quigonejinn

Horatio had been on port leave with Bush a number of times -- a certain amount of distance developed after Horatio became a commander, of course. Leave with Bush was also much less frequent once Horatio was married, but Bush in port was Bush on a ship was Bush with habits. He liked hard drinking, loud gambling, the occaisional bit of a scrap, though he had to be careful after he became a first lieutenant not to be bruised in the face or anywhere that showed over his uniform.

Bush was also a creature of habit when it came to women: if he had the money for it after the gambling, he liked to have two girls at once, and since Horatio only ever had one and got his business over quickly to boot, he would have to wait while Bush sat one on his knee and kissed her and traded saucy remarks with her while the other stood behind him, undid his collar, kissed his neck, helped him out of his coat and got all three of them to bed together in a tangle of arms and legs. And then, since Bush could, when he wanted to, also squeeze a coin hard enough to make it squeak and there was always the room rental fee that they paid up front, Horatio had to wait while Bush took his sweet time with each girl and,if there was time and he had really had a bit left over from gambling, seconds with the one he hadn't gotten enough of the first time around.

So Horatio would have to sit and wait. It always worked out, in fact, Bush would only be half done after Horatio had rearranged his clothes and paid his girl off. Sometimes, he would light a cigar and smoke. Other times, he would take a book out, hold it in front of him, and read about the shores of Portugal or the plantations of Hayti. Around the edges of the pages, he would see a bit of arm, part of a foot, Bush's hand on a breast while he did one of them on her back.

It was a warm, companionable way to go about it, and one time, while they were standing outside the brothel outside, while Bush was getting his neck cloth straight and his queue tight again, Hornblower felt expansive enough to make a little joke about it. "You go about it like a captain, you know," Horatio said.

Bush blushed hard enough so that Horatio could see where a little women's face powder had brushed onto his first lieutenant's cheek.

After a lifetime in the Navy and concomitant brothel patronage, Bush knew more about how to please a man in bed than he did a woman.

Bush made as much noise in bed as he did while on deck or anything, really: he breathed noisily while unbuttoning your coat; he growled at you when you held him still so that you could get his shirt over his head. He would try to say something to you while you got his trousers down to his knees, would break away from kisses to mutter, and Horatio was, when it came to matters like this, not inclined to converse. He kept his mouth on Bush's as much to keep him quiet as for the pleasure of Bush's lips and tongue. After the noise and racket of living on ship for months on end, of hearing every noise on ship even while shut inside his cabin, he wanted quiet while he had a chance for it.

Nevertheless, it always made him gasp and shake a little to hear the way Bush cursed when he actually did get fucked -- on his knees, usually, with Horatio behind him and Bush burying his face in his arms while his captain worked one finger in, then two, then slid in as slow as he could bear it. In fact, Horatio would have died rather than admit, even to himself, that his favorite moment about the whole thing was when Bush left off with the blasphemy and began, instead, to moan Horatio's name over and over, as loud as he dared.

Hornblower bathed in seawater whenever he could, and fresh water was always rare on board a ship, so it was unsurprising that Horatio's skin would taste more like salt than anything else. What was strange, actually, was how little hair there was on him -- very little on the back, only a sprinkling across the chest. Some on the legs, a good amount around the prick, but in many ways, he was as smooth as a woman in most places and softer in the hands, too, because as a captain, he did no manual labor.

Having him in bed was like wrestling a fish, and there were moments where Bush would be trying to press him still, and in the struggle, he would find himself with his face and mouth pressed against a sweat-slick shoulderblade or collarbone. There would be the taste of the salt, a little taste of the sea, Horatio twisting to look at him with wild eyes and wriggling at the same time and Horatio's hair, long and curly not from being in a seaman's queue but because that was naturally how it was, and Horatio didn't wear a queue anyway, and seamen's queues tended to leave hair in waves and not curls, and as a result, Bush would, for all his unimaginativeness, suddenly imagine that he was in love with some kind of mercreature.