resting here.
Feb. 19th, 2006 01:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quigonejinn- They had been in it together. That had been what drew them together halfway through the voyage, and now that Kennedy was dying, it pulled Bush across the room to sit next to him. After the doctor had given out the laudanum for the night, Bush would pull himself out of his bed, walk over, still bent because of the wounds on his back, and hand the basin up to Kennedy so that he could be sick in it -- weak as it was, Kennedy's stomach still did not like the laudanum.
Up would come the laudunum, as well as whatever food they had gotten into him since he had his last dose, but it was a choice between hunger and pain, and Bush would help him clean up afterwards. Pour a glass of water. Wipe his mouth off. Settle him easy into the bed again, wincing a little because his own wounds had not healed, and Kennedy never made an explicit request for it, but he began to tell Bush about the things from the past.
The Spanish prison. The boat out into the Devil's Teeth to rescue the men. A little bit about the Duchess, which made them both laugh, as well as Muzillac. An abbreviated version of Simpson, though Archie knew that Bush would guess at much of what he refued not say.
Eventually, talk would come back to Hornblower, and the third time that it happened, Bush managed to put what was happening into words. "Hornblower will have a brilliant career if this does not ruin him."
In the low light from the lamp, for a moment, Kennedy looked frightened, and then he made himself close his eyes and calm. His sea tan was beginning to fade, and he was growing paler by the day. He swallowed again.
"Yes. Yes, he will."
Even Bush could feel it, obscurely, in his heart. -
Brown came to fetch the Commodore's things, of course, and Bush was there, too, to make sure that the men minded whatever Brown ordered. They would need to remove the partition between the stern cabins, too, as there was no sense in having half of the place bang around empty, and he watched as Brown went through Hornblower's books to make sure that they were all there, looked in Hornblower's chest and counted the articles of clothing to see what was in the watch, then fetch them in, and Bush had his hands tucked behind him and watched with his back to the stern gallery during the process.
If Brown noticed that Hornblower was short a shirt, he never said anything about it. Bush, in his state of worry and fear and raging, helpless anger, did not think of it until he lay down in his cot, many, many hours later. He had not slept in the better part of thirty six hours, was swaying with exhaustion over the questions of command and preventative measures against gaol fever, and the room was swaying, too, and when he did lie down, there was his commodore's shirt, jammed against the side of Bush's cot, between blanket and the side of the cot and underneath the pillow.
Hornblower had left it there the night before, and Bush had lived through typhus as a midshipman, so he had no fear of it, but there was the squadron to think of. There was the ice, too, creeping down from the North, steady as time, and when the squadron left the Baltic, Bush finally took the shirt from underneath his pillow and put it, folded, into his sea chest.
He did not have a chance to give it back until Le Havre, until just before Caudebec.
There are nights when, after whist, Bush goes to look in on the boat.
It is usually cold and dark by then, but it is not very far to the place where they are building it, so he just sets his teeth against the temparature and walks. The path is familiar enough that he doesn't stumble, and once he's inside, he can strike up some light, put a fire in the hearth, and do a bit of work. Small work, usually, because the boat is at a scale large enough to require at least one fully able man, but nevertheless large enough so that he can feel justified if he starts to sing while he works.
Brown sings as he works on the boat during the day, but it would undignified to join him in it, so Bush has to get his signing in separately, at night.
There are songs about the sea, songs about the Navy. Ditties that he learned as a boy in Chichester about the baker's new apprentice and the French and their strange Republican eating habits. A phrase or two of a hymn that particularly moved him at Sunday service on the decks of the ships that he has served upon. When feeling particularly lively, bawdy songs that he learned as a midshipman. When sentimental, snatches of what he remembered his mother or sissters singing while doing the washing, though he had forgotten most of the words since it had a very long time since he had both been back with them and even longer since he had been with them while he was inclined to listen to them be happy.
It is the most vocal part of the day for him. Bush says very little because he does not speak French.
Moreover, even if he could speak French, Hornblower would still the only person in the house that he could have a conversation with. They are in a strange place with strange food and a strange language, and yet Bush is incapable of forgetting the sea or the Navy or his place in life.
Hornblower has, more than once, come out into the yard and watched Bush work. Bush has done a good job of hiding how lonely he is these days, and Hornblower is admittedly wrapped up in his own self-pity and yearnings, but even he can see that, these days, Bush is happiest when alone with the boat, sitting with a bit of canvas or part of an oar.
There is yellow light. Bush's lips and mouth move as he sings. He does look honestly content, and it makes Hornblower stamp and bite his lips and curse himself to realize how jealous he at seeing his friend happy.
Bush was shorter than Hornblower but built much more strongly and broadly in the shoulders, and Hornblower was a little surprised to discover just how finely built Bush was underneath the muscle. He had a hard face, and the hands were as tough as an able seaman's, but here were Bush's shoulderblades, neatly tucked on on either side of his spine. Here was the skin on the back of his neck, lying underneath his queue, and here was the small of his back, sloped inwards and strangely soft in much the same way that Barbara's was despite both of them being hard-muscled creatures.
Barbara earned hers by hours of walking and riding; Hornblower had no idea how Bush kept his now that he was a land-bound dockyard commissioner, but that was his hipbone -- it was a sign of how long Bush had been on land that he even slept on his side after almost twenty years of sleeping in hammocks or hard-bottomed cots. Bush and Barbara were different from the front, of course, hair lying over flat muscle in the place of smooth skin and breasts, but the back was somewhat similar.
Here was the hipbone, here was the prickle of hair, and here was Bush's cock, still mostly soft because he was asleep. Hornblower pulled Bush against him, nosed Bush's queue out of the way so that he could lay his mouth against the back of Bush's neck, then stroked Bush until Bush was no longer asleep and was, instead, gasping and arching and twisting and biting off curses for those hands to move faster.
It was not always noisy, of course. Bush could hold himself perfectly quiet when he was minded to, and years later, Hornblower would remember very clearly one morning that they had spent in bed entirely without words -- the door had been locked, and Bush lay, naked, on his side with one of his hands wrapped around a post of the bed. The curtains were drawn back, so they could see out of the bed and all around the room, the walls, the cot that they had called up for decency's sake with Hornblower's bag set on the floor by it. They tugged the blankets and mussed the pillow before setting to bed last night, and it was well enough along the morning that the sheets were very white in the sun.
There was a spot at Bush's waist that shone from where Hornblower had touched him there with slick hands, and Hornblower worked at Bush with those fingers longer than he had to just for the feel of it, tight and hot and so good that Hornblower felt an ache in his own stomach. It was a strange sensation to learn; he had never laid with a man in daylight, but here he was, fucking Bush with his fingers as methodically as he might plot a position on chart. He was watching Bush as he lay with his eyes closed, still enough to be thought sleeping except for the occaisional flicker of expression underneath the eyelids or around the mouth.
Once in a while, he would half-turn to look at Hornblower, and Bush was starting to grow pale with all the time that he spent on shore. He had very pale blue eyes, too, and they looked even lighter by way of the morning light. It seemed impossible that he should look so cool above and be so hot below.
When Hornblower could take it no more and finally slid in, he, not Bush, was the one to gasp and clutch at the sheets.-
Bush had been at the job at Sheerness just long enough to start to resent it: he attempted to bear the boredom and annoyance and frustrating uselessness of it as he would have a cold April gale at sea or an extended period at half-rations of water. When that failed, he tried to tolerate it like he tolerated the boredom of being at sea, but the truth was that boredom at sea was nothing like boredom on land. At sea, there was always some matter to which he could devote himself to, some small problem to be fixed or thing to be made better.
Here, there were always a thousand things to attend to simultaneously. He was never able to sit down and properly devote all his attention to working on some task because there were always other factors to be considered, other people on whom he must wait.
Writing letters to the Board was agony, too, and whenever Hornblower came, the two of them would set to the water for an afternoon in a small sailboat that Bush rented. It gave Bush pangs to be derelict in his duty, even for an afternoon, but he eventually decided that an afternoon's delay or a few days delay never hurt any of the letters that he had written. This was not the sea, this was not a ship, and Hornblower had originally felt that it was somewhat awkward, beneath the dignity of two men who had been senior officers on a ship of the line to set to sea in something not much larger than one of the Sutherland's boats. He had not said anything, and eventually, he had been won over, too, by the sensation of being out on the water again, of wind and sun and having nothing in sight but water.
Hornblower was always happy, in fact, to handle any bit of navigation that came their way. While they flitted about the coastal waters and those strong fingers worked out their position on the map, Hornblower would ask Bush many questions about his work -- what he was doing, how he was doing it, offer up bits of advice about how to handle an officer or a situation that always turned out to be good as gold -- but he never spoke of Smallbridge.
Eventually, Bush learned to limit his questions to the state of little Richard's health. - Hornblower was not the easiest man to fuck.
Bush knew that Hornblower was tone-deaf, but he knew, too, that his old captain had a good sense of rhythm. He had seen Hornblower pacing or tapping at the weather rail too much to be ignorant of the fact that Hornblower had a perfectly good sense of timing in things like this; when the marines drilled on deck, Hornblower noticed when the drummer boy missed a beat. Once he had gotten over the seasickness, Hornblower had the feel of his ship better than almost any man in the Navy, and the only thing that Bush could guess was that inexperience on the receiving end that made him so awkward.
When Bush pressed forward, Hornblower went forward, too. When Bush pulled back, Hornblower tried to move after him. Hornblower tried to wrap his legs around Bush's at the most inappropriate times; he moved when he ought to be still and was still when he ought to move. He squirmed away when Bush reached a hand around to stroke him; he tried to move Bush's hand when it would be inconvenient, but he was well slicked up and easy to move in, hot as brass under a tropical sun, so it was not discomfort that was making Hornblower so contrary.
Bush was not a man to talk or make extraneous noise in bed: he was not sure, in any case, that he could manage to give his old captain orders. It was hard enough trying to use his hands to show Hornblower how it ought to go, and later, Bush would flush up to the hairline and feel as though he wanted to die in shame whenever he remembered how he had eventually snarled and lost his patience and ability to hold out any longer and simply pinned the man who had made him a captain flat against the wall on one side of the bed.
Pressed him there, using hands and the weight of his body, and just held him there, still for once, so that he could be fucked.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: the notion of bush as a fluffy-feathered hen makes me so happy.
Date: 2006-02-21 05:07 pm (UTC)My entire presence in fandom is kind of like a giant "WHAT CLASSE?" icon. XD
Re: the notion of bush as a fluffy-feathered hen makes me so happy.
Date: 2006-02-21 08:05 pm (UTC)Re: the notion of bush as a fluffy-feathered hen makes me so happy.
Date: 2006-02-22 04:25 am (UTC)*has brain of chicken tonight*