Three Things that Never Happened to Horatio Hornblower: the Future

[quigonejinn]

This is the start of a crackfic/ghoulfic that black_hound suggested.



Hornblower was in the habit of marrying women who were unsuited to him: Maria was as unlike him in character and moods as could be imagined, though she did share his middle-class taste in home and hearth and family. Barbara was as like him in character and mood as could have been arranged for a woman of that period, but she was a grand lady. Her greatest pleasure was to host a small dinner for two dozen with white-ducked servants behind each chair. Loneliness reminded her of the years that she had spent in poverty, waiting for one of her wretched brothers to make something of his life. She had despised loneliness; she despiesed it still, and the years at Smallbridge were difficult for her.

Smallbridge was, after all, years of hard riding and hard walking by herself in the park. It was worse, in fact, than it had been when she was sixteen: there was no end in sight. She could count on neither Richard's cleverness nor Arthur's luck to get her out of this, and in the end, she only bore it because it happened after Vienna, after Le Havre and what she could guess at, but could never know, with Bush and the Comte and his beautiful daughter-in-law.

They were three people that Hornblower never spoke of anymore, two places that did not exist for him anymore. He did ask the occaisional question of her about Vienna while reading the international sectin of the journals. Had this gentleman been a minister when she met him? What had he seemed like?

In the end, the loneliness at Smallbridge was the price Barbara, personally, had to pay to get back the only man she had ever loved, and she knew it. In fact, she assumed that it was the only thing she would have to give up.

...

One morning, when she had taken her walk along the northern side of the park and was warming herself by the fire, Hebe came in and indicated that the groundskeeper was there to see her. It could not wait until she was at her desk, apparently, and the man was agitated.

In the decades of her life that came after, Barbara remembered, very clearly, the way she had gotten herself decent, the signal she had given Hebe to let him in. There had been a ball of dread in her stomach then, and in the decades that came after, Barbara realized the persistence of the ice in her cloak before the fire was her second signal. The cold in her stomach while she waited for the groundkeeper was the third, and the first, the very first, had been the flock of ravens that had been flying south over her head, towards the direction of what had sounded like a shot, had been the first signal.

She did not want to think back further, to earlier signs. She would not.

...

"Where are you walking tomorrow, dear? Along the northern side of the park or the south?"

...

Comments

[black-hound.livejournal.com]

Holy shit.

*hops around like a crow on carrion*

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

I threw down the first few paragraphs and the blowjob scene in the Richard Arthur/Hornblower fic, too. I'm going to hell.

[black-hound.livejournal.com]

I hope it's a pretty big handbasket cause you're gonna have company. XD

*sizzles in hellfire*

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

That night, he dreamed about Richard: he was in the study in the western part of the house, sitting in his favorite armchair in the warm afternoon sun, and Richard had his mouth on him in the exactly the way that Bush used to -- tongue, lots of tongue. Hornblower had always thought of it, in the back of his head, with more than a little irritation, that Bush went after him the way he went after mustard on his fingers when there was no need to stand on manners.

So there was saliva. Wet, disgusting noises, pleasure so intense and yet so fleeting that made him rock from side to side in half-hearted attempts to get away from it until the mouth closed on him, imposibly tight and good, and there, underneath him, just as he'd remembered it, was the finger, slick with spit and what Hornblower had, himelf put in that wonderful, clever mouth. It was pushing at him; he was tight after all these years. He closed around that finger like a fist. It felt so good, and if he could get a fucking out of this -- get another finger in him, get fucked on his back or maybe even on his knees --

Hornblower knew, as his heart began to pound wide enough so that he was almost awake, knew that he had reached out with his arms and was holding that dream head down and his hips moved frward again and again -- Hornblower knew, then, even as he gasped and spent himself down the throat that wasn't there, that it didn't matter all that much whether Bush had been Richard's father or not.

He woke in his armchair in the study on the western side of the houe. It was night; the servants had gone to bed, and he had fallen asleep by the fire with port and the Naval Gazette. His pants stuck to him a little.

It didn't matter whether Richard was a ghost or not, he realized. The sentiment was there regardless.

*roasts another marshmallow*

[black-hound.livejournal.com]

You can't begin to measure how wrong this is. Just can't. :)

And of course ... mustard!

[nolivingman.livejournal.com]

Oh man. This is going to be good. I don't know how I missed this when you posted it before.