quigonejinn | The 5 Things Meme.

*makes the sign of the malocchio*

DEAD SEA FRUIT. Just sayin. :D

1. Horatio borrowed Archie's copy of Norie's out of Archie's chest because he'd read his own to pieces, and then he fell asleep at the wardroom table -- he failed to notice that Archie had cleverly excised out chapters 3 through 11 and replaced them with a frolicsome tale of young shepherdesses gone wayward. Horatio, the fool, fell asleep on top of the last page of Chapter 2 and drooled through the page. There was a remarkably intruiging print on that first page, and it ran into smudges.

2. Old Captain Keene. He knew, he knew, he knew.

3. New Captain Sawyer, ordering a flogging for the last man out of the rigging.

4. The time that the growd pelted the stage during the second act, first scene of Richard III -- the actor who played Gloucester had apprently cuckolded someone, and that someone had arrived between acts with friends -- and it had gotten so bad that they'd had to cancel the performance. It was the last show that Archie saw befoer he went to the Justinian, and he's not quite sure that he can convince himself to forgive either Gloucester (who had all the sensitivity of a cow to his role) or the man (whose wife probably had the right idea in sleeping with another man.)

5. Kennedy can't forgive himself.

1. What every competent officer of His Majesty's Royal Navy ends up doing every chance he gets: sleeping.

2. What every young man under the age of thirty does every chance he gets: fuck.

3. Also, read. Mostly poetry and Shakespeare. Some Donne. Horatio likes Pope, which Archie has a lot of sympathy for, and a technical book every now and then. Also, since he's picked up a decent amount of Spanish, a bit here and there. There's very little time for reading, though. Sleep and work. Work and sleep. He dreams about pages of open books more often than he actually reads them.

4. A distant fourth: write letters home to his family. There is little to report.

5. Try to learn everything that other young midshipmen and lieutenants were learning during those lost years he spent in prison.

5 things Hornblower said in his sleep that Barbara heard after Caudebec
and
5 things Hornblower wished he had said to Bush

Oh, see, those are brilliant ... why do I suck so?

1. The dictionary. His sisters promised him their cake for week if he could finish reading it. Archie failed.

2. The Iliad. The Odyssey went all right -- Archie struggled through that all right. There were adventures at sea and monsters and tricks. Twelve year old boys can handle that all right.

3. A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. He had an aunt who was a devotee to the devout and holy life. Most fourteen year old boys, freshly discovering the delights of the female sex, are not.

4. This one damned collection of short pastorals by Pope. It was about shepherds. And pretty skies. And the beautiful-smelling country. Archie's father had a place where he went shooting, and Archie had seen those wretched sheep. He'd been able to swallow it, to some degree, when he was young. Even enjoyed it. He'd bought a volume of it for himself in Portsmouth because he remembered enjoying it and -- it was much less palatable him now aboard the Renown.

5. Decline and Fall. No matter how many times Horatio pressed him to read the damn thing.

The lesson that Archie took, instead, was that perversions of the proper, righteous order of things led to horrifying results.

Horatio flinched from heavy floggings and hangings from the yardarm. Archie did not.

5. Horatio's damned luck. His damned, damned luck.

It is a perversion of the proper, righteous order of things that you haven't written more Kennedy up until now. I love all the stuff you've written for him in this whole meme. Love it like fuck. Best stuff I've seen. His sisters! Chimneysweep apprentice!

Also, you are going to be writing these 5 things FOREVER if these prompts keep coming. O.o

Hee. The few, the proud.

Oh. Your Maria breaks my heart in such gorgeous ways.

In which they are like:

1. They love the Navy. Horatio loves duty and success and having a purpose; he tolerates His Majesty's Service.

2. Music. Even before the ice broke between them aboard the Renown when Bush joined the mutiny, there was some friendliness over this: Kennedy only had one friend in the wardroom, and it was Hornblower, who was tonedeaf and completely unappreciative of music.

One afternoon, just as Bush was coming off watch, Archie was singing bits and pieces of "Spanish Ladies." They looked at each other, and Bush stayed in the wardroom until the end. He even nodded a little as Kennedy held the note of the final "leagues," and while they never sang together, when they were in the infirmary together, while Bush wrung out a cool towel for Kennedy, he hummed a bit of it, too.

We will rant and we'll roar like true British sailors,
We'll rant and we'll roar all on the salt seas.

3. They both had sisters. A great number of loving, older sisters, in fact, and there is community among men who have endured such things. They recognize each other by certain signs.

4. Horatio, and their affection for him.

5. There was this one particular song about a pussycat who was one color above and another below. It seems that they were both fond of it, and on their first night back on the Renown after Samana, Archie sang it rather loudly with Bush toasting him at each chorus.

"Pity Horatio isn't here to enjoy this," Archie said, and Bush grinned. "I don't think he's heard this."

"We'll have to introduce him to it in Kingston. Do you know the verse about the salty dog who chased the pussycat?"

In which they are dissimilar:

1. "I must insist that the dog was brindled, not spotted, sir."

2. Bush supported four unmarried sisters on half of his pay. Archie's three -- particularly the one married to a marquess -- were somewhat freer of the need to discover new, intruiging ways to cook turnips.

3. Sawyer was not Bush's first experience of an actively abusive captain. With his second ship, he had one as bad as Sawyer in certain ways, but better in one crucial one: his abuse did not interfere too much with the function of the ship.

4. Archie has always loved the Navy -- even before he was too young to understand the miracles of weight and counterweight, wind and tide, he loved the glamor of uniforms and sea battles. There was a period when he struggled with its structure, and a time when he told himself that he did not have any affection for it. Even if he were released, he told himself, he would not go back to the sea. Bush came to love the Navy only after having spent time with her, but he was constant in his appreciation.

5. Bush lived through Kingston. Kennedy did not. Before leaving Kennedy to say his goodbye to Hornblower, Bush grasped his hand and smoothed the covers.

We strove for to weather but we run quite aground;
The seas mountain high made our sorrow abound.

Ahah. It looks like they've slowed down, but even at the previous rate it wasn't too bad. It's not like I have actual work or classes, pfft.

Considering that your Kennedy is my personal gold OMG standard, I'm really, really, really glad you like the Kennedy in this.

commodorified has been talking to me about some of the finer points of Kennedy and trying to get me to unpack the intuitions that I've got about him -- hence these questions, but really, in the end, I think it all comes from that first song on the Archie CD that I mailed to you. XD He can't leave! He has sisters!

Thanks again, oh lovely R.

Oh jeez. XD I've been trying and trying and trying to do these for days, but things just aren't clicking for me.

I suck at humor -- I've been beating my head for days, but I'e only been able to come up with one thing for the Harry and Cho two angstful things (to do something splendid that will make her like him; to make her stop crying), but neither of them are consonant with book 6. And one thing for Fred and George, which makes no sense outisde of anyboyd's head but mine (hate him.)

Can I offer you a full-length fic in any other fandom but, uh, Venture Brothers as a consolation prize ofr my suck? Or anything else that I can do for you?

~~5. HE WON'T EAT HIS GODDAMN FISH~~

1. The atrocities that Horatio committed against Spanish when they were in prison together. It's a wonder he ever struggled into something approaching conversational level in French -- never mind the fact that his grammar is still better than Archie's. The man is tone-deaf.

2. The time that Horatio accidentally reminded Archie just how he came to be the senior of them: Archie had come into the service first, after all, and Horatio made a joke about how he had now accumulated more sea time than Archie. It was funny at the time, and Horatio realized the impact once he had said it, but the damage was done.

As much as Archie likes to joke about what happened at the Spanish prison, he doesn't like to actually be reminded of it.

3. Horatio is Horatio is Horatio. There's nothing intended to be unkind in that, but it works that way. Horatio is Horatio, and the fact that he exists and that he is Archie's closest friend only makes it worse. Really, this is the crux of it.

4. "Do you think we'll have long in Kingston?" Cruel only in retrospect.

5. "Archie, Archie -- " Horatio's mourning on the deck of the Renown. It made dying more bittersweet, and this cruelty filled Archie's last days on Kingston.

1. There was an inn. Maybe there was more than one. It's hard for Bush to recall precise names and details. He could not see out the window, and he spent the first few days in a haze of pain and fever. There is one long, long day in which they ride in the carriage, and there is one long, long evening of dim lamps and covered dishes and strange voices on the other side of the door. A soldier at the door, but keeping them in, as opposed to keeping the crew out. Preserving the dignity of the captain.

2. The embarassment of having to be helped to the chamberpot, helped onto it, and helped off. It was comedic on certain levels, but also grim.

3. Brown, wiping the mouth of the bottle with a napkin.

4. The hand-holding, of course. Every morning, the captain reached for his hand moments after the carriage wheels began to turn, and if Bush let go of Hornblower's hand to let Hornblower brood, it was only for a little while before Hornblower was reaching back across the coach.

5. Bush chooses not to remember the pain. There was plenty of the pain, both during the day and during the night, but he chooses to remember the hand-holding instead of it. It was the first time that they had shown affection for each other in years -- it was the first time, in fact, since they parted ways after the Hotspur sank.

ARGH! I love Bush so much! How in pain he is in this and how much I want to cuddle him ... overactive mothering instinct, or something. Hand holding! Pain! A glimpse of affection from his best friend!

1. To stay in his cabin when he was sick.

2. To let his lieutenants run the ship when he was sick.

3. A certain night in Kingston where Hornblower was drunk enough to sing -- he was still incapable of distinguishing one note from another, much less reproducing them, but he was drunk enough to try. He studied Bush's mouth, the movements of his tongue, made a technical study of it as best as he could after two days and almost two nights in Kingston's best brothel, and when their money ran out, they went down the street, arm in arm, with Hornblower belting out the worst rendition of The Battle of the Nile that Bush had ever heard.

They had no money, and dawn was getting close. Nevertheless, when they sat down on the pier together to wait until it was time for Bush to go back to the Renown, Bush remembers that the stars were very bright.

4. The boarding action on the water hoy.

5. The man that he was before his children died.

*feels guilty for asking hard ones...*

Um...any HP fic would do :p Slash/Crack/Angst...But seeing as you don't really seem in a HP mood...hummmmm

5 Things Horatio got for his 12th Birthday (or any other birthday that works better)

XD Have been loving all the other 5 things up above :)

1. Kingston, Kingston, Kingston. Hornblower knows it is irrational, but he wishes that he could have told Archie "no." Even when he thinks about it now, it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

2. Kingston.

3. Horatio never really enjoyed being drunk, but he did like that time in Portsmouth with Archie, trying to drink the town dry. It was just that last round of drinking -- the Spanish wine with the strange, tarry taste -- that he wished he'd said "no" to. He woke the next morning with a full Marine band in his head and a Rear Admiral salute in his ears.

So yes, he wishes that he had said no.

4. When Archie was ill in prison and Horatio was nursing him, there were these long, terrible periods of silence. Archie would turn his face away from food and water and Horatio and stare at the blank wall; it went on and on and on, and to make Archie talk, Horatio would ask Archie questions. At first, they were technical questions about sailing because they were what sprang to Horatio's mind, but eventually, they moved to a more personal note. Horatio began to ask about Archie's family. Did he have sisters? Were they married? Were both of his parents still living? Had they been the ones who took him to the theater?

Eventually, Archie turned away from the wall, and when Archie had answered everything that Horatio could think of, Archie looked at Horatio. "And you, Horatio?"

Up until that point, Horatio had never even told anyone that his father was dead while he was away at sea. No-one had, in fact, ever asked. To make Archie laugh, Horatio even told him about the childish games he played -- he had been trying to explain why he went to sea, and a shadow fell over Archie's face. He was probably thinking of the fact that it had been so long since he had been at sea, and that had been it.

Horatio had been friendly with Archie before that. He felt an enormous sense of obligation to this midshipman whose time in prison he was responsible for, but there hadn't been a true emotional connection between them.

5. "Promise me you won't write to my family. Promise, Horatio. Do you understand why? My mother will tell everyone, and this will mean nothing -- "

To those who are reading along: welcome to the crack.

1. Breast implants. How is Horatio going to fill out his wedding gown if he has nothing up top?

2. Take old dry coconuts. Halve them -- without cutting your finger, Horatio -- and then go out into bay about thigh depth. Float the coconut shells. You can now re-enact all the Navy sea battles that your heart desires!

Just let Archie play England sometimes, Horatio. Because otherwise, if you're always the one to "close to boarding range" and "send the parties," Archie is going to end up so sore in the ass that he can't play Battle of the Nile anymore.

3. Pretend that they're midshipmen. Order them around.

4. Make a hairy sextant out of them. Calculate, from taking star positions, just how fucked the two of you are. Continue to wonder how a storm in the southern Atlantic could whisk you to an uninhabited Carribbean island.

4. Horatio, you can do this when Archie is having an Issue Day: kit out a coconut with yellowed palm leaves, leave it on a warm rock in the sun for a few hours, then cut a certain-sized hole in it. Etc.

Haha, number one is hilarious. So true, too. Sounds just like something Archie would say. And number 3? Also so true and something that Archie certainly had to come to terms with, I'm sure.

Number 4 and 5? *wails and wails* God. You always break my heart. In the best of ways, of course.

*loves all over Bush* He's a sap deep down, me thinks. *loves you, too*

1 &2? YES, DAMNIT. 3 makes me preen with happiness. I'd like fic of that. *nudge*

Number 5 makes me weep. God, so sad.

*has no words*

OH MAAAAAN. These just tear me up. KINGSTON. God. And I love number 4 where we see them becoming close.

And number 5 WAAAAAH. You've successfully made me cry on all these memes. But I love them all to death.

<33

*is seriuosly very dead. adds these all to the long list of things she wants to try on Gay Coconut Island(TM)*

Horatio says he would particularly like to try number 2. :D

*loves you and your brain to death*

The 5 Things Meme.

Re: Five discussions Caesar would have with Marc Antony.

Re: Five lies Hornblower told Bush.

5 things Archie Kennedy has never forgiven.

5 things Archie Kennedy does every chance he gets.

no subject

no subject

Re: The Archie Series, since you asked :) ...

Re: 5 things about the Navy that Archie Kennedy never got used to.

no subject

Re: 5 things Maria never told anyone about her marriage

5 ways Archie Kennedy is like William Bush, and 5 ways he is not.

Re: 5 things about the Navy that Archie Kennedy never got used to.

5 Things Harry wants to do to Cho with a wand

5 ways that Horatio was unkind to Archie but didn't mean to be

5 things Bush remembers about the carriage ride to Paris

Re: 5 things Bush remembers about the carriage ride to Paris

5 things Bush wishes Hornblower would remember

Re: 5 Things Harry wants to do to Cho with a wand

5 times Horatio wishes he had told Archie "No"

5 uses for a coconut on GAY COCONUT ISLAND(TM)

Re: 5 ways that Horatio was unkind to Archie but didn't mean to be

Re: 5 things Bush remembers about the carriage ride to Paris

Re: 5 things Bush wishes Hornblower would remember

Re: 5 times Horatio wishes he had told Archie "No"

Re: 5 uses for a coconut on GAY COCONUT ISLAND(TM)