Three Things.
Jul. 22nd, 2006 03:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quigonejinnSome of you have seen parts of this already, I think. I was posting bits and chunks of it a while back.
There are only three things that you can never tell your friend Tom.
Orrock is solid, as good a friend as you've ever had. Better, in fact. You can confess any incompetency or gap in knowledge to him, and he'll laugh and make you feel better. In fact, he seems to take joy in doing it, great happiness, and this is hy at you can never tell him the first thing: you are somewhat better at navigation than you pretend to be for his sake.
He is far better than you with the sextant. He is helping you learn the signal book. Nevertheless, you do not need his help to navigate the tables and numbers, but you pretend to, and the way you pretend is much like how you pretend not to be able to understand the mutterings of the French major that the Hotspur is transporting. It is almost exactly the same way that you go about hiding the new shirts you still have at the bottom of your chest and keep on wearing the same one that you've been wearig. It's getting a little disgusting, but you figure that later, when everybody is good and filthy, you can stumble on them and give one to him, and both of you can be provisioned for a while without any additional shame.
That's the first thing.
Second, you can never tell him that your father died under somewhat igominious circumstances. It is true that he died after fighting a duel, but he was fighting the duel over his mistress, not an insult to your mother. He was nicked in the duel, promptly surrendered both the duel and the woman, and then died from the fact that he caught cold in the rain afterwards. You learned this from hearing your grandmother tell your mother to stop weeping for Charles, the useless, dead all those years and then some. Your uncle was standing nearby; you remember seeing the gold of his epaulette. You were looking through the crack in the drawing room doors, and you saw that bit of fringe sway when he nodded his head.
Finally, you can never tell your friend Tom that that you remember what it was like to lie under Lieutenant Bush. You were on your back; the two of you were almost face to face, and you could see the shape of your name on his lips, but you did not hear it because he was so breathless from fucking you.
...
Of course, there are plenty of other things keeping you occupied these days besides figuring out the things that you can and cannot tell Tom. Life at sea is cold, miserable, and thirsty. There is plenty of food, but it is miserable stuff eking biscuits and salt beef and cold pork with the provisions you brought. Hooker, who is only fourteen, but has two years of experience on a frigate already, tells you that being a midshipman here is paradise compared to being one on just any other ship in the fleet: Captain Hornblower has, for some reason, taken a special interest in the midshipmen, and this includes, apparently, preventing excessive bullying both among and of them.
Everyone is young. There are no irrational chest levies. Junior midshipmen get their rum last and have to run more wardroom errands than the seniors, but they get their ration, and the wardroom never makes unreasonable demands. Orrock, at eighteen and on the verge of eligibility for becoming a lieutenant, is senior and runs the mess as efficiently and competently as he does everything else, and after the second week, it does not feel wrong to think of that low, dark space as home.
The Captain even comes by once. From the way that Hooker squeaks and almost falls off the bench, the way that even Orrock jumps up and almost bangs his head against a beam, this is rather unusual, and the captain walks around the bench-and-table with his head ducked low and his hands tucked behind his back. Surveying what he sees, you think. He seems to be in an amazingly good mood.
"Playing cards, gentlemen?" he says, finally, and glances round at the bunch of you. At sea, as far as you have had experience, he is a much different man than he was in the Long Rooms, much colder, much stiffer and far more distant, but there is a little smile playing around his mouth now, and when his survey reaches you, he looks straight at you for a moment. The smile twitches a little more broadly. "Mr. Hammond here is a very good whist player."
You blush up to your hair.
None of you ever find out, not even Hooker, who knows all the gossip, why the captain was in such a glorious mood that evening. Such things are, apparently, not for midshipmen to know, and he left without saying much more.
The smile was familiar. It reminded you of the Long Rooms, and you find yourself playing it over in your head for days, partially for the joy of your hero smiling at you, partially because you are trying to learn the ways in which men at sea are, in fact, different from men on land.
...
Here is a rather vivid example even though it turns back onto an already discussed subject: one afternoon, you are being punished for being wretchedly slow at getting the readings with your sextant at the noon navigation lesson. Captain Hornblower has apparently given orders that midshipmen are not to be beaten unless there is good cause, and masters have had to use alternative methods.
As a result, you have not yet been beaten, but you are in the nets along the side of the mast. It might go by other names on other ships, but on the Hotspur, it is known as racking, and you are to stay there for the entirety of the afternoon watch. Your shoulders are already starting to ache, to say nothing of your calves. Prowse made sure that you were good and hanging there. The sun is just strong enough to make you thirsty; the wave that occaisionally splashes across your back is cold enough to make you thoroughly miserable, as the skies are clear but there is sharp wind coming from only God-knows-where. It is a good thing that you have gotten over your seasickness, or you'd be spewing vomit as the ship rises up and then drops back down.
With two bells to go, Lieutenant Bush comes onto the deck. He has his telescope tucked undereath his arm, is walking with complete steadiness, and you see him pause for a moment and look at you. There is nothing in his expression, not even a hint of either interest or surprise, but he is studying you, and you are very much aware that you are spreadeagled against the rigging, that you have bitten at your lips until you can taste a little blood in your mouth, that you cannot speak until spoken to.
You are starting to shiver from cold and tiredness, and you can feel Lieutenant Bush's eyes on your chest, on your face. Sliding up the inside of your thigh, resting for a moment on your stomach or possibly regions below. He is looking at you; he says nothing, and his expression does not change. He does not even raise an eyebrow, but he is clearly taking in the sight of you, spread against the ropes.
And then he turns and calmly begins to discuss, with Mr. Prowse, the captain's orders for exercising the hands aloft later.
...
The Major figures out that you know French a little bit later. You are still sore from being up in the rigging, and you are still, it seems, bad at keeping expressions from your face. You are standing a bit behind him at the quarterdeck; he is looking down and muttering about how this ship has all the grace of a drunk turtle, and the corner of your mouth twitches. You manage to keep from making any noise, but you are standing back and a little to his left, so he sees you move out of the corner of his eye. Some of the amusement must still be on your face; when he turns to look at you, he studies you with his eyebrows raised.
You have pretended, at other times, not to understand French. You were with Orrock then, after all, and the Major studies you. Up and down, similar, but different from the way that Lt. Bush was looking at you -- you'll have to remember that for later, and you are more familiar with the Army than the Navy, but you nevertheless blush.
Again, it goes all the way up to your hair, and after studying you for a little longer, the Major turns back to the rail.
...
The midshipman's berth is, in fact, where you spend most of your time when you are not on dekc. It is a narrow, tiny thing; at night, the hammocks are put over the bench and table where you eat your meals. Your place is second from the end on the starboard bench. After dinner, Hooker lounges on his side, smoking a pipe. Orrock is at your shoulder, quizzing you from Norie's, and the two youngest middies, just eleven and barely twelve, are playing dice.
If the weather is fine, the midshipmen's berth skylarks. Sometimes, even when the weather is not so fine, there is still skylarking. You have even begun to enjoy it, and slowly, you are settling into the life of a midshipman. Slowly, there are moments when it is all so comfortable and natural that you forget the situation you are in. You forget the danger.
...
After the inspection, Styles comes to fetch you. There is only one bosun on the Hotspur; it is a small ship, and Captain Hornblower's wants are simple, so Styles is, in addition to the steward, sometimes the bosun's mate, and there is no doubt what is the offing. Orrock grips you on the shoulder; Hooker looks sympathetic, and you go with Styles.
Your hands are cold; your feet do not move quickly, and your heart is pounding so loud that you cannot actually hear what he is trying to say to you. Advice, you suspect, about taking your first beating. A warning to watch your step becaue there has been rain on deck, and when you get down to the gundeck, you suspect that your nervousness and fear may, in fact, be the reason it takes so long for your eyes to adjust.
Matthews is standing by one of the twenty-four pounders that you have charge of during an action. He has his hands folded in front of him and looks a little embarrassed, and when your eyes adjust some more, you realize that Bush is standing next to him, that he is the one with the cane in his hands. He still has his coat, his hat; perhaps, he will set his hat aside, but he is going to beat you while fully and appropriately dressed, and it is either darkness or fear that makes you unable to see the details of his face. Somewhat further is the surgeon, you know, and it is Bush who is going to be beating you today. Just as the captain takes a special interest in the midshipmen to prevent them from being bullied, Mr. Bush has, apparently, taken a special interest in your case.
"Mr. Hammond," he calls out. You remember the undertone to his voice during the ship inpection. You make yourself step forward.
...
You lie on your stomach in your hammock while Tom puts paper dipped in a little seawater and a little vinegar over you.
"It's not bad," he says. "He laid into you hard, but he didn't lay them on top of one other."
"That's the worst," Hooker chimes in from the other side.
"And he laid them square on the back of your legs. If you want, you'll be able to sleep on your side."
"Thank you, I've had beatings before," you tell them. The main impediment to speech is not the pain, but instead, the way that you bit at your lips. They're swelling now, and the taste of blood is still in your mouth. Your face feels stiff from crying, and the vinegar running down your legs stings. "My old tutor used a switch on me."
...
The wardroom has an iron delivered to it every moring. Usually, it is Orrock who takes it to them -- it means a trip to the warm galley in the cold morning. Styles is good company for a hungry, cold boy, but one morning, a few days before the captain goes to shore with Cotard for the first time, Orrock has the watch, and it is your duty to go and fetch the item.
You wake. You dress, stiff-fingered in the cold, and you trot down to the galley, bask in the heat while the iron heats and Styles works at the captain's breakfast. When the iron is so hot that spit disappears, you wrap a rag around the handle, and trot down to the wardroom. You knock, say through the door, "Iron, sir," and the door swings open because the ship yaws. The door was't entirely closed, and there, on the other side, in the morning sun, is Bush.
He is obviouly in the process of getting dressed. Shaved already, but he is not wearing anything except for his shirt -- bare legs, bare feet, the parts of his hair not in a queue loking a little tousled, and he has his neckcloth over his fingers. The shirt is in the cut of gentlemen's shirts from a few years ago with the narrow neck and the wide ruffles. It's good material, clean, but washed thin enough so that with the morning light coming from behind, you can see the shape of his upper thighs through it. Not much shadow, with the way that the light is coming through, and you would lick your lips if they weren't cracked and still somewhat swollen.
"Iron, sir," you say and hold up the iron. You have the suspcion that you are a little out of breath from the change in temperature, from running, and you fight to keep your breathing even. You started to sweat a little in the galley, and it's making the back of your legs sting.
He holds his hand out, and you bring the iron to him. His fingers almost brush yours when you switch the iron over, and it is a little tricky getting actually handing it off becaue the rag is a bit smaller than you'd wish, but he takes it, and then he is looking at you again.
It is as impossible as ever to read his expression, but if you had to guess, he was trying to be kind.
...
Here is how it went with you and Mr. Bush originally: he had been waiting in the street when you came out of the bookstore -- he must have seen you go in, stood outside in the cold, was waiting for you with his coat pulled up around his ears. You remembered him from the Long Rooms, of course, and after a little bit of talk in the street, of feeling yourself blush a little whenever his eyes loked you over and asked you a question about yourself, the two of you were in a room with nothing in it but a bed.
Your books were on the floor, and you were in his lap. Both of you were naked; before, he had been kissing you, and now, you could feel his prick pressing against your back while he jerked you off. Hard sailor hands, surprisingly light on you anyways, and his mouth against your ear, your neck, your shoulder. Teeth brushing over the back of your jaw until you came all over his hand.
From the way he had you in his lap, you thought that maybe he would want you on your hands and knees after that. Your collarbones felt a little sore, in fact, because at the end, to keep you in his lap while you came, he'd had to put a hand across your chest and hold your back agains this front. Now, though, he put you on your back, slicked up a finger and put it in you. You thought he would follow with another, but he took a palmful of oil and put it on his cock.
You'd protested, explained that you usually needed more, but he looked at you, promised that he would go slow -- he just wanted to feel you tight around him, and you remember the ache in your stomach that'd started up again at that point. He was pale all over; he talked to you, explained that he'd been on shore all these months since the Peace of Amiens, and he had, in fact, gone slowly, petting your hair, kissing you again and again, propping himself up over you. He'd been on the bed with you; he'd drawn the curtains, so the whole world looked white, and then, you wrapped your legs around his waist and pulled him all the way against you because it had, indeed, felt that good.
You sucked in your breath, arched your back. Whimpered a little, gripped the sheets to keep from making more noise, and rocked against him. He looked you in the face, and all the breath went out of him. He had started saying your name a little after that, and when you saw Bush in the Wardroom of the Hotspur, his hands and face had been dark, but the rest of him had been as pale as he was that afternoon. There had, in fact, been a neat line around his wrist for where the sleeves of his coat ran, another on his throat, where the neckcloth and stock ended.
More than one night on the Hotspur, you've woken up with your blanket spattered and your hand sticky, and you are fairly sure it is no longer the captain of whom you've been dreaming.
...
You remember very little of your father. From the descriptions that you have gotten, you have some understanding of his character, and the miniature that your mother still keeps and looks at when she thinks that nobody is paying attention to her, you have a vague image of what he must have looked like. He does resemble Bush, nor does he look anything like your uncle.
...
Before he and the captain are to go ashore, Cotard is at the rail. The boat is being lowered into the water, and Tom is standing by Cotard and supervising.
When you come out onto deck, Cotard is saying something to Tom. It seems that he was trying to explain something in English and has resorted to French. This is why you are hesitant to approach the rail; out of the corner of his eye, again, Cotard sees you. Instead of asking you to translate, though, after a moment of study and consideration, he continues talking to Tom in his accented, awkward English.
The deed is, nevertheless, smoothly done.
...
There is blood on your face after the engagement. It is your first, and whenever you think about what has happened, you have to suppress a terrible urge to start screaming and continue screaming. You have washed the blood off the side of your face, but you can feel the residue on your fingers, and the shame of having failed so badly is worse than the hysteria.
In fact, it is what keeps your back straight and your head at a decent angle when you knock on the captain's door. There is a pause, and the captain tells you to come in -- he and Mr. Bush are standing together on the far side of the table, close enough so that their shoulders bump, and Mr. Bush is standing in a slightly awkward position. His hand -- the one that he has closer to the captain -- is hanging awkwardly down his side. He is unsure where to put it, and eventually, he rests it on the table, in front of him. They were discussing something, perhaps, when you came in.
Whatever they had been discussing, they are studying you, now.
Word has spread of your conduct; even if Matthews would never breathe a word, someone else would notice, and the Hotspur is a small ship. The captain, the lieutenant, the creaking of the cabin, and the play of light through the windows of the cabin. It is very quiet, and you straighten your shoulders even more, lift your chin. Your voice is steady.
"Mr. Prowse sends his respects and wonders whether the captain might come to the deck."
In the moment before the captain answers, there is just the faintest bit of approval in both of their eyes.
...
In the beginning, you did not think that it would be so difficult to be a man. When your grandmother and your uncle spoke of it in the drawing room, it always appeared easy. It always seemed to consist of the obvious thing, the right thing. Before you came to the Hotspur, you would have assumed that any difficulties you had with becoming a man were due to your father, evidencing himself in you.
Now, you know better. It is difficult business. It is difficult to be pulled, backward and forward, forward and back, terribly slowly at some moments, and horrifyingly quickly at others. It seems strange; it seems unnatural. Yet, you look around, and you see its traces in the captain, in Bush, in all of these men that you admire. Even Cotard.
There is hidden grace in all of them, and you are done fighting it: this will be the way that you will have to become a man. You have accepted it, and you look forward to telling your uncle, the next time you see him, the one true thing you have learned in your time at sea.
There are only three things that you can never tell your friend Tom.
Orrock is solid, as good a friend as you've ever had. Better, in fact. You can confess any incompetency or gap in knowledge to him, and he'll laugh and make you feel better. In fact, he seems to take joy in doing it, great happiness, and this is hy at you can never tell him the first thing: you are somewhat better at navigation than you pretend to be for his sake.
He is far better than you with the sextant. He is helping you learn the signal book. Nevertheless, you do not need his help to navigate the tables and numbers, but you pretend to, and the way you pretend is much like how you pretend not to be able to understand the mutterings of the French major that the Hotspur is transporting. It is almost exactly the same way that you go about hiding the new shirts you still have at the bottom of your chest and keep on wearing the same one that you've been wearig. It's getting a little disgusting, but you figure that later, when everybody is good and filthy, you can stumble on them and give one to him, and both of you can be provisioned for a while without any additional shame.
That's the first thing.
Second, you can never tell him that your father died under somewhat igominious circumstances. It is true that he died after fighting a duel, but he was fighting the duel over his mistress, not an insult to your mother. He was nicked in the duel, promptly surrendered both the duel and the woman, and then died from the fact that he caught cold in the rain afterwards. You learned this from hearing your grandmother tell your mother to stop weeping for Charles, the useless, dead all those years and then some. Your uncle was standing nearby; you remember seeing the gold of his epaulette. You were looking through the crack in the drawing room doors, and you saw that bit of fringe sway when he nodded his head.
Finally, you can never tell your friend Tom that that you remember what it was like to lie under Lieutenant Bush. You were on your back; the two of you were almost face to face, and you could see the shape of your name on his lips, but you did not hear it because he was so breathless from fucking you.
...
Of course, there are plenty of other things keeping you occupied these days besides figuring out the things that you can and cannot tell Tom. Life at sea is cold, miserable, and thirsty. There is plenty of food, but it is miserable stuff eking biscuits and salt beef and cold pork with the provisions you brought. Hooker, who is only fourteen, but has two years of experience on a frigate already, tells you that being a midshipman here is paradise compared to being one on just any other ship in the fleet: Captain Hornblower has, for some reason, taken a special interest in the midshipmen, and this includes, apparently, preventing excessive bullying both among and of them.
Everyone is young. There are no irrational chest levies. Junior midshipmen get their rum last and have to run more wardroom errands than the seniors, but they get their ration, and the wardroom never makes unreasonable demands. Orrock, at eighteen and on the verge of eligibility for becoming a lieutenant, is senior and runs the mess as efficiently and competently as he does everything else, and after the second week, it does not feel wrong to think of that low, dark space as home.
The Captain even comes by once. From the way that Hooker squeaks and almost falls off the bench, the way that even Orrock jumps up and almost bangs his head against a beam, this is rather unusual, and the captain walks around the bench-and-table with his head ducked low and his hands tucked behind his back. Surveying what he sees, you think. He seems to be in an amazingly good mood.
"Playing cards, gentlemen?" he says, finally, and glances round at the bunch of you. At sea, as far as you have had experience, he is a much different man than he was in the Long Rooms, much colder, much stiffer and far more distant, but there is a little smile playing around his mouth now, and when his survey reaches you, he looks straight at you for a moment. The smile twitches a little more broadly. "Mr. Hammond here is a very good whist player."
You blush up to your hair.
None of you ever find out, not even Hooker, who knows all the gossip, why the captain was in such a glorious mood that evening. Such things are, apparently, not for midshipmen to know, and he left without saying much more.
The smile was familiar. It reminded you of the Long Rooms, and you find yourself playing it over in your head for days, partially for the joy of your hero smiling at you, partially because you are trying to learn the ways in which men at sea are, in fact, different from men on land.
...
Here is a rather vivid example even though it turns back onto an already discussed subject: one afternoon, you are being punished for being wretchedly slow at getting the readings with your sextant at the noon navigation lesson. Captain Hornblower has apparently given orders that midshipmen are not to be beaten unless there is good cause, and masters have had to use alternative methods.
As a result, you have not yet been beaten, but you are in the nets along the side of the mast. It might go by other names on other ships, but on the Hotspur, it is known as racking, and you are to stay there for the entirety of the afternoon watch. Your shoulders are already starting to ache, to say nothing of your calves. Prowse made sure that you were good and hanging there. The sun is just strong enough to make you thirsty; the wave that occaisionally splashes across your back is cold enough to make you thoroughly miserable, as the skies are clear but there is sharp wind coming from only God-knows-where. It is a good thing that you have gotten over your seasickness, or you'd be spewing vomit as the ship rises up and then drops back down.
With two bells to go, Lieutenant Bush comes onto the deck. He has his telescope tucked undereath his arm, is walking with complete steadiness, and you see him pause for a moment and look at you. There is nothing in his expression, not even a hint of either interest or surprise, but he is studying you, and you are very much aware that you are spreadeagled against the rigging, that you have bitten at your lips until you can taste a little blood in your mouth, that you cannot speak until spoken to.
You are starting to shiver from cold and tiredness, and you can feel Lieutenant Bush's eyes on your chest, on your face. Sliding up the inside of your thigh, resting for a moment on your stomach or possibly regions below. He is looking at you; he says nothing, and his expression does not change. He does not even raise an eyebrow, but he is clearly taking in the sight of you, spread against the ropes.
And then he turns and calmly begins to discuss, with Mr. Prowse, the captain's orders for exercising the hands aloft later.
...
The Major figures out that you know French a little bit later. You are still sore from being up in the rigging, and you are still, it seems, bad at keeping expressions from your face. You are standing a bit behind him at the quarterdeck; he is looking down and muttering about how this ship has all the grace of a drunk turtle, and the corner of your mouth twitches. You manage to keep from making any noise, but you are standing back and a little to his left, so he sees you move out of the corner of his eye. Some of the amusement must still be on your face; when he turns to look at you, he studies you with his eyebrows raised.
You have pretended, at other times, not to understand French. You were with Orrock then, after all, and the Major studies you. Up and down, similar, but different from the way that Lt. Bush was looking at you -- you'll have to remember that for later, and you are more familiar with the Army than the Navy, but you nevertheless blush.
Again, it goes all the way up to your hair, and after studying you for a little longer, the Major turns back to the rail.
...
The midshipman's berth is, in fact, where you spend most of your time when you are not on dekc. It is a narrow, tiny thing; at night, the hammocks are put over the bench and table where you eat your meals. Your place is second from the end on the starboard bench. After dinner, Hooker lounges on his side, smoking a pipe. Orrock is at your shoulder, quizzing you from Norie's, and the two youngest middies, just eleven and barely twelve, are playing dice.
If the weather is fine, the midshipmen's berth skylarks. Sometimes, even when the weather is not so fine, there is still skylarking. You have even begun to enjoy it, and slowly, you are settling into the life of a midshipman. Slowly, there are moments when it is all so comfortable and natural that you forget the situation you are in. You forget the danger.
...
After the inspection, Styles comes to fetch you. There is only one bosun on the Hotspur; it is a small ship, and Captain Hornblower's wants are simple, so Styles is, in addition to the steward, sometimes the bosun's mate, and there is no doubt what is the offing. Orrock grips you on the shoulder; Hooker looks sympathetic, and you go with Styles.
Your hands are cold; your feet do not move quickly, and your heart is pounding so loud that you cannot actually hear what he is trying to say to you. Advice, you suspect, about taking your first beating. A warning to watch your step becaue there has been rain on deck, and when you get down to the gundeck, you suspect that your nervousness and fear may, in fact, be the reason it takes so long for your eyes to adjust.
Matthews is standing by one of the twenty-four pounders that you have charge of during an action. He has his hands folded in front of him and looks a little embarrassed, and when your eyes adjust some more, you realize that Bush is standing next to him, that he is the one with the cane in his hands. He still has his coat, his hat; perhaps, he will set his hat aside, but he is going to beat you while fully and appropriately dressed, and it is either darkness or fear that makes you unable to see the details of his face. Somewhat further is the surgeon, you know, and it is Bush who is going to be beating you today. Just as the captain takes a special interest in the midshipmen to prevent them from being bullied, Mr. Bush has, apparently, taken a special interest in your case.
"Mr. Hammond," he calls out. You remember the undertone to his voice during the ship inpection. You make yourself step forward.
...
You lie on your stomach in your hammock while Tom puts paper dipped in a little seawater and a little vinegar over you.
"It's not bad," he says. "He laid into you hard, but he didn't lay them on top of one other."
"That's the worst," Hooker chimes in from the other side.
"And he laid them square on the back of your legs. If you want, you'll be able to sleep on your side."
"Thank you, I've had beatings before," you tell them. The main impediment to speech is not the pain, but instead, the way that you bit at your lips. They're swelling now, and the taste of blood is still in your mouth. Your face feels stiff from crying, and the vinegar running down your legs stings. "My old tutor used a switch on me."
...
The wardroom has an iron delivered to it every moring. Usually, it is Orrock who takes it to them -- it means a trip to the warm galley in the cold morning. Styles is good company for a hungry, cold boy, but one morning, a few days before the captain goes to shore with Cotard for the first time, Orrock has the watch, and it is your duty to go and fetch the item.
You wake. You dress, stiff-fingered in the cold, and you trot down to the galley, bask in the heat while the iron heats and Styles works at the captain's breakfast. When the iron is so hot that spit disappears, you wrap a rag around the handle, and trot down to the wardroom. You knock, say through the door, "Iron, sir," and the door swings open because the ship yaws. The door was't entirely closed, and there, on the other side, in the morning sun, is Bush.
He is obviouly in the process of getting dressed. Shaved already, but he is not wearing anything except for his shirt -- bare legs, bare feet, the parts of his hair not in a queue loking a little tousled, and he has his neckcloth over his fingers. The shirt is in the cut of gentlemen's shirts from a few years ago with the narrow neck and the wide ruffles. It's good material, clean, but washed thin enough so that with the morning light coming from behind, you can see the shape of his upper thighs through it. Not much shadow, with the way that the light is coming through, and you would lick your lips if they weren't cracked and still somewhat swollen.
"Iron, sir," you say and hold up the iron. You have the suspcion that you are a little out of breath from the change in temperature, from running, and you fight to keep your breathing even. You started to sweat a little in the galley, and it's making the back of your legs sting.
He holds his hand out, and you bring the iron to him. His fingers almost brush yours when you switch the iron over, and it is a little tricky getting actually handing it off becaue the rag is a bit smaller than you'd wish, but he takes it, and then he is looking at you again.
It is as impossible as ever to read his expression, but if you had to guess, he was trying to be kind.
...
Here is how it went with you and Mr. Bush originally: he had been waiting in the street when you came out of the bookstore -- he must have seen you go in, stood outside in the cold, was waiting for you with his coat pulled up around his ears. You remembered him from the Long Rooms, of course, and after a little bit of talk in the street, of feeling yourself blush a little whenever his eyes loked you over and asked you a question about yourself, the two of you were in a room with nothing in it but a bed.
Your books were on the floor, and you were in his lap. Both of you were naked; before, he had been kissing you, and now, you could feel his prick pressing against your back while he jerked you off. Hard sailor hands, surprisingly light on you anyways, and his mouth against your ear, your neck, your shoulder. Teeth brushing over the back of your jaw until you came all over his hand.
From the way he had you in his lap, you thought that maybe he would want you on your hands and knees after that. Your collarbones felt a little sore, in fact, because at the end, to keep you in his lap while you came, he'd had to put a hand across your chest and hold your back agains this front. Now, though, he put you on your back, slicked up a finger and put it in you. You thought he would follow with another, but he took a palmful of oil and put it on his cock.
You'd protested, explained that you usually needed more, but he looked at you, promised that he would go slow -- he just wanted to feel you tight around him, and you remember the ache in your stomach that'd started up again at that point. He was pale all over; he talked to you, explained that he'd been on shore all these months since the Peace of Amiens, and he had, in fact, gone slowly, petting your hair, kissing you again and again, propping himself up over you. He'd been on the bed with you; he'd drawn the curtains, so the whole world looked white, and then, you wrapped your legs around his waist and pulled him all the way against you because it had, indeed, felt that good.
You sucked in your breath, arched your back. Whimpered a little, gripped the sheets to keep from making more noise, and rocked against him. He looked you in the face, and all the breath went out of him. He had started saying your name a little after that, and when you saw Bush in the Wardroom of the Hotspur, his hands and face had been dark, but the rest of him had been as pale as he was that afternoon. There had, in fact, been a neat line around his wrist for where the sleeves of his coat ran, another on his throat, where the neckcloth and stock ended.
More than one night on the Hotspur, you've woken up with your blanket spattered and your hand sticky, and you are fairly sure it is no longer the captain of whom you've been dreaming.
...
You remember very little of your father. From the descriptions that you have gotten, you have some understanding of his character, and the miniature that your mother still keeps and looks at when she thinks that nobody is paying attention to her, you have a vague image of what he must have looked like. He does resemble Bush, nor does he look anything like your uncle.
...
Before he and the captain are to go ashore, Cotard is at the rail. The boat is being lowered into the water, and Tom is standing by Cotard and supervising.
When you come out onto deck, Cotard is saying something to Tom. It seems that he was trying to explain something in English and has resorted to French. This is why you are hesitant to approach the rail; out of the corner of his eye, again, Cotard sees you. Instead of asking you to translate, though, after a moment of study and consideration, he continues talking to Tom in his accented, awkward English.
The deed is, nevertheless, smoothly done.
...
There is blood on your face after the engagement. It is your first, and whenever you think about what has happened, you have to suppress a terrible urge to start screaming and continue screaming. You have washed the blood off the side of your face, but you can feel the residue on your fingers, and the shame of having failed so badly is worse than the hysteria.
In fact, it is what keeps your back straight and your head at a decent angle when you knock on the captain's door. There is a pause, and the captain tells you to come in -- he and Mr. Bush are standing together on the far side of the table, close enough so that their shoulders bump, and Mr. Bush is standing in a slightly awkward position. His hand -- the one that he has closer to the captain -- is hanging awkwardly down his side. He is unsure where to put it, and eventually, he rests it on the table, in front of him. They were discussing something, perhaps, when you came in.
Whatever they had been discussing, they are studying you, now.
Word has spread of your conduct; even if Matthews would never breathe a word, someone else would notice, and the Hotspur is a small ship. The captain, the lieutenant, the creaking of the cabin, and the play of light through the windows of the cabin. It is very quiet, and you straighten your shoulders even more, lift your chin. Your voice is steady.
"Mr. Prowse sends his respects and wonders whether the captain might come to the deck."
In the moment before the captain answers, there is just the faintest bit of approval in both of their eyes.
...
In the beginning, you did not think that it would be so difficult to be a man. When your grandmother and your uncle spoke of it in the drawing room, it always appeared easy. It always seemed to consist of the obvious thing, the right thing. Before you came to the Hotspur, you would have assumed that any difficulties you had with becoming a man were due to your father, evidencing himself in you.
Now, you know better. It is difficult business. It is difficult to be pulled, backward and forward, forward and back, terribly slowly at some moments, and horrifyingly quickly at others. It seems strange; it seems unnatural. Yet, you look around, and you see its traces in the captain, in Bush, in all of these men that you admire. Even Cotard.
There is hidden grace in all of them, and you are done fighting it: this will be the way that you will have to become a man. You have accepted it, and you look forward to telling your uncle, the next time you see him, the one true thing you have learned in your time at sea.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-25 08:10 pm (UTC)You have accepted it, and you look forward to telling your uncle, the next time you see him, the one true thing you have learned in your time at sea.
Aw, this is pretty heart-breaky.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-26 12:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-26 05:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-27 02:22 am (UTC)