quigonejinn

I am trying to keep myself from posting every day, but oh my God, I have a physical need to rec this fic and rec it now: Close Quarters by thehappyreturn.

And yes, I know it's not done. I normally don't even read WIPs, but let me say that I do not care. This is exactly the second WIP in about eleven years of fandom, eleven years, that I'm bothering to follow as it comes out, and it is so good. When I saw the most recent chapter show up on my f-list about 25 minutes ago, I let out this long, high-pitched squeal and proceeded to shout "OMFG EEEE OMG OMG" every four paragraphs because it is is a darling, wonderful, fantastically executed AU re-imagining of the HH universe.

Hornblower doesn't meet Simpson until they're both lieutenants in the Baltic, and Bush is there, and so is this lady and oh my God, really, there aren't words. The Bush in it -- and, slowly, the Hornblower, too -- is a source of joy for me. Like, literally. I have this enormous smile on my face from the Bush tirade we get to hear at the end of Part 2, the current chatper.

I don't care if the plot isn't here yet. I don't care if the tone is uneven. I desperately want this fic to continue, but it is so good that my life has been made better, I swear, by the sheer existence of the first two chapters. THIS FIC AND THE BUSH CHARACTERIZATION IN IT IS THAT DAMN FUN, DO YOU HEAR ME?

Chapter 1
Chapter 2

Jack has been learning about signals.

Untitled Horatio Hornblower fic. NC-17, Bush/Jack Hammond by randomalia with the most brilliant, amazing undertone of djgljdf I can't even describe it because it's so subtly and beautifully done that it'd be wrong to give it away, but oh man oh man oh man.

randomalia writes so goddamn well. So subtly, so brilliantly, with such an ear for how a sentence should come together and such an eye for how the different elements of a scene ought to lie. Goddamn.