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midshipThis is calm water. This is a steady skimming on the surface. This is genuine safety in a home port.
This is already too much for Mr. Midshipman Horatio Hornblower.
Clutching his arm a little tighter around his own stomach, reflex and unhelpful, is at least enough to suppress the baser impulses roiling inside him as the little boat continues to glide along beneath him. It's far too late to tell the rowers to turn them back. It's far too late as well to simply let out a bit of a scream. A properly childish fit would, at least, force his shoulders to relax from the intense pressure he's been building up between them.
The oars are eerily quiet on the water. If their little craft is making much of any noise at all, Horatio can't hear it. Much louder, as if whipped directly to his ears, is the new sensation of a constant crackling and groaning. The sound is half-recognizable--like the protest of an old table with too much hefted up onto it, like the stinging wail of a well-bucket dropped too fast. The closer they creep toward the hulking mass of the HMS Justinian, the more deafening the aching sounds become in his ears.
For better or worse, of course, most sound was drowned out soon enough by the thudding of his own heart in his ears. That pounding vibrates through him, morphing from a thud in his ears to a thud in his skull to a general uncomfortable pounding through his entire frame that drowns everything out.
He barely hears the first words spoken to him. He can't tell you, a few weeks later, what the voice that became home first said to him.
This is still calm water. This is a gentle rocking at anchor. This is a port to find one's feet in and take the first few hesitant steps toward the future.
This is still only bearable because of Mr. Midshipman Archie Kennedy.
Horatio doesn't quite notice the odd sense of vacuum on the ship until the seasickness begins to fade properly. There's a space that seems to linger like a ghost just at Archie's elbow; to catch the other young man's attention from an odd middle distance. There's a faint sense of absence that clings to the berth, a certain noisy silence in the space where someone else is meant to be.
Archie sets him to the signal book, and the gentle corrections seem to come from almost another voice. Archie shows him the trick to the last twist of a knot, and the steady movement seems to have sprung from another set of hands. Archie grins, and it is at him (and it's just a bit like the sun peeking out from behind the clouds or the first breath of wind after a long stuffy night), but it's also always beyond him.
His fingers drum absently at the pages of the book he should be studying intently. The absence that isn't his own--the absence that's built into his new home, because his new home is Archie so much more than the Justinian--gnaws at his gut and, somehow, sets all the words swimming together before his gaze.
Blinking brings his eyes up to Archie, completely without intention.
"It's-- soon, isn't it?" Speaking up first is new, still. His voice wavers with uncertainty before settling into itself. "That Mr.-- Mr. Bush is due back?"
This is already too much for Mr. Midshipman Horatio Hornblower.
Clutching his arm a little tighter around his own stomach, reflex and unhelpful, is at least enough to suppress the baser impulses roiling inside him as the little boat continues to glide along beneath him. It's far too late to tell the rowers to turn them back. It's far too late as well to simply let out a bit of a scream. A properly childish fit would, at least, force his shoulders to relax from the intense pressure he's been building up between them.
The oars are eerily quiet on the water. If their little craft is making much of any noise at all, Horatio can't hear it. Much louder, as if whipped directly to his ears, is the new sensation of a constant crackling and groaning. The sound is half-recognizable--like the protest of an old table with too much hefted up onto it, like the stinging wail of a well-bucket dropped too fast. The closer they creep toward the hulking mass of the HMS Justinian, the more deafening the aching sounds become in his ears.
For better or worse, of course, most sound was drowned out soon enough by the thudding of his own heart in his ears. That pounding vibrates through him, morphing from a thud in his ears to a thud in his skull to a general uncomfortable pounding through his entire frame that drowns everything out.
He barely hears the first words spoken to him. He can't tell you, a few weeks later, what the voice that became home first said to him.
This is still calm water. This is a gentle rocking at anchor. This is a port to find one's feet in and take the first few hesitant steps toward the future.
This is still only bearable because of Mr. Midshipman Archie Kennedy.
Horatio doesn't quite notice the odd sense of vacuum on the ship until the seasickness begins to fade properly. There's a space that seems to linger like a ghost just at Archie's elbow; to catch the other young man's attention from an odd middle distance. There's a faint sense of absence that clings to the berth, a certain noisy silence in the space where someone else is meant to be.
Archie sets him to the signal book, and the gentle corrections seem to come from almost another voice. Archie shows him the trick to the last twist of a knot, and the steady movement seems to have sprung from another set of hands. Archie grins, and it is at him (and it's just a bit like the sun peeking out from behind the clouds or the first breath of wind after a long stuffy night), but it's also always beyond him.
His fingers drum absently at the pages of the book he should be studying intently. The absence that isn't his own--the absence that's built into his new home, because his new home is Archie so much more than the Justinian--gnaws at his gut and, somehow, sets all the words swimming together before his gaze.
Blinking brings his eyes up to Archie, completely without intention.
"It's-- soon, isn't it?" Speaking up first is new, still. His voice wavers with uncertainty before settling into itself. "That Mr.-- Mr. Bush is due back?"
