Sleeping Beauty (3/5)
Title: Sleeping Beauty
Fandom: Hornblower.
Characters/Pairing: Archie/Horatio
Disclaimer: All recognisable characters belong to CS Forrester, and possibly A&E/Meridian.
Summary: A slightly odd version of Sleeping Beauty based on Hornblower. Or a very odd version of Hornblower based on Sleeping Beauty.
Rating: PG
Notes: Yes, it does say 3/5 up there instead of 3/3. I thought I was nearly done with the final part but it turned out Archie & Horatio had a lot more to say, so I've had to divide it up. Also, apologies for the huuuge gap between postings. RL has not been conducive to writing about pretty sailor boys. Hope it's worth the wait.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 4
Chapter 3
In which the prince is hidden.
Archie stared unseeingly out at the setting sun. The vista before him was one that he might once have considered dramatically, if dustily, beautiful, but he no longer cared about such things. On good days, like today, he would struggle out of his bed in the mid-afternoon and sit out on the veranda. But good days were rare and he often didn’t leave the villa at all. Often he didn’t even leave his bed. He slept a lot. He seemed unnaturally tired and sleep was preferable to waking, despite the nightmares. Nightmares could be dismissed as just that, but his waking thoughts were not so easily disregarded.
When he had first arrived, he had out of necessity gone into the nearby village for supplies, his basic Spanish just enough to get by. But one of the women in the village, Catalina, had taken pity on ‘the poor, sick English boy’ and begun taking food up the hill to him. Other people in the village, he knew, considered him not so much sick as crazy. They were probably right. For the most part she brought the food and left him to his own devices. Some days she would arrive with bread and soup and tell him he had spent the previous day, or two days, or three, staring unresponsively at the wall.
He did not know how long he had been here. Weeks. Months. He had seen his opportunity when Simpson had been called away to a conference for the weekend. He had woken on the Saturday morning knowing that this was his last chance. There would be no other opportunity to escape the very different threats of Jack and Horatio. So he had got up, packed a bag, written a note for his parents, one for Horatio and one for his friends, and left. He withdrew all his savings and made his way to Dover in something of a daze. His first ever view of the sea was not the exciting event it should have been. He had travelled across the Channel and through France, somehow ending up in southern Spain where he decided on a whim to stop.
He had dreamed in the past of travelling through France and Spain, and then on further; across Europe and around the world. In his dreams, it had been an adventure. Striking out on his own, discovering the world. Later, he had dreamed of travelling with Horatio. Dull periods in the shop or during the few hours of the days when the two boys were not together had been filled with sunshine, beaches and sightseeing. Now he tried not to think about Horatio at all.
Horatio would not have run away; Horatio was not a coward. He had felt guilty at first about leaving him alone with Jack, until he realised that Horatio would never allow Jack to use him the way he had used Archie. So now he kept Horatio out of his thoughts. His friends, too. It was no good wishing for Clayton’s wise advice, or Hether & Cleveland’s daft comments. They weren’t here. He definitely didn’t think about his parents. Except sometimes the dam holding the thoughts back would break and everything behind it would come crashing through his mind. The dam was breaking more and more often and Archie did not know how long he would be able to keep patching it up.
He heard a noise behind him but did not stir. It would be one of his dreams again. They came to him more and more often, even when he was awake. The fractured, broken dreams, full of half-glimpsed images and vague fears; the clearer, vivid dreams that were the same moment repeated over and over and over again - Jack walking into the room and shutting the door behind him, that hideous smirk stretched across his face; the dreams he dreaded most, the ones of him and Horatio, all the more terrible for the fact that eventually they would end and reality would shatter him once again.
The noise came again, this time accompanied by a voice, and Archie closed his eyes in despair and willed the voice away. But the voice would not go away; instead it grew more insistent, calling his name. There was a hand on his arm, on his cheek, stroking the hair back from his face. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to look at the face before him. He would not allow these dreams to torment him any further.
“No,” he said, his voice cracking as he looked at Horatio’s horrified face. “Go away. Go away.”
*****
Shivers wracked his body until he thought his bones would shatter. His skin was on fire, he was sure of it. He heard voices in the distance and wondered why they didn’t come to help him. He tried to cry out but the words burned in his throat and died. One of the voices must have heard him because it suddenly came much closer. He couldn’t understand it though. Why wouldn’t it speak so he could understand it? And why did it still sound so far away? Why was he here all alone? Why wouldn’t anyone help him?
*****
The room was far too warm. Why did his mother insist on having the heating so high? He tried kicking the covers off and found they were tight around him. He panicked for a moment, until a soothing hand brushed his forehead and a familiar voice told him he was alright. He did not know how he knew the voice, but he trusted it and believed it when it said he was safe. He felt a glass pressed to his lips and he drank when the voice told him to. The voice told him to sleep. So he did.
*****
“You’re going to drink. You’re going to eat. And you’re going to get better.” It was difficult to resist such a command but Archie tried. He had reached a decision: all he wanted was to go to sleep and not wake up again. Being asleep was much easier than being awake; the Horatio there was definitely a dream, whereas this Horatio was far too real. There was no danger from dream-Horatio; even when he found out the truth about Archie, he always came back again. This Horatio who had invaded his sanctuary, if you could call it that, held no such certainties. The desire to give in to Horatio and accept his presence was strong, but Archie had left for a reason and he was not about to go back on it now.
And yet… Life had been so much easier, so much better, with Horatio. Even now, the feel of his rough hands against his face was a comfort. His presence beside him, just knowing that Horatio was here, had searched for him, left Archie lost for words. Why he had done it, Archie couldn’t even begin to fathom. But the fact was he had, and he was here, and he was speaking to Archie with such urgency that Archie could almost dare to think that perhaps, maybe, there was a chance for hope. He reached out a shaking hand and grasped the cup Horatio held to his lips. It was messy and sloppy, and more water probably ended up down his front than in his mouth, but the cool liquid felt good to his parched throat. Horatio’s hand, wrapped around the cup with Archie’s own, felt even better.
*****
“How are you feeling?” Archie, just waking, barely had time to blink against the lamplight filling the room before Horatio was beside him, pressing a concerned hand to his face.
“Not too bad,” Archie croaked. He didn’t want to tell Horatio he actually felt like he’d been run over by a bus. Horatio’s smile suggested he didn’t really believe him, but Archie could live with that. He gratefully accepted the cup of water Horatio passed him. A sharp smell of oranges suddenly filled the air.
“You should eat something,” Horatio said, holding a piece of orange to Archie’s lips. Archie pulled his head back.
“I can eat a piece of orange by myself. I don’t need to be fed,” he snapped. Horatio nodded sheepishly.
“Of course. I’m sorry.” He handed the fruit to Archie who chewed slowly on one piece and then another. It took him five minutes and completely exhausted him. Just the effort of lifting his hand to his mouth was harder than he could ever have imagined. He had to admit defeat. “It’s alright, Archie,” Horatio said when he reluctantly said it was too much for him. “You’ve really been very ill. You ought to be in hospital.” Archie glared at him. They had already had this argument. He was not leaving this house and that was an end of it. Horatio held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I know, I know,” he said. “I promise I won’t even mention it again.” He fed Archie the rest of the orange, breaking the segments up and gently pushing each piece into his mouth. Occasionally the juice would run down his chin and Horatio would wipe it away, his fingers sweeping lightly across Archie’s skin, brushing his lips. Every single aspect of the procedure made Archie want to scream.
Finally his ordeal was over and Archie sank back against his pillows, more exhausted than he had ever been in his life. “Get some rest, Archie,” Horatio said with a worried smile. “You need it.” Archie wanted to say something cutting about being told what to do, especially when it was something he had already planned on doing, but sleep was pulling him under and he couldn’t find the words.
*****
Archie sipped carefully at the soup Horatio had brought him, wary of burning his tongue. He was sitting up in bed now and had even allowed Horatio to open the curtains. He had blinked a little at the unaccustomed light but had to admit it was better. He might even give in to Horatio’s pleas and have the window open later. Just a crack. Let some air in. A thought occurred to him and he looked suspiciously around the room. “Did you clean up in here?” he asked Horatio, who had just walked in with a sandwich in his hand.
“Of course I did. With Catalina’s help,” he said, swallowing a mouthful of bread and sitting on the chair which had taken up permanent residence by Archie’s bed. “You didn’t think I was going to let you continue on in that squalor, did you? I cleaned up weeks ago.”
“I don’t remember you doing it.”
“I shouldn‘t think you would. You were unconscious.”
“Oh.” Another thought occurred to him. “Weeks? You’ve been here for weeks?”
Horatio nodded, taking another bite of his sandwich while he thought about it. “It’s been, let me see, six, nearly seven weeks since I got here.”
Archie spooned soup mechanically into his mouth as he considered this. Seven weeks. That was a long time to sit by the bed of someone who wasn’t even sure if you were really there or not. His head swam. He had been touched that Horatio had come looking for him but had thought that he had come mostly at the request of his parents. Yet when he got there he hadn’t summoned them to him or packed him off to hospital for someone else to deal with. Archie knew he himself had refused to go to hospital, could remember the argument about it, though it was a little vague around the edges, but he had been in no state to resist if Horatio had really insisted. But he hadn’t. He had cared for him himself. Archie couldn’t get his head around it. “It doesn’t seem like that long,” was all he could find to say, finishing his soup and putting the bowl to one side.
“You were asleep for a lot of it,” Horatio said with a smile. He leaned forward, casting his half-eaten sandwich aside. Archie looked at it longingly; his appetite was returning and he was absolutely ravenous. All thoughts of sandwiches were cast out of his mind, however, when Horatio grasped his hand. “Don’t you know how ill you were, Archie? I had to ask Catalina to call a doctor out, even though you’d begged me not to. I thought you were going to - I sat here for hours wondering if I was doing the right thing, if I shouldn’t take you to the hospital. You were so -” His voice broke and he stopped, much to Archie’s relief. He didn’t recognise this Horatio and didn’t know how to react to him. Archie looked down at Horatio’s hands gripping his own and thought he might cry. He took a deep breath and pulled himself together. Horatio seemed to be struggling to do the same. His eyes were desperate and his hands tightened around Archie’s until it was almost painful. He looked at Archie for a long time and Archie waited with mounting dread and hope at what he might say. Then he smiled slightly and stood up, slowly pulling his hands away. When he spoke, his voice was almost normal. “Get some sleep, Archie.” He turned and left the room, Archie staring after him.
Archie closed his eyes momentarily and rested his head against the headboard. He took several deep breaths and then picked up the remains of Horatio’s sandwich trying not to eat too quickly and make himself sick. He watched the dust motes dance slowly around the room, visible now in the shaft of light that fell through the window. Their journey led his eye to the chair by his bed and he stared at it, wondering just how long Horatio had sat there, and if he had held his hand the whole time.
Fandom: Hornblower.
Characters/Pairing: Archie/Horatio
Disclaimer: All recognisable characters belong to CS Forrester, and possibly A&E/Meridian.
Summary: A slightly odd version of Sleeping Beauty based on Hornblower. Or a very odd version of Hornblower based on Sleeping Beauty.
Rating: PG
Notes: Yes, it does say 3/5 up there instead of 3/3. I thought I was nearly done with the final part but it turned out Archie & Horatio had a lot more to say, so I've had to divide it up. Also, apologies for the huuuge gap between postings. RL has not been conducive to writing about pretty sailor boys. Hope it's worth the wait.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 4
Chapter 3
In which the prince is hidden.
Archie stared unseeingly out at the setting sun. The vista before him was one that he might once have considered dramatically, if dustily, beautiful, but he no longer cared about such things. On good days, like today, he would struggle out of his bed in the mid-afternoon and sit out on the veranda. But good days were rare and he often didn’t leave the villa at all. Often he didn’t even leave his bed. He slept a lot. He seemed unnaturally tired and sleep was preferable to waking, despite the nightmares. Nightmares could be dismissed as just that, but his waking thoughts were not so easily disregarded.
When he had first arrived, he had out of necessity gone into the nearby village for supplies, his basic Spanish just enough to get by. But one of the women in the village, Catalina, had taken pity on ‘the poor, sick English boy’ and begun taking food up the hill to him. Other people in the village, he knew, considered him not so much sick as crazy. They were probably right. For the most part she brought the food and left him to his own devices. Some days she would arrive with bread and soup and tell him he had spent the previous day, or two days, or three, staring unresponsively at the wall.
He did not know how long he had been here. Weeks. Months. He had seen his opportunity when Simpson had been called away to a conference for the weekend. He had woken on the Saturday morning knowing that this was his last chance. There would be no other opportunity to escape the very different threats of Jack and Horatio. So he had got up, packed a bag, written a note for his parents, one for Horatio and one for his friends, and left. He withdrew all his savings and made his way to Dover in something of a daze. His first ever view of the sea was not the exciting event it should have been. He had travelled across the Channel and through France, somehow ending up in southern Spain where he decided on a whim to stop.
He had dreamed in the past of travelling through France and Spain, and then on further; across Europe and around the world. In his dreams, it had been an adventure. Striking out on his own, discovering the world. Later, he had dreamed of travelling with Horatio. Dull periods in the shop or during the few hours of the days when the two boys were not together had been filled with sunshine, beaches and sightseeing. Now he tried not to think about Horatio at all.
Horatio would not have run away; Horatio was not a coward. He had felt guilty at first about leaving him alone with Jack, until he realised that Horatio would never allow Jack to use him the way he had used Archie. So now he kept Horatio out of his thoughts. His friends, too. It was no good wishing for Clayton’s wise advice, or Hether & Cleveland’s daft comments. They weren’t here. He definitely didn’t think about his parents. Except sometimes the dam holding the thoughts back would break and everything behind it would come crashing through his mind. The dam was breaking more and more often and Archie did not know how long he would be able to keep patching it up.
He heard a noise behind him but did not stir. It would be one of his dreams again. They came to him more and more often, even when he was awake. The fractured, broken dreams, full of half-glimpsed images and vague fears; the clearer, vivid dreams that were the same moment repeated over and over and over again - Jack walking into the room and shutting the door behind him, that hideous smirk stretched across his face; the dreams he dreaded most, the ones of him and Horatio, all the more terrible for the fact that eventually they would end and reality would shatter him once again.
The noise came again, this time accompanied by a voice, and Archie closed his eyes in despair and willed the voice away. But the voice would not go away; instead it grew more insistent, calling his name. There was a hand on his arm, on his cheek, stroking the hair back from his face. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to look at the face before him. He would not allow these dreams to torment him any further.
“No,” he said, his voice cracking as he looked at Horatio’s horrified face. “Go away. Go away.”
*****
Shivers wracked his body until he thought his bones would shatter. His skin was on fire, he was sure of it. He heard voices in the distance and wondered why they didn’t come to help him. He tried to cry out but the words burned in his throat and died. One of the voices must have heard him because it suddenly came much closer. He couldn’t understand it though. Why wouldn’t it speak so he could understand it? And why did it still sound so far away? Why was he here all alone? Why wouldn’t anyone help him?
*****
The room was far too warm. Why did his mother insist on having the heating so high? He tried kicking the covers off and found they were tight around him. He panicked for a moment, until a soothing hand brushed his forehead and a familiar voice told him he was alright. He did not know how he knew the voice, but he trusted it and believed it when it said he was safe. He felt a glass pressed to his lips and he drank when the voice told him to. The voice told him to sleep. So he did.
*****
“You’re going to drink. You’re going to eat. And you’re going to get better.” It was difficult to resist such a command but Archie tried. He had reached a decision: all he wanted was to go to sleep and not wake up again. Being asleep was much easier than being awake; the Horatio there was definitely a dream, whereas this Horatio was far too real. There was no danger from dream-Horatio; even when he found out the truth about Archie, he always came back again. This Horatio who had invaded his sanctuary, if you could call it that, held no such certainties. The desire to give in to Horatio and accept his presence was strong, but Archie had left for a reason and he was not about to go back on it now.
And yet… Life had been so much easier, so much better, with Horatio. Even now, the feel of his rough hands against his face was a comfort. His presence beside him, just knowing that Horatio was here, had searched for him, left Archie lost for words. Why he had done it, Archie couldn’t even begin to fathom. But the fact was he had, and he was here, and he was speaking to Archie with such urgency that Archie could almost dare to think that perhaps, maybe, there was a chance for hope. He reached out a shaking hand and grasped the cup Horatio held to his lips. It was messy and sloppy, and more water probably ended up down his front than in his mouth, but the cool liquid felt good to his parched throat. Horatio’s hand, wrapped around the cup with Archie’s own, felt even better.
*****
“How are you feeling?” Archie, just waking, barely had time to blink against the lamplight filling the room before Horatio was beside him, pressing a concerned hand to his face.
“Not too bad,” Archie croaked. He didn’t want to tell Horatio he actually felt like he’d been run over by a bus. Horatio’s smile suggested he didn’t really believe him, but Archie could live with that. He gratefully accepted the cup of water Horatio passed him. A sharp smell of oranges suddenly filled the air.
“You should eat something,” Horatio said, holding a piece of orange to Archie’s lips. Archie pulled his head back.
“I can eat a piece of orange by myself. I don’t need to be fed,” he snapped. Horatio nodded sheepishly.
“Of course. I’m sorry.” He handed the fruit to Archie who chewed slowly on one piece and then another. It took him five minutes and completely exhausted him. Just the effort of lifting his hand to his mouth was harder than he could ever have imagined. He had to admit defeat. “It’s alright, Archie,” Horatio said when he reluctantly said it was too much for him. “You’ve really been very ill. You ought to be in hospital.” Archie glared at him. They had already had this argument. He was not leaving this house and that was an end of it. Horatio held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I know, I know,” he said. “I promise I won’t even mention it again.” He fed Archie the rest of the orange, breaking the segments up and gently pushing each piece into his mouth. Occasionally the juice would run down his chin and Horatio would wipe it away, his fingers sweeping lightly across Archie’s skin, brushing his lips. Every single aspect of the procedure made Archie want to scream.
Finally his ordeal was over and Archie sank back against his pillows, more exhausted than he had ever been in his life. “Get some rest, Archie,” Horatio said with a worried smile. “You need it.” Archie wanted to say something cutting about being told what to do, especially when it was something he had already planned on doing, but sleep was pulling him under and he couldn’t find the words.
*****
Archie sipped carefully at the soup Horatio had brought him, wary of burning his tongue. He was sitting up in bed now and had even allowed Horatio to open the curtains. He had blinked a little at the unaccustomed light but had to admit it was better. He might even give in to Horatio’s pleas and have the window open later. Just a crack. Let some air in. A thought occurred to him and he looked suspiciously around the room. “Did you clean up in here?” he asked Horatio, who had just walked in with a sandwich in his hand.
“Of course I did. With Catalina’s help,” he said, swallowing a mouthful of bread and sitting on the chair which had taken up permanent residence by Archie’s bed. “You didn’t think I was going to let you continue on in that squalor, did you? I cleaned up weeks ago.”
“I don’t remember you doing it.”
“I shouldn‘t think you would. You were unconscious.”
“Oh.” Another thought occurred to him. “Weeks? You’ve been here for weeks?”
Horatio nodded, taking another bite of his sandwich while he thought about it. “It’s been, let me see, six, nearly seven weeks since I got here.”
Archie spooned soup mechanically into his mouth as he considered this. Seven weeks. That was a long time to sit by the bed of someone who wasn’t even sure if you were really there or not. His head swam. He had been touched that Horatio had come looking for him but had thought that he had come mostly at the request of his parents. Yet when he got there he hadn’t summoned them to him or packed him off to hospital for someone else to deal with. Archie knew he himself had refused to go to hospital, could remember the argument about it, though it was a little vague around the edges, but he had been in no state to resist if Horatio had really insisted. But he hadn’t. He had cared for him himself. Archie couldn’t get his head around it. “It doesn’t seem like that long,” was all he could find to say, finishing his soup and putting the bowl to one side.
“You were asleep for a lot of it,” Horatio said with a smile. He leaned forward, casting his half-eaten sandwich aside. Archie looked at it longingly; his appetite was returning and he was absolutely ravenous. All thoughts of sandwiches were cast out of his mind, however, when Horatio grasped his hand. “Don’t you know how ill you were, Archie? I had to ask Catalina to call a doctor out, even though you’d begged me not to. I thought you were going to - I sat here for hours wondering if I was doing the right thing, if I shouldn’t take you to the hospital. You were so -” His voice broke and he stopped, much to Archie’s relief. He didn’t recognise this Horatio and didn’t know how to react to him. Archie looked down at Horatio’s hands gripping his own and thought he might cry. He took a deep breath and pulled himself together. Horatio seemed to be struggling to do the same. His eyes were desperate and his hands tightened around Archie’s until it was almost painful. He looked at Archie for a long time and Archie waited with mounting dread and hope at what he might say. Then he smiled slightly and stood up, slowly pulling his hands away. When he spoke, his voice was almost normal. “Get some sleep, Archie.” He turned and left the room, Archie staring after him.
Archie closed his eyes momentarily and rested his head against the headboard. He took several deep breaths and then picked up the remains of Horatio’s sandwich trying not to eat too quickly and make himself sick. He watched the dust motes dance slowly around the room, visible now in the shaft of light that fell through the window. Their journey led his eye to the chair by his bed and he stared at it, wondering just how long Horatio had sat there, and if he had held his hand the whole time.