Look Up to Ganymede (jestana remixed)
Title: Look Up to Ganymede
Author: lemurling
Remixed Fic: Inspired by "Greek Myths", with additional inspiration and mood from her fanvid, "No More".
Remixed Author: jestana
Rating and type of fic: PG, H/A
Word Count: 1740
Disclaimer: Not my people, I just torture them.
Notes: Give me a bit of joyful light-hearted play, and I give you back angst, but what else could be expected from me?
Also, my sincere apologies to the mods. I dropped off the face of the earth this last month, haven't even been reading email, due mostly to being distracted by pregnancy complications. My little girl was born (early but healthy) on the 1st, and re-finding my muse has been a good way to get through these last few anxious days.
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"Out among the stars I sail,
way beyond the moon...."
Kennedy paused in his last circumnavigation of the deck at the song floating up from the grating. He couldn't quite place the singer, but the rich, melancholy baritone tugged at his attention, and he lingered through the last of the music, ignoring the persistent ache in his fingers and toes.
"In my silver ship I sail,
a dream that ended too soon."
The Indefatigable had been enjoying a period of calm, sailing north in winter waters. They would be home soon for a resupply. There might even be a few days leave for the officers, and prize money waiting from their summer successes. It should be a happy time, but Kennedy was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain his native cheerfulness, the closer they drew toward Portsmouth.
"Nerves." He told himself. Lieutenant Bracegirdle had hinted that the captain might recommend him for the Exam soon. He was past time for it, past twenty now. Three years in French and Spanish prisons had done nothing for his career. Or to be honest, his nerves.
"Now I know exactly who I am,
and what I'm here for.
And I will go sailing no more."
Even now, with Ferrol a years-old memory, Kennedy could not completely shake the sensation that he would never truly leave it. The cell lurked there in the back of his mind, waiting to receive him again after his next failure, his next weakness, his next fit.
"All the things I thought I'd be,
all the brave things I'd done,
vanished like a snowflake,
with the rising of the sun."
The fact that he didn't have fits anymore, that he had earned some modicum of respect from the men, that even the lauded Pellew had accepted him as Hornblower's lesser shadow, if not as a true officer, was all immaterial. Perhaps the secret to his malaise lay not in his fears of Ferrol, but its remembered pleasures. What sort of real man would long for the impotent idleness of prison when there was a war to fight, and glory to be won? And yet, and yet... Horatio, who had been so eager to embrace him when it had no risk or cost, was cool, as often as not, back in the close-quartered arms of sea life.
"Never more to sail my ship,
where no man has gone before,
and I will go sailing, no more."
With the last notes, one of the other men down below began a more raucous, traditional tune, and Kennedy was at last able to pull himself away, realizing with a delayed shiver that the duty bell had rung, and he was late to report for his relief.
It didn't surprise him when he entered the empty wardroom a short while later, to see that Horatio was not waiting up for him. Shedding coat and hat, he shoved aside the door to their shared berth, blowing on his stiffened fingers. Inside, he found Horatio too comfortably tucked into a box bed, nose in book, to even notice his tardiness.
"What are you reading, Horatio?" Kennedy asked, his light-hearted tone belying the flare of resentment that sprang to life in his stomach.
The lanky lieutenant jumped hard enough to rock the cradle, and Kennedy was surprised to note a guilty flush as his friend stuffed away the apparently captivating book. "Ah. It's nothing, Archie. Some light reading."
"My arse," Archie retorted lightly, and half curious, half annoyed at the dissembling, shoved his still frigid fingers into the bundle of warmth below Horatio's queue, producing a yelp and a distraction that allowed him to lay hands on the hastily hidden book. A quick step, all the room there was in the crowded berth, gave him space to examine his prize."Let's see what Mr. Horatio Hornblower found so intriguing...."
"Archie, you shouldn't be reading other people's books." Horatio tried to snatch the tome back, but Kennedy was out of reach, and dodged away without even looking from a more determined attempt that sent Hornblower to the deck in an undignified heap. Cracking the book, Kennedy read the frontispiece with some bemusement.
"Greek Mythology? I didn't know you had an interest." Considering Hornblower's general disdain of music, art, and his own fascination with plays and stories, it seemed almost like hypocrisy to find the man reading children's fables.
Hornblower made some patently transparent excuses, nonsense about Greek tutors and improving command of the language, but the pages showed the signs of more handling than even Hornblower's level of studiousness could account for. This discovery would provide fodder for his amusement for months.
"You astonish me Mr. Hornblower, I thought the only Greeks you cared for were Euclid, Thucydides, and the other scholars." He finally let his friend snatch back the little tome, and watched, bemused again, as Horatio tucked it gently away in a sea chest.
"Well, you were wrong, weren't you?" Horatio's reply was quite sharp, and Kennedy realized that his sensitive friend was actually mad. Probably bruised his dignity falling out of bed. But a sulky Hornblower was impossible to live with, so he knelt down with a sigh, and made his obeisances.
"I'm sorry if I've upset you, Horatio. I didn't mean to." Hornblower had to take an irritatingly long time arranging the book, before finally closing the chest and looking up at him. But the hint of a smile turning up the corners of that wide sensuous mouth melted away Kennedy's own annoyance, replacing it with an aching and familiar warmth.
"I really should learn not to be so sensitive to teasing," Hornblower conceded.
Between the smile and the concession, Kennedy felt a sudden giddy lift of the spirits. "You should, particularly as you made the mistake of falling in love with me." Unable to help himself, Kennedy planted a playful kiss on the face before him, managing just enough restraint to bestow this on the end of Horatio's nose, rather than the desired target somewhat farther south.
He should have expected the rebuke, instantaneous, though without much bite. "Not here, Archie."
It was an argument they had had often enough to make Kennedy tired to the soul, for all that Hornblower occasionally let him win it. "There's no one to know. Everyone not on watch is bundled away from the cold, not venturing out to pay calls and catch us at each other." He tried to coax, without much hope of success.
Indeed, Hornblower rose up and moved away, fussing with disturbed bedding, and not even looking at him while leveling tonight's verdict. "It's not right Archie. We're on the ship.".
He was too worn out, and cold through, to argue about Article 29, and whether they violated it in the sail room, but not in a dockside inn. "As you like," he said instead, and sat down on the now-closed chest to pull off his boots, and regain some dignity.
Both seemed unmanageable, stiff leather refusing to yield, unwarranted tears threatening to, when long fingers cupped his own, then shooed him aside. With casual efficiency, first one foot, then the other was freed from its icy prison. Already unmanned, by the song, by the cold night, the fight, and his own melancholy thoughts, the unexpected kindness threatened to undo him completely. Then the hands did not leave him, but instead chafed his stocking feet, before peeling the worn silk away and cupping the tips. Hornblower breathed warmth into his frozen extremities, making Kennedy uncomfortably aware again of the one warm part of his anatomy. "That will not entice me to restrain myself, Mr. Hornblower."
Hornblower paid him no mind, brown eyes shadowed in thought as he methodically, sensuously breathed and rubbed warmth into every part of Kennedy. "When you came bouncing up to me after our first battle, waving your sword and spattered with blood, I realized why Zeus would have been tempted by Ganymede." The abrupt return to Greek mythology, combined with the distracting effects of Horatio's hands and breath utterly confused Kennedy.
"I beg your pardon?" His disgruntled and reluctant lover was blushing now, and not quite meeting his eyes.
"Ever since I first read the story of Zeus and Ganymede, I wondered why he would want a boy to be his cupbearer. He had a wife, many female consorts, why would he even be tempted? Then you came bouncing up to me like a puppy after our first action and I understood."
"Is that a compliment, Hornblower?" He tried to laugh it away, unsure of how to handle Hornblower in this queer mood, whether to take him seriously or search for some hidden barb. Puppy, indeed!
But his lover just smiled and nodded toward the sea chest and the carefully buried book of myths. "I am, actually. Whenever I read about Ganymede now, I picture you."
"Oh Horatio...." Kennedy had to hide the wince at being compared to the most famous catamite in history. That was his pain, not anything Hornblower had brought to him. And it was a compliment, a lovely one. Ganymede was the most beautiful of boys. If that was truly how Hornblower saw him, then he was a lucky man. Tentatively, he leaned forward, and Horatio let him express his gratitude with lips, then tongue, for once not drawing back, or making protest, just allowing their passion to build until they had to break away or be smothered.
He understood that Hornblower could never give him everything. The man was on a destiny, born to lead, to stumble, and stubborn, and scheme a way to victory and success. Perhaps it hadn't had to be this way, if there had been no Simpson, no Papillon, no Biche and Ferrol, to break and bind him. But they had, and Kennedy had lost his dreams, put aside his thoughts of a ship of his own, a destiny of his own. "If I'm Ganymede, does that make you Zeus?"
In moments like these, watching the blush rise on his lover's cheek, lips plump with kisses, Kennedy could see his own sad fate, his insignificant place among the stars, and still feel content. The ardent press of lips was his only reply, and Kennedy took it gladly. To be the erômenos of a man like Horatio was enough. The cupholder that quenches restless fire, soothes anxious aches? There were worse things.