(no subject)
Another short one. This is set in the movieverse after the end of the film, when Tom Pullings has sailed away with the Acheron. Am I the only one who thought that Philippe Devigny (thanks, bear!), the "doctor", was Teh Hawwt Hawwt SexXxor?
Anyway, here it is. Mild pre-slash. PG at worst. Virtually plot-free. Warnings: Possible movie spoilers. Snippets of my bad high-school French.
Tom Pullings, though quiet, was a gregarious man; he was always happiest among his fellows, whether it was turning to in the rigging, messing in the gunroom, or smoking cigars and telling jokes afterwards over a can of spirits and a hand of cards. Captain Pullings of the Acheron, on the other hand, was a solitary man. He told no jokes. He smoked alone. He woke, in the depth of nights that were almost unbearably quiet, to the strange width of a cot instead of the close-slung warmth of a hammock. He took endless turns around the quarterdeck with only respectful touches of forelocks to acknowledge him. He dined, most evenings, in lonely splendor in the middle of a great cabin where bits of shattered glass still winked between the deck planking like fairy dust.
All of his life Tom Pullings had longed for the day he would command a ship. Now, as he drank the last of his glass of port and blew out the candle, settling on his back between the cool sheets of the cot, he found himself thinking wistfully of his days as a mid. Hard, yes; Jack hadn't been lying when he'd teased once at the captain's table about Tom sniveling for hearth and home. At first the longing for his Da and his sisters and for the pale skies and soft water meadows of the West Country had almost overwhelmed him. But then he'd learned to love the sea and the life along with his fellow midshipmen, all of them working like navvies, playing pranks and taking their licks for it, eating whatever they could scrounge or grab and drinking whatever they could win off one another with dice, sleeping in the warm stinking darkness of the orlop with their hammocks slung close enough to bump and touch like a swaying huddle of puppies. Always together.
Hard days indeed, but thinking back on them now in the silence of the great cabin, a feeling suspiciously like tears rose with a hot sudden prickle. In the dimness Tom laced his fingers together in front of his face, watching absently as the white linen of his nightshirt slid down his wrists and belled around his forearms, and glumly considered getting up for another glass of port.
The wind was rising, faintly; very faintly, Tom thought. He could hear it just at the edge of his notice, a soft murmuring, but he couldn't yet feel it in the timbers of the ship. That was to be expected, since the Acheron was such a hulk compared to dear old Surprise, with her knack of capering before every trick of the air. After a moment he swung his feet over the edge of the cot and sat up to reach for the decanter of port, still listening to the wind's sigh as it grew ever more perceptible. It rose and then fell, in a sad lovely strain almost like a melody.
Almost exactly, in fact, like a melody.
Tom frowned, humming under his breath as he picked up the tune. Something slow but very pretty; he was sure he'd heard Dr Maturin play it once or twice on his cello. A sudden memory stabbed him of Surprise's great cabin, mellow with gold light, and the doctor's dark head bent over his instrument, one wiry arm, with its shirtsleeve stripped to the elbow, tensing and relaxing as he bowed out the passionate wild melancholy of the music. Jack Aubrey sitting next to him on a locker with his head thrown back and his collar loose, his face flushed and nearly sublime with pleasure, his fingers moving to beat time with the measure but always held a careful, silent quarter-inch above the wood.
The glass of the forgotten decanter was cool against his fingers. Tom said aloud into the still air, "I am the Captain now. And I have some very fine officers; some very good men."
The soft whispering of the music became clearer, light and plaintively insistent. It had to be one of the Frenchmen. Tom knew all of the Surprises aboard, of course, and none of the prize-crew were more musical than an occasional jig on a penny-pipe. There were only three ranking officers of the Acheron's crew left; the purser, Belchard, the third lieutenant Saint-Juste, and Devigny, the ship's surgeon.
As Tom opened the door the Marine sentry came to a sudden, lively attention from his cross-armed slump against the bulkhead. Waving him off, the Acheron's new captain padded quietly through the coach to the forward companionway.
The music was coming from the berth deck. As he swung down the ladder Tom heard it trill with a beckoning invitation.
A heavy snoring rose from the closest cabin; Saint-Juste, almost certainly, as the man drank and was fat. Belchard the purser was recuperating from a broken leg and a shattered collarbone gotten in the engagement with Surprise; he was hardly capable of rising from his hammock, much less serenading his soi-disant captain. So, then, Devigny.
A thread of light lay along the farther bulkhead from a door standing barely on the jar, just at the end of the berth deck. Tom approached and tapped lightly. With a suddenness that made him think of his gram's old stories of fairy-folks, the music disappeared and all was silent.
"Qui est lá?" a voice asked mildly, after a moment. "Saint-Juste?"
"No, Monsieur Devigny. It is Captain Pullings, Thomas Pullings." Suddenly conscious of the lack of dignity that went with bare legs and unbound hair, Tom tugged at his nightshirt and straightened to his full height. The door opened.
"Ah. Captain Pullings." The surgeon was still dressed, though barefoot. His dark hair was bunched at his nape and faintly damp. His bow was held loosely in his right hand. In his left, still cradled against his shoulder, was an instrument of beautifully polished heartwood that gleamed like satin in the dimness. He stepped back and made a slight gesture with the bow. "Entré si vous," he said courteously.
The cabin was so tiny that they stood a bare foot or two apart. Tom was unable to stop a smile. "Dr Devigny, I had no idea that you were a musical man! Captain Aubrey, of the Surprise, also plays the violin. I vow," he added, laughing half-uneasily, "that when I heard you tonight at first I thought I had dreamed myself back on the old barky."
"The music was pleasant to you, then, and not a disturbance? Bien." The surgeon set the bow down and began to carefully tighten a peg. His mouth had the drawn, weary look of a man who'd gone a long while without sleep. The motions of his sun-browned fingers were delicate and precise.
Devigny drew a nail over the string and hummed in tune with the sound, then turned the peg another tiny fraction. Looking up at Tom he said with a faint smile, "But this is not a violin, m'sieu Capitaine. It is a viola. Or to give the proper name, what is called a viola d'amour."
Tom's French could be cast out only a very little way before it ran out of cable, but there were some words every sailor knew. "Of... love?" he asked tentatively, looking at the shining curve of the viola resting against the ruddy tan of Devigny's throat. "Because it's played for sweethearts, perhaps?"
The older man lifted his bow, his arm sweeping over Tom's shoulder in the tiny space as he angled it to the strings. The flickering of the candlelight smoothed the deep lines around his eyes and made them look impossibly large and dark. He smiled with a sudden and unexpected sweetness.
"Most think so, Capitaine, but no." The bow descended, lightly stroking across the strings, and a tiny whisper of air from Devigny's movement brushed Tom's cheek and ruffled a strand of his hair. "You see, when played capably, the viola d'amour will supply its own answer. " The melody rose again, not shrill but high and soft, and after a moment the tone became richer and clearer with vibrato, its intricacy increasing until it sounded almost like two voices. "En tant qu'ainsi."
It was hot, stuffy in the tiny cabin. Tom could smell rosin, and sweat, and a faint tang of port. The surgeon played on, and the music wound around them in an enchantment until Pullings felt his heart squeeze like a fist.
Devigny's great dark eyes were still half-closed as he lowered his bow. "Do you understand?" he asked quietly. "D'amour is the name because one string is awakened by the trembling of another. It is the resonance of desire."
"Play for me again." The words tumbled out almost before Tom had formed them in his mind, and he shifted to hide his embarassment. "Not tonight, of course. I meant that perhaps if you would care to join me for dinner in the cabin some night, you'd be kind enough to do so afterwards." Again an image of Stephen Maturin and Jack Aubrey came to him, and he was hard-pressed to keep the eagerness out of his voice as he added, "Tomorrow evening, if you like."
The surgeon sketched an abbreviated bow, one that nearly brought his forehead against Tom's shoulder, and said, "I would be most honored, Capitaine Pullings. We are placed in peculiar circumstances, you and I, but I would greatly prefer it if we could perhaps, a little, become friends." Devigny lowered the viola, then folded over his shirt-tail to polish the shining curves with a slow, caressing hand. "And if you are willing, some time we might try a duet."
Tom Pullings smiled at him, feeling a sudden ease that hadn't been his portion since he'd set foot on the Acheron. As he turned to leave he said, "I'm sorry to disappoint, Monsieur Devigny, but I don't play."
The other man's breath was warm against the side of Tom's neck, just for a moment, as he held open the door and stepped aside to let Tom pass. In the doorway, framed with light, he bowed again. His lips were quirked in amusement, his dark eyes alight with something elusive.
"Ah, my captain," he said, "but you do. All gentlemen play, do they not? It is only a question of instrument."
Anyway, here it is. Mild pre-slash. PG at worst. Virtually plot-free. Warnings: Possible movie spoilers. Snippets of my bad high-school French.
Tom Pullings, though quiet, was a gregarious man; he was always happiest among his fellows, whether it was turning to in the rigging, messing in the gunroom, or smoking cigars and telling jokes afterwards over a can of spirits and a hand of cards. Captain Pullings of the Acheron, on the other hand, was a solitary man. He told no jokes. He smoked alone. He woke, in the depth of nights that were almost unbearably quiet, to the strange width of a cot instead of the close-slung warmth of a hammock. He took endless turns around the quarterdeck with only respectful touches of forelocks to acknowledge him. He dined, most evenings, in lonely splendor in the middle of a great cabin where bits of shattered glass still winked between the deck planking like fairy dust.
All of his life Tom Pullings had longed for the day he would command a ship. Now, as he drank the last of his glass of port and blew out the candle, settling on his back between the cool sheets of the cot, he found himself thinking wistfully of his days as a mid. Hard, yes; Jack hadn't been lying when he'd teased once at the captain's table about Tom sniveling for hearth and home. At first the longing for his Da and his sisters and for the pale skies and soft water meadows of the West Country had almost overwhelmed him. But then he'd learned to love the sea and the life along with his fellow midshipmen, all of them working like navvies, playing pranks and taking their licks for it, eating whatever they could scrounge or grab and drinking whatever they could win off one another with dice, sleeping in the warm stinking darkness of the orlop with their hammocks slung close enough to bump and touch like a swaying huddle of puppies. Always together.
Hard days indeed, but thinking back on them now in the silence of the great cabin, a feeling suspiciously like tears rose with a hot sudden prickle. In the dimness Tom laced his fingers together in front of his face, watching absently as the white linen of his nightshirt slid down his wrists and belled around his forearms, and glumly considered getting up for another glass of port.
The wind was rising, faintly; very faintly, Tom thought. He could hear it just at the edge of his notice, a soft murmuring, but he couldn't yet feel it in the timbers of the ship. That was to be expected, since the Acheron was such a hulk compared to dear old Surprise, with her knack of capering before every trick of the air. After a moment he swung his feet over the edge of the cot and sat up to reach for the decanter of port, still listening to the wind's sigh as it grew ever more perceptible. It rose and then fell, in a sad lovely strain almost like a melody.
Almost exactly, in fact, like a melody.
Tom frowned, humming under his breath as he picked up the tune. Something slow but very pretty; he was sure he'd heard Dr Maturin play it once or twice on his cello. A sudden memory stabbed him of Surprise's great cabin, mellow with gold light, and the doctor's dark head bent over his instrument, one wiry arm, with its shirtsleeve stripped to the elbow, tensing and relaxing as he bowed out the passionate wild melancholy of the music. Jack Aubrey sitting next to him on a locker with his head thrown back and his collar loose, his face flushed and nearly sublime with pleasure, his fingers moving to beat time with the measure but always held a careful, silent quarter-inch above the wood.
The glass of the forgotten decanter was cool against his fingers. Tom said aloud into the still air, "I am the Captain now. And I have some very fine officers; some very good men."
The soft whispering of the music became clearer, light and plaintively insistent. It had to be one of the Frenchmen. Tom knew all of the Surprises aboard, of course, and none of the prize-crew were more musical than an occasional jig on a penny-pipe. There were only three ranking officers of the Acheron's crew left; the purser, Belchard, the third lieutenant Saint-Juste, and Devigny, the ship's surgeon.
As Tom opened the door the Marine sentry came to a sudden, lively attention from his cross-armed slump against the bulkhead. Waving him off, the Acheron's new captain padded quietly through the coach to the forward companionway.
The music was coming from the berth deck. As he swung down the ladder Tom heard it trill with a beckoning invitation.
A heavy snoring rose from the closest cabin; Saint-Juste, almost certainly, as the man drank and was fat. Belchard the purser was recuperating from a broken leg and a shattered collarbone gotten in the engagement with Surprise; he was hardly capable of rising from his hammock, much less serenading his soi-disant captain. So, then, Devigny.
A thread of light lay along the farther bulkhead from a door standing barely on the jar, just at the end of the berth deck. Tom approached and tapped lightly. With a suddenness that made him think of his gram's old stories of fairy-folks, the music disappeared and all was silent.
"Qui est lá?" a voice asked mildly, after a moment. "Saint-Juste?"
"No, Monsieur Devigny. It is Captain Pullings, Thomas Pullings." Suddenly conscious of the lack of dignity that went with bare legs and unbound hair, Tom tugged at his nightshirt and straightened to his full height. The door opened.
"Ah. Captain Pullings." The surgeon was still dressed, though barefoot. His dark hair was bunched at his nape and faintly damp. His bow was held loosely in his right hand. In his left, still cradled against his shoulder, was an instrument of beautifully polished heartwood that gleamed like satin in the dimness. He stepped back and made a slight gesture with the bow. "Entré si vous," he said courteously.
The cabin was so tiny that they stood a bare foot or two apart. Tom was unable to stop a smile. "Dr Devigny, I had no idea that you were a musical man! Captain Aubrey, of the Surprise, also plays the violin. I vow," he added, laughing half-uneasily, "that when I heard you tonight at first I thought I had dreamed myself back on the old barky."
"The music was pleasant to you, then, and not a disturbance? Bien." The surgeon set the bow down and began to carefully tighten a peg. His mouth had the drawn, weary look of a man who'd gone a long while without sleep. The motions of his sun-browned fingers were delicate and precise.
Devigny drew a nail over the string and hummed in tune with the sound, then turned the peg another tiny fraction. Looking up at Tom he said with a faint smile, "But this is not a violin, m'sieu Capitaine. It is a viola. Or to give the proper name, what is called a viola d'amour."
Tom's French could be cast out only a very little way before it ran out of cable, but there were some words every sailor knew. "Of... love?" he asked tentatively, looking at the shining curve of the viola resting against the ruddy tan of Devigny's throat. "Because it's played for sweethearts, perhaps?"
The older man lifted his bow, his arm sweeping over Tom's shoulder in the tiny space as he angled it to the strings. The flickering of the candlelight smoothed the deep lines around his eyes and made them look impossibly large and dark. He smiled with a sudden and unexpected sweetness.
"Most think so, Capitaine, but no." The bow descended, lightly stroking across the strings, and a tiny whisper of air from Devigny's movement brushed Tom's cheek and ruffled a strand of his hair. "You see, when played capably, the viola d'amour will supply its own answer. " The melody rose again, not shrill but high and soft, and after a moment the tone became richer and clearer with vibrato, its intricacy increasing until it sounded almost like two voices. "En tant qu'ainsi."
It was hot, stuffy in the tiny cabin. Tom could smell rosin, and sweat, and a faint tang of port. The surgeon played on, and the music wound around them in an enchantment until Pullings felt his heart squeeze like a fist.
Devigny's great dark eyes were still half-closed as he lowered his bow. "Do you understand?" he asked quietly. "D'amour is the name because one string is awakened by the trembling of another. It is the resonance of desire."
"Play for me again." The words tumbled out almost before Tom had formed them in his mind, and he shifted to hide his embarassment. "Not tonight, of course. I meant that perhaps if you would care to join me for dinner in the cabin some night, you'd be kind enough to do so afterwards." Again an image of Stephen Maturin and Jack Aubrey came to him, and he was hard-pressed to keep the eagerness out of his voice as he added, "Tomorrow evening, if you like."
The surgeon sketched an abbreviated bow, one that nearly brought his forehead against Tom's shoulder, and said, "I would be most honored, Capitaine Pullings. We are placed in peculiar circumstances, you and I, but I would greatly prefer it if we could perhaps, a little, become friends." Devigny lowered the viola, then folded over his shirt-tail to polish the shining curves with a slow, caressing hand. "And if you are willing, some time we might try a duet."
Tom Pullings smiled at him, feeling a sudden ease that hadn't been his portion since he'd set foot on the Acheron. As he turned to leave he said, "I'm sorry to disappoint, Monsieur Devigny, but I don't play."
The other man's breath was warm against the side of Tom's neck, just for a moment, as he held open the door and stepped aside to let Tom pass. In the doorway, framed with light, he bowed again. His lips were quirked in amusement, his dark eyes alight with something elusive.
"Ah, my captain," he said, "but you do. All gentlemen play, do they not? It is only a question of instrument."