(no subject)
Title: Finesse (or, The four times that Lieutenant William Bush lost at cards and the one time that he didn't).
Rating: 17, slash
Pairing: HH/WB
Word Count: about 2500
Disclaimer: not my guys.
Notes: Written for the prompt given by iansmomesq for the five things meme. I have tried my very best to shoehorn this one into canon, but I can't find a single book with this combination of circumstances. So it's set on the Sutherland somehow... if I tell you it's got Pimp Daddy Bush terminating frogs left right and centre, will that help?
(I have no idea why the copypaste from my starsuite doc is not appearing as anything but huge letters. I did change it from an .odt to a .doc before pasting, hoping to avoid linux weirdness. Changing the text size in wysiwyg or html makes no difference. Bloody linux. If anyone knows of a way to make the text smaller, let me know!)
Definitely more PMG!Bush than book!Bush, so even more licence has been taken...
Finesse (or, the four times that Lieutenant William Bush lost at cards and the one time that he didn't).
Rob whist of finesse, and you rob the game of its greatest charm.
You must always recollect, when planning any finesse, that if your finesse loses, the immediate loss is nearly always modified, provided, of course, that your finesse was justifiable, or turned into a gain in an after play; for you have thrown the lead, and what appears to be the loss of a trick is frequently equivalent to a gain of two. By finesse you have made yourself last player in the next round, which is a position of advantage, and you may command the play to your subsequent gain.
- C.D.P. Hamilton, Modern Scientific Whist
It was one of those times they played for other stakes than money. It had been a poor voyage, and the meagre means of a ship's officer were running too low for any of the Sutherland's officers to be unmanned by the prospect of more trivial stakes. As it was, they played for trifles. The game would win the next egg laid by the wardroom hens, or the first glimpse through the nearest spyglass at the sight of a foreign sail, or the sewing-on of a button, or a dab of shoe polish - paid by the lowest scorer to whoever won the rubber. But more often than not, by common consent, the prize was just the owing of a favour. Anywhere but at sea, the debt of such small favours would have been recognised as mere amusements not even worth the honouring. But they were sailors, and at sea any such bond of obligation has such strong formal qualities that it may as well have been an article of war.
Bush was frequently the worst loser. His calloused hands struggled to hold thirteen cards with the same infelicity as his mind struggled to keep track of the other thirty-nine. He could calculate by sheer experience the rate of knots a certain spread of canvas might give him in a certain wind and sea, arguably a much subtler task; but he was not given to abstraction.
When Hornblower had the leisure, he would privately fret about how Bush was to pay the favours he owed. Hornblower was already captain, and there was little he could ask of Bush that he would not already give. Indeed, in his overworked imagination, the winning of a favour seemed to add a grotesque surplus of power, vaguely mocking of his authority.
The first time he had won a favour from Bush, the matter got resolved soon after in the great cabin. The wind had veered two points, and Bush had just reported what new canvas they were under, when Hornblower lost his balance in an unexpected swell and he folded suddenly over his own feet like a topmast struck square in the crosstree. He fell heavily against the immovable body of Bush. Two strong arms gripped his shoulders and a worried pair of eyes brought Hornblower back to the upright. Right you are, there, sir. She nearly had you out through her stern window.
Bush's big hands were fussing some impossible dust from Hornblower's uniform.
Hornblower's total lack of dignity gave way to some idea that passed into his eyes and then something altogether more sleek came across his expression.
That's the favour you owed me, then.
He was still looking down at Bush's hands, brushing his chest off, as he said it.
*
Maybe because the porto had been broached well before the next wardroom game of whist had even begun: when Bush inevitably lost, Hornblower's suggestion for a favour went down well. The idea of the first lieutenant having to stand on the deck and take a shower, in the manner of their strange captain, was received with a chorus of laughter and agreement. Bush doffed Longley's head, who was giggling. That's enough from you, shrimp.
Sunday came and the idlers amongst the crew, glad of some sport, gathered to watch Bush pay his debt to the captain. A rough sea sent sunlight shivering through the spray. The pumps clanked, he abandoned his towel, and a general cheer went up as the hose was turned onto the first lieutenant. He took the whole thing in good part, knowing it would be even worse for discipline if he didn't. At the sting of the cold water he washed himself down with a holystone and pretended to clown around. He roared in cheerful outrage when someone flicked a towel at his posterior. To the officers watching from the quarterdeck, it was like watching a frolicking bull.
As the pumps and laughter ceased someone offered him a coat and a tot of rum. Bush being Bush, he made use of the rum before the coat, and standing brutally naked on the dripping maindeck he knocked it back, to be cheered again by the crew. The wet air around him was bright and cold and sharp like lemonade.
Gerard was musing to nobody in particular: Strictly speaking, it's more of a forfeit, than a favour.
While everyone else was laughing, he glanced at Hornblower, whose eyes were on Bush, and then he wasn't so sure.
*
Bush owed Hornblower again. Hornblower had invited Bush, Gerard, Rayner, and Vincent to dine, and there had been time for a game of whist. Bush was again the worst loser, and wished he could have sat out of the game instead of Vincent, fiddling politely in the corner. But the matter of favours was left postponed by the announcement of a sail on the port beam, and Hornblower had condescended to allow the ship to clear for action.
They laid alongside and boarded her, but more out of necessity than out of choice. Weight of gunnery was bound eventually to overcome them, and even a foolhardy gesture was their only chance. Englishmen or those bound to England poured across the French deck, and the noise of guns and crashing wood was replaced by desperate yelling, the pounding of pistols, and the crash of steel.
In battle, Bush thrust his ire ahead of himself like a flaming torch. Even in those insane moments he kept certain men in his reckoning. And in the corner of his eye he saw Hornblower, pushing his opponent back and swiping his sword desperately. Hornblower's movements were hindered, and as the engagement was doggedy concluding itself only just in his favour, he had no attention to spare for another assailant behind him, springing down from the ratlines. A new rage filled Bush. He had a hiatus in which to act. He saw the Frenchman ready his cutlass to strike, and he hurtled towards the man. He cursed the man to the pits of hell with all the filth of his hatred, and the sailor fell away under a sleet-rain of steel blows.
Hornblower turned and saw the death that he had just been spared, and then he turned back to Bush. In that moment he watched the grotesque transformation of the first lieutenant from madman to human being, breathing heavily all the time. Bush's eyes widened.
Sir - are you hurt?
The concern in Bush's eyes came from an entirely different person; a person who had not just seconds ago spat on the body of a dying man.
They did not even have to speak to agree that Bush's favour had been paid.
*
They put into port at Plymouth, and there was shore leave, and they were merry. Such parsimony as they had exercised on board had been precisely with this moment in mind, and for that night they could afford wine and women. After losing at cards several times to Hornblower, Bush made sure they visited one of the establishments that provided both.
Hornblower returned to the Sutherland. He was a married man, although with Maria in Portsmouth this was considered rather immaterial. He refused to imagine it was the kindness of his heart that kept him away, and he told himself that had too many duties before he could relax. The revictualling, and the damage sustained in their engagement with the French seventy-four would mean tiresome wrangling with the dockyard.
It was three bells in the middle watch when Bush knocked on his door to bid his greeting before turning in. The formality of their ranks he had washed away in claret, and he arrived in the great cabin full of memories of Kingston and good company. He was swaying a little more than the anchorage quite allowed for, and when he came closer, Hornblower could smell wine, and sex. He had bet his shirt at some point, and now he wore just his coat over his bare shoulders. The candles at the desk were guttering low. Hornblower snuffed them and lit another, and then the cabin also smelled of soot and wax. He sat down on the edge of his cot.
How was your evening?
Bush described the night: The first soft bread they had tasted in weeks, and the fight the coxswain got into, and half the hands being sick on their shoes, and the bad ale they had drunk that made them call for wine instead. And the girls.
He licked his lips, and Hornblower watched him remember his last fuck.
They weren't like the girls in Kingston, he said, but he laughed. It was still good to have it. Bush was sure Horatio knew what he meant.
Hornblower said that he knew exactly what he meant, and he gestured at a chair that he should sit. But Bush just stood there, in the near darkness. I'm sorry sir, it's not right that you didn't get any shore leave.
He said it again, stubbornly. It's not fair that you didn't get any. Thing.
Bush had the morning watch, and should be sleeping off his excesses. The night waves slapped the side of the ship, and she creaked around them.
I owe you a favour, sir.
When the ship swayed slowly at anchor, a candle's flame would lean sideways, indicating the true vertical. In its light, Bush was a strange figure stumbling determinedly to his knees in front of Hornblower, being helped off with his coat. He began to tug at his stock, but Hornblower stilled his hand. And then he took up Bush's hand and put one middle finger into his mouth. It slid into his mouth, and then slowly out again, while Bush watched.
Was this what it was like? With the girl?
Bush's gaze was direct. Yes it was, sir. It was a lot like that. Except -
Except?
They had to get Hornblower's trousers off before Bush could show him, and when they did Bush indicated that she had first, by means of tongue and mouth, begun with the lightest touch. She went on, continued Bush, like this with so many feather-swipes of her tongue and like this with so many little sucking kisses to it, that Bush had indeed thought he was going to explode before she even took it in her mouth. I see, said Hornblower, barely breathing.
Bush spoke very soft and deliberate, as if he was warning a midshipman who couldn't remember his signals. He felt totally helpless, he said, when she had begun sucking only the very tip, in and out, like this. And he looked up, to check that Hornblower was watching closely enough. It had, Bush said, driven him close to insanity. Did the captain know what he meant?
Yes, said Hornblower, his voice cracking. Yes, I know what you mean, yes. Bush told him how pretty her lips had looked around his cock, and then he showed Hornblower as slowly as possible what that had been like. And apparently she had sucked so long, so hard, and so slow that Bush's vision must have clouded, for although Hornblower's eyes had adjusted to the light of the single candle he momentarily couldn't see a thing, but then he looked again and saw his own hands pulling Bush's head as close as the whore had allowed it.
She had, it seemed, allowed a lot.
Oh good god. Oh sweet jesus, was what Bush might have said as she continued. Hornblower was having to stop his fingers twisting into Bush's hair and pulling harder, because the girl had clearly known exactly what she was doing. And for a time she must have quietly pushed Bush to the brink of insanity, until he must have been moaning like a man desperate for succour, in fact he must have pleaded for it.
But a man with Bush's physique and hardy constitution would not have felt like the world had ended when he came, and nor would he have been guided trembling onto the bed as a coverlet painted with roses was laid over him to sleep it off.
*
Two bells in the first watch. You are on the Sutherland, but you are just a pair of eyes and ears. You see the sailors who were last night libertymen, and through what is widely viewed as pure cruelty, they have sweated off the excesses of their one night of freedom with a series of exercises on the way to Ushant. The ship creaks out the soft and contented song of her crew's fatigue. The port watch sleeps with empty heads, pillowed by the pure languour of bodies worked hard and hung up contented in their hammocks like so many bales of hemp.
In the dim light of the wardroom, a fad for whist continues.
Everything is much the same as any other evening of cards. A midshipman lies on his stomach on the deck, ankles crossed in the air, lips moving soundlessly as he reads Marlowe to himself. The master is darning a stocking by the light of a lamp in the corner. And around a pair of candles, three lieutenants and a captain conclude their game. The junior is hungover to the back teeth, his ebullient manner dampened by the disquiet in his head and stomach. A rather handsome young officer has a smooth air that perhaps conceals some reminiscences of the night before. The captain is losing, and seems surprised at this.
If you were an observant pair of eyes, you might have noticed that this dark and hollow-cheeked man is having trouble concentrating on his hand. He is distracted over some unspoken conversation with the fourth player directly opposite him. You would need to be exceptionally observant, because the captain works hard to hide his feelings in whist as in life, and here he is in both. But granting you some clairvoyance now, you might imagine that he is intrigued despite himself by something in the other man's gaze; and it is unclear, in the glances that pass between them, if that thing is a suggestion or a reminder. It would seem that it is both simple and repetitive, and it is ruining his concentration.
The fourth player is not, for once, sweating over his cards. He has a very good hand, which he contemplates calmly, only occasionally looking up, under his eyelashes, across the table.
The rather handsome young officer counts the tricks and says: Finally it looks like it's Hornblower who owes you a favour this time, Bush.
Again Hornblower's glance flickers from his cards to Bush's eyes, and shifts in his chair. And every now and again, as the ship creaks around them, Bush softly strokes his lips with his forefinger.