FIC: Horatio Hornblower - Hands

[fajrdrako_fic]

Title: Hands
Author: fajrdrako
Fandom: Horatio Hornblower
Genre: Slash
Characters: Horatio/Pellew
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine, no claims, all property of the C.S. Forester estate ITV3 and A&E.
Note: Set after "The Duel", when Horatio is on the Indefatigable, but still early in the series. With thanks to gem225 for beta-reading.


Hands

A Valentine Tale

He woke from a dream, and it would not leave him.

Sir Edward Pellew did not consider himself a fanciful man. In normal circumstances, he was able to keep his mind on practical matters and concentrate on the task at hand. There was much to be done, and the world too exciting for a man to spend his time in dreams.

Only those closest to him knew the romantic streak in him. He had become adept at hiding it, or turning it to his purposes. It had led him often on a perilous course; it had led him to glory in exploits at sea, and fame for his sense of honour. Sometimes it led him in other directions, about which nothing should be said.

It was not Pellew the war-hero who woke in his bed on the Indefatigable with the breath caught in his throat at the oddest and most exquisite of dreams. It was Pellew the romantic who had
dreamed an image that burned in his brain. A simple image, those of a man's hands - why did this leave him blinking in the dark, awake?

Just a scrap of a dream, hands at work on a ship - those, he saw every day, the hands of his crew going about their many tasks. Busy hands, all of them, for there could be no end to the work involved in keeping a ship moving, and clean, and healthy for those living on it. Besides, the Devil finds work for idle hands, and Pellew took care that there was no idleness on the Indefatigable.

So it was no surprise that he would dream of Horatio Hornblower's hands. He knew well how strong and agile those fingers were. If he thought of them in anything other than the context of naval business.... Well, it was not the business of a good Captain and honourable man to do so, and that was the end of the matter.

But the dream had seared him like a brand. Horatio's hands. What had they been doing? He could not remember. He tried to recapture the memory - oh, the image was strong, those hands,
those fingers, but they could not have been disembodied or purposeless, not even in the dream, so why had it affected him so?

This was the kind of foolishness that came in the middle of the night, chasing the dim, fading visions of sleep, and to no purpose. He had more sense than to be distracted by dreams.

No: he had more sense than to ignore a matter which disturbed him. And disturb him it did, and he stumbled over his thoughts to pin down the reason. It had not been a nightmare. No Gothic
image of Horatio strangling him, or, heaven forbid, being attacked. No, it was -

Quite different.

Erotic dreams follow their own course and their own illogic, sometimes to the surprise of the dreamer. The feelings he was left with - restless, half-aroused, his brain as unsettled as his body - yes, but what about that image had been erotic?

Was it just that the hands had been Horatio's?

Dear God.

He put on his dressing gown and sat in his chair in his main cabin. He put his head in his hands, elbows propped on the desk, and then leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes to relieve them. How had it come to this?

Horatio Hornblower. He had made no secret of his favouritism. Horatio had been his finest midshipman, had recently become his finest Lieutenant - young, but not before he deserved it. An officer and a hero at twenty-one. So soon. The time would come when Horatio would go to another ship, perhaps one of his own, for he would be a post captain one day if he wasn't killed first. The service was lucky to have him, and Pellew lucky to have him on his ship.

This much, he would have said to anyone. He would not have said how, in his dreams, Horatio's hands had reached for him in something more than friendship, and how the intensity of his
desire for this had shocked him awake. The dream had gone, the image was fading, but the desire remained.

Pellew knew Hornblower to be shy with women; he knew that, contrary to rumour, the Duchess of Wharfedale had not seduced him, and that when he had spent the night with a beautiful French
paysanne, they had done no more than briefly kiss. He knew this because Horatio had told him.

Was Horatio equally inexperienced with men? It seemed likely, if not certain. Pellew had wondered in the past if something more than friendship lay between Horatio and young Kennedy, but he had concluded that the relationship, warm, sentimental, even passionate - had nothing to do with the senses.

Unlike his own feelings for the man. And his own sensual experiences.... He had never been reckless and he was not promiscuous by nature, but how can a sane man resist the lure of
loving, and of being loved? He had loved both men and women, he had known loves that were wise and those which were not, and he had come to think himself too sensible, too careful, too wise to ever burn with that desire again. Staid middle-aged captains were not supposed to be susceptible.

He looked down at his own hands, just visible now as the windows caught the first light of dawn. Staid and middle-aged? Be damned to that; he was not dead yet, and love was a precious gift.

He closed his eyes, and remembered the image in the dream. Horatio, reaching for him, love in his eyes.

It had been a beautiful dream, painful only because it was not reality. Horatio had the hands of an angel and the form of temptation made flesh. Pellew valued him as a friend, as a man, as
an officer of his ship, and as an intellect to be respected. Was it not greed to want his love as well? Or was it simply disastrous vanity, to believe - even in the shadow of a dream - that this beautiful young man could ever desire him in return?

Yet Horatio loved him, he knew that. Hero-worship? Respect? Infatuation? Or like spirits finding something abiding in each other?

If he could convince himself that what he felt for Horatio was a fleeting lust, something that would pass as soon as it was appeased - then he would have no trouble in quelling it. If he could convince himself that it was for Horatio's own good, as well as his own, that he should not act on this desire, then he would never act on this desire. Could he believe that?

No, he could not. Every living being must have love, or life would be an empty thing.

He stared at his hands as the growing light revealed them, resting atop his desk. In the dream, Horatio's hands had reached for him, but his had not reached back. Instead he had retreated to wakefulness. In his imagination now, he pictured himself reaching out, their hands touching. Clasping. He pictured moving closer, Horatio's lips meeting his, himself taking Horatio into his arms. He imagined the touch of those hands, and his hands touching
Horatio, fingers on flesh, skin on skin, all bodies, all hands.

Had he ever wanted anything so much?

His servant would come in to tend him in a moment. He opened his log, and got out his ink, and wrote in his customary careful hand: "14th Feb., 1797." He put the pen down abruptly. It was
the morning of the Feast-Day of St. Valentine, Christian patron of love. Was this irony, or the twisted logic of dreams? Or was it simply inevitable, from the day he had first set eyes on Horatio?

Can a man deny love?

He had a strength of will that could defy nations at war and tame the sea. If he must, he could deny himself this.

But he would not.

The choice of course was not fully his. The choice would be Horatio's. If Horatio loved him as he hoped, and trusted him as he must. . . .

He picked up his pen again and wrote: "St. Valentine's Day. May St. Valentine favour this ship and all who here reside."

Life was a gamble. So were matters of the heart. Smiling, he rose to prepare himself for the day.