I Think You Were There - I-III
I.
“Oh, how we laughed, oh how we drank-
You acquiesced and the rest is a blank.”
-Stephen Soundheim, A Little Night Music
Archie Kennedy knew he was being watched.
The Portsmouth afternoon was cloudy, rain and mist darkening the streets enough that an uninformed observer might have mistaken the four o’clock day for midnight, and the interior of the pub was not well-lit, but that did not stop Kennedy from noticing that he was being observed. Through surreptitious glances he had even been able to discover the fellow – he was sitting behind Archie and to the left slightly. The man had straight, dark hair, a lanky frame, and a curious, approving expression.
As the hour wore on, Archie attempted to stay focused on his drink, on the silence of his self-companionship that he had purposefully sought that evening. Horatio had not been lucky enough, as he had, to receive leave for the short time that the Indefatigable was in port, and though Archie had barely been able to admit it to himself, he was somewhat glad for the time alone – and he had no intention of allowing a curious stranger to interrupt that, or so he told himself. Something drew his gaze back to his observer time after time, enough for him to muse silently that the young man was at least attractive – a thought quickly banished.
Almost as soon as the thought crossed Archie’s mind, though, their gazes finally met, and with only a small smile, the man got up from his table and moved to the seat across from Archie.
As he took his seat, Archie leaned back in his chair slightly and quirked an eyebrow. “Yes?”
The man chuckled. “I could say the same to you.”
“You were watching me first.”
“I suppose I needn’t say it, then,” he countered.
Archie couldn’t help a small grin. “I suppose so.” He paused, studying the man again. He had a relaxed air about him and seemed so clearly comfortable in his own skin that Archie found himself relaxing as well, despite his previous vow to take advantage of his solitude. “But do I get an answer?”
He seemed to hesitate briefly. “Some people you can’t look at just once.”
Archie, his glass halfway to his mouth, nearly dropped the drink to the table. “Pardon?”
“Some people you can’t look at just once,” he repeated, though his tone was more nervous this time. The man frowned slightly, seemed to prepare to stand, but then changed his mind and relaxed with a smile.
Archie couldn’t help but laugh. This really wasn’t turning out to be the night that he had expected it to be. “You’ve been thinking about seducing me, haven’t you?” When the young man across the table only looked back at him expectantly, he continued, “ You’ve more nerve than I, that’s for sure - I might punch you, or walk away, or god knows what…”
“I’m counting on the fact that you haven’t yet,” he pointed out rather ruefully, just a touch of embarrassment in his eyes.
Archie snorted. “I’ll give you that.” He tilted his head to the side slightly with a grin. Oh, what the hell – after Ferrol, after the unease that still followed him relentlessly, even these months after their return, he deserved a bit of fun to forget all of it. “How about you offer to buy me a drink and I’ll think about it?”
Archie’s new companion raised an eyebrow, pale blue eyes twinkling. “Don’t you naval officers get paid enough to buy your own drinks?”
“You’d be surprised,” Archie countered dryly, adding with a grin, “Besides – don’t I deserve the token of good faith?”
The dark haired young man rolled his eyes and chuckled, but he rose from his seat and went to the bar to retrieve the drinks. On his return, setting the drinks back on the table, he said, “The name’s Daniel Cunningham, by the way.”
“Archie Kennedy.” He smiled and took a sip from the mug he had been offered. “So – Mr. Cunningham, who pays you enough to enable you buy drinks for both yourself and unsuspecting strangers?”
Cunningham chuckled. “A dull and ordinary accounting office not far from here. Not half as exciting as your source of means.”
“Excitement is not all one might imagine,” Archie countered, shaking his head – the admittance was simple, but it was one he had not yet been able to express, not even to Horatio. Especially not to Horatio. “Which is why I plan to thoroughly enjoy myself while I am here.” He smirked at Daniel, raising his glass in toast-fashion, and his companion laughed cheerfully.
Archie found himself surprisingly at ease as they sank into conversation, more so than he had been in a long time, and as the hours wore on and the drinks continued to flow, he even forgot that there was an Indy to return to the next day. Alcohol and cheerful flirtation eased tension and calmed nerves; barely-admitted anxieties that Archie could not even name were hidden in corners of his mind where they could be ignored. Daniel Cunningham may not have known it, but his cheerful presence, his disconnection from the Naval world, allowed Archie to laugh uncontrollably for the first time in years.
Though he might have been expecting it, he barely noticed when Cunningham invited him home, when their cheerful laughter and playful teasing had tumbled into the street, and then into Daniel’s flat a few blocks away. As Archie sunk into an offered chair, his host finally ruefully acknowledged what their conversation had only implied for much of the night – “I hope you’re not thinking me too forward?” Though he was grinning, his question was genuine.
Only then did Archie blush slightly, his mind briefly catching up with his intoxicated thoughts, but he did not allow it to dwell there. No – he was going to enjoy this fully, come hell or high water. “If you are, I don’t mind,” Archie assured him softly.
Daniel’s smile softened as he crossed the room from the door to stand next to Archie’s chair, taking the blond’s chin in his hand. Their eyes met, and Archie rose with a murmur, “It’s been a good evening…”
“It’s going to become an even better one,” came Daniel’s soft response a moment before their lips touched.
Archie tensed at first, but as a rebellion against his body’s visceral reaction, instead of pulling away he deepened the kiss, and finally, after a time, he began to relax. And as the kisses, the touch of Daniel’s hands continued, he was able to further forget – to forget every event, every pain, every thought that had been plaguing him for years and give himself over to pure feeling.
II.
“How we kissed and how we clung,
Remember, darling?
We were foolish, we were young –
More than we knew.”
Though the curtains of the room’s main window were closed, there was a smaller, still open one, just large enough to allow the moonlight to stream in. The two men were still awake, comfortably close on the bed – Archie’s head was pillowed on Daniel’s chest as Daniel lightly stroked his hair.
Archie finally interrupted the calm quiet that had settled over them for some time. “But what do you do, then?”
Daniel blinked, sending him a perplexed look. “I’m not sure I follow.”
“I mean, your money for drinks,” an amused looks, “comes from… what was it? Accounting? But what about you?”
“How do you know I do anything at all?”
“Besides seduce unsuspecting young men?” A smirk.
“Well, yes.”
“Call it a good feeling.” Archie grinned softly, and Daniel laughed.
“Well, if you must know…” He shifted slightly, turning on his side and propping his head up with his elbow in order to meet Archie’s gaze. “I suppose you could say I do a bit of writing.”
Archie’s face lit up and he laughed, gazing up at him from the pillow now. “Truly? What do you write, then?” He reached out to tuck a loose strand of hair behind his companion’s ear.
“Nothing worth reading, believe me,” Daniel informed him ruefully.
“Somehow I doubt that,” Archie grinned in response.
“No, it’s entirely too true - probably a good thing that I gave in to my family’s wishes after all.” He shook his head. “When I was young and foolish - oh, don’t snort like that.” He ruffled the smirking blond’s hair as he continued, “I told them that I planned to run off and become a great writer, or something else equally absurd, and they told me to pack my bags.”
“Only for that?”
“To be fair, by that point they couldn’t be expected to keep me around if I wasn’t doing something practical.” He chuckled nervously. “Though it probably had more to do with, well, who I was running away with.”
Archie blinked. “Ah.” But when Daniel looked away and offered nothing more, Archie added softly, “We all have our…pasts.”
“Yes…” He smiled absently and the brief discomfort that had filled the air dissipated. “And what about you?”
“Mm?”
Daniel rolled his eyes and nudged him. “Same question.”
Archie snorted. “You think I have time…” But when Daniel only looked back at him expectantly, Archie chuckled and sighed dramatically. “All right, all right. I suppose I read when I have the time.”
“What sorts of things?”
Archie paused briefly. “Shakespeare… mostly.”
Daniel gazed down at him for a long moment, finally breaking into pearls of laughter. As Archie blushed and averted his eyes though, he brought a hand to his cheek. “How did I manage to find you?” came his incredulous murmur.
Archie went pink again, but with pleasure this time. “Bad luck, perhaps?”
“Hardly.”
Their lips brushed, and Archie sighed, closing his eyes contentedly for a long moment. Separated from his life, from his memories, and in the arms of this man who gazed softly down at him, he felt free, unburdened. The troubled, haunted Archie Kennedy who woke in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, who panicked, did not have to exist here. And this man did not, and somehow Archie knew in his heart, would not, ask to know it.
“We understand each other, don’t we?’ Archie murmured, voicing his thoughts.
Daniel laughed softly and cupped the blond’s cheek. “I suppose so…” And with that, Archie grinned, pulling his head down in order to kiss him properly.
III.
“Every day a little sting,
Every day a little dies,
In the heart and in the head,
In the looks and in the lies.”
Archie’s return to the Indy the following morning was a surreal one. Just as dawn was pinkening the sky and light was beginning to play across the water of the Portsmouth harbor, Archie took a boat back to his ship, feeling, as he approached, as if the skies themselves were weighing down his shoulders. His feet felt leaden as he climbed over the side and made his way down to the midshipmen’s berth.
Due to the early hour, his farewell to Daniel had been nothing but a few words and brief promise to stay in touch, but that Archie had been glad of. He had no desire to have his new lover see him step back into his old skin that now, after an evening free of it, felt all the more ill-fitting than it had before. And it was in that unhappy frame of mind that Archie descended to his bunk, hoping to get a few hours of sleep before his watch was called.
He did not make it that far, though. Just he turned to enter the berth, a familiar voice called out his name, one he did not have the heart to ignore.
“Archie – you’re back,” Horatio Hornblower greeted him, welcoming Kennedy with a rare smile. Archie chuckled softly in response.
“For better or for worse. You’d best batter down the hatchways.”
“Don’t be foolish,” Horatio chided dismissively, and Archie rolled his eyes. “How was your evening?”
Archie sunk down next to the table in the berth and his gaze went up to Horatio where he stood, halfway leaning against the entrance. “A thoroughly enjoyable and completely debauched one.” The words were said flippantly – a joke to hide the truth in them that Archie was afraid was causing him to blush and – though, oh, how he hated to admit it – wish Hornblower would just disappear. But he was only met with a hurt look from his friend, one that made the guilt already collecting in his stomach churn. “I – I’m not serious, ‘ratio,” he somehow managed weakly.
“Of course.” Archie was met with a tight smile. “Well… I’d best leave you.” Hornblower turned to go.
Archie almost called him back, wanted to force himself to in order to apologize for his poor sarcasm and inhospitable behavior, even explain – though what, exactly, he did not fathom – but the words stuck in his throat, and then Horatio was gone. With a weary sigh, he went to seek out his hammock and once there, immediately sunk into it, burying his face in his pillow.
It was not the first time recently that the two friends had left each other in such uncomfortable moods – the awkwardness between them had stemmed from their return back to the Indefatigable from the minor hell that had been El Ferrol. Since then, their conversations tended to drift inevitably to uncomfortable silences, and while neither of them actively avoided the other, their paths has crossed much less than one would expect from two people who had grown so close through the heat, pain, and homesickness that had been their three years together in that Spanish prison.
Archie knew it had been entirely his own fault.
He could not even explain it. In the week preceding their return, after they found out about their release, Archie had been more aglow than he had been possibly since Horatio had known him. He had spoken of nothing but England, and once that topic was exhausted, the Indy itself, musing to Horatio every chance he got about what it was that he would do first once they arrived. But the moment he had stepped back onto his ship, all those joyful thoughts had dissolved and turned to an unhappy whirling of his mind that had made him distant, silent, and above all, unfair to his closest friend.
Archie had to admit that he did not truly know the Indefatigable. He had no doubts about its strength or about the prudence of Captain Pellew, but his time there before the Papillion attack had not been extensive. But he knew deck, and he knew rigging, and masts, and bulkheads, and crowded midshipmen’s berths noisy with card games and off-color jests. Even far away from Spithead and with a crew that was as different from that of the Justinian as sea was to desert, he could not forget what those meant to him.
He knew pitying looks, too. It wouldn’t be like that, Horatio had promised him in that makeshift hospital with whitewashed walls and crucifix hanging over the bed. But it was like that – or so Archie was convinced.
There was something else, too – something he refused to even name. Despite all, a lightness fluttered in Archie’s stomach whenever he met Horatio’s gaze.
And so Archie had withdrawn. He became sullen, quiet. Without meaning to, comments that might have at one time been lighthearted jokes became cynical remarks. At first, he had even told himself that he merely needed to readjust, but one month had turned to two, and then to three.
Now Archie was certain that all he needed to do was forget.
**
And forget he did, at least when he was able, for Daniel Cunningham became the perfect means through which he was able to do so.
Archie wrote his first letter to Daniel, really no more than a brief note, about a week after the Indefatigable set sail again. It was, of course, some time before he was able to send it at a port or through a home-going vessel, and even longer until he received a reply, but when the letter came bearing his name, he knew it had been worth it. Without a word to the perplexed-looking Horatio who stood beside him, he dashed down to his bunk, and collapsing onto it, tore open the worn envelope. He read the letter – pages longer than the one he himself had sent - with relish, sinking comfortably into his hammock and forgetting the ship around him in Daniel’s cheerful words from another world.
“Good news?”
The interruption came just as Archie was finishing Daniel’s final sentence. He looked up sharply from where he was nestled into the canvas, going red as he saw his friend’s brown eyes peering over him and quickly stuffing the pages into his bedclothing. “Ah… yes,” he mumbled lamely.
“I haven’t seen you that pleased in a while.” But when Archie merely shrugged in response, Horatio’s expression turned from curiosity to disappointment. “Forgive me for interrupting…”
Before Horatio could turn to go again, Archie sat up, quickly enough to cause the hammock to sway dangerously. “Horatio…” He swallowed. His friend turned back around, his expression painfully blank. “Give me some time. Please.”
“I thought I’d done that,” came Horatio’s brief, quiet reply before he turned again and disappeared.
Archie sunk back into the canvas, this time in painful despair. For a long moment he lay, staring up at the ceiling, but finally he gathered himself together and went to his trunk in order to retrieve paper and ink for a reply.
His response to Daniel made no mention of his discontent at the time of its writing, let alone of the fact that much of it now stemmed from his uneasiness near the one person around which he had never expected to feel unease. And yet, Horatio’s name was mentioned three times in as many pages – always in passing, but conspicuously there on the page, in the same way that he had stood quietly beside Archie for many years - and Archie hardly noticed.
The exchange of letters continued, though Horatio ceased to ask what caused his friend to oh-so-briefly return to his once common joyful, comfortable demeanor. And on days when letters would not – far more common – Archie spent any moment he could snatch reading old ones, dredging from every line as much happiness in their escape as possible – and quietly, somewhere far in the back of his mind, detesting himself for it all the while.