Seventeen Bells: [WRITTEN/ACTION]

[simplestgift]

On July the 4th, 1776, one Horatio Hornblower was born in Kent.  If you see him, bid him many happy returns.  He will most likely grump about it all day and act ungrateful, but don't allow it to discourage you.  He does appreciate it, he simply does not know it.

[For most of the day, Archie will be running around trying to furnish a bedroom in the house for a new housemate. He'll end up in the library, Good Spirits, the grocery store, then finally the Battle Dome, mostly staring in bewilderment at the controls before deciding this is too scary and leaving. At some point, he'll also take a walk in the woods, rain or no rain, in shirtsleeves and waistcoat but no coat. After a while, he'll get back on the journals.]

[Filtered away from Grell, 44%]

If you wanted to surprise someone dear to you, to cheer her up when she returned from being kidnapped, what would you do for her?

Comments

[all7seas]

"Discussin' Buffy's a subject rather close to my heart. She rouses me, savvy?"

He...didn't mean it like that, Kennedy.

[simplestgift]

"And the very thought of marrying her angers you?"

[all7seas]

"What?...........No. It's not that at all, Kennedy." And in his efforts to reach over the bar for a fresh bottle, Jack topples and disappears head-first behind it.

He continues speaking, however.

"Buffy's....odd about things like that. 'Short and brutal' is a Slayer's life and all."

[simplestgift]

"The same can and is said of a sailor's life. Between me and Buffy, I'm the dead one, remember."

[all7seas]

An arm pops up from the other side of the counter, clutching a bottle of Scotch.

".....Drink up, Lieutenant."

[simplestgift]

Kennedy nabs the bottle from Jack's hand and pours himself a glass as he sits. "Thank you."

[all7seas]

Jack simply stays on the floor behind the bar, where he can lean against one of the shelves, and has a bit of whiskey. "Anytime, Kennedy."

[simplestgift]

Archie took a thoughtful swallow, then tried another song which, hopefully, Jack knew.

"Up jumps the eel with his slippery tail,
Climbs up aloft and he reefs the topsail..."

[all7seas]

No. He doesn't.


"........Eels?"

[simplestgift]

"Found one you don't know, did we?"

[all7seas]

"Must be a Navy song. Proper pirates don't sing about eels, lad."

The bottles behind him clink as Jack shifts and tries to get comfortable against the shelves.

"What about one about a mermaid? A lovely mermaid."

[simplestgift]

"Which one?"

[all7seas]

"That one about the mermaid what saves the sailor's life?" Jack had no idea what song it was, but there HAD to be one like that. There simply had to. It was almost a sea shanty rule that there had to be one.

[simplestgift]

Whichever one Jack meant, Archie was about to change the subject. "You know, Jack," he said, lifting a finger, "I've noticed your distaste for Horatio and would like to mention it's only making my plot to get him to like you more difficult to implement."

[all7seas]

"Oh it is, is it?" Jeweled fingers thrummed impatiently against the bottle of rum. "Why on earth do you want him to like me, Kennedy?"

[simplestgift]

"I don't like it when my friends bicker, I find. What's more, you deserve his respect. I don't expect you to think it important."

[all7seas]

"I.......ah. Right." Well, that silenced him for a moment, and Jack took advantage of that moment to open another bottle of rum. "Respect, is it? Doubtful. And you can't force such a thing from a man, either. I haven't earned Hornblower's respect, Kennedy, and it's very likely that I won't."

[simplestgift]

"He shouldn't put you in a box with every other pirate who ever lived, Jack." He sounded resolved.

[all7seas]

"Nah; he should put me on the TOP of the box, seeing as I'm Captain Jack Sparrow and all. Never to be lumped into the box, me." Jack heard that resolve and answered it with a great deal of "I'm Not Particularly Fussed What Hornblower Thinks of Me."

[simplestgift]

And Archie did not expect him to be. "Never. And neither is he, by the by. Not very tolerant, either of you." More whiskey. He was getting fairly sloshed by now.

[all7seas]

"Pffft. With whom have I lumped him, Kennedy? I were tolerant enough to HIDE the man in my bloody ATTIC, wasn't I?"

[simplestgift]

There was a bit of a pause. "Well, he isn't a prat."

[all7seas]

Not a prat? Jack pulled himself up enough to peer over the top of the bar and blink at Kennedy. He'd had a friend like that, once: Christophe. He'd trailed along behind the older pirate much the same way he saw Kennedy trailing along with Hornblower. And that? Had ended in betrayal and dueling and ruin.

Jack Sparrow had never had a close male friend in the same manner ever since. Gibbs, of course, was possibly the man he trusted most. And he misplaced plenty of trust in women along the way, but that wasn't the same thing.

"Right. Not a prat. Whatever you say, Kennedy."

[simplestgift]

Jack couldn't know what Archie had spent the afternoon telling Jilly, about exactly why he and Horatio were the way they were. The dependence in their friendship had little akin to a tagalong child and his older idol. In some ways, it was scarier than that, and in others, much safer. But Archie had never told Jack how very close he had come to unraveling without Horatio, sometimes. But Horatio was dependent right back, in his own ways, as if Archie was keeping him from being damned for imagined crimes. But none of this was anything Archie could tell Jack. He operated by making many friends but having only one true confidant--and now two, with Jilly.

"Not a prat." Grell. "Well. Not all the time."

[all7seas]

"He's a captain: they have their prattish moments," Sparrow admitted. The word "prattish" came out more than a little bit slurred as he sank back down behind the bar. "Christophe, now-----he was an utter prat, Kennedy."