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

[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."

[simplestgift]

"Who was he?" Kennedy leans over the bar to peer down at the pirate on the other side.

[all7seas]

There was a pirate peering right back at him.

"My best friend."

[simplestgift]

"What did he do?"

[all7seas]

There was a long drink of rum, then. A very long one. Jack was almost to the point of oblivion, and it wasn't a bad place to be.

"Turned my dad against me. Traitor. Duel. I killed him."

[simplestgift]

"That is a prat," Archie intones solemnly. After a second, he scrambles clumsily over the bar and lands at Jack's side, sitting. "Least all my enemies have always been enemies and not enemies pretending to be friends. Well. 'Cept for Grell. And Buckland, I suppose, though he wasn't a friend. He was the first lieutenant and a fool, though. We thought he could take command, but he couldn't. Nearly got us all killed."

[all7seas]

"Mmmmmph." The not-quite-empty bottle clattered to the floor through nerveless fingers. "Notsomuch prat, Archibald. Rogue pirate. Me father put a price on my head. Too trusting, me."

[simplestgift]

Archie was just too far gone to take offense to being called "Archibald." "A price on you head? Your father? Whatever for?"

[all7seas]

There was just a grunted reply, which might have been "broken," before the pirate slipped into drunken unconsciousness. There would be a chance he wouldn't remember having much of this conversation, later.

[simplestgift]

Kennedy sighed and wobbled to his feet, sliding a trash can close to Jack in case he woke up sick. He paused for a moment, watching the unconscious pirate breathe.

Too trusting, me.

Something clicked then, and Archie could see the breathing body as completely man-shaped, not a strange and quirky soul to be alternately pitied and irritated with. Not a hopeless one, at that, one who had been burned by life just like everyone else, even if he wouldn't show it. In that way, not very different at all from Archie. One who, in a few hours, would undeservedly wake up alone on the floor of a bar if his friend left him there like he wasn't worth helping home.

He stooped and shook the pirate to wake him. "Jack. Let's get you home."

[all7seas]

There was a kind of swatting motion from one of the pirate's hands and a grumbled gerroff. So far, so bad.

[simplestgift]

Okay, the revelation wasn't about to remove all possible irritation with the man. "Up, Jack. At least back to my house. It isn't far."

[all7seas]

"Piffle."

[simplestgift]

"You can't stay here for the cool ladies to step over."

[all7seas]

"Right. Can't. Bugger, why are you upside-down, Radish?"

There was no fathomable reason why Jack should have called Archie "radish." It was just one of those things.

[simplestgift]

"You're lying down, Turnip. Now. Let's see if we can get you on your feet, first."

[all7seas]

Somehow, feet-getting-to happened. It wasn't pretty and it wasn't graceful and it wasn't earning any I'm Captain Jack Sparrow reputational points, but it happened.

"Where's the door, Kennedy? I've a sudden urge to...wander."

[simplestgift]

Archie took an arm and steered him toward the door. "No wandering. Stay on course."

[all7seas]

"On course," he repeated, leaning heavily on the younger man. "My compass isn't here anymore."

[simplestgift]

Somehow, they managed to stagger back to the Hornblower-Bush-Kennedy residence, where Jack could crash in the spare room.

[all7seas]

And crashing in the spare room is exactly what Jack did. Even if Kennedy did not somehow haul him onto the bed, Jack would find the floor rather comfortable and spend the next few hours in utter dead-to-the-world oblivion.

The hangover he would wake up with, however, would be formidable.