The Cottage

* 2*

Horatio woke to that wonderful drifting somewhere wakefulness and drowsing sometime before dawn. He stretched, enjoying the softness of the feather bed beneath him and the luxury of clean sheets around him. He had the sense of well being which can only come from having enjoyed a satisfying session of lovemaking.

It was still dark in the small bedroom, and as he rolled over to slide an arm around the man who should have been next to him, he was surprised to feel only an empty expanse of smooth sheet. He became more fully awake. That was odd. Perhaps Edward has gotten up to use the chamber pot. Or maybe he had gone out to the privy in the back of the cottage. After a few minutes he still hadn't returned and there were no sounds to be heard.

They had come to Edward's cottage to sort out the terrible row that they had whilst on leave in Portsmouth. The trouble seemed be behind them and they seemed, if anything, closer than they had been. The fear they had both felt at the intensity of their disagreement had made a large impression on them both.

Getting up and slipping on his trousers, he walked barefoot out to the small main room. Sitting there on the small couch in front of the fire was Edward, his closest friend, his lover for three years now and his Captain. Captain Sir Edward Pellew, commander of HMS Indefatigable, Hero of the realm, Baronet, Knight of the Bath.

His Edward.

Wearing his robe loosely wrapped about him and thoughtfully watching the flames, Horatio stood behind him, putting his hand on the side of the older man's neck, rubbing it gently. "Is everything alright?"

A smile more felt than seen, "Yes, fine. I didn't want to wake you, you looked so peaceful."

Horatio came around to sit on the carpet just next to Edward, his arm coming around to enclose his legs, his head resting on his lap. Edwards's hand smoothed the long hair from his face, caressing his head, playing with the curls.

After a few minutes like this Horatio looked up at him and said, "Come back to bed with me. It's too big for one person and it's not time to be up yet."

"In a few minutes." Horatio hugged him just a bit tighter.

"What is it that you've been here thinking about?"

"How close I came to losing you. I was thinking on how my life would be if you were no longer in it. How lonely I would be, how desperately I would miss you. I know how much I've come to depend on you being here with me where I can touch you and talk to you, hear your advice and your thoughts. I've come to lean on that so much over the last several years. I can't bear to think what it would be to not have you anymore."

"Those are exactly the same thoughts that I had when I was walking by the water earlier."

Horatio moved so that he was sitting on the sofa next to Edward, his body angled into him, his hand gently tracing his face for a moment while he gathered his thoughts.

"In my life there have only been two people who have loved me. You and my mother. She died when I was six. For twelve years after that there was no one in the world who would allow me to touch them, who would touch me in return. There was no one who cared what I thought or felt. No one to whom it mattered if I was cold or sick or tired or frightened." His voice broke slightly and he curled his body into Edward's, pressing himself close to the older man's body, holding onto him.

"You're the first person in all that time who I can put my arms around and not be thrown off. You're the only person I've ever kissed or slept with. You're my only lover." His eyes spilled over. "I couldn't bear to lose you, Edward." He shook his head. " I couldn't. While I was walking earlier, I began to think what it would be like with out you, if we had never met. You asked me once about the duel with Simpson, but I never told you the truth about that."

Edward realized that Horatio was getting too upset, that he was becoming distraught and tried to calm him, to quiet him, but the young man went on, barely pausing for breath. Edward stroked him as he spoke.

"I challenged him because I thought that there was a good chance that I'd be killed. Don't you see? I was trying to use him to commit suicide. In the unlikely event that I actually killed him, then well and good, but I knew that he'd most likely kill me. That's what I'd counted on, but then Clayton knocked me over the head and was killed in my place. If it hadn't been for you being on the Indy when I got there, I'd have simply found another way. You saved my life Edward, not just by shooting that bastard, but also just by being on the ship and being decent to me. Knowing that you were there, even before we became lovers, just knowing that you expected things of me and thought that I had some worth were what made the difference. You're what made me want to live."

Horatio rubbed his cheek against Edward's chest. "How could I not fall in love with you?"

Edward continued to stroke his hair and his back as he said, "Sweeting, that's not true. You know that your father loves you deeply, and you've many friends on the ship. You're men all deeply loyal to you and the other officers respect you enormously."

"But no one other than you has ever really loved me, don't you see that? My mother doesn't even count. Mothers have to love you, don't they? No matter what you are. My father hates me. He told me once that I was the reason that my mother was dead. That if it hadn't been for me, she wouldn't have caught the fever that killed her…"

"Horatio, he was upset, distraught at the loss of his wife…"

"No. No! He was right. It was my fault that she died. She nursed me and she got sick. If I hadn't gotten sick, if she hadn't been about me, she'd still be alive. Father told me not to go into the village when everyone was sick, but I didn't listen to him. I went anyway. I did kill her, not on purpose, but I still did. That's why my father sent me away to school a fortnight after she was buried. He couldn't stand to have me about. He didn't even want to look at me. When I walked into a room he'd leave. He's right. I did kill her."

"Love, he was upset, as any man would be after such a loss. If you were to speak with him now, I'm sure that…"

Horatio plunged on, unheeding. "And then after I finished school, the headmaster wanted me to continue at University, but my father had arranged for me to ship with Captain Kean. He was a patient, you see. They arranged that between them. I had hoped after I returned from school that perhaps I would work with him in his surgery, but he still couldn't bear to have me in the house with him." He held Edward tighter still. "Do you begin to see now what you are to me?" His face turned up to look at his lover. Edward had never seen such naked need on Horatio's face, such vulnerability. It was a side that in three years he hadn't even suspected. "If I were to lose you, I couldn't bear it, truly I couldn't."

Taking his face in his hands, Edward spoke directly to Horatio, realizing that he was close to losing all control and that he would be ashamed and upset later if that happened. He had kept his secrets locked inside of him since he was a child; it was only his extreme distress that was allowing them to spill out now.

"Horatio, you are what I've been searching for all of my life. You are the grounding that keeps me sane when all around me is madness. I depend on you to be there for me when I need your arms to hold me. I need you as my haven when all around us is beyond our control and there is death and disease and war waiting to claim us. I count on your strength and your courage to help guide me when I've lost my own strength." Horatio shook his head, disagreeing.

"I need you more than I've ever needed another in my life, Horatio. It frightens me just how much I need your love to sustain me. Without you I would be a bitter and lonely old man. You are the reason that I have love in my life when I had given up all hope of ever finding it."

"But you could have anyone. I'm just…" He was unable to finish his thought. He was just nothing.

Gathering the young man in his arms, Edward held him against his chest. "You are the best part of me. You are what make me capable of being anything, of being what I am. You give your love without condition, asking for almost nothing in return, even when I struck you, you were able to forgive me. I swear that will never happen again. When I knew what I had done, I…I…oh, God, I'd rather that the blow had landed on me a hundred times than to know I'd caused you pain. I see what I've done each time I look at you, I reproach myself again."

Horatio sat up, pulling from Edward. His face turned away. His voice quiet, hardly wanting to say what he was about to, but needing to have Edward understand.

"No, you were right. I was …flirting with that friend of Chadd's. He was making advances to me and I was flattered. You were right. When you went home before me he asked me to go with him. I did. We found a hidden spot in the Admiral's garden. We kissed and…" He just shrugged, shaking his head, unable to voice what they had done together. "It was all over in a few minutes. I don't even know his first name."

Edward was stunned. He'd had no idea. He wouldn't have believed that Horatio was even capable of such a …sordid…thing. And then to come home to him as though nothing had happened.

"Have there been others?"

"No. I swear not."

"Why are you telling me this now? Why would you say this to me? Do you wish to hurt me with this?"

"You think that I'm something that I'm not. I'm not what you think, Edward. I'm …"

"You're what?"

"I'm not worth you. You should be with someone so much better than me."

Edward closed his eyes as he breathed, "Oh, Horatio.

"You are more than my equal in intelligence, you have more talent for strategy and the sea than I'll ever possess. You are kind and gentle and command loyalty effortlessly. You have more natural authority on a ship than anyone I've ever seen. And you have the most loving heart I'll ever have the privilege of knowing. Why do you insist that you are not worthy of what has rightfully come your way?"

Stubbornly holding onto his beliefs, "You only see what I let you see. I am not the person you think. I am selfish and weak and frightened. You should have someone better than me."

"Horatio, there is no one better than you. Don't you see that? God, What I would give to have you believe in your own worth for just a day. Are you so without self pride that you give yourself to strangers in dark corners?"

"Don't you see? It didn't matter. I know that it's just a question of time before you realize what I am. That I'm not what…who you should…"

"Stop that. I'll hear no more of this, do you understand me? You are my lover. You are the person who I'm in love with, the one whose body I want to hold against mine, the man whose soul is part of me. You are the only one I wish in my bed and you are the person who I wish to have next to me when I am an old man. Whatever problems we may have, whatever differences, we will work them through. We will stay together. I swear that. You are everything to me that is important in my life. My career will end but you will still be there."

"Edward." It was a plea…

Edward took him back into his arms as the young man sobbed out his anguish. The pain that had built up over years, the neglect and the rejection, the loneliness and the belief that no one would ever want him again were all in those wracking cries.

"God, I hate your father for doing this to you."

He held the young man as the cries continued, their arms clenched around each other, Edward stroking his back and his hair, murmuring quiet comforting sounds, not letting go, not letting the other man think that he was doing this for any other reason that to give comfort. It wasn't for any gain of his own. It was simply out of love for the young man.

Finally, finally he had managed to calm himself enough to just lie quietly in Edward's arms. The stayed calmly holding each other for some time, saying nothing, each with his own thoughts

.

At last Horatio broke the silence. "Last night I thought that we'd managed to put all of this right. We were reconciled and we made love and it was so wonderful. I've ruined it, haven't I?"

"No, you've ruined nothing. This all had to come out one time or another. Better that it all be brought out into the open now than to let it fester."

"But what I did at the party …how can you forgive me that? Just last night we agreed that without trust, we had nothing."

"Horatio, it happens. Perhaps it shouldn't, but you're as human as anyone. A stranger flattered you. It means nothing. I know that."

He sat up. "But how can you bear to touch me knowing that I…"

"Horatio, I love you. I love all of you. I know that you're not perfect, any more than I am. I can accept your faults as well as the other parts of you, the parts that make you so very special to me. Just as you accept my faults and failings and love me despite them."

The young man stood and walked over to the door, opening it and stepping through it to the garden beyond. Dawn was breaking and the air still held the coolness of night, but with the warmth of the first rays of the suns just starting to warm the breeze. He stood watching the changing colors as the sky lightened by the minute. Gray to the first streaks of pinks and violet, the fire of amber and yellow, the first hints of blue shy, the stars disappearing. The seabirds could be seen in their never-ending dance over the waves.

He turned when he sensed Edward had joined him, put his arms around the older man and was held in return.

"It is going to be all right, isn't it? We'll be all right."

Kissing his cheek, "Yes, it's going to be fine with us, now that you've gotten that all out of you it can begin to heal. We both can. You'll see, Horatio. It will be better now."

Looking at him, Horatio nodded. God, he hoped so.

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