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Well, J-Term is over, and with it my 1950s sci-fi film experience. Parts of it were fun, parts of it were disturbing (I will be hearing the giant ants' attack noise from Them! in my nightmares for years), and parts of it were painfully bad and used far too much stock footage. However, when all is said and done, I got to see aliens attack DC twice, (as well as LA, San Francisco, and Rome), so it was probably time well spent.
This weekend, (which was our end-of-J-term-break), my Dad flew up and brought me back home so that I could go to the Two Wheel Racer Reunion in Richmond (a convention for people who used to race motorcycles at the Richmond Fairgrounds). It was the third convention I've been to, and the first one where nobody was wearing costumes. I got a poster (It's signed! And personalised!) and everyone liked my "history of Richmond racing" booklet. A couple of people even asked me to sign it. They also really liked my "1968 Richmond 6-Mile National" jacket (which was really my Dad's--he bought it from Gary Nixon, whose name means nothing to most of y'all, but trust me, in the motorcycle world, he's famous).
Also, having made the mistake of perusing the unfilfilled requests at Yuletide Treasure, I was forced to re-read Captain Blood (slashiest pirate novel ever) and write this:
Warning: This is very wordy. I should not be allowed to read late 19th/early 20th century trashy novels. They’re like literary crack, and only encourage my addiction to melodrama and overly long sentences. For those of y’all who’ve read the book, this takes place between Chapter IX: The Rebels-Convict and Chapter X: Don Diego.
Chapter IXa: Medicinæ Baccalaureus
Peter Blood should, by all rights, have been a happy man. He had awoken the previous morning a slave, unjustly and maddeningly imprisoned at the mercy of a brute of a man he wouldn’t have deemed worth spitting on at home in England, with nothing but the Governor’s appreciation of his medical skills to keep himself from abject degradation. Now, he was his own man again, and master of a ship besides, thanks to the Spanish raiders’ carelessness, and he had just had the highly satisfying experience of watching the brutish and bullying Colonel Bishop, his master no longer, walk the plank. The resultant giant splash had been most heartening. Sadly, the fat beast had turned out to be a fairly good swimmer, but the sight of him hitting the water, bobbing like a very large and ugly cork, and thrashing inelegantly toward shore was going to remain smugly enshrined in Blood’s memory for a very long time. Possibly forever.
In light of all this, Blood should have been a happy man, but as he ducked through the doorway into the Cinco Llagas’s roundhouse to change Jeremy Pitt’s hastily applied bandages, happiness was very difficult to summon up. All of the day’s good fortune paled beside the grim fact that the stripes on Jeremy’s ravaged back were fast becoming putrid, and there was nothing Blood could do to halt the process. What good were freedom and a ship without a navigator to sail it? What good were decent clothes, self-respect, vengeance, an end to the humiliations of slavery, if Jeremy suffered so for it?
But then, had he not been dying piecemeal under the lash of Colonel Bishop’s overseer, a death of the soul that was perhaps worse than physical death?
Blood tried to tell himself that, but when he knelt down next to Jeremy’s bunk and began to ease the stiff, blood encrusted bandages away from his skin, the sight of the ragged wounds beneath them rendered such platitudes remarkably ineffective.
“I should have been after killing Bishop when I had the chance,” Blood mused, wrath rising in him once again as he contemplated the damage Bishop’s splintered bamboo cane had inflicted. Blood had seen men flogged before, when he had served under de Rutyer, had seen atrocities he still preferred not to think on during his time in the Spanish prison hulk at Seville, but somehow the mere fact that this was Jeremy’s back that had been reduced to so much raw, oozing flesh made it worse. There was something almost sacrilegious about inflicting such damage on something so beautiful, and Jeremy’s smooth, fair English skin had been beautiful.
Jeremy stirred when the bandages came off, but did not wake. Even in sleep, his face was drawn tight with pain, with little lines of tension between his brows. His shoulder, when Blood rested a hand on it, was heated with a slowly growing fever. It was also one of the only places between Jeremy’s neck and waist that hadn’t been sliced near to ribbons.
Blood leaned closer to peer at the lacerations, careful not to let his hair brush against them—it would hurt Jeremy, beside coating the ends of his newly clean hair with blood—and inhaled deeply. People looked at a man funny when he did that, but inflamed wounds smelled different from clean ones. He would stake his reputation on it, had he still possessed a reputation to stake. Blood, obviously, and sweat, and, mixed in with it, a hint of that sickly scent that heralded infection. No gangrene, though. That was something at least, and there were no maggots growing in the wounds, which happened all to often in this climate.
Jeremy shivered, almost as if he could feel Blood’s eyes on him, and stirred again. Blood pulled away, and found himself looking into a pair of heavy-lidded grey eyes.
“Peter?”
“Shh,” Blood said. “Be quiet for me now, Jeremy darling, while I have a look at your back.” He turned away, carefully not looking at those watching eyes, which felt accusing even though he knew they weren’t, and lifted a scrap of linen out of the bowl of water he’d had one of the escaped convicts bring in. Fresh water, from the ship’s stores. He wasn’t going to wash Jeremy’s back with seawater as long as there was fresh water to be had. “I’m going to clean these cuts out for you,” he warned.
Jeremy hissed through his teeth when the cloth made contact with his flesh, and flinched visibly, but said nothing. Blood worked with painstaking slowness, despite the fact that he normally took pride in how quickly he could clean and dress a wound. “We’re well away now,” he said as he sponged the half-dried blood off a long slash just to the left of Jeremy’s spine. As the wound came clean, he could see the tiny splinters of bamboo lodged in it. “Barbados is three hours sailing behind us, and thanks to His Most Catholic Majesty’s navy, Bridgetown is in such a state of confusion that they shan’t be able to chase after us.”
“We really did it, then?” Jeremy asked. Little beads of sweat were forming along his hairline. He closed his eyes again and curled the fingers of one hand into a fist. “How the devil did we manage that, with Nuttall’s boat out of reach and our plans known to Bishop?”
“Sure, now, didn’t I tell ye we were going, and that you were going with us?” Blood said. “You should pay more heed to what I say. Ye’ll find I’m nearly always right.”
Jeremy almost smiled for a moment, but then Blood picked up the pincers he had appropriated from the ship’s poorly equipped surgery and tugged the first of the splinters free, and the almost smile dissolved into another half-stifled gasp of pain. “Christ’s blood, if this is how you treated Governor Steed’s gout, it’s a wonder he didn’t have you flogged.” He pushed himself up on one elbow, gritting his teeth as he did so, and twisted his head around to try and peer at his back.
“Easy now.” Blood seized him by the shoulder again and gently pushed him back down. “If ye’ll hold still, I’ll be done with it that much faster. The Spanish, barbarous butchers that they are, haven’t got any laudanum in their stores. At least, these Spanish haven’t, or I’d be giving it to you.” He blinked suddenly damp eyes hard and actually had to force himself to pull the next splinter out. It was ridiculous. He hadn’t been so squeamish about hurting a patient since his first year at Trinity. But this was Jeremy, and it was Blood’s fault that Jeremy had been beaten, or at least, enough his fault that he felt guilt over it; were it not for Blood recruiting him, Jeremy would never have been part of the escape plans, would never have been caught and interrogated.
Jeremy stayed still and silent for the rest of the long, painful process. It wasn’t until Blood had pulled the last splinter loose and laid it down atop the little pile of bloodstained bamboo fragments that he spoke again. “It wasn’t your fault, you know.”
“No,” Blood agreed wryly. “That fool Nuttall lost his nerve and got you caught. Ye’ll have to see that it doesn’t happen again.”
“I most certainly will.” Jeremy’s eyes were drifting shut now that the painful part was over, and he seemed almost to lean into Blood’s touch as he drew clean bandages across his shoulders.
“Sit up, now, so I can wrap these around you,” Blood ordered. He shifted closer to the bunk so that Jeremy could rest against him while he ran the bandages around the other man’s chest and back. The unmarred skin of Jeremy’s chest was smooth under his hands, and his blond head was a hot heavy weight on Blood’s shoulder. “Good, like that. I’ll be done directly.”
He concentrated on tying the bandages, trying to ignore the feel of Jeremy’s skin and the tickle of that blond hair against his neck. If he only thought hard enough about bandages and inflammations and logistics and where they ought to sail for, and what they were going to do with those eleven Spanish prisoners currently locked up and waiting to be seen to, then surely the thoughts of how soft Jeremy’s hair would be between his fingers and how solid that muscular body would be against his would go away. It hadn’t worked yet, but perhaps this time…
Two years in a Spanish prison can teach a man a great deal about himself, including things he might very well wish he’d never learned. Things that came all too easily to the surface of his memory at the feel of Jeremy’s body in his arms.
Blood finished tying the last bandage and eased Jeremy back down onto the bunk with a mixture of relief and regret. “Ye’ll be sleeping now, if ye know what’s good for you,” he said.
Jeremy, who seemed already to be half asleep, smiled again—a real smile this time, not the pained expression of earlier. “We’re free now,” he said, half to himself.
“To be sure we are.” Blood, feeling greatly daring for doing so, reached out a hand to brush Jeremy’s hair back from his face. “And England and King James will never get their filthy hands on us again.”
“Good.” Jeremy closed his eyes and shifted slightly, trying to find a position that didn’t hurt his back. “Peter? Thank you. I never did ask,” he added, “where did you get the coat?”
Slightly taken aback, Blood touched a hand to the lace at the front of his newly acquired black and sliver coat. He hadn’t though that Jeremy had even noticed it. “The former captain has quite generously donated it to me. He doesn’t know that he has yet, but I’m sure he’ll be quite glad to have been of service once he finds out.”
“We’re indebted to him,” Jeremy mumbled. “You cut a fine figure in black. Which-,” he yawned “is p’robly why you chose it, but still…” his voice trailed off into another yawn, and moments later he was asleep.
Blood blinked, firmly reminded himself that the comment had meant nothing, and went to thank Don Diego for the coat.
^_~
This weekend, (which was our end-of-J-term-break), my Dad flew up and brought me back home so that I could go to the Two Wheel Racer Reunion in Richmond (a convention for people who used to race motorcycles at the Richmond Fairgrounds). It was the third convention I've been to, and the first one where nobody was wearing costumes. I got a poster (It's signed! And personalised!) and everyone liked my "history of Richmond racing" booklet. A couple of people even asked me to sign it. They also really liked my "1968 Richmond 6-Mile National" jacket (which was really my Dad's--he bought it from Gary Nixon, whose name means nothing to most of y'all, but trust me, in the motorcycle world, he's famous).
Also, having made the mistake of perusing the unfilfilled requests at Yuletide Treasure, I was forced to re-read Captain Blood (slashiest pirate novel ever) and write this:
Warning: This is very wordy. I should not be allowed to read late 19th/early 20th century trashy novels. They’re like literary crack, and only encourage my addiction to melodrama and overly long sentences. For those of y’all who’ve read the book, this takes place between Chapter IX: The Rebels-Convict and Chapter X: Don Diego.
Peter Blood should, by all rights, have been a happy man. He had awoken the previous morning a slave, unjustly and maddeningly imprisoned at the mercy of a brute of a man he wouldn’t have deemed worth spitting on at home in England, with nothing but the Governor’s appreciation of his medical skills to keep himself from abject degradation. Now, he was his own man again, and master of a ship besides, thanks to the Spanish raiders’ carelessness, and he had just had the highly satisfying experience of watching the brutish and bullying Colonel Bishop, his master no longer, walk the plank. The resultant giant splash had been most heartening. Sadly, the fat beast had turned out to be a fairly good swimmer, but the sight of him hitting the water, bobbing like a very large and ugly cork, and thrashing inelegantly toward shore was going to remain smugly enshrined in Blood’s memory for a very long time. Possibly forever.
In light of all this, Blood should have been a happy man, but as he ducked through the doorway into the Cinco Llagas’s roundhouse to change Jeremy Pitt’s hastily applied bandages, happiness was very difficult to summon up. All of the day’s good fortune paled beside the grim fact that the stripes on Jeremy’s ravaged back were fast becoming putrid, and there was nothing Blood could do to halt the process. What good were freedom and a ship without a navigator to sail it? What good were decent clothes, self-respect, vengeance, an end to the humiliations of slavery, if Jeremy suffered so for it?
But then, had he not been dying piecemeal under the lash of Colonel Bishop’s overseer, a death of the soul that was perhaps worse than physical death?
Blood tried to tell himself that, but when he knelt down next to Jeremy’s bunk and began to ease the stiff, blood encrusted bandages away from his skin, the sight of the ragged wounds beneath them rendered such platitudes remarkably ineffective.
“I should have been after killing Bishop when I had the chance,” Blood mused, wrath rising in him once again as he contemplated the damage Bishop’s splintered bamboo cane had inflicted. Blood had seen men flogged before, when he had served under de Rutyer, had seen atrocities he still preferred not to think on during his time in the Spanish prison hulk at Seville, but somehow the mere fact that this was Jeremy’s back that had been reduced to so much raw, oozing flesh made it worse. There was something almost sacrilegious about inflicting such damage on something so beautiful, and Jeremy’s smooth, fair English skin had been beautiful.
Jeremy stirred when the bandages came off, but did not wake. Even in sleep, his face was drawn tight with pain, with little lines of tension between his brows. His shoulder, when Blood rested a hand on it, was heated with a slowly growing fever. It was also one of the only places between Jeremy’s neck and waist that hadn’t been sliced near to ribbons.
Blood leaned closer to peer at the lacerations, careful not to let his hair brush against them—it would hurt Jeremy, beside coating the ends of his newly clean hair with blood—and inhaled deeply. People looked at a man funny when he did that, but inflamed wounds smelled different from clean ones. He would stake his reputation on it, had he still possessed a reputation to stake. Blood, obviously, and sweat, and, mixed in with it, a hint of that sickly scent that heralded infection. No gangrene, though. That was something at least, and there were no maggots growing in the wounds, which happened all to often in this climate.
Jeremy shivered, almost as if he could feel Blood’s eyes on him, and stirred again. Blood pulled away, and found himself looking into a pair of heavy-lidded grey eyes.
“Peter?”
“Shh,” Blood said. “Be quiet for me now, Jeremy darling, while I have a look at your back.” He turned away, carefully not looking at those watching eyes, which felt accusing even though he knew they weren’t, and lifted a scrap of linen out of the bowl of water he’d had one of the escaped convicts bring in. Fresh water, from the ship’s stores. He wasn’t going to wash Jeremy’s back with seawater as long as there was fresh water to be had. “I’m going to clean these cuts out for you,” he warned.
Jeremy hissed through his teeth when the cloth made contact with his flesh, and flinched visibly, but said nothing. Blood worked with painstaking slowness, despite the fact that he normally took pride in how quickly he could clean and dress a wound. “We’re well away now,” he said as he sponged the half-dried blood off a long slash just to the left of Jeremy’s spine. As the wound came clean, he could see the tiny splinters of bamboo lodged in it. “Barbados is three hours sailing behind us, and thanks to His Most Catholic Majesty’s navy, Bridgetown is in such a state of confusion that they shan’t be able to chase after us.”
“We really did it, then?” Jeremy asked. Little beads of sweat were forming along his hairline. He closed his eyes again and curled the fingers of one hand into a fist. “How the devil did we manage that, with Nuttall’s boat out of reach and our plans known to Bishop?”
“Sure, now, didn’t I tell ye we were going, and that you were going with us?” Blood said. “You should pay more heed to what I say. Ye’ll find I’m nearly always right.”
Jeremy almost smiled for a moment, but then Blood picked up the pincers he had appropriated from the ship’s poorly equipped surgery and tugged the first of the splinters free, and the almost smile dissolved into another half-stifled gasp of pain. “Christ’s blood, if this is how you treated Governor Steed’s gout, it’s a wonder he didn’t have you flogged.” He pushed himself up on one elbow, gritting his teeth as he did so, and twisted his head around to try and peer at his back.
“Easy now.” Blood seized him by the shoulder again and gently pushed him back down. “If ye’ll hold still, I’ll be done with it that much faster. The Spanish, barbarous butchers that they are, haven’t got any laudanum in their stores. At least, these Spanish haven’t, or I’d be giving it to you.” He blinked suddenly damp eyes hard and actually had to force himself to pull the next splinter out. It was ridiculous. He hadn’t been so squeamish about hurting a patient since his first year at Trinity. But this was Jeremy, and it was Blood’s fault that Jeremy had been beaten, or at least, enough his fault that he felt guilt over it; were it not for Blood recruiting him, Jeremy would never have been part of the escape plans, would never have been caught and interrogated.
Jeremy stayed still and silent for the rest of the long, painful process. It wasn’t until Blood had pulled the last splinter loose and laid it down atop the little pile of bloodstained bamboo fragments that he spoke again. “It wasn’t your fault, you know.”
“No,” Blood agreed wryly. “That fool Nuttall lost his nerve and got you caught. Ye’ll have to see that it doesn’t happen again.”
“I most certainly will.” Jeremy’s eyes were drifting shut now that the painful part was over, and he seemed almost to lean into Blood’s touch as he drew clean bandages across his shoulders.
“Sit up, now, so I can wrap these around you,” Blood ordered. He shifted closer to the bunk so that Jeremy could rest against him while he ran the bandages around the other man’s chest and back. The unmarred skin of Jeremy’s chest was smooth under his hands, and his blond head was a hot heavy weight on Blood’s shoulder. “Good, like that. I’ll be done directly.”
He concentrated on tying the bandages, trying to ignore the feel of Jeremy’s skin and the tickle of that blond hair against his neck. If he only thought hard enough about bandages and inflammations and logistics and where they ought to sail for, and what they were going to do with those eleven Spanish prisoners currently locked up and waiting to be seen to, then surely the thoughts of how soft Jeremy’s hair would be between his fingers and how solid that muscular body would be against his would go away. It hadn’t worked yet, but perhaps this time…
Two years in a Spanish prison can teach a man a great deal about himself, including things he might very well wish he’d never learned. Things that came all too easily to the surface of his memory at the feel of Jeremy’s body in his arms.
Blood finished tying the last bandage and eased Jeremy back down onto the bunk with a mixture of relief and regret. “Ye’ll be sleeping now, if ye know what’s good for you,” he said.
Jeremy, who seemed already to be half asleep, smiled again—a real smile this time, not the pained expression of earlier. “We’re free now,” he said, half to himself.
“To be sure we are.” Blood, feeling greatly daring for doing so, reached out a hand to brush Jeremy’s hair back from his face. “And England and King James will never get their filthy hands on us again.”
“Good.” Jeremy closed his eyes and shifted slightly, trying to find a position that didn’t hurt his back. “Peter? Thank you. I never did ask,” he added, “where did you get the coat?”
Slightly taken aback, Blood touched a hand to the lace at the front of his newly acquired black and sliver coat. He hadn’t though that Jeremy had even noticed it. “The former captain has quite generously donated it to me. He doesn’t know that he has yet, but I’m sure he’ll be quite glad to have been of service once he finds out.”
“We’re indebted to him,” Jeremy mumbled. “You cut a fine figure in black. Which-,” he yawned “is p’robly why you chose it, but still…” his voice trailed off into another yawn, and moments later he was asleep.
Blood blinked, firmly reminded himself that the comment had meant nothing, and went to thank Don Diego for the coat.