#both are exercises in borrowing weather and emotions from my own life and wrangling them into pretty sentences

[chiropteracupola]

Is it too late to ask about wips? (Yes, yes, I'm greedy, I know!)

harold they're wet

cold cold take two

uh oh lads it's alan breck again

alan just happens so much

it's never too late to ask me about my wips!

'harold they're wet' is one of those ones that acquired a nonsensical just-to-divide-the-document title that has really nothing to do with the contents of the fic in the slightest, but I've kept the name around because of the silliness. and silliness is what's in what I've actually written as well so far, because it's just little scraps and bits of describing the weather and Keith and Ewen's reactions to it.

'cold cold cold' is sort of a rewrite of my previous Graçay fic, which I'm no longer entirely satisfied with. while there's a lot that I did there that I liked, I have some other angles that I'd like to get at and a rather darker take on Hornblower's mental state at that time that I've been sort of rotating gently around.

'uh oh lads it's alan breck again' - another semi-rewrite of a previous fic! my first fic for Alan and David was kind of a rushed job, and almost as soon as I'd finished it, I wanted to approach the same missing scene from a more in-depth viewpoint. so this is going to fill in the space where the book leaves off and that begins, and perhaps, depending on how things go, write over my previous attempt with a different take on their reconciliation.  also I think it does comes across that I was writing while sick, stressed, and awake at 4am in the first iteration, so I’m hoping to improve on that a little.

'alan just happens so much' is possibly my favorite of my fics for Kidnapped so far, despite the fact that I have very little idea of where it's going to go in the slightest. since we see a lot of David getting hurt and Alan having to help him through it in the book, I thought it might be fun to reverse that relationship for once and see how Alan reacts to receiving a more physical consequence for his constant brushes with danger!

(rather short, sadly, as none of these are all that realized at the moment) tasting platter of snippets under the readmore:

harold they're wet:

The air tasted of summer, the leftover smell of warm wet soil rising from the ground as it always did after a rain. A wind of delicate but slowly increasing intensity tickled at Ewen’s arms and tossed the ends of his still-wet hair, carrying with it the faint tang of river-water. By the gathering blue clouds in the distance, there would be thunderstorms in a matter of hours, but for the moment, the day was bright and glorious.

Bright it remained despite the first scattering of rain, the movement of the air almost tangible all around him. The sun-shower that had come up was warm enough that he felt the need to enjoy it as long as it lasted, relishing the feeling of the rain against his shoulders.

cold cold cold:

That was William Bush as he had always been — soft blue eyes and a too-loyal heart and a warm, hard hand reaching out to him. But he took that hand, that sturdy lifeline, and held it between his own as if it was the last thing holding him in the living world.

In that seemingly-interminable carriage journey, he had come to know Bush’s hands better than ever he had hoped in years of watching them at their work. Though the familiar tan had faded in those sunless weeks, they were still half callus and half scar, made worn by their capability and made capable by that same wear. Hornblower’s own hands were knobbly and ungainly, even more so in such direct comparison, but he gripped Bush’s hand as firmly as he felt was safe and allowed himself to be drawn closer.

Bush reached up and put his free hand to Hornblower’s mouth, gently brushing his thumb over the place where his lip was cut and swollen. Being forced down against the riverbed had left him considerably battered, the side of his face bruised and scraped where it had made far too familiar an acquaintance with a sharp rock, and though it did not now cause him much more than a dull and constant ache, he shied away from the touch all the same. He knew his own inadequacy as well as he knew anything at all, but to have it marked so pointedly by Bush was another sort of shame entirely; scowling, Hornblower turned his face away.

uh oh lads it's alan breck again:

At last he slipped into sleeping, for though their journeying had not weakened him as it had David, he still was greatly in need of rest. His shoulders slumped and his head dipped to rest against the side of the bed, but even so, his hand, the best help that he could yet offer, stayed firmly wrapped around that of his friend. Alan Breck was a gambling man in all things, for he borrowed and bet with his own life and others’ lives as easily as he spun cards and coins from one hand to the other. There was a flitting, frisking sort of madness that came over him oftener than otherwise, that kept him leaping, laughing, from one caper to the next. But whatever he’d made and so nearly broken with David was not something to be bargained away. Their friendship had not been forged to hold the dull shine of worn-down silver, but the bright strong gleam of tempered steel.

alan just happens so much:

“Dead!” said he, a flash of triumph shining across his face like a lightning-strike. But like the lightning it was gone within a blink, and as he tugged his sword free of his fallen opponent, Alan made a sharp sudden inward breath and fell forward. The sword-hilt slipped from his hand and clattered against the stones, and its master tumbled so that he lay nearly upon it, all in a mess of torn blue cloth and tarnished silver lace.

David rushed over to him, finding himself kneeling at his side almost at the same moment he was conscious of intending to do that very thing. Alan had fallen upon his face with his legs folded haphazardly beneath him, his feather-trimmed hat lying in the heather a few feet away. Even in falling, Alan had curled himself securely around the more major injuries, and as David put a hand on each of his shoulders and lifted him into a sitting position, he saw that his face was still all a-snarl with anger and pain.

“How are you hurt?” David asked, but as he drew back his hand, his question was answered. His palm was smeared across with blood, the same blood that was currently in the process of seeping its way through Alan’s coat-sleeve and down his arm.

Alan stared down at his hand, the fingers stilled but shining with blood, all of him eaten up by horror. Words came to him, but they were empty, a hollow shadow of their usual shine. This was not right — this should have been a victory to be crowed over, a new verse to the song of his own glory and his own strength, but it was no such thing. Instead, that strength already seemed to ebb from him and that glory was nothing but ash almost as soon as it had sprung to light.

“It’s no’ so bad as that,” he insisted, his voice unsteady.