The Turning of the Tides

TITLE: The Turning of the Tides 10/?
AUTHOR: Seraphina (lealea55@hotmail.com)
PAIRING: eventual Jack/Will slash
RATING: eventual NC-17
SUMMARY: Literary lessons with Jack; guaranteed to have Will pulling his hair out.
DISCLAIMER: not mine, nver were and unfotunately never will be.
AUTHOR´S NOTE: Hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and thanks for reading and reviewing!!!!


CHAPTER 10

Will paused in the rolling up of a map as he sounded the letters out loud. A crease of concentration furrowed his brow as he did, but it soon gave way to a triumphant smile.

“Elephant! You know the ‘ph’ confused me for a moment there and your drawing didn’t help at all…it looks like a pig…actually all your drawings look like pigs, but it’s ‘elephant’, right?”

Will was thoroughly enjoying his afternoon literacy lessons with Jack. They’d only been at it for three days in which time he’d proved to be a quick study. Quicker than Jack, that was for sure, for whilst Will was excelling in his attempt to learn to read and write, Jack’s grasp of numbers was, from what Will could tell, on the rapid decline. This could have something to do, of course, with Jack’s firm belief that the highest number in existence was something called ‘infinity-nine’- the origins of such a belief had alluded Will so much so that he daren’t ask for further explanation- and that calculating the square root of something somehow always involved the telling of some crude story about a whore.

After observing this, Will came to the conclusion that very few of the profit margins had ever actually been done by Jack himself, but most likely by another crewmember, although that too was also hard to believe; they weren’t exactly the brightest sparks around. But, Will conceded, they didn’t need to be. Their job was to follow their Captain’s orders, pillage and plunder wherever possible and drink as much rum as one could without actually pickling oneself although he was fairly sure there were select few who had actually managed to do just that. How else would Mr Richter, ship’s night watch, have come to smell something akin to a human gherkin?

At this very moment, they were all out there, following Jack’s orders to ‘stealthily await the approach of a payday’ which Will found to look remarkably like floundering around in the middle of the Caribbean like a bunch of old women. This came as a relief though to Will for as long as they were doing that, they weren’t attacking ships just yet thereby giving the lad time to warm to the idea and to tell his morals to bugger off.

But all that was at the back of his mind as he finished rolling the map and strode over to where Jack sat, elbow on table, face in hand, dozing whilst holding a flash card in the other. The smith struck the tabletop with the map and smirked as Jack bolted upright looking around wildly for danger. Seeing that there was none, and noticing the map in the boy’s hand and the smirk on his face, he scowled and took his seat once more.

“What in the blazes did ye do tha’ for bloody great fool?! I could’ve killed you!”

Will raised an eyebrow.

Jack’s effects lay some feet away on the desk and he’d not actually made any move for them in his brief moment of panic.

“I can’t die from a paper cut, Jack,” Will said wearily, motioning to the flash cards and the one map that was now left of the table. The rest were on racks that he’d made after the fiasco with Spinoza.

After leaving the infirmary, Will had visited the brig and decided that there really was no need for *all* of the manacles and chains, the numbers of which were many. Jack had never said anything about taking on prisoners. He hadn’t, of course, told Jack that he’d melted all of these down to create the iron frame that held all the precious maps. The captain had indeed been pleased enough and hadn’t asked any questions. In actual fact it probably had never occurred to him that there weren’t great lumps of iron lying around at Will’s disposal and that most things the lad constructed were actually objects he melted down.

But for now, all that was of little consequence as Jack’s quarters finally had some semblance of order, he still believed that infinity-nine was the highest number there was, and Will was currently mocking him, and the look on Jack’s face told him the pirate wasn’t impressed.

“Don’t you raise yer eyebrow at me boy!” he said grumpily. “Now wha’ did ye go an’ wake me for?”

Will ignored the pirate’s sour demeanour. After all, it was Jack’s third day without rum and he was doing fairly well all things considering. He occasionally still needed to bolt for the door, returning a few minutes later rubbing his stomach gingerly and muttering something about ‘those damnable pickled eggs’. The captain had no inkling to the fact that Spinoza’s ‘medicine’ was actually to blame and had taken to abusing the chickens that were kept in wooden cages out on deck. He claimed that if he did not get fresh eggs soon, he’d be feasting on roasted fowl and enjoying it no matter how tough they were. Will hated chickens, almost as much as he hated whores so he didn’t feel guilty about the blame being shifted to them. The point was, that due to many circumstances, Jack was in a shitful mood!

“The word is elephant,” Will repeated calmly.

Jack turned his head to look at the flashcard whilst still holding it so that Will could see. “Very good,” Jack said without enthusiasm. “The word is elephant, hooray for you. Although I highly doubt tha’ ye’ll ever need t’ know how t’ read or write such a word as elephant.” Then something in Jack’s attitude shifted and he managed a slight smile. “I really do think tha the other cards would be more…beneficial, shall we say to yer plight.” Jack eyed two other piles of cards on the table next to him

“No.”

Jack’s smile fell straight away into another scowl. “But…but…” A childish whine started to enter his voice.

“No,” Will said with more force. “Next word please *captain*.”

Jack ignored him and looked longingly at the other cards.

The first pile, Jack had introduced him to after they’d established that he was familiar enough with the alphabet and the sounds each letter made to go straight on to identifying words.

Whilst the cards had been Will’s idea, Jack had insisted on the drawings that accompanied each word. Will had not protested, even though he thought it a little childish, until Jack had held up the first card with a broad grin on his face.

Having stared at it for a few seconds, the youth had been at a complete loss until he started to tilt he his head slightly sideways to look at the figure Jack had drawn next to the spidery script. When the realisation had hit Will, he had immediately turned as red as a beet and decreed that there would be no women’s anatomy in any of his lessons. Jack, apparently, had been ready for this and produced another set of cards without too much fuss, although something *was* said about Will actually enjoying himself had he gotten beyond the first card. But Will was quicker off the mark this time as the first word was presented to him, and men’s anatomy was also marked as being out of the question.

So Jack had been forced to produce a set of complete benign and boring cards or Will was going to end their lessons there and then. This was not a viable option for the pirate. When a pirate wasn’t doing pirate-y things, life was boring, and there wasn’t exactly an endless supply of merchant ships just paddling around waiting to be pillaged. In the interim, there was rum, but thanks to Spinoza, Jack wasn’t even afforded that luxury of late. He had a gripe in his guts, and damn it if this wasn’t the first time he’d been this sober since…well, he couldn’t even remember. But Will was his saving grace. He liked having the boy to himself, without other’s vying for his attention when they needed things seen to. Will, he’d come to realise, was never going to be just another of his crew. He was going to be a mate. They’d kindled a friendship over a curse and girl and damn it if Will was the only one he’d ever come across who would put up with him in this kind of mood. God bless the boy. That didn’t mean that he forgave him for rejecting his flashcards though. That beautiful blush that had crept up the lad’s neck and covered his face when he’d realised what the first word of the lesson was…he would see that blush again or his name wasn’t Captain Jack Sparrow!!! But if he had any hope of doing that, he would probably need to humour the lad some, the lad who was currently standing in front of him with and expectant and impatient look on his face obviously waiting for him to do something. What was it then? Oh that’s right, next word *captain*. Well he *had* called him captain, even if his tone had been somewhat presuming, and so Jack resumed his former stance of elbow on table, face in palm as he held the next uninspiring and dull card up for Will to read.

Will narrowed his eyes at the word he was presented with, his mouth moving to form the sounds of the letters as they appeared before him. His brow furrowed and his eyes glanced at the accompanying picture hoping for a clue. No help there, it looked once more, just like a pig. Ignoring Jack’s audible and dramatic sigh, he continued with his plight until with a cry of satisfaction he announced, “Monkey!” Will straightened and moved to place the map in the rack along side the others he’d salvaged from around Jack’s room.

The pirate captain, somewhat unmoved by his young protégé’s success, moved to the next card without even checking to see if Will had been correct. By God, he could do with a nip of rum right now.

He looked up without moving his head from its resting place in his hand to find the former blacksmith standing in front of him, hands on hips, squinting at the new card. Though after a few short seconds, Will knew what it was.

“That one’s easy. It’s ‘Jack’.” Despite this, he leaned in for a closer look at the picture Jack had drawn next to his name. A simple ‘portrait’ of a round body, a round head complete with triangle representing his hat, sticks for arms and—

“Jack, why do you have three legs?” he asked after careful scrutiny.

“Huh?” Jack, who had barely been paying attention, but pining for his beloved rum instead, frowned, lifted his head and looked at the picture where there were indeed three lines of equal length protruding from the crude little body. He squinted before a large grin appeared on his face. “That’s no leg, boy!” he cried, positively beaming as he watched the expressions play over Will’s face. He waited only a second before he was rewarded once again with that lovely blush.

Will tried to look disapproving but was having a hard time keeping his eyes from wondering somewhere they really shouldn’t in an attempt to ascertain how much truth the image held. Obviously it was highly exaggerated…not that he’d ever had the chance to inspect another man in such a way before. But stop that! He was thinking things he *really* shouldn’t be thinking and things that he couldn’t possibly want to know…really…well maybe…just a little… “Next card please!” he said quickly, averting his eyes from the captain’s grinning features altogether.

Jack obliged the boy, smirking at his response. He’d seen the eyes dart to his lap. Well, let him think on that one! He thought as he watched Will wring his hands, obviously uncomfortable with the turn the lesson had taken, but still determined to go on.

Will looked at the next card, eyes brightening in recognition as he saw his own name next to a similar drawing of what he assumed to be himself. He looked wearily at the likeness, afraid of what he would see. In the end it was a case of what he didn’t see, and frowning slightly he asked, “Jack…why don’t I have three legs?”

Jack nearly choked and he started to sputter, “Well, I, er, well, ye see, I…well, I wasn’t quite sure of yer…dimensions as it were,” he finished finally, his own eyes darting to Will’s crotch and back up to the youth’s face which, if it were possible, was turning an even deeper shade of red.

Will’s eyes became like saucers and he turned his back quickly on Jack, busying himself with a pile of empty rum bottles he’d collected from around Jack’s room. He’d had in mind dividing the pile in two, one half for Spinoza and his medicines, the other half for Jack and his ‘collection’ but for now, he simply sifted through the heap with a booted foot, mentally berating himself for even asking such a question. What did he care that Jack had neglected to include such an appendage, such a completely *private* appendage in his likeness of Will?

Glass clinked and Jack smirked, aware of the obvious conflict going on in Will’s head. The boy was trying to decide whether or not he should be thankful or slighted at the fact his captain hadn’t taken liberties with the drawing on the card and he wondered which one of Will’s emotions would win over in the end. Either would be entertaining from where he sat; he’d be rewarded with another lovely blush or one very miffed blacksmith to goad and aggravate.

Unfortunately, Jack would have to be kept wondering for just then there came cries from on deck and the pounding of footsteps. Both Jack and Will’s head’s lifted to the door when a knock sounded, all thoughts of the awkward situation forgotten as Gibbs stuck his head into the room.

His expression was first one of surprise at sight of the floor- something he hadn’t seen in Jack’s cabin for a good long while- then his features became stern as he looked at Jack.

“Cap’n, the watch has spotted a merchant ship off the port bow. She’s French, Cap’n.”

Jack scrambled to the desk, sifting frantically through the pile of papers that Will had yet to sort out. He seemed to have found what he was looking for though as he surveyed a document- evidently the manifest as stolen by young Robby- a frown on his face as his eyes scanned back and forth.

“She must be the Liberté,” he muttered almost to himself then louder, addressing his two companions, “She’s smaller than us and we’ve got almost double the crew. Shouldn’t be too much of a challenge.” He looked up at his quartermaster who was waiting for orders. “Ready the men, Mr Gibbs. Mr Turner and I shall be on deck presently.”

Gibbs nodded and his head disappeared followed by the sound of his voice screaming at the crew to arm up and ready themselves for boarding.

Jack looked up at Will, who now stood facing his captain. The pirate tried to gauge the lad’s response to this news but the youthful face held nothing but a slight frown. Will’s baldric and sword lay on the desk and Jack tossed if to him as he strapped on his own.

Will himself wasn’t completely sure what he was feeling. Excitement? Trepidation?

He was searching his heart for answers, but looked up when Jack spoke.

“So, Will me lad, yer first raid. Yer father would be proud,” he said with a grin. Will smiled slightly too.

“Right. Either that, or he’d be madder than a cut snake at you for leading me astray.” He gave a winning smile to the now uncertain looking pirate captain and strode out of the cabin. Best to meet this thing head on, he guessed. After all, he wanted to be a pirate…didn’t he?