Jjail

Unsurprisingly, Norrington was having a bad night. Also unsurprisingly,
Norrington's bad night was making Jack's evening similarly unenjoyable as the
man's restlessness and muffled sounds of pain did their part to scour his
nerves raw. He'd never been much of a fan of pain. Didn't relish causing it.
Certainly didn't care for receiving it (though his flesh told the tale that
he'd made its acquaintance often enough to know its shoe size). Listening to it
ranked among his least favorite ways to spend an evening.

Sleep hadn't much of a chance with that quiet racket. Stretched out in the
middle of the earthen floor, arms and legs akimbo, he blew out a loud, gusty
breath and stared in the general direction of the ceiling (which he couldn't
see at all, but was fairly certain it didn't warrant this amount of attention
even when visible).

Norrington took the bait. Come to think of it, he always had, hadn't he? Not to
mention dropped his own more than once, knowingly or instinctively. Baity
little bastard.

"Don't tell me you're awake, Sparrow."

"I had no intention of telling you any such thing."

"Bad enough I'm imprisoned because of a--"


"Misunderstanding," Jack chimed in, saying it with him, though
the commodore ignored him with aplomb.

"--and to have a pirate for a cellmate..."

"Thought we weren't cellmates, mate."

"...and now it seems there will be no sleep to be had. Marvelous."


Jack lifted his head from the straw-strewn dirt, looking to the corner with its
miserable lump of naval officer. Norrington hadn't moved much since he'd
finally settled there. By now he'd be stiffening up, making bruises and
swellings and strains all the lovelier when he dared to breathe. "You've
never been beat like that before, have you?"

A lengthy pause. He thought he could just make out the shuttering gleam of eyes
blinking at him slowly.

"No," Norrington finally said, voice lacking any inflection.

Jack's head dropped. "Mm." He regarded the blackness above.


After a few breaths, the question came. "Have you?"

"I have."

"But you're not..." The scrape of cloth against stone, and a short
breath. "You're not 'stiff-spined.'"

"No, I'm right bendy."


"You said..." Another shift. This time that breath caught on
something not the least bit unlike a whimper. A curse followed, soft and
fervid.

Jack sat up in a fluid motion, then kept right on flowing to his feet. Padded
over. Norrington's head tipped up, his face failing to mask his discomfort,
glaring a warning.

Jack rolled his eyes heavenward, then sinuously slid down, pushing and prodding
the commodore forward to make room between man and stone.

"Just what do you think you're--"

"Am I not the voice of experience? Trust me." He squeezed in behind,
legs straddling to either side even as Norrington hissed and cursed and made
ineffectual efforts to pull away that just led to more hissing and cursing.

"Be still, man, if you hope to sleep at all tonight."

"But what are you--"

Jack caught the dark-haired head between steepled fingers, holding gently but
firmly, fingertips circling in tiny motions, and Norrington stilled abruptly.

"Relax," Jack said in a quiet voice of command.

No comment. No relaxation either, but that would come.


Thumbs rubbed down towards his neck. "Breathe, mate."

Unsteadily, he did so. The tension throughout his battered body was causing a
constant little tremor that was no doubt tying his muscles up worse.

A hot bump beneath a questing forefinger warned him off the area just above the
left ear. Carefully he mapped out other spots of ache, massaging where it would
help, fingers teasing through unbound and thoroughly mussed mahogany hair.

Norrington's breathing steadied gradually as his body slowly, slowly slumped
against Jack's rather-more-yielding-than-stone torso. That rigid spine of his
loosened marginally, letting Jack roll his head forward to rub at the agonizing
tension at the base of his skull, from side to side in order to stretch and
ease neck muscles. There was only so much he could do, but distraction in the
form of pleasurable contact had its uses, and if the man's overall tautness
could be drained it would certainly lessen the pain. Right now those clenching,
shivering muscles were their own worst enemies.

Finally Norrington gave up all efforts of holding himself away, sagging
entirely against Jack with an almost-suppressed groan. Jack kept up the
fingerwalking, his touch ever-shifting, craning his neck a bit to study the
commodore's face. Norrington's brow was knitted and lined, eyes squeezed shut,
lips curved slightly open around his shallow-if-level respiration. Ethereal
starlight made his wounded features ghastly. His lower lip was split, blood
crusting along its curve. That swollen eye had puffed and darkened in an ugly
way. At the hinge of his jaw, the knot was a smudgy blotch that hurt to look
at. And Jack didn't think he wanted to know what damage those civilian clothes
were hiding.


"Stop staring at me," Norrington growled wearily, not opening an eye.

"Just seein' how pretty they left you."

"Ha," he said, dry-voiced, "ha."

"They ask you any questions or just take their jollies from your
face?"


"Questions."

"What questions?"

"Spanish questions." Lips quirked in brief, bitter amusement.
"It would seem Sad Man Samuel is expected to understand the language. I'm
sure they're very impressed with my ability to keep my cover intact under
duress."

"Hmm." His head tilted as he kept up his scrutiny of that captured,
battered visage. "They left your nose in decent shape."


"I'll try to remember to thank them."

Most of that near-constant thrumming had left the body leaning into his. Jack
let hands work down to Norrington's shoulders. A little awkward with the angle and
no room to really get proper leverage, but he managed well enough. Norrington
jerked when he thumbed a particularly sore spot. "Not there?"

"Not there."

He shifted hands. Glided thumbs in languorous strokes. "How's this?"

"That's...that's fine."


Jack smiled. Only a little evilly. "That's fine, eh? How I'm
touching you?"

Eyes opened, the one wider than the other. The wariness was back. Given their
current positions, Jack found it rather adorable.

"Can I trust that this is..." Norrington's tongue slipped out to
moisten dry lips. Oh yes, baity little bastard, whether he meant to be
or not. "...this is merely...kindness?"


"I prefer to think of it as shutting you up so I can get some sleep."

"But you're not...ah..."

Jack's smile curved lasciviously, cockeyed, baring gold. He dragged thumbs up
the man's neck and back down, fingers pattering along his vulnerable throat.

Norrington swallowed. Tried to shift away, but gasped as the motion pulled
again at complaining injuries that had just finally started to quiet.

Jack abandoned the leer, tugging his suddenly unresisting body back again.
"I did tell you that sleep is the goal here, did I not? And I
assure you, what you just had runnin' through your head isn't very conducive to
that end. You're a nice armful, mate, an' I still say Elizabeth must've had the
sense knocked out of that pretty head of hers not to see it, but I promise I'm
perfectly capable of leavin' a body unravished when he doesn't wanna be
ravished."


Norrington was blinking at him, squinty swollen eye and good eye both.
"What?"

"What what?"

"What you just said."

"What part of what I just said? And what about it?"

Silence. Scrutiny. Norrington appeared to have a great many thoughts rambling
around in his brain, and Jack was willing to bet a few of them were, willingly
or otherwise, at least a little bit flattered. Which had been a tiny part of
the point, of course. Jack wasn't about to let an officer of the King's Navy
out-bait him. Even one who'd likely be dead in a day.


That last thought really did nothing good for him. Even if he hadn't found the
man interesting enough to play with in the past -- though he had, obviously,
right up through their last encounter on the rampart -- he held a certain
measure of respect for those who attempted to live by some code that separated
'right' from the rest of it, and who consistently aimed for the former. By
Norrington's code, Jack figured, stringing a pirate captain up on the
gallowstree was right. Even when it was wrong. Stay true to the course, and
damn the reefs in the way.

Fortunately for the commodore, Jack's own moral compass was a good bit more
flexible about finding north. Sometimes it didn't even bother with north at
all.

He smiled sardonically at those suspicious, searching eyes. "Save it,
then. I suggest you try to get some sleep, Commodore. Tomorrow won't be an easy
day for you, I'll wager."

A flash of what looked to be genuine fear crossed that mauled face and was gone
almost before he noted it. Norrington nodded faintly. Reached a hand out and
clutched a protruding stone along the wall, pulling away, expression betraying
the pain of it despite the silence he managed to keep.

Jack let his hands slip from those shoulders but otherwise offered no
assistance as Norrington eased down an arm-length away, body quite flinchy as
he stretched out flat on hard-packed dirt. After a moment Jack flopped down in
the opposite direction with a grunt, his head more or less alongside the other
man's, hands going to fold beneath his skull.

Nothing much to listen to but breathing and his own heartbeat for a minute or
two. Then, in a voice that had great composure and dignity for all its strained
undercurrent, Norrington told him, "I thank you."


"For?"

"Your...considerateness. It was...unexpected."

He smirked at the black ceiling. "Aye, I s'pose it would be, for
you."

"I'll endeavor to repay you in kind someday."

Jack's scarred eyebrow quirked upward. He turned his head slightly, glancing at
the starlit profile, the puffy lip, the unbroken nose. Realization dawned.
"You mean after this little 'misunderstanding' gets cleared up."


"Naturally."

Making half-assed plans for the future, just to keep telling himself it would
come. Sad, really. One of the saddest things he'd heard in a good while, and
all at once he did feel rather irritatingly sorry for the man, thrust here
willy-nilly, wholly unprepared for it.

Jack adopted his wryest, most skeptical voice. "I'll believe it when I see
it. Ten-to-one you forget all about this the second you're breathin' free air
again."

"I'm a man of my word, Sparrow." Said with a little more confidence
and that familiar haughty disdain.

"Must you call me that?"


"It is your name. Or so you claim."

"You say it all wrong." He mimicked the lordly, contemptuous tone of voice,
spitting out the first syllable of his name with every repetition. "'Jack Sparrow,
is it?' 'Mister Sparrow, do this,' 'Mister Sparrow, don't touch
that'..."

"I don't say it that way." He actually sounded offended. A
contemplative pause. "Sparrow."


Jack snorted loudly.

"Sparrow," Norrington continued, as if to himself. "Sparrow.
Sparrow."

"Let it roll off your tongue, mate."


"Spare-rowww."

"No no no." A ring-heavy hand fluttered over, fingers tapping a
waving pattern on one tight commodorial shoulder. "Soft 'sssss.' Less hard
with the 'puh.' It's like a breath, aye? Ssspuh! Try that much."

"Sssparrow."

Jack considered, fingers still lightly drumming. Norrington, lying in silence,
seemed content to await his judgment.


Finally he pat-patted that shoulder consolingly. "Probably you should just
call me Jack."

***