Change in the House of Flies

::Change in the House of Flies::


*~Chapter Five~*

“So you found me again, Jack. What are you going to do?” Will traces strange, shifting patterns in the sand. Jack leans over his shoulder and tries to decipher his cryptic etchings. But they flow across his vision and vanish into the next curve or line before his mind can ar thr them.

“You haven’t really found me, though.”

“Oh haven’t I?” Jack grabs Will’s hand and brings it to his sea-chapped lips. e the the hidden ciphers of the young man’s designs have left some lingering flavor upon the calloused digits, a cutting taste of words and numbers trapped in haphazard syntax and hidden equations. Eyes never leaving Will’s, Jack delicately laps the sandy tips of the lad’s fingers, which twitch and flex within his grasp. A hitched sigh passes the smith’s lips and he closes velvet brown eyes briefly.

“Jack…” There is a soft warning in the young man’s voice as he attempts to free hind. nd. The pirate refuses to release him, spurred by a prickling fear that some force is trying to draw Will away. With his other hand he grabs the youth’s chestnut curls and jerks the resisting youth against him. Ruthlessly he seals his lips to Will’s and steals the breath from his lungs. Soft noises of distress and pleasure drift into his mouth to trip across his plundering tongue.

“Is this what you want? Is this why you stay?” Will asks from where he sits a few feet away, arms wrapped around long legs bent against his chest. Brown eyes, dark with unnamed emotions and gleaming warmly, move over the pirate’s face.

“There’s much I want.” The world around them is strangely empty, as if God lowered his hand and swept everything else away in a fit of infantile rage. Jack shivers and spans thstanstance between him and the young man with a shaking hand. Gently he tugs upon a dark curl, straightening it and then letting it return to its coil.

“What do you want?” Will asks as he catches the pirate’s dirty hand and holds it tenderly. The smith’s blunt fingers explore the bumps and hollows of Jack’s knuckles with feather-like strokes.

“I want to know why.” The lad’s grip tightens by degrees and distress shadows his face, a cloud passing over the sun of his countenance. A seething, frothing tension surges through him and lights his eyes with glowing shrapnel. Jack has one moment to observe the emotions obscuring Will’s face before Will lunges at Jack and forces their mouths together in a clash of tongue and teeth.

“Why are you silent?” he wants to scream, unbounded rage roaring through his tissues. Instead he grapples with the young man and finally forces him to the sandy ground. Gripping the youth’s chestnut curls hard enough to tear pained cries from his flushed lips, Jack forces the acknowledgement of his dominance. He will seek his answers from the lad’s malleable flesh.

He digs his teeth into Will’s neck and rips at the ties of his breeches.

“Is this what you want?”

Naked, the young smith kneels with his back to him, the sweet convexity of his spine bared and vulnerable. Hell-fire surges deep in Jack’s stomach, pooling thickly in his cock, as his gaze fastens upon the shadowed cleft revealed. His hands clench and release spasmodically; saliva floods his mouth. How long has he wanted this, dreamed and agonized over it?

“Will…”

Invitation softens the youth’s lean body and anticipation sets it trembling; yet unbending masculinity has married itself to every angle and sweeping bend. Sweet lines and curves and planes coalesce into a geometry of Jack’s desire.

Biting back a groan he lays his hands upon the resilient flesh. As if in fear that harsher touches will shatter the lad into dust, he runs his palms up the youth’s arched back. His body follows the progression of his hands and he soon fnds himself firmly pressed against Will’s quivering back and tight buttocks. Breath rushes from his lungs with the force of an incorporeal punch to his gut. Now his bare skin is flush against the scorching heat of the youth. Every shift, every twitch of me rue rubs their bodies together, nudges Jack’s swelled cockhead between Will’s firm cheeks.

“Take what you want, Jack…pirate.”

“Yesss…”

The lad gasps loudly as the pirate snaps his hips foreward and forces his rigid length past the delicate ring without preamble. A fiery, liquid pleasure drowns Jack’s thoughts in red as Will opens up, drawing him deeper and deeper into his rippling heat. Chest heaving and slick with sweat, the man fights for control, for breath, but the lad will not allow this. Slim hips roll with too much skill and internal muscles clench, and it is all the pirate can do not to expire on the spot from the pleasure lacerating his innards.

Blindly he gropes his way down Will’s chest, rough fingers pausing to tweak pebbled nipples, in search of the lad’s arousal—only to find his hands captured by the smith’s and forced to press into the ground. Jack discovers himself so firmly molded against the young man that there is no hope of escape from the fleshy vice around his cock or the pain of ecstasy. All he can do is rock himself into the shuddering, panting swordsmith beneath him. Harder and harder he drives himself into Will, wishing to pierce the hindering barrier of flesh and muscle and fully bury himself in the core of the lad’s body. All blood and thought rush down the length of his prick, engorging it till it strains agaithe the satin walls of the youth’s sheath.

“Will!”

The hot surge of his lust rushes through him, flowing out of him, taking the heart of him with it, into Will.

Only Will is no longer there…

Cold seawater closes over his hands and legs. Suddenly he is kneeling upon a glass ocean looking into the moving darkness, into the stricken eyes of Will Turner. The youth sinks into the water’s chill embrace—away from Jack.

“Will!”

The pirate throws his weight downward, but finds himself unable to break through, tocue cue the lad—again. Desperately he slams his fists against the impediment and calls Turner’s name in aching desperation.

With a scream fit to burst Jack’s ears, the darkness swallows Will.

—Jack throws the thin sheet off the narrow cot in a fit of nightmare-induced fervor and pants into the balmy silence of the small inn room. The very violence of his heartbeat threatens to tear the wet organ from his chest. With a grimace he feels the steadily cooling evidence of his somnolent ejaculation clinging to his thighs and limp penis. Simply delightful.

He slumps back upon the thin mattress with a groan and gives the false-dawn tinted sky beyond the casement a mild glower. Another damned dream has come to wreak havoc on his unconscious mind. Only this time it was a bit different. Will still left him the moment before he released, but this time the young man did not turn into a putrefying corpse (for which Jack is immensely grateful); the ocean consumed him. Finding the youth alive should have stopped the nightmares, not fed them with richer substance.

Running a hand over his face, he sighs loudly and reaches into the emptiness beside the mattress in search oe she sheet. He finally finds it and quickly employs it in cleaning off his mess. Good thing he decided to sleep bare tonight; walking around in semen starched clothing is hardly pleasant.

The life of a wayward traveler is never an easy path to tread.

*~*~*~*

A brief trip back the Pearl proves to be quite advantageous; not only is he able to retrieve the necessary payment for Turner’s craftsmanship, but he has the opportunity to give his crew the good news that those not employed towards the purpose of careening may take a bit of a holiday. The only condition is to stay away from trouble; those who don’t will be relieved of various body parts without compensation. Jack knows that a man can function perfectly well upon a pirating vessel lacking nose, lips and tongue and maybe even the ears. He won’t be all that attractive, but ability does not necessitate beauty.

Except when it does, he amends with a wry grin. But exceptions make life interesting and that is all that truly matters. Jack firmly believes that to say to someone “may your life be interesting” is a blessing and not, as those unnamed pedants would have one think, a curse.

With the sea to his back—lamentable that—he turns to a course familiar despite only a single acquaintanceship. Back up through streets treated as a sort of aboveground waste disposal project and buildings of varying dereliction, his deliberate tread takes him to his destination. No one pays attention to his presence for they are all ruled by a creed of ignorance prolonging life. Besides, nobody likes a busybody. These people are smarter for that, Jack believes. Keeping one’s nose clean does not do so much as keeping one’s eyes averted.

Whistling a jaunty, though somewhat off-key, tune, the pirate reaches the little doctor’s demesne and pauses before the clean pale-wood fence. The front door is open in invitation to those seeking aid and no sounds of smithing can be heard around back. He takes stock of the door and the sunlit rooms beyond and grins. Sedately he opens the front gate and promenades up the path of neatly placed stone slabs. However, just before he reaches the awning sheltering the entranceway, he jumps over the tidy native plants lining the pathway and lets himself in through an unlocked window—he would have preferred locked, but one takes what one can get.

With catlike ability he drops nearly soundlessly onto the wooden floor of the chirurgeon’s dining room. A medium sized table still sports breakfast’s dirty dishes and uneaten portions. Two chairs have been pushed away from the table and wait patiently to be returned to their places. Jack saunters over to the table and stuffs a few slices of toast into his mouth; he has eaten already, but he’s not one to pass up an opportunity for better fare when it presents itself. Out of habit he picks over the contents of the table for anything portable of value. He pockets a few pewter utensils, but leaves the rest well enough alone—maybe one more spoon.

Leaving the room by the door leading to the entry hall (Jack gave himself a tour of the downstairs rooms and their contents while the little chirurgeon tended to Will yesterday), he hes hes the low burr of conversation from the doorway opposite. He grins in anticipation of causing a stir with his utter lack of civilized etiquette. He cannot find it in himself to care whether the voices in the other room belong to the goodly butcher and one of his customers or not. If Will is present, then all the better. Perhaps he will be able to evoke that familiar indignation that characterized their encounters five years ago. He doubts, though, that the doctor, if he is here, will be fazed in the slightest. The little man has the strangest ability to accept everything with tranquility.

Jack finds the door to the sitting room, in which he detects the conversation, to be open and so takes this as an invitation to enter. Leaning against the right doorjamb he surveys the room. Heavy bookshelves of dark wood press up against the ceiling on the wall opposite. All manner of texts, portfolios and strange apparatuses fill them. The shutters have been latched open on the glassless windows and a weak breeze moves the edges of the parted drapes. Diagrams of dissected human components hang here and there on any available wall space: here the musculature of a hand, there the labeled vertebrae of a spine, &c. A solid oak desk dating back to another century proudly rests against the wall on the side by the door and next to it is a carefully and sturdily locked cabinet—Jack tested the worthiness of its confinement only yesterday. The inner floor space is peopled by a mismatched couch, ottoman, stool and sitting chair. The pirate finds this inexplicably amusing.

The chirurgeon is not in, but the lad is. A strange relief falls into the pirate’s stomach at the sight of the kneeling young man with his mane of chestnut curls prevented from rioting by a ragged strip of cloth. Did Jack believe in the veracity of his dream? Perhaps a bit, but only insofar as any superstitious, seafaring man would. Dreams can be portents, but sometimes they are simply dreams. Jack hopes for the latter. But he need not worry, the inception of his somnolent adventure not withstanding, for the young smith is here, alive and hale.

Concerning the matter of the pre-nightmare state…A pulse runs down his spine and lodges with great discomfort in his breeches. He shifts against the jamb and directs his attention away from prurient recollections and to the smooth voice of Will Turner and the words it authors—the intended recipients being two young children, a boy and a girl.

“You cannot treat your sister in the same manner as you would one of your mates, Gregory,” William chides the boy while he gently cleans the scraped knees of the girl sitting on the simple wooden stool.

“But she was following us. We didn’t tell her to,” the boy retorts sullenly. The smith sighs and dips the cloth back in the small bowl by his knees. The little girl sniffles softly and covers her eyes with dirt-smeared hands.

“As her brother you have special responsibilities. As a gentleman you must always be considerate of those who rely upon you.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be a gentleman. Maybe I want to be a pirate!”

Jack finds himself possessed of the acute desire to box the impertinent boy’s ears, though he knows the child to be ignorant of the smith’s previous association with Jack’s brethren. It is a testament to Will’s inner steel that he doesn’t evidence the slightest reaction to the child’s declaration. He continues to administer to the girl’s injuries and calmly begins to explain to the boy why he should not want to take up such a life. Jack, unobserved by the trio, listens more to the gentle ebb and flow of the young man’s voice than to the pearls of wisdom he drops for the youngsters.

With sudden bludgeoning clarity the pirate realizes to what an extent he is an interloper in their private affair. The scene is too wholesome, too reminiscent of all things still fresh and untouched in the world for the likes of him to ever partake of. His very gaze taints this moment between adult and child. He doesn’t remove himself from the room, though, for he knows that such gentle care is rarely seen or felt by a good number of the world inhabitants. He watches wistfully and once again acknowledges that this is the only reason he never returned to Port Royal to take Will aboard with him on his Pearl.

Out of all the men in the entirety of the world Will Turner is the one who deserves to be a father. A single image of the lad’s future has remained constant since the pirate first met him: surrounded by a host of dark-haired, laughing children, he weaves lavish tales with incomparable skill and draws the young ones into a world of which only Will knows the map; young voices ask questions eagerly and always he answers them with due consideration and patience. This is how Will should be now. Why isn’t he? Why does he cater to the petulant imps of another man’s seed?

“I will not tell your mother because that is your duty as a man, but I will warn you not to wait too long in the telling. Trust me, you would rather she hears the explanation from your own lips than your sister’s.”

The boy mutters something lowly and rolls his pale eyes. The little girl thanks the smith politely for his attendance to her injuries before hopping off the stool. Will stands, towering over the younger ones, and urges them to take themselves home to face the censure of their dame. It is only then, when turning to the door, that the children notice Jack’s presence. Will, obviously taking his cue from the sudden inhalations and rigid postures, whips about, a throwing dagger in hand.

“Jack!”

Surprise dances across the lad’s emotive feature and then slides into a steady look of mild irritation. The knife vanishes and the pirate feels a expressive weight lift. He has never been particular to dangerous weapons being waved in his general direction, especially when he finds himself unable to predict what the wielder might do. Five years ago he would have known almost the entirety of the scope of Turner’s reactions. Now a base uncertainty unnerves him in the young man’s presence. He does not like this.

Giving Will a mischievous wink, he turns his attention to the children. The boy glares at him with all the vigor and impetuosity of youth placing himself between the pirate and his sister. The girl stares in simple fascination over her brother’s shoulder, scraped knees all forgot. Jack grins wickedly at them and finds himself marginally pleased to observe a thrill of fear in the young boy’s eyes; the girl remains impassive. There’s a large difference between wanting the vague adventure of being a pirate and actually being of said profession. Time to give him a sample of the disparity.

“Hello, young master.” His affectedly menacing tone puts right terror into the two children. There is no substantial wealth of pleasure to be taken from affrighting young children, but sometimes it must be done for educational purposes; or else the world would find itself beholden to runaways and upstarts with no conceivable enfranchisement.

“Jack,” Turner hisses in exasperation and places his lean body before the children. The pirate allows his eyes, currently at the level of navel, to travel upwards across the clothed chest and the column of Will’s neck, stopping briefly at those delightfully shaped lips, to meet miffed brown eyes.

The pirate holds his hands up in placation and gives the lad a winning smile. “Didn’t mean any harm.”

“Indeed.” This is accompanied by an eloquent roll of the lad’s velvet brown eyes. Will shoulders Jack aside and leads the children from the room and presumably from the tidy abode. The fey rogue grins widely and runs grimy fingers over the dissipating ache where the lad’s shoulder pushed against him. Dreamscape images briefly surge to the forefront of his thoughts in a vicious, rolling tide. The act was violent, as always. Will goaded him, seduced him and yet seemed disconnected and resistant. The voice and body did not agree upon an amalgamated sentiment.

With a shake of his head, trinkets clattering with wonderful discordance, and a distracting rigidity in his breeches, Jack makes his way into the room and throws himself into a sprawl across the couch. Humming and gesticulating elegantly, he amuses himself while waiting for Will. He a pauses a moment as a thought strikes him. In the dream Turner never once asked for help; Jack was the sole locus of action. Curious. He shrugs against the upholstery and resumes his motions and tuneless song.

“So you’re here,” the lad announces resentfully upon reentering the room. Jack ceases his mindless entertainment and cocks his head to give the young man a sardonic grin.

“I’m here,” he affirms grandly with a dismissive wave of his hand, ignoring the implied inquiry into exactly what his purpose is here. He has discovered within himself a singular craving, an unchecked rapacity, for the huskily melodic tones of William’s voice, as if only continual auditory stimulus will prove the lad’s existence. Some part of him still waits in puerile fear for confirmation that all has been a lucid dream sent by cruel seraphs to break through the cohesion of his soul.

His senses demand ineluctable, empirical proof. The timbre of the lad’s voice fills his ears. His olfactory sense delights in the perfume of smoke, sweat and metal that lingers upon the young man in a marked proclamation of his preferred profession. A slight tenderness remains in his shoulder and so he knows that Turner is no phantasmal manifestation of syphilitic insanity—not that Jack has the disease, as far as he’s aware, but if the lad proves apparitional then he might begin to suspect.

Only taste remains unconfirmed. His pulse leaps and his stomach clenches something violent at the thought. Jack licks his lips and avidly watches as the youth’s mouth shape the words asking him why and the lungs expelling the words on a harsh exhalation.

“Payment, love,” the pirate quips in response and digs around in his coat until finally alighting upon a soft leather pouch. With a triumphant and self-satisfied smirk he withdraws the heavy purse and holds it aloft for the lad’s perusal.

“You are truly set on this,” Will mutters incredulously. They both know the agreed upon sum exceeds even Will’s superlative ability. They both know it is merely a test of the pirate’s tenacity and a veiled excuse for him to leave well enough alone.

“I do believe I told you that I need a good—no, exceptional—blade and the only man I’m willing to trust with such an endeavor is yourself. I need the other bits as well, though not as badly, and I figured that I might as well get everything done with at one time.”

“Fine, fine.” Will stalks over to the carelessly sprawled rogue and grabs the bag. Calloused fingers graze Jack’s and he holds onto the payment a bit longer than strictly necessary. After acquiring the pouch, the lad quickly moves away from the pirate. Jack stops his lips from turning down in a frown of annoyance.

“When may I expect you to start?” The lad stares at the bag as if his world rocks back and forth upon the very edge of some precipice and he has no power within his body to pull back. With appreciable reluctance he raises his eyes to the pirate’s after secreting the pouch on his person.

“I will begin tomorrow if my benefactor requires no assistance.”

“Good!” Jack claps his hands in delight and jumps to his feet. The youth takes a step back in the face of the mercurial rogue’s sudden exuberance. His face is a study of anxiety and trepidation, anticipating some action on Jack’s part.

The pirate takes a mental pause and briefly debates the lad’s cognition of his, Jack’s, desires. No…the reaction was not along the vein of an assault of a sexual nature. He apprehended injury, but only injury that maims externally.

A severed finger, only the first of several brutalities…

“Why did you cringe?”

“I did no such thing.”

“Don’t lie, Will. You acted as if you thought I was going to strike you.”

“You have.” The lad has a point with that, but that blow had been for medicinal purposes. Truly. Or had he fallen prey to the insidious voice urging for violence unspent by the destruction of the captain of the Bonnie Maid. He knows something inside broke then or perhaps, more aptly, some flagitious force was freed.

“I—” Jack hesitates a moment in his apology. The words clog his throat as his mind quickly calculates the placating properties of each. “I regret the doing of the deed, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“I see.”

“So now rest assured that I will not be lifting a hand against you—for the moment.” Jack is not one to make a promise that might be broken on account of Will’s insistence upon being an ass.

“I believe you.” Such simple, unaffected words should not elicit such simplistic excitement in the receiver of them; they do in Jack. Will trusts him with an untarnished, unspoiled implicitness. The lad believes in him. And what has he done to garner such loyalty? His stomach clenches again but it is in a decidedly unpleasant manner. Whatever he has done, it has not been enough. Not nearly.

“Then why…?” Jack wiggles his fingers to articulate the unspoken words.

“Ingrained responses are hard to quell. It is nothing personal.” The shrug of the lad’s strong shoulders is a clear dismissal of the topic. However, Jack is not so easily deterred—otherwise Barbossa would still be living, in a fashion.

The pirate crosses the short distance between them and consciously invades the young smith’s personal space. Every muscle in Will’s body tenses until Jack has the queer impression that he is about to shatter into a thousand screaming shards. Eyes locked upon the lad’s, Jack grabs the smith’s left hand and brings it to his mouth.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Turner demands angrily and struggles to reclaim his hand.

Jack is caught in last night’s dream.

Grip tightening upon the young man’s captured hand, Jack deliberately touches his tongue to the knuckle of the index finger. Conflicting emotions of hope and revulsion riot across Will’s face and he freezes. The pirate cares not as his need for taste finally achieves satisfaction. The salt of sweat, the bite of metal, the residue of smoke spread across the eager expanse of Jack’s tongue. Slowly he brings it to the knuckle of the middle finger, leaving behind a glistening trail and pauses there. The next finger, the ring finger, bears the evidence of Will’s travails under the perverse guardianship of the captain.

“Jack…” Acute embarrassment and paralyzing fear fill Will’s strained voice.

“It’s a war wound,” Jack answers and brings his tongue to the truncated appendage in contest. Meticulously he laves it and briefly suckles the end of the scarred knob of flesh and bone. For a moment he feels as if he can force new bone and tissue to burst forth. He almost convinces himself that he has the power to grow what was shorn so cruelly. He has power.

Blood pounds, rushes, roars in his ears as he worships the healed injury. A single throbbing heartbeat eclipses his thoughts and lays waste to his senses. But his eyes never leave Will’s. Jack pours into those dark orbs, falling into a maelstrom of unremitting agony, until he lad’s pupils constrict suddenly and the pirate is thrust back into his own form.

“No!” Will rips his hand free with all the strength of his lean body and shoves Jack away. Panting, eyes rolling in wild panic, he stumbles a few steps and then flies from the room. The pirate finds himself alone with the taste of a haunted young man on his tongue.

Jack bites out a curse. He’s hard.

“Ah, now I see the cause of Black’s sudden departure,” Smith announces mildly from the doorway, sweat gleaming on his balding head, face flushed with recent exertion. The pirate glares impotently at him. “Care for a drink?”


&*&*&*&*&*&


Firstly I would like to apologize for the prolonged delay in the completion and final submission of this chapter. This was worked upon around the hell that is college finals. Fortunately that has now since past and I was able to give it to my exquisitely wonderful new beta, Beth. I have even received a sublime piece of fanart for this series, for which I am both ecstatic and humbled. I never imagined something my mind would create would ever achieve such approbation with anyone else.

Now on to those of you who have so graciously taken the time to leave an offering upon the threshold of my creative processes.

Cashiel, crevette, Squall, Ghost, I am overjoyed that the long delay with the previous chapter was not so much as to ruin your enjoyment of the fic in its stunted entirety. Originally I had only planned on around five chapters. As you can see, it has gotten quite out of control. My thoughts and imagination have taken the initiative and my own will has been subsumed for their own purposes.

Hellborne, I accept your words with reverence. You have truly done great things in this fandom!

Seraphina, Being unable to appreciate my own work, I am glad to receive the kindness you have so generously given me. Again, I can only offer the plainest and unfit apologies for the recent lack of updates. I hope to remedy this situation with a summer of academic freedom.

Night, I too noticed a distinct change in the style of the last chapter, but I have been in grave doubt upon where to look for the most efficacious of remedies. As such I shall let it alone and hope that no further abnormalities shall crop up, and that this current chapter brings this whole monstrosity back upon track. Thank you for the encouragement, without which I would be sore pressed to continue.

Leviathan, I aim to please and I am glad that this one was found pleasing in your esteemed eyes. Hopefully this trend shall not abandon me for other fare.

Photis, I do tend towards an affected and somewhat obsolete style, but I cannot seem to help myself. I absolutely adore the older works, most specifically the original Gothic novels. However, I am relieved that there was still something in this work that, well, worked for you. I hope that you are able to find further enjoyment, and that I do not offend too greatly.