Exsanguination

Disclaimer: I don’t own the rights to the Pirates of the Caribbean or its characters, which solelyong ong to Disney, et al, but that hasn’t stopped me from writing about them.


Warning: This story contains the themes of graphic mutilation/torture, male/male relationships, a.k.a. slash/yaoi, and heavy angst. If any of these may offend you, then stop reading. If, however, you do read this, in spite of my warnings, and find it offensive, then I have to say it is your own fault. This scene is of an erotic nature, but I have attempted to write it as tastefully as my ability allows.

Note: I will not accept any flames, however, comments and criticisms are welcome. I am under the assumption that anyone reading this has a clear understanding of the difference between flames and criticisms so I don’t have to explain it. Here are some reason why I don’t accept flames: 1) they generally include an attack on the author’s character without regard to previous or future works that may or may not be in the same vein, 2) not only are they childish, but they make the writer of them sound immature and not old enough to read the material contained herein, 3) flames hneitneither the author nor the flamer to improve the work and, therefore, are not constructive, 4) if something is so offensive as to elicit the impulse to flame then it is better forgotten and not dwelled upon, 5) you waste time writing it and I waste time reading and then deleting it, 6) it won’t do you any good to point out my lack of scruples, morals, intelligence, sanity, etc., because not only don’t I care, but I won’t listen.

Thank you for your kind regards and any reviews (not flames) that you will allocate to me.

I would like to extend the warmest and sincerest of thanks to a wonderful beta and an exquisite writer, Beth, for putting up with the strange pieces I send to her to read (I took your suggestion for the title change!) and to Becky for the quick read through for glaring errors.

All mistakes found herein are now my responsibility, as I tend to putter around after the fact.

::Exsanguination::


Commodore James Norrington inscribes the first line delicately upon the dip of flesh between back and buttocks. Glittering jewels of blood well up and gleam with eldritch beauty in the lambent candlelight. Turner moans softly and arches almost imperceptibly into the knife’s violent mercy. James smiles tenderly and slices crimson paths to the cadence of the boy’s breathing. The knife’s edge presses firmly against pale flesh till it parts, like the Red Sea under God’s will, and rich wine spills over. A pulse of fire shoots deep into the man’s stomach as he continues his carving.

William shivers and his hips shift recklessly, almost jarring the commodore’s hand, against the crisp linen sheets borrowed from James’ bed—when he returns they will be reverently replaced. The man places a stilling hand upon the agitated youth to quell the need to buck his hips. The boy is truly beautiful like this, he muses as he crafts a bloody rose in the previously unmarked flesh. Curves and lines bleed together as if the flower is dripping carmine dew down the boy’s shivering side.

Small etchings ornament the sweet youth’s flesh, and all of them are conceived by the practiced stroke of James’ blade. When he looks upon young Turner he sees a canvas awaiting the delicate violence of an artist. The unblemished expanses of sun-tinted skin seem to plead for the touch of his imagination.

The same wordll ill in verbal showers from the boy’s full lips.

“Please, commodore, please.”

And who is he to resist the siren crawling beneath William’s flesh, awaiting its release?

His own cock throbs to his excited heartbeat; his own blood sings to flow out and mingle with that of the blacksmith’s. A shudder of unreleased pleasure moves through his body and the knife edge slips slightly, going deeper than intended.

“God!” Turner gasps and arches up. James feels an acidic moan working its way up his suddenly dry throat as a thick rivulet of blood oozes down the boy’s side. It is as if he can feel the moist warmth of the split flesh through the cold metal of the knife. The tool has become another appendage. His hips jerk unconsciously. He feels the first thrilling swells of orgasm racing in his blood.

He has never known such brutal ecstasy.

~*~*~

Captain Jack Sparrow tugs thoughtfully at one end of his mustache and regards the dockside of Port Royal with glinting black eyes. Where should he direct his stride? To the mansion of fair Missus Turner, or to the humble blacksmith’s shop her husband still attends to? He cocks his head, sending the trinkets bound there to clatter against each other. If his memory serves correctly, and it usually sees fit to—though there have been a few lapses, which he can’t remember—Elizabeth was not the least bit glad to see his face the last time. In fact he had earned his first slap from her and a few more besides. She had a right interest going on between her palm and his cheek. To be fair, and he feels rather generous at the moment, he might have been deserving of them. After all, he’d been trying his wiles upon an oblivious Will on a regular basis during his last stay. Darling Elizabeth—smart woman that—was not ignorant of Jack’s less than pure intentions. She caught him licking a bit of honey off the bemused lad’s hand and promptly dragged him from the room for a slap and a lengthy monologue of warnings. In no uncertain words she banned him from plotting a way into young Turner’s bed or entering their abode again.

‘I won’t let you have him, Jack.’

She is quite protective of her claim over the lad.

The smithy it is, then. Will refuses to cease laboring there, apparently to the wife’s continued consternation, and the pirate suspects he will still be toiling away in the smoke and fumes. Jack turns his feet in that directiod nad navigates his way across the familiar stone bridge and along the packed dirt streets. Gamely he nods at passersby and grins just a touch evilly at any child bold enough to stare. Confidence trails after every movement and rolling sway of his hips. However, he is quick enough to duck out of sight upon seeing a flash of British red. It would not do to be caught and put under the rigid commodore’s rule; though the thought of Will once again unbridling his impetuosity to dash to the pirate’s rescue sends a thrill down his spine.

He must find the proper agency to steal the boy away.

For a moment, while surveying the area about Brown’s smithy for danger, he entertains a fantasy of seducing Will and convincing him to board the Pearl before he res ths those damnable senses. Of course, being so naïve and innocent as to be a virgin despite marital conjugation, the lad would have no conception of seduction—his obliviousness thus far is proof—and, therefore, would be immune. Also, he might not even knuch uch a thing between men to be possible.

A real pity that.

~*~*~

The skin where the ending concavity of buttocks blends into upper thigh is remarkably silken; fine, blonde hairs add a delicate, downy texture: silk and velvet. James traces a bloody finger along these tender ribbons of flesh. He wets it again upon the slowly seeping rose and then adds another stripe of red to each thigh. William twitches beneath his idle ministrations and releases a small plea for fulfillment.

His own blood feverish with want of completion, James picks up the crimson-dipped blade again and lays the edge upon one of his ciphered drawings. With breathless anticipation he adds pressure. The resilient flesh bows beneath the relentless metal; then the flesh can take no more, give no more, and surrenders, yielding up the precious fluid beneath. Turner whines softly, sweat dewing his bared body.

“Be still,” the man admonishes the boy as he feels the muscles tense in anticipation of instinctive motion. William issues a low moan and relaxes reluctantly. He wants to move, to writhe slowly against the cruel edge splitting his skin and spilling his blood. He craves the merging of metal into his own body.

‘I want to be penetrated by it.’ Brown eyes lower. ‘I want it to sink so deeply into me that it becomes a part of me.’

James knows this, understands it even amid his own strange desires. However, he cannot give Turner all that he yearns for. Oh, there can be no doubt that the stiff commodore would like nothing better than to drive the blade past the scant barrier of flesh and muscle and into the pulsing organs below, scraping against bone; but he knows the consequences of such. Unlike the boy, he knows to control his own impulses. Mortality stays his hand and prevents him from completing this macabre communion. He must only sever flesh and blood vessels.

He bends his head down and runs his tongue along the furrows he cuts into the tender skin. William sighs deliciously and squirms, and James allows this.

“Would you like a little more?” He must not do too much more. He cannot mark up the boy in the sanguine way he dreams about. His wife, the incomparable Elizabeth Turner, would bleed from her heart and soul to discover the evidence of such proceedings. A woman-in-love’s selective blindness will not permit infinite transgressions.

“Please, commodore, please.”

‘Cut me.’

~*~*~

Red on white. Red blood on white flesh. Red blood on white sheets. Jack’s mind fades for a moment and all he sees is an expanding circle of crimson before his eyes. Irrationality and rationality vie for the much needed explanation. And from some corner of his psyche, far darker than the sin permeating the rest of him, a black stirring rises to the surface. Or perhaps it should be called sanguine.

If only his mind could wrap itself about the tableau of young Will eagerly offering his sun-tinted flesh to the commodore’s knife, then maybe his feet would move him from the threshold. A primal force saturates the smoky shop, as if the two before him are in the throes of some ancient and libidinous deity and Will is the delectable sacrifice. The white sheets beneath the lad’s trembling body are spattered by spots of deep red. Jack thinks that it has become a strange and unholy altar cloth.

And he fervently wishes to be the one performing this profane ritual.

“Ja-ack?” the lad’s soft voice drifts into his mind. The fog of strange thoughts lifts and he finds sweet Will watching him with glazed eyes—and Norrington as well, only his eyes are sharp and angry.

“Sparrow.” If a name and a look could be so full of vitriolic rage as to smite a man where he stands…well, Jack is supremely glad that neither can.

“Will. Commodore.” He pauses, head cocked to the side. “And that’s ‘captain,’ if you please.”

“I don’t ‘please.’” Jack raises an eyebrow and glances at the lad’s nude form. He licks his lips and can almost taste the salt of his thick blood. Norrington catches this motion and his narrowed eyes widen slightly.

“You want to mark him,” he murmurs, eyes darkening to a deeper blue. Will gasps and then moans softly. His velvet brown eyes bore into Jack’s and speak of nothing but invitation and guileless desire. The first step the pirate takes is without his conscious volition, and the second comes while he is surprised by the first. Then, as if a flood of activity possesses him, Jack steps off the uneven stone stairs and lands amid the dust and dirt of floor. From the stairs to Will and Norrington is only a few more paces, and he is a helpless thrall pulled closer by the dark promise offered by the lad.

There should be unfettered, unrestrained animosity in the commodore’s gaze. There should be confusion, humiliation and indignation in Will’s. For the former there is; for the latter there isn’t. With sudden clarity, as if some great light has plunged down into the very core of his mind, he knows that it is the lad’s will that stays the commodore’s rage. Without words, without proper articulation, with only breathy little ejaculations of sound, the has has imposed his will and pulled both man and pirate into his power.

A shudder runs the course of his lean form as he gazes upon the crimson wounds and silver scars ornamenting the lad’s back. A surge of fluid heat washes through his body and small, prurient voices exalt the sight before him. If the damned commodore is allowed to touch and mark the young smith in such a way, he should have the same privilege. The commodore only plays at the edges of humanity’s darkness; Jack plunged into the inky depths ages ago.

“Give me the knife.” The man glances between the bloodied blade in his hand and the pirate brooking no argument. Then his gaze settles on the patient, vulnerable form between them. Strong muscles twitch beneath young flesh in anticipation. A single prayer without religion breathes from Will’s glistening skin. Enraptured by the play of light upon the soft gold and brilliant red of the lad’s body, Norrington yields up the weapon to Jack. A jolt of deceptive power burns into the pirate’s rough palm as he grips the knife. His pulse picks up and his ever eager cock throbs beneath the faded cloth of his trousers.

In his darkest dreams there are no tender words or patient reassurances. Wide brown eyes fill with uncertain fear and pale limbs flail in a pathetic bid for freedom. Pleasure is one-sided, thick and hot, and everything is ruthlessly controlled. Bent but not yet broken, Will writhes under Jack’s deliberate tortures and begs for mercy that will never be granted. Screams rend the air and die in the rasping gasps of air starved lungs.

Delicious shivers move through Jack and he sighs softly, eyes perusing the lad’s prostrate form. He trails a grimy finger down the elegant spine and pauses at the coagulated bloom. Even the lightest touch elicits a low moan and a rippling shudder. Fascinated by the reactions, he presses his fingers in till new blood wells up. The cry that escapes Will’s throat sings along the surface of Jack’s body and dives deep into his groin. He finds his breathing oddly stilted.

His dark eyes narrow and he twirls the sharp blade between his fingers of his other hand. The rose is not of his craftsmanship, not his brand upon the lad. His eyes meet Norrington’s across Will’s offered body as he brings the knife to the silken skin. He lowers his gaze, a dark smirk upon his lips, and watches the bloodied edge dimple the flesh. Harder and harder he presses. He imagines he can feel the skin ripping in one short hiss, like rent silk, as the blade splits Will’s tender flesh. Tingles of excitement race up his arm; his cock pulses eagerly. Deep crimson fills the indent about the penetrating knife and leaks over. He raises the blade and looks upon the shallow gash, throat dry and breath escaping in short pants.

“More, Jack.” Will’s soft voice drifts up to his ringing ears. He grins at the commodore and slashes unrepentantly, slicing deeper with each stroke. Beneath his mastery Will arches and drives his slim hips against the cloth covered table. Norrington’s harsh breaths bleed into the background of the lad’s delighted cries and Jack’s own ragged breathing.

“God!” With that single intonation and a gush of sweet crimson, Will convulses in the tortured throes of maddened ecstasy. Jack steps back to watch the gorgeously painted form writhe and twist as if on the very threshold of final death. Strangled little wails pour from his red lips and he finally stiffens. The two men issue a strained exhalation as the thick scent of the lad’s spent seed fills the air.

Jack’s unsatisfied cock aches with unbearable sweetness. He meets the commodore’s smoldering gaze and finds an odd accord therein.

~*~*~

Sweat beading upon his brow, James licks his parched lips and feels his heartbeat pulse within the confines of his breeches. Displayed upon the swarthy face of the rogue captain is the same knowledgeable intent. Desire, thick and cloying, strangles them with honeyed wires. As if of one mind and one purpose, they take hold of the limp boy and drag him off the table.

“Bedroom?” the pirate snarls, grimy hands moving across expanses of blood-smeared skin. James needs no words to convey his affirmation of the suggestion. His own vital fluids surge through him and drive him relentlessly, with overbearing fury, towards the small room young William has called his own since his arrival at Port Royal. The progression there is a blind moment of lust saturated intensity. All he feels is the downy silk of the boy’s flesh and the sticky wetness of his blood, metallic and spiced with lust. The weight of Will does not register, only the dark pleasures awaiting at the destination matters.

James releases his hold when the pirate, clasping a weakly struggling Turner, falls onto the poor pallet comprising the boy’s bed. From his supine sprawl he gives James a look of challenge: “Come and take him,” it says. And he will. The mutilated back of the boy calls him in on carmine cravings. Sweet young body for his own regulated perversity.

He drops to his knees and grabs the damp chestnut curls of the boy’s hair and pulls him onto all fours above the pirate. Swaying weakly and voicing dazed complaints, William allows the commodore to pull his head back, neck arched, and take possession of his lips. He breaches the tender mouth with his tongue and violently laps at the moist recesses and passive muscle within. He ignores the pained spasms in his neck from the uncomfortable position and devours the whimpers filling the boy’s mouth. Cock bloated with his own vitality, he moulds his clad body against Turner’s and exalts as the seeping wounds glue him to the other; he cannot find it in himself to care if this causes the boy discomfort. Teasingly he grinds his hips against tight buttocks and groans deeply, tongue unceasing in its rapid thrusts.

It is only when the pirate growls, “Clothes off, now!” that the commodore remembers him. For the second time that night they are in patent agreement. Reluctantly he releases William’s lips and draws back enough to work at the fastening of his own clothes. Jack scoots back and sits up, fingers already working upon the length of cloth about his waist. The two men trade curses as they divest themselves with startling alacrity, while Turner kneels dazedly, bleeding from the lacerations on his back and upper thighs. Had he tried to run James and Sparrow would have wasted not time in dragging him back. Events have gone too far and there can only be one conclusion.

We need to slow down, James thinks even as he jerks off his shirt and hurls it away with unnecessary violence. But he can’t, neither one of them can. A drug laces the air, drips into their hearts and it goes by the name of William Turner. Sweet boy, succulent and ripe, and the instigator in this salacious farce.

“I want you to cut me. I want to feel the m.”

He could not resist the idea of marking that flawless skin, of driving his blade beneath the exterior strength to the cloistered vulnerability, when Turner first pressed the finely wrought knife into his shaking hand. The boy gave him that first forbidden taste with stricken eyes and now he needs it more than the boy does. This should be unnerving, he thinks, pulling off his shoes. For a moment, one of many since the execution of this action, he meets the caitiff’s heated gaze and sees the same acknowledgement of the pervasive wrongness of the situation, and he sees ineluctability. Neither will end this, can end this.

Together resume their places, mouths and tongues working across William. Everything tastes of blood and something earthy and insatiable. James buries his nose in the boy’s wet curls and inhales, one arm encircling him, hand brushing against the pirate’s slick chest, and drawing him close; the other grips the curls ferociously: forge smoke and sweat and blood. Everything comes back to blood.

“Give us a kiss, love.” Hips rocking against young Turner’s sticky buttocks, James watches Jack grab the youth for a brutal clash of teeth, mouths, and tongues. Aked ked groan passes his lips and he presses himself against William. He bears his ardent companions down onto the pallet, crushing the pirate beneath their combined weight. Delicious.

But there is something far hotter his body urges him to take.

One hand is trapped between the undulating, sweaty bodies beneath, and the other clutches spasmodically upon Turner’s hair. Twisting his body atop the boy’s he slips his free hand between pale thighs and brushes against two hard erections; two sounds, a snarl and a gasp, breathe into his ears. Emboldened, he strokes the hot, rigid lengths of satin and grinds his own cock against the damp divide of the boy’s buttocks.

A rough hand suddenly grasps his sensitive sack in a harsh grip.

“I don’t want a hand,” Jack hisses, calloused fingers tightening their hold in warning. “I don’t want a mouth.”

“Neither do I.”

The only one moving now is William; strange little, stilted gasps embellish the wet slide of his body. James and Sparrow glare mutual challenge at each other.

“Is he a virgin?” Jack’s hand releases the commodore, though the man’s remains in place, and slides up Turner’s side. The boy makes no response, save a small moan.

“No.”

James relieved the youth of that state the first time he opened his flesh with steel. The boy never agreed, but he never voiced any resistance either. When the commodore bent his bloodied form over his desk, William remained mute in protest. James took this to mean willing complicity and, thus, culpability. There was nothing to prevent his rejection. Nothing.

“‘No’? A true navy man, aren’t you, commodore?” The pirate grins darkly at the man and jerks his head down for a brief press of lips. “Get us something slick and we’ll both be getting what we want.”

Not one to be ruled by the commands of lesser men, James gives a vicious pinch to the pirate’s hard organ. Sparrow’s eyes widen in pain and then his swarthy face flushes deeply with rage.

“I wouldn’t advise you to play that game, Norrington. We could be doing something far more enjoyable.”

“I will not be told what to do by you.” Jack laughs harshly and grabs James’ hips. With a grun for forces the commodore’s pelvis tightly against William and thrusts up. Pure pleasure, almost nauseating in its intensity, rips into James’ stomach and he groans loudly. The boy arches and grinds against the two men in his own rapture.

“Now go get something so we can finish this.” He does not nee ask ask what they are to finish; they both know. They will both take the boy this evening.

James stills the unconscious rocking of his hips and slowly pulls away from the agglutinative heat of William’s young, marred body. Uncaring of his nudity, cock twitching with the wild pulse of his heart, he searches the small room—a closet really—for anything serviceable. A recently opened pot of lavender scented salve proves to be the only viable option and James grabs it. He turns back to find Jack’s dirty fingers digging into William’s pale flanks and urging him into a hard, grinding undulation.

Molten heat rushes through his extremities, boiling his blood and forcing stinging droplets of sweat to the surface of his skin. James refuses to contemplate the sensuality of the two males together. All he can acknowledge is the exquisite vessel of his imminent ecstasy, the pirate being a mild distraction only. Knuckles bled white by his grip upon the pot, James kneels behind the boy and, with the af thf the pirate, forces Turner to straddle Jack on his knees.

Holding the pale cheeks open with one hand, the commodore swirls his fingers into the fragrant salve and then presses one lubricious digit to the tender pucker there. A small shiver works through William before he draws his muscles taut. James circles the opening and lightly presses the tip of his finger in. Over the boy’s shoulder he catches the licentious rogue’s smoldering glower. With a smirk, reveling in contcontrol he perceives to have, he drives his finger into the clasping heat of young Turner. His delighted moan mingles with the startled noise he pulls from the boy and pirate as his motion causes the youth to thrust his hips downward to escape penetration. James can only imagine the rush of sensation that accompanies the collision of two hard cocks. His world has become an orgy of heated sensation.

Boldly he pumps his finger in and out of the tight recesses of the young smith’s trembling body. Sparrow leans up and reaches around William to delicately stroke the pink flesh stretched about the commodore’s invading digit. James allows him to slowly wedge a dry finger in beside his own oiled one. Together they coerce the tight ring to admit greater penetration.

The commodore finds himself mesmerized watching the fingers plunge in and out, feeling the heat of the inner tissues. Jack works a second in and they both growl as the s mus muscles clamp down in violent protest; Turner hisses. Three fingers, two of which are alien to James, move deeply within, the pirate’s on a rhythm of their own. In. Out. In. Out.

He coats the other hand in salve and carefully eases in his index finger. As the pirate pumps his fingers in and out, James spreads his own, stretching till the boyls lls loudly and bucks wildly against their violation. Only the withdrawal of the fingers quiets him. Stomach rolling in anticipation, breathing irregular and harsh, the commodore slicks a hand and grabs the pirate’s prick. Firmly he squeezes it, feeling it twitch and leak, and draws a low groan from Sparrow.

As soon as James releases him, Jack grabs the boy’s trim hips and works him down upon his hard shaft. William braces his hands against the pirate’s chest and shudders and groans. Sparrow gives two languid thrusts, flushed length disappearing into the boy’s stretched hole, before James stops him by holding the boy up with one arm, allowing only the engorged tip of the pirate’s cock to remain inside.

“Not without me.”

Jack grins, sweat dampening the faded bandana he refuses to remove. “Then hurry up.”

Goaded by the challenge glowing boldly in the pirate’s eyes, James takes hold of his own heated shaft, mouth opening upon a prolonged hiss as pleasure shoots into his loins, and coats it quickly. William gasps in distress, body shaking, when the comre ore opens him up further with his thumb and forces the head of his cock in beside Jack’s.

Three breaths whoosh out in a storm of desire and pain.

‘Cut me.’

Together, the commodore and pirate push in, stretching Turner to unimaginable dilation. James, body burning up with physical awareness, closes his eyes and exhales brokenly into the shell of the boy’s ear.

‘Cut me.’

The world diminishes, narrows to the singular sensation of the thrust of his hips and the heat gripping his length. Turner becomes the means to molten completion; Sparrow and his challenge cease to matter. Release of the rapturous tension flushing him to feverish intensity consumes him as he drives his cock deeper.

‘Cut me. Cut me. Cut me.’

~*~*~

Will is darkness.

It bleeds out of his velvet eyes and rises to the surface of his skin. Face damp with perspiration, mouth open on strangled gasps, the lad rides the men’s cocks and drenches them in his shadows. Jack knew it would be this way—well, except the commodore’s participation. The young smith doesn’t belong here in this tame town of gentlemanly comportment. He will not survive here now that he has awoken to a larger world. Jack must save him.

He grips Will’s bucking hips and growls as the lad’s trembling passage squeezes agaiagainst the commodore. The pleasure ripping into him, the darkness pouring from the lad devours his conscious mind. Every hot, slicked motion draws his essence into a taut string waiting to snap with unrestrained violence.

Strange, inhuman grunts pass the young smith’s swollen lips as the men’s driving pricks force his own to drill into the pirate’s stomach. If Jack could free one white-knuckled hand to release Will, to send him into a paroxysm of completion, he would. Yet all his mind can focus on is the sweet penetration; it is all he can feel. Air does not fill his lungs fast enough. He cannot drive himself deep enough.

“Will.” Glazed eyes meet his ahen hen flutter closed on a drawn out moan. The commodore presses down, crushing Jack with glorious weight.

As Norrington withdraws, he thrusts in. As he plunges deeper, the commodore pulls out. A continuous stream of bestial grunts and whimpers issue from poor Will as he digs blunt fingers into Jack’s chest and takes both of them within his lean body. The dull pain of the lad’s unconscious aggression urges the pirate to reciprocate in kind.

“Will.” Those gorgeous eyes open again and he seizes the lad’s tender bottom lip between and bites down. A howl of pain spills across his face as a few thick drops of blood slides into his mouth, metallic and salty, and the lad’s inner muscles clench down upon him with such fury he fears for the integrity of his partsgasmgasm takes the boy into a convulsion of brutal pleasure. Hot seed scalds his stomach as Will slumps in boneless abandon upon him. He cannot thrust properly under such dead weight. Only the friction of the commodore’s plunging cock and the pulsing walls of the lad’s inner hold move him towards his own release.

And then the commodore issues a choked, hiccupping exhalation and his seed drenches Will’s clenching walls and Jack’s cock. Just before the last jerking thrusts subside, Jack contorts his spine, surging up with all his might, muscles screaming in protest, and hurls himself into sticky, swe mes messy completion.

All mine, he thinks.

~*~*~

William Turner draws a blunt fingertip through the tacky seed coating his stomach and licks it experimentally. A grimace stretches his mouth and he spits on the ground. He should be sleeping, or at least mostly unconscious like the two men on his thin pallet. Even unaware, the commodore and pirate maintain a careful distance between them that not even the lure of shared body heat can overcome, as if their dialectic is set in stone.

Slowly, as if an age has settled into the marrow of his bones, Will hobbles out of his small room and into the main area of the smithy. Gray sparkles, like glittering shrapnel, mottle his vision and a familiar lightheadedness assaults him. He can feel the strained pull of muscles beneath his flayed back and a deep, humiliating burning deep within his arse.

He had not asked for this! He never did, yet the outcome has remained ever constant—though Jack is a new addition.

There is something dark and ugly inside of him: a thick, black ichor that has lain dormant. Norrington once named it rashness, but Jack Sparrow came closer when he intimated Will’s heritage. Calling this darkness the “blood of a pirate” is all well and good, but it still cannot fully encapsulate what horror, what evil the young man has discovered within.

Elizabeth does not know, cannot know; and their sweet son cannot be tainted.

Norrington was supposed to take it from him, to draw it to the surface and bleed it out. A wry smile graces Will’s strong face. If only he knew beforehand that a seed of sin had been planted in the commodore as well, then maybe he would have found some other remedy, some other method to lance the festering wound in his core.

Naked and chilled, Will hugs himself and makes his way to the covered table. His legs give out, darkness threatens to rush in and carry him away, and he throws his weight against it, hand scrabbling upon the blood spattered linen. God, he reeks of them, of filthy pirate and proper commodore. They rubbed their mingled odors into his skin, deep into him till his own scent was drowned. Their sweat dries upon his body along with his own and his blood.

He smells still of the lavender balm Elizabeth purchased to soothe his burns.

“God damn it.”

He cannot allow Elizabeth to see him like this. He shudders and rubs his cheek against the sheets. Four years ago she bled for taking his name when faced with Barbossa’s malevolence. Three years ago he made love to her on the bridal bed with as much tender emotion as his body and spirit were capable of, and she bled. Nine months later she bled horribly bringing their son into the world. So much of her blood has been spilled on his account.s iss is why he knows shimmering blackness lurks just below the surface.

The cursed pirate captain showed him this.

And only blood will lift the curse. Curse of a Turner. Blood of a Turner. So when had he come to enjoy the necessity? A loose shudder takes hold of him. He hungers for the steel, for the crimson division of his living flesh, for a hint of death’s fetid breath. The commodore taught him with relentless precision that there is no true boundary between ecstasy and agony (where had he learned that?). Will spills the darkness in red and white waves only to feed it through the commodore’s rapacity. This is a cycle then; a cruel cycle that he cannot find the strength to break. The reason for the initial execution stands stark in his mind, but his body craves it for baser reasons.

He should have resisted when Norrington touched him with flesh instead of metal.

“Damn.”

He should have given Jack the knife in the first place. The pirate has already embraced the shadows within, revels in them with fierce enjoyment. Will’s taint would not have had the ability to call forth anything worse than what the man has already become. But, then, that is why Will has always feared the man and yet found himself unaccountably fascinated. He is too far removed from the civility, whether masked or not, that the young man knows.

Then he appeared as some sort of malfeasant angel this evening and Will knew, intimately, regret and desire.

Weakly he lifts his head and pushes himself up. Does he have the strength to make his way back to the house? The muscles in his arms quiver alarmingly with the strain of his weight. The room spins about its axis for a moment and he decides that he will not be going home to his sweet wife this night. She will not worry. He has spent an occasional night in his old room at the smithy when work took him past the midnight hour.

But two interlopers currently hold somnolent dominion over his sleeping area. He sends a tired glare to the shadowy figures resting there. He might try Brown’s small shack out back, but there is a chance the man has moved his inebriated self there—Will finds himself honestly amazed that the stout man has not drunk himself to death—and how he is to explain the sad condition of his back then?

With an angry rush of energy he yanks the commodore’s soiled sheets from the table and hurls them to the dirt floor. Shaking and dizzy, he holds his head in his hands and leans his hip against the roughly hewn boards of the table.

Everything has gone awry. The commodore was supposed to remain untouchable ice, not frail and human; and Jack, Jack was not supposed to return after Elizabeth threw him out that last time—or even after his acquaintanceship with Port Royal’s noose.

‘Come and sail with me, Will. Let me show you the horizon.’

If not for his ties in the town, his love for wife and son, he might let himself be caught up in the riptide pull of Jack Sparrow; he might yield to the subtle urgings of the deep. The last time the pirate called upon them he almost capitulated. Elizabeth recognized this and made haste to remove temion.ion. However, Jack is a man to be reckoned with, a man marked by the favored hand of the goddess of tenacity.

‘Let me take you…away.’

“Will.” The smith stiffens and hunches his shoulders against the indolent gaze of the unconscionable rogue. He does not need to confront Jack just now, so sso soon after…

He can feel the slight change in air currents as the pirate approaches with careful tread. The blunt edges of his fingernails dig into his face. He will not look to see what expression has taken possession of Jack’s emotive features. He will not—

Rough hands grasp his wrists and jerk his hands away. Will allows this violent movement without resistance. Slowly he tilts his head up in one languid roll and meets the pirate’s dark eyes, penetrating eyes. Questions hover there in a fine sheen among a thousand wordless demands and a single entreaty and a promise. The entreaty interrupts his heart; the promise freezes his blood.

With great care and ceremony Jack releases his wrists and picks up the knife that still lies upon the edge of the table. The sharp edge gleams dully beneath Will’s dried blood. The smith glances between the pirate’s gaze and the blade. Without the need for verbal communication, Will obligingly tilts his head further. At the first soft, tender touch of the cold steel against his skin he closes his eyes. Bright, stinging pain blooms upon his cheek, followed by a swift swipe of wet tongue.

Will allows his eyes to open again and absently touches the gash upon his face. It is clean and narrow. Likely it will not even scar, yet he will know it remains just beneath the surface of his healed flesh. It is symbolic of the pirate’s vow.

The time will come when Jack will come for him, come and take Will away whether he wants him to or not. All the ethereal bonds to Elizabeth and their son will hold no governance.

On that day the young smith will fight the pirate captain and the darkness with the last dregshis his strength; he will fight to keep his life full of sunlight and soft breezes.

Until that time he will practice his sword skills and pay special attentions to his family; and he will give himself to Norrington in hopes that someday the man will find a cure for them both.

Jack gives him a knowing wink and pockets the dagger.

He will come when the darkness grows too large for the young man to contain, when no quantity of blood spilled will siphon it off.

“Wait for me.”

“I will.”

What else is he to do?


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End

*
Final Notes: This is the bastard sister to "Sanctified" and follows the same general template. However, something darker took hold of me while I wrote this and it turned into something quite sinister. I think I hate it as Frankenstein hated the monster he created, as only a mother can hate her child.