Tides

Note: This is a scene that takes place somewhere in those five or so days
of captive-freedom Jack decides James oughtta have at the end of Full
Moon. It started life as marshmellowgoo-fic (not marshmAllow -- marshmEllow),
then twisted a bit into PMS-moodswing-fic. If you're just in a mood for
unmitigated schmoopy lovin', don't read this right now.

Other Note: "Luuuuurve" is (::coughcough::) almost unforgivably
anachronistic here. Forgive me anyway. It had to be done.

One More Note: Thanks to MonkeyPuzzle for the Sex-swing of you-know-what.

Jack's eyes were closed, his face resting sideways on folded hands over a
cushiony pillow over the plump mattress that turned a reasonably comfortable
hanging cot into what he'd fondly dubbed the Sex-swing of Luuuuurve.

Not that the mattress was the only ingredient needed to earn the cot that label.
The other reason for the name was currently going over Jack's back, inch by
thorough inch, learning his tattoos and muscles and scars and vertebrae with a
patience and attention to detail he'd seldom shared a bed long enough to
receive.

Odd, that, as they'd not been sharing this space for very long at all. Two
nights with no lurving; three now with. Perhaps three more to go (if he didn't
manage to concoct a few "delays" along the way, which he fully
intended to attempt). Apparently his Commodore James meant to soak him up, drink
him in, carry something of him back to the lonely life the man so voluntarily,
stubbornly, pointlessly insisted on returning to.

Jack shifted to spare a cheekbone the pressure of a ring. Arched a shoulder up
into a caress that paid tribute to the mermaid inked there, a cheery and buxom
seductress he'd worn for but a few years now. James leaned across his back and
kissed the lady softly.

Smiling, not cracking an eye, Jack said, "She's a pretty one, eh?"

"Mm." That, Jack was coming to learn, usually meant agreement.
"Where did you get her?"

"Curacao. Young Dutch chap, very nervous to be markin' up the likes a'me.
Thought if he flubbed it too badly I'd have his tongue or 'is bollocks."

A snort, tiny warm explosion of air against his skin. "I trust you paid the
fellow well?" Thumb tracing the 'maid, curving, rolling over muscle and
bone. "She looks worth a fair price."

"He had no complaints," Jack murmured drowsily.

"Hm." That one, he'd decided, could mean a great many things,
including that James held doubts about something Jack said. Which James
frequently did. Didn't much matter though. He believed what he needed to
believe, and he believed what Jack needed him to believe when it mattered.
Mostly. Sometimes.

And doubts or no, James had given himself quite wholly to the physical here, in
this cabin, with him. He'd been holding a lot in, and for devil knew how long.
Might be because of that "propriety" bilge he'd been drinking his
whole life. Might be a result of the endearingly awkward shyness Jack managed to
startle from him every now and again. Deep waters, this one, for all that he hid
them behind steel and stone, sarcasm and solemnity. Acutely uncomfortable about
revealing those fathoms.

But growing more and more comfortable with Jack's body, at least. He could feel
James kissing along his spine, flicks of tongue, hands spread open as they
journeyed complementary paths. Traveling downward, but slowly. Relishing him.

It would not be easy to relinquish this warm, wet, wandering worship. But he'd
given his word that he would. And Captain Jack Sparrow was...mostly...a man of
his word.

Mouth and lips and tongue lingered over the dragon coiling at the small of his
back. The mermaid was fetching; the dragon, brilliantly colored in reds and
greens and yellows, took one's breath away. "A souvenir?" James asked
against the beast. "Far East?"

"Aye," Jack said, to both. "S'posed to be about wisdom or some
such."

He felt the smirk of a smile. It changed the air between them just a little,
almost a tangible thing. "And were you hoping it would impart a measure of
that cardinal virtue?"

"Then all I'd need is, what...temperance, courage an' justice?" Jack
mumbled absently. "That'd complete the set, aye?"

A pause in movement of hands and kisses. Startlement from James also changed the
air, though in a way that made Jack grin with probably unfair amusement. It was
just too much fun to shake the man up, challenge his entrenched conceptions,
show him a different face of the world he'd once thought he knew.

"I must say, Platonic philosophy is a decidedly odd fit in your bed."

"Keep going in the direction you're goin', mate, there won't be nothin'
platonic about what happens next."

James tasted the dragon. Edged lower. "I don't get you, Jack."

Beginning to wake in more ways than one, Jack writhed a little beneath him in
lascivious invitation. "Been gettin' a lot more of me than most do,
Commodore James."

"One minute you're spouting Plato." Hands nudged Jack's thighs apart.
Teeth nibbled the swell of one buttock. "The next you're mangling
English."

"Aye, well..." He shifted again, taking pressure off the stirring
demand of his cock. "English is a language what can use a little
mangling."

James nipped lower, sharply, where arse met thigh, the sting of it startling,
wince-worthy. Depth of spirit and surprising touch of tenderness aside, he'd
been dangerously excited to find the commodore had a bit of an edge to him in
the sheets. A bit of bite.

"So which is it, Jack? Are you an educated man?" Fingers slid between
his parted thighs, down to tickle his balls. "Or merely very good
at...pretending?"

Jack's breathing quickened a bit. He still kept his eyes shut, his hands beneath
his head, but his legs were sliding over sheets and mattress, propping, shoving
his backside up to that promising mouth while the hand between his thighs took
the hint and closed 'round his stiffening cock. "Does it matter?"

"I'm curious."

"Few days ago you didn't care t' know a bleedin' thing about me."

"And a few days ago you would have helped Black Bart scuttle my ship."

"I'd still help 'im scuttle your ship if you insisted on being fool
enough to fight the both of us at once."

Another nip, rebuking, drawing a hiss. "Dangerous admission, Captain Jack,
when I've your...goods...at my mercy."

"Aye," Jack breathed, "I suspect it was." He pushed back to
elbows, forehead pressing into the pillow. "You plannin' t' do
something with that fine instrument in your hand there?"

The hand, lazily stroking, stilled. Jack cursed.

"You're terribly pushy," James observed loftily.

Enough of this. Jack reached underneath to pry those fingers off of him --
thankfully James wasn't in quite the mood to test how far he might push
back just now -- and flipped over, his motion setting the cot to swinging
irregularly. James caught a suspension chain for balance.

"I," Jack said, emphasizing every word, "am the captain of
this ship. It is my right -- nay, my prerogative, to be pushy." He
propped up on elbows, matching the other man's arrogance in face and voice with
hardly any effort. "And may I remind you, sir, that you are, in
fact, my prisoner, as it were."

James arched an eyebrow. "I could have sworn you named me a free man."

A slow, sly leer. "Bein' my prisoner is a rather liberating
experience, wouldn't you say?"

"So it would seem." And the commodore stretched out alongside him,
propping his head on one hand, dark coffee hair decidedly mussed. He looked
younger now than he had those handful of days past, when he'd come aboard the Pearl
with his pride a sour lump in his gullet and his courage all the more obvious
for the trepidation he'd been unable to entirely hide. Then, Jack would've put
him near his own age, plus or minus a year or three. Now he wondered.

Of course, now he could ask. "How old are you, mate?"

"Why?"

"Must there be a reason?"

Faint smile. "You've still not answered my question. Why should I answer
yours?"

"I forgot yours."

"Your education," James reminded him patiently. "Where did it
come from?"

Ah. Still trying to reconcile a learned pirate with the upbringing that had
taught one James Norrington to disbelieve in even the possibility of such
things. "Where'd yours come from?"

"Private tutors mostly. Then the Naval Academy, of course."

"And you've learned nothing outside of that?"

Green eyes, browned by lamplight, took on a considering cast, thoughtful. That
so-often-frowning mouth thinned absently as he was forced yet again to question
himself. Jack rather thought James wanted to resent him for that. Were the man
less honest, less willing to acknowledge truth when it hit him upside the head,
no doubt he would.

A bit of a scowl creased lips and pale brow. "You expect me to believe
you're entirely self-educated?"

"No man -- nor woman, for that matter -- educates himself in isolation. Or
herself. Or itself, I suppose, in the case of eunuchs, of which I've only met
two I can confirm."

"What does that mean?"

Jack fell back to the pillow with a soft whump and stared up at the dark wood
paneling above them. "It means we learn where we learn how we learn from
whom -- or what -- we learn it from."

"Could you try to be a bit vaguer, Jack? I very nearly followed that."

Obligingly, Jack lifted arms to gesture expansively, and quite vaguely.
"Y'see, mate, we are all of us but the wee-est of babes toddling through
the great an' terrible enigma that is this adventure we call life..."

James shushed him with smiling lips upon his. Pulled away just enough to speak
and told him, "I'm thirty-one."

Thirty-one. Christ. Jack smoothed a thumb over that solemn brow until the lines
that shouldn't be there eased away under the touch. "See? Practically an
infant."

"Thirty-one is hardly young."

"Say that when you're forty."

Green eyes flew wide. "You're not."

"Not what?"

"Forty."

"Very well then."

"Then how old...?"

"Eh? Oh. Forty."

James blinked. "Forty years?"

His hand slipped down to chuck the whelp beneath his chin. "Aye," he
said simply. "As of June."

"But you seem so..."

Baring teeth, Jack wriggled up against him, catching behind his neck and tugging
him down. "I must be doin' somethin' right, eh?" he said between
kisses. "Could be in nine years you'll be laughing at forty."

"I'm not even laughing at thirty-one," James muttered far too
seriously.

"Could be..." He watched those closed eyes, caressing lips to parted
lips. "...you change your life now...head off in a new direction...could
be..."

Eyes opened. James pulled back an inch, staring at him. The muscles along the
back of his neck were tight beneath Jack's hand.

Jack sighed to himself. Right, right. Duty, obligation, honor, all that rot. It
wasn't fair, apparently, to remind the man he had choices.

"It could be that if you changed your life now, you'd be alive when
I'm not laughing at forty," James told him, voice rather flat. Quite cold,
really, for all the heat of his body full length along Jack's.

Jack began to remember why that certain subject wasn't worth broaching here. It
tended to kill the mood. And honestly, what good was having a commodore in his
cot if he didn't get to use him?

He smiled, offering peace. Said noncommittally, "Could be." And to
change the subject, veer it towards physicality and touch and the things he knew
James knew he could do to his body, he caught his companion's right hand and
pulled it before him, palm to his face, frowning with great concentration.

A hint of reluctant smile. "What are you doing?"

"Reading your future."

"Reading my future."

"Aye," Jack said gravely. "Now stop distracting me, man, or I'll
read it all wrong."

James fell silent, watching him. Let his hand be moved pliantly between Jack's
manipulating fingers. Tension still lingered in his body, however, and not the
kind the pirate preferred to find there, so Jack casually flopped a leg across
his, knee hooking over a naked thigh, the shift bringing him close enough to
remind the man's half-erect organ that they had unfinished business yet. James
chuffed a quiet laugh.

"Shhh," Jack chided.

"Aye, Captain Jack."

"I do so love the sound of that... Say it again."

"Captain Jack?"

"The whole thing."

James leaned in close. Tucked hair aside and breathed into his ear,
"Aye...Captain...Jack." Then turned it into a sojourn down his jawline
to mouth the strawberry blotch of birthmark half-hidden under beard.

Jack tipped his head, inviting more nibbling, but kept up his examination of
that captured hand. Not so rough as his own. There were calluses aplenty here,
though, from diligent sword-training like as not. He knew from a good number of
hours of feeling those hands all over him that the right was tougher, more
conditioned than the left. He'd have to remember to mention that later...tell
James to practice more with his weaker side. Sometimes such versatility made all
the difference in a melee where no one deigned to follow the "proper"
rules of engagement.

"Long life," he said, thumbing a groove across that palm. "Good
health."

"Hm."

"You doubt me?"

"I didn't say that," James told his throat. "Please go on."

Another line, deep and distinct. "According to this you're a..."
Deliberate pause. Haughty inflection. "...reasonably intelligent
man."

A breathy chuckle. Lips closed against the side of his neck, and then there was
hard, almost painful suction. Marking him -- claiming him? Oh dear boy.

"D'you want children?"

"Mm."

"I see children. A great many children, all a credit to their father,
naturally." He followed a random curve over the heel of the hand.
"Except for Jimmy Junior here. He plans to run off an' turn pirate."

"Does he." James rolled in a little, knee flexing and pushing Jack's
draped leg up. His cock, more than half-hard now, pressed along Jack's thigh.
"Are you implying..." A pause to work a trail down his chest, breath
hot and moist over a nipple. "...that you will have some influence over my
children?"

"Only Jimmy."

James licked. Firmly. "And if none of my sons are named Jimmy? Or
James?"

Sparks flickered through his veins, shooting outward from chest and groin in
tandem with that stroking tongue. "What? You think I was born
Captain Jack Sparrow?"

Lamplit eyes flashed at him. He realized belatedly that he'd just invoked
another curiosity in his companion, and swore inwardly. Unreasonable, it was,
that the man could still think so clearly even with that increasingly more
insistent erection burning into Jack's thigh.

He laid a finger over James's lips to fend off questions. Shook his head
slightly, unsmiling.

Those eyes studied him a few heartbeats, the thoughts behind them indiscernible,
but a moment later James kissed his finger in tacit agreement and bent back to
that nipple he'd taken such a liking to.

"Do you see..." Lick. "...the woman who's to help..."
Nibble. "...with the making of all these children?"

"Ah..." He blinked, trying to refocus on that hand again. "Have
you any prospects at present?"

"No." With an unmistakable trace of bitterness. Still not over
Elizabeth? Well, Jack supposed she'd be a hard one to move on from, once the
heart settled there.

But no reason he couldn't spin a hopeful little fantasy... "I see a woman
of strength and intelligence." Presumably James liked his women thus, as
Elizabeth could never be mistaken for lacking either. "Beauty, no
doubt."

"Hm."

"A great and very necessary patience, of course, if she's to be paired with
you..."

"I might say the same for anyone who shares your company for any length of
time," James muttered wryly. "Little wonder you're not married."

"How d'you know I'm not?"

Another glint of inquisitive eyes. This time, however, perhaps finally giving in
to the growing demands of his body, he let the question rest.

Jack felt an anticipatory thrill as James rubbed against him, erection
throbbing. His own cock bobbed sympathetically. "Does she have a
name," James asked, sounding rather uninterested, "this fine
woman?"

"For certain." Jack drew his hand down and tasted the wrist,
reacquainting himself with the flavor of commodore. "That's best left
secret, however. You wouldn't want to be chasing her away by acting out of sorts
when you meet her, savvy?"

"Mm." Pulling his hand from Jack's grasp, James ran it down his torso
in a steady glide to his cock, which he took up without delay, pumping
unhurriedly, those sword-calluses sweet torture in the ring of that sliding
grasp.

Jack's breathing sounded jagged, harsh already in the quiet of the cabin with
the soft creaking of the chains as the cot swung gently to and fro. Outside on
the main deck the crew was just starting to put some volume to their nightly
distractions, louder and more flagrant with their cavorting than they'd normally
bother to be. The HMS Encounter, shadowing them, had his people edgy.
They needed to burn off the energy and thumb their noses at the Navy at once.
Last night he'd walked out in the midst of the revelry to find a whole row of
scallywags flashing their bare arses over the bulwark at the Encounter.

Only with a great exercise of willpower had he resisted joining them.

He started to sit up. James covered him instead in a swift, constraining motion,
barely room enough between their bodies for his continual stroking, pulling,
kneading of Jack's cock. It seemed the man was done with words; he put his mouth
to better use, crushing lips against Jack's, tongue forging between his teeth
with an insistent, irregular rhythm that brought to mind choppy seas,
unpredictable swells, the ocean in one of her bitchier moods.

Jack gripped his hair. Kissed him back with matching force, giving over to the
nearly violent accord.

Slowing suddenly, deepening the kiss and making each movement more deliberate,
James curved fingers against the head of his cock, smearing and gathering fluid.
Jack sent a hand to explore the readiness of James's erection. At his touch the
man flinched with a sharply inhaled sibilant, the sound like pain. Jack touched
him again, liking the response, but James twisted away.

"I want to have you," he whispered roughly into Jack's mouth. Slicked
fingers slid down, prodding for access. Jack drew his legs up. "Be inside
you."

He quaked at words and sensation both as a finger pressed into him.
"Developed a...taste for it...have you?" Only last night had he
inducted the commodore into the semi-exclusive club of men who'd buggered
Captain Jack Sparrow. By the end of these five (or more) days, he fully intended
to have also introduced James to the roster of men who'd been buggered by
Captain Jack Sparrow, though he could tell already that would take a bit of
doing. The proud officer got twitchy whenever he strayed too near the backdoor.
But Jack had considerable -- certainly justifiable -- faith in his powers
of persuasion, and if anyone could manage it...

"Holyjeezusfuck," he gasped when another finger worked inside, deep
enough to graze that wonderful something that made his cock jump in
tortured joy.

"Where's the oil?" James muttered, fingers still stroking in and out
as he looked around them. "Where oh where..."

"Jar," Jack said, panting, pointing, "floor."

James leaned over him, looking down. "Damn."

Grasping at air off the side of the cot, Jack commanded the little jar,
"Jump." Nothing sprang to his hand. "Please jump?" It
failed to so please.

The bland look James gave him, even while fingering him quite imperatively,
suggested that Jack's solution left something to be desired.

Fine then. He'd just have to do everything. "Don't let go of
me," he warned, squirming sideways, then diagonally to lean head and
shoulders backwards off the cot. The fingers in him stilled, started to
withdraw. He pulled up, horrified, sending an imploring look. "Don't stop!"

Laughter. James curled an arm around one of his thighs, holding it securely to
his chest and leaning back to counter his weight. Thrust fingers inside with a
twist and a flex. Jack, forgetting to breathe, hung limply from the cot, a hand
and most of his hair brushing back and forth on the floor. No reason he couldn't
just stay here a little while...oh...they were such long and...and
splendidly wriggly fingers...

"Jack." A tad strained there, Commodore. "The oil, Jack."

"Eh?"

"Jack."

He spied the jar. Reached for it. "Now who's pushy?"

James hauled him up and back to the center of the cot, the whole assemblage
rocking in a decidedly perilous fashion beneath them. Quite impatient now
himself, Jack slapped the jar into his waiting hand, instantly mourning the loss
of those fingers as they abandoned him to open it. While James hurriedly
anointed himself Jack grabbed a pillow, pulling it down to shove beneath his
hips. Comfort was not a thing to be frowned upon.

When James saw what he intended -- just like this, face-to-face -- something
flickered through his expression that had the appearance of sudden doubt, very
nearly alarm. Smiling enigmatically, maybe a little cruelly, Jack let him know
he saw it. Said not a word to acknowledge the hesitation. Last night the
commodore had fucked him from behind. Searingly exciting and wildly pleasurable,
aye, but Jack had a mind to test some limits here tonight. Face-to-face meant
eye-to-eye. Meant locked gazes and forced acknowledgment of just whose
body was providing these sensations, the mutuality of the experience.

In a word, it meant intimacy. And Jack felt a certain wicked urge to see just
how poorly this man dealt with it.

Eyes hooded, not quite concealing his unease, James moved to kneel between
Jack's quickly lifted legs. In a moment the slippery head of his erection nudged
for entrance, pushed inside.

Jack took a shaky breath at the long, slow, careful glide. Here was that
concern, that self-restraint. It called from memory a terse explanation once
uttered from those lips for his ears: I serve others, Mister Sparrow, not
only myself.

So that's what that meant...

James stopped, flush against him now and breathing harshly, holding in place
with Jack's legs anchored over his shoulders. Looked down into his face. Seemed
bemused by the curve of his lips, the fragment of a grin there.

Jack's hands pulled him down to plunder his mouth as the commodore's hips began
to thrust. James groaned a low, hungry rasp of a sound, eyes closing.

Maybe the man was really falling for him. He'd thought so after their first
night of shared and traded pleasures -- after he'd broken through that frigid,
self-satisfied mask and teased James out from the safety of Commodore.
Then, mere hours later, he'd been forced to reevaluate. Stood to reason a man
who'd fallen for him would want to be with him, and yet his
not-quite-offer of kidnapping had been summarily rejected.

But then there was that declaration to consider. I serve others...

Against him, inside him, James swelled and ran out like waves on the shore --
surging push up (in) over, caressing, shoving, displacing...dragging, reluctant
draw (out) back to the sea, only to build and surge again. His face, laid bare
by greedy need and that truly surprising tenderness, fascinated Jack, held his
focus even as the hard shaft struck bone-like against the spot over and
over again, even as Jack's aching cock throbbed against his abdomen.

Those eyes hadn't opened. Jack wondered if James knew how telling that was. Not
thinking about it, he drew his head closer and kissed one eyelid, the other. If
the man would only look at him...only brave his feelings and look at
him...

The thrusts picked up speed and force bit by bit, Jack squirming to match and
counter them, swearing between his teeth, wanting to send his hands ranging but
curiously reluctant to release James's head, his face. Curiously unwilling to
stop studying him.

It would be quite a boon, having a man of this one's rank and authority wrapped
around his finger. He'd return to these waters in time, after all, and no doubt
by then Black Bart would be gone, leaving Jack Sparrow and his nonpareil Black
Pearl the most coveted outlaw targets in the entire ocean. Then, for
survival's sake, he might well need this man to love him. If he could manage the
trick. If James would open his eyes.

"Jack," on a hoarse groan, "oh god..."

James tremored atop him, his bracing arms tense. Jack touched lips to his
shuttered eyes again, each one, then abruptly found himself caught in another of
those bruising, needing-taking kisses, James's tongue pistoning through his lips
as tempestuously as his loins thrust against Jack's pelvis.

Jack's eyelids fluttered, widening and then shutting, the totality of sensation
building like a wave, roiling, rising, rumbling towards the break. He felt James
pull back from his lips. Felt the furious motion slow, gather, the whitecap
forming on the crest.

Jack opened his eyes. Met a sea-green gaze of shattering intensity that
swallowed him in and took him apart, piece by piece, in the space between
heartbeats.

"Jack," James mouthed, nearly voiceless.

"Oh fuck," Jack managed, brokenly. And shut his eyes tight.

The wave crashed over him with drowning strength. He swore profusely, the words
meaningless, their only worth in channeling his sudden panic into something less
helpless than stammering cries. All but untouched, his cock jerked and unloaded
in spasms of white.

A hollow, aching moan. James shuddered, thrusting shallow and quick and then
lunging, body arching, his outcry buried in the hollow of Jack's neck as he gave
his release to Jack's clenching arse.

The chains, Jack noted distantly, were squeaking near-constant complaints at the
disturbance to the cot's equilibrium. The sound seemed unnaturally loud. So did
James's ragged breathing. So did his own hammering heartbeat, thumping a
rabbit-warren-alarm against his breastbone.

Slowly, he eased his legs down. James pulled back, sliding out of him, then
stretched to cover him again, uncaring of the mess smeared between them,
catching some of his weight on forearms to either side of Jack's body. He let
out a long, unsteady breath against Jack's neck.

Jack stared at the dark ceiling flickering with the amber light of the lamp, his
eyes feeling too wide, his heart not seeming inclined to slow anytime soon.
Something, he decided, had gone very very wrong with the Plan. According to the Plan,
right now the good commodore should be lying in shocked silence with his
lungs incapable of drawing deep breath. Not the pirate. Where had he
miscalculated? Had he forgotten to carry a two...?

"Jack...?" Spoken into his skin, warm enough to make him shiver. James
sounded sated. He sounded concerned.

"'m good, mate." Only a little lie. He cleared his throat. Steered
away from that dangerous reef. "You might have a bit of a gift for this, I
think."

A smile in that voice. "Oh?"

"Aye."

"It seems a shame, then, that I shall have so little opportunity to
practice it."

Jack crossed arms over his sweaty back, palms circling languidly.
"Eh?"

James shifted a little to the right, taking more weight on that side and
touching his left hand to Jack's face, tracing the bridge of his nose, the curve
of his cheekbone. "Even if I were inclined to simply indulge with any
willing body -- and I'm not -- my life is rather...public."

Jack gazed upward. That hand wandered his face, memorizing, reminding him with
every motion that its owner would soon be gone. Back to that public life while
Jack returned to trying to sneak up on whatever existed just past the skyline.
Just him and the Pearl and a suitably crazy crew, voluntarily exiled from
this place.

"Once Bart's gone..." he began, not sure where the thought would take
him. Not sure where it could take him.

James stroked a thumb over his lips, stilling them. Resettled his cheek against
Jack's chest. His voice, musing, detached, struck Jack as very, very military.
"There's apt to be a knighthood in it for me, if I'm the one to take him
down."

"A knighthood." His hands lay flat, heavy on James's back. On the
commodore's back. "Well. Bully for you."

"Mm."

He didn't much like the sick swirl happening in his gut. Really didn't care for
the memory image that sprang to mind just then: the decaying corpses on display
at Gallows Point outside Port Royal's harbor, swaying helplessly in the wind.
Swaying with a rhythm not wholly unlike that which the Pearl's steady
rolling gave this cot holding them.

I serve others, Mister Sparrow...

A slow breath, indrawn and exhaled. Yes, it meant that too, didn't it?

"Am I worth a knighthood?"

The thumb lazily stroking his cheekbone faltered in its motion. "Not to
me."

Jack dredged up a bit of a smile at that. "Call me presumptuous, mate, but
I'd already figured on that much."

Another shift to the side. James lifted to look at him, and for all that the
intensity was once again buried, Jack found his gaze little easier to take now.
"Quite sure of yourself, aren't you?"

Jack regarded him, half-lidded. "Should I not be?"

An eyebrow tilted. "For the life of me, I cannot understand how your
overconfidence has failed to kill you already."

He shrugged one shoulder. "Aye, it's a mystery, innit?" Then ran a
hand into sweat-dampened hair atop that serious face, ruffling the untidy locks
briskly before sidling away, slipping from the cot to feel the Pearl's
reassuring solidity beneath his feet. He hunted down his breeches and stepped
into them, lacing up as he walked to the water jug, then dampening the washrag
and swabbing his abdomen, his chest.

"Going somewhere?"

"Crew's too quiet. Best be certain they're not takin' the boats across for
a little nighttime assault on your bonnie Encounter, eh?"

Once again the military man, James sat up swiftly. "They wouldn't."

Jack flashed teeth. "Pirates, mate. Unwise to put money on what they wouldn't
do." He wrung out the rag, soaked it again, squeezed most of the water from
it and tossed it to James. "Be right back."

"If your men attack my ship, Jack..."

At the doors, with his back to James, Jack paused. Said over a shoulder,
"Let's not be makin' unnecessary threats, Commodore. I wager no one out
there's gonna earn you that knighthood."

The silence following that was a bit heavy, a bit stunned. Constantly redrawn
between them, these boundaries were, and he doubted James knew anymore than he
did just where tolerance ended at any given moment.

"Likely not," the man said after a moment, stiffly.

Jack scrubbed a hand over his face, muttered something rather vile beneath his
breath, and pushed the doors open to escape into the humid night.

~finis~