The Raptors of Misdirection and Waxing Gibberish - Chapter 10
Title: The Raptors of Misdirection and Waxing Gibberish
Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean; Sparrington
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: I have no claim on POTC or the lovely characters who populate it, even if it seems that James Norrington is making himself quite at home in my head, the snarky British bastard.
Summary: After the initial chaos on Isla Cruces, there is a lull, which the two captains take advantage of. Groves is a bit bemused. Anamaria settles the lingering debt Jack owes her. Elizabeth is very greatly amused.
Chapter Ten
James exhaled slowly and deliberately through his teeth, which were clenched against the pain. Someone on the Black Pearl had possessed the foresight to make sure that there had been almost-boiling hot water waiting when they had returned. James was very grateful. It just hurt a great deal to have the steaming cloth pressed into his wound.
“I don’t trust that slime Jones’ crew seem to have instead of blood, mate. I doubt you want it in your system,” Jack had said.
And James had agreed, which was how he had ended up stripped from the waist up and sitting backwards on a chair in Jack’s cabin while Jack sat behind him--the pirate being notably sans coat, weapons and hand-decorations--with one hand resting on the undamaged side of James’ back for balance, and his other cleaning James’ wound with a steaming-hot cloth. James’ arms were loosely folded on the back of his own chair; this stretched the wound uncomfortably, but it was as James had said: only a flesh-wound.
The cleaning and sewing supplies were on the table to their right, along with a small pile of cloth-and-leather wrappings and gaudy rings, which Jack had removed from his hands in order to prevent them getting wet and bloody. It was for the same reason that he’d unbuttoned his sleeve-cuffs and pushed them up his arms so the fabric gathered at his elbows.
Jack dipped the cloth into the hot water again, letting it soak, wringing it out, soaking it again, wringing it out only part-way, and then pressed the steaming cloth to the wound again.
James did not flinch, but small muscle at the corner of his jaw might have twitched. He did not even close his eyes. He only took another deep breath, and slowly let it out. Then the cloth was gone, after wiping away the remaining blood from the surrounding skin. Some number of years ago he had spent a few months perfecting his ability to not-react to pain. It had made a few particularly sadistic spaniards lose interest in him quickly, moving on to more responsive prisoners for their entertainments: a valuable thing, back then.
Luckily, Jack’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “So you realized he was leavin’ a bit of a trail, then? For Beckett?”
“Yes. And I verified that it was Studson doing so after I had noticed the first two markers he dropped overboard. Studson has worked in my command for years now. I could see what was going on.”
“Aye. I can tell. But at some point you forgot to tell me about all this. Hardly fair, mate.”
“What? And miss my opportunity to shock Captain Jack Sparrow?” Then Jack dragged the cloth down one blood-drop’s trail leading very nearly to the waist of James’ breeches, and the ex-commodore tried to repress the shiver it caused with incomplete success. As the adrenaline buzz wore off, his skin was increasingly sensitive, but not to pain.
“You alright, there, James?” Jack’s voice was a bit low.
James cleared his throat quietly. “Yes.” He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder and meet Jack’s gaze with a heated enough look to let the pirate know quite how fine he felt indeed, but he knew that it would be best if he at least wait for the stitches to be done, and besides, those should come up next, getting out of the way soon enough. He was surprised when he instead felt a cool ointment being applied. It smelled crisply of mint as well as something sharper and more pungent, and it was cooling at first, but it stung slightly and made his skin feel hotter once applied. “What is that?”
“A gift from a girl named Tia Dalma. She gives me a bit of it every time I drop by, since she knows how often I get cut up. It’s good for keepin’ out rot and helps you to heal up a bit faster.” He blew a puff of air across it and James restrained another, more violent, shiver as the tingling heat of the ointment abruptly felt cold once more, at least, until the air stilled again.
Interesting, James thought, aware of the tension collecting low in his abdomen; he pulled himself together, requiring use of every ounce of his considerable restraint to keep his voice unaffected as he asked, “And we are currently headed to meet this woman?”
“Yes. She knows more about the thump-thump in your coat over there than even Mr. Gibbs and all the other men like him that Tortuga might have to offer.”
“Mm. Impressive.” James could hear some shuffling sounds, then the sounds of Jack dipping his hands into the pot of hot water and scrubbing them a bit with the cloth that was still floating in it.
The pirate asked simply, “You ready for the needle, then, mate?”
“As I’ll ever be,” James murmured. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sparrow apply more of the ointment to the needle and thread. Then he felt Jack’s hands on his back. Resting his forehead on his folded forearms, James took a slow, deliberate breath. When the needle pierced his skin, it burned, searing and tingling and the adrenaline suddenly was not enough to distract him. His shoulders tensed. Gritting his teeth, James breathed out slowly as Jack pulled the thread through and tied down the anchor-stitch before continuing to the next one.
Jack admitted a bit of respect for James’ pain tolerance. The first time that he’d put Tia’s ointment on something that’d needed to be stitched, Jack had cursed so loudly and to such effect that even Barbossa had blanched a bit--before the mutinous bastard had burst out laughing, as he was so oft prone to do.
As Jack neatly stitched the wound shut with the ease that came from practicing for years on himself, he occasionally glanced over, in an appreciative fashion, the lovely view he had of James’ naked back. He’d gotten to do most of his looking while cleaning the wound, but now he noticed finer details, like the distinctive texture of the scars across James’ shoulder blades; while at first glance, he’d assumed them to be from being flogged in the Navy for one offense or another, at second and third glances, Jack realized that the scars weren’t quite that old and that even the Navy was usually averse to using cat-o’-nine-tails instead of good old fashioned whips, even in small amounts, on their officers; those scars, then, probably shared the same origins as the shackle-marks on James’ wrists.
Then there was the one really and truly surprising part about James’ naked back: the tattoo. It had caught Jack’s eye as soon as the ex-commodore had pulled off his shirt. It was in the middle of James’ upper back, almost near the nape of his neck, and the ink had been done on top of the ragged old scars, which meant it had been tattooed at some point after the time James had spent with the Spanish. It wasn’t any symbolic image: just two latin phrases, two separate lines one on top of the other. They were written twice: in normal script on the right side of James’ spine, and backwards on the left side, forming mirror-images like the shadow of a pair of lost wings. Jack realized that the tattoo was designed so that James could read it in the mirror easily, while still not appearing to hide the message in any way:
The script was bold, each letter nearly an inch tall, in such clear script that it might have come from a printing press, if the press in question had possessed a slightly Romanesque style. The ink was medium-blue and not very faded over the last several years; although now that the unscarred skin around it had tanned, it seemed less stark than it might have looked in the past.
When Jack finished stitching, he put a bandage over the wound, its edges painted with something very sticky to hold it in place.
“I’m surprised that you’ve kept quite so quiet,” James murmured, his calm voice not edged with pain now, but still slightly rougher than usual. Then again, Jack’s hands were still on him, and one of them was pressed flat to his skin, moving slowly from his shoulder blade downward, along his uninjured left side. James did not lift his brow from where it rested on his folded arms. His breathing was still controlled, but the tension in his shoulders was easing. The tension elsewhere, lower in his body, was not letting up in the slightest. Unseen by Jack, James licked his lips.
“The tattoo you’ve got here’s a bit disquietin’,” Jack murmured.
“Yes.” A half-smirk. “It occurs to me: I am not at all surprised that you know Latin.”
“Good. I’d be ashamed of you otherwise, Jamie.”
James chuckled softly.
“Good advice, though,” Jack remarked, tracing two fingers across the inked skin.
“I’ve needed it a lot, in times past. Especially the second one, but that’s gotten easier of recent, it would seem.”
“Good to hear, that.”
A slight pause.
James turned his head slightly, still not lifting it. “Jack?”
“Yes, love?”
“Are you aware of your left hand?” James sounded amused, his smirk almost audible, but there was something too-heavy about his tone that belied his sardonic calm. It took a great deal of effort on James’ not to twitch or shift his hips in a suggestive fashion.
Jack was about to say that he was, but then realized that he truthfully had no idea when his left hand had abandoned its post on James’ shoulder blade and somehow wandered all the way down to James’ hipbone, where two of Jack’s fingers had gone so far as to slip partially under the waistband of James’ breeches to explore it. Jack considered this and said with surprised sincerity, “Not ‘til you’d mentioned it, really.” Sidling forward a little until he sat on the very edge of his chair, Jack leaned forward until he could feel the heat coming off of the other man’s body. Jack’s breath stirred the fine hairs at the nape of James’ neck, and the pirate could anticipation akin to the electric hum in the air just before a lightning-storm. His voice was thus a little huskier than usual when, letting his lips brush the ex-commodore’s skin, he inquired, “D’you really mind it there, Jamie?”
With a herculean effort, James prevented himself from reacting more than the involuntary tension throughout his body from anticipation, despite the rush of heat he felt at the gravel in Jack’s voice and the sensation of Jack’s lips on his neck. He did lift his head a little, turning just enough to tease, but not quite enough for Jack to see more of his face than the line of his brow and cheek. In light and thoughtful sardonic tones, he mused, “Do I mind? Hmm.” There was no way to tell if he were threatening or flirting.
Jack was unperturbed, but wary, ready to spring away even as his fingers slid further beneath the fabric of James’ breeches. Jack was still unsure whether he would have to flee or not when the pirate hunter pushed himself, with apparent calm and poise, to his feet and turned to face him. Then James leaned towards him, resting a hand on either arm of Jack’s chair, caging the pirate in place. Mesmerized by the predatory smirk on James’ face, Jack found himself unable to complain about how his hands were now suddenly cold, as he had planned on doing from the moment the ex-commodore’s movements had removed them from said ex-commodore’s trousers. Then Jack glanced down at the front of the trousers in question and grinned at the visible bulge there. “You don’t mind, then. Very good.”
“You never stop talking do you?” James rumbled, his lips very close to Jack’s.
“Make me.”
At that, James grinned, showing all of his teeth, and seized Jack’s hips in an iron grip. “I accept your challenge.” James leaned back from his hips and pulled Jack after him, so that James landed back in his chair with a lapful of warm and breathless pirate. Smirking at him, James curled a hand into Jack’s heavily decorated hair, pulling him forward a little further. Thus arranging the pirate into the opportune placement, James fixed his mouth onto a deliciously tender spot on the side of Jack’s throat and taunted it mercilessly with lips and tongue and teeth.
Jack laughed in surprised satisfaction, relaxing into the embrace, one hand clutching hard at the arm wrapped around his waist and the other exploring the skin across James’ front, lingering on the scars from a bullet-wound on the ex-commodore’s left shoulder because he remembered when that one had been fresher. When James’ grip on his waist tightened, Jack couldn’t help but grind against the other man’s growing erection. He grinned when James let out a sharp breath against his throat.
“Jack...”
And wasn’t it nice to hear his name growled out like that? “A man could get used to this kind of treatment,” Jack muttered, and his grin widened until James’ mouth distracted him again; lips moved up over Jack’s jaw, a warm tongue flicked out to trace the edge of his beard, and teeth nipped at his lower lip. At the pirate captain’s sharp intake of breath, James kissed him hard, his tongue sliding past Jack’s lips to conquer his mouth. Jack groaned, fighting back by capturing James’ tongue in his teeth and sucking on it, and James responded with a low growling noise that made the pirate shiver.
Jack was surprised by quite how dexterous and fast James’ fingers were, quickly and efficiently divesting him of his belts and sash, then untucking the hem of his shirt and sliding beneath the cloth to explore his skin. James’ palms and fingers spread wide to press flat against Jack’s body as they wandered, feeling everything: every shift of muscle beneath skin, every scar and every twitch when he found a particularly sensitive spot, which the ex-commodore logged away for future reference.
Then, still not leaving off of the kissing, Jack retaliated by pushing James’ shoulders until the man leaned back in the chair, giving Jack enough room to remove James’ belt, which he tossed aside. He stroked James’ erection through the surprisingly soft fabric of James’ breeches, earning a low and tasty little noise of approval from the ex-commodore, who was clearly struggling against the urge to wantonly thrust against Jack’s hand as the pirate traced the lines of him and squeezed in an ever-so-maddening fashion.
James finally broke away from Jack’s mouth, breathing hard as his hands grabbed fistfuls of Jack’s shirt and tugged urgently. “Lift your arms.” His eyes were dark and his growling voice managed to sound expertly commanding even when partially breathless.
Jack smirked a bit, meeting James’ gaze before holding up his arms and allowing the ex-commodore to pull his shirt up over his head. Then the pirate hissed in surprise and cursed under his breath as James leaned in and swirled his tongue around one nipple, teeth nipping very gently at the tender skin. Jack reflected, somewhat dazedly, that James was not in the least new to these activities and not hesitant in the least, which was both surprising and arousing as Hell. Then James, holding onto the side of Jack’s waist with one hand and pushing up off the edge of the table for leverage with the other, rolled his hips in a fantastic and highly skilled undulating motion, rubbing himself up against Jack in a way that caused every coherent thought in the pirate’s head to disappear.
Jack released a shocked groan, his hands clutching James’ lithe hips in a bruising grip; and although he made no attempt to stop them moving, stop they did, leaving him a bit dazed and disappointed. Breathing hard, the pirate struggled to shape the vague, blurred notions in his mind into a coherent question; finally, as James’ smirk became thoroughly insufferable, Jack succeeded: “Where did a nice Navy man such as yourself learn a trick like that?” Jack managed, his face flushed and his black eyes full of hunger.
James grinned wickedly and undulated again, making the pirate arch into him with a choked-sounding gasp, until their upper bodies were pressed together, skin to skin. James’ voice was rough and heavy when he replied, “The Navy, of course... and, by extension, Singapore.” He ran his tongue downward along the shell of the pirate’s ear and licked at the pierced lobe. “And ‘nice’ has never really stood out as one of my more prominent character traits.”
“You? Singapore?” Jack wasn’t entirely aware of asking; instead, he was rather intently focused on the way James was nibbling his earlobe and suckling gently on the piercing in it.
“I had a brother stationed in the area. He was the one who wasn’t an unrepentant ass,” James said quietly, then nipped the shell of Jack’s ear while his tongue ran along its edge, making Jack groan again and mutter an oath under his breath.
James’ breath hitched as his trousers were at last unbuttoned and tugged open by Jack’s clever hands, one of which decided to wrap itself firmly around his cock and give one long, slow and exploratory stroke, leaving James quite breathless.
“Pride of the King’s Navy you must’ve been, then, James,” Jack mused, stroking, squeezing, stroking again.
The former navy man shuddered with the effort of holding onto his self-control, and Jack took advantage of his distraction, sliding his unoccupied hand into the other man’s hair, tugging at it until James tilted his head back, whereupon Jack ran his tongue up the length of the paler man’s throat at the same time that he gave James’ cock an encouraging little squeeze. James made a low, breathless sound, like a groan restrained, and bucked his hips. Jack stroked him slowly, teasingly and coaxed his mouth in a languid kiss that stifled James’ moan.
Giving in to the pirate’s ministrations--at first--James arched up against Jack, his hands clinging tight at Jack’s waist, but then, after a moment, slid down the man’s stomach to the fastenings of his breeches, regaining some sense of purpose through the lustful haze; he wanted to see Jack Sparrow lose control entirely and come undone with him. Once he had the other man’s trousers open, James turned the tables on their playful little duel for dominance. Seizing Jack by the arse, he abruptly rose to his feet, smirking against Jack’s mouth when the pirate gave a muffled little yelp of surprise and instinctively wrapped his legs around him for support. James ran his tongue across Jack’s lower lip lazily as he carried them both toward the bed.
Jack chuckled. “You’re quite good at this, James,” he panted. Then it was the ex-commodore’s turn to make a low, startled sound when Jack seized the bedpost and canopy for leverage and twisted them around so that the pirate landed on top, straddling James’ lap.
“I could say the same for you, Jack,” James admitted, his green eyes wide and dark. “But I’m sure that your already considerable ego needs no help.”
They stared at each other for a moment, breathing hard. Then Jack moved further down James’ body and lifted one of James’ knees until the ex-commodore’s boot-heel rested on the edge of the bed. He unfastened the other man’s boot, tugged it off, and dropped it to the floor. Then he replaced James’ leg into its former position, and repeated the action with the other boot; throughout, he never looked away from the James’ green eyes, which made the entire business much more... interesting.
Sitting up on his elbows, James watched Jack’s face closely as the pirate took his boots and stockings, dropping all of it to the floor. Then Jack moved back and his fingers curled around the sides of James’ breeches; obligingly, the ex-commodore lifted his hips so that when Jack pulled them, they slid off without further encouragement. James made that low growling noise again as Jack crawled back up his body.
“You’re just full of surprises, ain’t you, love?” Jack mused, curiosity making his dark eyes bright and his grin sharp. A not-quite-stifled gasp escaped him when James abruptly wrapped one leg around his, slipping his foot under the edge of Jack’s boot and sliding it down slowly. The boot hit the floor with a soft thud.
“You aren’t the only one who enjoys keeping people off-balance,” James countered, repeating the boot-removal procedure on the other side, until the footwear fell away, forgotten. Then James’ legs tightened around Jack’s and the pirate realized, belatedly, that James could grapple quite well, as shown by how easily he flipped their positions and pinned Jack to the bed by his hips--specifically, via the ex-commodore’s exceptionally warm palms pressing to the suddenly bare skin of Jack’s hips, long commodorial fingers gripping firmly and holding him down. James’ smirk widened slowly as he lowered his lips to kiss Jack’s breastbone.
“So I see,” Jack replied breathlessly, watching him intently. Then he gave a low groan as James’ thumbs (also very warm) traced the tender skin on either side of his groin--close to the part of him that so desperately needed to be touched, but not close enough to satisfy. Warm hands, Jack thought dazedly, are marvelous. Shortly afterward, the pirate’s train of thought was derailed entirely as those hands pushed his breeches further down and James wrapped his lips around the head of Jack’s cock, sucking on it as his tongue fleetingly swept beneath the edge of the foreskin. Giving himself up for lost as a warm and rope-roughened sword-roughened hand wrapped around the base of his erection, Jack let his head fall back onto the bed as obscenities rolled off his tongue in three different languages.
James smirked slightly, relaxing his jaw and his throat as he took Jack further into his mouth, tasting smoke, salt, spices, and masculine arousal. Holding Jack’s hips down firmly, James worked him over with his lips and tongue and teeth, drawing an utterly wanton moan, which sounded distinctly like James’ name, from Jack.
Tangling his fingers in James’ hair, Jack tried to remember how to breathe as coils and spikes of pleasurable tension spread through his stomach. There was wet heat and warm hands, James’ body between his legs and that man’s infuriating tongue was driving him mad much more effectively now that the pirate hunter was not using it for just talking. At some point, Jack’s breeches were at last tossed aside into some distant corner of the room.
Jack moaned as if from pain when James’ mouth left him, but then he looked up, panting hard, at the predatory and hungry look in those sea-green eyes, which were very close to his face all of a sudden because James Norrington was abruptly hovering over him in an ominous fashion. Far from finding this disconcerting, Jack merely glared at him, looking more than put out that the blinding pleasure had suddenly been put on pause, but then he shuddered as James’ erection brushed his own, James’ hips pressed against him and that hot, hard flesh rubbed against Jack’s own and all was forgiven.
James stroked the back of Jack’s knee with one hand, then lifted the pirate’s leg up until his thigh brushed James’ hip. With his dark eyes falling open to stare at James, Jack came to the realization that he knew exactly what the other man wanted, and felt an unexpectedly hot thrill up his spine at the thought. He groaned and arched up against James, who only smirked and raised an eyebrow, but the huskiness of his voice belied the sardonic expression when James asked a very simple, promising question: “Oil?”
“Aye, mate.” With a shudder caused by something that was quite different from fear, Jack shot him an eager grin, reached for the small chest of haphazardly organized items next to the bed, and quickly retrieved from it a small vial of oil, which James immediately took from him. Then James’ mouth captured Jack’s again, the kiss strong and wanting and full of something the pirate could only think of as Naval conviction: forceful and thorough and wholehearted--and God was it good. Jack moaned into the kiss as one of those skilled ex-commodorial hands, slick with oil, slipped two fingers into him. Jack’s head fell back, but he tangled the fingers of one hand in James’ hair, pulling the other man with him, continuing the dance of lips and tongue even as he moaned and writhed and all but whimpered when James’ fingers found that one glorious, mind-numbingly sweet spot inside him, and proceeded to torment it without mercy.
James was breathing hard, too, and his kiss became feverish, as though he wanted to devour the man beneath him and cherish him at the same time, which was quite a heady combination. Then James’ hand moved away, another part of his anatomy taking its place, and Jack broke the kiss, jerking his head back and hissing in pleasure as James slowly filled him. Then James stopped, patient even as he rested his brow against the side of Jack’s throat and shuddered like a racehorse just before the opening gate--and Jack was grateful, at first, because there were other things about the man he could think of as horse-like. But as the burn eased, replaced by the impatient and pressing need for release, Jack’s sense of mischief returned in full force. Careful and controlled the ex-navy man was, but his eyes were green fire, his hands were almost as hot, and his mouth had a flavor like strong gunpowder tea; and Jack was a creature built entirely to push people into losing control, which he planned on doing right about... now: if only to see how much more fire and heat he could get from the good ex-commodore.
Jack rolled his hips up against James, taking in the last inch of him harder and more abruptly than the ex-commodore had been prepared for; James’s head jerked up with a gasp and he stared down at Jack, who grinned and rolled his hips again--that, and the feel of Jack’s arousal pressing up between them was enough to make both men groan appreciatively. James caught Jack’s hips this time, and again pushed them into the bed. Jack responded by wrapping his legs high around James’ waist and pulling them both closer together, silently demanding, because he could not speak just now even if he tried.
James returned the pirate’s wicked grin, and promptly gave Jack what he was so clearly asking for, hard and fast. Jack gave a ragged cry of pleasure, wrapping his hands around the sculptured carvings on the headboard and using the grip for leverage to counter-thrust. The bed-frame rattled in protest, but they ignored it; they might have ignored the Kraken attacking the ship, had it tried to interrupt at that point. Jack was murmuring incoherently in a variety of Latin-based tongues, and James had his lips and teeth on the pirate’s throat, growling and cursing softly in a mixture of French, English and Gaelic as their thrusts grew more and more desperate. Jack’s back arched and his litany of cursing broke into a singular moaning cry when James’ hand, still slick from oil, wrapped around his cock and began stroking him hard.
Jack could feel himself losing it, falling apart, and he could sense the same urgency of feeling from James. He opened his eyes wide to watch the other man fall apart, and found that James was already watching him. Then James’ hand sped up the pace as his thrusts became less controlled, pounding harder, and Jack lost it.
And then he watched James lose it, too.
Once the Gold Hawk had finally taken its place alongside the Black Pearl again, the little gold ship’s first mate boarded the Pearl along with Anamaria and a few of her men.
“Where is Captain Norrington?” Groves asked.
“He’s meeting with Captain Sparrow, and also gettin’ a small flesh-wound fixed,” Gibbs explained, taking a sip from his flask and hoping that his reassuring grin did not look too suspicious or false.
A slightly disheveled-looking Elizabeth Swann added, “Captain Sparrow wanted to discuss the matter of plans that Captain Norrington made--namely those in which Captain Sparrow had not been involved in the plotting thereof.”
Groves coughed quietly, a little discomfited to have been part of those plans. “I see...”
“Incidentally, what are we going to do with a stolen ship of the EITC?” Elizabeth asked.
Anamaria only grinned. “Jack does owe me a boat.”
“That’s... quite a ‘boat,’” said a very disheveled William Turner.
“That she is,” Anamaria mused, still grinning.
“And where exactly are we going? Did Captain Norrington...”
Before the Gold Hawk’s first mate could ask any further questions to which the answers might be awkward, Gibbs started explaining at length the route to Tia Dalma’s hut. With a few conversational tricks learned from years of association with Jack Sparrow, he then also managed to send Groves back to the Hawk without informing him further of the Jack’s or the ex-commodore’s current conditions, locations, or future plans.
Anamaria then waited, for about half an hour, taking into consideration the time for actual wound-cleaning as well as what other plans Jack doubtlessly had had in mind, and then she proceeded towards the captain’s cabin.
The two captains were sprawled side by side on the bed, catching their breaths.
Finally, Jack managed to inquire, “How exactly does one go about getting that sort of training in the Navy?”
James laughed. “It’s a course of independent study, for the most part; although most of the actual course-work is, obviously, undertaken with the aid of a select number of one’s peers. I believe that I already mentioned the traveling abroad...” His voice stilled when he felt Jack’s lips and teeth pulling lazily at the tender skin at the meeting place between his neck and shoulder, and Jack’s tongue tracing a design there. The commodore’s eyes fell open, and their sea-green depths flickered with curiosity, amusement, and a lazy variety of mostly-satiated-yet-easily-rekindled lust as he peered down at Jack.
Jack pulled away enough to meet his gaze and smirked, wriggling his eyebrows suggestively.
Arching an eyebrow at him in return, James licked his lower lip in a slow, thoughtful fashion, tilting his head a bit to one side. Before Jack could lean forward enough to once more explore that lip himself, they were most rudely interrupted.
Knock-knock-knock
Anamaria’s voice: “Jack, if you’re done wit’ your pet ex-Navy, I gotta talk to you about some debts between you and me.”
Jack buried his face in the hollow just above James’ collarbone and cursed irritably. James, the bloody tease, only chuckled. Turning to face the door, Jack barked, “Anamaria, you are quite possibly the most evil creature that ever sailed!”
“You an’ Captain Norrington got five minutes to get dressed, or I rip off all what your breeches should keep covered and throw it overboard,” she replied, sounding almost bored.
When Anamaria came in, just short of five minutes later, both men sat fully dressed at Jack’s large plotting-table. Jack was glaring at her with pure spite. The ex-commodore seemed to still be rather amused, the afterglow of truly excellent sex still suffusing his mood with an overabundance of good humor.
Jack’s crew was notably minimized by the time the Black Pearl parted ways with Anamaria and her new ship, so that the latter could go to Tortuga and rustle up her own before meeting them at the mouth of the river leading to Tia’s residence, to return her borrowed crewmen. Nevertheless, Jack was grinning broadly even as he watched her go. She had given him quite an idea, but then, James had not liked it at all.
“C’mon, Jamie.”
“No.”
“You might as well be-”
“No. I refuse, point blank, to call you Commodore Jack Sparrow.”
“Would you have if I’d kept both ships?” A gold-tipped grin.
“No.”
Jack snorted. “No fun at all, mate.”
“And I will never be a part of your fleet.”
“That’s just rude...”
James only smiled and tilted his head to one side, once more looking like a predatory bird. “I am, however, willing to sail with you whenever we might happen to meet and to be headed in the same direction--as a sort of partnership.” His sea-green eyes sparked with something rather like mischief.
“Whenever, ay?” Jack mused, and grinned suggestively. “Well, I suppose that we could easily plan to keep in touch, then, so as to find out-” read: plan it out “-when our plans might best coincide.”
James grinned back. “I believe that I quite like that idea, Jack.”
“Meet in Tortuga?”
“About every month, unless a message can be sent to indicate a change of timing or location, of course.”
“I think we have an accord, then, James.” Jack held out his hand.
James accepted the handshake, but shot Jack an amused look that suggested there might be more apt ways to seal this particular variety of accord, if they only had the time to indulge. “I must get to my ship,” he explained, “I do not like the sound of what Anamaria said about Groves taking a prisoner into the Hawk’s brig.”
Feeling no small amount of exhilaration, Jack watched the ex-commodore swing across back to the Gold Hawk. So busy was he, admiring the lithe movements of the other captain, that Jack Sparrow scarcely heard the light footsteps behind him.
“Hello, Jack.” It was Elizabeth.
Jack spun around quickly, alarmed as he was, and was met with a firm slap across the face. Cursing, he clutched at his jaw. “Why did I deserve that?” he shouted, glaring at her as he straightened up and rubbed the slightly throbbing side of his face.
“That, was for lying to me about Will,” Elizabeth growled.
Jack winced. “Oh. Right.” So maybe I deserved that.
“This, however-” Jack squeezed his eyes shut, ready for another slap; he was pleasantly surprised that she chose instead to kiss him lightly on the cheek; although the kiss landed exactly where she had just slapped, so it still stung “-is for getting us out alive. Even if it was just to save your own piratical skin.” She was obviously still irritated.
Jack opened one eye tentatively. He took in her disheveled state and smirked. “I suppose you and William do owe me thanks, if you’ve celebrated as you seem to ‘ave done.” He grinned and opened his other eye when Elizabeth blushed prettily.
She did, however, also straighten her shoulders, oh-so-sardonically cock her head to one side, and lift her chin defiantly as she looked him over. Then she smirked. “Jack... there are teeth marks on the side of your throat. And that’s not all.” Her eyebrows raised, mockery changing a bit into surprise and morbid fascination.
Teeth marks there were indeed, along with at least one large purple hickey. Having seen them in the looking glass before emerging from his cabin, Jack was totally unperturbed by having them observed. He was, after all, Captian Jack Sparrow. “That happens,” he said.
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. “Really?” She was still blushing, and suddenly looked very young and innocent; it was disconcerting.
With obvious enjoyment, Jack shot her a knowing, gold-edged smirk. “So Will tends toward the more gentle, ay? I can’t say I’m all that surprised.”
Her blush magnified, spreading from her face to her ears. “Er... well.” She cleared her throat. “I just... hadn’t expected of James...” She shifted her feet uncomfortably.
Jack had the sudden urge to laugh as when recognized the slightly unfocused look in her dark eyes as she looked away. “Before ya ask, Elizabeth: no, you can’t watch.”
Elizabeth’s gaze whipped around to lock on his and he could almost feel the heat of embarrassment (and perhaps a small amount of lust) that radiated off of her skin as she sputtered a bit, attempting to deny any such thoughts. Then she realized that the pirate was all but laughing at her, and she glared at him for so easily frustrating her. “Damn you.”
“Been done, love.” He winked. “Many times. James just helped me with the most recent sins, as well.” Again, he was grinning lecherously.
Elizabeth’s mind swam with... interesting images involving the pirate in front of her and her ex-fiancee`. The images had caused her to feel suddenly rather too warm, and she had the distinct urge to wake up Will and...
She licked her lips subconsciously.
Then Jack did laugh at her, and she did slap him again, before leaving to find Will.
Previous || Story Index || Next
Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean; Sparrington
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: I have no claim on POTC or the lovely characters who populate it, even if it seems that James Norrington is making himself quite at home in my head, the snarky British bastard.
Summary: After the initial chaos on Isla Cruces, there is a lull, which the two captains take advantage of. Groves is a bit bemused. Anamaria settles the lingering debt Jack owes her. Elizabeth is very greatly amused.
Chapter Ten
James exhaled slowly and deliberately through his teeth, which were clenched against the pain. Someone on the Black Pearl had possessed the foresight to make sure that there had been almost-boiling hot water waiting when they had returned. James was very grateful. It just hurt a great deal to have the steaming cloth pressed into his wound.
“I don’t trust that slime Jones’ crew seem to have instead of blood, mate. I doubt you want it in your system,” Jack had said.
And James had agreed, which was how he had ended up stripped from the waist up and sitting backwards on a chair in Jack’s cabin while Jack sat behind him--the pirate being notably sans coat, weapons and hand-decorations--with one hand resting on the undamaged side of James’ back for balance, and his other cleaning James’ wound with a steaming-hot cloth. James’ arms were loosely folded on the back of his own chair; this stretched the wound uncomfortably, but it was as James had said: only a flesh-wound.
The cleaning and sewing supplies were on the table to their right, along with a small pile of cloth-and-leather wrappings and gaudy rings, which Jack had removed from his hands in order to prevent them getting wet and bloody. It was for the same reason that he’d unbuttoned his sleeve-cuffs and pushed them up his arms so the fabric gathered at his elbows.
Jack dipped the cloth into the hot water again, letting it soak, wringing it out, soaking it again, wringing it out only part-way, and then pressed the steaming cloth to the wound again.
James did not flinch, but small muscle at the corner of his jaw might have twitched. He did not even close his eyes. He only took another deep breath, and slowly let it out. Then the cloth was gone, after wiping away the remaining blood from the surrounding skin. Some number of years ago he had spent a few months perfecting his ability to not-react to pain. It had made a few particularly sadistic spaniards lose interest in him quickly, moving on to more responsive prisoners for their entertainments: a valuable thing, back then.
Luckily, Jack’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “So you realized he was leavin’ a bit of a trail, then? For Beckett?”
“Yes. And I verified that it was Studson doing so after I had noticed the first two markers he dropped overboard. Studson has worked in my command for years now. I could see what was going on.”
“Aye. I can tell. But at some point you forgot to tell me about all this. Hardly fair, mate.”
“What? And miss my opportunity to shock Captain Jack Sparrow?” Then Jack dragged the cloth down one blood-drop’s trail leading very nearly to the waist of James’ breeches, and the ex-commodore tried to repress the shiver it caused with incomplete success. As the adrenaline buzz wore off, his skin was increasingly sensitive, but not to pain.
“You alright, there, James?” Jack’s voice was a bit low.
James cleared his throat quietly. “Yes.” He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder and meet Jack’s gaze with a heated enough look to let the pirate know quite how fine he felt indeed, but he knew that it would be best if he at least wait for the stitches to be done, and besides, those should come up next, getting out of the way soon enough. He was surprised when he instead felt a cool ointment being applied. It smelled crisply of mint as well as something sharper and more pungent, and it was cooling at first, but it stung slightly and made his skin feel hotter once applied. “What is that?”
“A gift from a girl named Tia Dalma. She gives me a bit of it every time I drop by, since she knows how often I get cut up. It’s good for keepin’ out rot and helps you to heal up a bit faster.” He blew a puff of air across it and James restrained another, more violent, shiver as the tingling heat of the ointment abruptly felt cold once more, at least, until the air stilled again.
Interesting, James thought, aware of the tension collecting low in his abdomen; he pulled himself together, requiring use of every ounce of his considerable restraint to keep his voice unaffected as he asked, “And we are currently headed to meet this woman?”
“Yes. She knows more about the thump-thump in your coat over there than even Mr. Gibbs and all the other men like him that Tortuga might have to offer.”
“Mm. Impressive.” James could hear some shuffling sounds, then the sounds of Jack dipping his hands into the pot of hot water and scrubbing them a bit with the cloth that was still floating in it.
The pirate asked simply, “You ready for the needle, then, mate?”
“As I’ll ever be,” James murmured. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sparrow apply more of the ointment to the needle and thread. Then he felt Jack’s hands on his back. Resting his forehead on his folded forearms, James took a slow, deliberate breath. When the needle pierced his skin, it burned, searing and tingling and the adrenaline suddenly was not enough to distract him. His shoulders tensed. Gritting his teeth, James breathed out slowly as Jack pulled the thread through and tied down the anchor-stitch before continuing to the next one.
Jack admitted a bit of respect for James’ pain tolerance. The first time that he’d put Tia’s ointment on something that’d needed to be stitched, Jack had cursed so loudly and to such effect that even Barbossa had blanched a bit--before the mutinous bastard had burst out laughing, as he was so oft prone to do.
As Jack neatly stitched the wound shut with the ease that came from practicing for years on himself, he occasionally glanced over, in an appreciative fashion, the lovely view he had of James’ naked back. He’d gotten to do most of his looking while cleaning the wound, but now he noticed finer details, like the distinctive texture of the scars across James’ shoulder blades; while at first glance, he’d assumed them to be from being flogged in the Navy for one offense or another, at second and third glances, Jack realized that the scars weren’t quite that old and that even the Navy was usually averse to using cat-o’-nine-tails instead of good old fashioned whips, even in small amounts, on their officers; those scars, then, probably shared the same origins as the shackle-marks on James’ wrists.
Then there was the one really and truly surprising part about James’ naked back: the tattoo. It had caught Jack’s eye as soon as the ex-commodore had pulled off his shirt. It was in the middle of James’ upper back, almost near the nape of his neck, and the ink had been done on top of the ragged old scars, which meant it had been tattooed at some point after the time James had spent with the Spanish. It wasn’t any symbolic image: just two latin phrases, two separate lines one on top of the other. They were written twice: in normal script on the right side of James’ spine, and backwards on the left side, forming mirror-images like the shadow of a pair of lost wings. Jack realized that the tattoo was designed so that James could read it in the mirror easily, while still not appearing to hide the message in any way:
The script was bold, each letter nearly an inch tall, in such clear script that it might have come from a printing press, if the press in question had possessed a slightly Romanesque style. The ink was medium-blue and not very faded over the last several years; although now that the unscarred skin around it had tanned, it seemed less stark than it might have looked in the past.
When Jack finished stitching, he put a bandage over the wound, its edges painted with something very sticky to hold it in place.
“I’m surprised that you’ve kept quite so quiet,” James murmured, his calm voice not edged with pain now, but still slightly rougher than usual. Then again, Jack’s hands were still on him, and one of them was pressed flat to his skin, moving slowly from his shoulder blade downward, along his uninjured left side. James did not lift his brow from where it rested on his folded arms. His breathing was still controlled, but the tension in his shoulders was easing. The tension elsewhere, lower in his body, was not letting up in the slightest. Unseen by Jack, James licked his lips.
“The tattoo you’ve got here’s a bit disquietin’,” Jack murmured.
“Yes.” A half-smirk. “It occurs to me: I am not at all surprised that you know Latin.”
“Good. I’d be ashamed of you otherwise, Jamie.”
James chuckled softly.
“Good advice, though,” Jack remarked, tracing two fingers across the inked skin.
“I’ve needed it a lot, in times past. Especially the second one, but that’s gotten easier of recent, it would seem.”
“Good to hear, that.”
A slight pause.
James turned his head slightly, still not lifting it. “Jack?”
“Yes, love?”
“Are you aware of your left hand?” James sounded amused, his smirk almost audible, but there was something too-heavy about his tone that belied his sardonic calm. It took a great deal of effort on James’ not to twitch or shift his hips in a suggestive fashion.
Jack was about to say that he was, but then realized that he truthfully had no idea when his left hand had abandoned its post on James’ shoulder blade and somehow wandered all the way down to James’ hipbone, where two of Jack’s fingers had gone so far as to slip partially under the waistband of James’ breeches to explore it. Jack considered this and said with surprised sincerity, “Not ‘til you’d mentioned it, really.” Sidling forward a little until he sat on the very edge of his chair, Jack leaned forward until he could feel the heat coming off of the other man’s body. Jack’s breath stirred the fine hairs at the nape of James’ neck, and the pirate could anticipation akin to the electric hum in the air just before a lightning-storm. His voice was thus a little huskier than usual when, letting his lips brush the ex-commodore’s skin, he inquired, “D’you really mind it there, Jamie?”
With a herculean effort, James prevented himself from reacting more than the involuntary tension throughout his body from anticipation, despite the rush of heat he felt at the gravel in Jack’s voice and the sensation of Jack’s lips on his neck. He did lift his head a little, turning just enough to tease, but not quite enough for Jack to see more of his face than the line of his brow and cheek. In light and thoughtful sardonic tones, he mused, “Do I mind? Hmm.” There was no way to tell if he were threatening or flirting.
Jack was unperturbed, but wary, ready to spring away even as his fingers slid further beneath the fabric of James’ breeches. Jack was still unsure whether he would have to flee or not when the pirate hunter pushed himself, with apparent calm and poise, to his feet and turned to face him. Then James leaned towards him, resting a hand on either arm of Jack’s chair, caging the pirate in place. Mesmerized by the predatory smirk on James’ face, Jack found himself unable to complain about how his hands were now suddenly cold, as he had planned on doing from the moment the ex-commodore’s movements had removed them from said ex-commodore’s trousers. Then Jack glanced down at the front of the trousers in question and grinned at the visible bulge there. “You don’t mind, then. Very good.”
“You never stop talking do you?” James rumbled, his lips very close to Jack’s.
“Make me.”
At that, James grinned, showing all of his teeth, and seized Jack’s hips in an iron grip. “I accept your challenge.” James leaned back from his hips and pulled Jack after him, so that James landed back in his chair with a lapful of warm and breathless pirate. Smirking at him, James curled a hand into Jack’s heavily decorated hair, pulling him forward a little further. Thus arranging the pirate into the opportune placement, James fixed his mouth onto a deliciously tender spot on the side of Jack’s throat and taunted it mercilessly with lips and tongue and teeth.
Jack laughed in surprised satisfaction, relaxing into the embrace, one hand clutching hard at the arm wrapped around his waist and the other exploring the skin across James’ front, lingering on the scars from a bullet-wound on the ex-commodore’s left shoulder because he remembered when that one had been fresher. When James’ grip on his waist tightened, Jack couldn’t help but grind against the other man’s growing erection. He grinned when James let out a sharp breath against his throat.
“Jack...”
And wasn’t it nice to hear his name growled out like that? “A man could get used to this kind of treatment,” Jack muttered, and his grin widened until James’ mouth distracted him again; lips moved up over Jack’s jaw, a warm tongue flicked out to trace the edge of his beard, and teeth nipped at his lower lip. At the pirate captain’s sharp intake of breath, James kissed him hard, his tongue sliding past Jack’s lips to conquer his mouth. Jack groaned, fighting back by capturing James’ tongue in his teeth and sucking on it, and James responded with a low growling noise that made the pirate shiver.
Jack was surprised by quite how dexterous and fast James’ fingers were, quickly and efficiently divesting him of his belts and sash, then untucking the hem of his shirt and sliding beneath the cloth to explore his skin. James’ palms and fingers spread wide to press flat against Jack’s body as they wandered, feeling everything: every shift of muscle beneath skin, every scar and every twitch when he found a particularly sensitive spot, which the ex-commodore logged away for future reference.
Then, still not leaving off of the kissing, Jack retaliated by pushing James’ shoulders until the man leaned back in the chair, giving Jack enough room to remove James’ belt, which he tossed aside. He stroked James’ erection through the surprisingly soft fabric of James’ breeches, earning a low and tasty little noise of approval from the ex-commodore, who was clearly struggling against the urge to wantonly thrust against Jack’s hand as the pirate traced the lines of him and squeezed in an ever-so-maddening fashion.
James finally broke away from Jack’s mouth, breathing hard as his hands grabbed fistfuls of Jack’s shirt and tugged urgently. “Lift your arms.” His eyes were dark and his growling voice managed to sound expertly commanding even when partially breathless.
Jack smirked a bit, meeting James’ gaze before holding up his arms and allowing the ex-commodore to pull his shirt up over his head. Then the pirate hissed in surprise and cursed under his breath as James leaned in and swirled his tongue around one nipple, teeth nipping very gently at the tender skin. Jack reflected, somewhat dazedly, that James was not in the least new to these activities and not hesitant in the least, which was both surprising and arousing as Hell. Then James, holding onto the side of Jack’s waist with one hand and pushing up off the edge of the table for leverage with the other, rolled his hips in a fantastic and highly skilled undulating motion, rubbing himself up against Jack in a way that caused every coherent thought in the pirate’s head to disappear.
Jack released a shocked groan, his hands clutching James’ lithe hips in a bruising grip; and although he made no attempt to stop them moving, stop they did, leaving him a bit dazed and disappointed. Breathing hard, the pirate struggled to shape the vague, blurred notions in his mind into a coherent question; finally, as James’ smirk became thoroughly insufferable, Jack succeeded: “Where did a nice Navy man such as yourself learn a trick like that?” Jack managed, his face flushed and his black eyes full of hunger.
James grinned wickedly and undulated again, making the pirate arch into him with a choked-sounding gasp, until their upper bodies were pressed together, skin to skin. James’ voice was rough and heavy when he replied, “The Navy, of course... and, by extension, Singapore.” He ran his tongue downward along the shell of the pirate’s ear and licked at the pierced lobe. “And ‘nice’ has never really stood out as one of my more prominent character traits.”
“You? Singapore?” Jack wasn’t entirely aware of asking; instead, he was rather intently focused on the way James was nibbling his earlobe and suckling gently on the piercing in it.
“I had a brother stationed in the area. He was the one who wasn’t an unrepentant ass,” James said quietly, then nipped the shell of Jack’s ear while his tongue ran along its edge, making Jack groan again and mutter an oath under his breath.
James’ breath hitched as his trousers were at last unbuttoned and tugged open by Jack’s clever hands, one of which decided to wrap itself firmly around his cock and give one long, slow and exploratory stroke, leaving James quite breathless.
“Pride of the King’s Navy you must’ve been, then, James,” Jack mused, stroking, squeezing, stroking again.
The former navy man shuddered with the effort of holding onto his self-control, and Jack took advantage of his distraction, sliding his unoccupied hand into the other man’s hair, tugging at it until James tilted his head back, whereupon Jack ran his tongue up the length of the paler man’s throat at the same time that he gave James’ cock an encouraging little squeeze. James made a low, breathless sound, like a groan restrained, and bucked his hips. Jack stroked him slowly, teasingly and coaxed his mouth in a languid kiss that stifled James’ moan.
Giving in to the pirate’s ministrations--at first--James arched up against Jack, his hands clinging tight at Jack’s waist, but then, after a moment, slid down the man’s stomach to the fastenings of his breeches, regaining some sense of purpose through the lustful haze; he wanted to see Jack Sparrow lose control entirely and come undone with him. Once he had the other man’s trousers open, James turned the tables on their playful little duel for dominance. Seizing Jack by the arse, he abruptly rose to his feet, smirking against Jack’s mouth when the pirate gave a muffled little yelp of surprise and instinctively wrapped his legs around him for support. James ran his tongue across Jack’s lower lip lazily as he carried them both toward the bed.
Jack chuckled. “You’re quite good at this, James,” he panted. Then it was the ex-commodore’s turn to make a low, startled sound when Jack seized the bedpost and canopy for leverage and twisted them around so that the pirate landed on top, straddling James’ lap.
“I could say the same for you, Jack,” James admitted, his green eyes wide and dark. “But I’m sure that your already considerable ego needs no help.”
They stared at each other for a moment, breathing hard. Then Jack moved further down James’ body and lifted one of James’ knees until the ex-commodore’s boot-heel rested on the edge of the bed. He unfastened the other man’s boot, tugged it off, and dropped it to the floor. Then he replaced James’ leg into its former position, and repeated the action with the other boot; throughout, he never looked away from the James’ green eyes, which made the entire business much more... interesting.
Sitting up on his elbows, James watched Jack’s face closely as the pirate took his boots and stockings, dropping all of it to the floor. Then Jack moved back and his fingers curled around the sides of James’ breeches; obligingly, the ex-commodore lifted his hips so that when Jack pulled them, they slid off without further encouragement. James made that low growling noise again as Jack crawled back up his body.
“You’re just full of surprises, ain’t you, love?” Jack mused, curiosity making his dark eyes bright and his grin sharp. A not-quite-stifled gasp escaped him when James abruptly wrapped one leg around his, slipping his foot under the edge of Jack’s boot and sliding it down slowly. The boot hit the floor with a soft thud.
“You aren’t the only one who enjoys keeping people off-balance,” James countered, repeating the boot-removal procedure on the other side, until the footwear fell away, forgotten. Then James’ legs tightened around Jack’s and the pirate realized, belatedly, that James could grapple quite well, as shown by how easily he flipped their positions and pinned Jack to the bed by his hips--specifically, via the ex-commodore’s exceptionally warm palms pressing to the suddenly bare skin of Jack’s hips, long commodorial fingers gripping firmly and holding him down. James’ smirk widened slowly as he lowered his lips to kiss Jack’s breastbone.
“So I see,” Jack replied breathlessly, watching him intently. Then he gave a low groan as James’ thumbs (also very warm) traced the tender skin on either side of his groin--close to the part of him that so desperately needed to be touched, but not close enough to satisfy. Warm hands, Jack thought dazedly, are marvelous. Shortly afterward, the pirate’s train of thought was derailed entirely as those hands pushed his breeches further down and James wrapped his lips around the head of Jack’s cock, sucking on it as his tongue fleetingly swept beneath the edge of the foreskin. Giving himself up for lost as a warm and rope-roughened sword-roughened hand wrapped around the base of his erection, Jack let his head fall back onto the bed as obscenities rolled off his tongue in three different languages.
James smirked slightly, relaxing his jaw and his throat as he took Jack further into his mouth, tasting smoke, salt, spices, and masculine arousal. Holding Jack’s hips down firmly, James worked him over with his lips and tongue and teeth, drawing an utterly wanton moan, which sounded distinctly like James’ name, from Jack.
Tangling his fingers in James’ hair, Jack tried to remember how to breathe as coils and spikes of pleasurable tension spread through his stomach. There was wet heat and warm hands, James’ body between his legs and that man’s infuriating tongue was driving him mad much more effectively now that the pirate hunter was not using it for just talking. At some point, Jack’s breeches were at last tossed aside into some distant corner of the room.
Jack moaned as if from pain when James’ mouth left him, but then he looked up, panting hard, at the predatory and hungry look in those sea-green eyes, which were very close to his face all of a sudden because James Norrington was abruptly hovering over him in an ominous fashion. Far from finding this disconcerting, Jack merely glared at him, looking more than put out that the blinding pleasure had suddenly been put on pause, but then he shuddered as James’ erection brushed his own, James’ hips pressed against him and that hot, hard flesh rubbed against Jack’s own and all was forgiven.
James stroked the back of Jack’s knee with one hand, then lifted the pirate’s leg up until his thigh brushed James’ hip. With his dark eyes falling open to stare at James, Jack came to the realization that he knew exactly what the other man wanted, and felt an unexpectedly hot thrill up his spine at the thought. He groaned and arched up against James, who only smirked and raised an eyebrow, but the huskiness of his voice belied the sardonic expression when James asked a very simple, promising question: “Oil?”
“Aye, mate.” With a shudder caused by something that was quite different from fear, Jack shot him an eager grin, reached for the small chest of haphazardly organized items next to the bed, and quickly retrieved from it a small vial of oil, which James immediately took from him. Then James’ mouth captured Jack’s again, the kiss strong and wanting and full of something the pirate could only think of as Naval conviction: forceful and thorough and wholehearted--and God was it good. Jack moaned into the kiss as one of those skilled ex-commodorial hands, slick with oil, slipped two fingers into him. Jack’s head fell back, but he tangled the fingers of one hand in James’ hair, pulling the other man with him, continuing the dance of lips and tongue even as he moaned and writhed and all but whimpered when James’ fingers found that one glorious, mind-numbingly sweet spot inside him, and proceeded to torment it without mercy.
James was breathing hard, too, and his kiss became feverish, as though he wanted to devour the man beneath him and cherish him at the same time, which was quite a heady combination. Then James’ hand moved away, another part of his anatomy taking its place, and Jack broke the kiss, jerking his head back and hissing in pleasure as James slowly filled him. Then James stopped, patient even as he rested his brow against the side of Jack’s throat and shuddered like a racehorse just before the opening gate--and Jack was grateful, at first, because there were other things about the man he could think of as horse-like. But as the burn eased, replaced by the impatient and pressing need for release, Jack’s sense of mischief returned in full force. Careful and controlled the ex-navy man was, but his eyes were green fire, his hands were almost as hot, and his mouth had a flavor like strong gunpowder tea; and Jack was a creature built entirely to push people into losing control, which he planned on doing right about... now: if only to see how much more fire and heat he could get from the good ex-commodore.
Jack rolled his hips up against James, taking in the last inch of him harder and more abruptly than the ex-commodore had been prepared for; James’s head jerked up with a gasp and he stared down at Jack, who grinned and rolled his hips again--that, and the feel of Jack’s arousal pressing up between them was enough to make both men groan appreciatively. James caught Jack’s hips this time, and again pushed them into the bed. Jack responded by wrapping his legs high around James’ waist and pulling them both closer together, silently demanding, because he could not speak just now even if he tried.
James returned the pirate’s wicked grin, and promptly gave Jack what he was so clearly asking for, hard and fast. Jack gave a ragged cry of pleasure, wrapping his hands around the sculptured carvings on the headboard and using the grip for leverage to counter-thrust. The bed-frame rattled in protest, but they ignored it; they might have ignored the Kraken attacking the ship, had it tried to interrupt at that point. Jack was murmuring incoherently in a variety of Latin-based tongues, and James had his lips and teeth on the pirate’s throat, growling and cursing softly in a mixture of French, English and Gaelic as their thrusts grew more and more desperate. Jack’s back arched and his litany of cursing broke into a singular moaning cry when James’ hand, still slick from oil, wrapped around his cock and began stroking him hard.
Jack could feel himself losing it, falling apart, and he could sense the same urgency of feeling from James. He opened his eyes wide to watch the other man fall apart, and found that James was already watching him. Then James’ hand sped up the pace as his thrusts became less controlled, pounding harder, and Jack lost it.
And then he watched James lose it, too.
Once the Gold Hawk had finally taken its place alongside the Black Pearl again, the little gold ship’s first mate boarded the Pearl along with Anamaria and a few of her men.
“Where is Captain Norrington?” Groves asked.
“He’s meeting with Captain Sparrow, and also gettin’ a small flesh-wound fixed,” Gibbs explained, taking a sip from his flask and hoping that his reassuring grin did not look too suspicious or false.
A slightly disheveled-looking Elizabeth Swann added, “Captain Sparrow wanted to discuss the matter of plans that Captain Norrington made--namely those in which Captain Sparrow had not been involved in the plotting thereof.”
Groves coughed quietly, a little discomfited to have been part of those plans. “I see...”
“Incidentally, what are we going to do with a stolen ship of the EITC?” Elizabeth asked.
Anamaria only grinned. “Jack does owe me a boat.”
“That’s... quite a ‘boat,’” said a very disheveled William Turner.
“That she is,” Anamaria mused, still grinning.
“And where exactly are we going? Did Captain Norrington...”
Before the Gold Hawk’s first mate could ask any further questions to which the answers might be awkward, Gibbs started explaining at length the route to Tia Dalma’s hut. With a few conversational tricks learned from years of association with Jack Sparrow, he then also managed to send Groves back to the Hawk without informing him further of the Jack’s or the ex-commodore’s current conditions, locations, or future plans.
Anamaria then waited, for about half an hour, taking into consideration the time for actual wound-cleaning as well as what other plans Jack doubtlessly had had in mind, and then she proceeded towards the captain’s cabin.
The two captains were sprawled side by side on the bed, catching their breaths.
Finally, Jack managed to inquire, “How exactly does one go about getting that sort of training in the Navy?”
James laughed. “It’s a course of independent study, for the most part; although most of the actual course-work is, obviously, undertaken with the aid of a select number of one’s peers. I believe that I already mentioned the traveling abroad...” His voice stilled when he felt Jack’s lips and teeth pulling lazily at the tender skin at the meeting place between his neck and shoulder, and Jack’s tongue tracing a design there. The commodore’s eyes fell open, and their sea-green depths flickered with curiosity, amusement, and a lazy variety of mostly-satiated-yet-easily-rekindled lust as he peered down at Jack.
Jack pulled away enough to meet his gaze and smirked, wriggling his eyebrows suggestively.
Arching an eyebrow at him in return, James licked his lower lip in a slow, thoughtful fashion, tilting his head a bit to one side. Before Jack could lean forward enough to once more explore that lip himself, they were most rudely interrupted.
Knock-knock-knock
Anamaria’s voice: “Jack, if you’re done wit’ your pet ex-Navy, I gotta talk to you about some debts between you and me.”
Jack buried his face in the hollow just above James’ collarbone and cursed irritably. James, the bloody tease, only chuckled. Turning to face the door, Jack barked, “Anamaria, you are quite possibly the most evil creature that ever sailed!”
“You an’ Captain Norrington got five minutes to get dressed, or I rip off all what your breeches should keep covered and throw it overboard,” she replied, sounding almost bored.
When Anamaria came in, just short of five minutes later, both men sat fully dressed at Jack’s large plotting-table. Jack was glaring at her with pure spite. The ex-commodore seemed to still be rather amused, the afterglow of truly excellent sex still suffusing his mood with an overabundance of good humor.
Jack’s crew was notably minimized by the time the Black Pearl parted ways with Anamaria and her new ship, so that the latter could go to Tortuga and rustle up her own before meeting them at the mouth of the river leading to Tia’s residence, to return her borrowed crewmen. Nevertheless, Jack was grinning broadly even as he watched her go. She had given him quite an idea, but then, James had not liked it at all.
“C’mon, Jamie.”
“No.”
“You might as well be-”
“No. I refuse, point blank, to call you Commodore Jack Sparrow.”
“Would you have if I’d kept both ships?” A gold-tipped grin.
“No.”
Jack snorted. “No fun at all, mate.”
“And I will never be a part of your fleet.”
“That’s just rude...”
James only smiled and tilted his head to one side, once more looking like a predatory bird. “I am, however, willing to sail with you whenever we might happen to meet and to be headed in the same direction--as a sort of partnership.” His sea-green eyes sparked with something rather like mischief.
“Whenever, ay?” Jack mused, and grinned suggestively. “Well, I suppose that we could easily plan to keep in touch, then, so as to find out-” read: plan it out “-when our plans might best coincide.”
James grinned back. “I believe that I quite like that idea, Jack.”
“Meet in Tortuga?”
“About every month, unless a message can be sent to indicate a change of timing or location, of course.”
“I think we have an accord, then, James.” Jack held out his hand.
James accepted the handshake, but shot Jack an amused look that suggested there might be more apt ways to seal this particular variety of accord, if they only had the time to indulge. “I must get to my ship,” he explained, “I do not like the sound of what Anamaria said about Groves taking a prisoner into the Hawk’s brig.”
Feeling no small amount of exhilaration, Jack watched the ex-commodore swing across back to the Gold Hawk. So busy was he, admiring the lithe movements of the other captain, that Jack Sparrow scarcely heard the light footsteps behind him.
“Hello, Jack.” It was Elizabeth.
Jack spun around quickly, alarmed as he was, and was met with a firm slap across the face. Cursing, he clutched at his jaw. “Why did I deserve that?” he shouted, glaring at her as he straightened up and rubbed the slightly throbbing side of his face.
“That, was for lying to me about Will,” Elizabeth growled.
Jack winced. “Oh. Right.” So maybe I deserved that.
“This, however-” Jack squeezed his eyes shut, ready for another slap; he was pleasantly surprised that she chose instead to kiss him lightly on the cheek; although the kiss landed exactly where she had just slapped, so it still stung “-is for getting us out alive. Even if it was just to save your own piratical skin.” She was obviously still irritated.
Jack opened one eye tentatively. He took in her disheveled state and smirked. “I suppose you and William do owe me thanks, if you’ve celebrated as you seem to ‘ave done.” He grinned and opened his other eye when Elizabeth blushed prettily.
She did, however, also straighten her shoulders, oh-so-sardonically cock her head to one side, and lift her chin defiantly as she looked him over. Then she smirked. “Jack... there are teeth marks on the side of your throat. And that’s not all.” Her eyebrows raised, mockery changing a bit into surprise and morbid fascination.
Teeth marks there were indeed, along with at least one large purple hickey. Having seen them in the looking glass before emerging from his cabin, Jack was totally unperturbed by having them observed. He was, after all, Captian Jack Sparrow. “That happens,” he said.
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. “Really?” She was still blushing, and suddenly looked very young and innocent; it was disconcerting.
With obvious enjoyment, Jack shot her a knowing, gold-edged smirk. “So Will tends toward the more gentle, ay? I can’t say I’m all that surprised.”
Her blush magnified, spreading from her face to her ears. “Er... well.” She cleared her throat. “I just... hadn’t expected of James...” She shifted her feet uncomfortably.
Jack had the sudden urge to laugh as when recognized the slightly unfocused look in her dark eyes as she looked away. “Before ya ask, Elizabeth: no, you can’t watch.”
Elizabeth’s gaze whipped around to lock on his and he could almost feel the heat of embarrassment (and perhaps a small amount of lust) that radiated off of her skin as she sputtered a bit, attempting to deny any such thoughts. Then she realized that the pirate was all but laughing at her, and she glared at him for so easily frustrating her. “Damn you.”
“Been done, love.” He winked. “Many times. James just helped me with the most recent sins, as well.” Again, he was grinning lecherously.
Elizabeth’s mind swam with... interesting images involving the pirate in front of her and her ex-fiancee`. The images had caused her to feel suddenly rather too warm, and she had the distinct urge to wake up Will and...
She licked her lips subconsciously.
Then Jack did laugh at her, and she did slap him again, before leaving to find Will.
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