part 3 - the roses or the ribbons in her long brown hair
Shore Leave
Ten years the waves roll the ships home from the sea,
Thinkin’ well how it may blow in all good company,
If I tell another what your own lips told to me,
Let me lay beneath the roses, till my eyes no longer see. - Grateful Dead, "Maybe It Was The Roses"
Shore leave in Tortugua is always the same, whores and watered-down rum, awakening in a sordid room much like this one with shirts missing, trousers unbuttoned, and cocks at half-mast. In the morning light, the whore looks a lot younger than and much less like Elizabeth than she had the night before-Fancy a fuck, gents? Five shillings for the pair o’ ye-buttercup hair loose, face paint smeared across the bedding. Jack is snoring loudly beside her, one arm flung haphazardly over the swell of her rump, the other dangling off the bed. What Will remembers of the night before is enough champagne to drown in, and young boys with wicked mouths and arses that called a man to sin.
It hadn't always been like this. In the old days, he’d hated the very mention of the word "pirate". In the old days, he'd had a trade, and a fiancée with a dowry every man envied. He hadn’t cared about the dowry-just the girl. It nearly cost him his life. Now he cares for nothing, for no one-except the man who’s saved that life more times than he cares to count.
*~*
He’s been drifting in and out of consciousness for two days, his only connection to this world a rowboat, sans oars, lost in the storm. The sun is hazy and high in the sky, and he’s lost in a dream of Elizabeth dancing in a fountain, the water droplets glistening against the pale cream of her skin. He’s just about to lick them off when a rude shout awakens him.
"You there! Ahoy!"
His head is too heavy to lift, and his limbs seem to be disconnected from the rest of his body. The voices keep on fading in and out, and his tongue is moving in a language all but forgotten. "H…h…help…" The sun is in his eyes, and there’s a splash somewhere nearby, but it’s too hard to concentrate, what with the water dripping from Elizabeth’s hair and her lips parting to shape his name…
"Will? Will! Will Turner! Get up, mate!" There’s a bit of grunting and grumbling, and then they’re flying… "Bloody ‘ell Turner, yer makin’ this difficult."
Taste, touch, sense-a sudden sensation of soaring-and then landing down hard on sheets as soft as eiderdown. Later, he'll chalk this chance meeting up to luck, or maybe even fate-God knows he isn't a particularly superstitous man, not even after the events abroad the Black Pearl six months previous.
When he comes to, they're forcing water down his throat; apparently the crew doesn't believe in letting a man die in peace. He doesn't remember very much from that time; most of it is hearsay-the way he screamed her name, over and over, a man banished forever to the pits of hell; the bronzed hands that held him down; the prolific curses and cajoling that brought him back from the brink.
"That would've been yer windin' sheet in another couple of hours, lad." Everything is in focus now-the candles guttering beside the bunk, the dark eyes that seem to be everywhere and nowhere at once, the water-soaked rag that is making its slow, tortorous way down his chest. There's a not unpleasant sensation of tingling in his groin, and by the way his companion's fingers are lingering on his skin, he can only imagine that the idea isn't anything Jack would be averse to.
"How long have I been like this?"
"What, completely at m'tender mercies? Oh, I'd say a week at most. You, Turner, are the very reason this crew has been saved from boredom. This," Jack shakes his head with a rougish grin, "has to be the most entertainment we've seen in weeks. You were lucky we was passin' along that route just then."
"I was coming back from England..." Will winces, and attempts to sit up. "Elizabeth! I have to get back to her!"
"I hate to be the one to tell you this, mate, but word on the water is this-that the Commodore Norrington's taken a wife and all waters in and about Port Royal are open season while the couple takes their honeymoon tour. So if you intend to 'brave all and reclaim the fair lady', you'll have to go it alone, mate. You ain't in much of a condition to, though, if you don't mind my interference. In case you hadn't thought this out, you probably left, what? Four months ago? You've been sick for quite awhile, mate. That Norrington, aye, and Governor Swann, they would've taken advantage of the word of your death."
"Elizabeth's not like that!" Will growls, lunging for Jack and grossly miscalculating his bodily strength. He falls jelly-limbed and dizzy to the floor of the captain's quarters, the world spinning. Weeks later, honeymoon tour and recuperation complete, Will sneaks into the fort disguised so throughly his own mother wouldn't know her son. Elizabeth looks happy enough-that, more than anything, is what makes him finally choose the path of raid, pillage and plunder.
*~*
This is what it comes down to-Jack's lips on his own are sweeter than Elizabeth's ever were. Six months after Port Royal, Will is sitting on his hammock, melancholy and brooding, when Jack comes in and plops down next to him. They've been decamped in Tortugua for nigh on a week now, and Will can't lose himself between a whore's thighs the way the others can. There's too much he's clung to-brown eyes, and the dream of his childhood, and the promises of the flesh that now mean less than nothing. He's tried to come to terms with losing her, for she'll always be his heart. He'll always unconsciously be trying to find her.
"She's gone, Turner. Either you're going to come to terms with it or you're not, and if you can't you'll find all your friends will turn away one by one, because no one wants to keep company with a man who's miserable all the time."
"Trust you to tell me the truth of it, Jack," Will snaps, but he puts down the sword he's been staring at for the past half hour or so.
"Aye, my friend, there be other mermaids in the ocean. What say you we find you a damsel in distress in Tortuga?"
Will allows himself to be dressed in full pirate splendor (the hat is the most important part) and dragged to that city of iniquity. The rum is potent enough to stunt a man permanently, and the night is just beginning to blue when they stumble upon two sloe-eyed strumpets of indeterminate age leaning just in the shadows of The Rumpled Petticoat.
"Look, they come in pairs!" Jack chortles, throwing and arm around each of their shoulders. "One for me an' one for you, eh Will?"
The little one steps forward. "You ain't thinkin' of buyin' Sally, are ye? She's a queer mort, she is." At Will's confused look, she mouths "French pox!"
Sally spits in the direction of her companion and storms off towards the tavern. The other, with her ragged blue dress and grubby cheeks, is nothing like Elizabeth, and that's what Will needs right now-just a hole.
"You come too," he slurs, grabbing Jack and they all stagger up the stairs behind the tavern. The whore must be used to customers' peculiar peccadillos by now, for she makes no protest as they laugh and stumble to the room. Once they're in, however, it's a different story.
"Can't do it if he's watchin'," the dolly-mop slurs, indicating Jack as she licks her lips lasciviously, but that doesn't stop her from undoing the front laces of her dress. It falls, and she's left in nought but her corset and shift, a highly appealing mixture of cleavage and curves. "Two more shillings for the both o' ye, but mind ye, I'll not be havin' any swivin' mollies in my bed."
Jack shoots Will a hot look, and winks rougishly at the strumpet. "Not on your time, love. Word of a pirate."
"Right, save it fer yer own time and not Janey's," she purrs, strutting up to the two of them. "How d'ye like it, lads? I c'n do it the French way."
"Isn't that what got your friend Sally into trouble?" Jack murmurs, oozing charm and poison.
"Eh?"
"Let me show the lad here how a real man takes a lady, then, Janey-who-does-it-the-French-way." Twirling his mustasche with his fingers, Jack drops two shillings on the bedside table and begins to undo his trousers.
"I saw her first!" Will cries, slamming his two shillings down on the table.
"Now, now, gents, there's enough Janey for everyone." Laughing nervously, Janey dithers between the two of them.
"And I've never done this before...with a whore." The drink has loosened his tongue, and it comes out louder than he's planned. Both Janey and Jack look at him.
"Treat ladies like whores, and whores like ladies, that's all there is to it! Shall we show 'im, Janey?" Jack pinches the girl on the rump and she squeals like a child.
"Oh, I do love a fine game, sirrah!"
"Captain Sparrow. And this 'ere is me first mate, Turner." Jack is suddenly there, bracing one hand on Will's shoulder and another on his hip. "This is how you kiss the lady-" and his lips are on Will's, tasting of rum and smoke. Jack's tongue slowly begins to trace the outline of Will's lips, and Will opens his lips, unprepared for the sudden thrust of his captain's tongue, shivering with pent-up desire as their tongues move hotly into one another. The interlude is broken as he feels himself rising sharply and Jack pulls away, whispering wickedly, "I've always wanted to do that."
The little whore jerks Will to her and allows him to kiss her deeply, thrusting his tongue into her the same way his cock aches for it, but somehow it isn't the same. She's missing teeth and though her mouth tastes sweet from sucking on cloves, her ample breasts and tiny hips seem redundant with Jack's hot breath on the back of his neck. Besides, she seems to like it better as he moves southwards, directing his lips elsewhere every time he goes for hers. It's all the same as he remembers it being with Elizabeth-only he's not afraid to touch this harlot the way she begs for it; all holes and whores are the same in the end.
He's begun to undo his trousers when there's a tap on his shoulder and Jack flashes his white grin at both of them."Mistress Janey, if you'd be so kind, I fear my mate here's never had the pleasure of a lady's mouth on his prick."
She's quick with the buttons, and Will is quick as well-he can't stop the inevitable explosion, but she begins again and the sensation is so exquisite that he's pressing his lips into Jack's, teeth and tongue, in and out, hot and wet, groaning into Jack's mouth. As he tries to catch his breath, Jack tenses against him, submitting to Janey's nibbles and licks. Will glances down at her once, she's busy between his cock and Jack's, his seed spilled across her hard nipples as they strain against her thin chemise. There's too much going on-Janey's sucking and licking at his cock, Jack is sucking and licking at his lips, and before he erupts again, he growls out a single word-
"Stop." Will hauls Janey up like a sack of grain, pushing her onto the bed. This is something Janey's used to, and she dips her fingers in the jar beside her bed, rucking her skirts up to her waist and dabbing the mixture between her widespread thighs. "I want you to take me while I take her," he murmurs to Jack, cladestinely slipping him the jar, and blowing out the candles, steps out of his trousers to impale the panting Janey with a slick thrust. There's pain and pleasure all at once, and in the darkness the thrusts become frenzied, limbs flailing, pricks piercing, Janey's quim squeezing at his cock rhythmically. It's too much all at once-Jack continues to thrust, filling him slowly at first, then faster and faster as Janey arches her back and Will groans in pleasure. He slumps against her, spent, as the other two find their release with screams and grunts of ecstasy.
Later, when the three of them are done licking and kissing and cuddling in Janey's juice-riddled sheets, Jack shows Will again how good it can be between them, and Will knows he'll never pine for Elizabeth again (although she'll always be there in the back of his mind, somewhere between waking and dreams).
*~*
A hole is just a hole and a whore is just a whore, but ever since that night the two of them have been inseparable. They both like a whore every now and again--especially in Tortuga, although their tastes are different, as is expected-and just like that first strumpet, they always leave a bag of swag beside the bed. Swivin' is swivin', and Captain Jack Sparrow and his first mate don't need to be known as mollies in addition to their many other crimes.
Epilogue::A Surfeit of Fools