FIC: Smashed
Title: Smashed
Author: xzombiexkittenx
PotC: post DMC, no AWE spoilers
Pairing: Norrington/Anamaria
Rating: NC-17 (holy crap! I wrote het!)
Word count: 7417
Summary: It’s easier for James to sit in his workshop and drink himself to death.
Disclaimer: Still not mine, damn it.
For the Chinese Menu challenge.
hatofhornigold challenged me to use crossdressing, Norrington, Anamaria, a corset, a book and pie and it turned out much less funny than it ought to have.
James drank far more than he ought to but he was living on Bella Forma then, and no one knew him to care. He spent his nights in a mud-spattered little tavern choking down filthy wine, while the splintered bench ripped new holes in his already patchy trousers. The bottle the wine came in indicated that it had been imported from France but the wine came in the same bottle every night and from what James could taste, other than the vinegar-and-bile bouquet, the publican didn’t even wash the bottle out before refilling it so week old reds and whites mixed and soured together. James didn’t care. The taste wasn’t the point. He didn’t drink kill devil for the taste, he drank it for the burn and the way it freed his tongue. He drank wine to forget because it was far easier to live the way he did when he was too pissed to remember how to walk, never mind to put together complex thoughts.
He had developed a detailed routine that allowed him to continue his present duties without succumbing to the ever-pressing urge to simply lie down in the mire of the streets and let himself die. James was woken promptly at half past five of the clock by the pigs being fed directly across the street from his room. In the ordinary way of things he was still drunk and had only been abed for two or so hours so he would fumble under the bed for a bottle of whatever came first to hand and drink it to stave off the year’s worth of hangover he was owed. By the time he had located a bottle and managed to get a least some of the contents into his mouth rather than spilling it everywhere the pigs had usually quieted down enough that he could sleep again. At seven he would be woken again by the fellow in the rooms next to him. The man sang as he performed his morning ablutions and managed to never hit a note. If the man was hungover himself, James could rely on the man’s wife to start shrieking and nagging loud enough to wake the whole building. James would then stagger out of bed, and dress himself, if he wasn’t still dressed from the night before.
He had long since lost even the vestiges of his naval uniform - and it wasn’t as though he was in the service any longer. Yes, the situation had been resolved in a satisfactory manner, but James couldn’t redeem his dignity, and he certainly couldn’t return to the Navy, no matter how good the Governor was to him.
James worked at what the miserable little town considered a shipyard, the main source of industry other than taverns and prostitution, and while it wasn’t Tortuga by any means, most of the ships that came in for repairs were probably pirates or smugglers. The work kept him in liquor and allowed him to pay rent for his rooms, and they didn’t care if he was sober or not, so long as he could do basic carpentry. He was at the docks by half seven, after breakfasting on stale bread and cold soup which he got from the tavern under his rooms. He bought the leftovers from the night before if they were palatable, and sometimes even if they weren’t, but it was cheap and James washed it down with strong ale. He’d ruined his palate for fine liquors and delicacies anyway.
The work at the shipyard was tedious. James spent most of the day in a dingy workshop, working his way through another bottle of kill devil and doing basic carpentry. For all that he was a drunkard, he could still assist the shipmaster with organization. He had been a commodore of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, it didn’t take much effort to orchestrate the repairs, refitting and restocking of a few pirates.
Of course, being the one to call when no one else could figure arse from teakettle made the drinking all the more mandatory. Every week there was a major breakdown in management and every week James fixed it. This week, the problem was with the brig sitting in the harbor. She was in pieces, masts smashed, rigging broken, holes barely patched in the hull. She was repairable, James was sure of it, if they could get the captain off their backs for more than a moment.
Le Salamandre had been beautiful before a storm had wrecked her, and it was a miracle she had come through the storm at all. It made James ache to see her, a sick feeling that even rum couldn’t burn out and he’d been drinking almost constantly since she limped into port. He missed sailing, he regretted the loss of his own ship and he couldn’t think about the men who had died under his command. He couldn’t even begin to consider it. How could he, when it was all tangled around pirates who wouldn’t die, sea monsters and immortals? It was easier to sit in his workshop and drink himself to death.
Of course when the captain of Le Salamandre proved to be impossible to please, she was sent in James’ direction; she, unfortunately, being the captain, and not the ship. James was as tired of women as he was of everything else.
She was waiting for him in his workshop when he shuffled in. The only description James had been given was she was mulatto, female and of French descent. He couldn’t guess at the latter just from looking at her, but it was unlikely that this woman was anything but a sailor. James shut the door behind himself and bowed. “Madam,” he said. If he wasn’t so broken by the bottle, James might have said she was pretty. She was dressed in men’s clothing, cut to hide her curves and he couldn’t tell if the scowl was supposed to hide her looks or if it was just a reaction to the way he smelt.
“You’re the one where they send me?” she snarled, hand on her sword. “Is this supposed to be a joke?”
James settled himself at his work bench. “Your ship needs almost complete refitting.” He leaned back against the wall, propped his feet up on the bench and watched her fume. “We can do that for you, but the men here don’t like tramping through fetid jungle for new masts at the best of times and especially when they’re doing it for someone who will, invariably, shout at them for being slow moving, slow witted and…” He couldn’t think of a third, so he gave up and wet his lips, considering how much skill it was going to take to do his work. He was thirsty all the time.
“That isn’t what the other man said,” the woman said. “The small, greasy one.”
James shrugged. “He lied.” He pulled a drawing of her ship out of his desk drawer, and swallowed, trying to ignore how dry his mouth felt. “You may see for yourself, Madam.”
“Anamaria.” She leaned over to examine the schematics. “Did you write these?”
“I did.” He was a terrible carpenter, but his theory was sound as ever.
Anamaria looked at him pityingly. “You ain’t from around here, are you?”
James tried hard not to roll his eyes. “No,” he said shortly. James picked up the block of wood that was supposed to become a belying pin and proceeded to ignore her.
* ~ * ~ *
The pub was as dirty and miserable as the rest of the town, but Anamaria was used to it. At least the weather had cleared, her ship was still afloat and she had coin to spend. Halfway through her pint of ale - a passable brew - she spotted the man from earlier. Anamaria realized with no little irritation that he’d never even bothered to offer her his name. She elbowed her way through the crowd and sat down at the table across from him. He looked ill in the light of the fatty candle guttering on the table. She didn’t say anything and he simply raised his mug in a mocking salute and continued his efforts to render himself unconscious.
“You build ships as well as you drink?” Anamaria asked, sipping at her own ale. When he didn’t dignify her with a reply, Anamaria continued. “You navigate as well as you build ships?”
He laughed. “No.”
Anamaria sighed. “Shame.” She watched him drink, gauged the tremor to his hands and the shine of sweat on his face and the glassiness of his eyes. He wasn’t the first she’d seen stagger down this path and she’d no illusions that he would be the last, but Anamaria hated waste and it irritated her to watch a perfectly good shipwright drink himself simple. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“James.” James set his mug down and frowned at her. “Madam,” he said, “I am about to reach my goal for the evening and though a skillful combination of wines, liquors and beers I have done so while still having enough coin for a decent meal. I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t spoil the best part of the night.”
Anamaria scratched idly at her shoulder. “Which is what?”
“What happened to your ship?” he countered.
“Hurricano,” Anamaria said. Sometimes it was easier to catch flies with honey rather than just reaching across the rotten, crumbling table and smacking the offending party into compliance. “After a battle. The prize didn’t want to be taken and we chased her best we could with the damage done until we realized the hurricano was chasing us and then we just rode her out. By the grace of God, and such,” she said rapping her knuckles on the tabletop. “You seen one of those close up?”
James stared at her. “The grace of God?”
She wondered vaguely if a sound wallop around the head wouldn’t clear it for him. “I can tell for myself that you’ve not been seeing much of that.”
He chuckled again, and it was a decidedly unhappy sound. “Have you ever been to Tripoli?”
“You were there for that one? First hurricano I’ve ever seen there too and we-”
“Didn’t sail into it, I imagine.” His voice cracked and his beautiful, if not incredibly bloodshot, eyes stared determinedly into his mug.
Anamaria squinted at James, and considered all the lies Jack had told her and the little she had seen. She sipped at her ale. “No.” The man, no matter how much of a sot he had become, couldn’t manage to hide his accent, or his bearing. Lies or no, she wasn’t an idiot but it was also none of her business who James was or wasn’t. “Hard thing to lose a ship,” she offered instead and when his knuckles turned white around the handle of his mug she continued, “harder still to walk from it.”
James set the mug down, picked up the bottle and upended it, throat working. Anamaria watched, almost impressed, as he choked down half a bottle of kill devil. She wondered if it helped. He finally set the empty bottle down, gasping. “Not the hardest thing I’ve done, not even the start, Madam.”
“You sober up some and you could make yourself head of the shipyard,” Anamaria said placidly. “Sober up honestly and I could use a man of your talents, hurricano or not. Isn’t a man on my ship who knows buggerall about navigation and I’ve got to sleep some time.”
James shook his head. “The best part of the night,” he said, “is when I don’t have to think. Leave me alone.”
Anamaria shrugged carelessly. “Tomorrow then.”
* ~ * ~ *
James woke up, stuck his arm under the bed, grabbed hold of the chamber-pot and vomited into it. Thanks to Captain Anamaria he had not achieved the state of insensibility that he had been seeking and had, instead, spent the night in a more melancholy state than he might have wished and had, in the end, spent all his money on drink.
His need for the bottle, he had decided, was not based on any predisposition in his family, rather, it was a desire to ease the lump he carried in his stomach made up of the men he had lost, the people who had betrayed him and those he had betrayed, the distance he had fallen, the morals he had given up and the innumerable other damages done. It felt like his guts were on fire, most days, and it burned up his throat, parching him. Sometimes during the process of quenching the flames, James could even quiet his own thoughts, churning over and over, if only, if only. He wouldn’t have tolerated such self-indulgent despair in any of his men, he could barely stand it in himself.
It was embarrassing to have someone, by look or by tip of the head, let him know how far he had fallen, even if they didn’t know it to be a falling rather than just a failing and Anamaria had let him know without saying a single word. The sooner he was rid of her, the sooner he could go back to forgetting he decided, so James picked up his cleanest shirt and made his way to the nearest brothel. There he bathed, combed out his hair and trimmed his beard. It didn’t do anything to soothe his thirst or ease the knot in his guts but he felt a little more like a man again. He wasn’t sure if he wanted that, but he was late for work at any rate and had no time to do more than consider his reflection in the blackened glass before going to his workshop.
Anamaria was waiting for him in his office. “Madam,” he said and went back to his belaying pin.
Anamaria perched herself on his workbench. If she noticed his slightly cleaner appearance, she didn’t remark on it. “You like this work?” She picked up a thin file and started paring the dirt and tar out from under her nails. Her hands were calloused, scarred and tanned but she had long, slender fingers and delicate wrists; the hands of a lady, if they hadn’t been the wrong color.
James continued sanding. It was a soothingly repetitive process and he had no illusions that it would be sturdy enough for a ship, but it was something to occupy his hands and his head. “Have you nothing better to do?” he demanded.
She grinned at him with startlingly good teeth. “So long as you’re fixing my ship? No.”
“I, personally, am doing no such thing.” James smoothed away a rough patch and decided it was far too thin in the middle to support any substantial lines.
Anamaria frowned. “Why not?”
“Because,” he held up the pin, “as you can see, I am ill-suited to be in my current profession. You, I assume, would prefer someone who can even pretend competence.”
“I don’t want you sanding the damn thing,” she snapped, “I want you overseeing. You’re the only one who has them drawings and plans.”
James decided he didn’t care what she thought of him, and furthermore, that she would do better to have the right impression of him. He pulled a bottle of wine out of his desk and yanked the cork free. “They are sketches, Madam, nothing more.” James put the bottle to his lips but she swatted it out of his hand so it cracked against the wall and rolled away, spilling wine out onto the dirty floor. He was hard-pressed not to do something stupid like lurch off his bench to save what he could, or shout at her, and settled for biting the inside of his mouth until it was raw and painful.
“They are not and you know it,” Anamaria pointed the file at him threateningly. “I want you overseeing the repairs to Le Salamandre or I ain’t paying. Half-arsed workmanship is not what I asked for.” She smiled, smugly and went back to paring her nails. “Besides, I already talked to your overseer and he says you can have the job this time.”
James slumped in his seat. “What do you want?”
She flicked her fingers dismissively in an elaborate little wave and James was unpleasantly reminded of Jack Sparrow. “You don’t listen worth a damn. Pay attention. Fix my ship.”
With a sigh that he hoped expressed just how put-upon he was feeling, James got to his feet, dusted off his coat and slapped his ragged hat onto his head. “Very well, Madam. I will go look at the damned thing, I will draft you a complete rundown of what ought to be done and then I hope we can agree that you will leave me alone.”
Anamaria hopped down off the bench and eyed him consideringly. “James,” she said, her accent twisting the name, making the ‘J’ into something completely different. He expected her to continue, but she just set the file down on the workbench, settled her own hat over her faded yellow bandanna and led the way out, headed towards the docks and Le Salamandre.
The ship was in just as much disrepair as she had been the last time James had looked at her. Anamaria, hands stuffed into the pockets of her greatcoat, nodded to a few passing sailors on their way then stood next to James on the dirty, waterlogged boards of the dock as he stared critically at her ship.
“You’d do better to get a new one,” he said, turning away. “It’s broken.”
“I like this one.” Anamaria smiled fondly at her ship. “It can be fixed.”
James raised an eyebrow. “You’re not going to pay either way, are you?”
She shrugged. “I might.”
There was very little these days that James cared about, so he just nodded and climbed down onto the rough sand where Le Salamandre was beached. Anamaria gave him free reign to examine her ship from the topmasts to the bilges. His guesses had been right, the holes below the waterline had been properly boarded and calked and the decks were busy with men picking oakum and their mates, repacking the spaces and sealing them with pitch. The masts were going to be the real challenge. Le Salamandre needed them completely replaced and it was going to take weeks to find the right trees and then more time still to fit the ship with new masts. He was going to be stuck with Captain Anamaria for some time.
“Sup with me,” she said, as James was leaving. “I eat late, nine of the clock, here.”
James shook his head. “I’m afraid I must decline, Madam,” he said. “I have to-”
“Sit and drink,” Anamaria interrupted. “You can do that here. Consider it my thanks for your help.”
It would have been unforgivably rude to turn down such an offer, but James hadn’t had to be polite since he’d resigned his commission and he had no intention of starting again. “I have to decline,” he said again and left.
* ~ * ~ *
Anamaria had seen her fair share of lost causes before. She’d worked with a fair number of them. Notably high on the list were her Maman, Isobel, Elsje, Jeanne, and able Seamen, Henri, Thierry, Dries, Joris, Joshamee and Jack. There were more, but she’d either never learnt their names or forgotten them.
Gambling, drinking, women (or men) and disease from the women (or men) had made each of them what they were. It had killed a few of them. Each time Anamaria set her jaw and washed her hands of the matter. Those who fall behind, get left behind, as the saying went. It didn’t stop her from beating her head against stone walls for the first little while.
Besides, she liked this one. He didn’t seem likely to cheat her or lie to her and it was amusing and a little flattering to have a proper - no matter how fallen - British gentleman call her Madam. He cleaned up nice and didn’t look to have anything nasty or catching.
Just before noon, Anamaria stopped into the nearest public house that served food, ordered a jug of ale and a meat pie that looked like it actually contained meat and some sort of vegetables and went back to the workshop. James didn’t even look up when she came in, though she was certain he could smell the food. She set it down in front of him, took up her place on the bench and watched him sanding away at what might have been a belaying pin but was now just curved, smooth wood.
Anamaria poured the ale into a mug and took a swig. It was a little sour, but it would pass. “You should eat,” she said, irritated a second later to sound so much like the grandmothers and aunts who had plagued her as a child. You should eat, wash your face, wear this dress, bed this man. She snorted to herself and pushed the pie towards him. “The body needs more than beers and wines, even yours.” Pretty, pale English skin, burned and peeled and burned again until color finally took. Not much, mind, most of it looked like it was dirt, but this one wasn’t lily-white, though he must have been, before.
“Thank you, but I brought my own luncheon.”
She made a pshaw sound and held out the beer to him. “Last night’s stale leftovers. This is hot, and doesn’t taste of shit.” Anamaria grinned when he finally looked up, eyebrows raised. “Looked all over this wretched little island for something that didn’t taste of shit.” He looked like he was trying not to laugh. Maybe it was his delicate sensibilities hearing a woman swear, but she doubted it. Anamaria would bet he had a nice smile.
“You aren’t going to take no for an answer, I fear.” James took the mug and sipped from it, made a face and pulled another jug out of his desk. He had the good grace to look a little ashamed for a moment, before he held it out to her. “Try this instead.” James found his spoon and dug into the pie.
“There you go,” she said. His beer was better. Stronger, to be fair, but it tasted less of piss than hers. Anamaria pulled her own spoon out of a pocket and helped herself. “You know what that pin looks like?” she said after a few minutes of contented eating. James shook his head, picking his project up and turning it over in his hands. “Really?” Anamaria asked. “They got a name, hang on a turn, I’ll remember.”
James squinted at it thoughtfully. “Ah,” he said after a moment. “I see.” He smirked and Anamaria congratulated herself on being right so much of the time. He was going to have a beautiful smile when she could coax it out of him.
“A Frenchman, an Englishman and a Spaniard go into a brothel,” Anamaria said, mouth full of meat and pastry. “And the bawd turns to one of her girls and says-”
“I’ve heard it.” James set the wood down. “And the word, I believe, is dildo.”
Anamaria belched discreetly. “That’s it.” She washed the pie down with more of James’ ale. “Maybe not wood though.”
He winced. “Maybe not.”
Anamaria left him an hour or so later, setting into his sketches of Le Salamandre’s new masts, significantly more sober than she had seen him since she had arrived. It was hard not to feel smug, so she didn’t bother to try.
* ~ * ~ *
Captain Anamaria - odd and slightly irritating that she’d only given him the one name - brought him luncheon again, the next day. And the next. And the next. And James found himself looking forwards to her presence. He was tired of a lot of things, and it seemed as though being alone was one of them. Then she wasn’t there but there was a bottle of ale and a pie on his workbench next to a slim volume, poorly bound together, with a note tucked between the pages. The note-paper was cheap and there was half a draft of a badly penned sonnet on the back but the writing was good, so he could only assume that she had got a scrivener to pen it for her. That, and it sounded nothing like her, and James imagined that the scrivener had taken a great deal of poetic license in order to make his life less dull.
James - the note said - I have to attend to my duties as captain for the next few days, but I hope that when I return we can dine together, properly. And I’m not going to let you say no. A few miles south of here there is a little town, slightly less squalid than this one, where I imagine we might find something palatable. Until then, yours &c. Anamaria.
The book was tattered and it looked like it was missing some of the pages, which were blank, water stained and possibly a little rat-chewed, but it had been nice at some point and good paper was hard to come by in such a wretched port. Anamaria wasn’t wrong, there was a slightly more respectable town to the south, but it wasn’t a port town and he had nothing to trade and very little skills that he was willing - or able these days - to offer. It was a very thoughtful gift and he found himself curious as to what, exactly, she wanted from him other than a few fixed masts. He didn’t trust her any more than he had trusted the pirates he’d met before her, or any more than he ought to have trusted Miss Swann. It was disconcerting, to say the least, and he didn’t like being disconcerted any more than he liked the assumption that he was simply going to do as she demanded. He had to admit to curiosity though.
Curiosity, an emotion he’d hoped he’d drowned along with the guilt and the anger - though that hadn’t worked, so why he expected this to have, he was unsure of - yet he found himself waiting in his workshop four days later. It was a warm evening, but not desperately hot and there was a fresh breeze coming off the water. James was wearing the cleanest clothing he could muster, he had washed and shaved and he was incredibly drunk. He hadn’t intended the latter, but somewhere along the course of the previous days, it had just happened. James was having trouble standing upright when Anamaria let herself in. The way she looked, one would have thought she’d be quiet as a cat, but Anamaria moved decisively, she filled the space she inhabited.
Anamaria stood in the door of his workshop, hands on her hips and stared at him. Even with the drink clouding his vision James could see he’d really done it this time. She had teased her hair up into an intricate pattern of braids, presumably no mean feat, and ear bobs with gems made of paste flashed dully in the light from the lamp. She was wearing a dress. It was almost as incongruous as if James himself had appeared wearing a corset but there she was, laced into a dress that, if it wasn’t the height of fashion, was in one piece and almost fit as though she’d bought it and not stolen it. It wasn’t high-society, by any means; even with the jewelry, Anamaria looked more as though she’d be working rather than sitting on her arse drinking tea with ladies. The point, however, was that she had expected something, she had dressed for an occasion and he needed to lean against a wall to keep from falling over his own feet.
Anamaria spat on the floor and stormed off.
James cursed and ran after her. He careened against the doorframe, knocking one shoulder hard enough for the pain to penetrate through the rum-fog but just cursed again and kept going. With the back and forth staggering he was doing, it took him twice as long to catch her as it ought to have, but he caught her in the end, because she was unused to being laced and skirts were cumbersome at the best of times, never mind when one was trying to run.
He caught hold of her elbow and she rounded on him, jerking her arm away and slapping him as hard as she could. “You don’t touch me,” Anamaria snarled, panting.
James manfully resisted putting a hand to his cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said, and discovered he meant it, even if he was slurring his ‘s’es. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know?” Anamaria asked, incredulous. She shoved at him, sending him reeling back. “You didn’t know?” She shoved him again, and again, and James fell over, landing on his back in the muck of the street. “You’re a damn fool.” Anamaria, with her calloused sailor’s hands, her braids falling out of their updo, and her stolen dress, knelt down in the mud next to him and rubbed at her face tiredly. “What’s there to know?”
James sat up, mud soaking through his coat and trousers. “Thank you for the book,” he said.
Anamaria shoved his shoulder again, half-heartedly. “You might try to deserve it,” she replied, but she sounded much less cross, just upset.
“You look lovely,” James said, pushing himself to his feet and, using the nearest wall for support, got himself upright before offering Anamaria a hand up. All the effort they had put in was fairly nullified by the mud and the exertions of running.
Anamaria let him help her up, although she was by far the steadier of the two and even laughed a little. “Maybe before I set myself in the mud,” she muttered. “There’s no sense in us going any damn place now, we might as well just find some place here to fill our bellies.”
James tried not to look as ashamed as he felt. “I am sorry,” he said again. It wasn’t any less slurred the second time around.
She snorted and tried to brush the muck off her knees, only really managing to get it on her hands as well. “Of course you are.” Anamaria brushed at the muck on his back and, again, only managed to smear it around. James nearly jumped out of his skin at the touch. No one touched him any more. Not that anyone had touched him much before, to be honest. Anamaria shook her head and hooked her arm through his. “And of course I look lovely. Try saying something that ain’t the obvious.”
Anamaria led him, more than he led her, down the street in a swaying, stumbling ramble that took them to the dirty little public house nearest to James’ apartments and she bade him find them a table while she ordered the food and drinks. He did as he was told, and didn’t need prompting to accept the food and the weakest of beers. Thankfully, the nutrition did a great deal in the way of sobering him up.
They didn’t talk much over the meal. Anamaria spent the most part of it watching him speculatively and he spent most of it staring at his stew. She sat like a man, even in the dress. James sat hunched over his bowl and watched his hands shake. Every time he glanced up, she smiled at him. It was a genuine smile, every time, not as though something especially amusing had occurred, just a quiet, pleased smile. The mud itched in his hair. Her foot bumped against his, under the table and she didn’t move it away.
James wasn’t an idiot. He had also spent most of his life at sea, he had been turned down the one time he’d actually thought about a romantic engagement, and he hadn’t had sex he hadn’t paid for in years. It was a very rare occasion when anyone wanted James Norrington and it had been long enough that he wondered if Anamaria wasn’t just being nice to him out of pity. He wanted desperately to ask.
“How long will you be in port?” he asked instead and then regretted it, since he already knew the answer. When her ship was repaired, she would leave. He was in charge of seeing to the repairs. James realized, with a sick feeling in his guts, that he was in charge of sending the one person off who had been kind to him in a very long time.
“How long are you in port?” Anamaria asked him back, running her foot up his calf. She was wearing boots under the dress and they smeared more mud up his trouser leg. James gripped his ale mug until he thought his knuckles would split open the skin. “How long are you going to sit here?” she asked.
James wasn’t sure if she was talking literally, or in a more general sense of ‘here.’ He swallowed, hard, and didn’t lean into the movement of her boot bumping against the back of his knee and down again. Someone had carved the opening lines of a dirty joke onto the table; they had given up halfway through and just illustrated the rest instead. James felt sick. It was worse when her boot moved away. Anamaria reached across the table and gently pried the mug out of his hands. Her fingers were very warm and rough and James nearly choked on the bile rising in his throat. She didn’t try to take his hand, she touched his wrist instead, as though feeling the pulse, not quite holding hard enough to make him stay, but not just a caress either. Anamaria leaned across the narrow table and kissed him.
* ~ * ~ *
He tasted like a brewery and his mouth stayed stiff against hers, but when she pulled away Anamaria could hear the barest of tiny, desperate sighs. She waited, and for a moment she didn’t think he was going to do anything at all, other than sit, staring. He looked like she had shot him: surprised and waiting for the shock to wear off and the pain to set in. Anamaria gave him longer than she would have given anyone else.
James caught hold of her hand as she pulled away and Anamaria held very still, waiting. He kissed her and this time it still tasted as though she was breathing in a brewery, and he was clumsy and unpracticed but he kissed with passion.
“Where do you live?” Anamaria asked and watched him blush.
He lived in a room barely larger than her own cabin on Le Salamandre and it was littered with empty bottles. She shoved him against the door, closing it with his back and reached past him to slide the bolt. His beard was rough against her neck and she shivered when he bit at the place where her jaw hinged and pushed her hands up under his shirt and scratched her ragged nails over his chest to make him do the same.
James was hesitant, as though he’d forgotten the steps to a dance, or as though he couldn’t quite believe they were actually going to fuck. Anamaria didn’t mind so much, she was tired of feeling like she was being worked over. She was half tempted to just hitch up her skirts and have him against the door, but James moved away, fingers trailing across her bare shoulders, and turned her, so he could unlace her and she decided she’d much prefer his way, which seemed to consist of much more skin on skin.
The corset finally dropped away, the outer skits fell to the floor with a soft hiss of cheap linens and Anamaria turned around again and pulled James’ shirt up over his arms. They both had their scars; old sword wounds, knife wounds, bullet wounds. He had a tattoo, probably about ten years old judging by the fading: two lopsided stars, so he would always know the way. One of them was bisected by a scar that she traced with her tongue. He was hesitant, but not clumsy, as he worked her out of her stays and he wasn’t shy when she pushed his trousers off his hips and down to the floor.
She was unsurprised, if not a little disappointed when the toll that drinking takes made itself known. Anamaria was almost certain that no encouragement was going to help him, not if she put her hands on him, or sucked him and she expected the evening to come to a rather abrupt and slightly embarrassing ending. But James didn’t apologize as she expected. He put his hands and his mouth to her until she was as sweaty and satisfied as if he’d not been unmanned by the drink and he didn’t mind when she pulled his hair and scratched at his shoulders as she came.
The bed was a little too narrow for two to lie in side by side but James put his head on her breast and traced the curve of her hip with his fingertips, their legs tangled - a little uncomfortably - together. The blankets smelt of unwashed man and spilt liquor, but also of her now, and so long as Anamaria didn’t put them up by her nose, she didn’t mind.
“We should do this again,” she said, picking dried mud out of his hair.
James mumbled his agreement against her shoulder. She slapped his hand away when the caress became too itchy and ticklish for her to bear and he smiled and rubbed the spot, rubbing the itch away. Anamaria wondered if she couldn’t get used to someone so very well behaved.
* ~ * ~ *
James woke up sweaty and cramped and so very dry. He shut his eyes against the morning light and concentrated very hard on not getting out of bed for a drink. Bad enough that he had been so utterly shamed but to further compound his dependency seemed unutterable. Christ, he was thirsty.
Anamaria snored softly as she slept, now lying with her back pressed to his front, one of his arms trapped under her head.
He slowly, carefully, eased his arm free, trying not to disturb her. James sat on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands. There was a bottle of god-awful rum, half full, under the bed. He shut his eyes and dug his fingers into his hair and thought instead about being incredibly late to his work, or about how incredibly nice it had been to have someone in his bed, even if he was unable to perform as he ought to have. Shame was not a high motivator not to drink. He was better able to stand it when properly fortified and insensibility sounded increasingly preferable.
James gave in, but when he pulled his head back out from under the bed, Anamaria was awake and watching him. She held out an imperious hand for the bottle and he gave it to her, looking down at the dirty sheets. Anamaria popped the rotten cork out and took a drink, swishing the rum around her mouth before spitting it back out into an empty bottle.
“Rinse your mouth,” she said and stretched, almost golden in the light from the window. Anamaria smiled at him, still sleepy and not angry, not disappointed.
James felt something unclench in his stomach and did as she bid him. He put the bottle back under the bed and let Anamaria pull him over her. It had been a good twelve hours since his last drink, longer than he’d been sober in months, and this time he responded to her. Slowly, yes, but she grinned fiercely and pushed against him, matching him. Anamaria was stronger than her slight frame would have had him believe and they soon tumbled off the bed, teeth and touch and her bony fingers clutching at him as he did the same to her. He pinned her, halfway between the washstand and the door, and kissed her roughly, easing his fingers up inside her, using his thumb to make her squirm and gasp under him.
Anamaria twisted out from under him, and they wrestled each other across the floor until his head knocked against the wall and she straddled him, and let him catch hold of her wrists as she sank down onto him. He groaned and his head thumped back against the wall as he set his feet to the floor and pushed up. She was hot and wet and, god, he’d forgotten how good it felt.
It was rough and messy and afterwards he had bruises on his shoulders and her knees and his back were scraped from the rough wood of the floor. James dragged the blanket down off the bed and draped it over them, wiping himself off with a corner of the sheet.
“Mmm,” Anamaria said and James was very much inclined to agree. He still wanted a drink, but it was less pressing now. Certainly less important than just lying on the floor and remembering how his legs were supposed to work. Anamaria blinked up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “You should come with me,” Anamaria said and James wanted to make a lewd joke but refrained. She slapped his arm. “To sea with me,” she clarified.
James shook his head. “That would be unwise, in the extreme,” he said.
“Better to stay here and drink?” she asked, a touch snidely.
“Better not to be a pirate,” James snapped and got up. He left her the sheet but dressed quickly to cover himself.
Anamaria huffed out an exaggerated sigh. “Like you’ve never do-” she stopped abruptly and James turned around in time to see her bite down on her lip to keep the thought to herself.
“What did you say?” he demanded.
She sat up, wrapping the sheet around herself. “You sailed on the Pearl looking for Jones’ heart.” Anamaria rubbed at her face. “He’s half lie, half lunacy, but even I know when someone from one of his stories washes up in my life. I have to know, if I want to keep afloat.”
James didn’t need to ask who he was and he wanted to be sick.
“Besides,” Anamaria said and made no move to put her clothing back on. “I’m not a pirate.”
“The other one has bells on it,” James said, sitting heavily on the bed. He was almost certain that his shirt had ended up under the bed, and he didn’t want to look because he was sure that if he did, he would find the rum and he would start drinking again. Being sober was horrible, but being drunk hadn’t helped either. He decided he could get drunk once Anamaria had left.
She had the audacity to laugh. “Privateer. The navy doesn’t look too closely at who’s doing the sailing or what they’ve got ‘tween their legs.” Anamaria sat on the bed next to him and smoothed his hair out of his face. There was still dried mud in it that flaked off onto the mattress. “Don’t sulk,” she said.
James raised his eyebrows. “Sulk?”
Anamaria shrugged. “Aye, sulk.” She kissed him, firmly, and her hands were cool on his face, soothing away his headache and the fiery ache in his guts.
* ~ * ~ *
Le Salamandre sailed two months later, heavy one ex-navy navigator and tactician.
He was a disaster, she knew that. Anamaria watched James, counted the drinks he had, and it was still too much, but it was less, and that was something. She took him to her bed on Le Salamandre and didn’t try to explain how a French named ship had letters of marque from England and Spain as well as from France. He didn’t ask.
It was no good trying to talk to him about the navy, his life, or anything that had happened to him before they had met. If he was going to talk about it, he would do it on his own and every now and again he would tell a story and sometimes they would send him back to the bottle for a few days, and sometimes they even made him smile a little.
Anamaria imagined that sooner or later he was going to come back to himself. Eventually they would fight over pirating and command and every other damn thing that two people could fight over and he would, sooner or later, leave. As it didn’t seem to be happening sooner she was content to wait for later.
The End.
Author: xzombiexkittenx
PotC: post DMC, no AWE spoilers
Pairing: Norrington/Anamaria
Rating: NC-17 (holy crap! I wrote het!)
Word count: 7417
Summary: It’s easier for James to sit in his workshop and drink himself to death.
Disclaimer: Still not mine, damn it.
For the Chinese Menu challenge.
hatofhornigold challenged me to use crossdressing, Norrington, Anamaria, a corset, a book and pie and it turned out much less funny than it ought to have.
James drank far more than he ought to but he was living on Bella Forma then, and no one knew him to care. He spent his nights in a mud-spattered little tavern choking down filthy wine, while the splintered bench ripped new holes in his already patchy trousers. The bottle the wine came in indicated that it had been imported from France but the wine came in the same bottle every night and from what James could taste, other than the vinegar-and-bile bouquet, the publican didn’t even wash the bottle out before refilling it so week old reds and whites mixed and soured together. James didn’t care. The taste wasn’t the point. He didn’t drink kill devil for the taste, he drank it for the burn and the way it freed his tongue. He drank wine to forget because it was far easier to live the way he did when he was too pissed to remember how to walk, never mind to put together complex thoughts.
He had developed a detailed routine that allowed him to continue his present duties without succumbing to the ever-pressing urge to simply lie down in the mire of the streets and let himself die. James was woken promptly at half past five of the clock by the pigs being fed directly across the street from his room. In the ordinary way of things he was still drunk and had only been abed for two or so hours so he would fumble under the bed for a bottle of whatever came first to hand and drink it to stave off the year’s worth of hangover he was owed. By the time he had located a bottle and managed to get a least some of the contents into his mouth rather than spilling it everywhere the pigs had usually quieted down enough that he could sleep again. At seven he would be woken again by the fellow in the rooms next to him. The man sang as he performed his morning ablutions and managed to never hit a note. If the man was hungover himself, James could rely on the man’s wife to start shrieking and nagging loud enough to wake the whole building. James would then stagger out of bed, and dress himself, if he wasn’t still dressed from the night before.
He had long since lost even the vestiges of his naval uniform - and it wasn’t as though he was in the service any longer. Yes, the situation had been resolved in a satisfactory manner, but James couldn’t redeem his dignity, and he certainly couldn’t return to the Navy, no matter how good the Governor was to him.
James worked at what the miserable little town considered a shipyard, the main source of industry other than taverns and prostitution, and while it wasn’t Tortuga by any means, most of the ships that came in for repairs were probably pirates or smugglers. The work kept him in liquor and allowed him to pay rent for his rooms, and they didn’t care if he was sober or not, so long as he could do basic carpentry. He was at the docks by half seven, after breakfasting on stale bread and cold soup which he got from the tavern under his rooms. He bought the leftovers from the night before if they were palatable, and sometimes even if they weren’t, but it was cheap and James washed it down with strong ale. He’d ruined his palate for fine liquors and delicacies anyway.
The work at the shipyard was tedious. James spent most of the day in a dingy workshop, working his way through another bottle of kill devil and doing basic carpentry. For all that he was a drunkard, he could still assist the shipmaster with organization. He had been a commodore of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, it didn’t take much effort to orchestrate the repairs, refitting and restocking of a few pirates.
Of course, being the one to call when no one else could figure arse from teakettle made the drinking all the more mandatory. Every week there was a major breakdown in management and every week James fixed it. This week, the problem was with the brig sitting in the harbor. She was in pieces, masts smashed, rigging broken, holes barely patched in the hull. She was repairable, James was sure of it, if they could get the captain off their backs for more than a moment.
Le Salamandre had been beautiful before a storm had wrecked her, and it was a miracle she had come through the storm at all. It made James ache to see her, a sick feeling that even rum couldn’t burn out and he’d been drinking almost constantly since she limped into port. He missed sailing, he regretted the loss of his own ship and he couldn’t think about the men who had died under his command. He couldn’t even begin to consider it. How could he, when it was all tangled around pirates who wouldn’t die, sea monsters and immortals? It was easier to sit in his workshop and drink himself to death.
Of course when the captain of Le Salamandre proved to be impossible to please, she was sent in James’ direction; she, unfortunately, being the captain, and not the ship. James was as tired of women as he was of everything else.
She was waiting for him in his workshop when he shuffled in. The only description James had been given was she was mulatto, female and of French descent. He couldn’t guess at the latter just from looking at her, but it was unlikely that this woman was anything but a sailor. James shut the door behind himself and bowed. “Madam,” he said. If he wasn’t so broken by the bottle, James might have said she was pretty. She was dressed in men’s clothing, cut to hide her curves and he couldn’t tell if the scowl was supposed to hide her looks or if it was just a reaction to the way he smelt.
“You’re the one where they send me?” she snarled, hand on her sword. “Is this supposed to be a joke?”
James settled himself at his work bench. “Your ship needs almost complete refitting.” He leaned back against the wall, propped his feet up on the bench and watched her fume. “We can do that for you, but the men here don’t like tramping through fetid jungle for new masts at the best of times and especially when they’re doing it for someone who will, invariably, shout at them for being slow moving, slow witted and…” He couldn’t think of a third, so he gave up and wet his lips, considering how much skill it was going to take to do his work. He was thirsty all the time.
“That isn’t what the other man said,” the woman said. “The small, greasy one.”
James shrugged. “He lied.” He pulled a drawing of her ship out of his desk drawer, and swallowed, trying to ignore how dry his mouth felt. “You may see for yourself, Madam.”
“Anamaria.” She leaned over to examine the schematics. “Did you write these?”
“I did.” He was a terrible carpenter, but his theory was sound as ever.
Anamaria looked at him pityingly. “You ain’t from around here, are you?”
James tried hard not to roll his eyes. “No,” he said shortly. James picked up the block of wood that was supposed to become a belying pin and proceeded to ignore her.
* ~ * ~ *
The pub was as dirty and miserable as the rest of the town, but Anamaria was used to it. At least the weather had cleared, her ship was still afloat and she had coin to spend. Halfway through her pint of ale - a passable brew - she spotted the man from earlier. Anamaria realized with no little irritation that he’d never even bothered to offer her his name. She elbowed her way through the crowd and sat down at the table across from him. He looked ill in the light of the fatty candle guttering on the table. She didn’t say anything and he simply raised his mug in a mocking salute and continued his efforts to render himself unconscious.
“You build ships as well as you drink?” Anamaria asked, sipping at her own ale. When he didn’t dignify her with a reply, Anamaria continued. “You navigate as well as you build ships?”
He laughed. “No.”
Anamaria sighed. “Shame.” She watched him drink, gauged the tremor to his hands and the shine of sweat on his face and the glassiness of his eyes. He wasn’t the first she’d seen stagger down this path and she’d no illusions that he would be the last, but Anamaria hated waste and it irritated her to watch a perfectly good shipwright drink himself simple. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“James.” James set his mug down and frowned at her. “Madam,” he said, “I am about to reach my goal for the evening and though a skillful combination of wines, liquors and beers I have done so while still having enough coin for a decent meal. I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t spoil the best part of the night.”
Anamaria scratched idly at her shoulder. “Which is what?”
“What happened to your ship?” he countered.
“Hurricano,” Anamaria said. Sometimes it was easier to catch flies with honey rather than just reaching across the rotten, crumbling table and smacking the offending party into compliance. “After a battle. The prize didn’t want to be taken and we chased her best we could with the damage done until we realized the hurricano was chasing us and then we just rode her out. By the grace of God, and such,” she said rapping her knuckles on the tabletop. “You seen one of those close up?”
James stared at her. “The grace of God?”
She wondered vaguely if a sound wallop around the head wouldn’t clear it for him. “I can tell for myself that you’ve not been seeing much of that.”
He chuckled again, and it was a decidedly unhappy sound. “Have you ever been to Tripoli?”
“You were there for that one? First hurricano I’ve ever seen there too and we-”
“Didn’t sail into it, I imagine.” His voice cracked and his beautiful, if not incredibly bloodshot, eyes stared determinedly into his mug.
Anamaria squinted at James, and considered all the lies Jack had told her and the little she had seen. She sipped at her ale. “No.” The man, no matter how much of a sot he had become, couldn’t manage to hide his accent, or his bearing. Lies or no, she wasn’t an idiot but it was also none of her business who James was or wasn’t. “Hard thing to lose a ship,” she offered instead and when his knuckles turned white around the handle of his mug she continued, “harder still to walk from it.”
James set the mug down, picked up the bottle and upended it, throat working. Anamaria watched, almost impressed, as he choked down half a bottle of kill devil. She wondered if it helped. He finally set the empty bottle down, gasping. “Not the hardest thing I’ve done, not even the start, Madam.”
“You sober up some and you could make yourself head of the shipyard,” Anamaria said placidly. “Sober up honestly and I could use a man of your talents, hurricano or not. Isn’t a man on my ship who knows buggerall about navigation and I’ve got to sleep some time.”
James shook his head. “The best part of the night,” he said, “is when I don’t have to think. Leave me alone.”
Anamaria shrugged carelessly. “Tomorrow then.”
* ~ * ~ *
James woke up, stuck his arm under the bed, grabbed hold of the chamber-pot and vomited into it. Thanks to Captain Anamaria he had not achieved the state of insensibility that he had been seeking and had, instead, spent the night in a more melancholy state than he might have wished and had, in the end, spent all his money on drink.
His need for the bottle, he had decided, was not based on any predisposition in his family, rather, it was a desire to ease the lump he carried in his stomach made up of the men he had lost, the people who had betrayed him and those he had betrayed, the distance he had fallen, the morals he had given up and the innumerable other damages done. It felt like his guts were on fire, most days, and it burned up his throat, parching him. Sometimes during the process of quenching the flames, James could even quiet his own thoughts, churning over and over, if only, if only. He wouldn’t have tolerated such self-indulgent despair in any of his men, he could barely stand it in himself.
It was embarrassing to have someone, by look or by tip of the head, let him know how far he had fallen, even if they didn’t know it to be a falling rather than just a failing and Anamaria had let him know without saying a single word. The sooner he was rid of her, the sooner he could go back to forgetting he decided, so James picked up his cleanest shirt and made his way to the nearest brothel. There he bathed, combed out his hair and trimmed his beard. It didn’t do anything to soothe his thirst or ease the knot in his guts but he felt a little more like a man again. He wasn’t sure if he wanted that, but he was late for work at any rate and had no time to do more than consider his reflection in the blackened glass before going to his workshop.
Anamaria was waiting for him in his office. “Madam,” he said and went back to his belaying pin.
Anamaria perched herself on his workbench. If she noticed his slightly cleaner appearance, she didn’t remark on it. “You like this work?” She picked up a thin file and started paring the dirt and tar out from under her nails. Her hands were calloused, scarred and tanned but she had long, slender fingers and delicate wrists; the hands of a lady, if they hadn’t been the wrong color.
James continued sanding. It was a soothingly repetitive process and he had no illusions that it would be sturdy enough for a ship, but it was something to occupy his hands and his head. “Have you nothing better to do?” he demanded.
She grinned at him with startlingly good teeth. “So long as you’re fixing my ship? No.”
“I, personally, am doing no such thing.” James smoothed away a rough patch and decided it was far too thin in the middle to support any substantial lines.
Anamaria frowned. “Why not?”
“Because,” he held up the pin, “as you can see, I am ill-suited to be in my current profession. You, I assume, would prefer someone who can even pretend competence.”
“I don’t want you sanding the damn thing,” she snapped, “I want you overseeing. You’re the only one who has them drawings and plans.”
James decided he didn’t care what she thought of him, and furthermore, that she would do better to have the right impression of him. He pulled a bottle of wine out of his desk and yanked the cork free. “They are sketches, Madam, nothing more.” James put the bottle to his lips but she swatted it out of his hand so it cracked against the wall and rolled away, spilling wine out onto the dirty floor. He was hard-pressed not to do something stupid like lurch off his bench to save what he could, or shout at her, and settled for biting the inside of his mouth until it was raw and painful.
“They are not and you know it,” Anamaria pointed the file at him threateningly. “I want you overseeing the repairs to Le Salamandre or I ain’t paying. Half-arsed workmanship is not what I asked for.” She smiled, smugly and went back to paring her nails. “Besides, I already talked to your overseer and he says you can have the job this time.”
James slumped in his seat. “What do you want?”
She flicked her fingers dismissively in an elaborate little wave and James was unpleasantly reminded of Jack Sparrow. “You don’t listen worth a damn. Pay attention. Fix my ship.”
With a sigh that he hoped expressed just how put-upon he was feeling, James got to his feet, dusted off his coat and slapped his ragged hat onto his head. “Very well, Madam. I will go look at the damned thing, I will draft you a complete rundown of what ought to be done and then I hope we can agree that you will leave me alone.”
Anamaria hopped down off the bench and eyed him consideringly. “James,” she said, her accent twisting the name, making the ‘J’ into something completely different. He expected her to continue, but she just set the file down on the workbench, settled her own hat over her faded yellow bandanna and led the way out, headed towards the docks and Le Salamandre.
The ship was in just as much disrepair as she had been the last time James had looked at her. Anamaria, hands stuffed into the pockets of her greatcoat, nodded to a few passing sailors on their way then stood next to James on the dirty, waterlogged boards of the dock as he stared critically at her ship.
“You’d do better to get a new one,” he said, turning away. “It’s broken.”
“I like this one.” Anamaria smiled fondly at her ship. “It can be fixed.”
James raised an eyebrow. “You’re not going to pay either way, are you?”
She shrugged. “I might.”
There was very little these days that James cared about, so he just nodded and climbed down onto the rough sand where Le Salamandre was beached. Anamaria gave him free reign to examine her ship from the topmasts to the bilges. His guesses had been right, the holes below the waterline had been properly boarded and calked and the decks were busy with men picking oakum and their mates, repacking the spaces and sealing them with pitch. The masts were going to be the real challenge. Le Salamandre needed them completely replaced and it was going to take weeks to find the right trees and then more time still to fit the ship with new masts. He was going to be stuck with Captain Anamaria for some time.
“Sup with me,” she said, as James was leaving. “I eat late, nine of the clock, here.”
James shook his head. “I’m afraid I must decline, Madam,” he said. “I have to-”
“Sit and drink,” Anamaria interrupted. “You can do that here. Consider it my thanks for your help.”
It would have been unforgivably rude to turn down such an offer, but James hadn’t had to be polite since he’d resigned his commission and he had no intention of starting again. “I have to decline,” he said again and left.
* ~ * ~ *
Anamaria had seen her fair share of lost causes before. She’d worked with a fair number of them. Notably high on the list were her Maman, Isobel, Elsje, Jeanne, and able Seamen, Henri, Thierry, Dries, Joris, Joshamee and Jack. There were more, but she’d either never learnt their names or forgotten them.
Gambling, drinking, women (or men) and disease from the women (or men) had made each of them what they were. It had killed a few of them. Each time Anamaria set her jaw and washed her hands of the matter. Those who fall behind, get left behind, as the saying went. It didn’t stop her from beating her head against stone walls for the first little while.
Besides, she liked this one. He didn’t seem likely to cheat her or lie to her and it was amusing and a little flattering to have a proper - no matter how fallen - British gentleman call her Madam. He cleaned up nice and didn’t look to have anything nasty or catching.
Just before noon, Anamaria stopped into the nearest public house that served food, ordered a jug of ale and a meat pie that looked like it actually contained meat and some sort of vegetables and went back to the workshop. James didn’t even look up when she came in, though she was certain he could smell the food. She set it down in front of him, took up her place on the bench and watched him sanding away at what might have been a belaying pin but was now just curved, smooth wood.
Anamaria poured the ale into a mug and took a swig. It was a little sour, but it would pass. “You should eat,” she said, irritated a second later to sound so much like the grandmothers and aunts who had plagued her as a child. You should eat, wash your face, wear this dress, bed this man. She snorted to herself and pushed the pie towards him. “The body needs more than beers and wines, even yours.” Pretty, pale English skin, burned and peeled and burned again until color finally took. Not much, mind, most of it looked like it was dirt, but this one wasn’t lily-white, though he must have been, before.
“Thank you, but I brought my own luncheon.”
She made a pshaw sound and held out the beer to him. “Last night’s stale leftovers. This is hot, and doesn’t taste of shit.” Anamaria grinned when he finally looked up, eyebrows raised. “Looked all over this wretched little island for something that didn’t taste of shit.” He looked like he was trying not to laugh. Maybe it was his delicate sensibilities hearing a woman swear, but she doubted it. Anamaria would bet he had a nice smile.
“You aren’t going to take no for an answer, I fear.” James took the mug and sipped from it, made a face and pulled another jug out of his desk. He had the good grace to look a little ashamed for a moment, before he held it out to her. “Try this instead.” James found his spoon and dug into the pie.
“There you go,” she said. His beer was better. Stronger, to be fair, but it tasted less of piss than hers. Anamaria pulled her own spoon out of a pocket and helped herself. “You know what that pin looks like?” she said after a few minutes of contented eating. James shook his head, picking his project up and turning it over in his hands. “Really?” Anamaria asked. “They got a name, hang on a turn, I’ll remember.”
James squinted at it thoughtfully. “Ah,” he said after a moment. “I see.” He smirked and Anamaria congratulated herself on being right so much of the time. He was going to have a beautiful smile when she could coax it out of him.
“A Frenchman, an Englishman and a Spaniard go into a brothel,” Anamaria said, mouth full of meat and pastry. “And the bawd turns to one of her girls and says-”
“I’ve heard it.” James set the wood down. “And the word, I believe, is dildo.”
Anamaria belched discreetly. “That’s it.” She washed the pie down with more of James’ ale. “Maybe not wood though.”
He winced. “Maybe not.”
Anamaria left him an hour or so later, setting into his sketches of Le Salamandre’s new masts, significantly more sober than she had seen him since she had arrived. It was hard not to feel smug, so she didn’t bother to try.
* ~ * ~ *
Captain Anamaria - odd and slightly irritating that she’d only given him the one name - brought him luncheon again, the next day. And the next. And the next. And James found himself looking forwards to her presence. He was tired of a lot of things, and it seemed as though being alone was one of them. Then she wasn’t there but there was a bottle of ale and a pie on his workbench next to a slim volume, poorly bound together, with a note tucked between the pages. The note-paper was cheap and there was half a draft of a badly penned sonnet on the back but the writing was good, so he could only assume that she had got a scrivener to pen it for her. That, and it sounded nothing like her, and James imagined that the scrivener had taken a great deal of poetic license in order to make his life less dull.
James - the note said - I have to attend to my duties as captain for the next few days, but I hope that when I return we can dine together, properly. And I’m not going to let you say no. A few miles south of here there is a little town, slightly less squalid than this one, where I imagine we might find something palatable. Until then, yours &c. Anamaria.
The book was tattered and it looked like it was missing some of the pages, which were blank, water stained and possibly a little rat-chewed, but it had been nice at some point and good paper was hard to come by in such a wretched port. Anamaria wasn’t wrong, there was a slightly more respectable town to the south, but it wasn’t a port town and he had nothing to trade and very little skills that he was willing - or able these days - to offer. It was a very thoughtful gift and he found himself curious as to what, exactly, she wanted from him other than a few fixed masts. He didn’t trust her any more than he had trusted the pirates he’d met before her, or any more than he ought to have trusted Miss Swann. It was disconcerting, to say the least, and he didn’t like being disconcerted any more than he liked the assumption that he was simply going to do as she demanded. He had to admit to curiosity though.
Curiosity, an emotion he’d hoped he’d drowned along with the guilt and the anger - though that hadn’t worked, so why he expected this to have, he was unsure of - yet he found himself waiting in his workshop four days later. It was a warm evening, but not desperately hot and there was a fresh breeze coming off the water. James was wearing the cleanest clothing he could muster, he had washed and shaved and he was incredibly drunk. He hadn’t intended the latter, but somewhere along the course of the previous days, it had just happened. James was having trouble standing upright when Anamaria let herself in. The way she looked, one would have thought she’d be quiet as a cat, but Anamaria moved decisively, she filled the space she inhabited.
Anamaria stood in the door of his workshop, hands on her hips and stared at him. Even with the drink clouding his vision James could see he’d really done it this time. She had teased her hair up into an intricate pattern of braids, presumably no mean feat, and ear bobs with gems made of paste flashed dully in the light from the lamp. She was wearing a dress. It was almost as incongruous as if James himself had appeared wearing a corset but there she was, laced into a dress that, if it wasn’t the height of fashion, was in one piece and almost fit as though she’d bought it and not stolen it. It wasn’t high-society, by any means; even with the jewelry, Anamaria looked more as though she’d be working rather than sitting on her arse drinking tea with ladies. The point, however, was that she had expected something, she had dressed for an occasion and he needed to lean against a wall to keep from falling over his own feet.
Anamaria spat on the floor and stormed off.
James cursed and ran after her. He careened against the doorframe, knocking one shoulder hard enough for the pain to penetrate through the rum-fog but just cursed again and kept going. With the back and forth staggering he was doing, it took him twice as long to catch her as it ought to have, but he caught her in the end, because she was unused to being laced and skirts were cumbersome at the best of times, never mind when one was trying to run.
He caught hold of her elbow and she rounded on him, jerking her arm away and slapping him as hard as she could. “You don’t touch me,” Anamaria snarled, panting.
James manfully resisted putting a hand to his cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said, and discovered he meant it, even if he was slurring his ‘s’es. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know?” Anamaria asked, incredulous. She shoved at him, sending him reeling back. “You didn’t know?” She shoved him again, and again, and James fell over, landing on his back in the muck of the street. “You’re a damn fool.” Anamaria, with her calloused sailor’s hands, her braids falling out of their updo, and her stolen dress, knelt down in the mud next to him and rubbed at her face tiredly. “What’s there to know?”
James sat up, mud soaking through his coat and trousers. “Thank you for the book,” he said.
Anamaria shoved his shoulder again, half-heartedly. “You might try to deserve it,” she replied, but she sounded much less cross, just upset.
“You look lovely,” James said, pushing himself to his feet and, using the nearest wall for support, got himself upright before offering Anamaria a hand up. All the effort they had put in was fairly nullified by the mud and the exertions of running.
Anamaria let him help her up, although she was by far the steadier of the two and even laughed a little. “Maybe before I set myself in the mud,” she muttered. “There’s no sense in us going any damn place now, we might as well just find some place here to fill our bellies.”
James tried not to look as ashamed as he felt. “I am sorry,” he said again. It wasn’t any less slurred the second time around.
She snorted and tried to brush the muck off her knees, only really managing to get it on her hands as well. “Of course you are.” Anamaria brushed at the muck on his back and, again, only managed to smear it around. James nearly jumped out of his skin at the touch. No one touched him any more. Not that anyone had touched him much before, to be honest. Anamaria shook her head and hooked her arm through his. “And of course I look lovely. Try saying something that ain’t the obvious.”
Anamaria led him, more than he led her, down the street in a swaying, stumbling ramble that took them to the dirty little public house nearest to James’ apartments and she bade him find them a table while she ordered the food and drinks. He did as he was told, and didn’t need prompting to accept the food and the weakest of beers. Thankfully, the nutrition did a great deal in the way of sobering him up.
They didn’t talk much over the meal. Anamaria spent the most part of it watching him speculatively and he spent most of it staring at his stew. She sat like a man, even in the dress. James sat hunched over his bowl and watched his hands shake. Every time he glanced up, she smiled at him. It was a genuine smile, every time, not as though something especially amusing had occurred, just a quiet, pleased smile. The mud itched in his hair. Her foot bumped against his, under the table and she didn’t move it away.
James wasn’t an idiot. He had also spent most of his life at sea, he had been turned down the one time he’d actually thought about a romantic engagement, and he hadn’t had sex he hadn’t paid for in years. It was a very rare occasion when anyone wanted James Norrington and it had been long enough that he wondered if Anamaria wasn’t just being nice to him out of pity. He wanted desperately to ask.
“How long will you be in port?” he asked instead and then regretted it, since he already knew the answer. When her ship was repaired, she would leave. He was in charge of seeing to the repairs. James realized, with a sick feeling in his guts, that he was in charge of sending the one person off who had been kind to him in a very long time.
“How long are you in port?” Anamaria asked him back, running her foot up his calf. She was wearing boots under the dress and they smeared more mud up his trouser leg. James gripped his ale mug until he thought his knuckles would split open the skin. “How long are you going to sit here?” she asked.
James wasn’t sure if she was talking literally, or in a more general sense of ‘here.’ He swallowed, hard, and didn’t lean into the movement of her boot bumping against the back of his knee and down again. Someone had carved the opening lines of a dirty joke onto the table; they had given up halfway through and just illustrated the rest instead. James felt sick. It was worse when her boot moved away. Anamaria reached across the table and gently pried the mug out of his hands. Her fingers were very warm and rough and James nearly choked on the bile rising in his throat. She didn’t try to take his hand, she touched his wrist instead, as though feeling the pulse, not quite holding hard enough to make him stay, but not just a caress either. Anamaria leaned across the narrow table and kissed him.
* ~ * ~ *
He tasted like a brewery and his mouth stayed stiff against hers, but when she pulled away Anamaria could hear the barest of tiny, desperate sighs. She waited, and for a moment she didn’t think he was going to do anything at all, other than sit, staring. He looked like she had shot him: surprised and waiting for the shock to wear off and the pain to set in. Anamaria gave him longer than she would have given anyone else.
James caught hold of her hand as she pulled away and Anamaria held very still, waiting. He kissed her and this time it still tasted as though she was breathing in a brewery, and he was clumsy and unpracticed but he kissed with passion.
“Where do you live?” Anamaria asked and watched him blush.
He lived in a room barely larger than her own cabin on Le Salamandre and it was littered with empty bottles. She shoved him against the door, closing it with his back and reached past him to slide the bolt. His beard was rough against her neck and she shivered when he bit at the place where her jaw hinged and pushed her hands up under his shirt and scratched her ragged nails over his chest to make him do the same.
James was hesitant, as though he’d forgotten the steps to a dance, or as though he couldn’t quite believe they were actually going to fuck. Anamaria didn’t mind so much, she was tired of feeling like she was being worked over. She was half tempted to just hitch up her skirts and have him against the door, but James moved away, fingers trailing across her bare shoulders, and turned her, so he could unlace her and she decided she’d much prefer his way, which seemed to consist of much more skin on skin.
The corset finally dropped away, the outer skits fell to the floor with a soft hiss of cheap linens and Anamaria turned around again and pulled James’ shirt up over his arms. They both had their scars; old sword wounds, knife wounds, bullet wounds. He had a tattoo, probably about ten years old judging by the fading: two lopsided stars, so he would always know the way. One of them was bisected by a scar that she traced with her tongue. He was hesitant, but not clumsy, as he worked her out of her stays and he wasn’t shy when she pushed his trousers off his hips and down to the floor.
She was unsurprised, if not a little disappointed when the toll that drinking takes made itself known. Anamaria was almost certain that no encouragement was going to help him, not if she put her hands on him, or sucked him and she expected the evening to come to a rather abrupt and slightly embarrassing ending. But James didn’t apologize as she expected. He put his hands and his mouth to her until she was as sweaty and satisfied as if he’d not been unmanned by the drink and he didn’t mind when she pulled his hair and scratched at his shoulders as she came.
The bed was a little too narrow for two to lie in side by side but James put his head on her breast and traced the curve of her hip with his fingertips, their legs tangled - a little uncomfortably - together. The blankets smelt of unwashed man and spilt liquor, but also of her now, and so long as Anamaria didn’t put them up by her nose, she didn’t mind.
“We should do this again,” she said, picking dried mud out of his hair.
James mumbled his agreement against her shoulder. She slapped his hand away when the caress became too itchy and ticklish for her to bear and he smiled and rubbed the spot, rubbing the itch away. Anamaria wondered if she couldn’t get used to someone so very well behaved.
* ~ * ~ *
James woke up sweaty and cramped and so very dry. He shut his eyes against the morning light and concentrated very hard on not getting out of bed for a drink. Bad enough that he had been so utterly shamed but to further compound his dependency seemed unutterable. Christ, he was thirsty.
Anamaria snored softly as she slept, now lying with her back pressed to his front, one of his arms trapped under her head.
He slowly, carefully, eased his arm free, trying not to disturb her. James sat on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands. There was a bottle of god-awful rum, half full, under the bed. He shut his eyes and dug his fingers into his hair and thought instead about being incredibly late to his work, or about how incredibly nice it had been to have someone in his bed, even if he was unable to perform as he ought to have. Shame was not a high motivator not to drink. He was better able to stand it when properly fortified and insensibility sounded increasingly preferable.
James gave in, but when he pulled his head back out from under the bed, Anamaria was awake and watching him. She held out an imperious hand for the bottle and he gave it to her, looking down at the dirty sheets. Anamaria popped the rotten cork out and took a drink, swishing the rum around her mouth before spitting it back out into an empty bottle.
“Rinse your mouth,” she said and stretched, almost golden in the light from the window. Anamaria smiled at him, still sleepy and not angry, not disappointed.
James felt something unclench in his stomach and did as she bid him. He put the bottle back under the bed and let Anamaria pull him over her. It had been a good twelve hours since his last drink, longer than he’d been sober in months, and this time he responded to her. Slowly, yes, but she grinned fiercely and pushed against him, matching him. Anamaria was stronger than her slight frame would have had him believe and they soon tumbled off the bed, teeth and touch and her bony fingers clutching at him as he did the same to her. He pinned her, halfway between the washstand and the door, and kissed her roughly, easing his fingers up inside her, using his thumb to make her squirm and gasp under him.
Anamaria twisted out from under him, and they wrestled each other across the floor until his head knocked against the wall and she straddled him, and let him catch hold of her wrists as she sank down onto him. He groaned and his head thumped back against the wall as he set his feet to the floor and pushed up. She was hot and wet and, god, he’d forgotten how good it felt.
It was rough and messy and afterwards he had bruises on his shoulders and her knees and his back were scraped from the rough wood of the floor. James dragged the blanket down off the bed and draped it over them, wiping himself off with a corner of the sheet.
“Mmm,” Anamaria said and James was very much inclined to agree. He still wanted a drink, but it was less pressing now. Certainly less important than just lying on the floor and remembering how his legs were supposed to work. Anamaria blinked up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “You should come with me,” Anamaria said and James wanted to make a lewd joke but refrained. She slapped his arm. “To sea with me,” she clarified.
James shook his head. “That would be unwise, in the extreme,” he said.
“Better to stay here and drink?” she asked, a touch snidely.
“Better not to be a pirate,” James snapped and got up. He left her the sheet but dressed quickly to cover himself.
Anamaria huffed out an exaggerated sigh. “Like you’ve never do-” she stopped abruptly and James turned around in time to see her bite down on her lip to keep the thought to herself.
“What did you say?” he demanded.
She sat up, wrapping the sheet around herself. “You sailed on the Pearl looking for Jones’ heart.” Anamaria rubbed at her face. “He’s half lie, half lunacy, but even I know when someone from one of his stories washes up in my life. I have to know, if I want to keep afloat.”
James didn’t need to ask who he was and he wanted to be sick.
“Besides,” Anamaria said and made no move to put her clothing back on. “I’m not a pirate.”
“The other one has bells on it,” James said, sitting heavily on the bed. He was almost certain that his shirt had ended up under the bed, and he didn’t want to look because he was sure that if he did, he would find the rum and he would start drinking again. Being sober was horrible, but being drunk hadn’t helped either. He decided he could get drunk once Anamaria had left.
She had the audacity to laugh. “Privateer. The navy doesn’t look too closely at who’s doing the sailing or what they’ve got ‘tween their legs.” Anamaria sat on the bed next to him and smoothed his hair out of his face. There was still dried mud in it that flaked off onto the mattress. “Don’t sulk,” she said.
James raised his eyebrows. “Sulk?”
Anamaria shrugged. “Aye, sulk.” She kissed him, firmly, and her hands were cool on his face, soothing away his headache and the fiery ache in his guts.
* ~ * ~ *
Le Salamandre sailed two months later, heavy one ex-navy navigator and tactician.
He was a disaster, she knew that. Anamaria watched James, counted the drinks he had, and it was still too much, but it was less, and that was something. She took him to her bed on Le Salamandre and didn’t try to explain how a French named ship had letters of marque from England and Spain as well as from France. He didn’t ask.
It was no good trying to talk to him about the navy, his life, or anything that had happened to him before they had met. If he was going to talk about it, he would do it on his own and every now and again he would tell a story and sometimes they would send him back to the bottle for a few days, and sometimes they even made him smile a little.
Anamaria imagined that sooner or later he was going to come back to himself. Eventually they would fight over pirating and command and every other damn thing that two people could fight over and he would, sooner or later, leave. As it didn’t seem to be happening sooner she was content to wait for later.
The End.