The best nights are the ones where James doesn't sleep alone. Running a close second are the ones on which he goes to bed alone, but does not wake up that way.

"When did you get in?" He presses his face to Jack's belly, feeling the ripple of muscle as the pirate strokes his hair back.

"'Round four. Didn't have the heart t' wake you." He shifts closer, sliding down lower from where he'd been resting against the headboard.

James harbors his drowsy smile in the faint hollow beneath Jack's cheekbone. "What have you been doing for near two hours?"

"Oh, nothin' much," Jack says, kisses on James's brow as breezy as his voice. "Watched you sleep, thought the same thoughts over and again."

"And what were those thoughts?" James finds the spot at the base of Jack's neck that always makes him roll his shoulders and then turn boneless.

Jack murmurs softly, his eyes closing at the gentle rub. "How you get more beautiful the more I miss you, an' how I love you."

"Tell me how you love me, Jack," James says, curling arms around his pirate's waist. Jack stretches out, lying half atop him with his knee crooked around one leg.

"You know how," he mumbles, beard tickling James's ear. "True an' deep an' however hard you like." His hand creeps under the hem of James's nightshirt, lifting it up past his thighs.

"Forever?" His voice comes out in a gasp as he pulls Jack nearer, rocks his hips against solid weight and pressure.

There are a thousand ports of call in Jack's dark eyes, an endless moonbright sea. "Aye," he says, the promise he can't make and James would be foolish to accept. But he says it again nonetheless, his face intent. "Aye, for it's ours t' take."

James kisses him on each eyelid and believes it. Although that sea stretches farther than either man can comprehend, it always leads Jack back to him, and he knows it always will. Whether it is the end of a lonely day or the start of a happy one, as it is now, matters little. All days belong to the two of them, all nights are their own to claim. Tangled in each other's arms, they welcome this particular morning with guttering cries and whispers of mineyoursmine.