Groves is on watch when he hears the shouting coming from Norrington's cabin. Every man onboard is loyal to Norrington unto death; no one says a word when they capture one pirate over and over, no one says a word when he's kept not in the brig but in the commodore's own quarters, no one says a word when he quietly escapes after a few days. And no one says a word on the occasions when it ends like this, with Sparrow slamming the door hard enough to rattle the glass as one last expletive is flung back over his shoulder. He stalks past Groves, who doesn't move, doesn't even blink. When the bell sounds, Groves goes to the lieutenants' cabin to rouse Gillette. They had a ridiculous argument about Descartes this morning, nowhere near as heated as the fight between Norrington and Sparrow, but bitter enough for the hot-tempered Gillette to grumble at him and refuse a conciliatory kiss.

He waits nearly two hours before he ventures out again, slipping along in the dark, down to the hold where it smells like salt and iron and ash. Sparrow is already there, stinking of rum and rock-hard as he shoves Groves back against the bulkhead. He swallows an involuntary moan with his gold-plated mouth as they rock together for a few moments, what little rhythm they can attain desperate and ungainly. A well-practiced spin and Groves is nearly sitting on a cannon, then flipped over. He lays his cheek against cool metal as Sparrow, swearing violently, tears his breeches down. There is a moment in which Groves waits, his breath raising little clouds of condensation on the gun, before Sparrow gets his own breeches down. He spits into his hand several times, pushing two moistened fingers into Groves and twisting perfunctorily. Groves almost wishes that took more preparation than that, but to his shame, it doesn't; Sparrow's slide into him is smooth and unencumbered. He's smaller than Gillette but he more than makes up for it with his careless thrusts, one hand fisted in Groves's hair and the other on his hip, jerking backward as if Groves isn't already doing so on his own. Pressing his lips to the solid thing beneath him, he thinks of how cold it is now, and how very hot it gets when it is fired. Sparrow bites his neck sharply, sinking nonsense curses into the marks. When he grinds his hips viciously and hisses "fuckfuckfuck—Jamie—Jamie—Christ—" Groves comes, his cock gripped by rough fingers. He says nothing, just breathes heavy on the cannon, while Jack's hands tighten on him painfully and he whimpers the commodore's name.

They clean each other off quickly and quietly. Sparrow is up the hatchway first, Groves needing some time before he can make his aching muscles obey him. He walks slowly to his cabin, not yet feeling the pain that will overtake him in the morning. As he passes the commodore's cabin, he can already hear the grunts and strained gasps as Norrington fucks Sparrow into the mattress. Even if he can't see it, he can imagine it: Sparrow solicitous and contrite and smelling of gunpowder, Norrington shaking with lust and anger and yes, love, in a manner of speaking, though it's not the kind that will ever be enough.

In his own bunk, on the other hand, Gillette will wake him in an hour or so, apologies falling from his lips as easily and as sweetly as his kisses. Groves will plead exhaustion and Gillette won't mind, because Groves holds him so tightly that he believes everything to be secure enough that they don't need sex to prove it. By the end of the day Groves will be feeling well enough to open up for him, for his Andrew—never forcing, never hurting, never letting slip a single touch like the ones Sparrow gives him when he is bent over the gun. And he will love it, adore it, beg for it as much as Sparrow begs for Norrington to loosen his iron restraint after he's taken Norrington's second lieutenant in the bowels of Norrington's own ship.

But he'll still wait for the sounds of strife coming from that larger cabin, and he'll still go to Sparrow in the dark, where kissing the gunner's daughter will still be the closest to kissing a woman he's been in fifteen years.