Gone Come Dawn (1/3)

by Curiouslyfic

Pairing: J/N
Rating: Overall NC-17
Disclaimer: Pirates of the Caribbean is owned by Disney, etc. No infringement intended.
Originally Posted: 9/27/07
Summary: He'd very much like details about his pants.

Captain Jack doesn't know what hit him. Rum, he thinks, but he knows there's more and his brain's being miserly with details. Important details, he thinks. Details about his pants, perhaps.

He'd very much like details about his pants.

There's a distant possibility this is all curse-related, some bastard offspring of the undead pirates and tentacled ferrymen. There's a distinct possibility this is all pirate-related, some natural outpouring of rum-soaked welcome back to Tortuga's shores.

Naked and rum-less and baffled, he thinks, is slightly better than the slapping. Perhaps. If there's rum in his future.

No rum, no pants, no clue should mean robbed, but when he moves his hands the shine from his rings dances into his eyes, blinding him with refracted sun. Not robbed, then.

Both intriguing and disquieting, that.

There's no noise like Tortuga, which unsettles him further because Tortuga is always noisy, always busy with someone doing something, even if it's only pickpocketing the drunkards by morning's light as the lightskirts make their way home, a pretense of industry settling over what shame they've got left.

Captain Jack sees no such women. Nor children. Nor pirates. Nor... no, he's alone.

He's never alone in Tortuga. Everyone knows him. He's famous. He's loved.

He's naked and rumless and lying on some bit of beach that smells like Tortuga but clearly isn't, and he's a fool for not getting up to see where, in fact, he is and what, in fact, has happened to his breeches.

Eventually, he thinks, he'll miss those.

* * *

When he pushes himself upright, he encounters his scarf lying under his hip. Strange, that.

It's smeared with something dried and tacky by turns and Captain Jack's face belies his newest confusion even if he won't admit it aloud. Someone's got off on his headscarf, mate, and if it weren't him, he plans to be right pissed.

Really he will be.

His arse is... sore's not the word. He can think of others that apply more.

But if it ain't his arse what's sore, it ain't his spunk on the scarf unless he's spent the night all on his onesy and if that's so, where's his pants? Don't need to strip for the pleasures of his own hand.

The more he ponders this, the more mystery it becomes.

* * *

Hasn't done this in a long while, but he expects a treasure hunt collecting his gear. Breeches trapped on a leafless bush, worn linen snagged on the knob of a brittle twig. Missing lacings, missing boot, that constant element of surprise as he rounds each corner stripping slow in reverse.

Instead, he finds his clothes a short hike port, folded neat beneath both boots and a smooth stone. He knows that's not how he'd've removed them and deduces the arsehole who hadn't touched his is, in fact, new to piracy. Like straight out of the Navy, still caught up in rules amid the taste of freedom.

And what he's done on a beach with ex-Navy is beyond him. Blackguards only forevermore, he'd promised himself, and he'd kept it.

He's almost certain he's kept that.

* * *

His Pearl laughs on the wind, a teasing flirting thing what says she knows how he's spent his night, even if he doesn't, and she approves wholeheartedly.

* * *

He finds the note when he looks up, finds his short, sharp Turner blade pinning parchment to bark with almost friendly delicacy. No heavy thunk of hatred here, not like the posters what's up on the village boards sometimes declaring his worth lifeless for the East India Trading Company.

Captain
Your effects.
~N

He looks up. Doesn't see what he wants, and his Pearl's laughing at him again.

* * *

The best part of the morning after a night with Sparrow is the baffled way he wakes, how he shows his debauchery in small, silent ways most people don't notice.

James doesn't miss one.

There's lines at his eyes, so he's had more than two jars, but not the line between his brows, so less than five. The lines are deeper than normal but not as deep as he's seen them this week, so he'll guess three with the possibility of a fourth earlier on.

He's smirking, so there's been sex, and the gleam in his eye says it was good but he's not swaggering more than normal and he's not limping at all, so no penetration was involved.

James knows these things already, but he likes to check that he's still got Captain Sparrow sorted. He'd hate to miss a trick.

Sparrow's head tilts, his elflocks catching the breeze as his smile breeds gold.

"Commodore," Sparrow says in that smooth, slick voice of his, and it's all James can do not to pin him to the mast and take what's temporarily offered. "A word, if y' please."

James wants to smile. Wants to react. Can't, a defect for which he sarcastically thanks His Majesty's Naval Service. "Mister," he says instead, and takes small joy of Sparrow's startled look. "Not a Commodore unless I've command of a fleet, Captain. Which, as you might recall, I do not."

The kohl around Sparrow's eyes settles into the lines there as he squints recognition. "James," he says and James takes this as strange, that the Captain would forgo the cool distance of surname for the familiarity of first, a thing he's done so far with no one but Anamaria.

James doesn't fool himself that he's taken her place in the Captain's regard. No one's sure quite what that place is—neither Anamaria's nor his own—but James at least is sure there's a difference and like always will be.

He's made his peace with that.

* * *

Anamaria is the only one to notice James's slight limp. She'd mention it but there's the Code to consider. No questions, she thinks, because ex-Navy or not, James has earned his place within the security of the Articles.

It's been a year, she thinks. A year since the Pirate Hunter stopped being Commodore and started being James. Never Norrington, not on this ship or any other without His Majesty's flag to shield him from the effects of his infamous hunting. Always James, for which she blames the Captain.

She's the only one who does. But then, she's the only one who's noticed James limping.

* * *

The Captain's quarters are roomy and bright compared to the crew's hold below decks, but upon stepping in from the ratlines, they're dim and suffocating, the first he's been indoors since night watch began. He acclimatizes himself as Sparrow sweeps in, all floating coattails and fluttering hands. James loves the way they sparkle as they move, the way they capture fractal light as it shifts.

It's all quite Sparrow.

"That's not Tortuga," Sparrow says, hand fluttering at the peek of shoreline framed by window.

"No." James's smile is invisible. He suspects Jack knows it's there.

"Yet we stopped for shore leave." Sparrow leans in, cocks his head to fish-eye James like he sees through the remaining Naval reserve that way. "Why did we stop for shore leave if that's not Tortuga?"

James wants to tell him, really he does, but Sparrow won't like the reminders. He never does.

* * *

If pressed, Jack remembers the gold on Isla des Deseos. Galleons, he thinks, and piles of shiny, glittery goodies laid out waiting for him. Better than Isla de Muerta in that there'd been no undead pirates to befuddle, no ships of His Majesty to bewitch. No short drop and sudden stop to consider, no whelps to conspire.

If pressed, Jack remembers the witch keeping watch, a frail thing that vaguely reminded him of Tia Dalma in her mystery, Elizabeth in her pointed, accusatory finger.

If pressed, Jack remembers some of the past year. Some, but not much.

He steadfastly doesn't remember what he doesn't remember. Not the passage of time or the accumulation of the new crew. Not the witch's warning should he touch that gold. His heart's desire, she'd said, but never to last.

Most days, he doesn't even remember James at all.

* * *

Come nightfall, it changes. Jack's all Jack, all swift-moving hands and nimble lips and decadent tongue, bronzed skin James charts by moonlight every way he can. Need and power and urgency, most of it rum-soaked and salty and somehow all the more charming for it.

The taste of Jack on his tongue, the feel of him spending in James's mouth, the way his fingers curl in the dark hair James is growing now that the wig is well and truly gone. The slide of sweat-slicked skin, the grind of hipbones and cocks and chests until sweat's not the only thing lubricating.

The arch of broad, bared backs lifting from the warm, damp sand of a shore leave encounter or the cool cloth sheets of a night in the Captain's quarters.

The way Jack's thumb rubs James's mouth when Jack has him pinned in that delicious moment between full penetration and first thrust. The gleam of moonlight in Jack's eyes as James rolls his hips, an intimate imitation of the Pearl's gentle rock through breaking water. The catch of hitching breath when James's helpless contractions drag Jack into his own crest, caught in the wake of James's pleasure.

They fall asleep tangled, James's body a patchwork of sun-kissed dark and sun-spared pale against Jack's ink-stained tan. Fitting, James thinks as he watches Jack sleep, that the man's colourful nature should reflect itself so openly. He traces the smudging kohl with his gaze, the line of Jack's wanton mouth with his finger, and thinks his own changing tone suits, too.

He knows he should sleep, that soon enough he'll have watch to work and a ship to crew, that doing it on fractured sleep is asking for trouble, but he hates wasting moonlight and Jack's private affection.

Knows morning chases them, that not even the Pearl can sail fast enough or far enough to escape the day.

* * *

By day, he's Sparrow and he doesn't remember why he undoubtedly woke naked on the beach or why James is limping or why—Jack's favourite morning question lately—why the rum is gone.

Some days, Anamaria wonders how James can stand it.

* * *

Some nights it's hard, frantic and furious, a mirror of Jack's confusion, James's frustration. Some nights it's rough, Captain battling Commodore in somewhat closer quarters than they're used to.

Some nights, it's careful, a tentative peace Jack doesn't quite understand and James knows not to trust.

Some nights, it's slow, sweet and tender, repayment for the patience James sometimes feels slipping.

It's always love. Some nights, it even feels that way.

* * *

James's eyes raise skyward, beyond the Pearl's dark sails, to chart the hours left until his Jack returns.

As always, it's far too long.

His every wish by moonlight, gone come dawn.

Read Part 2