Jack lies curled on his side, snoring in a manner he hopes is plausible yet not unattractive, and tries to work out if there is a third option beyond the obvious two.

Option one consists of slitting Barbossa's throat when he's asleep. This has the merits of simplicity and relative security, but wouldn't be as much fun as option two: fucking the living daylights out of each other until morning or some new crisis (such as Hector trying to slit Jack's throat) intervenes.

Experience has taught him that 'wait and see' is often a good response to this kind of dilemma, so he lies still while Hector locks the cabin door behind him. When he goes straight to the chest full of weapons, Jack's right hand twitches towards the pillow—and the knife under it—but Hector comes to the bunk empty-handed. (Of course, there's the little knife hidden under that green bandana, but that gives Jack an advantage really, since he knows where Hector's hand will go if it's looking for a weapon.)

Hector spreads a blanket over him, which is so sweetly unexpected that Jack is tempted to wake up and kiss him. But then he feels Hector lift a corner of the pillow. Bugger!

Hector—rather cunningly, in Jack's opinion—replaces the pillow, but leaves the dirk where it is. (Because that way, at least he knows where Jack's hand will move etc. Bugger bugger bugger.)

If Jack wants to regain his advantage (and he does), he'll have to stay awake and focused long enough to move his weapon to a new hiding place.

No kissing then, which is probably a blessing in disguise given the regrettable loss of captainly dignity that kissing Hector still seems to provoke. He'd really hoped he was past all that—still hopes so, in fact, because he certainly wants to kiss someone, and have that someone kiss him back, before moving on to a range of more stimulating activities he's been mapping out in his head ever since he returned to life, sensation and opportunity.

Truth be told, he never stopped wanting, even in the Locker, but now, with blood throbbing in his veins again, the desire is suddenly a lot more urgent, and a quick rub against Hector wasn't nearly enough to satisfy. Although it was enough to allow a measure of caution to assert itself, which is why he keeps his eyes shut and allows himself to be shifted gently onto the far side of the bunk as Hector climbs in beside him. (He keeps his hand close to the pillow.)

Then a bristly mouth presses against his forehead as Hector lies down beside him and murmurs, "I missed ye, Jack."

I missed ye, Jack?!?

Good thing Jack is a master of misdirection or he'd never have been able to keep his face slack. He's seen enough to know Hector still wants to tup him—with gratifying urgency—for all the eye-rolling denials, but surely the old goat... (Mustn't think about goats!) Surely the old walrus never cared about anyone but himself.

Himself and that damn monkey, now thankfully banished into the safe hands of Mr. Cotton. Perhaps Hector's thinking about his monkey, and what he actually said was, "I miss ye, Jack." Yup, that'll be it.

And even if Hector did care for Jack—Sparrow, that is—he'll sell anyone and anything to get what he wants. And he's smart, damn him! Probably guesses Jack's awake, and said that just to gain his trust. Well it won't work. Not this time. Barbossa is not a man who can be trusted: Jack won't be making that mistake again.

He lies quiet until Hector's snoring settles to a steady rhythm, then he opens his eyes. Moving the dirk to a new hiding place down the side of the bunk is child's play, so he decides to try for Hector's hidden knife as well, but when he tries to slip a finger inside the green bandana, Hector stirs in his sleep and calls out, "Ragetti! Tell them cursed monkeys to keep away from me beer!"

"And he calls me a drunk..." mutters Jack under his breath, rather feeling Hector could have found something more interesting to dream about, under the circumstances.

Jack himself is soon dreaming about kissing (good); he's not sure who the other mouth belongs to (could be good or bad, depending on what information it is he's missing), but he or she certainly knows how to kiss (very good). However, it's evidently someone he'd have done better to stay away from because he's now clamped tight in giant, chilly tentacles (very bad). Then comes the breath (truly, unimaginably bad) and a very large number of long, pointed teeth (worse, but somehow almost a relief after the breath).

At this point, he starts up, knife in hand and bathed in cold sweat. Hector's still snoring beside him and, for a blissful second, he can believe it was only a dream brought on by Hector's breath on his face. But Hector's breath smells of roses and peppermint compared to... to the other thing he can still smell. Hoping against hope, he checks his own breath in his cupped palm: evil, but nowhere near that evil. Dread climbing up his gullet, he sniffs the air.

"Kraken!" he screams, leaping from the bed and grabbing weapons for himself and Hector. "Kraken!"

Hector snaps awake fast enough to catch the cutlass and pistol Jack tosses him, which—panic-stricken though he is—Jack finds quite impressive. (True, he initially levels both at Jack, but this is understandable really, and soon cleared up.)

"Now, Jack," Hector says, lowering his weapons and slipping his arms through Jack's guard to clasp him by the shoulders. "Don't ye think things seem mighty quiet on deck for a ship what be under attack? 'Twas but a nightmare, I promise ye."

Jack shakes his head, weapons gripped and ready. Can't Hector smell it? His throat clenches. "Kraken!" he squeaks. Then, clearing his throat and deepening his voice, adds, "I'd know that stink anywhere."

"I don't doubt it," concedes Hector, "but t'aint here."

This is so manifestly untrue that Jack can't decide where to begin arguing, so he pulls and pushes the bigger man towards an open casement in the stern window. The stink here is overpowering: Jack steps back from the window, surreptitiously plotting bearing and distance to a selection of containers that could, in a crisis, serve as puke buckets.

Hector breathes deep as though pondering the bouquet. "Aye, a smell like dead fish," he concludes. "The deadest I've smelled, but faint and far off. I think ye must be over-sensitised from... well, I dare say ye know well enough what from."

"Far off? Faint?" Jack flails around for words to express his indignation, although, now he comes to think of it... "Well obviously it's faint and far off. I know that! But location is hardly the point at issue. This is, beyond any doubt, the distinctive aroma of Davy Jones' overgrown, over-tentacled, and generally over-familiar monstrosity."

"I'll bow to yer superior knowledge," says Hector, with less irony than Jack would have predicted—not that he can spare the mental capacity just now to calculate degrees of scraggle-bearded mockery. "But I'm really thinkin' it don't pose much threat just at the moment."

Jack nods. For once, being wrong is a good feeling, if not one he's willing to admit out loud. "Just drawin' your attention to it."

"Consider it drawn." Hector glances (regretfully?) towards the rumpled bunk, but sits down under the window, patting the bench for Jack to join him. "I don't suppose ye'll be wantin' to sleep now, Jack."

Hector still has his britches and Jack's quite naked (aside from pistol and cutlass, but he leaves them on the table). Being naked—even being the only one naked—isn't a problem in itself, but he fears Hector will use it to claim some sort of superiority.

Right this moment, however, nothing compares to the presence of a living, breathing fellow-human beside him. So he snuggles close; it's good just to sit there and breathe, and feel the weight of Hector's arm around his shoulders.

"Not such a bad death, really," he says at last. "A lone, heroic stand against the invincible Leviathan."

No response being forthcoming, he persists. "Doomed but undaunted an' all that. Gotta be better'n hangin' or pox. Makes for a better story anyhow. Maybe even a song or two."

Privately, he thinks it's at least a picaresque novel and several ballads (of the impressively long and memorably gruesome variety), but you'd think someone would have known a verse or two and sung them to him by now...

The trouble with standing alone and valiant in the face of certain death (or anything else actually) is that—by definition—nobody's watching. No-one knows whether you whimpered and begged, or confronted sabre-fanged oblivion with panache. 'Save me, Mummy!' or 'Hello, Beastie.' What's the difference if nobody hears?

"I'll wager ye were still spitting even as ye slid down its throat," says Hector, giving him a squeeze.

"Too busy tryin' to bite the bugger back," Jack asserts, though, if the truth be told, he's hazy on anything after the teeth. (He's very clear about those.) Then, because Hector is probably the very last person—out of a considerable number of not-quite-last people—he'd think would suspect him of courage, he adds, "But how would you know?"

"Marooned ye, din't I?" asks Hector.

This, sadly, is irrefutable.

"I ne'er saw it till then, but I'll not be forgettin'."

"???" says Jack, or pulls faces to that effect.

"Oh, ye do a fine job, Jack Sparrow, of skedaddling like a frighted coney while there be a chance of savin' yer pretty hide. But when there's naught left to play for, yer true mettle shows tempered steel."

Their eyes meet, then hurriedly glance away.

Jack feels strongly inclined to do a bit of skedaddling right here, right now. Only everyone outside the cabin probably thinks he tried to flee the Kraken, and that's not what he wants either.

"'S hardly the point, eh?" he argues, because prevarication beats confirmation or denial. "Easy to be brave with nothing to lose."

"Nay, lad: not easy, but honest."

Jack suddenly needs to bury his face in Hector's shoulder and just breathe.

"I didn't run," he says very distinctly, although it seems to come out muffled through his dreadlocks. "Well, only at first."

"I know that, Jack."

The way Hector says "Ja-a-aack," it's like waves breaking on shingle. It still sends a shiver down Jack's spine, as if those breakers are rolling pebbles up and down inside him, all the way to his tailbone.

Then Hector's hands are stroking Jack's hair, arms, and shoulders like they're laying claim to a valuable prize, and Jack doesn't want this to stop, so he won't mention that he couldn't take the rest of it, that he isn't brave enough to face the Locker. In fact, he's very definitely not going to think about the Locker at all, or what happened to him—all of him—in there. Not ever again. Not now, anyway.

He swings a leg around to straddle Hector; takes that battered, familiar, sometimes frightening, yet somehow comforting face in his hands; rubs his fingers through that sorry excuse for a beard.

He smiles.

"Hello, Beastie."

______________________________________________
Nuts Out series:
First Nut out of the Locker
Second Nut Out of the Locker: Like Nuts for Bananas
Third Nut Out of the Locker: Intense, with a hint of Kraken
Fourth Nut Out of the Locker: Two's Company
Fifth Nut Out of the Locker: Small Island Paradise
Sixth Nut Out of the Locker: Madness and Brilliance
Seventh Nut Out of the Locker: Goats and Monkeys
(Almost) Eighth Nut Out of the Locker:Sibling Rivalry
Ninth Nut out of the Locker: Last Men Standing