Jack hates to fuck Will.

Which is not to say that he doesn't enjoy fucking Will, because all evidence—the hands clenched in Will's hair, the teeth at his nape, the way Jack groans and holds him down and pushes into him with artless urgency—supports the eventual conclusion of Jack collapsing atop him and his lingering aches. Will has caught sight of Jack with other partners, and he would even venture to say that Jack likes fucking him better than any other.

But time after time, he resists his own urges and Will's advances, clumsy and fumbling at first but steadily growing as sure as his sword hand. He can now navigate the thin line between too much rum and not enough with nary a thought. Most of the time he doesn't resent the need for Jack to be drunk first, because he finds seduction easier on his pride if he is drunk as well. The alcohol never banks the fire if he watches the level of the bottle carefully, and the fire is what matters—why Jack keeps surrendering despite his attempts to stave Will off, why Will keeps tempting him into bed despite the availability of women and men to a handsome young pirate with a fine arse. For this he must answer to Jack and Jack alone; he has tried to quench his thirst elsewhere and merely found himself more parched afterwards, still desperate for the burn and the salve of the touch so strenuously denied him.

Jack never says why he won't, and Will tries not to wonder.

In the mornings when he wakes to an empty cabin or rented room, he has the leisure to hate himself for his weakness, to wish that Jack would seek him out, become the supplicant rather than the patron. This has been the last time, Will swears to himself, the absolute last. He'll stay distant from Jack for weeks to prove it, stubbornly grateful that Jack never deigns to mention what has passed, until hunger gnaws at him again and he makes his case once more.

Except for those fleeting moments of contact in the dark, they are never easy with one another, not the way they were before it all started. It is over a month after Jack starts sequestering himself in his cabin for a day or two each week, complaining of headache, before Will stops by to see if he might offer any help. Jack sends him away. He obeys, and comes back with a lock pick.

"What in God's fiery hell d'you think you're doing?" Jack hisses when Will gets the door open, levering himself up from the bunk.

Will plants his feet a step or two from the captain, arms crossed over his chest. "The men are whispering, Jack. You won't tell them what ails you, but you will tell me or I'll know the reason why."

Jack's lips twist cruelly in a way Will has never seen before. "You'll remember your place, whelp," he snarls, and then he sends Will reeling back with his left fist.

Touching the blood seeping from his mouth, Will stares at him with wide eyes, shock and hurt belaying any further action. Jack does not manhandle his crew, and even at his roughest, he has never struck Will in bed.

"What—" he begins, taking a step forward. Jack's fists clench, his eyes squeeze shut, and he hits Will in the belly, doubling him over. Abruptly Will's patience with the captain's games deserts him and his face heats with rage. He straightens and sidesteps the next punch, bringing both hands up and shoving hard. Jack stumbles as his glittering features sag, mouth falling into a sad droop, eyes clouded with confusion. Will reaches for him, catching the hem of his worn shirt. It tears as Jack jerks away from his grasp.

Will stares at the scar on his belly. He has seen its like before, at the lace edge of a woman's bodice. Gibbs' voice is suddenly in his ear, from the first night they traipsed into port, the second time he boarded the Black Pearl.

There's girls aplenty in Port Maria, young Will, but watch out fer the ones with th' pox. Sometime ye can see sores, sometime ye can't; the real bad off ones'll have a sort o' stagger in their walk, like, or tip their 'eads wrong, or talk nonsense if their minds've gone. Aye, they're a sad lot, sure enough, an' tain't no harm in tossin' 'em a coin or two, but don't you go samplin' their wares 'f ye value yer manhood and yer life.

For most of his life he lived among sailors, and he needed no warning. Even in Port Royal there were a handful—women with lip rouge exaggerated to cover red sores, young girls with spines bent from arthritis, eyes filmed over with white, babbling to themselves between randy calls to passing customers. He felt revulsion, and pity, and a touch of curiosity about where they came from and how they had been driven to prostitution and disease.

But he has never touched a woman in such a condition.

Running his tongue over the new split in his lip, he feels for the twinge at the corner of his mouth, first noticed the day before yesterday. Jack watches him, makes a strangled sound deep in his throat, and drops his face into his hands. Will turns away sharply and leans over, palms on his knees, afraid he might vomit.

For a long moment all other emotions manifest as sickness. He focuses on his own breaths and fights back the need to retch. His skin feels hot and the soles of his feet itch and he wants to hurl his body into the cold sea.

Gradually his heart stops hammering in his ears so that he can hear Jack's dry sobs. He lifts his head to see the captain on his knees, head bent, arms wrapped around himself, shoulders hunched and trembling.

"I tried not to, I tried not to," he is whispering, lifting a hand to bite at his knuckles. "God forgive me, I tried..."

"Jack," Will says thickly, swallowing bile. He falls beside him and touches the line of anguish between his brows. Jack shakes his head violently, trying to pull away, but he has nowhere to go and Will's arms are strong as iron yet.

There is anger powerful enough to scorch, and despair, turning the air he breathes to smoke in his lungs. He could catch hold of it if he tried. But he knows it will keep.

"No, mustn't—won't—" He has heard those words so many times before, but it's all different now, because now there is a why.

He holds Jack on his lap like a child, though the man has twenty years and innumerable wisdoms on him. Will knows nothing, and Jack—Jack doesn't know this.

"Shhh, easy, easy," he murmurs, stroking Jack's black mane as he once calmed nervous colts. "What's done is done, and I—" Could have done differently.

No, I couldn't. Nor could you.

"William—Will—'s all in me head, clamorin' at me, and I knew I should say—knew I shouldn't, but you... you'd always make me quiet for a time..."

Will slides his hand inside the torn shirt, spreading his fingers over Jack's heart. "It's all right, love," he says, voice hollow in his own ears because of course it isn't, but Jack's tears abate and his tremors start to ease. Gradually his breathing deepens and he sleeps, cheek on Will's thigh. Will lifts him far too easily—he never noticed this, never noticed any of it because it is always dark and they are always too far gone and even then, he realizes, Jack must have worked to hide all the signs.

"You're very good at keeping secrets, Jack," he whispers as he crawls into bed beside him. Jack grunts and turns over, pulling Will's arm around his waist. "I'm afraid I am not. But I'll learn."


In the last ten years of Jack Sparrow's life, it was observed that his first mate never left his side for any reason, neither on land nor at sea. Some believed the man a devoted lover, protecting the captain as his famed wits deserted him, and said he found Sparrow dead by his own hand that last morning in October. Others claimed he held a powerful grudge and spent those years poisoning Sparrow, literally or figuratively, and that it was Will Turner's finger on the trigger the day the captain was returned to the waves. All agreed that in either case, death was a boon to the mad captain by then. Those who had admired him and even those who had hated him were glad that he never lived past the twilight of Caribbean piracy.

As for Turner, he left the Black Pearl in the hands of a young coxswain who got her blasted out of the water by French cannon before six months had passed. None who would know him ever saw or heard tell of him again.