A man can be excused his poor manners when he's a cursed pirate skeleton serving under Cap'n Barbossa. But when a man finds himself a not-cursed pirate with his cap'n dead, and the British Navy all 'round, he comes to realize that it's time for a bit of... spiffing up. Time to hang up the cutlass and figure out what a cravat was and if you ate it or wore it.

Roderick Pintel was never much accounted for his sharpness, but he'd been among the first to figure that a man doesn't get a chance to eat cravats when he's dancing on the air, so he'd gone in for some quick prevarication about the details of the curse. Slight fabrications painted the Black Pearl's crew as a bunch of merchants and farmers, no harm to anyone, really, who got the pirate in them when they'd found a chest of cursed gold at Ragetti's dear auntie's old estate, and did the Navy want to go blaming Ragetti's dear dead auntie?

The chap in the white wig wasn't taken in, but the pirates got clemency on account of that they were clearly cursed, so it might have been a true story, and the man with the wig was more keen on hangings than trials.

Just as well, anyway. Piracy wasn't cheap, no matter the merchant ships they captured (although they might have made a bigger profit if the cap'n didn't insist on a full galley when his crew didn't need to eat). No, Pintel wanted to try his hand at getting the real money.

So it was that Roderick Pintel and Giorgio Ragetti proceeded to commandeer the first financier they encountered and force him, at gunpoint, to deed over his business.

+ + + + +

Cravats, as it turned out, got stuffed into a man's shirt. Pintel straightened his carefully, grubbing up the satin in the process, and brushed imaginary dust from his shoulders, which were soon speckled with very real grime. He ran a hand through his greasy hair. He was filthy rich, and both adjectives applied.

"Aren't you loverly," Ragetti muttered, studying his own reflection. The parasol and lacy fan just didn't go with the swishy suit, but the bonnet was sort of fetching. "Give 'er a hand, Roddy," he called, meaning at the maid who was trying squeamishly to push in the wooden eye. "For Christ, poppet!" he shrieked, putting down the fan and popping the eye in himself.

P'raps the little fork holes were a little disquieting, but that was all going to change today.

"Do I look 'andsome, Roddy?" Ragetti asked, fluttering his fan.

Pintel pulled the bonnet off his associate's head and thumped him with the parasol. "'Andsome like a duck in breeches." He threw the parasol into a corner and pulled on a pair of mucky velvet gloves. "Come on, then."

Linking elbows, the courtly gentlemen made their way out of the dressing room.

They'd got used to getting stuck in the door by now.

+ + + + +

Crockery was shelved everywhere. There were posh wineglasses hanging by their bottoms from great tall racks and bowls and bottles full of funny dead weeds. Plates in stacks went right alongside crystal... thingies, and there was a dangling chandelier the likes of which Ragetti had only seen when he'd got lost looking for the privy and found the Pope instead.

Pintel swaggered up to the glazier's desk and leaned menacingly over the little man behind it. "Yer eyes," he rasped threateningly, and the man cringed, covering his face.

"TAKE IT! Crystal... g-g-glass, anything, just don't cut out my eyes!"

Pintel and Ragetti did a quick glance between them.

"Yer glass eyes," Ragetti specified, popping out his wooden one to clear the picture. "Blue-like, poppet."

The glazier peeked through his fingers at the unwashed, one-eyed face only two inches away, and decided that compliance was the better part of valor. "H-h-here," he whispered, pulling out three stacked wooden trays lined with velvet.

The middle one had blue eyes in all kinds and colors, and the gentlemen—they were dressed as gentlemen, for all they looked like pirates pretending—picked each one up and looked it over carefully. The glazier winced every time they put one back. He'd never get them clean after this! Never!

"Yer eyes are more a grey," the stouter one declared, thrusting a fist into the tray and bringing up three of the eyes. The one-eyed man popped one into his socket (how could he do it, after seeing it in that grimy glove?) and rolled it around.

"Too small," he decided, and threw it over his shoulder.

The glazier could feel what happened next even before it did. But there was no way of stopping it; nothing to be done but moan low in his throat as it hit the first glass—and it was all dominoes from there.

When the dust and shards settled around the two "gentlemen" and the shell-shocked, horrified glazier, the one-eyed man dropped a great sack of gold onto the desk. It crunched on a pile of green glass that had once been the glazier's best three vases. "I'll take this one," he said, pointing to his eye. The blue one that precisely matched his real eye.

As the glazier thanked God, angels, saints, and providence for their departure, the stout man suddenly thumped the back of the other's head.

"You're a-stumpin' 'round in women's shoes again, Rags!"

+ + + + +

"Do I look loverly, Roddy?" asked Ragetti, grinning with yellowed teeth at the other man.

"Loverly and right handsome," Pintel replied. "For the twelfth time tonight, yer loverly. Get to sleep."

He rolled over and began snoring again. But Ragetti lay awake, smiling across the covers at his partner in piracy, financiering, and other things. Roddy thought he was lovely.



__________


The Challenge: As per carmarthen's request, this fic features a glass eye, a lace fan, and someone getting thumped on the head. Additionally, I don't know any first names for the daring duo, so I have dubbed them Roderick and Giorgio.