There's a noise downstairs in the shop, and Will sits up in bed, listening. He can hear the soft creak of a shutter and the sound of quiet feet. He slips out of bed, and Elizabeth draws the covers back around her. He's not sure if she's awake, but if she is, she hasn't heard anything to alarm her.

Will draws on his breeches and goes out barefoot, creeping silently down the stairs. He stands in the shadows of the smithy, the only light the dull glow of the banked fire. He can't see anything moving but the open shutter swaying open and shut. The wind is from the sea, and the air smells of salt.

He hears the footsteps behind him, but not in time to turn before a hand goes over his mouth from behind and something sharp presses against his back. "What have we here?" Jack breathes in his ear.

Will presses forward away from the knife he knows is in Jack's hand, pressing Jack's fingers hard against his mouth. He can taste the salt on Jack's skin. He shudders, angry and hungry, and Jack laughs.

"Here's a nice piece of pirate loot," he says. He moves his hand from Will's mouth and catches him by the hair instead, the knife still at Will's back. "Will you come along nice and quiet, or are you going to make this a fight?"

"I haven't got a weapon," Will points out.

"You should learn to be more prepared, mate."

"So that when I meet a pirate I can—"

"Are you going to talk all night, or can we get on with me kidnapping you?" Jack brings the point of the knife up to brush against the side of Will's throat. Holding very still, Will can feel it trace a line from just below his ear to his collarbone.

"That's a persuasive argument," he says.

Jack tightens his hold on Will's hair and pulls him over to the window. "Out," he says. He doesn't take the knife away, and although Will expects he could trip Jack and send them both sprawling, he's not sure he could do it without shedding blood. Probably his own.

"All right," Will says once they're out the window and into the alley behind the shop. It's dark, with just a fragment of moon. "What is it you want from me, pirate?"

"That's the question, isn't it?" Jack says, and then he moves fast, the pressure of the knife blade barely gone before the cold irons clamp around Will's wrists.

For the first time, Will feels genuinely alarmed. "What are you doing?"

"Kidnapping you, like I said," Jack says. "The Pearl's in the harbor. I've a mind to take you with me when I go. Keep you as my cabin boy, like."

"You can't do that," Will says.

"I have a pistol and all manner of pointy things, and you're the one in irons," Jack says. "I'm not sure you're really in a position to tell me what I can't do."

He pushes Will in front of him through the muddy streets down to the harbor. There's some part of Will that wonders what it would be like to be taken aboard the Pearl like this and told to kneel in Jack's cabin, his hands chafed by the cold iron, knowing that outside there was rude speculation about just what the captain intended to do with his bit of loot. The waiting would be the worst part, surely, worse even than Jack's hand in his hair forcing his chin up.

Will stumbles and Jack catches him, jerking him back upright. "Do watch where you're going."

"It's a little hard to keep my balance with my hands bound behind me," Will points out.

Jack smiles unsympathetically. "All sorts of things you can do with your hands bound if you really try," he says. "Take it from me."

They're in sight of the harbor, and Will finds himself looking for the Pearl. He knows she won't be there. Jack would be a fool to sail straight into Port Royal and tie up next to a frigate. But he still looks for her tattered black sails against the sky, willing himself to see her, to pretend he can see more than clouds drifting in the wind.

"I would, you know," Jack says, his fingers tracing the line of Will's jaw, finding the shallow scratch where the point of the knife has rested. "Take you away with me on the Pearl. See the whole world, mate."

"Jack, don't," Will says, before Jack can say anything else that might be real. "I could never sail under the command of such a notorious pirate."

Jack lets out a breath in something that might be frustration and might be acceptance of an imperfect world. "Well, then, mate, I think you need a lesson in obeying orders."

He draws Will behind a low wall, and Will is sure then that the Pearl is standing out to sea, as is only sensible; Jack's probably come ashore in a longboat, which is no place for sport.

"On your knees, mate," Jack says, and starts unfastening his breeches.

The cold iron is chafing at Will's wrists, and it's a strain to kneel like this, his shoulders pulled back and his hips thrust forward to keep his balance. He's hard already, and every motion pulls his breeches tight against his prick. "You can't make me," he says.

"I beg to differ," Jack says, and draws the knife out again, pressing it against Will's collarbone where his shirt gapes open. Will wonders if he's imagining the moment of hesitation before Jack does as he wants and draws a long, stinging line against the bone. "I think I can."

That feels enough like permission. Will leans in to take Jack's hard prick in his mouth, awkward with his hands behind him. Jack's hands go to his shoulders, steadying him, the handle of the knife cool against his skin.

"Just like that," Jack says. "You know." And Will does know just the way Jack likes it, just the way to make his breath speed and his hands on Will's shoulders tighten. This isn't the first time they've played this game, although the irons are new, and the feeling of leaning into Jack's hands so he won't fall.

It doesn't take long for Jack to shudder and spend in his mouth, the taste bitter and familiar. "Now," Jack says, and strangely there's more hunger in his voice now than there was a moment ago. A key appears in his hand, and he slides down to his knees, reaching around Will to unlock the irons from his wrists. They clatter to the ground, and Jack tangles himself with Will so that they go sprawling to the ground, Jack unfastening Will's breeches and sliding down his body, his hands roving.

Will lies back, already sweaty and shaking from tension and cramped muscles. This is the part that makes him feel guilty, because he can't make himself believe he has no choice, or that he doesn't want it, crave it. Jack's mouth is warm and wet around his prick, and Will is straining up into that warmth. He can feel the pressure mounting, and he struggles not to spend yet, not to end this so soon.

He closes his eyes, and Jack sucks hard, and he tangles his hands in Jack's hair, so unlike Elizabeth's, and feels himself start to come apart. "Oh, hell," he breathes, and Jack's hands are on the insides of his thighs, and Jack's hair is brushing against his skin, and he loses all control, spending himself in a surge of pleasure that makes the world fade away for an eternally long moment.

Then he's aware again of the smell of the sea and of the muddy streets, and of Jack sprawling down beside him as if they're in a bed, leaning his head back on his hands.

"Well, then, young William," Jack says. "How have you been?"

"Well enough," Will says, and that's true. He's happy with Elizabeth and his work. They spend long hours in the shop with Elizabeth perched on a table telling him stories out of books or speculating on what might be happening out in the rest of the world. So far, she seems to be content with that. "And you?"

"Well enough," Jack says, and shrugs. That could mean anything, but he looks well enough, in a fine new coat and with a new gold trinket dangling from his hair. The last time he'd looked thin and ragged, with great dark circles under his eyes, but they hadn't talked about it; Will wouldn't have known what to say. He seems to have made a better roll of the dice this time.

Will sits up, starting to assemble his clothes, starting to assemble himself. His shirt is clinging to his shoulder, damp with blood and sweat, but when he fingers the cut he can tell it's not deep. "Elizabeth misses you," he says.

"Does she?" Jack looks amused, which could mean anything. "I don't hear her saying so."

"I don't see you asking," Will says. He knows Jack's lonely, just as he knows that Elizabeth does miss Jack and that he craves these mad nights no matter how he tries to tell himself that he's content without them.

"And what should I ask her?" Jack looks out at the harbor, where it's almost possible to believe in the shape of ghostly sails. "The devil only knows what your sweet Bess wants, but I doubt it's to be taken away in irons."

"More likely to take you away in irons," Will says. Elizabeth is master in the bedroom, and they both like it that way; he can't tell himself that's the reason he's here with Jack, especially when he's not sure Jack would be playing that sort of game at all if he didn't insist.

"She's had her chance," Jack says, with a crooked smile. "I'm not letting the wench chain me up again. Besides," he says, in a rather different voice, "that's not so much me taste." Jack picks up the knife and wipes it clean on the knee of his breeches, and then does them up as an afterthought. "Not everyone's got a taste for pain."

Will wants to deny that he does, but he can't, not with every sense sharpened and his hair clinging to the back of his neck, damp with sweat. "That's not the only game there is," he says.

"All kinds of games around," Jack agrees. He stands up, glancing at Will and then out at the moonlit water. "But I like to know which one I'm playing."

"You could come visit sometime," Will says. "Through the door." He's not sure what would happen if Jack did. He's not sure it's ever possible to know what will happen in anything involving Jack. It's something he supposes he can accept about an imperfect world.

"We'll see, mate," Jack says, with an indecipherable smile.

When Will climbs in the window, the shop is just as he left it, the familiar shadows tracing the shapes of bits of work done or left to do in the morning. He climbs the stairs quietly and slips back into bed next to Elizabeth. She's not asleep, now; he can tell it from her breathing even before she turns over to put her arms around him, resting her head against his shoulder.

"How is Jack?" she says.

"The same as ever," Will says, and he can feel Elizabeth smile. He wonders what she's thinking, and if she's doing the same mental arithmetic he always does, the weighing of this comfortable life against a leap into the unknown. Right now, tired and sated, with Elizabeth curled warm against him and the forge waiting in the morning, it seems like a great deal to risk.

"Do you think he'll be back soon?" Elizabeth asks, a little wistfully. She finds the cut on his shoulder with her fingers, and after a minute she kisses him there, tasting the blood that's dried on his skin. He knows it tastes of salt.