"You're too chivalrous."

That's what James had said when Will, soft-eyed as ever, silent as always, had blinked solidly beneath caking sawdust while the Unsoberable Mr. Brown had shuffled out of the smithy in pursuit of his award. And he was saying it again, to an even more stubborn incarnation of an already too-stubborn blacksmith's apprentice.

"Maybe I am. But she should be yours."

It must be the mule that made him this way. James ground his jaw, breathed through his nose, and pressed his eyes shut at the seams. "Have I told you that you are an absolute fool?"

"Only every day." Will plucked at the bars of brocade across James' chest with fluttering torn short fingernails. "But fool would I be to keep her, when we know she'd live so much better with you."

James stopped the fidgeting hands with long fingers locked around fine-boned wrists. "And fool would I be to take her, when I know how she follows you."

"James..." A sigh, almost a cry, plaintive, stricken. James opened his eyes to see brown ones slanting up at him, glimmering. Incongruous. Was this a man or a minx?

"Damnit, William..."

"Will. It's easier to say." Easier to... but he didn't say that. Didn't need to, with the way those eyes still hadn't lost their coy. James wrung a small smile from his lips, noticed a piece of sawdust clinging to an eyelash, reached up to brush it away—

—Took his smile back and traded it in for disgruntled shock when Will turned the tables and it was his wrist caught, now.

Blazing lips held a circle to his palm, and everything in him melted into a small shiver. A tongue dashed out and left a blistering little mark, and soft hot lips framed it, warm puffing pressing breath kept it unbearable. Will's eyes snatched the glow from the forge and tossed it to James, who was loath to look away, even when the tongue returned with one sweep, two, pause—three, and when it retreated there was suction, and James moaned very low, deep in his chest, and felt his knees begin to fade.

Will followed him down, clung to his hand, a leech—a very sensual leech—but far from medicinal, his attention was encouraging swelling, in a most awkward manner. A hot tongue slipped and swiped across his palm, the heel of a big boyish hand pushed against the front placket of his trousers, kneaded, smoothed. James twitched and bucked, bit his lip, murmured something about full dress and ceremony, arched up toward his hand, and shuddered thoroughly. Will flicked the buttons on one side open, slipped his hand beneath. "It's not fair."

"It's not... what's not fair?" Will's hand, scruff, hot from the forge, traced, wound, slid, slipped, up-down-circle-tight-yes, all very distracting. Very.

"Everyone out there got to see you done up, shining and sparkling and showing off, while I stayed here, working myself to the point of exhaustion in front of the furnace... sweating... panting... my clothes all sticking to me..."

"It was..." gasp. push. "...a boring ceremony. You wouldn't have" tighter. twist. "liked it."

Oh, and that was a thing to say. Will's eyes lit up dangerously. "You claim, sir, to know what I like and dislike?" It could have been an invitation or it could have been a challenge. James took both, used them to his advantage, and in an instant had reversed the two of them in a whirlwind attack that knocked Will's head against the leg of his workbench but he didn't notice because James' lips were just there beneath his throat, working and worrying and then there were teeth, and Will knocked his head back on purpose this time so James could reach better. "Mmm... James..." Will writhed and squirmed in an attempt to give more of his neck to James' mouth, a mouth which despite all that never moved from its one perfect spot until it lifted away and pulled a thin breath of a whimper. James smiled.

"I think I knew that you would rather like that."

"Oh, yess." Will hissed the last of his fervent approval and pressed his palms, fingers lifted, down James' sides, clutched at his hips, pulled them up again, picked at brass buttons. "But I don't like this. Not on you. Not now."

James shrugged the coat off and draped it over the anvil. He stood above Will in waistcoat and shirtsleeves. "Better?"

"For now. Come back to me."

James took two steps and knelt in a straddle of Will's hips, always so beautifully narrow. Working with both memory and speed, James reached forward and slipped loose each button of Will's jerkin, then nosed the fabric apart as he sat back on the tops of Will's thighs and drowned himself in the smoky-sharp scent of metal and fire and hard labor and blacksmith's apprentice. Every so often he licked, and the sporadic slip of tongue against surprised flesh made Will shiver. Slowly, ever so slowly James worked lower, feeling the way Will's tight belly quivered and hips wanted to jump, but the boy was holding them down. Good, strong boy, who moaned very loudly when James' tongue took up temporary residence in his navel. James planted hands on the hips beneath him to make sure he would not get a bludgeon to the chin at an unexpected moment. Will clawed at the soot-and-sawdust floor with desperate, elaborate hands.

"Ja—ah! James, please... please!" His voice was pitching, yelps and gasps as high as a young child's sometimes, moans and murmurs as throaty as the lowest whore's at others. But when he begged his timbre was pure burning wrenching need, and it held so much dawn-sunrise promise that James did not want to ignore it, even if he could. Whispering calming nothing noises against Will's stomach, James undid the boy's trousers and slid them down, and savored the delicious sigh that swirled around him when Will could finally feel the forge- and body-warmed air and the sureness of more instead of the dull press of exigent fabric. Just a nice, quiet "mmmmh", soon to lose its quietude when James suckled ferociously in a coup de tête. Those hips popped up, launching the rest past James' expectantly smiling lips and into his ready relaxed throat. He swallowed once, simply, and Will groaned as though his chest were being ripped apart. "God... yes... that, more..."

James gave him more, and when Will began to bite his tongue James reached up and touched his fingertips to it, and Will sucked the two long fingers into his mouth like a camel drinking water and made busy with his tongue against them. Little murmurs still fell past the corners of his mouth, but for the most part they spent themselves vibrating through James' fingers on a direct line to his half-unbuttoned breeches.

Will began to shake, constantly, like a leaf on a tree branch, and James grazed just the tips of teeth against him to make him fall, tumbling and shouting and leaving the fingers for naught, until he was limp against the gritty floor at last.

While Will was letting breath pour back into his lungs, James was standing and shedding his waistcoat, cravat, shirt, breeches, everything. He made a quick three-step pilgrimage across the smithy to retrieve something, and despite that, even, by the time Will opened his eyes it was to a purely nude James on top of him, to their hips slotted together like a dovetail joint, to a cock that with thanks to youth clearly appreciated it, and to a low, lovely voice saying, "But I'm sure I know what you will like best of all."

"Mm... you do..." Will let his eyes slink shut so they wouldn't distract him from the slide, perfect-perfect-whereareyougoing-why of James' length against his, the oh-my-god-oh-thatwaswhy of a finger, warm, slick, back, back and in, "Ah, yes," and reaching, turning, twisting, finding, making Will's hips soar off the dirt floor and his voice crack while fiery little stars assaulted his eyelids and James' low plum-and-chocolate hum caressed his ears. "What is that?"

"Purcell."

Another finger, a gasp, a keen. "Sing it."

"Mm..." Thinking it over. Upon Will's spine-defying reaction to a third finger and a strong curved press, James decided to oblige in the smooth, flowing baritone-tenor that Will so adored. "Let Dido smile and I'll defy..." Long, high, spinning note that made Will tremble and not notice the retreating fingers. "The feeble stroke—" Will shouted, gasped, moaned, and then somehow drew up words to follow.

"That stroke was not feeble."

"Quiet, I'm singing.—of destiny!"

"Two—oh, yes, again—two words?"

"They were two important words."

"One of them was important. One of them was—mm—of."

"William Turner, if you would not mind shutting your mouth so that I can properly sod you I would greatly appreciate the gesture. And you might as well."

"Fine. But yo—mmph!" James swallowed the rest of Will's retort and reimbursed the boy in coin of his own tongue, which was sucked upon and twined around and overall much approved. With his hands he took hold of Will's hips, for the sake of angle and control, both of which Will welcomed enthusiastically if his muffled electric rumbles of groans and cries were anything by which to judge. A split second later Will had the good presence of either mind or impulse to wrap his legs around James' middle and throw his head back and his body up-forward-down-back while he shouted James' name and slid hard against James' stomach and came with the force of a dozen tenor Es, shaking. James struck again once, twice, curved his shoulders back toward his heels, snapped his hips, tumbled forwards and joined Will in a sated tangle on the smithy floor.

Off in a corner, a little meow brought them back into the moment. James glanced over at it and said, "So we still have not decided with whom she stays."

"Not really. But I am certain of one thing."

"Mm?"

Will's smile was nothing short of conspiratorial. "We name her Beldam."

Norrington grinned, and inspiration dawned in the brightest way. "Why, in that case, it's simple!" He cleared his throat, hummed a moment, then cheerfully sang. "Say, Beldam, say, what's thy will?"

"Meow." The cat known as Beldam sauntered over, yawned once, and curled into place evenly between two warm bodies.

"...Damn."


...


My Two Cents: It's a quarter past two in the morning. I should be abed. But nooo, I'm writing porn. Ah, well, at least it got me to find my score for Dido. And hopefully it'll do its job as for cheering up captain_molly. (I hope it did?) So you know, James first sings a line from Aeneas' and Dido's first exchange, and then he sings a line of the First Witch's, from the beginning of scene II. Yeah, I don't know why I came up with that. Really. But I'm tired, so quite frankly piss off. I'm going to bed. (P.S. Raise your hand if you thought Beldam was Elizabeth in the beginning of the fic. I did.)

Ta,

-M

One more note, Belated: wtf does Will wear up top? He unbuttons it all at once, so I called it a jerkin. Je ne sais pas. Merci adieu.