Jack refuses to kiss James over the threshold of the door. Says it's bad luck to do something like that.

"'S too final," he says, "Picked it up while I was 'n Poland. My Black Pearl met the Black Sea, and I met quite the girl. Courtesan, as you could imagine. Name was Malgosia." The name rolls sweetly off the pirate's lips, ethnic, smooth. "Taught me a few words, and a few nice tricks."

Tricks Jack employs when his lips curve around the head of James' cock and his tongue slides neatly along the seam there.

Jack Sparrow tends to explain his superstitions when he has drunk at least half a bottle of rum—a drop in the bucket for a man of his tolerance. And yet he only really opens up when he's slightly off kilter and has run out of pirate songs to sing off key.

"Never was a religious man," he told James once, after the commodore had been thoroughly fucked. "But I know there's someone up there, 'else I'd have left this world with Mamá." And he always says it like that: with an accent; and James always wonders why. But then Jack is atop him again, his fingers running through the younger man's silken hair, and his tongue pressing at James' teeth.

Before Sparrow ravishes James, he always removes his hat. but his treasured tricorn never falls on a bed—any bed. That, too, spawns bad luck and he doesn't need any more bad luck now that Anamaria has taken up permanent residence on the Pearl. As soon as the hat is off, so are the breeches and the boots and his tunic and Jack has pinned his James to the bed, pebbling the navy man's nipples beneath a practiced tongue and waiting for the young cock to twitch just right so that he can wrap his warm tongue about the shaft.

"Each o' my scars has some point and purpose, love," Jack assures Norrington, "I know 'cause I put 'em there myself." And Norrington's eyes are wide until Jack explains: "One for each victory, always." there are eight lines across the captain's bronze forearm.

One for the first ship he owned, a second for the first he stole. One for the first woman he slept with, another for the first man. A scar for surviving the mutiny, a scar for surviving the ghost pirates who'd committed said mutiny, and a scar for surviving the noose.

"That's just seven, Jack," Norrington points out.

"Aye, the last is recent. Stands for the first time I went against my better judgment." It makes no sense to James now, but later he would understand it as Jack means it.

And at night Jack is quiet; sleep is a rare gift and he earns each minute of it. But before slumber falls over the sweat-dewed men, a pair of words is shared, taught originally by a red-headed courtesan with nothing but kind intentions: "Che kocham."

A soft Polish "I love you."