The ship moves fast over the water, scarcely seeming to graze the surface of the waves as its engines grow louder over the otherwise calm waters. Overhead, the moon's pale face hangs full and heavy in the night sky, spare clouds move swiftly with high unfelt winds, and the shadow waits in anticipation.

It seems the steadiest, most patient of shadows, standing just outside the blazing firelight of the engine room. The air is thick with smoky salt-air and the smell of hot metal and steam. One voice cuts through the sounds of machinery and cog wheels with apparent ease, English and sharp and loud and achingly naval: clearly it belongs to a commander, and a leader of men. It is more polished than most voices heard on steam-vessels these days, because it is a voice from an era long before, back when a man bedecked in naval finery would be well-suited if he could bellow orders across the whole length of his ship.

"Steady, men! Fires up! If we are not out of the water within the hour, and we miss the change in the winds, I shall offer your skins to the law myself when they catch us!" the loud baritone raps out.

As the orders ring out, the steam-ship spreads strange sails—more like wings, really—and takes to the air, as much at home on the wind as on the watery waves below. At first it hovers like a zeppelin, then with one final order shouted, the room blazes brighter, roars to life in a brief, fiery beginning cacophony as the rest of the engines engage. Then the sounds smooth out, starting out deafening and then lowering and lowering until the whole ship growls but softly and rhythmically.

The man in the shadows, dark enough to be a shadow himself compared to the light of the engine room, smiles broadly, and glints of gold and white reflect off his teeth. For a moment, he wonders if James would have looked half as appealing working this hard on one of the old canvas-sail ships that they both still reminisce about from time to time—but doubts that James would've. One of the chief benefits of the immortality they'd both managed to get their hands on, has been watching James discover a fascination with, and talent for, machinery of all kinds.

James Norrington, dressed in ragged shirt-sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and tall boots, with his dark, earlobe-length hair a sweaty mess, approaches the shadow-figure. "What are you smiling at this time, Captain?" There is still a hint of mockery in the way that he pronounces the title.

Jack Sparrow only grins wider, and steps further into the engine room, so that the red-orange light exposes his features and makes his pitch-black eyes brighten. "That you seem to be in most excellent form tonight, love."

"It's as much an engineer's night to lead as it is a captain's one, this time," James offers. "Especially given the nature of our escape."

Over their heads, Jack's first-mate at the helm steers them up and out of the clouds, the strange machine-ship's sails catching the winds and making the ship look, from below, like naught more than another bit of shadow between different stars. Their path is carefully plotted by James, so as not to give themselves away by obscuring the moon as they take refuge in the night sky.

Jack shakes his head at the taller man. "I've been told by a number of very wise persons, James, that having two captains on one ship is courting disaster."

"I've been told that courting you was courting disaster," James muses. "It did not stop me, as I'm sure you've noticed." He offers a slightly wicked grin. "And in any case, I am not a captain, these days. I am your head engineer."

"And I've never had so many arguments with quartermasters about where we go and what we do, as I've had with you," Jack teases.

"You are in charge of the ship, and her piloting, and I am in charge of her engines and the rest of what moves her. Both of us must be in agreement in order for the ship to go anywhere and/or do anything."

"So I keep hearing," Jack sighs. He watches a drop of sweat slide down James' face to the edge of his jaw. Unable to resist the temptation, Jack leans in and tilts his head up, to lick the drop away.

James shoots him a dark, intense look of want: a look with which Jack has been familiar for most of their long acquaintance by now, but the expression also shows a hint of surprise that had appeared only over the past hundred years, as it had occurred to the ex-commodore just how unusual was the passion between them, in that it was undimmed by time. He has known Jack Sparrow so intimately, now, and for so long, it still indeed amazes him that neither he nor Jack have grown sufficiently restless or bored to part ways, and could indeed still inspire such heat in each other as many other pairs often lose after merely a few years.

"Mayhap," James says slowly, "I am willing to let you quiet me, given the right sort of persuasion."

Jack, too, marvels at how impossible it is for him to grow bored with this man, and how that rich voice still now and then makes him shiver with desire. In reply, he traces the path of another droplet with the tip of his tongue, from the hollow just below the corner of James' jaw, down the tender skin of James' throat. He then flicks his tongue out further and traces an invisible design into the hollow of James' collarbone, visible since the heat had led the ex-commodore to partially open his shirt.

When James groans softly and wraps an arm around his waist, Jack lets his eyes fall shut and whispers, "Are ye persuaded yet?"

"No," James assures, his voice calm and controlled despite how red he is now, from both the heat and the pirate's proximity. "Perhaps you could persuade me more easily in our cabin."

Jack chuckles. "Aye. Let's adjourn, then, m'love."

The dark ship rides the high winds, stirring the topmost layer of cloud through which it plows. The silvery moonlight reflects off of the glass window of the captain's cabin, wherein two shadows meet in a familiar dance, as eternal and timeless as the cloudscape around them.