The firelight cast strange white-and-orange flickers of light across the pale sand, amongst the dancing shadows, dancing even when the two men making them at last grew still and calm in the Caribbean night. The taller of them was paler than the sand, except for his face and hands, tanned by the sun; he lounged on his side, sitting up on one arm with the pirate leaning back against his chest, drinking rum. They both wore only undone breeches and untucked shirts, all in disarray from previous activities on the thin blanket spread out beneath them, to prevent sand landing in uncomfortable areas.

"It's too good, you know," the paler man said, his low baritone oddly gentle.

"Ay?"

"This," James answered, without answering. When the pirate shot him an arch look over his shoulder, James proceeded to gingerly pluck the rum bottle from Jack's hand and take a respectable swig. As he returned it, he nuzzled at the back of the pirate's neck. "One of us will die. By our very nature, we are neither of us the sort of men who tend to lead long lives and die in our beds at home."

Jack's mocking grin softened a little, but the glitter in his dark eyes remained bright and undulled, which James always liked. "I've made clear my own intentions to live forever, Jamie, as I'm sure you've noticed."

"Yes, but I've worked out your game there," James murmured, wrapping an arm around Jack's waist again, his fingers tugging at the fabric of Jack's shirt. Most of the desperate edge taken off by their earlier adolescent rolling, he was quite content to take his sweet leisurely time moving on to round two. "You plan to live forever through your mad stories, at least a third of which are either exaggerated or outright lies." There was James' authoritative, sardonic tone again: impeccably condescending, but there was an edge of affection to it here that never colored his tone when he wore his naval uniform. "You want to be remembered throughout the ages, and when you die, people will still speak of you with wonder and disbelieve that you could possibly be gone." One hand slid under Jack's shirt, wide-spread fingers and palm pressed flat to the pirate's belly, mapping with minute attention the feel of Jack Sparrow under his touch.

Jack shifted his hips a little, arching into the contact as James' hand moved up his stomach to the side of his ribcage and across his chest. "Aye, love, you've quite got me all worked out," he concurred, sly and a little droll in his oddly lilting manner.

"Do I?" James mused, supercilious to the nines, but again with that playfulness. It was so easy here on this beach, in the firelight, so far from any other people. "Or, perhaps, you are hastening to assure me of my correctness in order to hasten a change of subject and indeed of focus, from discourse to intercourse," the commodore mocked.

"Mayhap it's a bit of both, love. The stories and the urge to set tale-telling aside for a while in order to get to a bit more pressing—" He arched back against James' body in a most distractingly suggestive fashion "—matters."

James chuckled softly, darkly, sitting up a little further. "Pity, really, because I've been thinking about tales of late. Not even just the pressing ones." He kissed the side of Jack's neck.

Jack recognized a hint of something more serious in James' words, and rolled over, pinning the commodore's shoulder blades against the blanket-covered sand. "You have, ay? Not plannin' on interrupting mine, I hope?" he teased.

"And ruin this? Heavens, no," James countered, in airy tones. "Quite the opposite, actually." His fingers trailed up Jack's shirt to its open collar, then traced up Jack's sternum and along his clavicle. "I was considering, perhaps, becoming a larger figure, with a more prominent sort of role in your story, Captain Jack Sparrow."

Jack's dark eyes widened, the whites of his eyes very bright in the firelight as he stared at James, reading the seriousness behind that playful smirk, noting the way the commodore seemed to be holding his breath unconsciously as he awaited an answer, and thinking of what an astounding twist it would be in the tale of Captain Jack Sparrow to suddenly have at his side a certain commodore known to most pirates in the area as 'the Devil himself' Norrington.

A broad, mischief-bright smile broke out across Jack's features. "Well, now, that could make for quite a tale, now, mightn't it, depending on what role yer looking into."

"A new one, and yet, not altogether wholly new." His feather-light touch turned easily into a death-grip on the front of Jack's shirt, tugging the pirate down closer to him for emphasis. "You know precisely what I mean, Jack."

"What's the navy done, to chase you away into my arms so permanently this time, I wonder," Jack whispered, his breath warm; James could feel it against his lips.

"Just the usual, including the almost regular brushes with death," James murmured, his tone almost idle except for the intensity of his deep green eyes. "Except that those dices with death, especially when they miss oneself but take the life of a friend, tend to shift one's perspective. I have changed, not the navy." His lips brushed Jack's in a tender, unusually chaste and brief gesture. "I'll not wait to lose you, and never know when or how it happened. I would prefer..." James paused, hesitant. "Assuming of course—"

"Assume away," Jack said, a little too quickly to fit in with his usual grace, but he smoothed it over with a smile that bore the faintest impossible trace of something that, on anyone else, might have been called an iota of sheepishness. "I want you to sail with me. Love the idea. Love you, and the idea, which improves matters even further." He then pressed a slightly longer, rather less chaste kiss against James' lips before the other man could reply. Then, Jack added, because he could not help it, "You bloody delicious English pillock." It was apparently fine, however, because he could feel the curve of James' smile against his mouth.

Jack had mentioned love often, almost off-handedly, in the past; if James had not known better, he might have assumed the comments to be just a part of the pirate's eternal façade. James had never said a word about it, letting the pirate assume what he would, until now.

"And you are a libidinous, licentious, mischief-mongering pirate scoundrel," James countered, low and pleased, and seized hold of Jack's hip with his free hand, using leverage to roll the pirate under him, their bodies pressed together in a manner both familiar and thrilling. "And damn you, but I can think of no one, real or imaginary or idealized, the likes of whom I could possibly love more than you."

Jack laughed, delighted and pleased and increasingly lust-clouded as James' knee insinuated itself between his thighs and pressed up. "James..."

With a soft but wicked smile, James inquired, "And you are sure that you can handle a navy man on your ship, Jack Sparrow? What would be my rank then, I wonder."

"Officially, first mate'd do well, since Anamaria's been gettin' more interested in ventures of her own," Jack murmured. "If you'll share my bed, and my life and my story, I don't see why you can't share the Pearl as well."

James' breath caught.

Again, shadows danced, and the shadow-makers did, too, until the dawn erased them, leaving nothing behind but the ashes of a fire, footprints and other marks in the sand, a rather battered-looking uniform, and an empty bottle of rum.