Nail 16

Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don't own the stuff that belongs to the Mouse. Anything you don't recognize is mine fair and square, though.
Originally Posted: 4/06/04
Summary: 'Where might we be going?'

He lay on his back, studying the ceiling. Closing his eyes, he tried to see the ceiling of his cabin on the Pearl above him, closer than this one and made of dark, unpainted wood. The memory wasn't very clear, however, as he didn't usually spend a great deal of time studying his own ceiling, so he soon gave up.

His thoughts turned to the newest arrival in Port Royal, which was an infinitely more interesting topic. He and Norrington had been to visit the Turners today, greeting an exhausted Elizabeth, a thunderstruck Will who could've been knocked over with a feather, and a tiny black-haired creature with all ten toes and all ten fingers, safe and healthy. They had called her Morgan, which Elizabeth swore was an old family name. Jack suspected otherwise. In any case, Sir Henry couldn't have been prouder to have such a pretty little girl bearing his name.

It had amused Jack to no end to watch Norrington panic when Elizabeth gently laid the baby in his arms. She had started wailing and he'd turned white, immediately giving her back. She'd cried when Jack first held her, too, but Jack had arrived with the intention of making that child fall madly in love with him. He had cooed to her and dangled some of the beads in his hair, and after a few minutes it seemed as though Morgan had inherited her mother's fascination with pirates. He'd kept her until she got a suspiciously pleased look on her face and warmth began to soak through her diaper, at which point he'd hastily handed her back to her mother. Babies were all well and good, but there were some things he was not going to deal with unless it was absolutely necessary.

Norrington shifted beside him and sighed tiredly. "Jack. Go to sleep." He pulled Jack into his arms, stroking his hair. Jack wriggled closer to him. He'd met Bill's granddaughter today and nothing could have made him more content—and yet here was this lovely long-limbed man in his bed, not just icing on the cake but an entire spun-sugar fairy castle.

Jack squinched his face up against Norrington's chest. The commodore did not keep enough sweets in his house and it was a travesty.

"Sorry," he murmured, just to have something to interrupt his internal musings. "I know you have to work in the morning. If'm bothering you, you should go back to your room."

"That isn't what I meant," said Norrington. He sounded a little hurt and Jack turned to him, kissing him slowly and lazily. Norrington had relaxed by the time he finished.

"You really do hate it here, don't you?" His voice was small and shy, odd for a man who'd seen Jack at his most uninhibited, the most recent incidence being just a few hours ago. And heavens knew Jack had reduced him to a state of incoherence more times than he could count. Perhaps it was lingering awkwardness from the afternoon with the Turners, in which Norrington had struggled mightily to pretend that what was going on between them was not, in fact, going on. Jack hadn't bothered; Elizabeth already knew, and Will was so deliriously happy that pirate could've ravished commodore right in front of him and the boy wouldn't have noticed a thing. His little touches and assaults of bedroom eyes had left Norrington sitting stiffly beside him, glowering with irritation. It was still such fun to drive him mad.

Jack realized that he hadn't answered the question. He thought a moment longer; he had already offended Norrington once tonight, albeit unintentionally, and he didn't mean to do it again.

"It feels... like a cage," he finally said, trying to sketch an illustration in the air with one hand. "All these solid walls around me, they make it hard to breathe. I can ignore it most of the time, but there's moments when it presses down like a weight. I need..." He paused, heaving a sigh against the hand caressing his cheek. "I miss the sea."

Norrington sat up suddenly and started to dress. Jack rolled his eyes, wondering what he could possibly have done now.

"Let's go," said Norringon briskly, pulling on his breeches and tossing Jack's discarded clothing at him.

Norrington turned around to look at him. His smile was just barely visible out of the bedroom's shadows. "We're going for a swim."

"Yes," said Norrington, looking out at the small cove a half-mile away from his home, "but often my ideas are quite bad. I've no aptitude for spontaneity."

Jack began to rapidly strip off his clothing. "Well, here's your chance to remedy that." He tugged at his breeches and Norrington gasped in shock.

"Excuse me, Commodore, but the words 'let's go for a swim' are ringing too loudly in my ears for me to hear your feeble protests."

Kicking his clothes aside, Jack swept a hand around the deserted beach. "Gabriel, there is absolutely no one here. No one here!" he shouted to the empty air, making Norrington flinch.

He dipped the toes of one foot in the gentle lap of water against the sand, wiggling them happily. "Perfect," he pronounced, and proceeded to wade out. He got to where the water was to his knees and flopped forward, submerging totally in the shallow water. It was cool but not cold, and silky in that way totally unique to saltwater. Jack fluttered his limbs in contentment; he had greatly missed just the sensation of being cradled by the ocean. She was his mistress as much as the Pearl and no bathtub could imitate her touch, even with a playful commodore in it to make waves.

Norrington, he saw, was still glancing around anxiously. Jack sighed and splashed him, catching him square on the pristine white breeches and hose he'd pulled on. Norrington jumped out of range with a shout, brushing at his soiled clothing and glaring at Jack.

"You're all wet now," he said. "You might as well." When Norrington still hesitated, he began backstroking out further. "You know," he called innocently, "I'm feeling a little weakened here. If you don't swim out and join me, I might drown."

"It would be an improvement for this island, though I doubt the sealife would thank me for allowing it," Norrington retorted, but he began tugging off his shoes all the same. Jack treaded water idly and enjoyed the show. By the time Norrington reached him, he had a boyish smile on his face.

Floating again, Jack said smugly, "See now, was that so hard?" Norrington dunked him in response, his hands pushing down on Jack's belly until he folded in two.

"What was tha' for?!" Jack spluttered as he came up, lobbing a wall of water at Norrington.

He laughed and returned the splash. "Well, you said you were in danger of drowning, I only wanted to see if you were serious."

Jack dove under the water and swam in a circle around Norrington, listening as his chuckles slowly faded away. After a pause, he could make out Norrington's increasingly frantic calls.

When the burning in his lungs became too much to bear, Jack grabbed Norrington's arms and yanked him below the surface, slowly enough that he had time to take a breath first. Then he stole that breath from him in an underwater kiss.

Upon resurfacing, they immediately engaged in a silent and furious splashing battle. After a few minutes Norrington gave in, no doubt because the one of them that had been deathly ill was beginning to tire. Jack could feel it in his bones, although he'd never admit to it, and Norrington knew his body well enough by now to be able to tell. Still, in Jack's opinion, a victory was a victory. He also caught himself giggling and was appalled. Captain Jack Sparrow did not giggle. He might laugh, he might snicker, he might even indulge in the occasional cackle or guffaw, but he did not giggle. The same went for Commodore Gabriel Norrington and yet there they were, romping about a deserted Jamaican beach in the middle of the night and giggling until they had barely enough energy to tread water.

Jack didn't spend a great deal of time pondering his lot in life. Luck or none, fate or no, you got what you got, you went from there, and it was a waste of time to measure out worth on some universal scale. Still, there were the few occasions he would pause to appreciate, wondering what he'd done to deserve such a turn but not really caring because the important thing was that he'd gotten it. And Jack had gotten Norrington, gotten him well and truly, and he was glad.

Presently Norrington suggested they head in. Jack refused, even though his recuperating muscles were rubbery with exhaustion, in the hopes that Norrington would insist on manhandling him back to shore. He was not disappointed, though Norrington complained about hauling his dead weight all the way back. They collapsed on dry land next to the neat pile Norrington had made of their clothing, lying side by side with their arms just barely touching, gazing up at the stars.

"See, there you go again," said Jack, rolling his eyes. "We're having this nice moment and you have to complain. Tell me that this isn't the most beautiful night you've ever seen. Tell me you don't feel part of somethin' larger, even if that something's just you and me."

Norrington's only reply was to turn his head to look at Jack, so close that Jack could feel his warm breath. He was always warm, giving off heat like a brazier, compelling Jack to stick close to his body even when he wasn't interested in wrangling those sweet moans and cries from it. The stare made him a bit uncomfortable, though, so he kept his gaze on the sky, taking Norrington's left hand in his right and tracing imaginary constellations in the sky with a long forefinger. "Think of where you'd be if you were living in England right now. It'd be so dull and—and ordinary."

"In a great white mansion, with eight little bratlings running through the halls."

Norrington laughed. "I'm only thirty. This rhetorical incarnation of me must be a busy man."

"Ah, that explains it." He rested his forehead against Jack's cheek, kissing his shoulder. "And you, where would you be if you weren't here?"

Jack shrugged, the movement knocking Norrington's lips against his skin again. "Dunno. Probably dead, if I grew to a man in the same place I was a boy. Might have made it out, except where would I go beyond the docks? Docks are where the boats go, and sailin's all I ever wanted to do, so I never wanted to leave the docks—at least not by way of land."

"Aye, I always knew the sea was in my blood. I'd ask you, judging by your line of work, didn't you know it too?"

Jack craned his neck to stare at him incredulously. "But you never felt that desire to cross the great blue—to see what was beyond the horizon? To make the world your own?" All the things he'd seen in Norrington's arms—the heights he'd reached—he had just assumed that he'd found a kindred soul, buried though it was beneath brocade and duty.

"No," said Norrington softly. "I never felt it. Not then. But now... now I feel it when I look at you, and sometimes even when I'm alone, when I was on the Dauntless this last time—the freedom you crave." His words came out in a breathless tangle and Jack knew he'd spent some time thinking about them. "I touch you and I feel it because you feel it. And I think that... that I'll feel it forever now. Because of you."

Jack's eyes drifted back to the stars. His body was still, but blind panic was ringing through his every nerve.

He was about to say the words neither of them could possibly allow him to say—Jack knew it was so, with a certainty that frightened him. He put a hand to the back of Norrington's head and kissed him deeply, rolling over and pressing him down into the sand, hoping fervently that the moment and the danger would pass. When their lips broke apart, something in Norrington was different. Although his voice as he whispered, "You're shivering, are you chilled? We'd better get back," was exactly the same, Jack knew that he had changed on some fundamental level, and that it had been Jack who'd forced him to it, in that moment when he had not let him speak.

The words 'I'm sorry' came quickly to his tongue, but he bit them back, allowing Norrington to pull him to his feet. They dressed in silence and returned to the house the same way they'd walked down, clinging close enough to trip over one another's feet, before falling together into Norrington's bed.

And Jack knew that not only had he lost something that night on the beach, he'd actually thrown it away. He would not let himself mourn it. There was no room for regret in the lives of pirates, but it was doubly true for pirates who were foolish enough to fall in love when they knew better.

For Want Of A Nail

Chapter 16