A/N: I wrote a version of this a while ago as a challenge from another author. We exchanged a story - a kiss from James Norrington. I thought I would polish it up and publish it. Feedback is always welcomed. Thanks for giving it a look. :)
A Kiss From James Norrington
An upbringing of the strictest propriety had led me to believe that a kiss was entirely off-limits unless you planned on marrying the girl. As a child it seemed to me a mysterious, secret thing that I treated with the utmost caution, and I thought it best to avoid it as much as I could. When I grew older my idea of a kiss changed as I slowly learnt more of the world, and it began to epitomise all the beauty and passion that was conspicuous in its absence from my life. It was something special, something that proved one's love for another person, something I longed for, and something that had meaning.
When I came to Tortuga that all changed. I saw women exchanging kisses and much more for a pittance, the magic of that moment reduced to nothing but business. It saddened me and sickened me, and repulsed as I was by the very idea of that, I once again vowed to avoid such things with a cold intensity.
Then I met her.
It wasn't love, you have to understand; all my love had always belonged to Elizabeth. My feelings for this woman ran deeper than that. I have never been good at describing my feelings, and to express what I felt for her would be an impossibility.
She came when I needed someone most.
She scraped me off the floor when I finally collapsed there in a bitter, drunken stupor. She extracted me from the claws of some of Tortuga's more twisted inhabitants before any more harm could befall me. Then when I shunned her, resenting her little kindnesses, she never complained, used to, I think, there being little reward in this life for a kind heart.
She would demand nothing for her help, and for a long while I wondered why, mistrusting her motives, which I soon realised was unjust. She was innocent in her way, yet more worldly wise than I think I shall ever be. She had one fatal flaw: she believed that everyone had some good in them, a fiction I had given up hoping for a long time ago. Although, something about her, with her unassuming eyes, plain brown hair, dirty apron and open, unexpected smile went a long way to restoring some of my faith in humanity.
We would sit, she and I, in the taverns of Tortuga. I would try and drown myself in a rum bottle and she would try and stop me. It was a strange, unequal relationship, but sitting there beside her felt oddly right.
I don't remember what day it was. My time in that nightmarish place has all merged in my mind with only a few events shining through the godforsaken mire. I remember her face, flushed from the hot oppressive atmosphere in the tavern, framed with the smoke, and lit up with the dancing light from the nearby fire. The room was full of loud drunken men and shrill drunken women, but we sat in our own little oasis of calm, the first time I had felt at peace in a long time.
She was laughing. I don't remember what I had said, but I do remember that my witticisms and dry jokes that had got me nowhere in Port Royal never failed to make her smile. We were very close, so close that when she laughed her hair bounced and brushed my cheek. I almost recoiled from the contact, so used to being alone, but I realised that I found the warmth of her body beside mine strangely comforting.
I must have been looking at her oddly then, because she frowned, the laughter dying on her lips. I wiped the look off my face and her smile returned, which I answered with a smile almost in reflex. As I did, her smile grew until I almost felt the warmth it gave off on my face. I wondered what had prompted this sudden joy, then I realised this was possibly the first time I had shown any sign of such emotion towards her, not that there weren't many times I had wanted to. Did I really keep my emotions locked up so close inside?
On impulse, suddenly filled with the need to reach out to her, I leant across and brushed a tentative hand across her cheek. She froze in surprise, opening her mouth as if to say something, but no sound came out. Undaunted, I continued with my audacious motions and traced the line of her jaw, stopping to cup her small chin in my hands. As I gently explored her face with my eyes and hands, she closed her eyes.
Suddenly filled with unexplainable courage, I leant closer, moving very slowly as if she were an animal that might startle. She looked so fragile I was almost afraid she might break as I pulled her towards me, but she floated into my arms with no trouble at all, turning out to be a perfect fit in my hold. She opened her eyes then; they were as round as coins and glowing in the gloomy room. At that point, I hesitated.
She didn't move, waiting for me to decide what to do. Recognising in that moment the truth of my own freedoms and choices, I made a decision with reference to no one but myself. I reached across the small distance between us, the inches seeming like acres for a moment, then our lips met and the barriers between us crumbled.
Her kiss mirrored her personality: open and simple. I responded to her gently. She was warm and soft, her lips tasting of the sharp, unmistakable tang of the sea. I just prayed I tasted of something other than rum as I instead drunk in her gentle fragrance, finding it infinitely more intoxicating than any drink I had wasted my time on in Tortuga.
We sat with our bodies pressed tight against the other so I could feel her heart hammering next to mine, and the feeling was beautifully hypnotising. We were unwilling to let go of this fleeting moment of happiness.
I'll never forget that, seared as it was on my memory, both beautiful and painful in my mind. I never saw her again after that night, as fate decreed it was time for me to leave Tortuga, and all my contact with that world was shattered.
It was only a kiss.
Yet somehow that one moment managed to irrevocably change my normally immovable mind. Suddenly kissing didn't seem so meaningless after all.