"Why are you staring at me?" asked the increasingly irate voice of James Norrington, who had, until just recently, been happily eating his dinner. He had been rudely interrupted, in his opinion, by a seemingly sober Captain Jack Sparrow, who was currently sitting directly across from the former commodore holding a soon to be empty bottle of rum and staring at him.

Instead of answering the question, Jack continued to stare unblinkingly with his kohl rimmed eyes. The effect was particularly unnerving to any subject, but more so to Norrington since he and Jack were not on the best of terms.

"Sparrow, WHY are you staring at me?" James repeated with increasing ire, once again receiving no reply. "SPARROW!" James roared, completely abandoning his meal.

Elizabeth, drawn by the former commodore's shouting moved over to sit by James and laid a hand on his arm in a placating manner. "Jack, what have you done this time?" she asked exasperatedly. Jack continued staring at Norrington as though he hadn't heard Elizabeth.

James pointed angrily. "That! He's been staring at me like that for the past 20 minutes while I'm TRYING to enjoy my dinner!" he glared at the offending captain in an accusatory manner.

"Well, then just move to a different seat!" Elizabeth suggested irritably. James huffed as he stood and took his half-finished meal to another table near the back of the galley where he hoped to remain undisturbed. It wasn't until after he had finally finished his roll he had noticed Sparrow staring at him from across the room. As he watched, the captain stood and swaggered over to HIS table and sat down, kicking his feet up onto the table top and upsetting James' drink.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT SPARROW!" James yelled furiously as he retrieved his now empty cup from the floor. Jack leaned forward in his seat and stared pointedly at Norrington and opened his mouth slightly as though he were about to speak.

"Well, I was conductingly effecting a rather intriguingly interesting sort of observatory surveillance on your commodorial, or rather recently non-comodorial, customary eating practices and/or habits, as it were."

Now it was James' turn to stare as he tried to work out the surprisingly complex statement made by the eccentric captain. "You were studying my eating habits?" he asked incredulously. "You stared at me for over a half an hour! You didn't blink ONCE! And you say you were 'STUDYING MY EATING HABITS'?"

Jack grinned enthusiastically, seemingly unaffected by Norrington's shouting. "Aye! That'd be the gist of it!" James put his face in his hands. A practice he seemed to be well acquainted with since joining Sparrow's crew.

Finally when he could look at the captain without murdering him, he raised his head and spoke with a determined calm. "Don't you think that's a little EXCESSIVE, Sparrow?"

Jack took a long drink of his rum and smiled again. "Nope!"

" You must have better things to do than stare me down! You are a CAPTAIN as you are so fond of reminding us!" James growled, quickly losing his calm façade.

Jack looked thoughtful for a moment, something James though looked particularly hard for him, before grinning again. "Nope!" he repeated.

"And you thought I was insane…" James mumbled, almost to himself. Suddenly his expression turned thoughtful before he smirked to himself. "If you will excuse me, Captain, I have something I need to attend to…" James stood, giving a mock salute to Jack before he left.

About an hour later, when Jack returned to his cabin he found a new item added to the list pinned to his door. The fresh black ink read:

2. Excessive staring.

Jack smiled to himself. Maybe James could be part of the crew after all.

Reviews please? ;)