Any Port In A Storm
Chapter II : The Ghost of Captain Jack
[ colloquial title : prove it ]
**
A year and a half ago, I watched the Black Pearl pull out of port with her sails trimmed. I watched her stern fade to nothing on the horizon, sure that this would be my very last look at her. A year and a half ago, I married Elizabeth Swan; held out my wrists for the shackles of Happily Ever After and resigned myself to a lifetime with the woman I love.
And I do love her, really -- but I laid eyes on her before I laid eyes on the world around me. I fell in love with Elizabeth before I realized that there was anything else for me in life besides days spent in the blacksmiths shop, and nights spent practicing with the weapons I crafted. I'm a good blacksmith, but I've always been a better swordsman. And I'm a good husband, too. But I'm a better pirate.
Sometimes, very late at night, I walk down to the piers. I don't go there much, anymore. I haven't been back more than a dozen times since the Pearl sailed away into the sunset, and took with it everything that my life was -- and is -- supposed to be. Captain Jack Sparrow was gone with the wind.
And I, Will Turner, am right back where I started.
I learned to live without him; and I learned to do it quickly, before anyone realized what he'd been to me. I kissed my beautiful bride and married my way into all the money than even a pirate could want, and I pushed Jack Sparrow into my memories. Since then, I've done everything that a good husband should; and yet a part of me sailed away with the Black Pearl that day, a part I thought I'd surely lost forever.
I don't know why I stayed so late at the blacksmith's shop. I kept the place because I needed something of my own. I can buy any sword I want, now, and yet I continue to make them because I love them ... because it gives me freedom to make them, and wield them, even if it's only at the walls of my own little shop.
Then the storm had come up like a demon, descending upon Port Royale with the darkness, and to go back to the house in such weather would have been foolish unless it was absolutely necessary. And there was something quite comforting about the little building, something nearly cozy, really. Let the storm beat away at my door; I was free, here -- free to think, free to remember him...
How easy it was to draw up the image of him in my mind when I tried to -- dark, wild hair and darker, wilder eyes; hardened, calloused, and yet surprisingly slender hands, and the sun darkened skin that was so much softer than it looked. The way he smiled when he had a particularly good plan, the way he laughed, the way he looked right after we'd made love...
Too much, these memories. They pressed in on me from all sides if I allowed them to, until I couldn't think of anything but him. He was probably leagues away, by now, and God only knew where he was; whether he lay in someone's arms, tonight, or suffered in a cold little cell somewhere. Maybe Captain Jack Sparrow was already dead and gone. I had no way of knowing. I would never know.
He haunted me through the night, the memories gathering themselves like phantoms in the shadows of the smithy, collecting silently around me until I could feel him, smell him, taste him. Captain Jack Sparrow, legend of the high seas, fast asleep against my shoulder with his fingers still curled through my hair. I could damned near see the moonlight spilling over the smooth plane of his back, feel his warm and even breath against my skin. Wild, abandoned, utterly beautiful...
I had to get out of that smithy. I had to get away from the ghost of Captain Jack. The rain had let up, some, and the wind was not so fierce. Dawn should be rising soon, though in weather like this it would no doubt stay dark well on into morning. I would slip back inside before Elizabeth woke, go back to Happily Every After...
I opened the door, and there he was.
I could not believe my eyes. Surely I had gone mad. He was a thousand miles away, right now, not here on my very doorstep. Fate had never been this generous to a living soul before, as far as I knew, and I could see no good reason for it to change its ways now. For a moment I stood very, very still in the doorway, with the rain pouring in at my feet, and struggled with my own senses. He simply could not be real; and yet when I crouched down beside him, placed a hand against his shoulder, there was flesh and bone beneath it; a soaked, shivering, solid man.
He was injured, but that was far from unusual and the least of my concerns. He was also very drunk, which was nearly requisite. His dark eyes were glazed, half mast, and he didn't seem to he able to focus them on me for more than a second. And he must have been out all night in the rain, because there wasn't a single dry inch on him. Water dripped from the brim of his hat, from the ends of his hair and from his beard. He looked like hell -- but he was alive, and real, and at my very fingertips.
The moment was surreal -- strangely sharpened and yet dreamlike. For so long I had lived with only the memories of him, that the living, breathing being before me was a shock to my system. My God, it was as though I had only seen him yesterday; and as I lifted him in my arms, he was quite simply too real to be real at all.
And then Captain Jack Sparrow looked up at me sleepily, drunkenly, and said "Damn you, Will Turner..."
I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or kiss him first.
So I did all three at once. I laughed through my tears as I sank to the floor with him inside; ran both hands covetously over his shoulders and arms and his knotted, rain soaked hair And then I kissed him -- kissed him for all the times that I'd dreamed of kissing him but couldn't, kissed him to make him real again. I kissed him because I'd thought that he was gone forever, and now he was here in my arms.
He tasted just as I knew he would taste -- like sea salt and tobacco and rum, like daydreams made real, like freedom itself. His lips parted against mine willingly, his arms wound easily 'round my neck; enamored with the weight of him in my arms. I didn't care where he'd come from, or how, or why - I didn't care about anything except this kiss, and this man, and this moment. I held the kiss as long as I could before drawing back and gazing down at him.
He seemed content enough to rest in my arms. Tipping his head back onto my shoulder, he looked up at me with a little drunken, contented smile. "You know what would be wonderful, Will? It would be truly wonderful if you were real."
Drunk beyond words, and most likely just as shocked by our sudden reunion as I was. I couldn't be sure that he'd even aware what city he was in. I ran the backs of my fingers very gently over his cheekbone, whispered, "I'm real, Jack. This is real. I'm here. You're here. You're here.. "
"I really want you to be real, Will," he whispered back -- and his tone had changed completely. There was a desperation to it that I never thought I would hear in his voice, or see in his eyes. He seemed nearly on the verge of tears.
But he did not cry. I hadn't really expected him to. Instead he swallowed very hard and pressed his cheek against my hand, reached up to cup it with his own. For one brief moment he looked almost innocent -- not a hardened, fearsome fugitive from the law; just a man who'd been without comfort for too long, cold and tired and sick of being alone. I never wanted to let go of him.
But he was still soaked to the bone, and shivering harder and harder as the minutes passed. I pressed my lips to his again, very softly. "I'm real, Jack. And you're real, and you're here, and you're sopping wet. Come on," I said, and without waiting for him to respond I lifted him again, brought him to the crude hearth that nonetheless boasted a good, warm, roaring fire. "If I put you down, do you think you can stand on your own?"
Jack furrowed his eyebrows with a shadow of indigence. "Of course I can stand," he assured me, his voice heavy with rum and exhaustion -- and with that he hopped down from my arms of his own accord. I had to catch him before he stumbled into the fire, but once I helped keep him steady he managed to keep his feet under him fairly well "Your problem, Will, is that you worry too damned much," he informed me gravely, leaning precariously to one side and slinging an arm over my shoulder. He didn't seem to be conscious in the least of suffering from the cold, but he was shaking to the very bone even as he giggled drunkenly and threw the majority of his weight against me, as drunk people are wont to do when they have an arm 'round your shoulder and are in high spirits.
"Shut up, Jack," I said, and then I kissed him again to make him do just that, and be still for a moment. Having him here again was overwhelming. He didn't object, however -- in fact he reciprocated with passion, deepening the kiss of his own accord before it finally came to an and. And then he smiled at me -- the most beautiful, wicked, wanton smile -- and said, "Keep that up, darling, and I'm afraid I simply won't be able to resist you." He said this as though he were actually trying to, as though I wanted him to.
For a moment neither one of us said a word, as something unspoken passed between us. I first laid eyes on him in this room. I tried to kill him in this room. Now I would make love to him in this room.
"Why did you come back...?" I whispered.
He was very quiet for a moment, looking at me with the most curious, beautiful mixture of melancholy and heavy thought, and then he said - as though just now realizing it; "...Because I missed you."
There was nothing more to be said. He was here, he was mine; and now the days were melting away by the dozens, until the year and a half we'd spent apart was gone, and nothing that happened between then and now mattered, never had mattered, never'd been real at all. Impossible, that he'd ever been lost to me. He was too familiar, too tangible, too close and whole and perfect. I would have died without him.
I kissed him -- and this time, when our lips parted, I kissed him again. I slid my arms around his waist and I drew him flush against me, kissed him slow and soft and sweetly, over and over. Tossing his hat aside, I savored the taste of him, the smooth skin of his back beneath my fingers as I pulled the soaked and filthy shirt over his head. Jack was much smaller than he appeared to be; he carried himself as though he were a man twice his own size, but beneath the tattered sailors garb he was slender, though as finely muscled as I think it is possible for a man to be. His body had not seen a day without physical labor in the better half of his life, and it showed in the smooth, sinuous lines of his arms, the gently rippled plane of his back, the hardened grid of his stomach; yet from what I could figure when I lifted him he weighed no more than 140 pounds, quite literally soaking wet. A small person, but a strong one. The power in the slender arms around me was unquestionable.
Time itself ebbed away, left us suspended blissfully in it's wake, and the moments seemed like hours as we reclaimed each other with hands and mouths and tongues, stripping away garments until there was nothing between our souls but close-pressed flesh and bone.
Silence, as I laid him down upon my cloak in the corner; silence save for the rain tapping out it's soft staccato against the windowpanes, and the sound of our own, quickened breathing. He was still shivering a bit beneath me, but the chill was melting away from his body even as I ran my hands over it, and he was completely pliant as I kissed his fingers, drew his hands above his head, let my own trail back down the insides of his arms to spread flat against his ribs.
One would never guess Jack to be so passive, so willing to let me do with him as I pleased. He was no blushing innocent, to be sure, but he yielded to me completely and with obvious satisfaction. Captain Jack Sparrow is in control of his own life as much as any man can be -- and if he lets go of the reins for even a second, the consequences have the potential to be quite dangerous, if not outright fatal. Only in these moments does he ever truly give himself over to anything; but when he does, he does so with utter abandon, as though a great, invisible weight has been lifted from his shoulders. Stretching against the cloak and pressing close to me, he wrapped his arms almost lazily around my shoulders, letting his head fall back and his eyes fall shut as I began to trace a path down his torso with my lips.
His skin was smooth and salty to the kiss, his stomach taunt and quivering beneath my lips. Those calloused fingers wound their way easily through strands of my hair, lifting them and letting them fall; shivering against my scalp as I parted his knees gently, then tightening drastically against the back of my neck as my lips finally found their mark.
Captain Jack Sparrow was all mine.
I don't know how long I kept him gasping and writing beneath my ministrations, with one hand firmly knotted in my hair and the other balled into a fist around the cloak beneath him - I only know that it wasn't long enough to give him the release that he whimpered a bit and begged me for as I brought my face back up level with his to kiss him again. His chest was heaving against mine, his eyes very wide and very deep and his lips parted ever so slightly to accommodate his ragged breathing.
"You look perfect, right now," I told him.
"Why are you wasting your time lying to me when you could be kissing me?" Jack asked me in a hushed and heated whisper. He squirmed a bit, trying to reposition himself so that I would keep touching him where he wanted.
"I'm not lying to you. I have no reason to lie to you." I kissed his jaw, his throat, his collarbone. Nuzzling close to me, he whispered against my ear.
"Prove it." It was not a dare, but a plea.
Something in his voice unlocked a door inside me that had been closed for far too long; and I could not have restrained myself in that moment with every ounce of willpower that I possess. I kissed him roughly, cupping his jaw for a moment before I ran both my hands down, over those slender hips, and hitched his thighs up over my hips. Jack wrapped his legs willingly around my waist ... opened his lips to the gentle brush of my fingers, devouring them hungrily and sending shivers through me with the simple flick of his tongue over my knuckles.
He traced the progress of my hand back down his body with his eyes, then lay his head back and shut them again, and his entire form locked beneath me with a sharp gasp when I slid the first finger inside of him. His knuckles were white around the cloak, now, and I allowed him a few moments to adjust to the digit before adding another. God only knew how long it had been since this had been done to him -- his muscles were tight as a drum around my fingers, and I would not at all have been surprised if he'd been with no other man since last we parted.
"Breathe, Jack," I whispered against his ear, and dropped a butterfly kiss to the corner of his mouth.
"Will," he gasped through clenched teeth, his eyes shut tight against the gray light of dawn now seeping through the windows. "Do it. Now."
I could not have been more obliged.
Heaven inside of him. Heaven in the sharp, high-pitched moan that escaped his lips, in the sharp attack of his fingernails against my shoulders. I only moved when he was ready; finding an easy rhythm immediately that he matched with passion; rolling his hips against mine smoothly -- his back arching, relaxing, then arching again as I slid a hand between his legs once more.
Absolute passion. The hiss of human breath in the still morning air, the sheen of sweat on smooth, tanned flesh, the tangling of hair and limbs and souls and the heave of his chest against my own. His breath against my neck, hitched and rushed and intermingled with moans of ecstasy, the pounding of his pulse beneath my fingers as I ran them down his neck; scent of sex, sweat, salt, dreams come true.
It could have been hours, days, weeks or lifetimes. His whimpers rose to moans rose to short, gasping screams; now he was whipping his head back and forth against the cloak, his body shuddering, convulsing beneath me. It would be no more than moments before the tidal wave of ecstasy broke over him in full.
I dropped my weight onto my elbow, brought my hand up to caress his cheek gently, turn his face towards my own. The shudders that wracked him made it all the way to his eyes as he gazed up at me -- and never before have human eyes been so beautiful. This man was the world to me; everything and then some.
"I love you, Jack," I whispered -- and then I kissed him, very, very softly ... trailed my hand down to his hip and anchored his body against mine as I slid as deep inside him as our bodies would allow.
We came together, as one, in the rising light of dawn; our bodies pressed close and our hair in one another's faces. I could feet his heartbeat through his chest, see his ribs with every breath as his muscles finally uncoiled. Drawing my self out and off of him, I stretched out beside him on the thick woolen cloak; letting him come into my arms and curl up against me as I knew he would do. For a few minutes he lay very still and very quiet against my shoulder -- eyes shut, lips parted, fingers limp and curled against my chest. I could nearly feel the exhaustion myself as it finally caught up with him.
And then he opened his eyes, tilted his chin up to look at me, and whispered "... I believe you."
He slept there in my arms, the cloak wrapped around us both and the rain singing lullabies against the windows of the smithy. For a long time I watched him; savored the sight of his handsome face, his features unclouded by consciousness, the innocence of his slumber nearly childlike. I stroked his hair and watched him sleep until I could no longer keep my own eyes open.
And then I kissed his forehead and settled down beside him, and slept in peace for the first time since the stern of the Black Pearl had faded into the distance a year and a half ago.
***
Chapter II : The Ghost of Captain Jack
[ colloquial title : prove it ]
**
A year and a half ago, I watched the Black Pearl pull out of port with her sails trimmed. I watched her stern fade to nothing on the horizon, sure that this would be my very last look at her. A year and a half ago, I married Elizabeth Swan; held out my wrists for the shackles of Happily Ever After and resigned myself to a lifetime with the woman I love.
And I do love her, really -- but I laid eyes on her before I laid eyes on the world around me. I fell in love with Elizabeth before I realized that there was anything else for me in life besides days spent in the blacksmiths shop, and nights spent practicing with the weapons I crafted. I'm a good blacksmith, but I've always been a better swordsman. And I'm a good husband, too. But I'm a better pirate.
Sometimes, very late at night, I walk down to the piers. I don't go there much, anymore. I haven't been back more than a dozen times since the Pearl sailed away into the sunset, and took with it everything that my life was -- and is -- supposed to be. Captain Jack Sparrow was gone with the wind.
And I, Will Turner, am right back where I started.
I learned to live without him; and I learned to do it quickly, before anyone realized what he'd been to me. I kissed my beautiful bride and married my way into all the money than even a pirate could want, and I pushed Jack Sparrow into my memories. Since then, I've done everything that a good husband should; and yet a part of me sailed away with the Black Pearl that day, a part I thought I'd surely lost forever.
I don't know why I stayed so late at the blacksmith's shop. I kept the place because I needed something of my own. I can buy any sword I want, now, and yet I continue to make them because I love them ... because it gives me freedom to make them, and wield them, even if it's only at the walls of my own little shop.
Then the storm had come up like a demon, descending upon Port Royale with the darkness, and to go back to the house in such weather would have been foolish unless it was absolutely necessary. And there was something quite comforting about the little building, something nearly cozy, really. Let the storm beat away at my door; I was free, here -- free to think, free to remember him...
How easy it was to draw up the image of him in my mind when I tried to -- dark, wild hair and darker, wilder eyes; hardened, calloused, and yet surprisingly slender hands, and the sun darkened skin that was so much softer than it looked. The way he smiled when he had a particularly good plan, the way he laughed, the way he looked right after we'd made love...
Too much, these memories. They pressed in on me from all sides if I allowed them to, until I couldn't think of anything but him. He was probably leagues away, by now, and God only knew where he was; whether he lay in someone's arms, tonight, or suffered in a cold little cell somewhere. Maybe Captain Jack Sparrow was already dead and gone. I had no way of knowing. I would never know.
He haunted me through the night, the memories gathering themselves like phantoms in the shadows of the smithy, collecting silently around me until I could feel him, smell him, taste him. Captain Jack Sparrow, legend of the high seas, fast asleep against my shoulder with his fingers still curled through my hair. I could damned near see the moonlight spilling over the smooth plane of his back, feel his warm and even breath against my skin. Wild, abandoned, utterly beautiful...
I had to get out of that smithy. I had to get away from the ghost of Captain Jack. The rain had let up, some, and the wind was not so fierce. Dawn should be rising soon, though in weather like this it would no doubt stay dark well on into morning. I would slip back inside before Elizabeth woke, go back to Happily Every After...
I opened the door, and there he was.
I could not believe my eyes. Surely I had gone mad. He was a thousand miles away, right now, not here on my very doorstep. Fate had never been this generous to a living soul before, as far as I knew, and I could see no good reason for it to change its ways now. For a moment I stood very, very still in the doorway, with the rain pouring in at my feet, and struggled with my own senses. He simply could not be real; and yet when I crouched down beside him, placed a hand against his shoulder, there was flesh and bone beneath it; a soaked, shivering, solid man.
He was injured, but that was far from unusual and the least of my concerns. He was also very drunk, which was nearly requisite. His dark eyes were glazed, half mast, and he didn't seem to he able to focus them on me for more than a second. And he must have been out all night in the rain, because there wasn't a single dry inch on him. Water dripped from the brim of his hat, from the ends of his hair and from his beard. He looked like hell -- but he was alive, and real, and at my very fingertips.
The moment was surreal -- strangely sharpened and yet dreamlike. For so long I had lived with only the memories of him, that the living, breathing being before me was a shock to my system. My God, it was as though I had only seen him yesterday; and as I lifted him in my arms, he was quite simply too real to be real at all.
And then Captain Jack Sparrow looked up at me sleepily, drunkenly, and said "Damn you, Will Turner..."
I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or kiss him first.
So I did all three at once. I laughed through my tears as I sank to the floor with him inside; ran both hands covetously over his shoulders and arms and his knotted, rain soaked hair And then I kissed him -- kissed him for all the times that I'd dreamed of kissing him but couldn't, kissed him to make him real again. I kissed him because I'd thought that he was gone forever, and now he was here in my arms.
He tasted just as I knew he would taste -- like sea salt and tobacco and rum, like daydreams made real, like freedom itself. His lips parted against mine willingly, his arms wound easily 'round my neck; enamored with the weight of him in my arms. I didn't care where he'd come from, or how, or why - I didn't care about anything except this kiss, and this man, and this moment. I held the kiss as long as I could before drawing back and gazing down at him.
He seemed content enough to rest in my arms. Tipping his head back onto my shoulder, he looked up at me with a little drunken, contented smile. "You know what would be wonderful, Will? It would be truly wonderful if you were real."
Drunk beyond words, and most likely just as shocked by our sudden reunion as I was. I couldn't be sure that he'd even aware what city he was in. I ran the backs of my fingers very gently over his cheekbone, whispered, "I'm real, Jack. This is real. I'm here. You're here. You're here.. "
"I really want you to be real, Will," he whispered back -- and his tone had changed completely. There was a desperation to it that I never thought I would hear in his voice, or see in his eyes. He seemed nearly on the verge of tears.
But he did not cry. I hadn't really expected him to. Instead he swallowed very hard and pressed his cheek against my hand, reached up to cup it with his own. For one brief moment he looked almost innocent -- not a hardened, fearsome fugitive from the law; just a man who'd been without comfort for too long, cold and tired and sick of being alone. I never wanted to let go of him.
But he was still soaked to the bone, and shivering harder and harder as the minutes passed. I pressed my lips to his again, very softly. "I'm real, Jack. And you're real, and you're here, and you're sopping wet. Come on," I said, and without waiting for him to respond I lifted him again, brought him to the crude hearth that nonetheless boasted a good, warm, roaring fire. "If I put you down, do you think you can stand on your own?"
Jack furrowed his eyebrows with a shadow of indigence. "Of course I can stand," he assured me, his voice heavy with rum and exhaustion -- and with that he hopped down from my arms of his own accord. I had to catch him before he stumbled into the fire, but once I helped keep him steady he managed to keep his feet under him fairly well "Your problem, Will, is that you worry too damned much," he informed me gravely, leaning precariously to one side and slinging an arm over my shoulder. He didn't seem to be conscious in the least of suffering from the cold, but he was shaking to the very bone even as he giggled drunkenly and threw the majority of his weight against me, as drunk people are wont to do when they have an arm 'round your shoulder and are in high spirits.
"Shut up, Jack," I said, and then I kissed him again to make him do just that, and be still for a moment. Having him here again was overwhelming. He didn't object, however -- in fact he reciprocated with passion, deepening the kiss of his own accord before it finally came to an and. And then he smiled at me -- the most beautiful, wicked, wanton smile -- and said, "Keep that up, darling, and I'm afraid I simply won't be able to resist you." He said this as though he were actually trying to, as though I wanted him to.
For a moment neither one of us said a word, as something unspoken passed between us. I first laid eyes on him in this room. I tried to kill him in this room. Now I would make love to him in this room.
"Why did you come back...?" I whispered.
He was very quiet for a moment, looking at me with the most curious, beautiful mixture of melancholy and heavy thought, and then he said - as though just now realizing it; "...Because I missed you."
There was nothing more to be said. He was here, he was mine; and now the days were melting away by the dozens, until the year and a half we'd spent apart was gone, and nothing that happened between then and now mattered, never had mattered, never'd been real at all. Impossible, that he'd ever been lost to me. He was too familiar, too tangible, too close and whole and perfect. I would have died without him.
I kissed him -- and this time, when our lips parted, I kissed him again. I slid my arms around his waist and I drew him flush against me, kissed him slow and soft and sweetly, over and over. Tossing his hat aside, I savored the taste of him, the smooth skin of his back beneath my fingers as I pulled the soaked and filthy shirt over his head. Jack was much smaller than he appeared to be; he carried himself as though he were a man twice his own size, but beneath the tattered sailors garb he was slender, though as finely muscled as I think it is possible for a man to be. His body had not seen a day without physical labor in the better half of his life, and it showed in the smooth, sinuous lines of his arms, the gently rippled plane of his back, the hardened grid of his stomach; yet from what I could figure when I lifted him he weighed no more than 140 pounds, quite literally soaking wet. A small person, but a strong one. The power in the slender arms around me was unquestionable.
Time itself ebbed away, left us suspended blissfully in it's wake, and the moments seemed like hours as we reclaimed each other with hands and mouths and tongues, stripping away garments until there was nothing between our souls but close-pressed flesh and bone.
Silence, as I laid him down upon my cloak in the corner; silence save for the rain tapping out it's soft staccato against the windowpanes, and the sound of our own, quickened breathing. He was still shivering a bit beneath me, but the chill was melting away from his body even as I ran my hands over it, and he was completely pliant as I kissed his fingers, drew his hands above his head, let my own trail back down the insides of his arms to spread flat against his ribs.
One would never guess Jack to be so passive, so willing to let me do with him as I pleased. He was no blushing innocent, to be sure, but he yielded to me completely and with obvious satisfaction. Captain Jack Sparrow is in control of his own life as much as any man can be -- and if he lets go of the reins for even a second, the consequences have the potential to be quite dangerous, if not outright fatal. Only in these moments does he ever truly give himself over to anything; but when he does, he does so with utter abandon, as though a great, invisible weight has been lifted from his shoulders. Stretching against the cloak and pressing close to me, he wrapped his arms almost lazily around my shoulders, letting his head fall back and his eyes fall shut as I began to trace a path down his torso with my lips.
His skin was smooth and salty to the kiss, his stomach taunt and quivering beneath my lips. Those calloused fingers wound their way easily through strands of my hair, lifting them and letting them fall; shivering against my scalp as I parted his knees gently, then tightening drastically against the back of my neck as my lips finally found their mark.
Captain Jack Sparrow was all mine.
I don't know how long I kept him gasping and writing beneath my ministrations, with one hand firmly knotted in my hair and the other balled into a fist around the cloak beneath him - I only know that it wasn't long enough to give him the release that he whimpered a bit and begged me for as I brought my face back up level with his to kiss him again. His chest was heaving against mine, his eyes very wide and very deep and his lips parted ever so slightly to accommodate his ragged breathing.
"You look perfect, right now," I told him.
"Why are you wasting your time lying to me when you could be kissing me?" Jack asked me in a hushed and heated whisper. He squirmed a bit, trying to reposition himself so that I would keep touching him where he wanted.
"I'm not lying to you. I have no reason to lie to you." I kissed his jaw, his throat, his collarbone. Nuzzling close to me, he whispered against my ear.
"Prove it." It was not a dare, but a plea.
Something in his voice unlocked a door inside me that had been closed for far too long; and I could not have restrained myself in that moment with every ounce of willpower that I possess. I kissed him roughly, cupping his jaw for a moment before I ran both my hands down, over those slender hips, and hitched his thighs up over my hips. Jack wrapped his legs willingly around my waist ... opened his lips to the gentle brush of my fingers, devouring them hungrily and sending shivers through me with the simple flick of his tongue over my knuckles.
He traced the progress of my hand back down his body with his eyes, then lay his head back and shut them again, and his entire form locked beneath me with a sharp gasp when I slid the first finger inside of him. His knuckles were white around the cloak, now, and I allowed him a few moments to adjust to the digit before adding another. God only knew how long it had been since this had been done to him -- his muscles were tight as a drum around my fingers, and I would not at all have been surprised if he'd been with no other man since last we parted.
"Breathe, Jack," I whispered against his ear, and dropped a butterfly kiss to the corner of his mouth.
"Will," he gasped through clenched teeth, his eyes shut tight against the gray light of dawn now seeping through the windows. "Do it. Now."
I could not have been more obliged.
Heaven inside of him. Heaven in the sharp, high-pitched moan that escaped his lips, in the sharp attack of his fingernails against my shoulders. I only moved when he was ready; finding an easy rhythm immediately that he matched with passion; rolling his hips against mine smoothly -- his back arching, relaxing, then arching again as I slid a hand between his legs once more.
Absolute passion. The hiss of human breath in the still morning air, the sheen of sweat on smooth, tanned flesh, the tangling of hair and limbs and souls and the heave of his chest against my own. His breath against my neck, hitched and rushed and intermingled with moans of ecstasy, the pounding of his pulse beneath my fingers as I ran them down his neck; scent of sex, sweat, salt, dreams come true.
It could have been hours, days, weeks or lifetimes. His whimpers rose to moans rose to short, gasping screams; now he was whipping his head back and forth against the cloak, his body shuddering, convulsing beneath me. It would be no more than moments before the tidal wave of ecstasy broke over him in full.
I dropped my weight onto my elbow, brought my hand up to caress his cheek gently, turn his face towards my own. The shudders that wracked him made it all the way to his eyes as he gazed up at me -- and never before have human eyes been so beautiful. This man was the world to me; everything and then some.
"I love you, Jack," I whispered -- and then I kissed him, very, very softly ... trailed my hand down to his hip and anchored his body against mine as I slid as deep inside him as our bodies would allow.
We came together, as one, in the rising light of dawn; our bodies pressed close and our hair in one another's faces. I could feet his heartbeat through his chest, see his ribs with every breath as his muscles finally uncoiled. Drawing my self out and off of him, I stretched out beside him on the thick woolen cloak; letting him come into my arms and curl up against me as I knew he would do. For a few minutes he lay very still and very quiet against my shoulder -- eyes shut, lips parted, fingers limp and curled against my chest. I could nearly feel the exhaustion myself as it finally caught up with him.
And then he opened his eyes, tilted his chin up to look at me, and whispered "... I believe you."
He slept there in my arms, the cloak wrapped around us both and the rain singing lullabies against the windows of the smithy. For a long time I watched him; savored the sight of his handsome face, his features unclouded by consciousness, the innocence of his slumber nearly childlike. I stroked his hair and watched him sleep until I could no longer keep my own eyes open.
And then I kissed his forehead and settled down beside him, and slept in peace for the first time since the stern of the Black Pearl had faded into the distance a year and a half ago.
***