I feel really awful about not responding to each review, so I'm going to start. See next page for details.

What I learned writing this chapter: Inside Will's head is a lot more fucked up than inside Jack's head. It's a shock. Also, as disappointing as this may be, the heavy slash will be postponed. This chapter has sex in it, but it's more theoretical sex, and it's mainly het. Be patient. We'll get there.

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This is what William Turner knew about sex.

When he was very young, his mother told him that if he ever touched his… /organ/ for any purpose besides urinating or washing, it would fall off. To illustrate her point one day, she took him to the harbor to see a large ship come in and pointed out all the men missing legs, arms, eyes, and even teeth, and she told him that, should the men drop their trousers, he could see what else was missing. She told him he would go to Hell as well, because God hated weak, lustful men, and he would never marry because without it, he could never give his wife children.

Being young, Will didn't understand why anyone would /want/ to do such a trivial thing with such dire consequences. He was tempted at times, simply because it was something he was /forbidden/ to do, but whenever he considered it the image of a sailor with an eye and all but three teeth missing flashed in his mind, and he imagined what the man's sunken endowments must look like, and he always thought better of it.

Then he left his mother found Elizabeth, who was beautiful and soft and kind. All at once he knew why men were so tempted, and he knew why his mother had been so sure to warn him of the dangers of relieving himself in that way, because if she hadn't he surely would have given in and all chance he had to marry Ms. Swann would be lost.

His first few years in Port Royal he had been sure to go to Mast regularly, to confess his sins as his mother taught him. Forgive me father for I have sinned. I have lusted after a woman. Did you act on this lust in any way, son? No father. No, of course not… after a few years of having the same conversation every week with the priest he began to go less, and then not at all. It was time he could spend perfecting his craft, and if God forgave his every time before, Will figured it wasn't likely He would stop just because Will stopped telling the priest. As long as he didn't act on it.

Eventually, not being /completely/ gullible, Will realized that his mother had lied to him, that should he act on it he would remain bodily intact, and perhaps she had even lied about it being a sin. But it was still an improper act, and he was adamant about being proper for Ms. Swann's sake, no matter how tempted he was. She deserved nothing less. Whenever he saw her he ached for her, though he couldn't say how. Some nights he had dreams that refused to be controlled—jumbled images, the curve of her neck, a graceful glace of ankle as she stepped into her carriage, her shapely arm—and he would wake up breathing heavily, bed sheets soiled. The first time it terrified him. The second confused him. After the fourth he decided that it was simply another part of becoming a man, like the hair beginning to grow in odd places.

When Master Brown turned more heavily to the drink, Will would have to fetch him from the cheap taverns when the hour got too late. There he learned the mechanics of what men and women did, because everywhere he looked they seemed to be doing it. It seemed so carnal—he couldn't picture Ms. Swann in such an improper position. She was meant to be clothed in fine dresses, not bare, unkempt and out of control like the women in the tavern.

It would have been improper for him to lay with her before they were married, of course. Elizabeth had had complaint with this, of course, with her penitent for doing the proper thing only when it suited her. And Will, of course, had insisted they didn't. Though he did wish to place small, chaste kisses down her neck and arm, to worship her, he feared what would come next. He couldn't stand the thought of Elizabeth performing such a lowly act, like any common whore. He didn't think he could ever bear to look at her again, knowing it had been the one to lower her so.

Will thought about this.

Then, there was Jack… meeting Jack was like waking up for the first time, like coming up for air after far too long underwater. Jack wasn't anything Will had ever dreamed existed. Before his world revolved completely around Elizabeth, who was soft, calm, but Jack… Jack was uncontrollable, unpredictable, all fire and mystery. If Will allowed himself to admit it, Jack coaxed reactions from him that he had thought only Elizabeth could, except different. With Jack they were wilder, far more acute, like the difference between a wound from a dull blade and a sharp one. Will could easily imagine Jack in a wanton state. It didn't take much imagination, everything Jack did seemed a bit wanton. However, unlike with Elizabeth, it didn't seem to soil the man at all. Not that the man could possibly be any more soiled than he already was…

The gentle creak of rope sounded in harmony with the sea lapping at the ships, and then the soft twin thunks of two boots that were very practiced at landing in this manner. Will took another swing of rum, too used to it by now to even flinch, and impassively watched Jack re-board the Spartan. Will hadn't planned on drinking tonight, but drink dulled the world, and dull was currently Will's very close friend.

"You stay away, Pirate," he spat—slurred, rather. He looked to his bottle for answers, and found it nearly empty.

"Easy, lad," Jack said. "Your maidenhood is safe with me. I've never been fond of taking what isn't freely given." Will opened his mouth to protest, but Jack quickly added, "in his context, of course."

"That's not what the song says," Will insisted. "You /rape/, you pillage, you… something. And something. I don't recall exactly what, but I'm sure rape was the first part."

"Ah, that line was more about principal, you see, than actual—"

Will interrupted, currently lacking the attention span needed to listen to explanation. "What were you to my father?"

Jack's eyes darted briefly, looking at nothing. "His captain," he said decisively.

"That woman said that you wanted to… to do man-y/woman-y things to him."

Jack smirked slightly, eyeing Will. "I believe," he said convincingly, "in that case, there would be a supreme lack of woman-y, and a surplus of man-y. As it were."

"That's /exactly/ what I told her," Will said. "Well, not exactly, because you speak quite oddly, but that's what I meant… not enough females, is what."

"No females at all," Jack agreed, eyes wide.

"Yes!" Will cried triumphantly. "/None/. So you couldn't—I mean—it's not right… because I've /seen/ that sort of thing, and it just wouldn't work without a woman."

"You'd be amazed at what works with proper motivation," Jack muttered.

"What's that mean?" Will said.

"Nothing at all, lad." He motioned briefly upward with both hands. "Up, now. We've got to make way."

Will struggled to stand unassisted. Jack didn't move to help, and indeed hadn't even neared Will at all during the entire conversation. Will tried to figure out whether he thought this was a good thing or a bad thing, and settled on it being a thing, because he wasn't feeling up to internal debate just then.

"I thought we were to stay 'till morning," he said.

"Aye, we were, but Booth is planning to ambush us come sunrise. Figures it'll make him an easy reputation, doing off with Capitan Jack Sparrow and Bootstrap Bill's namesake in one go."

Will frowned, still unsteady and struggling with the ropes. "How do you know that?"

"Told you," Jack said, smiling confidently, "I can read people."