DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Disney. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. Hopefully, Disney's many experienced lawyers will not decide to come after me for this, as I posses only a computer, some black eyeliner, and a world atlas with colour maps of the Caribbean.
Posted by: Elspeth (AKA Elspethdixon).
Author's Notes: As before, I've only seen the movie once, so if you find any mistakes, inconsistencies, or inaccuracies in characterization, please tell me.
Ships: Will/Elizabeth, Jack/Elizabeth, eventual Jack/Will, eventual Norrington/OC
Warning: This story contains killing, stealing, lots of angst, an OC, and a non-evil Norrington. It also contains drinking, swearing, a male/male relationship, and an eventual threesome. Sadly, it probably will not contain any hot, steamy sex scenes.
Chapter Four: In Which Much Drinking Occurs, but Nothing is Resolved.
I could have married the King's daughter dear.
She would have married me.
I've forsaken her crowns of gold
all for the love of thee.
Tortuga had not changed much in the seven months since he'd last been there, Will concluded, as he gazed around the smoky, crowded confines of the dockside tavern. He suspected it was the same one he and Jack had met with Gibbs in, back the previous summer, but he couldn't be sure. After you had been in a couple, all of the taverns in Tortuga began to look alike. Certainly all of their proprietors knew Jack—which was why Will found himself, as Jack's companion, obliged to pay for all of his liquor up front.
He didn't have much of a problem with that at the moment, as small beer was pretty much the least expensive thing the Sea Cow offered.
"You might as well drink water," Jack opined, flicking his fingers disdainfully in the direction of Will's tankard.
"I would," Will confessed, "If I weren't afraid of catching something. Do you have any idea how hot it is inside a forge when the bellows are going? It's like the hinges of Hell."
"I'm sure we all appreciate your skill and fortitude. When are the guns goin' to be done?"
"Tomorrow."
"You said that yesterday," Jack protested, sounding aggrieved. His voice was at odds with his body language—he half-sat half-lay sprawled across a chair by the wall, eyes half-lidded as watched the rest of the tap-room. Will was fairly sure he was putting on the injured tone fore effect.
"That was before McTaggart and Hopkins let the fire in the forge go out." He frowned, thinking of the hours of wasted work. The Pearl's two twelve-pounders had been a surprisingly easy job, really, but for the set back with the forge. It had required a moderate amount of skill, but nothing like the sort that was needed to create a good blade. This job had needed a craftsman—for the other, it took an artist.
He toyed, once again, with the idea of making a sword for Jack—not a cutlass, but a true, double-edged blade, straight and slender and gaudy as an island sunset, just like its owner. He had made a dagger for Elizabeth that winter, as slim, delicate, and deadly as she could be, but had created nothing for Jack. He'd never been sure whether or not he was going to see Jack again, and didn't like the thought of a sword made for him ending up in the hands of some naval officer when its true owner never arrived to claim it, so the weapon had gone unmade.
"I ought to charge extra for the added time," he continued, perching on the edge of the table and doing his best to cast a stern look at its single occupant.
"And you keep calling me a pirate," Jack muttered, just loudly enough to be clearly audible. He waved a hand at the seat next to him, left empty while Anamaria recuperated slowly back onboard the Pearl. "Sit down, o most expensive blacksmith this side of the Antilles, and have a real drink. I'll stand you the first one."
Will obeyed, with far less reluctance than he would have once shown at the idea of sitting down to drink with a pirate. He had grown halfway comfortable sitting with Jack during that handful of days on the Interceptor, listening almost against his will to a seemingly endless ramble of disjointed and unlikely stories or occasionally, enjoying a blessed and rare silence. The trip out from Port Royal this time had seen few of those moments, with the two of them surrounded by the Pearl's crew. In some senses, it was a blessing—prolonged doses of pure, unadulterated Jack tended to grate upon one's nerves fairly quickly—and in some ways, it had been almost an annoyance. Will had been waiting for several days for the chance to catch Jack alone, to talk without someone, even if it was only Cotton's parrot, listening nearby.
The two of them had had an audience practically from the first moment Will had stepped aboard the little ship's boat back in Port Royal, to receive a slap on the back from Jack and a half sly, half-shy inquiry as to whether Elizabeth had liked her earrings. Will, his mind going back to his departure minutes before, had, much to his horror, blushed bright red.
"I do believe you're blushing," Jack had said, grinning evilly. "Ah, young love, isn't it adorable?" And then he had smirked, as if Will were a small dog who had just performed a clever trick, and as if he were pondering how to induce him to perform that same trick again.
"I am not," Will had insisted, trying to save face. He went on the attack. "A man could get ideas from a fellow giving jewelry to his wife."
"Oh, sorry. Jealous, are you? Did you want earrings too?" The concept of receiving his own set of earrings had never occurred to Will before that moment. It was disturbingly tempting. Elizabeth would have probably liked them.
"No!" he'd burst out, continuing with a babbled, "I mean, I can't wear earrings. I'm a respectable blacksmith. And if you think I'm letting you anywhere near my ears with a needle you're insane. Er. Insaner."
And the pirates standing by with the oars had laughed heartily and decided that Will and Jack were better than the theater, and that both Will's successful sallies and his embarrassed stumbles were the best entertainment they'd had in weeks. And every exchange since had been closely observed.
The phrase "You'll never guess what the lad said to the captain today…" had become the bane of Will's existence. Jack didn't seem to care. Jack was, he was sure, somehow encouraging it, simply to be annoying.
He was also the only annoyance to whom Will could even try to explain the problem that had been bothering him for weeks. No one back in Jamaica, with the exception of Elizabeth, would have understood, and confiding in Elizabeth would have made her feel guilty.
"I just can't talk to any of them," he found himself confessing, after a couple of rounds of rum. "They go all cold-eyed and look at me, like 'and who are you, you young upstart, aping your betters.' Elizabeth belongs in that sort of world, but I don't. I don't know how to manage a plantation, or make dinner conversation with a lord's son, or play the pianoforte. I just know swords. I make them, and I use them, except I can't use them against the Governor's friends even though it is all right for a gentleman to fence, because they don't like always losing."
"Gentry." Jack snorted. "All a title like "Lord" does is weigh a man down with useless land. Who wants a plantation? 'Captain,' now. 'Captain's a title a man earns."
"I don't want a plantation. All I want is a forge and a blade and Elizabeth. And freedom."
"I told you you were a pirate. Once the sea gets in your blood there's no gettin' it out. A ship like the Pearl, that's real freedom, you savvy? Go wherever you want, as far as you want, and never obey anybody except the wind."
That sounded far more appealing than Will really wanted to admit. "I can't drag Elizabeth around on board some ship," he protested. "She'd never complain, but her father, her home, everything she's ever know almost is in Port Royal."
"You're sure you'd never want to leave her for the ocean, for a ship?" Jack sounded almost surprised, as if the idea of a wife being more important than a ship, of a family outweighing one's personal freedom, was something that had never occurred to him before. "I've never met anyone worth givin' up the Pearl for. The best thing would be somebody to share her with me. Like a menage à trois." He grinned. "That's French, like parlay, only more fun."
Will could guess very well what it was. It made a very interesting mental picture, especially with the Black Pearl thrown into the equation. "I wouldn't think it would be much fun for the two women, though." He could feel himself blushing again as soon as he'd said it, appalled at himself. This was definitely the last round of rum.
"Don't know." Jack shrugged. "I've never heard complaints."
"These," Will announced, "are not the sort of details I need to hear."
"You're blushin' again," Jack pointed out, one hand gesturing broadly at Will's face. "You never used to blush this much, mate. Married life has made you go all shy."
"You never used to mention sex to me unless you were trying to insult me," Will accused in turn.
"You can't even say it." Jack was shaking with suppressed laughter now, looking perilously close to snorting rum out through his nose, which would have been extremely painful. And fully deserved. "You blush just tryin' to. You're worse than a woman. Really. Because a lot of women aren't shy at all."
"A gentleman doesn't kiss and tell," Will said, somewhat stiffly. What was wrong with him? He had blushed more in the past two weeks than he had in the whole past half year before them.
"We're neither of us gentleman, love." Jack smirked at him, slumping further down into his chair in a manner that somehow made him look as if all of his bones had melted. "I think you're just jealous that I got to spend the night with your Elizabeth before you did."
Will knew full well that Jack was only joking, but his mind flashed involuntarily to an image of the other man and Elizabeth, salt-coarsened black elf-locks tangling with sleek golden-brown silk, and dark skin sliding against pale. Strangely, this image didn't prompt jealousy or resentment, as the thought of Elizabeth with Norrington would have. Instead, Will felt an unaccountable stirring of arousal, and his face began to heat and color again.
Trying furiously to distract his mind, he countered, "Elizabeth told me all about that. She drank you under the table."
"She did nothing of the sort,' Jack protested. "There wasn't a table on the island. Trust me, I've spent more time there than I want to remember." He squinted at Will. "Have you got a sunburn?"
"I thought we were talking about freedom," Will said, trying to bring the conversation about to its original tack.
"We were. You're the one who went and brought up sex." Jack poured himself another glass of rum and extended the bottle toward Will. He waved it away. Already his head was swimming with the liquor he'd consumed, its effects compounded by his tiredness and the heat of the room.
"You sure the lass wouldn't mind leavin' Port Royal?" Jack asked. "When I caught up to her to her those earrings she was on the beach starin' at the sea like a stavin' man lookin' at a banquet table. I had expected to find you there," he added, "not her."
"No." Will shook his head. "When I start missing it, I go and make a new sword."
"How many swords have you made?" Dark eyes regarded Will levelly, the mirth of a few moments ago draining away like a tide pulling away from the beach.
"A few," Will admitted. Jack nodded slightly, understanding that 'a few' really meant 'dozens.' The little smithy in Port Royal was just as crowded with blades as it had ever been, but now a different sort of frustration was pounded out into the glowing metal. Into this rapier blade had gone his memories of slat breeze in his face and a rope in his hands; into that carefully wrought basket hilt went the glitter of a cavern full of treasure; and into every finely honed edge went the delicious adrenaline-laced thrill of combat and danger. The sort of wild plans and impossible risks that seemed to go hand in hand with Jack's company had chilled his blood at the time, but now, life without them seemed somehow flat, lacking in something vital. He sighed.
"Norrington offered me a commission as a midshipman when I first got back. He said that if I could learn to curb my recklessness, I could have a fine future in the navy. I think he may have just been trying to get me away from Elizabeth. I said no, of course, but sometimes I wish…" He let himself trail off. Then, as now, accepting a commission would have meant abandoning Elizabeth. Elizabeth, who had said several times that his presence was all that made life in Port Royal bearable, and who was herself one of the only things that kept Will from taking the first ship bound for Tortuga or Bridgetown.
Jack eyed him speculatively. "You'd have made a good naval officer," he sadi, words slightly more slurred than usual. He had been drinking two rounds to Will's one most of the evening. "You're honorable and brave and loyal and all of those good things I'm not. Norrington's a good sailor; he knows how to pick 'em, savvy?" He toasted Will with a mostly empty tankard. "Mr. Will Turner of His Majesty's Navy." He knocked back the remainder of the tankard's contents in one long swallow and set the empty vessel down on the scarred wooden table with a bang. "Be a waste, though," he added, "spendin' your life all tied down by navy discipline, jumpin' only when another man tells you to. You deserve better'n that."
"You really think I'd have been good at it?" Will asked, somewhat surprised. Captain Jack Sparrow, who could seemingly steer a ship on instinct and talk his way out of almost any scrape at the last moment, thought that he, Will Turner the blacksmith, the overly-honest 'whelp' who was forever doing stupid things, had the makings of a sailor?
"You learn fast, you do what needs to be done, an' I'd take you at my back in a fight over a half-dozen other men." Jack clapped one be-ringed hand on Will's shoulder, nearly unbalancing him. "Norrington should have grabbed you for a first mate and Elizabeth for a wife when he had the chance." Brown, dark-outlined eyes stared into Will's, pupils slightly dilated. "I would've, if I'd thought of it. I swear, mate, when you two stepped between me an' those swords… You could have asked for anythin', an' I'd have given it to you. Well," he temporized, "anythin' except the Pearl."
Will looked away, shaking his head. Something about that intent gaze made him feel almost embarrassed. "It wasn't that important," he muttered. "You would have done it for us."
"It's nice of you to say so," Jack told him. He grinned, gold teeth glinting in the lantern-light. "The Pearl would be proud to have you aboard her, both of you. I owe you one, and I do pay my debts occasionally."
Will did not answer. He didn't trust himself to refuse. "We should get back to the ship," he said instead, "before it gets too late. I've got work to do tomorrow."
Jack didn't press for a real answer. He let Will haul him to his feet and the two of them made their way out to the door and back down to the docks. Jack, one hand on Will's arm to provide him with the necessary balance--"cursed land, always stayin' still when you expect it to move"--hummed that pirate song Elizabeth was so fond of as they walked, occasionally singing a snatch of it aloud. By the time they reached the gangplank of the Pearl, Will had succumbed to the evil infectiousness of it and joined in.
^_~
Antilles: The largest group of islands in the West Indies, extending from Cuba to Trinidad.
Elf-locks: Snarled and tangled hair, not hair that is elven-looking (considering Orlando Bloom's last role, I thought I should make that clear).
Bridgetown: A seaport in Barbados, known as a haven for privateers and smugglers in the seventeenth century.
Next up: Chapter Five, In Which Elizabeth and Norrington Quarrel.
Stay tuned as we leave Will and Jack for a while in order to fit in some angst and plot development.