Jack Sparrow walked into a bar
"'Jack Sparrow...' No, let's not be forgetting, 'Captain Jack Sparrow walked into a bar'."
The said Captain Jack Sparrow walked - sauntered perhaps, or would it be better to say 'slunk'? 'Slunk?' 'Slinked?' Sod it! Jack gave up narrating his life story, and settled for weaving his way to the bar - which was inconveniently situated at the exact other end of the room from the end where he was at present standing. He considered that he might have already had all the rum it was safe to drink in the back streets of Port Royal; and quite a bit of the beer and brandy too, but he was upright, wasn't he? Besides, a nice little establishment like this wouldn't kick him out, or kick up a fuss if he spent the night on its floor - no safer place in the civilised world for a handsome pirate to kip or konk out, provided one didn't mind a little molestation in one's sleep, and Jack did not.
Warily, he negotiated the dancers, wheeling between the swinging skirts, clambered up the treacherously stationary deck... floor... and found himself standing by the polished wooden tables where those who had come to drink had berthed. They were occupied by a gaggle, nay a bevy, of gorgeously painted, sumptuously dressed mollies, and Jack - after he had seen to the important business of ordering himself a whiskey or three - smiled winningly at the lads. They were all looking so pretty tonight, as often happened when he looked at the world through the golden lens of rum. More proof, if proof was needed, of the sovereign powers of the bottle, which could make cowardly men feel like heroes, and plain girls take on a glow of beauty. Plain girls or plain... Jack blinked at the powdered, hectically rouged faces turned up to his.. whatevers. "Girls!" he said, expansively, opening his arms to them all, "this is the night that one..." he paused, rethought, holding up a finger to pause the time, "or all of you, catch Captain Jack Sparrow."
A wave of giggling and fluttering, and out of this froth there rose a young man in a russet coat with russet hair to match, eyes that looked like they'd seen the end of the world - and more to the point, a steadily aimed pistol with - as Jack had cause to notice - the hammer cocked. This was not quite the welcome he'd expected, and he was hurt. "Mate!" he said, spreading his hands inoffensively, while under cover of the movement easing himself into a position to either pounce or dive for cover, "are they yours? No trespass intended, share and share alike, eh?"
The rufous young man raised his chin, the better to display a look of triumph. "On the contrary, Mr. Sparrow. This is the night when I shoot you through the head, drag your odorous corpse to the Fort and claim I shot you while you were resisting arrest. Because I'm quite sure you would resist, if I let you."
There was something in the sentence structure that just grated along the edge of Jack's nerves - already set ajar by the mouth of the pistol barrel, all eager and black. Frankly he did not have the time to remember all the people he had menaced over a long career of blackhearted villainy, but he took a wild guess that this might have been one of them. He sighed - they always took it so personal!
"Now, mate..."
"I am not your mate!"
The trigger eased backwards. It seemed to Jack that the aim was true. He nerved himself, watching the slow pressure, counting down the half seconds to death. If he dived and rolled too early, the man would correct his aim, too late and 'farewell cruel world'. Except that the world had never seemed cruel to him - more like a toy box, jam packed with excitement, one game after another, and he did not want to stop playing or go to bed now.
"None of that in here, Captain. You know the rules."
Not that Jack wasn't obliged to see the freckled fingers ease back pressure on the trigger, nor for the appearance of a weedy, balding chap with a big nose and a proprietorial expression - who must in fact be the proprietor. It was just the mention of rules. Not only did he not know the rules, not want to know the rules, would not have obeyed the rules had he known them, but it distressed him to be mistaken for the kind of man who would.
"He's a notorious pirate."
Oh Jack smiled with relief, he wasn't talking to me.
"Outside, maybe, sir, I don't doubt you're right."
Hold on. Cocking his head to shake the slight discomfort out, Jack ran that thought past himself again. Here he was, the famous, the legendary Captain Jack Sparrow, and the man was not talking to him? The man was, in point of fact, talking to someone else? While Jack stood by as an almost innocent bystander? That couldn't be right.
"But in here, we don't have no names, no grudges nor histories. The world's enough against us without us being against each other - you know that, Captain."
"S'right," yielding to the indignant voice that demanded he should not be ignored, Jack smiled his most winning smile and sidled forwards, putting out a hand to fondle the long muzzle of the pistol suggestively as he moved it aside. "All friends in here, eh? Now I can tell I may have done you an ill turn in the past - stolen something you valued maybe?" He cast an eye over his assailant, who looked as though he'd bitten into a peach in the dark and found it a lemon in disguise.
"Can't have been your life," Jack reasoned, "less'n you're making a habit of resurrection. Unlikely to be your wife - given the circumstances." The young man was a fine upstanding lad with a supple mouth and a figure that reminded Jack, in a not unpleasant way, of a man-of-war; bigger than your normal boat but perfectly designed for the purpose. "And that's a mighty fine jacket you have on for a pauper, so I can hardly have beggared you." He smiled again, quickly happy that the words had come out so right - sometimes they did that, and it was as much an art and a gift as a good sword fight. "So how about I bugger you and we call it quits?"
"You stole my ship." My how that mouth twisted, and the black eyes snapped fire, like Anamaria at her best, except that Jack didn't put this lad down as the slapping kind. More likely the hanged, drawn and quartered, and stamping on the pieces afterwards kind. And well, the stealing of a ship, he could see how that would rile a man... but hold on, while he couldn't remember the faces, he could certainly remember the lovely wooden ladies he had liberated over his career. That called to mind why he'd been thinking the bloke like a man o war, why the pleasantly shaped eyes that glared at him were so conspicuously full of the noose. Last time, the boot had been on the other foot - or more appropriately, the pistol had been in the other hand.
"Gave it right back again though, didn't I? Don't see what cause you have to resent that - did no permanent damage, barely had her for five minutes." Navy lad, eh? Of course, finding him here was blackmail material enough in itself, should Jack survive to make use of it - and he had no doubt on that score now - but Jack preferred the personal touch. It was more... poetic, you might say. "I'd have you for a sight longer than that; make it up to you properly."
He dropped his voice to the rum roughened purr that the ladies loved, put a testing finger on the third button of the sage green waistcoat and walked them slowly up to where the ruffles of a creamy shirt lay open against a whiter throat, the purple bruise of a bite nestling like a sordid secret beneath the collar. It seemed the young man had done his debauching and had been having a quiet drink before making his way home. Jack glanced up, caught a boyish look - an almost virginal horrified fascination - on the soft, expressive face, and his own enthusiasm for the idea came on in leaps and bounds. The pistol fell to his assailant's side like a surrender, and Jack pressed forwards with a growing sense of anticipation.
Behind him the proprietor, satisfied that the situation had taken its more usual turn, faded away into the lacy crowd; many of whom were avidly watching. But they hadn't started shouting advice yet, so Jack felt he must be doing well enough on his own. "I see y've had your fun already, but, son, you haven't ever had anything like me. See, I'm Captain Jack..."
"Sparrow," said the lad, with a sudden resurgence of the bitten-lemon look, "I might be in despair, but I'm not dead yet. I'd sooner lick shit off the sole of my shoe."
Ah, the Naval school of charm, Jack thought, with appreciation, by no means put off by the response and wondering if the tendency to straightforwardly apply the maximum amount of force carried over into the Naval style of foreplay. "See, that's more'n I wanted to know about your personal habits," he said, genially, "but don't let me stop you."
There was a smattering of applause at the comeback and, delighted, he took time to bow and smile to the onlookers. Which was why he was not looking when the lad kicked out the back of his knees and grabbed the back of his hair. He twisted; "Ow! Ow! OW!" because he was attached to that hair and he could feel the roots straining like the clews of the rigging in a high wind, and the thought of going back to the Pearl with a fist-sized bald patch was not at all appealing. Maybe he'd misjudged the strength of feeling here, just a little. "Ow! S'cheating. You're not allowed to cheat - s'my job. Let's just sit down and work this out amicably eh?"
"Talk all you like, Mr.Sparrow, but you and I are going outside, where I will proceed with my plan of shooting you in peace."
"Lad, lad!" Jack said, distressed for his braids and for the fact that he was being bodily dragged back across all that wearisome space of floor, away from his drink, "you need to work on your people skills. And y'may not want me yourself, but I'm sure there's one or two here who would."
Doing his best to seem pathetic and put upon, Jack clawed at the door frame dramatically, as a man clings to the edge of a precipice with his feet hanging over a long drop. He could see looks of pity and indignation on several faces and he was tempted to tip a wink to the prettiest, except that it might get in the way of someone's brilliant idea to rescue him.
"Captain Gillette, I must protest!"
Oh good! Jack smiled to himself and fluttered his eyelashes shamelessly at the proprietor, who had nobly stepped back into the fray, the one long strand of his hair fluttering like a pennant behind him in the wind of his indignation.
"When I said you couldn't shoot him in the house, I didn't mean you could just drag him outside and shoot him in the street, either. That's taking things a little too literally. I'm sure the..." a professional glance, weighing up Jack's age and respectability, his manners and the depth of his pocket. Jack gave him a sweet look and was a little disappointed when he finished, uncertainly "person is a quite dreadful criminal, but while he's in my house he is a guest. Now do behave yourself, Captain, or I will have to ask you to leave, and him to stay."
Taking hold of his oppressor's wrist - a good wrist, he couldn't help but notice, good for taking a tumble with, perhaps not so good for wrestling - Jack eased the pressure on his hair and looked up into a face aquiver with naval fervour. Ah they were all the same - peas in a pod they were with their pressed uniforms and pressed men, rushing about with their 'yessir, at once sir,' self-righteous shiny obedience. A bit of sodomy was evidently nowhere near enough to discolour the essential deep-dyed navy of their souls. He could see from the white rage and the flared nostrils - like open gunports they were, never a good sight - that newly named Captain Gillette was giving serious thought to sacrificing his own social life and more to the point, sacrificing Jack, in the same blow. And that - well, that was something he could agree with the lad that he could live without.
He eased the grip off his hair, gave himself a little shake, accepted his hat from an admirer and said, in a conciliatory tone; "We're off duty, see? Now, how about you don't kill me, I don't buy you a drink, and we both sit down and have a little chat about better ways to woo your wayward lover than dumping a dead pirate in his lap..."
As he'd hoped, this startled the anger away. The lad's fluid face changed shape from angular to round in a way that didn't seem quite possible. But Jack had seen stranger things in his time, and appreciated the change more for what it boded - 'boded', yes, he liked that one - more for what it boded along the lines of immanent death than for aesthetics.
"You don't know him," said Gillette, with a flash of unexpected wit. "He likes cats. I could do worse than to leave dead vermin on his doorstep."
"Now is that a way to speak to a man who's taking such a sympathetic interest in your troubles?" Jack asked, taking advantage of the change of mood to take back possession of his hair. Rubbing his head theatrically, he put two and two together and came up with twenty two. It was something of a wild guess in the dark, but he'd learned to trust such things. "Besides, I know the Commodore well enough - wasn't he a guest on the Pearl for a month a while back - perfect gent, if a little too inclined to blow holes in my ship."
Suspicion and a touch of welcome awe battled each other on the young man's face. "How did you know?" he said sharply, succumbing for a moment, as they all did, to the legend.
Jack was not about to explain a thought process that relied on forty years of careful, affectionate observation of human nature - 'In despair' he said - doesn't look like the kind of man who'd frequent a place like this - thinks himself too good for it - chances are; boyfriend trouble - almost always is - or at least not necessarily 'boyfriend' - s'a new variation on the old tune, but still an affair de coeur. And all the lads at the dockyard call this one 'The Commodore's Dog' - had to be a fairly safe bet.
"Son," he said instead, "I'm..."
"If you say it again, I will be forced to shoot you. Out of sheer irritation."
Raising his hands in surrender, Jack sank down into his abandoned seat and smiled again. So he'd gone from 'I am going to shoot you' to 'don't force me to shoot you' had he? That was progress. And he could see the curiosity, embedded in the young man like a hook in his mouth, all ready for Jack to reel him in. "It is the bonnie Jamie Norrington for you, eh? And I dare say he notices you about as much as he notices the sword that dangles by his side - it being the lovely Lizzie for him or nothing, more's the pity. Let me bear you a sympathetic ear, mate, and buy you a drink to boot. I love a tale of broken hearts and star crossed lovers, 'tis better than a book."
Gillette sat down, suspiciously, the pistol - still cocked - balanced across his knees, and pointing - Jack was a little distressed to observe - at a rather sensitive area of Jack's anatomy. He shifted on his seat, thought about eunuchs, and retaliated for the discomfort by waiting until Gillette glanced away and innocently tipping a substantial mug full of whiskey into his beer.
"I am not going to pour out the troubles of my heart for your amusement, Sparrow," the young man took a long drink, frowned a little and then passed one hand through his hair. Short shorn to go under the wig, it responded by standing up in distinctly unregulation wild mahogany curls. "But I am going to sit here and make sure you do not get out of that door without me. You can consider yourself under house arrest for now - but they throw us all out at five in the morning. I'll just take you in then."
A man of admirable constancy - or a monomania, depending on how you looked at it, thought Jack, beginning to feel a bit put out by the whole affair. This was not the way the evening had been supposed to play out. By rights he should even now be upstairs with some lovely, having a good time - no name, no regrets, and no bloody interference from the military. If that couldn't happen, then the military should at least have the good sense to go down before his irresistible charms and end up having a highly irregular but enjoyable time himself. "Bloody terrier," he muttered to himself. Despite the generous size, if the man was indeed the Commodore's dog, he was one of those little snappy ones that buried their teeth in your ankle and wouldn't let go no matter how you waved the aniseed soaked rag at them.
"Still think you're barking up the wrong tree," said Jack, his metaphors getting the better of him. "Young Jamie let me go, didn't he? One day's head start, a tribute to the valiant enemy who saved his life, least he could do to square things with his conscience... you're following me?"
"Take a contortionist to follow you Mr.Sparrow," groused the lad, in a lower voice than he had so far used. There was an ever so slightly shiny look to him now as the whiskey did its work - a whiskey taken on top of whatever spirit he had used to fortify himself against the self-loathing of patronising this den of vice in the first place. Jack smiled to himself and waggled his eyebrows suggestively at the avid young boy in a lilac dress who was listening in on this conversation over Gillette's substantial shoulder. The little darling kissed his hand to Jack in return, and his mood revived. What with the prim and proper Miss Elizabeth Swann, and the one track - but the wrong track - mind of Captain Gillette, he'd almost begun to feel positively rejected. It was reassuring to find out that they were nothing more than the rare exceptions that proved the rule.
"My pint... not my pint, my point of course - yours is the pint, mine's the point... My point is," Jack said, and noticed with delight that his slip of the tongue had drawn the man's attention to his glass again. He watched Gillette drink - the alcohol softening the look in his eyes, softening the braced line of his lips, making him look no longer spiky but just very very tired - and wondered with a certain regret what it was about the Navy that bred such fine men and then made them so reluctant to share their honed and well-scrubbed glory with him. Such a waste!
"My point is - still where I left it, I think - that your James had a hard time squaring himself to that decision, didn't he? Knew he couldn't live with himself, was I to hang - and I the one who lifted the curse and stopped all his little men - you included, and I dare say that weighed in his decision - from getting cut to pieces by unkillable pirates. One day's head start was a good excuse to let me go, savvy? So how's he going to feel when you turn up bearing as a thoughtful present the ex-Captain Jack Sparrow with a neat hole in the head and no way of returning said gift when it's not what he wants?
Gillette bowed his head into the hand that was not holding the gun, and Jack's little friend took the opportunity to exchange his empty tankard with a full one. Making a mental note not to lift the boy's purse when he'd finished with him, Jack carried on carefully working the point home. "Dishonouring him, that's what you'd be doing - seems to me at least; telling him that in your opinion he was wandering in his wits to offer mercy to scum like me... 'S'not tactful, mate, is it? S'not the best way to get him to notice you; forcing him to make that decision again, is it, eh?" He nodded sympathetically as the naval man took a long pull on his new drink, screwed up his face in astonishment, choked a couple of times and slowly toppled forward to lie limp as seaweed at low tide over the beer sticky surface of the bar table.
Getting up, cautiously, Jack leaned forward and eased the sleeping man's fingers off the trigger, but nobly refrained - under the gaze of all those currently sympathetic but oh so changeable eyes - from lifting the pistol or picking the snoring Captain's pockets. "What was in that?" he asked, slinging an arm around the boy in the purple dress - just in case it might be necessary to rouse out a doctor on his way back to his ship. Escaping went without saying, but poisoning a bloke who was - well, perhaps not pouring out his woes, but certainly containing them in a very loud manner - was not Jack's style.
"Whiskey, brandy and port, with enough beer to give it head," said the boy, his painted lips pert with innuendo.
Making the appropriate joke, Jack flourished his hat to the assembled crowd and backed slowly out of the front door. "Gents, it's been lovely. Perhaps a little more dancing and making merry, and a little fewer pistols in the face... but still a high class joint. I shall always remember this as the day I..." he tripped backwards over the doorstep, narrowly missed planting his arse in the gutter, and departed to the sound of applause, well pleased with the world and himself.
About five minutes later, to the surprise of the patron - who had been considering how best to get his customer home in a barrow - Gillette raised his head from the table, paid for the drinks, and walked, cautiously but with no sign of a stagger, out into the fetid darkness of Port Royal's night. Blazing Caribbean stars slicked the streets with whey coloured light. The harbour breeze brought the scent of the town's cess pit up from the sea, and he could see rats in the gutter, a man pissing against the wall, the topmasts of the brig Atlantea as strokes of charcoal on an indigo sky behind the warehouse roofs. But no matter how hard he looked, he could not see Captain Jack Sparrow. The pirate had vanished like a bad dream - like a hangover in battle.
Five minutes head start, he thought, turning to go home, his pride smarting a little at the thought that soon all Port Royal would believe he could not hold his drink. But amazingly enough Sparrow had been right - it would have been unfeeling to force Norrington to make such a decision again; to revoke his mercy and criticise his kindness, when it had cost him so much to bestow them in the first place. This had been a convenient way out.
But only for you would I have let him go. Only for you would I let him think he beat me again. God knows, James. Only for you.