#3 FIC: Three Things that Never Happened to Johnny Depp, PG-13
Three Things That Never Happened To Johnny Depp
An odd little baby, where FPF (fictional person fiction) crosses over into RPF (real person fiction). For Olivia’s 17th birthday.
(beta'd by tethysian/ailura, THANK YOU.)
1. first times
The first time Johnny sees the man, he realises that the memory will remain seared into his consciousness for the rest of his life.
The first time Johnny sees the man, they are at some club he can't remember the name of. This happens after he's wrapped filming for Don Juan DeMarco, or Dead Man; he can't quite recall. Then again, most of his memories of that time come back fuzzy and powder-coated; colour and movement sluggish and too-bright in his mind.
It is a man, dressed in a suit cut in an oddly archaic manner, wearing a sort of alcoholic grace that makes Johnny almost envy him, the shining bastard. It is a man who, minus the goatee and the odd hair, seems to be a spitting image of Johnny.
"I should," Johnny begins, because this is important, "I should… do that… thing?" and he ends his declaration with a question, because Kate will know, maybe, somehow, how, Kate-
Kate is barely moving, but she opens her mouth slightly wider in response to Johnny's remark and closes her eyes. Johnny takes it that she's telling him not to bother. They do not bother about most things, these days.
The man in question is watching them now, Johnny decides. He resolves to go over and talk to him, and turns to tell Kate about his plan of action. "Kate," he manages to say. Everything is shifting so slowly, and Kate has started giggling for no reason.
And then Johnny finds that he doesn't need to move, after all, because the man is walking over to him now. He sways slightly as he walks, or maybe it's Johnny's vision that's swaying. He blinks as the man leans in close, grinning, and wonders vaguely if those gold teeth are real.
"So what they told me is true, then," the man says in Johnny's voice, but slightly lower in register and with a certain sharpness at the ends of his words.
"True?" Johnny repeats blankly.
The man laughs, and pats Johnny on the shoulder. Worn hands, brown from the sun, work-calloused; age-calloused. "Eloquent," he says, "I like you."
There is something Johnny needs to know, but he cannot, for the life of him, remember what it is. "What's true?" he asks instead.
"Us," the man tells him. "We. You and I. Alike, love."
I know, Johnny wants to say, but why? What comes out, instead, is, "Oh."
There is a moment of silence, where there is nothing but the syncopated thudding of club music. Then the man says, "I'll leave you to it, then," gesturing to the half-finished speed and god-knows-what lying on the table in front of them. "Never liked the stuff," he adds, "Much preferred rum."
2. (secret)
They are on an island in the Bahamas when they meet again. This time, Johnny knows his name.
He can hardly say it, though. He has done nothing but caper around on beaches and cave sets in this man's identity and pretend to be the authority on Sparrow's idiosyncrasies for months and months, but now, face to face with Captain Jack Sparrow himself, Johnny can only stare open-mouthed at the man. "Captain Sparrow," he manages, finally. He hasn’t expected them to ever meet again, but he has to admit that he’s been rehearsing this conversation in his head every since the Pirates script first landed on his desk. Even so, he is still unsure about how exactly he should greet this other self, this reverse doppelganger of his.
Sparrow is not wearing his suit this time; he looks rather worn, at the moment, standing on the beach in a grubby white shirt and ill-fitting trousers. Looking at him, Johnny realises, is like looking at a keen reflection of himself, even more so now that he's gotten the same gold teeth fitted in, that same brownness to his skin. Sparrow doesn't have the dreadlocks now, though, or the tricorne and coat; he couldn't have survived the past several hundred years as a seventeenth-century pirate.
"I've watched it," Sparrow says, with a bleary off-focus grin Johnny has only ever seen in the mirror of his trailer bathroom. Private, congratulatory.
Johnny squints at him in the harsh sunlight, trying to get over how bizarre this feels, because for the longest time he has assumed Sparrow to be yet another hallucination amidst that drug-filled haze years ago, the most vivid of the lot.
There is something that might just be pride in Sparrow's voice when he says, "You have a knack, Johnny Depp."
"Johnny," Johnny tells him. "Call me Johnny."
"Tell me, Johnny," Sparrow says, turning abruptly and starting to count steps along the beach. "Do you like this island?"
Johnny watches him for a moment, takes in that gait that he has become so familiar with as Sparrow meanders away from him. "It's all right, I suppose," he tells Sparrow. "Rather sunny, very empty."
Sparrow shuffles his bare feet in the sand, which must be scorching hot under the blazing sunlight. "Did anybody mention an unlimited stash of rum on this island? Did they tell you that it was cursed, or did they tell you it was charmed?"
"They told me nothing," Johnny replies, grinning despite himself. "So I'll assume it's both."
Sparrow swivels around and Johnny can already see that gleam in his eyes, that Sparrow is calculating, playing out an impending bargain in his head.
"If you buy this island, Johnny Depp, and I'll tell you the truth as I know it," says Sparrow, spreading his hands imploringly. "One favour, for old Jack, and I'll tell you the secrets of this island."
Johnny knows the tone Sparrow is using; he's used it before, but never so desperately. "How about I propose another exchange," he says, and the moment he does he knows it's a done deal; he's already estimating the amount of money this island will cost and how he's going to go about purchasing it, whether Sparrow knows it or not. "I'll buy this island, you don't tell me any of its secrets-"
"-brilliant idea" Sparrow interjects.
"-and you tell me why you're still alive," Johnny finishes. "No tricks."
"None at all," says Sparrow with a wriggle of his fingers and a grin. "All right, so you toddle along now and buy this pretty little island, and when you return, I will tell you-"
Johnny knows it's incredibly rude, but he cuts Sparrow off and says, "Or you can tell me now, and I give you my word that I'll do the toddling after." After all, Johnny's the one paying for the island, not Sparrow.
"Answers first, you mean?" Sparrow asks. He has now turned to look at Johnny again, with a sharpness in his expression that is completely foreign. "You want to know how one Captain Jack Sparrow has come to be the last bloody pirate on earth?"
"Yes."
Sparrow steps over to him, bare feet scattering hot sand, until he's standing face to face with Johnny.
"You want to know?"
Johnny swallows, throat dry. "Yes, I do want to know."
There is a gleam in Sparrow's eyes now, and a twisting not-quite-smile on his face that tells Johnny of secrets buried for hundreds of years, a hidden burden of seeing too many lifetimes. He regards Johnny for a slow second before leaning in, close.
"Fountain of Youth, love."
Johnny's not sure whether to believe him. What he does, later on, is to buy the island: his side of their dubious bargain.
3. (secret II)
At any event or other, Johnny will always meet some random kid who has dressed up as Captain Jack. Always, for a second, he will stop and look them in the eye, searching for his own face in another's.
"Doppelgangers are bad luck," Vanessa will say, "Don't look for him."
Johnny will shrug and reply, "Should be bad luck for him then, since I'd be his doppelganger."
He catches sight of Sparrow some hours after the premiere of the third film has ended, when it's already early morning the next day and he's on his way into the hotel. Sparrow glances at him for a brief moment, before he saunters round the corner, cigarette in hand.
It has been a long time since Johnny has really bothered about what other people say about his work. He sticks to his choices once he's made them, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't. With Sparrow, however, Johnny cares. He finds that he needs to know if he's got it right, he needs to know if he's nailed it, because this is Jack fucking Sparrow still alive and quick as always, the part of Johnny that is and is not.
"Cigarette?" Sparrow asks, when they've reached the back of the hotel building.
Johnny nods tersely, partly because it's some unforgivable time in the morning and he's exhausted beyond imagination, and partly because he needs to know.
"I've watched it," Sparrow says while he lights Johnny's cigarette.
"We took a few liberties with the Locker, and Bootstrap," Johnny tells him rather too quickly, trying to ignore how much it sounds like a pre-emptive apology.
Sparrow glances sidelong at him, before drawing another long breath from his cigarette. For a few heavy moments they stand there in nicotine-thick silence. Somebody on the lower floors of the hotel switches off their television, leaving a sudden dip of quiet amidst the night's white noise. A car goes past. Sparrow exhales; smoke curls from his mouth and nostrils.
"You got it about right, that whole business with Davy Jones," Sparrow says, gesturing vaguely with his cigarette. "Fountain of Youth, nice touch," he continues, "Keith whatshisface, not quite my father, and Turner had a more… sodden look about him the last time we met, but that's the movies for you."
"And yourself?" Johnny cannot help but ask. "Was it all right?"
Sparrow pauses for a moment, contemplates his cigarette, looks at Johnny from the corner of his eye. "I've said it before, and I'll say it again, love - you have a knack. But a knack's a knack, it takes you this far and then that's it." He drops his cigarette on the ground with a wriggle of his fingers, and grinds it under the sole of his boot.
"So-" Johnny begins to say, but Sparrow gestures to him to keep quiet.
"I'll tell you this, Johnny, because quite honestly, I like you. You are a brilliant human being; eloquent, evocative, elusive… elastic-" he stops for a moment to tug critically at Johnny's jacket - "and you are very, very good at playing me." He beams widely at Johnny.
"You couldn't have known about it, really," he continues, "but there is one thing, mate. There's just one thing you missed out." Here Sparrow pauses for effect.
After the pause goes on for a bit too long, Johnny hazards cautiously, "And what's this one thing?"
With a smile that might be a grimace (hard to see in the darkness), Sparrow tells him.
An odd little baby, where FPF (fictional person fiction) crosses over into RPF (real person fiction). For Olivia’s 17th birthday.
(beta'd by tethysian/ailura, THANK YOU.)
1. first times
The first time Johnny sees the man, he realises that the memory will remain seared into his consciousness for the rest of his life.
The first time Johnny sees the man, they are at some club he can't remember the name of. This happens after he's wrapped filming for Don Juan DeMarco, or Dead Man; he can't quite recall. Then again, most of his memories of that time come back fuzzy and powder-coated; colour and movement sluggish and too-bright in his mind.
It is a man, dressed in a suit cut in an oddly archaic manner, wearing a sort of alcoholic grace that makes Johnny almost envy him, the shining bastard. It is a man who, minus the goatee and the odd hair, seems to be a spitting image of Johnny.
"I should," Johnny begins, because this is important, "I should… do that… thing?" and he ends his declaration with a question, because Kate will know, maybe, somehow, how, Kate-
Kate is barely moving, but she opens her mouth slightly wider in response to Johnny's remark and closes her eyes. Johnny takes it that she's telling him not to bother. They do not bother about most things, these days.
The man in question is watching them now, Johnny decides. He resolves to go over and talk to him, and turns to tell Kate about his plan of action. "Kate," he manages to say. Everything is shifting so slowly, and Kate has started giggling for no reason.
And then Johnny finds that he doesn't need to move, after all, because the man is walking over to him now. He sways slightly as he walks, or maybe it's Johnny's vision that's swaying. He blinks as the man leans in close, grinning, and wonders vaguely if those gold teeth are real.
"So what they told me is true, then," the man says in Johnny's voice, but slightly lower in register and with a certain sharpness at the ends of his words.
"True?" Johnny repeats blankly.
The man laughs, and pats Johnny on the shoulder. Worn hands, brown from the sun, work-calloused; age-calloused. "Eloquent," he says, "I like you."
There is something Johnny needs to know, but he cannot, for the life of him, remember what it is. "What's true?" he asks instead.
"Us," the man tells him. "We. You and I. Alike, love."
I know, Johnny wants to say, but why? What comes out, instead, is, "Oh."
There is a moment of silence, where there is nothing but the syncopated thudding of club music. Then the man says, "I'll leave you to it, then," gesturing to the half-finished speed and god-knows-what lying on the table in front of them. "Never liked the stuff," he adds, "Much preferred rum."
2. (secret)
They are on an island in the Bahamas when they meet again. This time, Johnny knows his name.
He can hardly say it, though. He has done nothing but caper around on beaches and cave sets in this man's identity and pretend to be the authority on Sparrow's idiosyncrasies for months and months, but now, face to face with Captain Jack Sparrow himself, Johnny can only stare open-mouthed at the man. "Captain Sparrow," he manages, finally. He hasn’t expected them to ever meet again, but he has to admit that he’s been rehearsing this conversation in his head every since the Pirates script first landed on his desk. Even so, he is still unsure about how exactly he should greet this other self, this reverse doppelganger of his.
Sparrow is not wearing his suit this time; he looks rather worn, at the moment, standing on the beach in a grubby white shirt and ill-fitting trousers. Looking at him, Johnny realises, is like looking at a keen reflection of himself, even more so now that he's gotten the same gold teeth fitted in, that same brownness to his skin. Sparrow doesn't have the dreadlocks now, though, or the tricorne and coat; he couldn't have survived the past several hundred years as a seventeenth-century pirate.
"I've watched it," Sparrow says, with a bleary off-focus grin Johnny has only ever seen in the mirror of his trailer bathroom. Private, congratulatory.
Johnny squints at him in the harsh sunlight, trying to get over how bizarre this feels, because for the longest time he has assumed Sparrow to be yet another hallucination amidst that drug-filled haze years ago, the most vivid of the lot.
There is something that might just be pride in Sparrow's voice when he says, "You have a knack, Johnny Depp."
"Johnny," Johnny tells him. "Call me Johnny."
"Tell me, Johnny," Sparrow says, turning abruptly and starting to count steps along the beach. "Do you like this island?"
Johnny watches him for a moment, takes in that gait that he has become so familiar with as Sparrow meanders away from him. "It's all right, I suppose," he tells Sparrow. "Rather sunny, very empty."
Sparrow shuffles his bare feet in the sand, which must be scorching hot under the blazing sunlight. "Did anybody mention an unlimited stash of rum on this island? Did they tell you that it was cursed, or did they tell you it was charmed?"
"They told me nothing," Johnny replies, grinning despite himself. "So I'll assume it's both."
Sparrow swivels around and Johnny can already see that gleam in his eyes, that Sparrow is calculating, playing out an impending bargain in his head.
"If you buy this island, Johnny Depp, and I'll tell you the truth as I know it," says Sparrow, spreading his hands imploringly. "One favour, for old Jack, and I'll tell you the secrets of this island."
Johnny knows the tone Sparrow is using; he's used it before, but never so desperately. "How about I propose another exchange," he says, and the moment he does he knows it's a done deal; he's already estimating the amount of money this island will cost and how he's going to go about purchasing it, whether Sparrow knows it or not. "I'll buy this island, you don't tell me any of its secrets-"
"-brilliant idea" Sparrow interjects.
"-and you tell me why you're still alive," Johnny finishes. "No tricks."
"None at all," says Sparrow with a wriggle of his fingers and a grin. "All right, so you toddle along now and buy this pretty little island, and when you return, I will tell you-"
Johnny knows it's incredibly rude, but he cuts Sparrow off and says, "Or you can tell me now, and I give you my word that I'll do the toddling after." After all, Johnny's the one paying for the island, not Sparrow.
"Answers first, you mean?" Sparrow asks. He has now turned to look at Johnny again, with a sharpness in his expression that is completely foreign. "You want to know how one Captain Jack Sparrow has come to be the last bloody pirate on earth?"
"Yes."
Sparrow steps over to him, bare feet scattering hot sand, until he's standing face to face with Johnny.
"You want to know?"
Johnny swallows, throat dry. "Yes, I do want to know."
There is a gleam in Sparrow's eyes now, and a twisting not-quite-smile on his face that tells Johnny of secrets buried for hundreds of years, a hidden burden of seeing too many lifetimes. He regards Johnny for a slow second before leaning in, close.
"Fountain of Youth, love."
Johnny's not sure whether to believe him. What he does, later on, is to buy the island: his side of their dubious bargain.
3. (secret II)
At any event or other, Johnny will always meet some random kid who has dressed up as Captain Jack. Always, for a second, he will stop and look them in the eye, searching for his own face in another's.
"Doppelgangers are bad luck," Vanessa will say, "Don't look for him."
Johnny will shrug and reply, "Should be bad luck for him then, since I'd be his doppelganger."
He catches sight of Sparrow some hours after the premiere of the third film has ended, when it's already early morning the next day and he's on his way into the hotel. Sparrow glances at him for a brief moment, before he saunters round the corner, cigarette in hand.
It has been a long time since Johnny has really bothered about what other people say about his work. He sticks to his choices once he's made them, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't. With Sparrow, however, Johnny cares. He finds that he needs to know if he's got it right, he needs to know if he's nailed it, because this is Jack fucking Sparrow still alive and quick as always, the part of Johnny that is and is not.
"Cigarette?" Sparrow asks, when they've reached the back of the hotel building.
Johnny nods tersely, partly because it's some unforgivable time in the morning and he's exhausted beyond imagination, and partly because he needs to know.
"I've watched it," Sparrow says while he lights Johnny's cigarette.
"We took a few liberties with the Locker, and Bootstrap," Johnny tells him rather too quickly, trying to ignore how much it sounds like a pre-emptive apology.
Sparrow glances sidelong at him, before drawing another long breath from his cigarette. For a few heavy moments they stand there in nicotine-thick silence. Somebody on the lower floors of the hotel switches off their television, leaving a sudden dip of quiet amidst the night's white noise. A car goes past. Sparrow exhales; smoke curls from his mouth and nostrils.
"You got it about right, that whole business with Davy Jones," Sparrow says, gesturing vaguely with his cigarette. "Fountain of Youth, nice touch," he continues, "Keith whatshisface, not quite my father, and Turner had a more… sodden look about him the last time we met, but that's the movies for you."
"And yourself?" Johnny cannot help but ask. "Was it all right?"
Sparrow pauses for a moment, contemplates his cigarette, looks at Johnny from the corner of his eye. "I've said it before, and I'll say it again, love - you have a knack. But a knack's a knack, it takes you this far and then that's it." He drops his cigarette on the ground with a wriggle of his fingers, and grinds it under the sole of his boot.
"So-" Johnny begins to say, but Sparrow gestures to him to keep quiet.
"I'll tell you this, Johnny, because quite honestly, I like you. You are a brilliant human being; eloquent, evocative, elusive… elastic-" he stops for a moment to tug critically at Johnny's jacket - "and you are very, very good at playing me." He beams widely at Johnny.
"You couldn't have known about it, really," he continues, "but there is one thing, mate. There's just one thing you missed out." Here Sparrow pauses for effect.
After the pause goes on for a bit too long, Johnny hazards cautiously, "And what's this one thing?"
With a smile that might be a grimace (hard to see in the darkness), Sparrow tells him.