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Whatever clouds remain, they don't disuade the sun from filtering through the tree tops, infusing everything with an ethereal green glow. Jack sucks deep lungfulls of the humid air, enjoying the smoky scent of sun and wood and rain. It's been a good while since he came to this island last, but he remembers sending the crew to gather fresh water and
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Best decision Jack ever made. Kidnap the Commodore, charm him and befriend him, and succinctly end all pesky little worries about threats or hanging or being chased about the Caribbean until one of them made an attempt at some foolish last stand. With all Norrington's ideas of duty and propriety, it probably would've been him and then Jack would be forced to do something he'd really rather not. So much better this way, then, with coconuts and islands and meadering strolls. Jack's not best pleased with last stands. He's not best pleased with last anythings. There is too much out there to limit any of it, so much yet he hasn't seen.
Like the smile Norrington gives him. Full-faced and wide, it crinkles the corners of his mouth in a way that Jack wants to stroke smooth. Hold that smile between his palms just to feel it, believe that it's there, rare thing that it is. He almost doesn't trust himself to think that Norrington may in fact be happy in this moment, a man who seems to run from anything that could make him that way. And that Jack makes him that way. That's what his influence does. Apparently.
'Am I?'
Out of the corner of his eyes, there is a glimpse of an approaching palm tree. Sways left to direct them towards it.
'Can't say I don't approve. In fact, I could say could do with more influencial dread, if that's the effect.' Jack waves his hand, indicating Norrington's smile, a matching one spreading wide on his face, widening into something mischeivous as the palm tree looms behind Norrington.
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But he hardly gets to finish the word his heel snags on something behind him and he collides full force with what feels like very much like a quite determinedly solid tree. It knocks the breath out of him for a moment, and his arms very nearly whip up in a flailing windmill that would do Sparrow himself proud, but instead he catches a hand on the bole of the tree and steadies himself. After the briefest of moments to regain his lost breath, he tilts his heat to give Sparrow a scathing look.
Not truly scathing, of course, but enough to deliver the message.
'Oh, you are terribly clever, Sparrow. In that much of a hurry to get me up against a tree again?'
He lifts an eyebrow and shoulders himself off the tree lazily, allowing the faintest hint of a smile to twitch about the corners of his lips. 'You are utterly depraved.'
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'Didn't hear you complaining before.' Which is the truth, because Jack doesn't, but that don't mean Norrington hadn't said something. Given his nature, it's actually more likely that he did, and given Jack's nature, that he tuned it out immediately.
Jack pulls a hurt expression when Norrington calls him depraved, arching away from him in order to see his face. 'If I were you, I wouldn't be so quick to mind a thing what has only benefitted me.' He brings his hand up to touch Norrington's cheek, ghosting a finger along the lines that form when he smiles. 'Never know how it might improve things would more folk get ravished against trees and things, eh?'
It would make things so much more simpler if everyone did that, lived like Jack. Or, well. Not quite like Jack. Combining pirates with no treasure or towns to plunder and pilliage as a distraction never leads to good things. But if people lived almost like Jack, took the time to back others against trees instead of the other things they did, things would be better all around. He's sure of it.
'Seems a good outcome with certain grinning Naval types I know.'
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When the pirate says that people ought to be ravished against trees more often, his left eyebrow makes a valiant attempt to escape into his hair. He thinks he may have discovered Sparrow's idea of utopia; constant debauchery, augmented by the occasional involvement of tropical arboreal life, and that idea is so simply absurd that the faint curl of his lip turns into a proper grin. He refuses to contemplate that, behind the ridiculousness, the man might actually have a point; that, perhaps if people did things like that rather more often, they might be happier. Or... less stressed, or less apt to go around raiding ports and generally making the lives of Naval commanders difficult. Or perhaps not. This is Sparrow, after all. His grin disappears the instant Sparrow makes note of it, replaced by the most mockingly aloof Commodore's face he can muster.
'I have no idea what it is you think you're referring to, Sparrow.' He drawls, but, uncharacteristically, he can't keep his face straight for long, and it crinkles again in a small smile.
He shifts slightly, adjusting his back against the bole of the tree, and is struck again by the unpleasant stickiness of his breeches, which he'd forgotten for a moment. Ugh. Sex with clothes on, then, generally not the best of ideas. Something to keep in mind for the future, assuming that the future decides to continue in this particular vein. He widens his eyes in a query. 'You said something about swimming, I believe? I would like to get this... mess off me.
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