Title: Push the Button
Author: Emony
Rating: FRT
Disclaimer: Pirates is Disney and Bruckheimer. Numb3rs is CBS and Falacci and Heuton.
Spoilers: “The Janus List” and "PotC3"
Pairings: Jack/Charlie, Jack/Colby (Charlie/Colby and Jack/Charlie/Colby implied)
Summary: Jack’s pushing buttons all over the place. Oh, and there’s more rum.
Words Count: 1,078.
Notes: This one can be blamed on
entangled_now 'cause she woke up the sleeping plot bunnies.
Notes2: Follows
Family Secrets,
It Takes a Pirate and
Hoist the Colours ***
"Look!" Don grumbled, "He's doing it again!"
Megan sighed from behind her desk as she watched Don watch his brother and Sparrow argue in the war room. It had been like this for over a week now, Sparrow and Charlie locked away working and the rest of them on the outside making it look like they were working too. Truth was, they really couldn't do anything else now, not until Charlie was done. Then they would get to breath again.
"Ignore it, Don," she told him.
"What?" he asked finally taking his eyes off the pair.
"Ig-," she started.
"I heard what you said, I just didn't think you actually meant it," Don told her, his eyes a warning to his darkening mood.
"Sparrow's only doing it because he knows it will annoy you, and if you make a point about it he'll only get worse," she told him, hoping that this time he would actually listen. Don chose to ignore her and turned back to his very important task of brother watching. Megan watched as Sparrow leant in a little too close for propriety again.
"Look! There he goes again. What's he doing, leaning in like that?"
"If Charlie had a problem with him, do you really think he'd stay where he was and not make a fuss?" Megan asked.
"But-," Don started.
"Don!" David piped up from behind his computer screen, looking ready to throttle his boss if he didn't shut up.
***
"Jack, you really need to stop that," Charlie announced as Jack stepped up behind him for the seventy-third time that morning.
"If you really meant that you would move," Jack countered, his breath tickling the curve of Charlie's ear as he leant in further.
"Jack! Really, I don't have to turn around to know Don's about to blow a fuse, I can feel it from here."
"Ah," Jack brushed a hand down Charlie's arm and took hold of the marker hanging loosely in his grasp, "but that's where you're wrong. Your brother isn't going to do anything about it."
Jack added a few marks to the board whilst Charlie tried to think of a comeback. Looking at the board Charlie laughed,
"And here you keep telling us that you don't like the math."
"I don't," Jack pouted, "doesn't mean that some of it hasn't sunk in."
"Uh huh," Charlie muttered as he grabbed the marker back and continued on from Jack's work.
The room was quiet for a few moments, the only sounds coming from the marker travelling across the board and the odd shout in the bullpen coming through the closed door. As Jack finally darted back to his perch Charlie spoke,
"Dad's getting antsy."
Jack said nothing.
"He keeps giving me this look, the one that says that when he said to leave a note on the refrigerator he was thinking of Amita, not you, or any guy really."
"Hm," was Jack's contribution to the discussion.
"Jack!" Charlie almost shouted, more than a little frustrated with the pirate.
"What? Oh, what did you leave a note about?" he asked.
"I didn't," Charlie answered, "it was a- never mind, he's getting weird about you staying in the house, especially when Don so obviously doesn't think much of you."
Jack appeared behind him again whispering in his ear,
"Are you sure it's not because he can't be sure who's room it is I'm using for sleep?"
"Well, I meant that too, Jack."
"Well, why didn't you say so?"
"Jack! You knew what I meant," Charlie raised his voice slightly.
"Yes, but you needed to say it," Jack said, sounding serious for once.
***
Colby sat against the furthest wall from the door of his cell; it had been ten days since Charlie, Jack and the team had visited. He had yet to hear a thing. Not a good sign, not even Charlie usually took this long, especially if he'd already been working on the problem on his own before the FBI got involved.
He resisted the urge to start singing again (the only song he could remember the words to when he tried to sing was, as Jack had pointed out, not his best choice); he looked over at the bed next to him and the bottle that sat by thin pillow. It barely had a drop left in it.
As he reached out his hand towards it the door creaked open. He snatched his hand back and let the cold mask slip back over his face. The door shut, but no words were spoken. Odd.
He looked to his right as a body settled next to him on the floor. He smiled.
"Jack."
"Turner."
Colby leant his head against the wall and sighed. Jack tapped him on the arm.
"What?"
"Rum?"
"You can't have it, Jack," Colby sighed.
"Why not?"
"Because I don't have much left, that's why."
"Oh, do you want some of this, then?" Jack asked, pulling a fresh bottle from his jacket, taking a sip and then offering it to Colby.
Colby snatched it away quickly, Jack wasn't known for his sharing ability, and he was not about to wait for him to decide that Colby was not allowed any of the rum.
"And I brought something else for you," Jack said as he leant back against the wall.
"You did?"
Taking the rum from Colby’s grasp, and placing it on the ground, Jack pulled Colby towards him,
"Jack, cameras?"
Jack rolled his eyes in a ‘don’t be stupid, Turner’ way,
"I switched 'em off."
Then he leant in, kissing Colby thoroughly.
"That was from Charlie," he announced as he pulled away, slightly breathless.
"But not from you?" Colby half joked.
"Nope," Jack answered, grinning and then kissed him again, "that was from me."
He was silent for a moment and then he jumped up,
"Oh, well. We'll see you tomorrow, then."
"What?"
"Didn't I say?" he asked, grinning again.
"No, you did not, Jack and you know it."
"Our boy did it again, managed to prove you positively didn't do something that he knows you did. Isn't maths wonderful?"
Colby laughed,
"And still I have to wait for tomorrow?"
"Colonial government, you know," was Jack's only answer as winked and then left the room.
Colby picked up the bottle Jack had left on the floor and laughed, tomorrow he would be a free man again. For tonight he would sit on the cold concrete floor and get drunk.
End fic.