Take What You Can, Give Nothing Back
FANDOM: American Idol/Pirates of the Caribbean. Yes, really.
PAIRING: Adam/Jack Sparrow Captain Jack Sparrow
RATING: G
WORD COUNT: 5,725
WARNINGS: This makes about as much sense as PIrates of the Caribbean: At World's End, and is approximately as historically accurate.
DISCLAIMER: nothing described is real. OBVIOUSLY.
SUMMARY: It isn't so bad, being kidnapped by pirates.
NOTES: One time, I wrote a drabble ( here) for the teamcockbert drabble meme for the prompt "Adam/Johnny Depp - jewelry, rum, pirates." Then I got burned out on writing things I was emotionally attached to and decide to see if I could play with it a bit to spend some time on basically the exact opposite writing experience. Now you have almost 6k of Pirates of the Caribbean fic. I think that's a win all around, yeah? Title from the movie.
Take What You Can, Give Nothing Back
It isn't so bad, being kidnapped by pirates.
Such a thing is easy to think, Adam knows, leaning against the railing of the Pearl on a cloudless morning, the sun bright with a few hours yet until it coats them in its searing midday blaze, the sea as sparkling and beautiful as in every sailors' ode, the proverbial wind at his back. But he caught himself thinking it last night, in the crowded cabin he shares with four other men to whose rank smell he has become nearly accustomed, and two days ago while eating over-salted pork beneath the mast, and often enough, in the fortnight since his capture, that he is forced to admit it has become his truth.
Adam hears the uneven footsteps that signal the arrival of Jack. He waits to acknowledge him until he receives a hearty thump on the shoulder.
"Captain," he says by way of greeting, not taking his eyes from the horizon.
"Adam," Jack returns. "Do you know, perchance, why the rum is gone?"
"I should think you'd know that better than I."
Jack makes a dissatisfied noise. The black sails flap in the breeze. "Tomorrow we make port, barring of course all mistakes of judgment or navigation and disasters natural, unnatural, and supernatural."
"So the chances that we make port tomorrow are..."
"Roughly half and half."
"Ah." An indistinct shout comes from beneath the boards on which they stand. "And you're telling me this because..."
"Because, should we find word in the town fortunate enough to serve as our host that your esteemed family has agreed to pay the ransom we put upon your wealthiest of heads, it will mark the first sign of your eventual return to the cheerfully landlocked life from which you were thoughtlessly ripped two fortnights past."
"You mean, from which you thoughtlessly ripped me."
"If you want to split hairs."
"And the chances of finding such word are..."
"Anyone's guess."
"What's yours?"
Jack makes an affronted sound. "Surely you do not take me for a gambling man."
Adam turns to him. "Oh, surely it is an insult to impugn the honor of a pirate such as - "
"At any rate," Jack near shouts, "my purposes in this conversation having been achieved, I leave you to your undoubtedly fascinating contemplation."
He removes his hat to bow extravagantly, the sort of bow Adam used to practice in his mirror as a child before his tutor taught him the proper restraint. On his way up his eyes catch Adam's, with a spark like burning coal, and Adam feels a shiver run down his spine.
No, he thinks, watching Jack walk off with his characteristic half-swagger, half-stumble, the broad tipping lines of his body mesmerizing as the waves lapping against the hull, at least for this heir of the Lambert title, being kidnapped by pirates isn't so bad at all.
***
On the first evening he awoke cotton-mouthed and with an aching head, surrounded by a stench so overbearing he felt it might never leave his nostrils. A faint image of the previous night hung around the borders of his memory: a crowded tavern, the sharp sound of a fist connecting with a face, a blur of noise and motion that left him, somehow, flat on his back, and through the commotion a single word, ringing in fear and fury and triumph: pirates.
PIrates echoed in Adam's ear as panic built in his chest. He was on a dirty floor, in a room nearly pitch black, surrounded by air so thick he could barely breathe, and the possibility was dawning on him that the rocking of the world was not, in fact, only in his head.
Something creaked behind him. He whipped his head around, causing bile to rise in his throat. He took deep breaths, trying to steady his stomach.
A slit of light appeared on the floor and widened, illuminating his surroundings and intensifying the pain behind his eyes. Two men, one tall and pole-thin, the other considerably shorter and stouter, stood silhouetted in a pale yellow. The shorter one said, in a rough-voiced sneer, "Hello, poppet."
Adam blinked, shielded his eyes with his hand, blinked again. He said: "Parlay."
***
The tall pirate's name is Ragetti. He is very intent on learning to read. Adam has managed to to teach him the alphabet, and to write his name. They are starting on words now, using a rather battered Bible Ragetti carries closer to him than any loot.
The short pirate's name is Pintel. He is very intent on staying close to Ragetti and offering commentary on his actions. His commentary is not always useful.
"Now, when the T and the H are together, that makes a thuh sound," Adam explains, struggling in vain to remember his governess' instructions to him as a child. "So that would say..."
"Thee," says Ragetti, pronounced like a lisped see.
Adam frowns at the page. "Ah. Yes, well. That makes sense, but actually it says the."
Ragetti's face falls. In one of his unexpectedly verbose bursts of insight, he says, "Why must this bastard tongue of ours be so hopelessly inconsistent?"
"A question," Adam muses, "for the scholars, I suppose."
"Perhaps it's not hopelessly inconsistent," Pintel says. "Perhaps you're just too stupid to figure it out."
"Perhaps I am," says Ragetti, curiously defiant. "But at least I am trying to do something that will lead to the betterment and possible salvation of my immortal soul."
Pintel swats the back of his head. Ragetti's wooden eye falls out and he dives to the floor to retrieve it before it rolls too far. Adam ponders, briefly, the fact that he no longer finds this disconcerting.
"If you are so concerned with your immortal soul," Adam asks, "why did you become a pirate?"
Ragetti pops his eye back in and gets back up with a satisfied sound. "Because," he says, "I'm no good at nothing else."
Pintel gives a wicked smile. "You're no good at piracy neither."
"You don't have to be good at piracy to be a pirate."
"Tis a stroke of luck for you and a sorry truth for the rest of us," comes Jack's voice over Adam's shoulder. His breath blows hot against Adam's neck. "Tis also a pity our noble guest is not inclined towards our ignoble trade, based on his lessons to..." He waggles his fingers in distaste. "You lot."
Adam snorts. "Do you mean to tell me that skill with words is in high demand among pirates?"
"No," Jack says. He leans in close, whispers right in Adam's ear: "Only the great ones." A second before he's off again, swerving down the deck. Adam watches his hips and thinks he'd like to follow them, wherever they may lead.
Pintel grunts and mumbles, looking down at the floor, "Do you think you could teach me to write me name?"
Adam shakes his head to clear it. "Of course." He moves the Bible off the step around which they sit, revealing a few sheets of parchment, and picks up his quill. "First you make a letter like this, with a straight line and a curve at the top. That's a - "
"A p!" Ragetti crows triumphantly, and Adam smiles.
***
The first three days were the worst.
It was true that he didn't have his sea legs, so that he careened into the nearest object - wall, barrel, or man - every time the ship tilted in the slightest angle, but the real problem was that he didn't have his sea stomach; each roll of the waves beneath, each foul odor and disgusting noise, each attempt at choking down pirates' cooking sent his innards reeling. All told, even spending his days lying down on his thin straw mattress with eyes closed, Adam vomited seven times before he'd been there three nights.
On the fourth day he awoke with a body at peace, and stood up, slowly, on legs that held his weight easily even against the ocean's constant movement. Up the steps from the cabin the sun felt bright, not blinding, and the expanse of blue surrounding them glittered so dazzlingly Adam understood, suddenly and completely, how it was a man could lose his heart to the sea.
"So you have chosen at last, have you, to join the world of the living."
Adam whirled around. Before him stood a Platonic ideal of a pirate, tricorner hat askew on matted black hair, clothes a mess of fabrics and decorative baubles, sardonic grin revealing a gold tooth, obsidian eyes rimmed with kohl. Behind him the black sails billowed in the wind. Adam narrowed his eyes. "Jack Sparrow."
Jack pressed a finger against Adam's chest, causing an unexpected skip of his heart. "Captain - Jack Sparrow."
Adam pursed his lips.
Jack's smile diminished, but his eyes only grew sharper. "Now that you are able to stand long enough to hold a conversation - though I suppose we won't know that for certain for another several minutes - would you like me to acquiesce to your original request of parlay?"
"I would - " Adam started, and stopped. He was at sea on the Black Pearl, at the mercy of his captors, God only knew how many miles from anyplace he might call home and anyone who would know him. There was nothing to be done. "I would like to ask a few questions."
"Ask what you like," Jack said, with an almost delicate flourish of his hand, "but I promise no answers."
That would have to do. "Are you going to kill me?"
Jack waved this away. "Don't be daft. You're of no value to us dead."
"And of what value am I to you alive?"
Jack winced, exaggeratedly - as he performed, it seemed, all his gestures. "Whatever we can fetch for you. We pirates have a habit, it must be said, of occasionally spending past what we have plundered, and there are several people on these islands who'd as soon take our heads as a trophy as wait for us to acquire and deliver what it is we may or may not owe. As such, pickiness is not a luxury currently afforded to us, as while we live breathe et cetera for the salty ocean air and, of course, the pull of freedom, there are certain pleasures that are most easily acquired, and, perhaps, occasionally best enjoyed on unmoving soil."
Fear crept up Adam's spine. "You are selling me into slavery?"
"Holding you for ransom, rather."
He exhaled, slowly, reminding himself of his lineage. "You know who I am, then."
"Adam Lambert, heir to both the title and the not inconsiderable fortune of the well-established Lambert estate."
"How did you - "
"Your friends in the tavern were quite eager to point us to you in an attempt to curb the damage being wrought by the... incident that arose as a result of the questionable judgment of some among our number and, it must be said, rather a lot more among yours."
"Quite amusing, the idea of a pirate casting aspersions on the judgment of another."
"And would you argue it is anything but poor judgment to engage a pirate in a fight?"
Adam had no response to that. He should never have been in that tavern anyway, and those certainly weren't his friends. A scrambling of what sounded like claws against the rough planks of the deck caught his attention, and he turned his head in time to see a monkey scramble up the side of a barrel and rest, teeth bared for a halfhearted shriek.
Jack drew his pistol and before Adam could react he had shot the monkey, who fell with a morbid clunk to the ground.
Adam stood for a moment in shock. "You - how could you - why would you - you barbaric - "
"Calm yourself," Jack said, and pointed at the barrel, where the monkey, apparently unharmed, poked its head warily around the edge.
Adam, it must be admitted, gawped, no doubt unattractively. "What trickery is this?"
"No trickery, just - " He spread his fingers wide and grinned almost cheerily. "Magic. Forces unknown. Mysterious powers. And whatnot."
"Hm." Adam knew it wasn't magic, but he had no better explanation.
"Not unlike this," Jack said, and tossed a small compact in his direction.
Adam opened it to reveal a compass with a spinning needle. "A broken compass?"
"A magic compass."
"I'm certain."
"You don't have to believe me, but I tell it to you true: it points to what it is you most desire."
"A-ha." Adam held the compass out at him. "It isn't pointing at anything. Not much of a prank."
Jack shrugged. "It's not the compass's fault you don't know what you want."
Once again, Adam was left without a response. He shut the compass, more violently than he'd intended, and threw it back at Jack, who caught it easily. "I've had quite enough of you talking nonsense at me."
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Adam raised an eyebrow in surprise. "Shakespeare?"
Jack frowned. "No. Baxter the peg-legged drunk. I sailed with him for a year, until he found a woman who would wed a drunken peg-legged pirate."
Adam shook his head, suddenly eager to finish this conversation. "So what am I to do while I am in your" - he lay the word thick with sarcasm - "care?"
"You are to follow the rules of piracy." Jack leaned close, close enough for the heat of his body to reach Adam's. Against his will, he found himself drawn closer. "Which is to say: whatever you wish." He grinned again, wild and dangerous. "Savvy?"
***
The storm hits at nightfall.
The clouds had been gathering ominously above their heads for a while, their dark feathered grays filling with gloom the patches of blue between the stark black of the sails. Adam could feel the rumbling in the air before he heard it, a quaking resonating in the spaces of his joints, his bones attuned to the unknowable force of the weather in a way impossible to articulate. By the stiffening of the lounging bodies around him, he could tell they felt it, too.
This isn't a storm that builds; it's an unlocking of the sky like the opening of a dam, water falling cold and fast, the pelting drops harsh enough to sting. Thunder bellows, men cry out, the ocean beats angrily against the sides of the ship: a crash, of waves and wood and bodies, the cacophonous rage of Poseidon blasting in Adam's ears with the terrifying intensity of gunfire.
Gibbs shouts orders from the helm, his words nearly swallowed by the din. Adam is struck by the fleeting wish that he could understand the meaning of the words well enough to follow Gibbs's command if he were able to hear. The ship teeters wildly atop the churning water, and try as he might to stand Adam falls heavily on his back, grimacing at the sharp pain he can tell immediately will bruise by tomorrow.
The world is moving so fast he doesn't stop when he hits the ground, but slides backwards, miscellaneous items in a blur of sharp pain until he collides with the railing, his vision going white when his head slams against it.
This is, he feels suddenly, sickeningly certain, how he is going to die.
Something tight and cold and wet encircles his wrist. It isn't until he hears the familiar thick voice shouting, "Get up, get up," that he realizes it's Jack's hand. Jack is pulling him to his feet, and then Adam is on his feet, and his legs are shaking and his back is sore and he is so cold he barely feels it anymore but he's standing, and Jack is telling him he's fine and he isn't fine, he's the opposite of fine, and Jack is dragging him to the other side and giving him a rope to pull on and he can't, he can't, he'll die, they all will, and then he's pulling and they're pulling and Gibbs is shouting and Jack is, inexplicably but somehow comfortingly, laughing, and somewhere inside Adam a sun rises, almost visible through the maelstrom that has obscured even the moon.
This is the first storm he's truly witnessed, and the closest to death he's ever been, and Adam has never felt so alive.
***
A week after his kidnapping, the pirates anchored in a cove in which was rumored to be a chest of treasures belonging to a long-since murdered king. They returned with plunder that held elaborately wrought gold chains, heavy pendants of rubies and pearls, thick silver rings set with sapphires that, Adam couldn't help but notice as he examined his reflection in a pewter plate, set off pleasantly the color of his eyes.
"Aye, and ye be looking to steal our loot out from under the noses of us what have been so kind to ye?" Gibbs said, startling Adam into dropping a jade armband in the shape of a coiled snake.
"I - no, I - I was just admiring it." He realized after he'd said it that he owed Gibbs, or anyone else, neither apology nor explanation for any actions he took while held prisoner on the Pearl.
"Arr," Gibbs said. As always, Adam had no way of guessing with which of the hundred possible meanings Gibbs had meant to imbue that word; it sounded something like a guard dog begrudgingly appeased. "It's bad luck for a hostage to admire stolen treasure without the watch of his captors."
"Whose luck?" Adam asked.
Gibbs glared at him. "All of ours."
"Is this bad luck like spitting off starboard betwixt midnight and dawn, and waking a man when he's sleeping, and singing about ill weather in the fog, and having a woman on board a ship?"
"Aye, except that the last be the worst of all of them."
Adam turned his attention back to the treasure, drawn less by the promise of wealth - which was, after all, his birthright - than by the artistry of the designs. He held up to the light from the door an earring of emerald and silver. "Women have the good luck, at least, that they can wear such jewels as these."
"You needn't be a woman to wear that," Gibbs said. "Not on these waters."
Adam lifted his face in interest, then frowned. "But how should I...?"
Gibbs called off to the side, "Oh, Jack!"
Like the devil himself Jack appeared, looking far too pleased to be there. "You desire my services?"
Gibbs jerked a thumb at Adam. "He wants to wear jewels in his ears like a lady, he does."
Jack smiled a smile Adam was not sure he liked. With unsettling satisfaction, he said, "Excellent."
***
By daybreak the storm has long since ceased, but Adam hasn't slept. The thrill of storm hasn't ceased coursing through his veins; he spent the hours betwixt midnight and dawn pacing the deck, enjoying the smell of sea air after a storm, a smell he never knew existed until this night.
On land, he is Adam Lambert, heir to vast fortunes and immeasurable prestige, skilled in the gentleman's arts, loved by few but liked by all, safe and respectable and steady.
Out here, he is Adam Lambert, captive of the Black Pearl, but he could as easily some day be Adam Lambert, first mate on the Aurelia, or Calico Tom of no land more precise than the Indies, or whatsoever name he wishes, in whatsoever place. He has no skill in seafaring, but he could learn, or he could work at an inn, or apprentice himself to a blacksmith.
On land he is betrothed to a lovely local lass, skin ivory-white and down-soft, cheeks like apples and eyes like dew, with a cherry-red mouth and glowing golden curls, charming and demure and sweet, with a laugh like tinkling bells - everything a wife should be for a man of his standing.
Out here he is promised to no woman, and must marry no woman.
The gentle colors of sunrise spread across the sky. He admires the glint of the large sapphire in one of the rings he pocketed from the recent plunder, and admires more the extent to which the ocean outshines it, even in the yellow-tinted light of dawn. He can see the undulation of the waves, but it no longer sends him off balance.
The sun comes up, the pirates stumble themselves awake, sore and bitter from their battle with the elements, and Adam looks at the horizon, and wonders.
***
"Will it hurt?" Adam asked, affecting greater calm than he felt.
"Not a whit," Jack said, "it's only a needle-sharp pin attached to a precious stone getting shoved through the tender flesh of your ear. You won't feel a thing."
Adam eyed the earring warily. "You aren't funny."
"I wasn't trying to be. Now put this in your mouth - " Jack wedged a metal rod between Adam's teeth " - and hold still, before I pierce your neck instead."
He willed himself not to close his eyes, focusing on the wall he could see beyond Jack's shoulder. In the periphery of his vision he saw Jack frown, squint, stick his tongue out in concentration.
It hurt first less than he expected, and then more. To his relief, he didn't cry out - just bit down with a grunt, and dug his nails into his palms hard enough to distract himself from pain with different pain. Jack didn't wait for him to stop before thrusting the matching piece through the other ear, at which point Adam went dizzy and lightheaded. He rested his head between his knees, waiting for the pain to ebb into something manageable.
When he rose his ears were throbbing, but dimly. Hesitantly he touched the jewel in his right ear - a sapphire, empress cut - and winced, but felt a swell of pleasure, too, at the thought of how he must look. "When I thought about becoming a decorated man, this wasn't what I envisioned."
"Life so rarely is." Jack pulled out a flask and took a drink, then offered it out to Adam.
Adam looked at the shadows cast along the planes of his face. There was a nobility to it, even in the dank room, even knowing it was a pirate's face. He took the flask. "Why." He stopped, took a drink of rum, debated asking the question he had started. "Why do you line your eyes with kohl?"
Jack smiled. "Because I want to."
"Why do you want to?"
Jack didn't answer. The ship tilted, reset itself. "Do you want to?"
Adam thought of saying no, of course not, and then he thought of saying yes. He thought of both of these, unable to choose one, until Jack stood and left. Adam turned the flask over and over in his hands, watching the shifting line of white where the light hit the edge, until suddenly Jack was sitting back down in front of him, muttering, "Only one way to find out."
Adam looked up. Jack had a small jar filled with a black compound, and he was dipping his finger into it. "What are you - "
"Hold still and close your eyes."
Against his better judgment, Adam obeyed. Jack's finger was rough against his eyelids under cool semiliquid; his nail skirted the edge of Adam's cheek and Adam found himself wanting it to stay there, to trace its way downwards until Adam could feel the warmth of Jack's palm against his face. Jack was close enough, and the room was silent enough, that Adam could hear his breathing, and little else. He shivered.
"Open."
Adam looked into a dusty mirror, no doubt pilfered from some unlucky bedmate of Jack's, to see his eyes surrounded by dark shadows. They seemed bluer, somehow, or deeper - less like the sky and more like the sea. The earrings complemented them, it must be said, handsomely.
"Do you like it?"
Jack was eyeing him expectantly, with a slight smirk that said he read the answer in Adam's expression. Adam watched his unfamiliar reflection say, "Yes."
***
When they do make port, the sun is halfway through setting, a red crescent spilling blood along the edge of the sea.
The pirates are glad enough to see land, if by land one means a tiny nameless island with a single poorly stocked but cheap tavern - they have yet to accumulate enough to pay off their creditors, and are sticking to places they have little fear of being found.
"If you're still needing funds badly enough that you're holding me for ransom," Adam says, "shouldn't you perhaps be behaving somewhat... frugally?"
"Arr," says Gibbs, "but we pirates are not a lot much given to frugality. The rum is about gone, and our stores are mighty depleted, and usually once we get going we start thinking, if we're going to be spending some, we may as well as spend it all." His face twists into his version of a jolly smile. "Besides, there are wenches to be had for a smile and a pint, and I have one and I'll soon have the other, so you can color me happier than a thrice-fed parrot in the spring." He's gone before Adam can begin questioning any of the deeply questionable words in his speech.
The men rush off the ship in a throng, their outlines fading as they disappear into the darkening night. Adam can see a light on a hill some ways inland, and assumes that's their destination. He watches them go, mentally reciting their names as they leave; he knows them all now, Cotton and Leech and Cotton's parrot and Ogilvey and Mullroy and Twigg. They aren't friends - far from it - but they aren't strangers, either, and there aren't many men from Adam's old life - his real life - that he can truly call friend, either.
At last it's only Jack and Adam left.
Adam raises an eyebrow. "You aren't going for a drink?"
Jack shrugs. "I have the last of the rum in my quarters. They'll bring more back for the future."
"Or for a woman?
Jack's lips purse into a moue of distaste. "Women," he pronounces very deliberately, "are far more trouble than they've worth. I died for a kiss from a woman once, you know."
"No, you didn't."
"Well," he concedes, "technically I didn't know I was doing it at the time, and I hadn't been working very hard for the kiss. But she did kiss me, and I did die."
"You aren't dead."
"Obviously."
Strange noises fill the air which Adam places, after a moment, as the normal sounds of night on land: wind in the trees, the rumblings of distant merriment, the calls of nocturnal creatures. There is something he very much wants to say to Jack, but he doesn't know what it is.
"Well," Jack says abruptly, "I'll be retreating to my own amusements for the evening. Enjoy your respite from the clutches of the Pearl."
"What makes you think I won't flee you all forever?"
Jack studies him, smiling inscrutably. "You won't." It's not a question.
Jack turns to go back to the interior of the ship. Adam leans against the railing and thinks about the fact that it doesn't bother him that Jack is right.
***
He should never have been in that tavern.
It wasn't the place for a Lambert; it wasn't even the place for an Allen. It was a place for the lowest, most squalid forms of life humanity had to offer, thieves and beggars and traitors and drunks, men of the pistol and women of the night. It was a place of bad ale and tough meat, of crushing anonymity and ruthless indiscretion, the last place anyone in Adam's family would ever have wanted him to be found.
Adam didn't go there, the few times he had been, to annoy his family. He went because there was a restlessness in him like an itch that sometimes grew to be unbearable, and getting stone drunk didn't quell it, but it brought it back down to something possible to ignore; and he went because he would rather be stone drunk among strangers than among those who truly knew him. He went because he sometimes thought there was none who truly knew him, including himself, and at such times it seemed better to be where no one knew him at all rather than among those who knew half of him and claimed to know all.
He went because elsewhere, he had had a handful of unsatisfactory trysts with local girls, their bodies something mysterious and cold to him, and there, once, he had a rushed encounter with a sailor who barely spoke English that wasn't quite good, but was still better; and because he was born a Lambert, and bred to be a lord, and secretly he knew he would have given up both of those things for a handful of nights with that sailor.
He should never have been in that tavern, but he was, and then the pirates came.
***
In the captain's quarters Jack sits hunched over a beautifully rendered map, flask in hand. When Adam comes in he looks up. "I would have thought you'd have wanted to feel solid land under your feet while you could."
"I don't miss it as much as I thought I would." He feels awkward. "Do you mind if I sit?"
That death's-head grin, dangerous in all the best ways, flashes bright in Jack's sharp face. "Please." He gestures towards the chair next to him, turning his body so that when Adam is sitting down, they're face to face. "So. Are you looking forward to the end of your time amongst us filthy treacherous curs of the sea?" Jack takes a swig of rum. Adam is distracted momentarily by picturing those lips wrapping around altogether different things.
"To be honest, I'm starting to enjoy it."
Jack arches an eyebrow, thick-rimmed eyes flickering in the candlelight. "You are, are you?" - said like a challenge, or an invitation. He leans over, swaying a bit, and holds out the flask.
Adam takes it, drinking while he takes care choosing his words. "I was thinking, actually, of staying on past whenever it would have been you acquired the ransom for me."
"Were you, then?"
Jack is enjoying this, Adam can tell, and smiles at the thought. "If you'd have me, that is."
Jack studies him, taking one drink, then another. Adam watches his finely shaped neck, bronzed and shining with sweat from the heat of the hold, and imagines himself doing things to it that would, if spoken of in Adam's usual company, lead to dire consequences for them both - though Jack would almost certainly escape. "And why do you want me to - " Jack licks his lips " - have you?"
Adam bites his lip, thinking. "I've taken a liking to the sea. I've always had a liking for treasure. And." He pauses, thinking of the wholly unexciting prospect of his impending nuptials, the dullness of his betrothed's touch. "I like the freedom."
"Do you like freedom better than you like soft beds, clean air, decent cooking, the respect of society at large, and any sort of security be it financial, physical, emotional, or psychological?"
"I do," Adam says. It strikes him that this was not true until perhaps seven days ago, and yet feels like the most honest thing he's ever said. "Also." He drinks. "You have a monkey." He gives Jack the flask.
Jack drinks. "An undead monkey, at that." He places the flask on the table.
"Yes, you're going to have to explain that to me one day."
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"You never know." Adam fiddles with his rings. "I might surprise you."
"I suppose you might." Jack looks at him for a long moment, coarse strong fingers on his chin. Adam wants to feel them on every part of his skin, wants to take them in his mouth and wake up with scratch marks they have left. Without taking his eyes from Adam's face, Jack reaches into his satchel and digs out his compass, then holds it out to Adam. Adam takes it and, slowly, flips open the lid.
The needle spins, slows, stills. Its red point settles pointing directly outward from Adam's chest - directly towards Jack. Adam lifts his eyes to meet Jack's gaze, waiting for him to speak.
Jack's smile has taken on something between understanding and hunger. "Well then! I suppose you're a pirate."
Pirate. Adam tests the word out on himself. He finds he likes it. "Is it so easy?"
"We're not really ones for much ceremony. You can drink to it, if you like. As you may have noticed, we are ones for drinking." He offers Adam the flask. Their hands brush as Adam reaches for it.
"All right," Adam says, and smiles, broader than he has in a very long time. "To my embarking on a life of piracy." He brings the flask to his lips and frowns. "But - why is the rum gone?"
Jack laughs, which Adam doesn't understand, and then Jack kisses him full on the mouth, beard rough against Adam's jaw, hand gripping Adam's face so tightly it hurts. Adam brings his hands to Jack's neck, down his chest, around his waist, thrilling tot he feel of skin beneath his palms, the heat of Jack's body under his threadbare shirt, the groan in the back of Jack's throat when Adam slides his hand down past the small of his back. Jack tastes nothing like the women he's known in servants' quarters or in the backs of taverns; he tastes like rum and salt and something new and irresistible, like freedom or hope or adventure.
He tastes like pirate.
One last drag of teeth against Adam's lip and Jack breaks the kiss, looking at Adam with eyes gleaming in anticipation.
Adam is breathing heavily, feeling stunned and alive. "Oh," he says, "that's why - " and he kisses Jack again, vicious and deep, their bodies crashing against each other like waves against a ship, hearts pounding in the unsteady pulse of the sea.
PAIRING: Adam/Jack Sparrow Captain Jack Sparrow
RATING: G
WORD COUNT: 5,725
WARNINGS: This makes about as much sense as PIrates of the Caribbean: At World's End, and is approximately as historically accurate.
DISCLAIMER: nothing described is real. OBVIOUSLY.
SUMMARY: It isn't so bad, being kidnapped by pirates.
NOTES: One time, I wrote a drabble ( here) for the teamcockbert drabble meme for the prompt "Adam/Johnny Depp - jewelry, rum, pirates." Then I got burned out on writing things I was emotionally attached to and decide to see if I could play with it a bit to spend some time on basically the exact opposite writing experience. Now you have almost 6k of Pirates of the Caribbean fic. I think that's a win all around, yeah? Title from the movie.
Take What You Can, Give Nothing Back
It isn't so bad, being kidnapped by pirates.
Such a thing is easy to think, Adam knows, leaning against the railing of the Pearl on a cloudless morning, the sun bright with a few hours yet until it coats them in its searing midday blaze, the sea as sparkling and beautiful as in every sailors' ode, the proverbial wind at his back. But he caught himself thinking it last night, in the crowded cabin he shares with four other men to whose rank smell he has become nearly accustomed, and two days ago while eating over-salted pork beneath the mast, and often enough, in the fortnight since his capture, that he is forced to admit it has become his truth.
Adam hears the uneven footsteps that signal the arrival of Jack. He waits to acknowledge him until he receives a hearty thump on the shoulder.
"Captain," he says by way of greeting, not taking his eyes from the horizon.
"Adam," Jack returns. "Do you know, perchance, why the rum is gone?"
"I should think you'd know that better than I."
Jack makes a dissatisfied noise. The black sails flap in the breeze. "Tomorrow we make port, barring of course all mistakes of judgment or navigation and disasters natural, unnatural, and supernatural."
"So the chances that we make port tomorrow are..."
"Roughly half and half."
"Ah." An indistinct shout comes from beneath the boards on which they stand. "And you're telling me this because..."
"Because, should we find word in the town fortunate enough to serve as our host that your esteemed family has agreed to pay the ransom we put upon your wealthiest of heads, it will mark the first sign of your eventual return to the cheerfully landlocked life from which you were thoughtlessly ripped two fortnights past."
"You mean, from which you thoughtlessly ripped me."
"If you want to split hairs."
"And the chances of finding such word are..."
"Anyone's guess."
"What's yours?"
Jack makes an affronted sound. "Surely you do not take me for a gambling man."
Adam turns to him. "Oh, surely it is an insult to impugn the honor of a pirate such as - "
"At any rate," Jack near shouts, "my purposes in this conversation having been achieved, I leave you to your undoubtedly fascinating contemplation."
He removes his hat to bow extravagantly, the sort of bow Adam used to practice in his mirror as a child before his tutor taught him the proper restraint. On his way up his eyes catch Adam's, with a spark like burning coal, and Adam feels a shiver run down his spine.
No, he thinks, watching Jack walk off with his characteristic half-swagger, half-stumble, the broad tipping lines of his body mesmerizing as the waves lapping against the hull, at least for this heir of the Lambert title, being kidnapped by pirates isn't so bad at all.
***
On the first evening he awoke cotton-mouthed and with an aching head, surrounded by a stench so overbearing he felt it might never leave his nostrils. A faint image of the previous night hung around the borders of his memory: a crowded tavern, the sharp sound of a fist connecting with a face, a blur of noise and motion that left him, somehow, flat on his back, and through the commotion a single word, ringing in fear and fury and triumph: pirates.
PIrates echoed in Adam's ear as panic built in his chest. He was on a dirty floor, in a room nearly pitch black, surrounded by air so thick he could barely breathe, and the possibility was dawning on him that the rocking of the world was not, in fact, only in his head.
Something creaked behind him. He whipped his head around, causing bile to rise in his throat. He took deep breaths, trying to steady his stomach.
A slit of light appeared on the floor and widened, illuminating his surroundings and intensifying the pain behind his eyes. Two men, one tall and pole-thin, the other considerably shorter and stouter, stood silhouetted in a pale yellow. The shorter one said, in a rough-voiced sneer, "Hello, poppet."
Adam blinked, shielded his eyes with his hand, blinked again. He said: "Parlay."
***
The tall pirate's name is Ragetti. He is very intent on learning to read. Adam has managed to to teach him the alphabet, and to write his name. They are starting on words now, using a rather battered Bible Ragetti carries closer to him than any loot.
The short pirate's name is Pintel. He is very intent on staying close to Ragetti and offering commentary on his actions. His commentary is not always useful.
"Now, when the T and the H are together, that makes a thuh sound," Adam explains, struggling in vain to remember his governess' instructions to him as a child. "So that would say..."
"Thee," says Ragetti, pronounced like a lisped see.
Adam frowns at the page. "Ah. Yes, well. That makes sense, but actually it says the."
Ragetti's face falls. In one of his unexpectedly verbose bursts of insight, he says, "Why must this bastard tongue of ours be so hopelessly inconsistent?"
"A question," Adam muses, "for the scholars, I suppose."
"Perhaps it's not hopelessly inconsistent," Pintel says. "Perhaps you're just too stupid to figure it out."
"Perhaps I am," says Ragetti, curiously defiant. "But at least I am trying to do something that will lead to the betterment and possible salvation of my immortal soul."
Pintel swats the back of his head. Ragetti's wooden eye falls out and he dives to the floor to retrieve it before it rolls too far. Adam ponders, briefly, the fact that he no longer finds this disconcerting.
"If you are so concerned with your immortal soul," Adam asks, "why did you become a pirate?"
Ragetti pops his eye back in and gets back up with a satisfied sound. "Because," he says, "I'm no good at nothing else."
Pintel gives a wicked smile. "You're no good at piracy neither."
"You don't have to be good at piracy to be a pirate."
"Tis a stroke of luck for you and a sorry truth for the rest of us," comes Jack's voice over Adam's shoulder. His breath blows hot against Adam's neck. "Tis also a pity our noble guest is not inclined towards our ignoble trade, based on his lessons to..." He waggles his fingers in distaste. "You lot."
Adam snorts. "Do you mean to tell me that skill with words is in high demand among pirates?"
"No," Jack says. He leans in close, whispers right in Adam's ear: "Only the great ones." A second before he's off again, swerving down the deck. Adam watches his hips and thinks he'd like to follow them, wherever they may lead.
Pintel grunts and mumbles, looking down at the floor, "Do you think you could teach me to write me name?"
Adam shakes his head to clear it. "Of course." He moves the Bible off the step around which they sit, revealing a few sheets of parchment, and picks up his quill. "First you make a letter like this, with a straight line and a curve at the top. That's a - "
"A p!" Ragetti crows triumphantly, and Adam smiles.
***
The first three days were the worst.
It was true that he didn't have his sea legs, so that he careened into the nearest object - wall, barrel, or man - every time the ship tilted in the slightest angle, but the real problem was that he didn't have his sea stomach; each roll of the waves beneath, each foul odor and disgusting noise, each attempt at choking down pirates' cooking sent his innards reeling. All told, even spending his days lying down on his thin straw mattress with eyes closed, Adam vomited seven times before he'd been there three nights.
On the fourth day he awoke with a body at peace, and stood up, slowly, on legs that held his weight easily even against the ocean's constant movement. Up the steps from the cabin the sun felt bright, not blinding, and the expanse of blue surrounding them glittered so dazzlingly Adam understood, suddenly and completely, how it was a man could lose his heart to the sea.
"So you have chosen at last, have you, to join the world of the living."
Adam whirled around. Before him stood a Platonic ideal of a pirate, tricorner hat askew on matted black hair, clothes a mess of fabrics and decorative baubles, sardonic grin revealing a gold tooth, obsidian eyes rimmed with kohl. Behind him the black sails billowed in the wind. Adam narrowed his eyes. "Jack Sparrow."
Jack pressed a finger against Adam's chest, causing an unexpected skip of his heart. "Captain - Jack Sparrow."
Adam pursed his lips.
Jack's smile diminished, but his eyes only grew sharper. "Now that you are able to stand long enough to hold a conversation - though I suppose we won't know that for certain for another several minutes - would you like me to acquiesce to your original request of parlay?"
"I would - " Adam started, and stopped. He was at sea on the Black Pearl, at the mercy of his captors, God only knew how many miles from anyplace he might call home and anyone who would know him. There was nothing to be done. "I would like to ask a few questions."
"Ask what you like," Jack said, with an almost delicate flourish of his hand, "but I promise no answers."
That would have to do. "Are you going to kill me?"
Jack waved this away. "Don't be daft. You're of no value to us dead."
"And of what value am I to you alive?"
Jack winced, exaggeratedly - as he performed, it seemed, all his gestures. "Whatever we can fetch for you. We pirates have a habit, it must be said, of occasionally spending past what we have plundered, and there are several people on these islands who'd as soon take our heads as a trophy as wait for us to acquire and deliver what it is we may or may not owe. As such, pickiness is not a luxury currently afforded to us, as while we live breathe et cetera for the salty ocean air and, of course, the pull of freedom, there are certain pleasures that are most easily acquired, and, perhaps, occasionally best enjoyed on unmoving soil."
Fear crept up Adam's spine. "You are selling me into slavery?"
"Holding you for ransom, rather."
He exhaled, slowly, reminding himself of his lineage. "You know who I am, then."
"Adam Lambert, heir to both the title and the not inconsiderable fortune of the well-established Lambert estate."
"How did you - "
"Your friends in the tavern were quite eager to point us to you in an attempt to curb the damage being wrought by the... incident that arose as a result of the questionable judgment of some among our number and, it must be said, rather a lot more among yours."
"Quite amusing, the idea of a pirate casting aspersions on the judgment of another."
"And would you argue it is anything but poor judgment to engage a pirate in a fight?"
Adam had no response to that. He should never have been in that tavern anyway, and those certainly weren't his friends. A scrambling of what sounded like claws against the rough planks of the deck caught his attention, and he turned his head in time to see a monkey scramble up the side of a barrel and rest, teeth bared for a halfhearted shriek.
Jack drew his pistol and before Adam could react he had shot the monkey, who fell with a morbid clunk to the ground.
Adam stood for a moment in shock. "You - how could you - why would you - you barbaric - "
"Calm yourself," Jack said, and pointed at the barrel, where the monkey, apparently unharmed, poked its head warily around the edge.
Adam, it must be admitted, gawped, no doubt unattractively. "What trickery is this?"
"No trickery, just - " He spread his fingers wide and grinned almost cheerily. "Magic. Forces unknown. Mysterious powers. And whatnot."
"Hm." Adam knew it wasn't magic, but he had no better explanation.
"Not unlike this," Jack said, and tossed a small compact in his direction.
Adam opened it to reveal a compass with a spinning needle. "A broken compass?"
"A magic compass."
"I'm certain."
"You don't have to believe me, but I tell it to you true: it points to what it is you most desire."
"A-ha." Adam held the compass out at him. "It isn't pointing at anything. Not much of a prank."
Jack shrugged. "It's not the compass's fault you don't know what you want."
Once again, Adam was left without a response. He shut the compass, more violently than he'd intended, and threw it back at Jack, who caught it easily. "I've had quite enough of you talking nonsense at me."
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Adam raised an eyebrow in surprise. "Shakespeare?"
Jack frowned. "No. Baxter the peg-legged drunk. I sailed with him for a year, until he found a woman who would wed a drunken peg-legged pirate."
Adam shook his head, suddenly eager to finish this conversation. "So what am I to do while I am in your" - he lay the word thick with sarcasm - "care?"
"You are to follow the rules of piracy." Jack leaned close, close enough for the heat of his body to reach Adam's. Against his will, he found himself drawn closer. "Which is to say: whatever you wish." He grinned again, wild and dangerous. "Savvy?"
***
The storm hits at nightfall.
The clouds had been gathering ominously above their heads for a while, their dark feathered grays filling with gloom the patches of blue between the stark black of the sails. Adam could feel the rumbling in the air before he heard it, a quaking resonating in the spaces of his joints, his bones attuned to the unknowable force of the weather in a way impossible to articulate. By the stiffening of the lounging bodies around him, he could tell they felt it, too.
This isn't a storm that builds; it's an unlocking of the sky like the opening of a dam, water falling cold and fast, the pelting drops harsh enough to sting. Thunder bellows, men cry out, the ocean beats angrily against the sides of the ship: a crash, of waves and wood and bodies, the cacophonous rage of Poseidon blasting in Adam's ears with the terrifying intensity of gunfire.
Gibbs shouts orders from the helm, his words nearly swallowed by the din. Adam is struck by the fleeting wish that he could understand the meaning of the words well enough to follow Gibbs's command if he were able to hear. The ship teeters wildly atop the churning water, and try as he might to stand Adam falls heavily on his back, grimacing at the sharp pain he can tell immediately will bruise by tomorrow.
The world is moving so fast he doesn't stop when he hits the ground, but slides backwards, miscellaneous items in a blur of sharp pain until he collides with the railing, his vision going white when his head slams against it.
This is, he feels suddenly, sickeningly certain, how he is going to die.
Something tight and cold and wet encircles his wrist. It isn't until he hears the familiar thick voice shouting, "Get up, get up," that he realizes it's Jack's hand. Jack is pulling him to his feet, and then Adam is on his feet, and his legs are shaking and his back is sore and he is so cold he barely feels it anymore but he's standing, and Jack is telling him he's fine and he isn't fine, he's the opposite of fine, and Jack is dragging him to the other side and giving him a rope to pull on and he can't, he can't, he'll die, they all will, and then he's pulling and they're pulling and Gibbs is shouting and Jack is, inexplicably but somehow comfortingly, laughing, and somewhere inside Adam a sun rises, almost visible through the maelstrom that has obscured even the moon.
This is the first storm he's truly witnessed, and the closest to death he's ever been, and Adam has never felt so alive.
***
A week after his kidnapping, the pirates anchored in a cove in which was rumored to be a chest of treasures belonging to a long-since murdered king. They returned with plunder that held elaborately wrought gold chains, heavy pendants of rubies and pearls, thick silver rings set with sapphires that, Adam couldn't help but notice as he examined his reflection in a pewter plate, set off pleasantly the color of his eyes.
"Aye, and ye be looking to steal our loot out from under the noses of us what have been so kind to ye?" Gibbs said, startling Adam into dropping a jade armband in the shape of a coiled snake.
"I - no, I - I was just admiring it." He realized after he'd said it that he owed Gibbs, or anyone else, neither apology nor explanation for any actions he took while held prisoner on the Pearl.
"Arr," Gibbs said. As always, Adam had no way of guessing with which of the hundred possible meanings Gibbs had meant to imbue that word; it sounded something like a guard dog begrudgingly appeased. "It's bad luck for a hostage to admire stolen treasure without the watch of his captors."
"Whose luck?" Adam asked.
Gibbs glared at him. "All of ours."
"Is this bad luck like spitting off starboard betwixt midnight and dawn, and waking a man when he's sleeping, and singing about ill weather in the fog, and having a woman on board a ship?"
"Aye, except that the last be the worst of all of them."
Adam turned his attention back to the treasure, drawn less by the promise of wealth - which was, after all, his birthright - than by the artistry of the designs. He held up to the light from the door an earring of emerald and silver. "Women have the good luck, at least, that they can wear such jewels as these."
"You needn't be a woman to wear that," Gibbs said. "Not on these waters."
Adam lifted his face in interest, then frowned. "But how should I...?"
Gibbs called off to the side, "Oh, Jack!"
Like the devil himself Jack appeared, looking far too pleased to be there. "You desire my services?"
Gibbs jerked a thumb at Adam. "He wants to wear jewels in his ears like a lady, he does."
Jack smiled a smile Adam was not sure he liked. With unsettling satisfaction, he said, "Excellent."
***
By daybreak the storm has long since ceased, but Adam hasn't slept. The thrill of storm hasn't ceased coursing through his veins; he spent the hours betwixt midnight and dawn pacing the deck, enjoying the smell of sea air after a storm, a smell he never knew existed until this night.
On land, he is Adam Lambert, heir to vast fortunes and immeasurable prestige, skilled in the gentleman's arts, loved by few but liked by all, safe and respectable and steady.
Out here, he is Adam Lambert, captive of the Black Pearl, but he could as easily some day be Adam Lambert, first mate on the Aurelia, or Calico Tom of no land more precise than the Indies, or whatsoever name he wishes, in whatsoever place. He has no skill in seafaring, but he could learn, or he could work at an inn, or apprentice himself to a blacksmith.
On land he is betrothed to a lovely local lass, skin ivory-white and down-soft, cheeks like apples and eyes like dew, with a cherry-red mouth and glowing golden curls, charming and demure and sweet, with a laugh like tinkling bells - everything a wife should be for a man of his standing.
Out here he is promised to no woman, and must marry no woman.
The gentle colors of sunrise spread across the sky. He admires the glint of the large sapphire in one of the rings he pocketed from the recent plunder, and admires more the extent to which the ocean outshines it, even in the yellow-tinted light of dawn. He can see the undulation of the waves, but it no longer sends him off balance.
The sun comes up, the pirates stumble themselves awake, sore and bitter from their battle with the elements, and Adam looks at the horizon, and wonders.
***
"Will it hurt?" Adam asked, affecting greater calm than he felt.
"Not a whit," Jack said, "it's only a needle-sharp pin attached to a precious stone getting shoved through the tender flesh of your ear. You won't feel a thing."
Adam eyed the earring warily. "You aren't funny."
"I wasn't trying to be. Now put this in your mouth - " Jack wedged a metal rod between Adam's teeth " - and hold still, before I pierce your neck instead."
He willed himself not to close his eyes, focusing on the wall he could see beyond Jack's shoulder. In the periphery of his vision he saw Jack frown, squint, stick his tongue out in concentration.
It hurt first less than he expected, and then more. To his relief, he didn't cry out - just bit down with a grunt, and dug his nails into his palms hard enough to distract himself from pain with different pain. Jack didn't wait for him to stop before thrusting the matching piece through the other ear, at which point Adam went dizzy and lightheaded. He rested his head between his knees, waiting for the pain to ebb into something manageable.
When he rose his ears were throbbing, but dimly. Hesitantly he touched the jewel in his right ear - a sapphire, empress cut - and winced, but felt a swell of pleasure, too, at the thought of how he must look. "When I thought about becoming a decorated man, this wasn't what I envisioned."
"Life so rarely is." Jack pulled out a flask and took a drink, then offered it out to Adam.
Adam looked at the shadows cast along the planes of his face. There was a nobility to it, even in the dank room, even knowing it was a pirate's face. He took the flask. "Why." He stopped, took a drink of rum, debated asking the question he had started. "Why do you line your eyes with kohl?"
Jack smiled. "Because I want to."
"Why do you want to?"
Jack didn't answer. The ship tilted, reset itself. "Do you want to?"
Adam thought of saying no, of course not, and then he thought of saying yes. He thought of both of these, unable to choose one, until Jack stood and left. Adam turned the flask over and over in his hands, watching the shifting line of white where the light hit the edge, until suddenly Jack was sitting back down in front of him, muttering, "Only one way to find out."
Adam looked up. Jack had a small jar filled with a black compound, and he was dipping his finger into it. "What are you - "
"Hold still and close your eyes."
Against his better judgment, Adam obeyed. Jack's finger was rough against his eyelids under cool semiliquid; his nail skirted the edge of Adam's cheek and Adam found himself wanting it to stay there, to trace its way downwards until Adam could feel the warmth of Jack's palm against his face. Jack was close enough, and the room was silent enough, that Adam could hear his breathing, and little else. He shivered.
"Open."
Adam looked into a dusty mirror, no doubt pilfered from some unlucky bedmate of Jack's, to see his eyes surrounded by dark shadows. They seemed bluer, somehow, or deeper - less like the sky and more like the sea. The earrings complemented them, it must be said, handsomely.
"Do you like it?"
Jack was eyeing him expectantly, with a slight smirk that said he read the answer in Adam's expression. Adam watched his unfamiliar reflection say, "Yes."
***
When they do make port, the sun is halfway through setting, a red crescent spilling blood along the edge of the sea.
The pirates are glad enough to see land, if by land one means a tiny nameless island with a single poorly stocked but cheap tavern - they have yet to accumulate enough to pay off their creditors, and are sticking to places they have little fear of being found.
"If you're still needing funds badly enough that you're holding me for ransom," Adam says, "shouldn't you perhaps be behaving somewhat... frugally?"
"Arr," says Gibbs, "but we pirates are not a lot much given to frugality. The rum is about gone, and our stores are mighty depleted, and usually once we get going we start thinking, if we're going to be spending some, we may as well as spend it all." His face twists into his version of a jolly smile. "Besides, there are wenches to be had for a smile and a pint, and I have one and I'll soon have the other, so you can color me happier than a thrice-fed parrot in the spring." He's gone before Adam can begin questioning any of the deeply questionable words in his speech.
The men rush off the ship in a throng, their outlines fading as they disappear into the darkening night. Adam can see a light on a hill some ways inland, and assumes that's their destination. He watches them go, mentally reciting their names as they leave; he knows them all now, Cotton and Leech and Cotton's parrot and Ogilvey and Mullroy and Twigg. They aren't friends - far from it - but they aren't strangers, either, and there aren't many men from Adam's old life - his real life - that he can truly call friend, either.
At last it's only Jack and Adam left.
Adam raises an eyebrow. "You aren't going for a drink?"
Jack shrugs. "I have the last of the rum in my quarters. They'll bring more back for the future."
"Or for a woman?
Jack's lips purse into a moue of distaste. "Women," he pronounces very deliberately, "are far more trouble than they've worth. I died for a kiss from a woman once, you know."
"No, you didn't."
"Well," he concedes, "technically I didn't know I was doing it at the time, and I hadn't been working very hard for the kiss. But she did kiss me, and I did die."
"You aren't dead."
"Obviously."
Strange noises fill the air which Adam places, after a moment, as the normal sounds of night on land: wind in the trees, the rumblings of distant merriment, the calls of nocturnal creatures. There is something he very much wants to say to Jack, but he doesn't know what it is.
"Well," Jack says abruptly, "I'll be retreating to my own amusements for the evening. Enjoy your respite from the clutches of the Pearl."
"What makes you think I won't flee you all forever?"
Jack studies him, smiling inscrutably. "You won't." It's not a question.
Jack turns to go back to the interior of the ship. Adam leans against the railing and thinks about the fact that it doesn't bother him that Jack is right.
***
He should never have been in that tavern.
It wasn't the place for a Lambert; it wasn't even the place for an Allen. It was a place for the lowest, most squalid forms of life humanity had to offer, thieves and beggars and traitors and drunks, men of the pistol and women of the night. It was a place of bad ale and tough meat, of crushing anonymity and ruthless indiscretion, the last place anyone in Adam's family would ever have wanted him to be found.
Adam didn't go there, the few times he had been, to annoy his family. He went because there was a restlessness in him like an itch that sometimes grew to be unbearable, and getting stone drunk didn't quell it, but it brought it back down to something possible to ignore; and he went because he would rather be stone drunk among strangers than among those who truly knew him. He went because he sometimes thought there was none who truly knew him, including himself, and at such times it seemed better to be where no one knew him at all rather than among those who knew half of him and claimed to know all.
He went because elsewhere, he had had a handful of unsatisfactory trysts with local girls, their bodies something mysterious and cold to him, and there, once, he had a rushed encounter with a sailor who barely spoke English that wasn't quite good, but was still better; and because he was born a Lambert, and bred to be a lord, and secretly he knew he would have given up both of those things for a handful of nights with that sailor.
He should never have been in that tavern, but he was, and then the pirates came.
***
In the captain's quarters Jack sits hunched over a beautifully rendered map, flask in hand. When Adam comes in he looks up. "I would have thought you'd have wanted to feel solid land under your feet while you could."
"I don't miss it as much as I thought I would." He feels awkward. "Do you mind if I sit?"
That death's-head grin, dangerous in all the best ways, flashes bright in Jack's sharp face. "Please." He gestures towards the chair next to him, turning his body so that when Adam is sitting down, they're face to face. "So. Are you looking forward to the end of your time amongst us filthy treacherous curs of the sea?" Jack takes a swig of rum. Adam is distracted momentarily by picturing those lips wrapping around altogether different things.
"To be honest, I'm starting to enjoy it."
Jack arches an eyebrow, thick-rimmed eyes flickering in the candlelight. "You are, are you?" - said like a challenge, or an invitation. He leans over, swaying a bit, and holds out the flask.
Adam takes it, drinking while he takes care choosing his words. "I was thinking, actually, of staying on past whenever it would have been you acquired the ransom for me."
"Were you, then?"
Jack is enjoying this, Adam can tell, and smiles at the thought. "If you'd have me, that is."
Jack studies him, taking one drink, then another. Adam watches his finely shaped neck, bronzed and shining with sweat from the heat of the hold, and imagines himself doing things to it that would, if spoken of in Adam's usual company, lead to dire consequences for them both - though Jack would almost certainly escape. "And why do you want me to - " Jack licks his lips " - have you?"
Adam bites his lip, thinking. "I've taken a liking to the sea. I've always had a liking for treasure. And." He pauses, thinking of the wholly unexciting prospect of his impending nuptials, the dullness of his betrothed's touch. "I like the freedom."
"Do you like freedom better than you like soft beds, clean air, decent cooking, the respect of society at large, and any sort of security be it financial, physical, emotional, or psychological?"
"I do," Adam says. It strikes him that this was not true until perhaps seven days ago, and yet feels like the most honest thing he's ever said. "Also." He drinks. "You have a monkey." He gives Jack the flask.
Jack drinks. "An undead monkey, at that." He places the flask on the table.
"Yes, you're going to have to explain that to me one day."
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"You never know." Adam fiddles with his rings. "I might surprise you."
"I suppose you might." Jack looks at him for a long moment, coarse strong fingers on his chin. Adam wants to feel them on every part of his skin, wants to take them in his mouth and wake up with scratch marks they have left. Without taking his eyes from Adam's face, Jack reaches into his satchel and digs out his compass, then holds it out to Adam. Adam takes it and, slowly, flips open the lid.
The needle spins, slows, stills. Its red point settles pointing directly outward from Adam's chest - directly towards Jack. Adam lifts his eyes to meet Jack's gaze, waiting for him to speak.
Jack's smile has taken on something between understanding and hunger. "Well then! I suppose you're a pirate."
Pirate. Adam tests the word out on himself. He finds he likes it. "Is it so easy?"
"We're not really ones for much ceremony. You can drink to it, if you like. As you may have noticed, we are ones for drinking." He offers Adam the flask. Their hands brush as Adam reaches for it.
"All right," Adam says, and smiles, broader than he has in a very long time. "To my embarking on a life of piracy." He brings the flask to his lips and frowns. "But - why is the rum gone?"
Jack laughs, which Adam doesn't understand, and then Jack kisses him full on the mouth, beard rough against Adam's jaw, hand gripping Adam's face so tightly it hurts. Adam brings his hands to Jack's neck, down his chest, around his waist, thrilling tot he feel of skin beneath his palms, the heat of Jack's body under his threadbare shirt, the groan in the back of Jack's throat when Adam slides his hand down past the small of his back. Jack tastes nothing like the women he's known in servants' quarters or in the backs of taverns; he tastes like rum and salt and something new and irresistible, like freedom or hope or adventure.
He tastes like pirate.
One last drag of teeth against Adam's lip and Jack breaks the kiss, looking at Adam with eyes gleaming in anticipation.
Adam is breathing heavily, feeling stunned and alive. "Oh," he says, "that's why - " and he kisses Jack again, vicious and deep, their bodies crashing against each other like waves against a ship, hearts pounding in the unsteady pulse of the sea.