Pirates of the Carribbean (Jack/Norrington)
Title: Sparrington’s Island
Author/Artist: GuiltyRed
Beta: YohjiDeranged
Rating: PG13
Warnings: innuendo, booze, and misuse of fruit
Word count: 2660
Summary: A 3-hour tour gone wrong Commodore Norrington and Jack Sparrow, marooned on a desert island…what to do, what to do…
Prompt: July 28 - #35. Pirates of the Carribbean, Jack/Norrington: Ridiculous seduction - "The criminal underbelly can be a very fine thing, Commodore, if the criminal knows what he's doing."
A/N: There is just so much love on this island! ^____^ [Help. I am GuiltyRed’s inner grammar Nazi. I am being held captive in a jar full of dirt…]
“It could, of course, be worse…”
Commodore James Norrington turned toward his sole companion on this godforsaken island and glared bloody murder. “Worse? How? We’ve been marooned here by pirates of an ilk even lower than yourself, we have neither food nor water, and my new boots are ruined! What, maybe they could have shackled us together to make things more interesting?”
Jack Sparrow - currently just “Jack” Sparrow, as he had no ship of which to claim captaincy - wagged a scolding finger at the Commodore. “Now that’s just downright perverted. Unless you mean to say, that you would have preferred shackles? Or is it the making-things-interesting which you find lacking?”
“I find many things lacking on this island, Sparrow.”
Without warning a wiry arm draped over his shoulder from behind, and oily hair touched his cheek as warm breath whispered across his ear, “Don’t put yourself down so much, Commodore, or you’ll start to believe it.”
How he’d managed to lose track of the smaller man, allowing him to get so close, Norrington had no idea. He bolted up from his seat, one boot on and one boot off. “Get off, you lunatic!”
Sparrow’s smile grew downright snarky. He licked his lips slowly, provocatively. His dark-rimmed eyes gleamed as he observed, “You seem to think about that an awful lot, James. Jim. May I call you Jimmy?”
“You may not! And I don’t know what you’re blathering on about. Rather than stand here on this beach and wait to die, I for one intend to do something useful.” He tried to put his boot back on without tipping over in the sand, gave up, and settled for pulling the other boot off instead.
“Oh! Skinny-dipping! That is useful!” Jack parked himself on the sand and hauled his own boots off, then reached for the drawstring of his trousers.
Norrington stared at him in a mix of apprehension and bafflement, the way one might stare at a raving lunatic or a holy man in the throes of whatever they did that made them shout at shadows. “No! I am not skinny-dipping, I am going in search of shelter and fresh water, which should be your first priority as well, were you not a - a -”
“Pirate?”
“Imbecile!”
“Touchy, touchy, Commodore. One might think that you meant that to hurt my feelings.” Jack made a great show of dumping sand out of his boots before setting them carefully beside a scraggly clump of grass. He lurched to his feet, stuck a finger in his mouth, held it up to verify that there was, in truth, no wind whatsoever, then struck out across the beach in a vaguely north-northwest direction.
Ten paces later, he paused and turned back toward Norrington. “Well? Come on!”
The Commodore stood firm, arms folded across his chest. “And what?”
Jack grinned that maddening grin and threw his arms wide. “After all this time, and you still don’t trust me?”
“After all this - no, I don’t trust you! You are a pirate, a thieving, marauding, backstabbing criminal with no sense of loyalty to anyone but yourself. I see no benefit to granting you one bare inch!”
“Only one? Poor man, no wonder you’re so cranky…”
Norrington sputtered, unable to find words the other couldn’t twist with practiced ease. “You - you -”
Jack tiptoed back across the short distance and whispered, “Pirate.”
Defeated and deflated, Norrington sighed and nodded. “Pirate.”
“Very good! And now that we’ve agreed upon our semantics for this discussion, might I inquire just what, precisely, you know about pirates?”
“They are deceitful, sneaky, violent -”
“Only on Thursdays. Really, Commodore - Jim - what are pirates most generally known to do?”
Norrington considered this carefully, searching for traps. Finding none, he replied, “Attacking ships and stealing the cargo. Where is this going?”
“Ah, but after one steals said cargo, what must one do to ensure no one else tries to steal it further?” Jack punctuated his question with a fingerjab to Norrington’s collarbone, a gesture that brought him a fresh dark scowl.
“Sell it. Or hide it, I suppose. And if you touch me again I shall cut off your finger.”
Jack Sparrow grinned and leaned in closer, making sure to keep his fingers to himself. “And if I just so happen to know where might be hidden something of great value to two such men as we, would you be able to let bygones be bygones and just trust me for ten minutes?”
His eyes showed a rare seriousness in their foggy depths. This alone was almost reassuring. Norrington considered the question and the apparent candor and decided he really had nothing more to lose at this point. “Very well. What do you want to show me?”
“Later, Jim! Bugger all, but you do think about that a lot, don’t you? First things first. Come on!” Not waiting for his companion to argue or take a swing at him, Sparrow took off back across the beach.
Norrington followed at a trot, torn between a need for whatever good fortune might lie ahead and the growing desire to throttle the little bastard and be done with it. He snarled at the realization that, if this were no wild goose chase, he might actually find himself indebted to that same little bastard. The thought did not please him.
Jack skidded to a halt and spun about sharply, arms akimbo and mouth open as if to speak.
Distracted, Norrington ran into him full on. They hit the dirt with a damp thud and a squeak, the squeak coming from Jack as all the air fled his lungs in one startled squawk.
“Sparrow, what the hell are you doing?” Norrington shouted as he struggled to regain his feet to no avail. His swordbelt had tangled with the pirate’s, effectively binding them together at the waist.
“Co - Commodore! I might just ask you the same question!” Jack flailed beneath the larger man before giving up and relaxing under the weight. “Or could it be that your natural inclinations have sprung to the fore at last? Sorry I teased you earlier, size really isn’t all that important to me. Unless it’s mine. Which is very big, by the way, don’t let my vertical stature fool you.”
“Sparrow,” Norrington growled, frustration finally robbing him of eloquence, “you are not vertical, you’re flat on your back. And my sword is stuck in your belt.”
“That’s another way of putting it…”
The Commodore sighed and reached between them. Deft fingers unhooked both belts and yanked them loose, tossing them aside with a clatter. Freed from his untimely complication, Norrington rose and dusted off his knees with grim civility. He paused as he realized his internal monologue was beginning to sound annoyingly like Jack Sparrow, adjusted accordingly, then offered a hand up to the still prone pirate. “Come on, we’re not finding shelter like this.”
Jack took his hand and allowed Norrington to haul him up. He swayed a bit, no more than usual, then cast about for his hat.
Norrington reclaimed their belts, but rather than invite another embarassing moment he slung them both over his shoulder. He, too, swayed a bit; he quickly wrote that off as a matter of contagion and promised himself a good long bath when he returned to civilized lands.
“This way!” Jack turned and headed into the jungle.
The Commodore followed at a safer distance, having learned his lesson the last time.
Within a handful of minutes they arrived at a cave nicely appointed with a wooden door. Norrington stared blankly as though he’d never seen a such a thing before, which in fact he had not - the cave, not the door. He shook his head as his mind began spinning Sparrow-esque phrases again, then approached the cave with full caution.
“Smugglers, my good Commodore!” Jack hauled the door open and gestured inside. “They have hidden their goods where only they themselves would know to look. Little did they know that I was watching at the time… Good thing for us, eh?” He sauntered into the cave and caught up a large jug coated with dust. He raised it and reached for the cork, then paused, his eyes dark and suspicious. “Commodore, I have just had the most horrid feeling of déjà vu. You must promise me that under no circumstances will you burn the rum!”
Norrington smiled thinly, recalling the fine signal such a fuel could send up. “But of course.”
Sparrow brandished the bottle at him with an unsteady glare. “And you are not a good man for lying to me, even though I am myself dishonest, Jimmy!”
“Tell you what,” Norrington murmured, picking up another of the nearly four dozen bottles, “it shouldn’t take that much to light a signal fire. Night is coming, we could start a bonfire with some of the rum and keep it burning into tomorrow with little more. You can get stinking drunk and I can watch for rescue.”
“What fun is that? At least the bonnie lass had the grace to drink with me at such time as she found herself in a similar predicament. Surely she’s not more the man than you, Commodore?”
Norrington grabbed Jack by the shirt and shoved him back against the wall. “Do not. Discuss. Miss Swann’s virtue. Or lack thereof. With me. Do you understand?”
“Oh, I see.” Jack smirked up at his captor and leaned into the restraining hand. “Were you dropped off on this little paradise with said lass, with or without shackles, you would find that more to your taste than finding yourself here with me, is that it? My, my, James - is it so hard for you to allow me to rescue you for a change?”
Norrington blinked. The question failed to make sense for several seconds, during which time Jack Sparrow slid free from his grip and proceeded to uncork his rum with casual flair.
“Being a castaway is much more enjoyable with good drink and better company, though in this case I could resign myself to better drink and good company were that my current option,” Jack observed, rating the rum quite a bit higher than the last lot he’d found. He waved at the now-silent Commodore and gestured at the booze. “Come on, let’s haul this lot to the beach and get started, eh? May as well, it looks to be a long night.”
With a sigh, Norrington set his jug of rum back with its fellows and hefted the crateful.
All in all, it didn’t take the two men too long to haul most of the rum to the beach. This was, perhaps, due to the fact that Norrington forbade Jack to drink any of it until they were done, thus adding to his efficiency.
As Jack set up a bonfire and began toasting to his own success, Norrington searched for some kind of food. To his chagrin, all he could find was a banana tree. Considering all the innuendoes the pirate had become notorious for, the Commodore really didn’t look forward to eating a banana in his presence, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
He followed the light back to the beach, where a large fire burned merrily against the backdrop of dusk. Dropping to the sand, he set the bananas down and pulled one off the bunch.
A dirty hand dangled a half-full bottle in front of his face.
Norrington accepted the rum with a vague smile in spite of himself.
As soon as the bottle was taken, the hand reached down and snatched the banana.
“You can’t stand it, can you?” Norrington asked. He took a pull on the bottle and grimaced. “You just can’t manage to do anything without acting like a pirate.”
Jack sprawled in front of him and gestured grandly with the banana. “That’s because I am a pirate, Jimmy. James. And in case you did not notice, I did not steal your banana, I traded for it. Rum, banana. Banana, rum. Quite simple, really.”
Norrington laughed and shook his head. He took another swig of rum - a little too quickly but what the hell - and said, “All right. We traded. Are we square, then, since you found the rum and I found dinner, or am I somehow in your debt? Because, quite honestly, I would rather be in debt to the devil himself than to you.” He frowned at his own outburst; normally he would have kept such sentiment safely inside. Then again, normally he would not have been drinking rum.
“My dear Commodore,” Sparrow began, breaking the banana peel open and stripping it down, “let’s not talk about who owes who what, or what-have-you. It’s bad luck at this point of the evening. Suffice to say that I shall do everything in my power to stay alive until I find a way off this island, and I shall do likewise for you unless you do something utterly stupid to invalidate that offer. Savvy?”
The string of words fell so effortlessly from those dirty, uneducated lips that Norrington couldn’t help but laugh in surprise. “Really? You don’t intend to just strip me and leave me here to rot? How very British of you!”
“I thought we were past the whole insult thing, Jimmy…”
Annoyed, Norrington reached over and grabbed Jack’s hand, squeezing it around the banana until the fruit snapped under the strain. “Don’t call me Jimmy.”
Jack stared at his hand in abject distress. “You broke my banana!”
“You had it coming.” Norrington made a show of wiping his hand clean before taking another long drink of the rum. Fancy that, the damn stuff tasted better now than it had at first. He made it a very long drink.
“Well, well, Commodore,” Jack murmured, tossing aside his ruined snack, “you’ve got my attention. Fair enough. I won’t call you…the long ‘J’ name, and you won’t crush my banana. That is what we might call an accord, were we both pirates.” He moved to sit next to the taller man, affording him a better view of the bonfire and the sea beyond. “Then again, there was a young lass who understood matters of the Code better than some pirates. I guess there’s no accounting for taste.”
They drank a while in silence, watching the fire as stars wheeled above.
Jack glanced sidelong at his reluctant companion, who seemed to be well into his cups. One had to be careful: Miss Swann had been a very good actress during her stay on the last island, and Jack had no intention of repeating those mistakes.
But no, Norrington looked well and truly drunk.
Not his usual flavor, Jack mused, but as they say, any port in a storm. He sidled closer and rubbed the other man’s shoulders, coaxing him to relax.
Norrington sighed and leaned back into the touch.
Jack cautiously reached his other hand over to unfasten the Commodore’s shirt.
Norrington snorted and keeled over backward, nearly taking Jack to the sand with him.
“Bugger.” Jack lifted his jug, found it empty, tossed it aside and grabbed the Commodore’s bottle. Draining that, he regarded his unconscious compatriot.
A fiendish smile spread across his lips. The man was so concerned about who owed whom and the like, may as well make this entertaining. Singing softly to himself, Jack unbuttoned the man’s shirt, then re-buttoned it a button off. He slowly and quite cautiously unfastened the once-expensive trousers, taking the opportunity to size up the competition before smirking happily and sprinkling a bit of sand on the bare skin.
He then braced himself and rolled Norrington over, careful not to wake him. Tugging the trousers down just a bit more, he patted the fine rump and whispered, “Nighty night, sweet prince. Let’s not talk about this in the morning, it could only be awkward.”
With that, he settled back with the bunch of bananas and a fresh jug of rum to wait for sunrise.