(no subject)
This is possibly the best idea ever. Bootstrap/Jack is my PotC OTP and I don't normally have OTPs. calichan is all my Bootstrap inspiration, and at some point in the near future we are embarking upon an epic Bootstrap/Jack fictional quest.
In any case, here is Bootstrap/Jack-ness, a little babbling snippet as inspired by my great and dooby love for them, as well as inevitable, fiction-spawning boredom.
Rum
It is only the two of them in the one room, a smaller man and a bigger. The smaller man is more striking; the bigger, more conventionally attractive. The smaller man is: one tanned face illumined by candlelight and two regal cheekbones flooded with gold glow and shadow. The bigger man is: two amused eyes watching the flicker of emotions play over the face opposite his own.
Jack Sparrow is an open book and an ostentatious man. His saving grace is that there are volumes of him no man save for one has the time or the inclination to read, and his tastes are specific and high quality.
He has delicate hands with graceful fingers, more quick than they are strong. His muscles seem to be made of wire or thin, fine rope, and while he can run faster than any dog out of the butcher’s his strength is not meant for much other than speed. Bootstrap Bill Turner knows just how fast, quick on his feet and quicker with a mad idea, and that’s what sets Jack Sparrow apart from all the other fools in this world.
Despite how clever he is Jack’s prime weakness is rum; a handful of secondary weaknesses include redheads, the sound of his own voice, picking pockets, and a penchant for trying to outwit any and every soldier who crosses his path. On the latter, he most always succeeds. However, another weakness happens to be pride getting in the way of his great escape.
Bootstrap Bill doesn’t mind it. He’s been enjoying Jack Sparrow’s company for a while now and he doesn’t seem to want to change that. He’s a wife back in England and a son there, as well; William is three years old and Bootstrap Bill has seen him twice in those three years. He sends presents, and gets Jack to write him letters, when they have the time, and the boy thinks he’s a merchant trader. As if they aren’t all pirates, and a worse lot than the sort of man Jack Sparrow aspires to be.
Jack’s eyes are the color of old, old rum in the moonlight. His skin is taut and smooth. It is only the two of them in the one room. Jack’s hat tossed over one bedpost, Bootstrap Bill’s sword strapped to the other. They share the same bottle, pass it between themselves and Bootstrap Bill listens to Jack talk and talk with speech that slurs and slurs with time. Sometimes, Jack calls him Mr. Turner, emphasis on the Mr., and Bootstrap Bill tries not to laugh. So formal, the lad is. And so familiar at once.
“And that,” Jack emphasizes with a flick of his wrist and an curling of slim fingers, “is when she came after me with the bedpan; and it’s a wonder to me, Bill, a wonder really that these women can run so, trussed up as tight as they are, like sausages. Some sausages good, some bad, some the sort that chase after you with bedpans fresh from the fire; of course I’ve nothing against the good sausages, and the bad sausages are all right by me so long as they’re not out to kill you, but I’d soon as cook a sausage trying to cook me, if she - it - were so inclined. Where did I begin my story, exactly?”
“Redheads,” Bootstrap Bill says patiently, as he takes each Jack-finger off the neck of their bottle of rum, commandeers it as his own. Jack watches him tilt his head back, watches the Adam’s apple beneath a trim beard bob with each swallow. Try though he might, Jack cannot learn to hold his liquor; Bootstrap Bill can drink him under the table and through to China. Luckily it isn’t a competition, not between them. “Something dreadful about redheads.”
“Their fathers,” Jack bursts in, triumphant. “Their redhead fathers, that is the something dreadful about redheads.”
“You don’t know how to treat a lady,” Bootstrap admonishes easily. He offers Jack the bottle as compensation for the chastisement.
“My dear sir,” before taking a swig, “a redhead is not a lady. She may look like one, feel like one, sound like one but she acts like a hound out of Hell the next morning and that - is not a lady. That is a hellhound, you see.” Bootstrap nods amiably. He watches Jack’s eyes in the candlelight. Another one of Jack Sparrow’s saving graces is just how attractive he is, all slim, taut lines and sun-browned, smooth flesh, and fingers that dance and a body too graceful for a dark inn with - the sound registers faintly in Bootstrap’s senses, a muted pat pat pat of rain coming in through the ceiling - leaks in the thatching. His hair could use some work, with beads and bits of cloth braided in from his, and then their, travels; he remembers where Jack got the three dice, and also how long it took him to figure a way to weave them into the matted dark softness. He managed it, of course. Jack sets his mind to something and he manages it, it just depends on how much of a mess he causes along the way, and how long it takes him to get there. “My dear sir,” Jack is saying, childishly, “I believe that your mother and your lovely wife, whom I have never met because you will not bring such scoundrels as I into your good home, would tell you that it is impolite to stare, as you are staring.”
“Rum,” Bootstrap says.
“Aye,” Jack returns, “it is rum, and very good rum, at that, though I seem to be far more fond of it than you are, as it were.” Bootstrap waits for it. “Savvy?” There. He doesn’t know where Jack picked that up. It just started happening one day, and now that Bootstrap thinks back on it he can’t pinpoint the exact date it started. He supposes if it really begins to bother him he’ll ask Jack, and he’ll get enough of an answer to keep him from thinking about it any longer.
“Aye,” Bootstrap says. “But if you start singing, I’ll confiscate it.”
“What,” Jack says innocently, wearing it as he wears most other falsehoods, like a crown of gold and sapphire, about as inconspicuously, “yo ho, yo ho?”
Jack fancies himself a songwriter and a poet, or must, somewhere deep down; he’s smart enough to be, but he’s not applied himself properly yet, because he’s his eye set on being a captain of his own ship, and that doesn’t leave much room for else. The song is horrible. Bootstrap raises a skeptical brow.
“Yo ho, yo ho,” and Jack has a pleasant enough voice for singing, like warm, provincial bread, the sort that’s brown and thick-grained, “a pirate’s life for me! - sing with me, man, Bill, Mr. Turner, rum’s only as good as the song that goes with it - we pillage, plunder, we rifle and loot, drink up, me ‘arties, yo ho!” Again, Bootstrap Bill undoes Jack’s grasp on the bottle, the backs of his knuckles against Jack’s palm. It’s the rum. It’s always the rum. Bootstrap is the one to do the logistical thinking in this sort of instance, and Jack’s job to come up with the plan. Bill is drinking when he sees the light in Jack’s eyes, realizes he’s stopped his singing.
“Now, Jack,” Bootstrap says, “let me set the bottle down.”
“You’ve not heard the next part, the next part’s the best, if I do say so myself.” He does. “It’s the bit about ravaging, I do so love a good ravage. What say you, Bill Turner?”
“What say I?”
“Aye, you.”
“Aye, I?”
“Aye!”
They watch each other for a moment. Bootstrap makes use of the bedside table, sets the bottle of rum atop it, listens to Jack murmur something that might be a vagrant yo ho, or might be just a shifting of breath or even a creaking of bedsprings.
“It doesn’t have a tune,” Bootstrap says, but it doesn’t matter anymore, as there is an impulsive man too old to act so young against him.
And the headboard rattles.
In any case, here is Bootstrap/Jack-ness, a little babbling snippet as inspired by my great and dooby love for them, as well as inevitable, fiction-spawning boredom.
Rum
It is only the two of them in the one room, a smaller man and a bigger. The smaller man is more striking; the bigger, more conventionally attractive. The smaller man is: one tanned face illumined by candlelight and two regal cheekbones flooded with gold glow and shadow. The bigger man is: two amused eyes watching the flicker of emotions play over the face opposite his own.
Jack Sparrow is an open book and an ostentatious man. His saving grace is that there are volumes of him no man save for one has the time or the inclination to read, and his tastes are specific and high quality.
He has delicate hands with graceful fingers, more quick than they are strong. His muscles seem to be made of wire or thin, fine rope, and while he can run faster than any dog out of the butcher’s his strength is not meant for much other than speed. Bootstrap Bill Turner knows just how fast, quick on his feet and quicker with a mad idea, and that’s what sets Jack Sparrow apart from all the other fools in this world.
Despite how clever he is Jack’s prime weakness is rum; a handful of secondary weaknesses include redheads, the sound of his own voice, picking pockets, and a penchant for trying to outwit any and every soldier who crosses his path. On the latter, he most always succeeds. However, another weakness happens to be pride getting in the way of his great escape.
Bootstrap Bill doesn’t mind it. He’s been enjoying Jack Sparrow’s company for a while now and he doesn’t seem to want to change that. He’s a wife back in England and a son there, as well; William is three years old and Bootstrap Bill has seen him twice in those three years. He sends presents, and gets Jack to write him letters, when they have the time, and the boy thinks he’s a merchant trader. As if they aren’t all pirates, and a worse lot than the sort of man Jack Sparrow aspires to be.
Jack’s eyes are the color of old, old rum in the moonlight. His skin is taut and smooth. It is only the two of them in the one room. Jack’s hat tossed over one bedpost, Bootstrap Bill’s sword strapped to the other. They share the same bottle, pass it between themselves and Bootstrap Bill listens to Jack talk and talk with speech that slurs and slurs with time. Sometimes, Jack calls him Mr. Turner, emphasis on the Mr., and Bootstrap Bill tries not to laugh. So formal, the lad is. And so familiar at once.
“And that,” Jack emphasizes with a flick of his wrist and an curling of slim fingers, “is when she came after me with the bedpan; and it’s a wonder to me, Bill, a wonder really that these women can run so, trussed up as tight as they are, like sausages. Some sausages good, some bad, some the sort that chase after you with bedpans fresh from the fire; of course I’ve nothing against the good sausages, and the bad sausages are all right by me so long as they’re not out to kill you, but I’d soon as cook a sausage trying to cook me, if she - it - were so inclined. Where did I begin my story, exactly?”
“Redheads,” Bootstrap Bill says patiently, as he takes each Jack-finger off the neck of their bottle of rum, commandeers it as his own. Jack watches him tilt his head back, watches the Adam’s apple beneath a trim beard bob with each swallow. Try though he might, Jack cannot learn to hold his liquor; Bootstrap Bill can drink him under the table and through to China. Luckily it isn’t a competition, not between them. “Something dreadful about redheads.”
“Their fathers,” Jack bursts in, triumphant. “Their redhead fathers, that is the something dreadful about redheads.”
“You don’t know how to treat a lady,” Bootstrap admonishes easily. He offers Jack the bottle as compensation for the chastisement.
“My dear sir,” before taking a swig, “a redhead is not a lady. She may look like one, feel like one, sound like one but she acts like a hound out of Hell the next morning and that - is not a lady. That is a hellhound, you see.” Bootstrap nods amiably. He watches Jack’s eyes in the candlelight. Another one of Jack Sparrow’s saving graces is just how attractive he is, all slim, taut lines and sun-browned, smooth flesh, and fingers that dance and a body too graceful for a dark inn with - the sound registers faintly in Bootstrap’s senses, a muted pat pat pat of rain coming in through the ceiling - leaks in the thatching. His hair could use some work, with beads and bits of cloth braided in from his, and then their, travels; he remembers where Jack got the three dice, and also how long it took him to figure a way to weave them into the matted dark softness. He managed it, of course. Jack sets his mind to something and he manages it, it just depends on how much of a mess he causes along the way, and how long it takes him to get there. “My dear sir,” Jack is saying, childishly, “I believe that your mother and your lovely wife, whom I have never met because you will not bring such scoundrels as I into your good home, would tell you that it is impolite to stare, as you are staring.”
“Rum,” Bootstrap says.
“Aye,” Jack returns, “it is rum, and very good rum, at that, though I seem to be far more fond of it than you are, as it were.” Bootstrap waits for it. “Savvy?” There. He doesn’t know where Jack picked that up. It just started happening one day, and now that Bootstrap thinks back on it he can’t pinpoint the exact date it started. He supposes if it really begins to bother him he’ll ask Jack, and he’ll get enough of an answer to keep him from thinking about it any longer.
“Aye,” Bootstrap says. “But if you start singing, I’ll confiscate it.”
“What,” Jack says innocently, wearing it as he wears most other falsehoods, like a crown of gold and sapphire, about as inconspicuously, “yo ho, yo ho?”
Jack fancies himself a songwriter and a poet, or must, somewhere deep down; he’s smart enough to be, but he’s not applied himself properly yet, because he’s his eye set on being a captain of his own ship, and that doesn’t leave much room for else. The song is horrible. Bootstrap raises a skeptical brow.
“Yo ho, yo ho,” and Jack has a pleasant enough voice for singing, like warm, provincial bread, the sort that’s brown and thick-grained, “a pirate’s life for me! - sing with me, man, Bill, Mr. Turner, rum’s only as good as the song that goes with it - we pillage, plunder, we rifle and loot, drink up, me ‘arties, yo ho!” Again, Bootstrap Bill undoes Jack’s grasp on the bottle, the backs of his knuckles against Jack’s palm. It’s the rum. It’s always the rum. Bootstrap is the one to do the logistical thinking in this sort of instance, and Jack’s job to come up with the plan. Bill is drinking when he sees the light in Jack’s eyes, realizes he’s stopped his singing.
“Now, Jack,” Bootstrap says, “let me set the bottle down.”
“You’ve not heard the next part, the next part’s the best, if I do say so myself.” He does. “It’s the bit about ravaging, I do so love a good ravage. What say you, Bill Turner?”
“What say I?”
“Aye, you.”
“Aye, I?”
“Aye!”
They watch each other for a moment. Bootstrap makes use of the bedside table, sets the bottle of rum atop it, listens to Jack murmur something that might be a vagrant yo ho, or might be just a shifting of breath or even a creaking of bedsprings.
“It doesn’t have a tune,” Bootstrap says, but it doesn’t matter anymore, as there is an impulsive man too old to act so young against him.
And the headboard rattles.