PotC - No Bones About It
Title: No Bones About It
For: The Where’s the Rum Yahoo group Valentines Day contest
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: I’m not a big fan of V-Day and while this might be considered fluffy in retrospect, it’s kind of unpretty for a valentine’s day fic.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Jack is not romantically inclined in the slightest.
*~*~*~*
Jack, as an adult human male, has two hundred and six bones in his body. As Jack Sparrow, pirate captain extraordinaire, he has two hundred and eleven bones on or in his corpus. Each hand has twenty seven, his face has fourteen, there are two small bone dice threaded into his hair, one long boney spine poking out hazardously of the tangled mess, and one of his rings has a bone setting. Despite this myriad of choice as to where it might be placed, Jack doesn’t have a single romantic bone in, on, or around his body.
Will discovers this sometime into his tenth month aboard the Pearl and about eight months, give or take, that he and Jack have been - as Anamaria likes to say, with a snide smile - knocking boots. It’s a decidedly unromantic expression, and certainly not one that Will would have chosen. But it’s around that tenth month mark that he realizes that she might be right. He and Jack are certainly not doing anything else.
He and Jack do not share Jack’s little cabin below decks. Will sleeps in a hammock with the rest of the crew but most nights he’ll steal away to Jack’s room and they’ll - in even less charming language - fuck. Jack is surprisingly closemouthed. He grits his teeth through his grin, barely makes a sound the whole time, though he delights in making Will cry out against his hand and he comes with a grunt or a hiss. That is all. Will too is learning to bite his tongue, though it doesn’t come easily. Will likes his lovers to be exactly that, lovers.
It hits him harder than he’ll admit; Jack does not love him.
Jack loves one thing and that’s his freedom, and by extension, the Black Pearl. There is no room in him for anything else. Certainly not one blacksmith who’s still a little inept at the whole piracy business and more than a little inept and the whole sailing business.
Will doesn’t deal with this very well. He starts drinking which isn’t the best of plans because if he’s a bad sailor when he’s sober, he’s a terrible sailor when he’s drunk. It also backfires when he confines his drinking to the evenings because all it does is make him more susceptible to Jack’s advances. It’s not to say that Jack doesn’t like Will. He likes him well enough, well enough to bed him, well enough to share conversations and to keep wry amusement when Will bollocks something up. One might even say that Jack likes Will better than most since he’s not yet turned Will out on his ear, and Will might have pirate blood but the rest of him is decidedly landlubberly.
All the drinking does is give Will a perpetual hangover and a nasty temper. It doesn’t suit him, nor does it sit well with him. He gives that up after a week or so.
He tries ignoring Jack but that’s about as successful as ignoring a hurricane when you’re standing in the middle of it. They’re on a ship, there are only so many places for Will to hide and Jack knows all of them. He’s fucked Will in most of them. He also seems to have an uncanny knack for knowing when someone is avoiding him and has a great talent for seeking them out, whether they want to be found or not. They begin to argue, about nothing at all, and because it’s Will, this usually leads to apologies and making up. Making up, because it’s Jack, usually involves both of them being at least partially undressed and repeated acts of indecency.
As a general rule, when Jack wants something he gets it. He’ll go to the ends of the earth if it means enough to him. He’s proven that with his quest for the Pearl. But he doesn’t need to go to the ends of the earth to find Will, so it’s easy for him to get what he wants.
Will knows what he wants. He wants Jack to love him.
It’s a desire that he’s been carrying for as long as he can remember. Not, specifically, towards Jack, the attachment has changed from person to person over the years. He’s been disappointed every time.
It started out unselfishly enough. He wanted his father to love his mother enough to come home. When Bill stopped coming home, that was when things changed. Then all Will wanted was for his mother to love him enough that she wouldn’t die and leave him on his own. He knows, in retrospect, that she was very sick and no amount of love in the world could have kept her with him. Still, there is a small, scared little boy that lives inside of Will who believes, quite firmly, that if she’d only tried a little harder, if only losing her husband hadn’t worn her out…Will hates that part of himself when he remembers it.
He wanted his father to love him enough to find him. Enough to save him from pirates, or drowning. Again, Will knows this is foolhardy, because his father was somewhere at the bottom of the Caribbean trying to get free of a cannon. As a young man, he knows this well enough. As a ten year old child, clinging to a bit of gold and a few planks of wood, logic doesn’t hold water.
It changed again the day he was dragged out of the sea. When a golden angel saved him. Puberty didn’t help matters. Nor did living with a drunk who loved only the bottle and the money Will learned to bring in. Years and years passed and all Will wanted was for Elizabeth to love him. Most days he would have settled for having her notice him. Really, properly notice him. He thought he’d got what he wanted that day on the battlements. Adventure and near-death do things to a person though.
Will knows he’s good looking. Jack may not have what one might term discerning tastes but he knows a pretty thing from the rest and he’s not mean with his compliments where he feels they’re deserved. Besides, Will has all his own limbs, teeth and hair, he’s handy with a sword and he’s in fine shape. These things alone put him above much of the population.
A handsome young man and a daring adventure will turn a girl’s head. But not forever. And Elizabeth didn’t love him. She loved a make-believe pirate in (what Will learned the first day aboard the Pearl) a rather silly hat. These sorts of things wear thin and won’t hold up to strain. He’d gone to sea to prove himself to her and she’d married someone else. He hopes she’s happy. And not in the snide way that Anamaria likes to say it; he means it. He loved her.
He loved her, past tense, because Will now knows how this game works. He’ll love, and love, and love until the other person leaves and, sooner or later, Will finds someone else to love. That someone is Jack; and Jack does not love Will.
Will, despite what Jack’s teasing might lead you to believe, does in fact have a brain in his head. He knows how this game works, and he’s tired of it. However, in perfect accordance with Jack’s wry laments, Will has an excellent sense of dramatic timing but very little knowledge of what to do with it. He decides that he is going to leave the Pearl and set up his own smithy. There is always work for a blacksmith and there’s good money for a swords smith of his caliber. This decision is wise enough. His timing, however, is slightly off.
Jack is naked. So, in fact, is Will when Will opens his lips to impart his decision. Not only are they both naked but Will is on his back, one leg up over Jack’s hip, one hand fisted in the bed linens, the other in Jack’s hair and Jack is halfway through the motion of easing into Will. Jack makes a startled sound and since Jack talks a great deal with his body, he also makes a startled motion. It was a very dramatic time to announce his departure, but it wasn’t the most apt. Jack jerks, his head goes back, so Will winds up pulling his hair. This, in turn, makes Jack slip forward so he loses purchase on the sheets, hands skidding over the fabric as he lands, rather heavily, on top of Will. It probably doesn’t feel very good from where Jack is lying. It definitely doesn’t feel very good from Will’s position and he’s forced to grit his teeth against a decidedly unmanly whimper as Jack levers himself back up.
“I beg your pardon?” Jack isn’t smiling now, propped up over Will, inside Will.
Will looks away. It’s a bit foolish, but he’s wishing he’d kept his mouth shut and waited for the opportune moment. Even after ten months, he’s still not quite got a handle on it. “I said I was going to leave. Next port we stop into. I thought it was about time.”
Jack pulls away and rolls onto his back. There’s not a lot of room on the bunk and they’re pressed together from ankle to shoulder. Will has to resist the urge to squirm. “Bloody Christ, Will,” Jack says in amazement as he stares up at the ceiling where the lanthorn cover makes Arabian patterns shine on the dark wood. “You don’t half know how to pick your moments.”
They don’t say anything for a while. They just lie there, their skin slowly sticking together with sweat in the close air of the cabin, watching the patterns on the ceiling. Will bites his tongue until it bleeds to keep from saying anything else that might be considered inopportune.
Finally Jack sits up. “If that’s what you want.” He twists, leaning on one arm, so he can kiss Will then crawls on top of him, pinning him to the bunk. Will isn’t quite sure what to do. He was expecting to dress and go back to his hammock. “Are you bleeding?” Jack mutters against Will’s mouth but he guides Will’s leg back up over his hip and he doesn’t wait for the answer.
It’s not until after, after Jack’s left teeth marks on his shoulder and bruises on his hip and the inside of one forearm that Will understands. Jack may not have what one might term discerning tastes but he knows a pretty thing from the rest and at that moment, he was still Jack’s pretty thing. Jack’s had men and women up and down the coastlines of every island Will can name, never mind Jack’s more extensive travels. It’s certainly not about love, so why should it have anything to do with feelings at all? Will goes back to his hammock feeling ill used.
It doesn’t change a thing. He disembarks four days later and he doesn’t look back. Instead, Will walks into the nearest tavern, sets down his things, orders a drink and then he sits and stares at it for a few hours. He’s got no idea if he’s made the right decision, but for the first time he’s the one who walked away, even if he’s the only one who cares, and there has to be a first time for everything. It doesn’t make him feel any better.
Five long months pass. Will catches a ship to a more prosperous island and sets up a smithy. He makes parts for ships, and fixes or replaces swords and he doesn’t ask any questions about where the money comes from or what manner of ships the parts are going to. He’s teaching himself how to use his skills for detail to make jewelry. He’s not very good at it. He’s hammered out a few things but they all come out looking slightly squiffy. The last thing he made was supposed to be a ring. He did something wrong, god only knows what, and now it’s more of a blob. Will keeps all the mistakes in a little box. He thinks one day he’ll melt them down and make something better but after five months his mistakes have started to pile up.
There is little to distract him from his work. When he’s not working he practices fencing. He no longer counts the hours, he just does it until he can’t stand and then collapses into his bed above the smithy and tries not to dream. Will doesn’t know why he keeps fencing when he’s no longer trying to kill pirates. He has no lady fair to protect and he imagines the pistol he now keeps will do the job much better for any intruder.
If Will let himself stop and think for five minutes, he might miss Jack. But Will doesn’t stop. He makes his goods, he makes more swords than he needs, and he fights invisible enemies. When he dreams, it’s often nightmares.
One night, Will goes into town for a drink. Instead of drinking he buys a whore. She’s pretty enough, a little on the skinny side, with most of her own teeth and it looks as though she’s bathed recently. She has beautiful, sleek dark hair. He can’t see any visible signs of the pox and she winks at him. It’s the little wave that accompanies the wink that changes Will’s mind. He asks how much, she names a price and they go to one of the rooms above the tavern. Will kisses her and she’s willing enough but he sits on the edge of the moldering bed, puts his head in his hands and can’t bring himself to do anything to her. She sits next to him and pets his hair. Will has no desire to tell her all the ills of his life, and she doesn’t ask. He pays her anyway and goes back to the smithy where he makes ruined jewelry until his eyes ache in the bad light. He doesn’t go to the whores again.
After six months Will takes twine and knots all of his mistakes to lengths of it. He hangs them in his rooms where they wink, and shine, and catch the light. They’re beautiful, and useless, and often they get in Will’s way. Sometimes, if he’s tired, Will mistakes one of the flashes of light for Jack. He keeps turning around expecting Jack to be standing there.
One day, sometime into the seventh month, it is Jack.
Jack looks much the same as always and he’s stolen one of the baubles from its thread and is turning it over between his fingers, head cocked to one side. “What is it?” he asks.
Will sighs and shrugs. “A mistake.”
Jack tucks it into his pocket and starts poking about Will’s shop. “We left you northward.” He picks up a sword and turns it over, then puts it back and takes out another. Will lets him. He has very little to say to this specter. “I need a new sword.”
It hurts, but Will doesn’t really expect anything more of Jack. “What happened to the old one?” He wishes he hadn’t asked. He’s a blacksmith again, and he doesn’t want to know if his customers are pirates or not.
There’s an odd look in Jack’s eye and he fingers the hilt of his sword. He’s lying about something, but Will has no idea what. “T’was old, Will.” He resumes his investigation of the shop. “You do good trade here? Plannin’ on staying long?” He bats at the mistakes and sets them to jangling together. Will ignores the lurch his stomach gives when Jack smiles.
“No.” Now they are both lying about something. The lie sits heavy on Will’s chest until he realizes that he can’t stay. Not if Jack will come back again. “I thought it was about time to leave again.”
Jack makes a thoughtful humming sound. “Well, if you’re lookin’ for work, the Pearl could always use a blacksmith.” He taps the mistakes again. “Can I have these?”
Will turns away. “Of course.” He doesn’t care, he’ll make more. “I’ll start on a new sword unless you want one that I’ve already made.” Will points out the ones that Jack can have. He tries not to notice Jack’s hand on his shoulder as the pirate leans around him, or the way Jack smells, or the glint and shine of him. He resists the urge to shove Jack up against the smithy wall and kiss him and points out the high and low points of each of his swords.
“I didn’t break my sword,” Jack says abruptly. He goes so far as to draw it, and it’s old and needs a good sharpening and cleaning, but it’s certainly in one piece. “I came lookin’ for you. I need you back on the Pearl.”
Will starts taking down all the mistakes from their moorings. “No you don’t.”
“No,” Jack agrees. “You’re shite at sea.” He doesn’t help Will with his task, he just watches, that odd look back in his eye. “I thought you’d be where we left you.”
“Why?” Will hands the collection of twine and metal to Jack. He wants to ask what Jack will do with them, but he decides he doesn’t need to know. “People travel, Jack. You, more than most, should know that.”
Jack looks plaintive. “Not you, lad. I had to hunt up an’ down the Caribee-” he trails off. “I want you back on the Pearl, Will. If you’re not going to stay put here or there.” He smoothes his moustache and stares off at a point somewhere just past Will. “I’m askin’ you to come back.”
He can’t agree. Will crosses his arms and digs his fingers into the muscle and flesh to keep from saying yes. “Why?” he asks again, instead. “You’ve no use for me, and I do a fine trade here.”
What Jack says next is so quiet and mumbled that Will can barely hear him. He’s almost certain that he’s heard wrong because Jack Sparrow doesn’t miss people. Jack grins sheepishly though and Will wants to hit him for being such an ass. He wants to kiss him for coming back. Jack Sparrow has two hundred and eleven bones on, or in, his corpus. Not one of them is romantic. But he has a pocketful of Will’s mistakes and, as far as Will knows, Jack has only ever come back for one other thing, and that’s the Pearl. So Will arches an eyebrow, mimicking Jack, and sets his terms.
Jack hangs the little bits of metal in their room on the Pearl. Will usually hits his head on them when he stands up, but the light from the Arabic lanthorn catches on the metal and makes the tiny room into a fantastical place. The swords go to the crew, and Will resolves that he will teach them all to fight a little less haphazardly in their free time, because it’s something he can do.
Jack keeps at least one or two of Will’s baubles in his hair and Will tells Jack that he loves him too. Jack calls him a foolish, sentimental pup but he smiles and his decided lack of romance doesn’t matter so much.
For: The Where’s the Rum Yahoo group Valentines Day contest
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: I’m not a big fan of V-Day and while this might be considered fluffy in retrospect, it’s kind of unpretty for a valentine’s day fic.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Jack is not romantically inclined in the slightest.
*~*~*~*
Jack, as an adult human male, has two hundred and six bones in his body. As Jack Sparrow, pirate captain extraordinaire, he has two hundred and eleven bones on or in his corpus. Each hand has twenty seven, his face has fourteen, there are two small bone dice threaded into his hair, one long boney spine poking out hazardously of the tangled mess, and one of his rings has a bone setting. Despite this myriad of choice as to where it might be placed, Jack doesn’t have a single romantic bone in, on, or around his body.
Will discovers this sometime into his tenth month aboard the Pearl and about eight months, give or take, that he and Jack have been - as Anamaria likes to say, with a snide smile - knocking boots. It’s a decidedly unromantic expression, and certainly not one that Will would have chosen. But it’s around that tenth month mark that he realizes that she might be right. He and Jack are certainly not doing anything else.
He and Jack do not share Jack’s little cabin below decks. Will sleeps in a hammock with the rest of the crew but most nights he’ll steal away to Jack’s room and they’ll - in even less charming language - fuck. Jack is surprisingly closemouthed. He grits his teeth through his grin, barely makes a sound the whole time, though he delights in making Will cry out against his hand and he comes with a grunt or a hiss. That is all. Will too is learning to bite his tongue, though it doesn’t come easily. Will likes his lovers to be exactly that, lovers.
It hits him harder than he’ll admit; Jack does not love him.
Jack loves one thing and that’s his freedom, and by extension, the Black Pearl. There is no room in him for anything else. Certainly not one blacksmith who’s still a little inept at the whole piracy business and more than a little inept and the whole sailing business.
Will doesn’t deal with this very well. He starts drinking which isn’t the best of plans because if he’s a bad sailor when he’s sober, he’s a terrible sailor when he’s drunk. It also backfires when he confines his drinking to the evenings because all it does is make him more susceptible to Jack’s advances. It’s not to say that Jack doesn’t like Will. He likes him well enough, well enough to bed him, well enough to share conversations and to keep wry amusement when Will bollocks something up. One might even say that Jack likes Will better than most since he’s not yet turned Will out on his ear, and Will might have pirate blood but the rest of him is decidedly landlubberly.
All the drinking does is give Will a perpetual hangover and a nasty temper. It doesn’t suit him, nor does it sit well with him. He gives that up after a week or so.
He tries ignoring Jack but that’s about as successful as ignoring a hurricane when you’re standing in the middle of it. They’re on a ship, there are only so many places for Will to hide and Jack knows all of them. He’s fucked Will in most of them. He also seems to have an uncanny knack for knowing when someone is avoiding him and has a great talent for seeking them out, whether they want to be found or not. They begin to argue, about nothing at all, and because it’s Will, this usually leads to apologies and making up. Making up, because it’s Jack, usually involves both of them being at least partially undressed and repeated acts of indecency.
As a general rule, when Jack wants something he gets it. He’ll go to the ends of the earth if it means enough to him. He’s proven that with his quest for the Pearl. But he doesn’t need to go to the ends of the earth to find Will, so it’s easy for him to get what he wants.
Will knows what he wants. He wants Jack to love him.
It’s a desire that he’s been carrying for as long as he can remember. Not, specifically, towards Jack, the attachment has changed from person to person over the years. He’s been disappointed every time.
It started out unselfishly enough. He wanted his father to love his mother enough to come home. When Bill stopped coming home, that was when things changed. Then all Will wanted was for his mother to love him enough that she wouldn’t die and leave him on his own. He knows, in retrospect, that she was very sick and no amount of love in the world could have kept her with him. Still, there is a small, scared little boy that lives inside of Will who believes, quite firmly, that if she’d only tried a little harder, if only losing her husband hadn’t worn her out…Will hates that part of himself when he remembers it.
He wanted his father to love him enough to find him. Enough to save him from pirates, or drowning. Again, Will knows this is foolhardy, because his father was somewhere at the bottom of the Caribbean trying to get free of a cannon. As a young man, he knows this well enough. As a ten year old child, clinging to a bit of gold and a few planks of wood, logic doesn’t hold water.
It changed again the day he was dragged out of the sea. When a golden angel saved him. Puberty didn’t help matters. Nor did living with a drunk who loved only the bottle and the money Will learned to bring in. Years and years passed and all Will wanted was for Elizabeth to love him. Most days he would have settled for having her notice him. Really, properly notice him. He thought he’d got what he wanted that day on the battlements. Adventure and near-death do things to a person though.
Will knows he’s good looking. Jack may not have what one might term discerning tastes but he knows a pretty thing from the rest and he’s not mean with his compliments where he feels they’re deserved. Besides, Will has all his own limbs, teeth and hair, he’s handy with a sword and he’s in fine shape. These things alone put him above much of the population.
A handsome young man and a daring adventure will turn a girl’s head. But not forever. And Elizabeth didn’t love him. She loved a make-believe pirate in (what Will learned the first day aboard the Pearl) a rather silly hat. These sorts of things wear thin and won’t hold up to strain. He’d gone to sea to prove himself to her and she’d married someone else. He hopes she’s happy. And not in the snide way that Anamaria likes to say it; he means it. He loved her.
He loved her, past tense, because Will now knows how this game works. He’ll love, and love, and love until the other person leaves and, sooner or later, Will finds someone else to love. That someone is Jack; and Jack does not love Will.
Will, despite what Jack’s teasing might lead you to believe, does in fact have a brain in his head. He knows how this game works, and he’s tired of it. However, in perfect accordance with Jack’s wry laments, Will has an excellent sense of dramatic timing but very little knowledge of what to do with it. He decides that he is going to leave the Pearl and set up his own smithy. There is always work for a blacksmith and there’s good money for a swords smith of his caliber. This decision is wise enough. His timing, however, is slightly off.
Jack is naked. So, in fact, is Will when Will opens his lips to impart his decision. Not only are they both naked but Will is on his back, one leg up over Jack’s hip, one hand fisted in the bed linens, the other in Jack’s hair and Jack is halfway through the motion of easing into Will. Jack makes a startled sound and since Jack talks a great deal with his body, he also makes a startled motion. It was a very dramatic time to announce his departure, but it wasn’t the most apt. Jack jerks, his head goes back, so Will winds up pulling his hair. This, in turn, makes Jack slip forward so he loses purchase on the sheets, hands skidding over the fabric as he lands, rather heavily, on top of Will. It probably doesn’t feel very good from where Jack is lying. It definitely doesn’t feel very good from Will’s position and he’s forced to grit his teeth against a decidedly unmanly whimper as Jack levers himself back up.
“I beg your pardon?” Jack isn’t smiling now, propped up over Will, inside Will.
Will looks away. It’s a bit foolish, but he’s wishing he’d kept his mouth shut and waited for the opportune moment. Even after ten months, he’s still not quite got a handle on it. “I said I was going to leave. Next port we stop into. I thought it was about time.”
Jack pulls away and rolls onto his back. There’s not a lot of room on the bunk and they’re pressed together from ankle to shoulder. Will has to resist the urge to squirm. “Bloody Christ, Will,” Jack says in amazement as he stares up at the ceiling where the lanthorn cover makes Arabian patterns shine on the dark wood. “You don’t half know how to pick your moments.”
They don’t say anything for a while. They just lie there, their skin slowly sticking together with sweat in the close air of the cabin, watching the patterns on the ceiling. Will bites his tongue until it bleeds to keep from saying anything else that might be considered inopportune.
Finally Jack sits up. “If that’s what you want.” He twists, leaning on one arm, so he can kiss Will then crawls on top of him, pinning him to the bunk. Will isn’t quite sure what to do. He was expecting to dress and go back to his hammock. “Are you bleeding?” Jack mutters against Will’s mouth but he guides Will’s leg back up over his hip and he doesn’t wait for the answer.
It’s not until after, after Jack’s left teeth marks on his shoulder and bruises on his hip and the inside of one forearm that Will understands. Jack may not have what one might term discerning tastes but he knows a pretty thing from the rest and at that moment, he was still Jack’s pretty thing. Jack’s had men and women up and down the coastlines of every island Will can name, never mind Jack’s more extensive travels. It’s certainly not about love, so why should it have anything to do with feelings at all? Will goes back to his hammock feeling ill used.
It doesn’t change a thing. He disembarks four days later and he doesn’t look back. Instead, Will walks into the nearest tavern, sets down his things, orders a drink and then he sits and stares at it for a few hours. He’s got no idea if he’s made the right decision, but for the first time he’s the one who walked away, even if he’s the only one who cares, and there has to be a first time for everything. It doesn’t make him feel any better.
Five long months pass. Will catches a ship to a more prosperous island and sets up a smithy. He makes parts for ships, and fixes or replaces swords and he doesn’t ask any questions about where the money comes from or what manner of ships the parts are going to. He’s teaching himself how to use his skills for detail to make jewelry. He’s not very good at it. He’s hammered out a few things but they all come out looking slightly squiffy. The last thing he made was supposed to be a ring. He did something wrong, god only knows what, and now it’s more of a blob. Will keeps all the mistakes in a little box. He thinks one day he’ll melt them down and make something better but after five months his mistakes have started to pile up.
There is little to distract him from his work. When he’s not working he practices fencing. He no longer counts the hours, he just does it until he can’t stand and then collapses into his bed above the smithy and tries not to dream. Will doesn’t know why he keeps fencing when he’s no longer trying to kill pirates. He has no lady fair to protect and he imagines the pistol he now keeps will do the job much better for any intruder.
If Will let himself stop and think for five minutes, he might miss Jack. But Will doesn’t stop. He makes his goods, he makes more swords than he needs, and he fights invisible enemies. When he dreams, it’s often nightmares.
One night, Will goes into town for a drink. Instead of drinking he buys a whore. She’s pretty enough, a little on the skinny side, with most of her own teeth and it looks as though she’s bathed recently. She has beautiful, sleek dark hair. He can’t see any visible signs of the pox and she winks at him. It’s the little wave that accompanies the wink that changes Will’s mind. He asks how much, she names a price and they go to one of the rooms above the tavern. Will kisses her and she’s willing enough but he sits on the edge of the moldering bed, puts his head in his hands and can’t bring himself to do anything to her. She sits next to him and pets his hair. Will has no desire to tell her all the ills of his life, and she doesn’t ask. He pays her anyway and goes back to the smithy where he makes ruined jewelry until his eyes ache in the bad light. He doesn’t go to the whores again.
After six months Will takes twine and knots all of his mistakes to lengths of it. He hangs them in his rooms where they wink, and shine, and catch the light. They’re beautiful, and useless, and often they get in Will’s way. Sometimes, if he’s tired, Will mistakes one of the flashes of light for Jack. He keeps turning around expecting Jack to be standing there.
One day, sometime into the seventh month, it is Jack.
Jack looks much the same as always and he’s stolen one of the baubles from its thread and is turning it over between his fingers, head cocked to one side. “What is it?” he asks.
Will sighs and shrugs. “A mistake.”
Jack tucks it into his pocket and starts poking about Will’s shop. “We left you northward.” He picks up a sword and turns it over, then puts it back and takes out another. Will lets him. He has very little to say to this specter. “I need a new sword.”
It hurts, but Will doesn’t really expect anything more of Jack. “What happened to the old one?” He wishes he hadn’t asked. He’s a blacksmith again, and he doesn’t want to know if his customers are pirates or not.
There’s an odd look in Jack’s eye and he fingers the hilt of his sword. He’s lying about something, but Will has no idea what. “T’was old, Will.” He resumes his investigation of the shop. “You do good trade here? Plannin’ on staying long?” He bats at the mistakes and sets them to jangling together. Will ignores the lurch his stomach gives when Jack smiles.
“No.” Now they are both lying about something. The lie sits heavy on Will’s chest until he realizes that he can’t stay. Not if Jack will come back again. “I thought it was about time to leave again.”
Jack makes a thoughtful humming sound. “Well, if you’re lookin’ for work, the Pearl could always use a blacksmith.” He taps the mistakes again. “Can I have these?”
Will turns away. “Of course.” He doesn’t care, he’ll make more. “I’ll start on a new sword unless you want one that I’ve already made.” Will points out the ones that Jack can have. He tries not to notice Jack’s hand on his shoulder as the pirate leans around him, or the way Jack smells, or the glint and shine of him. He resists the urge to shove Jack up against the smithy wall and kiss him and points out the high and low points of each of his swords.
“I didn’t break my sword,” Jack says abruptly. He goes so far as to draw it, and it’s old and needs a good sharpening and cleaning, but it’s certainly in one piece. “I came lookin’ for you. I need you back on the Pearl.”
Will starts taking down all the mistakes from their moorings. “No you don’t.”
“No,” Jack agrees. “You’re shite at sea.” He doesn’t help Will with his task, he just watches, that odd look back in his eye. “I thought you’d be where we left you.”
“Why?” Will hands the collection of twine and metal to Jack. He wants to ask what Jack will do with them, but he decides he doesn’t need to know. “People travel, Jack. You, more than most, should know that.”
Jack looks plaintive. “Not you, lad. I had to hunt up an’ down the Caribee-” he trails off. “I want you back on the Pearl, Will. If you’re not going to stay put here or there.” He smoothes his moustache and stares off at a point somewhere just past Will. “I’m askin’ you to come back.”
He can’t agree. Will crosses his arms and digs his fingers into the muscle and flesh to keep from saying yes. “Why?” he asks again, instead. “You’ve no use for me, and I do a fine trade here.”
What Jack says next is so quiet and mumbled that Will can barely hear him. He’s almost certain that he’s heard wrong because Jack Sparrow doesn’t miss people. Jack grins sheepishly though and Will wants to hit him for being such an ass. He wants to kiss him for coming back. Jack Sparrow has two hundred and eleven bones on, or in, his corpus. Not one of them is romantic. But he has a pocketful of Will’s mistakes and, as far as Will knows, Jack has only ever come back for one other thing, and that’s the Pearl. So Will arches an eyebrow, mimicking Jack, and sets his terms.
Jack hangs the little bits of metal in their room on the Pearl. Will usually hits his head on them when he stands up, but the light from the Arabic lanthorn catches on the metal and makes the tiny room into a fantastical place. The swords go to the crew, and Will resolves that he will teach them all to fight a little less haphazardly in their free time, because it’s something he can do.
Jack keeps at least one or two of Will’s baubles in his hair and Will tells Jack that he loves him too. Jack calls him a foolish, sentimental pup but he smiles and his decided lack of romance doesn’t matter so much.