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I remember sitting in the boat bringing men from the Pearl to the beach on that first day. The crew – being as gullible and superstitious as only sailors can be, no matter which way their moral compass points – had accepted Jack’s claims as gospel truth, but one – young and freckled, one of young Mr. Hawkins friends, unless is misremember – had asked for elaboration. When Jack just leaned back and grinned, Mr. Gibbs spun a tale – about a young, shipwrecked pirate who had ridden a sea turtle to shore, only to find himself on a deserted island seemingly far from any shipping lanes. He was alone except for a pair of wild goats. Then one day an immense bird had appeared, its wings turning day to night, each beat of them stirring up the waves. It swooped – and flew away, carrying a bleating goat in its huge talons. Clever Jack spent the next many days hunting the remaining goat, until finally one day he succeeded. On that very day the day turned to night once more as the bird returned and swooped – and carried away both the goat and the pirate clinging to it…
”Commodore James,” the pirate in question interrupts my reverie, making me turn around. ”Dinner is served,” and he bows, making a sweeping gesture to encompass the blanket he has spread out on the ground and the food spread out upon it, leaving barely enough room for two men to sit if they are friendly. Not that I mind overtly much.
Dinner is delicious, if somewhat unorthodox. My host is all energy, sitting down and leaping to his feet before sitting down again. He picks out bits of food for the both of us –a piece of fruit, a bit of cheese, a hard-boiled egg, a morsel of spicy grilled fish – as the mood strikes him, meanwhile telling fanciful tales involving whatever he is proffering, stories that time and again make me smirk or grin or simply laugh.
Once the greasiest foodstuff has been eaten, Jack wipes his fingers and then proceeds to dig out a bottle from the basket, a bottle which to my surprise turns out to not contain rum, but a dark red wine. He pours a mug of it for each of us (having apparently chosen not to take the chance of bringing actual glasses and accidentally breaking them), then picks up the small leather-bound volume, which has been lying abandoned at the edge of the blanket. A play, I suppose, but no. He leafs through it, glances at me and grins.
”Love is too young to know what conscience is,
Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?
Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,
Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:
For, thou betraying me, I do betray
My nobler part to my gross body's treason;
My soul doth tell my body that he may
Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason,
But rising at thy name doth point out thee,
As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,
He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.
No want of conscience hold it that I call
Her love, for whose dear love I rise and fall.”
”Honestly Jack, have you no sense of propriety? Is not even the Bard safe from you?” and I pluck the book from his hands, glaring at him, though mostly in jest. Truly, I rather expected him to make his own personal interpretation of the poem perfectly clear and he has fully met my expectations.
Still, I glare at him. It is expected, after all, and it is met with a wide grin.
”Well then, my dear Commodore James, how about ye show me how it is done properly-like, aye?”
”Oh, I will,” I reply, as I leaf through the slim volume, looking for a sonnet that will be proper to read. But as I turn the pages, my eyes gliding over one poem declaring the poet’s love after another, my own inappropriate feelings stir, and suddenly, the formerly innocuous pieces seem like clever traps. I cannot read these to Jack, I cannot risk that he might somehow hear these lines ring with the truth of my emotions. Oh, but surely there must be a single sonnet among the many that will not betray me, surely – for Jack is still looking at me, expectantly, curiously. To not read, will that not betray me as surely as not…
Enough. This will have to do.
”O, how I faint when I of you do write,
Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame!
But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
My saucy bark inferior far to his
On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;
Or being wreck'd, I am a worthless boat,
He of tall building and of goodly pride:
Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
The worst was this; my love was my decay.”
”How very – nautical of you, my dear Commodore.”
”As befits a sailor, surely?”
”Oh, aye,” he nods, grasping for the book. ”My turn.”
And so it begins, this little game of ours, with Jack trying his best to scandalize me through gesture and intonation as surely as through his choice of sonnet, while I struggle to read them as they ought to be read.
Again and again Jack pours wine into our mugs. Again and again I forget myself and laugh at his antics instead of frowning and glaring as I ought. And as the evening progresses, it grows easier and easier to pick a fitting sonnet.
At some point I realize that it is getting dark and I root through the basket in search of a lantern, but apparently Jack has neglected to bring one. I look back at the trees and realize that night has long since fallen between them, dark and deep. I should not like to try and walk back in the dark without a light. It would be far too easy to break a leg or worse. I suppose we will have to spend the night up here. Sharing the single blanket Jack has bothered to bring.
I glare at him – again. It is getting to be a habit – as is his answering grin. He calls me back to his side with a gesture and we resume our reading, sitting shoulder to shoulder, holding the book closer and closer as the night falls.
”My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare. ”
I lift my head, having been forced to bend down and squint to make out the letters on the page, and freeze at finding myself suddenly face to face with Jack, so close that the tips of our noses are only just not touching. For what seems like an eternity neither of us moves, here in the dark.
Then Jack kisses me.
His lips are sliding over mine, lightly parted, tongue flickering out and in, teasing and oh, it is wrong, it is sinful, but it is Jack, but it is so good, and it has been so long. Surely there can be no harm in it, here in the dark.
I match him, lips to lips, tongues twining, teeth clicking with the clumsiness of a first kiss. He tastes of wine, of course, but beneath it is rum and sun and something else, something I cannot quite define.
Something Jack.
Then the lips leave mine. I open my eyes (when did I close them?) and am about to tug them back, wanting more (and when exactly did my fingers entangle themselves in Jack’s hair?), but Jack is moving, settling his weight in my lap, and then the lips are back and it is good. Yes.
Then the lips move again, sliding, sucking, nibbling at my jaw, gliding down, as clever fingers undo buttons, pushing cloth and a dangling gemstone aside.
Again he moves, the pirate in my lap, thrusting, sliding hardness against hardness, and it is all good, so good, and I moan and let my head fall back, baring my throat to those hungry, wicked, delicious lips, wanting more, wanting anything, wanting everything.
”Nice, Jamie-love, very nice.”
It feels as if someone had just thrown a bucketful of ice water at me. Everything is cold for just a moment, cold and empty and sharp as broken glass. Then heat rises once more. The heat of anger. How dare he…
I scramble backwards, dislodging him. I try to get to my feet, stumble, try again with more success.
”How dare you! You – you pirate! How dare you!”
”Now, Jamie-love, where might you be…” and he is blinking up at me, sitting on the ground. Even in this meagre light I can see that his lips are swollen from kissing, and I know mine are too. Damn him.
”How dare you! Have you not humiliated me enough? Or did you feel the need to add corruption of a commodore to your long list of sins?”
”Now, Jamie, ’twas but a bit of innocent sport…” and he climbs to his feet, not quite managing not to stumble in the process, unsteadily – due to the drink, no doubt.
”Sport? How dare you, you – you blackguard?! You villain!” Is that all this is to you, you bastard? Just a bit of sport? A bit of fun? A game?!
”James, James, James, settle down, there’s a lad…” and he moves towards me, raising his hands, almost imploringly, but I back away from him, back towards the trees.
”No! I am not going to be your latest plaything! How dare you approach me in this manner, you – you sodomite? Have you no decency in you? No shame? How dare you?!” How dare you pretend to give me what I want?
”Now, really, Commodore, ’tis not exactly a one-man dance we were dancing. If you’d just settle down…” but I will not. I cannot. Who knows what might happen if I do, if I succumb to Jack and his oh-so-reasonable words and his fingers reaching out towards my face, as slowly as if I was some wild thing he wanted to tame.
”How dare you?” and I slap them away, and again as they come back, harder. Repeating those words again and again and again, louder and louder and louder. Surely they must be able to hear this racket as far away as down by the Pearl.
”Commodore James bloody Norrington, will ye bloody well settle down!” and he grasps my right hand in his left, a grip like a vice, and with his right hand he slaps me, as if I was some hysterical woman.
It stings.
We stand in silence for a bit, eyes locked. He never relinquishes his grip.
A drop of something slides down my cheek, down next to the corner of my lip. I catch it on the tip of my tongue. It tastes like salt.
I look down on his right hand. One of those gaudy rings has somehow gotten twisted and is facing the palm of his hand. There is a speck of something on it, but I cannot make out the colour.
I close my eyes, taking a deep, steadying breath, then another one for good measure. Then I meet his gaze once more.
”Unhand me, Captain Sparrow. Or is it perhaps your custom to rape your captives?”
For yet another long moment he does nothing and I begin to grow worried that… but then he does let got of me, with the abruptness of a man letting go of something suddenly painfully hot or utterly repulsive.
I whirl around and plunge into the forest. I run through the dark between the trees, down the slope. I run recklessly, not caring about the snagging branches or the danger of breaking my neck in the dark. I trip over a root, fall, get back on my feet, still running. I am surrounded by the noises of stirring night life, the splashes as I run through water that I cannot see, only hear and feel – and if I seem to hear someone calling my name from somewhere behind me, then it is nothing but the forest and the night and my mind conspiring to play an evil trick on me.
I run.
The forest runs out.
I find myself standing at a tiny beach, grey and cold in the light of the risen moon. Like a sleepwalker I walk down to the water, removing my shirt and holding it up for inspection. One of the sleeves has miraculously escaped getting soiled during my mad dash through the night time forest, so I dip it in the sea and cautiously dab at the tiny cut on my cheek.
It stings.
That is when it comes crashing down over me like a tidal wave, the realization of what I have just done, what I have refused and what I have said.
Oh Lord. Oh Lord no.
Tiny waves licking at my ankles drive me back ashore. I pick a place on the beach well above the tidal mark, then I slowly lie down.
It is cold and I shiver, even having put my shirt back on.
I feel curiously – empty.
Tomorrow, the sun will rise and warm the sand, and I will wake up – alone.
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From: (Anonymous)
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But, no, it says "10/?", so there´s still hope. :D
Thank you so, so much! So good that this story continues! And an extra yay for the sonnets!
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Oh dear.
Oh dearie me.
Poor James. Silly, beloved fool.
Ah well. ^^ I must say, just the mere fact that you posted this overshadows it all. *is ecstatic*
" I can feel my eyebrow rising of its own volition." - There it is. Proof that James' eyebrows are seperate entities. xDDD
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I am so happy to see more to this story, and I love all the past love traumas poor James has faced.
Wow...just wow.
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Any who, thanks very much for the update. :)
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WOW!!... sigh...
write... more please, end my misery...
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Also, 10 is in my memories page, just not next to the other chapters, since it's been some time since last time I bothered to sit down and order all the entries nicely and alphabetically...
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Did you ever finish it? Because it's absolute torture that you ended it there! Please say there is a happy ending? *puppy dog eyes*