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OK, yes, Reckless Acts is a cheesy title. But it's a cheesy story. Pirate fluff. Good lord. Don't really even know why it was written.
Summary: Jack is insecure. The Commodore...isn’t. Fluff. Or something equally Out of Character.
AN: This is what happens when I try to write Sparrington without alcohol in my system. Though, when you when watch the movie enough, you notice Jack isn’t actually drunk all that much either. So that’s no real excuse for rambling on forever about nothing. I suppose this is what they wanted to do, since they wouldn’t do what I wanted to do. Bitches. Anyway, read![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pir8fancier’s (sexee) Game, Set, Match. Got me thinking about Jack Sparrow playing chess. Tried to write it. Ended up being a lot like me playing the game...which is to say bored and easily distracted. Oh well. It’s done.
POTC
It were torture, that’s what it was. One puffed up and too bloody righteous Commodore’s way of ensuring that one Captain Jack Sparrow did not escape from that same Commodore’s hold for what would be the sixth time, if Jack was keeping count properly—and of that Jack was more than certain that he was--by ensuring that Jack was dead long before his scheduled date with the noose.
Killing him, that’s what it really was. He’d die of boredom in right in his chair if Norrington had his way, and considering the amount of time Jack had been left alone in the dusty, cramped space that the Commodore considered an office, Jack was beginning to suspect that it truly was Norrington’s plan to see him dead before he was given the chance to slip free of his clutches once more.
Hadn’t read him wrong then, when Jack had decided to disable the rudder chain to keep the man from turning his ship and firing upon Jack’s newly acquired boat. He had thought the man might try it-—pride, as it were—-and he hadn’t been disappointed. Course, the man hadn’t done the same for Elizabeth, and a pirate had taken her, which was interesting, but only something to consider-like, whenever Jack’s mind had nothing to do but dwell on stiff-necked Commodores.
Which, when he thought about it, was now, and so Jack wrinkled his brow quite thoughtfully and lifted his hand, the free and unshackled one, to pull on his beard.
“I fail to see any prize for me in what you’re suggestin’, Commodore,” Jack offered softly, smiling, and raised his gaze to the desk between them. Just for a moment, he studied the pale, slender hands resting next to a flat plane of wood, marked with a light and dark pattern, watching the agitated tapping of one finger against the desk’s surface, and then Jack’s eyes moved elsewhere, to the window and the hint of evening sky just visible if he stretched his neck.
“We’re going to be here for some time, Sparrow.” Deliberately ignoring his title, the Commodore spoke evenly enough, masking any smugness he felt, if he felt any. Jack would have thought the man simply felt nothing at all, excepting that of course Jack knew better. Had seen the feelings expressed with his very own eyes, heard quiet longings with his very own ears, deep enough to make even a pirate feel for him. Not that the man seemed to appreciate the sentiment, judging from Jack’s current situation. Locked him up first chance he’d had, and not even in a proper cell. Had two very unpleasant red-coated fellows haul Jack up to this tower and his office and then stick him in this chair, irons at one wrist keeping him in place until the Commodore had decided to come keep him company.
Ought to be right pleased with himself then, capturing Jack Sparrow a week after his shortly-to-be-famous escape from the noose, even if the Commodore was taking no chances with ordinary guards and a normal cell in Port Royal’s gaol. Not for Captain Jack Sparrow, and Jack found himself again looking back to the desk, his eyes narrowing.
Little wooden figures were lined up so bloody precisely that only Norrington himself could have put them there. They were meant to represent men, Jack knew, even if they didn’t look like any Jack had ever seen in all his voyages. Light and dark, he didn’t know what kind of wood, all carved and curved so smoothly that Jack’s fingers twitched with the urge to touch just one.
He curled his fingers into his palms and raised his head. The Commodore wasn’t looking at him, busy straightening the rows of little men as though each piece weren’t already exactly where it ought to be before a game was started. Frowning so very intently down at his chessboard that he didn’t seem to feel Jack’s stare one bit. That was interesting. Very interesting, in fact, since Jack hadn’t thought even boredom would make the Commodore unbend enough to offer a game.
Even if it was such a very boring game.
Jack’s feet twitched on the floor and he let out a long, loud breath, the sound seeming to startle the Commodore into looking at him.
“We’re going to be here, then?” Jack asked though suspecting the answer; that he was to be watched by the Commodore personally to keep him here until he made his second visit with the Port Royal gallows. He grinned to show that already understood, and to his pleasure, Norrington dropped his head in acknowledgment, his eyes falling as well.
Studied his feet a lot, the man did, when something didn’t sit easy. Doubtless afraid of what those around might see in his eyes, not at all like the unwarranted animosity he felt for old Jack; That he was open enough with. Always shoving Jack’s hands away he was, as though he were a lass keeping watch on her virtue, as though Jack would have dared to take further liberties with a Royal Commodore, would have tried to slide his hands across the broad shoulders and down over the strong chest to feel the thunder of a heart under his fingertips.
His grin widening, Jack leaned in and slid a piece forward without looking at it, then leaned back to watch the quick swivel of the Commodore’s head. Eyes that appeared both green and brown—but mostly green—went from the board to Jack as though truly surprised. Then Norrington coughed.
Whatever had the man done that he had ended up being the one chosen to sit with Jack Sparrow in his last hours? No doubt he was hiding from a soon-to-be Mr. and Mrs. Turner, and even the company of a scalawag was better than nothing.
Jack’s bow was a tad lopsided, seeing as he had to move one hand to the other in order to press them together, and how he couldn’t move much of his body from the chair, but he thought his meaning was clear enough, judging from the manner in which mostly green eyes grew round and met his for long enough for his own to grow dry.
He blinked, and the Commodore’s brow lowered into the stern frown that most were no doubt familiar with, as well-known to Jack as the sudden curve of his lips that meant a smile. A cruel smile too. The kind that would have meant a show of teeth from anyone else, perhaps a joke from Barbossa, but for Commodore Norrington that didn’t seem to be worth bothering with. His meanings were always conveyed with the barest gestures if Jack were to guess, and he glanced down at the board between them.
“Who said you were to go first, Sparrow?” Norrington arched one eyebrow, but slid a piece forward—on the opposite side of the board as Jack’s, Jack noticed—and shrugged.
“A gift for a condemned man,” he offered, stretching up to again push his little man forward, very close to the Commodore’s little men in fact, where he was not surprised to see it quickly taken and placed to the side. He wasn’t a man to hesitate in doing his duty, the Commodore, and Jack pouted at him, frowning a bit.
“Don’t give a man a chance, do you, Commodore?” Norrington was still bent over the board when Jack asked, and he glanced up without lifting his head.
“One chance is all you seem to need, Sparrow. Ergo, one is one too many.” His voice clipped, Norrington sat back and stared down his nose at Jack across from him. He seemed confused when Jack’s grin returned.
Still staring into those perplexed eyes, Jack extended his free arm and pushed yet another little wooden man out into the field. Norrington’s gaze left his, a soft breath leaving his open lips as he considered what Jack had done, and almost, Jack was tempted to look and see where he had moved the piece. Almost, but instead he studied the Commodore studying the board. Commodore bloody Norrington preoccupied with a game. Gibbs would have said it weren’t real.
Right boring for a dream if it was. There were better things Jack Sparrow could be doing in his dreams then playing a bit of chess.
His mouth dry, Jack licked his lips, dropping back further into his chair and turning his gaze back to the window. He shifted, once, in his seat, and saw from the corner of his eye the Commodore make his decision and move his piece.
There had to be cloth lining the bottom of each wooden man, for their movements were hushed and soft, just whispers of velvet on velvet that were no louder than the Commodore’s careful breaths. Somewhere, far down below, there were bells and footsteps, far away from both of them, as distant as London for all that either of them paid them mind.
Norrington’s hand was still resting on the piece he had moved, and Jack slid his gaze to that before turning his head to follow, watching two fingers tap on the round head, clean, even nails, white as moons, stroking across the wood as though the Commodore also appreciated the smooth feel.
He had not taken Jack’s little man this time, and Jack spared a moment to glare at the pawn before scowling. Smart man, the Commodore.
“Your move, Sparrow.” There was no smug smile, but Jack knew the man was smirking inside anyhow, doubtless thinking that he would not be baited by a pirate twice, and there had to be a reason Jack was being so careless to be so easily captured.
Jack bared his teeth, fanged and golden, in a grin that made the Commodore’s chin come up, even if the superior smile slipped a bit at the same time. A line crossed his brow, for one moment only, and then it was smoothed, mostly green eyes steady on Jack.
Suspicious man as well, the Commodore. It weren’t as though Jack would have gotten himself captured just a week after escaping by design, but it was flattering of the man to think otherwise. Or to let Jack think that he thought otherwise; it was hard to say exactly how clever a man the Commodore was, what with honour and duty demanding a man do stupid things just when he had the chance to use his smarts.
Course, the Commodore had no reason to be flattering Jack at all, that Jack could figure. So then, ergo as the man had said, the man were not at all certain that Jack wasn’t captive of his own will.
Letting his grin slip to the easiest of easy smiles, Jack ducked his head as he leaned forward, reaching for the same little man but stopping his hand before he reached his target. He tapped a finger on the tallest figure’s crowned head, not at all surprised to find it spiky, and then let his palm hover indecisively over the back row. It was nothing at all to imagine Norrington observing his rough and tar-stained fingers, just as Jack had watched his clean and china-white hands a few moments before.
“This one,” he gestured to the softer lines of the figure next to the spiked head of the king and hummed for a bit. “Refresh me, Commodore-love, how does this one move?”
Irritation wiped the confusion from the man’s face, though not all the suspicion, Jack noted. And wondered, not for the first time, why it was that no one ever trusted him.
“That is the Queen, Sparrow. She may move wherever she pleases.”
“Ain’t that the way with queens, mate?” Eyes wide and innocent as the Commodore glanced sharply at him, Jack moved his hand to his exposed pawn once again and slid it right into hostile waters. Norrington dropped his gaze to the little figure, then turned his head to the side, doubtless staring out at the view denied to Jack.
His lips were firm, as always, thinning to consider something unpleasant, and Jack had little doubt that he should find it unpleasant as well, were he in the man’s shoes. Luckily, he still wore his own boots and decided to have a look at them, seeing as it was his last night on this earth and tomorrow morning they would end up in the hands of a hangman.
The Commodore gave a start as Jack propped first one booted foot on the man’s desk, and then the other, crossing them with a pleased sigh and leaning back in his chair. “It’s me last night on earth, mate,” Jack offered before he received a scold for soiling the desk.
“If you lived to be a hundred, I am certain you would have done it regardless.” It could not have been humour tipping up one corner of the Commodore’s oh-so-firm-looking lips, anymore than it was shame that made his gaze leave the window and fall, once more, to the floor.
“Hardly a fair supposition, Commodore,” Jack mused, again stroking his beard and nodding once, ignoring the small twitch of Norrington’s broad shoulders at his choice of words. “After all, I’m to hang in the morning. So we have no way of testin’ your theory.” One little sentence and he had the Commodore at attention, eyes fast on him and full of a thousand pointed questions that the other man had too much control to ask. “Not even worth thinkin’ about then, so we had best get back to our game.” Just barely—-and obviously--Jack stifled a yawn.
“Perhaps we might test another theory then.” Norrington’s words could have kept time with the marching soldiers outside the window. As though to echo Jack’s fancy, he laid one hand upon the desk between them and drummed his fingers back and forth twice, then three, times. It made no sound, but Jack imagined one anyway, quick and merciless.
Jack had not looked at the Commodore as he had stood on the gallows, listening to drums and a list of his adventures being read out. There would have been no point to that, and the only kind who thought it fitting were fools like young William who acted recklessly with no time left instead of acting recklessly when there was plenty of time stretching out before him.
Jack looked up to find Norrington still watching him, his eyes as green as the finest waters on the clearest of days, and if Jack had been looking at the ocean, he would said she beckoned.
He blinked, sweeping his gaze back to the window to observe the light.
A sailor the Commodore might claim to be while standing at the helms of such big, fine boats, but there was no scent of salt water about him now, and little evidence of the sun in a face shielded by a Commodore’s feathered hat. Hardly seemed of the sea at all, with no touch of her on his straight and spotless uniform.
He looked soft...pale...young enough to be Gibb’s son, Jack decided after a few minutes’ worth of musing, tapping out a song against the air with his boot. It were those eyes, or perhaps that closed and pressed mouth, that told a man otherwise, unless of course a man had the misfortune to be between the Commodore and the fulfillment of his duty.
Very determined, he must be now, to have risked the questions of his men and shut himself in such a small room with a man he rather famously despised. Jack was a little pleased with just how well-known the Commodore’s contempt for him was; knowing there was no way anyone in the Caribbean could ever claim to have not heard of Captain Jack Sparrow now. Doubtless it had raised more than one eyebrow in the fort to hear where Jack Sparrow and Commodore Norrington would be spending this evening.
This was very different from the last final night he had spent in Port Royal. Interesting, the difference of a week. It was more comfortable, it was true, to be in the Commodore’s fine chair, in his office, given the chance to play another game with Norrington.
Though, Jack wrinkled his nose and rolled his own fingers on the arm of the chair restlessly, it did leave something to be desired. Some rum, a song or two, or perhaps just a handful or two of what former first mate would have described as pleasurable company.
His grin returned, and Jack glanced back to the Commodore’s face. He wasn’t likely to get that here. Trapped here in this dusty, cramped little room and chained to a chair to keep him an arm’s length away from any bit of happiness in his last hours.
“It’s your move, Sparrow.” The Commodore’s voice was so smooth it might as well have been distilled from sugar, and even though no officer of the King’s Navy would be caught tasting of rum whilst guarding a prisoner, Jack couldn’t resist running his tongue along his lower lip a bit and just...wondering.
He stroked his beard, scratching at the short scruff along his jaw and making no move toward the board. The Commodore’s teeth looked to be clenched hard enough to crack a lichee nut shell, and the faint line of pink in the other man’s cheeks spoke of a rising temper. Jack paused for a moment, to consider that too, and Norrington narrowed his eyes.
“We can stop the game if you don’t wish to play, Sparrow.” The offer might have sounded more generous if Norrington had actually opened his mouth to say it. Which was fascinating in itself really, almost as interesting as the way Norrington’s chin dropped a moment later, but his gaze stayed on Jack’s face. As though he couldn’t decide whether to be ashamed of himself or not, snapping at a prisoner, excepting the prisoner was Captain Jack Sparrow.
Jack nodded in sympathy for what must be quite a problem for the good Commodore, pulling at his braids before taking his hand away to wave it in the air between them. Someday he might ask the Commodore why the man got so angry around one lonesome--though infamous and brilliant--pirate when he had hundreds of others to chase. But then, Jack reasoned the answer were obvious just to look at the two of them.
Norrington had shaved just that morning. Kept his wig on even though there was no one to see it but Jack, probably practiced with his sword four hours a day just to prove Port Royal housed someone more desperate than young William Turner. And not for anything would the man sit back in his chair, not even in the heat, or with the boredom, and especially not with a black-hearted scoundrel leaning back with his feet up in the chair opposite him.
There were bigger fools than William Turner in the world.
“You started the game, mate,” Jack mumbled at last, then blinked, startled into looking down at the board when his challenging words were only met with the faintest of smirks. It was bloody unfair, and if he were anyone else other than Captain Jack Sparrow, it would have been very disheartening.
When had the man moved his little castle? The Commodore was through wasting time with pawns, it seemed, even if Jack couldn’t exactly remember what that particular piece was used for. But there it was, a Fort Charles in miniature right next to Jack’s pawn.
Some rum might have helped a man remember, he decided resentfully. And no doubt that were the reason a drink had been denied him.
Glancing up just gave him a view of a too bloody calm Commodore, and no answers whatsoever. With a scowl, Jack turned back to the game, weighing options. Get his man killed now, get his man killed later, kill Norrington’s man, kill Norrington’s man later, stop playing altogether. None of which would actually get Jack anything he wanted, even if they might make Norrington happy. If anything could make the Commodore happy, which was something else to consider-like. If only he had more time.
Slowly putting his feet on the floor in order to lean in, Jack extended his free hand and picked up his pawn, dropping it one space farther away from him, one space farther away from the wooden castle. He shrugged, putting a finger to his mouth thoughtfully and then frowning to show confusion.
“Foolish.” Norrington’s gaze swept smoothly over the board and Jack as though surveying a map. He doubtless had plenty of charts at his disposal too, and would never plot a course with a broken compass and his memories. Which, all told, taught Jack nothing except that it truly weren’t likely he’d ever catch the scent of rum on the other man’s lips. He sighed and glanced once again to the window.
Of course, the man had followed Jack’s course of a broken compass and memories, now that Jack thought of it, returning his gaze to Norrington just as clear eyes slid away from him. Norrington kept his eyes on the game like they had always been there, and Jack felt his eyebrows go up.
“For a pirate, you seem to lack a predatory nature, Sparrow.” Norrington had stopped to speak with one hand left holding one of Jack’s pieces, and Jack smiled nervously, taking his gaze from the board before Norrington could remove the wooden man. His coat felt tight, stuck in this chair as he was, but of course there wasn’t much Jack could do about it. Bloody Commodore had seen to that hadn’t he, Jack reminded himself. Couldn’t even leave a man alone on his last night in the world, had to bring him here to pester him with his bloody, boring game. He was as annoying as young William with his insistence on last moment efforts.
“You see, Commodore...” Jack began brightly, flicking his hands out in distraction before he had lifted his eyes back to the Commodore. Norrington was still looking down at the board, so Jack glanced down, frowning slightly before again studying the other man.
Norrington coughed, breaking their silence, and Jack grinned, wider than he ought to have, wider than was safe. But the Commodore wasn’t looking, so Jack shook his head enough to hear the pleasant jingling of the beads in his hair and leaned in.
Fingers stroking through his beard, Jack nodded in agreement without even bothering to check the weather outside the window. He had noted it all the first time he had glanced out at the tiny view. The wind was fair, the sky was clear, and night birds were calling.
All that freedom lay outside. But in the Commodore’s cramped and dusty excuse for an office, that little fort had not moved. Tempting bait just sitting next to it, ripe for plunder and pleasure and instead the Commodore had moved another figure.
Now, the man had no reason to prolong the game—giving Jack chances when they both had already come to the accord that one was one too many. It wouldn’t take much, if Jack wanted, to imagine what the Commodore might do if Jack continued to play as he had been. Victory would be his whether or not he captured more pirates on his way. That was the way with Commodores who practiced playing chess almost as much as they practiced with their sabers.
This was a game that had ended before it had begun in Jack’s opinion, as only one of the players playing had shown any interest in said playing, as it were. But perhaps the players playing might have had interest in the game if both players playing had known exactly what game was being laid out on the table between them.
“With the right incentive, what won’t a man do?” Jack sighed sadly, capturing the Commodore’s brave little fort and setting it aside before sweeping off his hat.
The smirk was back on Norrington’s face before Jack had readjusted his hat to his satisfaction, and Jack scratched his cheek thoughtfully as he regarded the pieces. Then he blinked, confused as to exactly when the Commodore gotten so near to his king and queen. He wasn’t too many moves away, if Jack could remember all the movements correctly. ‘Course, it was once a man got close to the end that he was in the most danger. All exposed he was, trapping the king alone like that.
Jack’s scowl shifted to a quick smile, and he hummed softly under his breath as he directed his pieces in his mind and finally moved just one. Norrington was glancing at him, not-quite frowning as he evidently considered changing his plan now that Jack was truly minding the game, sliding his own figures about the board in response to each move Jack made.
If the fact that neither side lost any men after that bothered the Commodore, he gave no sign. Aside from bending the smallest of small fractions to better observe the game, Norrington had not spoken and had made no move to since Jack had taken an interest. And no matter how many times Jack had glanced up, ready to catch the man in the act, as it were, he had not once found the Commodore’s gaze anywhere but on the board.
His fingers gave not the slightest twitch that they would return to their previous drumming motion, and Jack found himself watching them as the time stretched out, and the bit of sky through the window turned dark.
Jack leaned in a bit further, resting one elbow on the desk and letting his other arm sit awkwardly behind him. The Commodore’s breathing hitched, quite as it had on his fine boat when Jack had leaned toward him in much the same way. He had been locked in irons then as well, Jack recalled, smiling to himself and humming louder.
“You’ve captured a remarkable number of prisoners, Commodore,” Jack commented just the Commodore’s hand reached out at last. Eyes that were leaning more to brown now that Jack was closer lifted to stare at Jack, and astonishment didn’t take long to turn to annoyance when Jack gestured to the pile of forgotten men at the Commodore’s elbow.
“Your point, Sparrow?” Nasty and venomous tone aside, the Commodore seemed very confused, his thumb and forefinger still holding the tiny cross atop the piece he had just moved. Jack shrugged, and watched as Norrington released his wooden clergyman but left his hand hovering above the board.
“But you don’t hold them all so close...” Jack added, and swooped in with his smoothly carved horsehead to knock the bishop onto his arse, rather liking the crooked path the horse took to get there. If the Commodore’s hand was in the way, and Jack’s hand should happen to brush against it for a moment or two, well there wasn’t anything to be seen in that, was there? A firm hand it was too. Not soft or smooth, but not rough either. And though Norrington were as still as if frozen, his hand was fair warm indeed.
The only other time their hands had happened to touch had been on the Port Royal docks, if one could call the other man’s death grip on his wrist to be just a touch, and Jack considered now, since he had the time, that Norrington had exactly the hands a Commodore ought to have, just as Jack had the quick fingers that a pirate should. It was a wonder then that neither of them had yet moved away.
Try though he might, Jack didn’t think the Commodore could have explained this as leading to an arrest, if he ever had to explain it to anyone. That Jack Sparrow was a pirate was known to every soul in Port Royal, and there was absolutely no reason for a goodly-fine Commodore to be consorting with his sort; to be sitting peaceably in the same room as him, playing a game as though they were mates, watching him steadily as their fingers kept still contact between them and forgetting that he ought to be pushing the dirty pirate away like he’d done before.
It would look quite incriminating, should anyone walk in then. The simple act of being alone with Jack now might be enough to condemn a man to a scurrilous reputation. But strain all he pleased, Jack could detect no steps outside the door, almost as though an order for privacy had been given in advance.
“You ‘ave no interest in the queen, Commodore-love?” He didn’t think if he had had any rum in the last few hours, that his words would have been so bloody loud. Norrington pulled back his hand and sat up just like some weasel of a pirate had just fired a shot or two into his backside, his expression saying he might just do the hangman’s job for him. It was a most forbidding look, and Jack bowed his head to acknowledge it, even if the effect were not quite so forbidding to Jack when a pretty dusting of rose coloured the man’s face and neck.
It could have been the very displeased reaction of a jilted man. Left all by his onesies, the man had been, and in public too. All he had for his own now was a promise to chase a pirate he planned to hang in the morning. It was a tale worthy of the saddest of Oriental operas.
“My interests are not your concern, Sparrow.” Norrington spoke just as Jack was composing his best commiserating expression, and he was left with pointing at the other man with his chained hand, letting the metal scratch against the wood as he gestured.
“Game was your idea, mate. Ain’t no reason now to pretend otherwise.” The way in which Norrington’s chin jerked up at Jack’s words did not seem promising. And neither did the sudden way all that delicious colour left the man’s face, which, more than anything else, was likely the reason that Jack heard himself continuing to speak even as he was frowning and trying to determine where exactly he had placed a foot wrong.
“You’ve already captured me, love, so I don’t know what you’re out to prove by trying to win at this game as well, unless you want to see a pirate play a match without cheating—which...” Jack paused to inhale and noticed that Norrington did the same, long and deep and bone-weary tired. Caution had him glancing away, but it did not take a smart man long to notice what they needed to notice. “...Which a lesser man than Captain Jack Sparrow may have been tempted to do, Commodore,” Norrington snorted derisively, and Jack ignored him, “but there’s no sort of reward in that sort of dishonesty...”
“I am well aware that you did not wish to play, Sparrow.” Norrington’s cool remark stopped Jack’s flow of words, stopped him with his bloody mouth open in fact, and Jack scowled for form’s sake but went silent readily enough and sat back in his chair. Which, a man like Will would not have noticed at all, but which Norrington seemed to already know Jack would do. Which was interesting, and said a lot about what exactly one man could learn about another man in an hour’s worth of chess playing. Which was possibly the whole point of this exercise, since Jack now found his mind full of strange suspicions and memories of Norrington that had not been there that morning.
He would have keelhauled dear William at that moment for a sip or two of rum.
“I am also well aware that you did not cheat.” Calmly spoken words that could runs chills down the spine of a man trapped on a shadeless sun-baked spit of land left the Commodore’s mouth, and then he was looking down, perhaps to the board forgotten between them or maybe to his feet. That he liked to look at his feet was an observation that Jack had made before, but now he wondered if he had studied his shiny buckled shoes as Jack Sparrow had walked to the gallows.
The truly irritating thing was…he hadn’t looked then, so he had no way of knowing that, did he? Blast, but it was hard for a man to think straight when his mouth was dry. Jack darted out his tongue to lick his lips, and then rolled his shoulders in a way that might have been mistaken for a careless shrug.
“I…I shall call someone else to stand watch then.” Norrington spoke as though Jack had answered him and they were saying their farewells and nevermore shall their paths cross again until the next life. Except that try though he might Jack couldn’t recall having said a word. Not even a “Between you and Jack” and certainly nothing as definite as, “It is,” which was a most definite, if brief and heartless, turn of phrase. But there was the Commodore, being his most Commodore-ish, steadfastly and nobly staring at his chessboard as he returned each piece to where it had been at the start without any sort of proper conclusion to the game at all.
“And what of your other theory, Commodore?” Jack was quite bloody certain that his mouth had never been so dry, not even on those long three days on that cursed island before Fortune had bestowed upon him such a lovely cache. Rescue, and rum, and the chance for revenge. And the Pearl. Of course his Pearl.
The last little pawn was not quite back in place but Norrington stopped and raised his eyes, caution all that Jack could read in them.
“I have a theory, meself.” The only reaction to both his smile and his statement were a raised eyebrow, and Jack felt his smile falter a bit. This must have been easier for Will; being on the verge of death had been a fresher experience for the lad, after all. But the terms of their agreement had been clear, the Commodore had created the opportune moment. It was Jack who had chosen the only one.
Norrington sighed when Jack did not speak and put a hand to the table, clearly to rise to his feet.
“That a Commodore guarding the famous Captain Jack might have the scent of rum on his breath, to suggest such a game with a pirate and a scalawag.” Jack exhaled the words and then had to quickly suck in air in case he was wrong and a very furious and fearsome Commodore drew his sword and Jack had to talk his way out of a gutting.
Norrington’ jaw went slack. Without his mouth actually falling open, he gaped and then clicked his teeth back together, all the while staring straight at Jack. His eyebrows went up, and then down, and Jack waved a hand in the air, not sure what he ought to say now to follow what he had already said.
“Are you insinuating a royal naval officer has been drinking while on duty, Sparrow?” The Commodore drummed his fingers on the table and Jack licked his dry lips.
“Well…” But the Commodore was pushing himself back and out of his chair, looming suddenly just as he had almost every other time he had been angry with Jack. He reached a hand into his coat and tossed something on the desk before stepping to the side, next to the window, not deigning to look out. The man’s eyes were only on Jack, and if only it were just unease that curled in Jack’s belly.
“Would go a long way to explain why you’re in here with the likes of me.” That Jack--to his eternal shame--sputtered a little as he spoke seemed to actually amuse the Commodore, judging from the brief smirk that the man did not try to hide. If Jack had been some dainty law-abiding lass, he doubted Norrington would have been so cruel. But before Jack could decide whether to howl his complaint or feign madness, the Commodore was stepping toward him and leaning down.
His posture was correct. Even bent to Jack’s eye level he was at straight angles. And yet he was so close. So bloody close. He had pulled back when Jack had snaked his way into close proximity with him before, stepped back just as Jack had finally got his hands under those starched lapels for a moment or two of possibilities and now here he was, not inches from Jack’s face.
Brown eyes watched him carefully, maybe having seemed lighter underneath the imposing dark of the man’s eyebrows, next to the smooth, pale flesh of his face. Jack looked down to the man’s waist, where one hand rested at his sword’s hilt, and then back up.
His hands were itching something terrible.
“To appease your curiosity, Sparrow.” Norrington twisted his head to the side, exposing a bit of his throat, the line of his jaw, and Jack narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, as a man ought to when a tempting bit of swag was laid before him and he yet he sensed no danger.
Slowly, Jack put both his hands on the arms of the chair, and pushed himself forward. A startled Commodore nearly jumped back around to face him and Jack froze.
“Not even a drop.” He frowned his disappointment after a long, careful sniff, watched the befuddled line appear in the Commodore’s forehead, the sudden lowering of fine eyes to the floor.
If only the man hadn’t been so bloody close, then Jack might have remembered to play fair. But a man had to grasp with both hands what Fortune had granted him, and Jack seized handfuls of clean royal naval officer uniform before it could slip away and brought Norrington’s mouth down to him.
One sweep of his tongue across the pressed, pink line of Norrington’s lips brought him no taste of rum either, but then Jack would have been disappointed if there were. It were a Commodore he was kissing now, Commodore bloody Norrington who opened his mouth to speak after a moment of shocked stillness and found himself with a mouthful of questing pirate tongue.
The man seemed to have forgotten how to breathe, and Jack lifted the hand he could, spreading careful fingers across the Commodore’s neck, stroking his ringed thumb across the warm, speedy pulse and sighing a little at the shiver this caused. Tar stained fingers caressed the smooth, clean throat of a such a fine man, and wait all he pleased, Jack could feel no gathering of strength to push the attack away. There was only a shuddering underneath his other hand, like a ship struggling to follow its course against a storm.
It was very pleasing to know he wasn’t about to find himself with a sword at his belly, but Jack felt the rumble of checked words in his throat. He pulled his mouth away, pausing at the smooth-shaven chin and jaw, working toward the shell of one ear before stopping, savoring the taste at his lips for several of the heartbeats that thundered in chest before pulling away and looking up at the unmoving Commodore.
“Me last night on earth,” Jack reminded the man, knowing a fine piratey madness would go a long way to explaining his actions even if they did nothing for the high colour on the Commodore’s face at that moment. Of course, as he said it, he recalled what the Commodore’s answer to that had been before, and flashed the other man a quick, if uneven, grin that Will could have deciphered easily.
Pirate.
Norrington was staring steadily back at him, his lips still parted, and Jack dared a glance, happy to see he had at least left the Commodore short of breath.
“We never did get to my theory, Sparrow.” It were the fierce words that made Jack forget just how tricky the Commodore was. The greenest of oceans held him fast the moment he looked up, and then he was groaning as he was pushed back against the chair; Norrington’s mouth pressing a seal to his as though not even air would halt the man now. If one chance were too many, then capture a pirate twice, and if Jack had had his wits--or his mouth, as it were--about him, he would have agreed.
As it was, Jack felt his hand curl into Norrington’s neck cloth, heard his breathing hitch and falter at the low growl from Norrington’s throat, a murmur at his fingertips that Jack had to reach out and touch if he could not take it. His Commodore had firm lips, as firm as the rest of him, likely, and Jack shifted in his seat to think on it.
Norrington’s lips were hard on his, nigh desperate, and Jack swore at the cuff holding his other hand to the bloody chair. All he could do for now was pull at the knotted neck cloth, lick encouragement along the tightly pressed mouth until suddenly that mouth was no longer pressed but open. Jack found himself throwing his head back against the chair as a single-minded Norrington ravaged his mouth, and was more than agreeable once he got past his surprise. A headache wouldn’t matter in the morning. He would have done it anyway, which Norrington likely already knew.
Bloody Commodore.
Norrington’s teeth grazed his lower lip and Jack gasped, twitching to feel the heat of arms on either side of him. A wriggle brought him back up, and a good grip on the neck cloth brought Norrington closer, within reach of even one iron-bound hand, and Jack let his fingers roam over the shivering body in front of him.
Jack spared another moment to savor the incredible firmness of Norrington’s lips, and then his tongue was probing past them, his hands heading southward with the same determination.
Cold, empty space that was not Commodore Norrington filled his palms instead and Jack scowled as warm lips slid from his mouth to rest at his cheek. A hateful, tormenting breath at his ear spoke his name, and Jack opened his eyes, certain he would find himself marooned once more.
“Jack...” That Jack did not, for the first time in his whole resentful memory, feel the need to correct Norrington’s form of address did not improve his mood. But open eyes afforded him a view of Norrington’s white knuckled grip on his sword hilt, and the ragged, shallow breathing against his cheek would have been obvious to even William. Not that William would ever get to hear it. Jack bared his teeth to no one in particular and reached out to undo the loops around a button or two on the Commodore’s waistcoat.
“You’re killing me, love.” Jack confessed in something too close to a whine for his liking. On the fourth button Norrington seemed to notice and flinched away, standing up and looking at his feet. Which just meant something Jack didn’t want to hear, and left him scowling worse than before.
“This is not what I’d...” Norrington coughed before his sentence was over, and Jack wondered if the man wouldn’t finished anything properly today, running a frustrated hand down the front of his breeches. Norrington directed his eyes to the desk, and then the window, before glancing back at Jack’s face. “I have th…things I must attend to.” He nodded though Jack had not spoken, swallowing thickly when Jack only continued to rub down the length of one thigh, watching him.
A series of knocks on the door made the both of them jerk and look back, though the Commodore had more ease at it than Jack, twisting in his chair. “Yes, Groves, a moment.” Norrington spoke before the man at the door could, and Jack swept the frown from his face before Norrington was looking back at him, lifting his bloody chin as he did it too. “You see, Sparrow, I have duties I must attend to. Our game must wait.” Norrington let out a breath once his cool speech was ended, then managed to not look sideways toward the chessboard and blush a fiery red at the same time.
“I will...I will be gone some time.” The man dared to whisper that when time was more precious than gold. A glimpse of serious eyes was all Jack were allowed, and then Norrington was pulling his waistcoat down and stepping to the door. He probably heard Jack swearing at him all the way down the corridor, closed door or not, and for once Jack was grateful for the cuff holding him to the chair. No way for him to look and watch the man walk away now, was there?
He had thought there was a bit of mercy behind the stony face of Commodore bloody Norrington. But there wasn’t even the basic courtesy of helping a man finish getting his jollies once he’d been kissed to weeping. The man had been torturing Jack when he’d had him brought him up here. Now Jack was certain of it, and scratched at his beard as he contemplated that cursed chess board.
There was an interesting...small piece of metal next to the board on the desk, and Jack recalled the Commodore pulling something from his pocket as he had stood up. Strange of the Commodore to have left that behind. It was just the right shape and size of scrap that a clever man might use to pick any locks he might feel the want, or need, to pick. And there it was, right within arm’s reach of a prisoner as well. A prisoner known for escaping. There was a choice in that sort of carelessness. Or a chance in that sort of recklessness, Jack’s mind wouldn’t quite give him the right of it.
It seemed there was more to this game of the Commodore’s than Jack had previously thought. Which was interesting.
Humming the tune Elizabeth had been so kind as to teach him, deceitful, headstrong lass though she was, Jack reached up to the desk. His hand stopped briefly over the metal, then continued on to the board. Not the most exciting work, but easy to enough to set right, and Jack cracked a smile just for himself as all the pieces were returned to where they’d been before Norrington had decided the game was over.
Only, it weren’t over yet.
Satisfied, in what small way he could be at the moment—blasted, fool Commodores—Jack scooped up the abandoned lock pick and leaned back in his chair. Boots on the desk, he stared at it, turning it about in his fingers until he could think of no possible other purpose to which such a piece of metal might be used. Then he tucked it away carefully in one of the braids on his chin, right next to the one just like it that Jack had installed there not six days ago, thinking on the Commodore’s fondness for chains.
Might come in handy later.
Summary: Jack is insecure. The Commodore...isn’t. Fluff. Or something equally Out of Character.
AN: This is what happens when I try to write Sparrington without alcohol in my system. Though, when you when watch the movie enough, you notice Jack isn’t actually drunk all that much either. So that’s no real excuse for rambling on forever about nothing. I suppose this is what they wanted to do, since they wouldn’t do what I wanted to do. Bitches. Anyway, read
pir8fancier’s (sexee) Game, Set, Match. Got me thinking about Jack Sparrow playing chess. Tried to write it. Ended up being a lot like me playing the game...which is to say bored and easily distracted. Oh well. It’s done. POTC
It were torture, that’s what it was. One puffed up and too bloody righteous Commodore’s way of ensuring that one Captain Jack Sparrow did not escape from that same Commodore’s hold for what would be the sixth time, if Jack was keeping count properly—and of that Jack was more than certain that he was--by ensuring that Jack was dead long before his scheduled date with the noose.
Killing him, that’s what it really was. He’d die of boredom in right in his chair if Norrington had his way, and considering the amount of time Jack had been left alone in the dusty, cramped space that the Commodore considered an office, Jack was beginning to suspect that it truly was Norrington’s plan to see him dead before he was given the chance to slip free of his clutches once more.
Hadn’t read him wrong then, when Jack had decided to disable the rudder chain to keep the man from turning his ship and firing upon Jack’s newly acquired boat. He had thought the man might try it-—pride, as it were—-and he hadn’t been disappointed. Course, the man hadn’t done the same for Elizabeth, and a pirate had taken her, which was interesting, but only something to consider-like, whenever Jack’s mind had nothing to do but dwell on stiff-necked Commodores.
Which, when he thought about it, was now, and so Jack wrinkled his brow quite thoughtfully and lifted his hand, the free and unshackled one, to pull on his beard.
“I fail to see any prize for me in what you’re suggestin’, Commodore,” Jack offered softly, smiling, and raised his gaze to the desk between them. Just for a moment, he studied the pale, slender hands resting next to a flat plane of wood, marked with a light and dark pattern, watching the agitated tapping of one finger against the desk’s surface, and then Jack’s eyes moved elsewhere, to the window and the hint of evening sky just visible if he stretched his neck.
“We’re going to be here for some time, Sparrow.” Deliberately ignoring his title, the Commodore spoke evenly enough, masking any smugness he felt, if he felt any. Jack would have thought the man simply felt nothing at all, excepting that of course Jack knew better. Had seen the feelings expressed with his very own eyes, heard quiet longings with his very own ears, deep enough to make even a pirate feel for him. Not that the man seemed to appreciate the sentiment, judging from Jack’s current situation. Locked him up first chance he’d had, and not even in a proper cell. Had two very unpleasant red-coated fellows haul Jack up to this tower and his office and then stick him in this chair, irons at one wrist keeping him in place until the Commodore had decided to come keep him company.
Ought to be right pleased with himself then, capturing Jack Sparrow a week after his shortly-to-be-famous escape from the noose, even if the Commodore was taking no chances with ordinary guards and a normal cell in Port Royal’s gaol. Not for Captain Jack Sparrow, and Jack found himself again looking back to the desk, his eyes narrowing.
Little wooden figures were lined up so bloody precisely that only Norrington himself could have put them there. They were meant to represent men, Jack knew, even if they didn’t look like any Jack had ever seen in all his voyages. Light and dark, he didn’t know what kind of wood, all carved and curved so smoothly that Jack’s fingers twitched with the urge to touch just one.
He curled his fingers into his palms and raised his head. The Commodore wasn’t looking at him, busy straightening the rows of little men as though each piece weren’t already exactly where it ought to be before a game was started. Frowning so very intently down at his chessboard that he didn’t seem to feel Jack’s stare one bit. That was interesting. Very interesting, in fact, since Jack hadn’t thought even boredom would make the Commodore unbend enough to offer a game.
Even if it was such a very boring game.
Jack’s feet twitched on the floor and he let out a long, loud breath, the sound seeming to startle the Commodore into looking at him.
“We’re going to be here, then?” Jack asked though suspecting the answer; that he was to be watched by the Commodore personally to keep him here until he made his second visit with the Port Royal gallows. He grinned to show that already understood, and to his pleasure, Norrington dropped his head in acknowledgment, his eyes falling as well.
Studied his feet a lot, the man did, when something didn’t sit easy. Doubtless afraid of what those around might see in his eyes, not at all like the unwarranted animosity he felt for old Jack; That he was open enough with. Always shoving Jack’s hands away he was, as though he were a lass keeping watch on her virtue, as though Jack would have dared to take further liberties with a Royal Commodore, would have tried to slide his hands across the broad shoulders and down over the strong chest to feel the thunder of a heart under his fingertips.
His grin widening, Jack leaned in and slid a piece forward without looking at it, then leaned back to watch the quick swivel of the Commodore’s head. Eyes that appeared both green and brown—but mostly green—went from the board to Jack as though truly surprised. Then Norrington coughed.
Whatever had the man done that he had ended up being the one chosen to sit with Jack Sparrow in his last hours? No doubt he was hiding from a soon-to-be Mr. and Mrs. Turner, and even the company of a scalawag was better than nothing.
Jack’s bow was a tad lopsided, seeing as he had to move one hand to the other in order to press them together, and how he couldn’t move much of his body from the chair, but he thought his meaning was clear enough, judging from the manner in which mostly green eyes grew round and met his for long enough for his own to grow dry.
He blinked, and the Commodore’s brow lowered into the stern frown that most were no doubt familiar with, as well-known to Jack as the sudden curve of his lips that meant a smile. A cruel smile too. The kind that would have meant a show of teeth from anyone else, perhaps a joke from Barbossa, but for Commodore Norrington that didn’t seem to be worth bothering with. His meanings were always conveyed with the barest gestures if Jack were to guess, and he glanced down at the board between them.
“Who said you were to go first, Sparrow?” Norrington arched one eyebrow, but slid a piece forward—on the opposite side of the board as Jack’s, Jack noticed—and shrugged.
“A gift for a condemned man,” he offered, stretching up to again push his little man forward, very close to the Commodore’s little men in fact, where he was not surprised to see it quickly taken and placed to the side. He wasn’t a man to hesitate in doing his duty, the Commodore, and Jack pouted at him, frowning a bit.
“Don’t give a man a chance, do you, Commodore?” Norrington was still bent over the board when Jack asked, and he glanced up without lifting his head.
“One chance is all you seem to need, Sparrow. Ergo, one is one too many.” His voice clipped, Norrington sat back and stared down his nose at Jack across from him. He seemed confused when Jack’s grin returned.
Still staring into those perplexed eyes, Jack extended his free arm and pushed yet another little wooden man out into the field. Norrington’s gaze left his, a soft breath leaving his open lips as he considered what Jack had done, and almost, Jack was tempted to look and see where he had moved the piece. Almost, but instead he studied the Commodore studying the board. Commodore bloody Norrington preoccupied with a game. Gibbs would have said it weren’t real.
Right boring for a dream if it was. There were better things Jack Sparrow could be doing in his dreams then playing a bit of chess.
His mouth dry, Jack licked his lips, dropping back further into his chair and turning his gaze back to the window. He shifted, once, in his seat, and saw from the corner of his eye the Commodore make his decision and move his piece.
There had to be cloth lining the bottom of each wooden man, for their movements were hushed and soft, just whispers of velvet on velvet that were no louder than the Commodore’s careful breaths. Somewhere, far down below, there were bells and footsteps, far away from both of them, as distant as London for all that either of them paid them mind.
Norrington’s hand was still resting on the piece he had moved, and Jack slid his gaze to that before turning his head to follow, watching two fingers tap on the round head, clean, even nails, white as moons, stroking across the wood as though the Commodore also appreciated the smooth feel.
He had not taken Jack’s little man this time, and Jack spared a moment to glare at the pawn before scowling. Smart man, the Commodore.
“Your move, Sparrow.” There was no smug smile, but Jack knew the man was smirking inside anyhow, doubtless thinking that he would not be baited by a pirate twice, and there had to be a reason Jack was being so careless to be so easily captured.
Jack bared his teeth, fanged and golden, in a grin that made the Commodore’s chin come up, even if the superior smile slipped a bit at the same time. A line crossed his brow, for one moment only, and then it was smoothed, mostly green eyes steady on Jack.
Suspicious man as well, the Commodore. It weren’t as though Jack would have gotten himself captured just a week after escaping by design, but it was flattering of the man to think otherwise. Or to let Jack think that he thought otherwise; it was hard to say exactly how clever a man the Commodore was, what with honour and duty demanding a man do stupid things just when he had the chance to use his smarts.
Course, the Commodore had no reason to be flattering Jack at all, that Jack could figure. So then, ergo as the man had said, the man were not at all certain that Jack wasn’t captive of his own will.
Letting his grin slip to the easiest of easy smiles, Jack ducked his head as he leaned forward, reaching for the same little man but stopping his hand before he reached his target. He tapped a finger on the tallest figure’s crowned head, not at all surprised to find it spiky, and then let his palm hover indecisively over the back row. It was nothing at all to imagine Norrington observing his rough and tar-stained fingers, just as Jack had watched his clean and china-white hands a few moments before.
“This one,” he gestured to the softer lines of the figure next to the spiked head of the king and hummed for a bit. “Refresh me, Commodore-love, how does this one move?”
Irritation wiped the confusion from the man’s face, though not all the suspicion, Jack noted. And wondered, not for the first time, why it was that no one ever trusted him.
“That is the Queen, Sparrow. She may move wherever she pleases.”
“Ain’t that the way with queens, mate?” Eyes wide and innocent as the Commodore glanced sharply at him, Jack moved his hand to his exposed pawn once again and slid it right into hostile waters. Norrington dropped his gaze to the little figure, then turned his head to the side, doubtless staring out at the view denied to Jack.
His lips were firm, as always, thinning to consider something unpleasant, and Jack had little doubt that he should find it unpleasant as well, were he in the man’s shoes. Luckily, he still wore his own boots and decided to have a look at them, seeing as it was his last night on this earth and tomorrow morning they would end up in the hands of a hangman.
The Commodore gave a start as Jack propped first one booted foot on the man’s desk, and then the other, crossing them with a pleased sigh and leaning back in his chair. “It’s me last night on earth, mate,” Jack offered before he received a scold for soiling the desk.
“If you lived to be a hundred, I am certain you would have done it regardless.” It could not have been humour tipping up one corner of the Commodore’s oh-so-firm-looking lips, anymore than it was shame that made his gaze leave the window and fall, once more, to the floor.
“Hardly a fair supposition, Commodore,” Jack mused, again stroking his beard and nodding once, ignoring the small twitch of Norrington’s broad shoulders at his choice of words. “After all, I’m to hang in the morning. So we have no way of testin’ your theory.” One little sentence and he had the Commodore at attention, eyes fast on him and full of a thousand pointed questions that the other man had too much control to ask. “Not even worth thinkin’ about then, so we had best get back to our game.” Just barely—-and obviously--Jack stifled a yawn.
“Perhaps we might test another theory then.” Norrington’s words could have kept time with the marching soldiers outside the window. As though to echo Jack’s fancy, he laid one hand upon the desk between them and drummed his fingers back and forth twice, then three, times. It made no sound, but Jack imagined one anyway, quick and merciless.
Jack had not looked at the Commodore as he had stood on the gallows, listening to drums and a list of his adventures being read out. There would have been no point to that, and the only kind who thought it fitting were fools like young William who acted recklessly with no time left instead of acting recklessly when there was plenty of time stretching out before him.
Jack looked up to find Norrington still watching him, his eyes as green as the finest waters on the clearest of days, and if Jack had been looking at the ocean, he would said she beckoned.
He blinked, sweeping his gaze back to the window to observe the light.
A sailor the Commodore might claim to be while standing at the helms of such big, fine boats, but there was no scent of salt water about him now, and little evidence of the sun in a face shielded by a Commodore’s feathered hat. Hardly seemed of the sea at all, with no touch of her on his straight and spotless uniform.
He looked soft...pale...young enough to be Gibb’s son, Jack decided after a few minutes’ worth of musing, tapping out a song against the air with his boot. It were those eyes, or perhaps that closed and pressed mouth, that told a man otherwise, unless of course a man had the misfortune to be between the Commodore and the fulfillment of his duty.
Very determined, he must be now, to have risked the questions of his men and shut himself in such a small room with a man he rather famously despised. Jack was a little pleased with just how well-known the Commodore’s contempt for him was; knowing there was no way anyone in the Caribbean could ever claim to have not heard of Captain Jack Sparrow now. Doubtless it had raised more than one eyebrow in the fort to hear where Jack Sparrow and Commodore Norrington would be spending this evening.
This was very different from the last final night he had spent in Port Royal. Interesting, the difference of a week. It was more comfortable, it was true, to be in the Commodore’s fine chair, in his office, given the chance to play another game with Norrington.
Though, Jack wrinkled his nose and rolled his own fingers on the arm of the chair restlessly, it did leave something to be desired. Some rum, a song or two, or perhaps just a handful or two of what former first mate would have described as pleasurable company.
His grin returned, and Jack glanced back to the Commodore’s face. He wasn’t likely to get that here. Trapped here in this dusty, cramped little room and chained to a chair to keep him an arm’s length away from any bit of happiness in his last hours.
“It’s your move, Sparrow.” The Commodore’s voice was so smooth it might as well have been distilled from sugar, and even though no officer of the King’s Navy would be caught tasting of rum whilst guarding a prisoner, Jack couldn’t resist running his tongue along his lower lip a bit and just...wondering.
He stroked his beard, scratching at the short scruff along his jaw and making no move toward the board. The Commodore’s teeth looked to be clenched hard enough to crack a lichee nut shell, and the faint line of pink in the other man’s cheeks spoke of a rising temper. Jack paused for a moment, to consider that too, and Norrington narrowed his eyes.
“We can stop the game if you don’t wish to play, Sparrow.” The offer might have sounded more generous if Norrington had actually opened his mouth to say it. Which was fascinating in itself really, almost as interesting as the way Norrington’s chin dropped a moment later, but his gaze stayed on Jack’s face. As though he couldn’t decide whether to be ashamed of himself or not, snapping at a prisoner, excepting the prisoner was Captain Jack Sparrow.
Jack nodded in sympathy for what must be quite a problem for the good Commodore, pulling at his braids before taking his hand away to wave it in the air between them. Someday he might ask the Commodore why the man got so angry around one lonesome--though infamous and brilliant--pirate when he had hundreds of others to chase. But then, Jack reasoned the answer were obvious just to look at the two of them.
Norrington had shaved just that morning. Kept his wig on even though there was no one to see it but Jack, probably practiced with his sword four hours a day just to prove Port Royal housed someone more desperate than young William Turner. And not for anything would the man sit back in his chair, not even in the heat, or with the boredom, and especially not with a black-hearted scoundrel leaning back with his feet up in the chair opposite him.
There were bigger fools than William Turner in the world.
“You started the game, mate,” Jack mumbled at last, then blinked, startled into looking down at the board when his challenging words were only met with the faintest of smirks. It was bloody unfair, and if he were anyone else other than Captain Jack Sparrow, it would have been very disheartening.
When had the man moved his little castle? The Commodore was through wasting time with pawns, it seemed, even if Jack couldn’t exactly remember what that particular piece was used for. But there it was, a Fort Charles in miniature right next to Jack’s pawn.
Some rum might have helped a man remember, he decided resentfully. And no doubt that were the reason a drink had been denied him.
Glancing up just gave him a view of a too bloody calm Commodore, and no answers whatsoever. With a scowl, Jack turned back to the game, weighing options. Get his man killed now, get his man killed later, kill Norrington’s man, kill Norrington’s man later, stop playing altogether. None of which would actually get Jack anything he wanted, even if they might make Norrington happy. If anything could make the Commodore happy, which was something else to consider-like. If only he had more time.
Slowly putting his feet on the floor in order to lean in, Jack extended his free hand and picked up his pawn, dropping it one space farther away from him, one space farther away from the wooden castle. He shrugged, putting a finger to his mouth thoughtfully and then frowning to show confusion.
“Foolish.” Norrington’s gaze swept smoothly over the board and Jack as though surveying a map. He doubtless had plenty of charts at his disposal too, and would never plot a course with a broken compass and his memories. Which, all told, taught Jack nothing except that it truly weren’t likely he’d ever catch the scent of rum on the other man’s lips. He sighed and glanced once again to the window.
Of course, the man had followed Jack’s course of a broken compass and memories, now that Jack thought of it, returning his gaze to Norrington just as clear eyes slid away from him. Norrington kept his eyes on the game like they had always been there, and Jack felt his eyebrows go up.
“For a pirate, you seem to lack a predatory nature, Sparrow.” Norrington had stopped to speak with one hand left holding one of Jack’s pieces, and Jack smiled nervously, taking his gaze from the board before Norrington could remove the wooden man. His coat felt tight, stuck in this chair as he was, but of course there wasn’t much Jack could do about it. Bloody Commodore had seen to that hadn’t he, Jack reminded himself. Couldn’t even leave a man alone on his last night in the world, had to bring him here to pester him with his bloody, boring game. He was as annoying as young William with his insistence on last moment efforts.
“You see, Commodore...” Jack began brightly, flicking his hands out in distraction before he had lifted his eyes back to the Commodore. Norrington was still looking down at the board, so Jack glanced down, frowning slightly before again studying the other man.
Norrington coughed, breaking their silence, and Jack grinned, wider than he ought to have, wider than was safe. But the Commodore wasn’t looking, so Jack shook his head enough to hear the pleasant jingling of the beads in his hair and leaned in.
Fingers stroking through his beard, Jack nodded in agreement without even bothering to check the weather outside the window. He had noted it all the first time he had glanced out at the tiny view. The wind was fair, the sky was clear, and night birds were calling.
All that freedom lay outside. But in the Commodore’s cramped and dusty excuse for an office, that little fort had not moved. Tempting bait just sitting next to it, ripe for plunder and pleasure and instead the Commodore had moved another figure.
Now, the man had no reason to prolong the game—giving Jack chances when they both had already come to the accord that one was one too many. It wouldn’t take much, if Jack wanted, to imagine what the Commodore might do if Jack continued to play as he had been. Victory would be his whether or not he captured more pirates on his way. That was the way with Commodores who practiced playing chess almost as much as they practiced with their sabers.
This was a game that had ended before it had begun in Jack’s opinion, as only one of the players playing had shown any interest in said playing, as it were. But perhaps the players playing might have had interest in the game if both players playing had known exactly what game was being laid out on the table between them.
“With the right incentive, what won’t a man do?” Jack sighed sadly, capturing the Commodore’s brave little fort and setting it aside before sweeping off his hat.
The smirk was back on Norrington’s face before Jack had readjusted his hat to his satisfaction, and Jack scratched his cheek thoughtfully as he regarded the pieces. Then he blinked, confused as to exactly when the Commodore gotten so near to his king and queen. He wasn’t too many moves away, if Jack could remember all the movements correctly. ‘Course, it was once a man got close to the end that he was in the most danger. All exposed he was, trapping the king alone like that.
Jack’s scowl shifted to a quick smile, and he hummed softly under his breath as he directed his pieces in his mind and finally moved just one. Norrington was glancing at him, not-quite frowning as he evidently considered changing his plan now that Jack was truly minding the game, sliding his own figures about the board in response to each move Jack made.
If the fact that neither side lost any men after that bothered the Commodore, he gave no sign. Aside from bending the smallest of small fractions to better observe the game, Norrington had not spoken and had made no move to since Jack had taken an interest. And no matter how many times Jack had glanced up, ready to catch the man in the act, as it were, he had not once found the Commodore’s gaze anywhere but on the board.
His fingers gave not the slightest twitch that they would return to their previous drumming motion, and Jack found himself watching them as the time stretched out, and the bit of sky through the window turned dark.
Jack leaned in a bit further, resting one elbow on the desk and letting his other arm sit awkwardly behind him. The Commodore’s breathing hitched, quite as it had on his fine boat when Jack had leaned toward him in much the same way. He had been locked in irons then as well, Jack recalled, smiling to himself and humming louder.
“You’ve captured a remarkable number of prisoners, Commodore,” Jack commented just the Commodore’s hand reached out at last. Eyes that were leaning more to brown now that Jack was closer lifted to stare at Jack, and astonishment didn’t take long to turn to annoyance when Jack gestured to the pile of forgotten men at the Commodore’s elbow.
“Your point, Sparrow?” Nasty and venomous tone aside, the Commodore seemed very confused, his thumb and forefinger still holding the tiny cross atop the piece he had just moved. Jack shrugged, and watched as Norrington released his wooden clergyman but left his hand hovering above the board.
“But you don’t hold them all so close...” Jack added, and swooped in with his smoothly carved horsehead to knock the bishop onto his arse, rather liking the crooked path the horse took to get there. If the Commodore’s hand was in the way, and Jack’s hand should happen to brush against it for a moment or two, well there wasn’t anything to be seen in that, was there? A firm hand it was too. Not soft or smooth, but not rough either. And though Norrington were as still as if frozen, his hand was fair warm indeed.
The only other time their hands had happened to touch had been on the Port Royal docks, if one could call the other man’s death grip on his wrist to be just a touch, and Jack considered now, since he had the time, that Norrington had exactly the hands a Commodore ought to have, just as Jack had the quick fingers that a pirate should. It was a wonder then that neither of them had yet moved away.
Try though he might, Jack didn’t think the Commodore could have explained this as leading to an arrest, if he ever had to explain it to anyone. That Jack Sparrow was a pirate was known to every soul in Port Royal, and there was absolutely no reason for a goodly-fine Commodore to be consorting with his sort; to be sitting peaceably in the same room as him, playing a game as though they were mates, watching him steadily as their fingers kept still contact between them and forgetting that he ought to be pushing the dirty pirate away like he’d done before.
It would look quite incriminating, should anyone walk in then. The simple act of being alone with Jack now might be enough to condemn a man to a scurrilous reputation. But strain all he pleased, Jack could detect no steps outside the door, almost as though an order for privacy had been given in advance.
“You ‘ave no interest in the queen, Commodore-love?” He didn’t think if he had had any rum in the last few hours, that his words would have been so bloody loud. Norrington pulled back his hand and sat up just like some weasel of a pirate had just fired a shot or two into his backside, his expression saying he might just do the hangman’s job for him. It was a most forbidding look, and Jack bowed his head to acknowledge it, even if the effect were not quite so forbidding to Jack when a pretty dusting of rose coloured the man’s face and neck.
It could have been the very displeased reaction of a jilted man. Left all by his onesies, the man had been, and in public too. All he had for his own now was a promise to chase a pirate he planned to hang in the morning. It was a tale worthy of the saddest of Oriental operas.
“My interests are not your concern, Sparrow.” Norrington spoke just as Jack was composing his best commiserating expression, and he was left with pointing at the other man with his chained hand, letting the metal scratch against the wood as he gestured.
“Game was your idea, mate. Ain’t no reason now to pretend otherwise.” The way in which Norrington’s chin jerked up at Jack’s words did not seem promising. And neither did the sudden way all that delicious colour left the man’s face, which, more than anything else, was likely the reason that Jack heard himself continuing to speak even as he was frowning and trying to determine where exactly he had placed a foot wrong.
“You’ve already captured me, love, so I don’t know what you’re out to prove by trying to win at this game as well, unless you want to see a pirate play a match without cheating—which...” Jack paused to inhale and noticed that Norrington did the same, long and deep and bone-weary tired. Caution had him glancing away, but it did not take a smart man long to notice what they needed to notice. “...Which a lesser man than Captain Jack Sparrow may have been tempted to do, Commodore,” Norrington snorted derisively, and Jack ignored him, “but there’s no sort of reward in that sort of dishonesty...”
“I am well aware that you did not wish to play, Sparrow.” Norrington’s cool remark stopped Jack’s flow of words, stopped him with his bloody mouth open in fact, and Jack scowled for form’s sake but went silent readily enough and sat back in his chair. Which, a man like Will would not have noticed at all, but which Norrington seemed to already know Jack would do. Which was interesting, and said a lot about what exactly one man could learn about another man in an hour’s worth of chess playing. Which was possibly the whole point of this exercise, since Jack now found his mind full of strange suspicions and memories of Norrington that had not been there that morning.
He would have keelhauled dear William at that moment for a sip or two of rum.
“I am also well aware that you did not cheat.” Calmly spoken words that could runs chills down the spine of a man trapped on a shadeless sun-baked spit of land left the Commodore’s mouth, and then he was looking down, perhaps to the board forgotten between them or maybe to his feet. That he liked to look at his feet was an observation that Jack had made before, but now he wondered if he had studied his shiny buckled shoes as Jack Sparrow had walked to the gallows.
The truly irritating thing was…he hadn’t looked then, so he had no way of knowing that, did he? Blast, but it was hard for a man to think straight when his mouth was dry. Jack darted out his tongue to lick his lips, and then rolled his shoulders in a way that might have been mistaken for a careless shrug.
“I…I shall call someone else to stand watch then.” Norrington spoke as though Jack had answered him and they were saying their farewells and nevermore shall their paths cross again until the next life. Except that try though he might Jack couldn’t recall having said a word. Not even a “Between you and Jack” and certainly nothing as definite as, “It is,” which was a most definite, if brief and heartless, turn of phrase. But there was the Commodore, being his most Commodore-ish, steadfastly and nobly staring at his chessboard as he returned each piece to where it had been at the start without any sort of proper conclusion to the game at all.
“And what of your other theory, Commodore?” Jack was quite bloody certain that his mouth had never been so dry, not even on those long three days on that cursed island before Fortune had bestowed upon him such a lovely cache. Rescue, and rum, and the chance for revenge. And the Pearl. Of course his Pearl.
The last little pawn was not quite back in place but Norrington stopped and raised his eyes, caution all that Jack could read in them.
“I have a theory, meself.” The only reaction to both his smile and his statement were a raised eyebrow, and Jack felt his smile falter a bit. This must have been easier for Will; being on the verge of death had been a fresher experience for the lad, after all. But the terms of their agreement had been clear, the Commodore had created the opportune moment. It was Jack who had chosen the only one.
Norrington sighed when Jack did not speak and put a hand to the table, clearly to rise to his feet.
“That a Commodore guarding the famous Captain Jack might have the scent of rum on his breath, to suggest such a game with a pirate and a scalawag.” Jack exhaled the words and then had to quickly suck in air in case he was wrong and a very furious and fearsome Commodore drew his sword and Jack had to talk his way out of a gutting.
Norrington’ jaw went slack. Without his mouth actually falling open, he gaped and then clicked his teeth back together, all the while staring straight at Jack. His eyebrows went up, and then down, and Jack waved a hand in the air, not sure what he ought to say now to follow what he had already said.
“Are you insinuating a royal naval officer has been drinking while on duty, Sparrow?” The Commodore drummed his fingers on the table and Jack licked his dry lips.
“Well…” But the Commodore was pushing himself back and out of his chair, looming suddenly just as he had almost every other time he had been angry with Jack. He reached a hand into his coat and tossed something on the desk before stepping to the side, next to the window, not deigning to look out. The man’s eyes were only on Jack, and if only it were just unease that curled in Jack’s belly.
“Would go a long way to explain why you’re in here with the likes of me.” That Jack--to his eternal shame--sputtered a little as he spoke seemed to actually amuse the Commodore, judging from the brief smirk that the man did not try to hide. If Jack had been some dainty law-abiding lass, he doubted Norrington would have been so cruel. But before Jack could decide whether to howl his complaint or feign madness, the Commodore was stepping toward him and leaning down.
His posture was correct. Even bent to Jack’s eye level he was at straight angles. And yet he was so close. So bloody close. He had pulled back when Jack had snaked his way into close proximity with him before, stepped back just as Jack had finally got his hands under those starched lapels for a moment or two of possibilities and now here he was, not inches from Jack’s face.
Brown eyes watched him carefully, maybe having seemed lighter underneath the imposing dark of the man’s eyebrows, next to the smooth, pale flesh of his face. Jack looked down to the man’s waist, where one hand rested at his sword’s hilt, and then back up.
His hands were itching something terrible.
“To appease your curiosity, Sparrow.” Norrington twisted his head to the side, exposing a bit of his throat, the line of his jaw, and Jack narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, as a man ought to when a tempting bit of swag was laid before him and he yet he sensed no danger.
Slowly, Jack put both his hands on the arms of the chair, and pushed himself forward. A startled Commodore nearly jumped back around to face him and Jack froze.
“Not even a drop.” He frowned his disappointment after a long, careful sniff, watched the befuddled line appear in the Commodore’s forehead, the sudden lowering of fine eyes to the floor.
If only the man hadn’t been so bloody close, then Jack might have remembered to play fair. But a man had to grasp with both hands what Fortune had granted him, and Jack seized handfuls of clean royal naval officer uniform before it could slip away and brought Norrington’s mouth down to him.
One sweep of his tongue across the pressed, pink line of Norrington’s lips brought him no taste of rum either, but then Jack would have been disappointed if there were. It were a Commodore he was kissing now, Commodore bloody Norrington who opened his mouth to speak after a moment of shocked stillness and found himself with a mouthful of questing pirate tongue.
The man seemed to have forgotten how to breathe, and Jack lifted the hand he could, spreading careful fingers across the Commodore’s neck, stroking his ringed thumb across the warm, speedy pulse and sighing a little at the shiver this caused. Tar stained fingers caressed the smooth, clean throat of a such a fine man, and wait all he pleased, Jack could feel no gathering of strength to push the attack away. There was only a shuddering underneath his other hand, like a ship struggling to follow its course against a storm.
It was very pleasing to know he wasn’t about to find himself with a sword at his belly, but Jack felt the rumble of checked words in his throat. He pulled his mouth away, pausing at the smooth-shaven chin and jaw, working toward the shell of one ear before stopping, savoring the taste at his lips for several of the heartbeats that thundered in chest before pulling away and looking up at the unmoving Commodore.
“Me last night on earth,” Jack reminded the man, knowing a fine piratey madness would go a long way to explaining his actions even if they did nothing for the high colour on the Commodore’s face at that moment. Of course, as he said it, he recalled what the Commodore’s answer to that had been before, and flashed the other man a quick, if uneven, grin that Will could have deciphered easily.
Pirate.
Norrington was staring steadily back at him, his lips still parted, and Jack dared a glance, happy to see he had at least left the Commodore short of breath.
“We never did get to my theory, Sparrow.” It were the fierce words that made Jack forget just how tricky the Commodore was. The greenest of oceans held him fast the moment he looked up, and then he was groaning as he was pushed back against the chair; Norrington’s mouth pressing a seal to his as though not even air would halt the man now. If one chance were too many, then capture a pirate twice, and if Jack had had his wits--or his mouth, as it were--about him, he would have agreed.
As it was, Jack felt his hand curl into Norrington’s neck cloth, heard his breathing hitch and falter at the low growl from Norrington’s throat, a murmur at his fingertips that Jack had to reach out and touch if he could not take it. His Commodore had firm lips, as firm as the rest of him, likely, and Jack shifted in his seat to think on it.
Norrington’s lips were hard on his, nigh desperate, and Jack swore at the cuff holding his other hand to the bloody chair. All he could do for now was pull at the knotted neck cloth, lick encouragement along the tightly pressed mouth until suddenly that mouth was no longer pressed but open. Jack found himself throwing his head back against the chair as a single-minded Norrington ravaged his mouth, and was more than agreeable once he got past his surprise. A headache wouldn’t matter in the morning. He would have done it anyway, which Norrington likely already knew.
Bloody Commodore.
Norrington’s teeth grazed his lower lip and Jack gasped, twitching to feel the heat of arms on either side of him. A wriggle brought him back up, and a good grip on the neck cloth brought Norrington closer, within reach of even one iron-bound hand, and Jack let his fingers roam over the shivering body in front of him.
Jack spared another moment to savor the incredible firmness of Norrington’s lips, and then his tongue was probing past them, his hands heading southward with the same determination.
Cold, empty space that was not Commodore Norrington filled his palms instead and Jack scowled as warm lips slid from his mouth to rest at his cheek. A hateful, tormenting breath at his ear spoke his name, and Jack opened his eyes, certain he would find himself marooned once more.
“Jack...” That Jack did not, for the first time in his whole resentful memory, feel the need to correct Norrington’s form of address did not improve his mood. But open eyes afforded him a view of Norrington’s white knuckled grip on his sword hilt, and the ragged, shallow breathing against his cheek would have been obvious to even William. Not that William would ever get to hear it. Jack bared his teeth to no one in particular and reached out to undo the loops around a button or two on the Commodore’s waistcoat.
“You’re killing me, love.” Jack confessed in something too close to a whine for his liking. On the fourth button Norrington seemed to notice and flinched away, standing up and looking at his feet. Which just meant something Jack didn’t want to hear, and left him scowling worse than before.
“This is not what I’d...” Norrington coughed before his sentence was over, and Jack wondered if the man wouldn’t finished anything properly today, running a frustrated hand down the front of his breeches. Norrington directed his eyes to the desk, and then the window, before glancing back at Jack’s face. “I have th…things I must attend to.” He nodded though Jack had not spoken, swallowing thickly when Jack only continued to rub down the length of one thigh, watching him.
A series of knocks on the door made the both of them jerk and look back, though the Commodore had more ease at it than Jack, twisting in his chair. “Yes, Groves, a moment.” Norrington spoke before the man at the door could, and Jack swept the frown from his face before Norrington was looking back at him, lifting his bloody chin as he did it too. “You see, Sparrow, I have duties I must attend to. Our game must wait.” Norrington let out a breath once his cool speech was ended, then managed to not look sideways toward the chessboard and blush a fiery red at the same time.
“I will...I will be gone some time.” The man dared to whisper that when time was more precious than gold. A glimpse of serious eyes was all Jack were allowed, and then Norrington was pulling his waistcoat down and stepping to the door. He probably heard Jack swearing at him all the way down the corridor, closed door or not, and for once Jack was grateful for the cuff holding him to the chair. No way for him to look and watch the man walk away now, was there?
He had thought there was a bit of mercy behind the stony face of Commodore bloody Norrington. But there wasn’t even the basic courtesy of helping a man finish getting his jollies once he’d been kissed to weeping. The man had been torturing Jack when he’d had him brought him up here. Now Jack was certain of it, and scratched at his beard as he contemplated that cursed chess board.
There was an interesting...small piece of metal next to the board on the desk, and Jack recalled the Commodore pulling something from his pocket as he had stood up. Strange of the Commodore to have left that behind. It was just the right shape and size of scrap that a clever man might use to pick any locks he might feel the want, or need, to pick. And there it was, right within arm’s reach of a prisoner as well. A prisoner known for escaping. There was a choice in that sort of carelessness. Or a chance in that sort of recklessness, Jack’s mind wouldn’t quite give him the right of it.
It seemed there was more to this game of the Commodore’s than Jack had previously thought. Which was interesting.
Humming the tune Elizabeth had been so kind as to teach him, deceitful, headstrong lass though she was, Jack reached up to the desk. His hand stopped briefly over the metal, then continued on to the board. Not the most exciting work, but easy to enough to set right, and Jack cracked a smile just for himself as all the pieces were returned to where they’d been before Norrington had decided the game was over.
Only, it weren’t over yet.
Satisfied, in what small way he could be at the moment—blasted, fool Commodores—Jack scooped up the abandoned lock pick and leaned back in his chair. Boots on the desk, he stared at it, turning it about in his fingers until he could think of no possible other purpose to which such a piece of metal might be used. Then he tucked it away carefully in one of the braids on his chin, right next to the one just like it that Jack had installed there not six days ago, thinking on the Commodore’s fondness for chains.
Might come in handy later.
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Jack cracked a smile just for himself as all the pieces were returned to where they’d been before Norrington had decided the game was over.
Only, it weren’t over yet.
Vintage you. Loffs.
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hmmm. yes they really needed to screw at the end of that but they wouldn't. in other news, in the OTHER POTC thing i've been pecking at forever, i discovered a scene i'd forgotten i'd written. which was a first. weird.
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Missing scenes. Yeah, I've done that. Unfortunately the ones I discover are crap so it's probably some defense mechanism on the part of my brain.
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