TITLE: ...Deserves Another
E-MAIL: eli @ popullus.net
RATING: PG-13
POSTED: Feb. 26, 2004
SUMMARY: Once upon a ship of black...
NOTES: doolabug wondered what had led to the situation in which Norrington found himself. Apparently Jack didn't feel much like sharing his own thoughts. I think I'm going to call what follows...an unexpected experiment.
DISCLAIMER: No pretensions of grandeur or ownership. Read.




You wouldn't say that he was sneaking, for he didn't try to camouflage his actions. He was only muffling the sound of his feet padding across the floor by avoiding the depressions that groaned and the bumps that creaked. And you likely wouldn't be wrong to posit that he had needed to depart from this cabin without the other occupant's knowledge more than once.

If you had been able to see into his skull, you would have seen much the same as you'd see in any other -- a mess of sticky parts that wouldn't have provided much insight. That, we shall all be sorry, is as close as anyone could hope to come to knowing exactly what his intentions were.

Earlier in the night, while the flames from the lamps had cast pictures of osprey and kraken and any other creature that fertile imaginations could draw from fingers and tongues and skin on skin, it was easier to determine motives. He and his partner had cried nearly everything but names as they twisted and shuddered across the covers. Thinking it was a battle as first one, then the other pressed and held and laughed until he was overcome, that would be forgiven.

Earlier? There were clothes scattered, tossed, one or two even ripped, all left lifeless on whatever surface caught them as they landed.

Later? A pile on the trunk by the doors; not folded, but neat and tidy nonetheless. A small pile, since half of the remnants from earlier were not included. They were once again adorning the body that you would have seen bending and swaying, experiencing the full sensual texture of their embrace.

That he didn't leave at that point, more than anything else, might have given the other man in the room a hint that something was planned.

You already know.

To find out what that something was, you have to look back even further. Not so far that the light coming through the windows was light cast by the sun, hot and heavy, a searing touch reaching out and branding flesh. No. The root that grew from a seed planted what might as well be eons before pushed and prodded and finally broke the surface shortly after sunset. Haven't you found that's when all heads and hearts begin to ache?

There was the metallic scent of meat cooked until tender, the bright flash of greens. Rummaging through the lower compartments, you would have found many fresh goods, and if you had peered hard and well enough to the east that morning, you would have seen the sun grow over a horizon thrusting spires into that glow.

Voices had been light, had expressed contentment, mischief. What they had voiced had been of little consequence. And then...they had changed.

Sentences had grown short, had been broken off, had developed edges. They had included names; not of men, not of any living thing, but uttered as passionately as if they were of women. You wouldn't have seen any wounds, but you would have seen pain -- in green eyes trained down, down, carefully down at white-tense hands -- in a full mouth pulled thin, tight, warped by teeth set hard against each other -- for a moment.

It might have bothered you to hear the first forced laugh, but you would have relaxed when the olive branch was accepted. Hands reached, fingers gripped, arms yanked, and the laugh that emerged as the laugher fell into the lap of the man that holds our interest rang freely through the room.

You have heard enough to know that decency, or perhaps shame, would have made some turn away at that point.

When the clothed man later reached the bed once more, he stayed as still as the sea would allow for one breath, two, then he knelt. The first burnt-orange light reflected off a medal in his hair to dance on his cheek before he ducked to the side to look under the frame. While down on his knees, if you had gotten down there with him, you might have been shocked by the ideas considered, discarded, settled on.

But you would have been prepared for what he held in his hands when he pulled himself up by the sheets. You wouldn't have been surprised by the speculation, the anticipation in the grin he bestowed on the man who was curled toward the depression that must have held the warmth he had left.

What came next? That story belongs to another.

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