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Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: NC-17. Sex and graphic violence. Some main characters dead previous to beginning of story.
Pairing: Mainly, Will Turner/James Norrington, Jacques/Jack/José Gaspar.
Feedback: Favorite lines, constructive suggestions, etc. are all welcome.
Disclaimer: None of this is mine except these versions of Jacques and José (sort of).
Notes: Jacques uses the occasional French phrase (still shouldn't interfere with reading); translations upon request. //words// in Spanish. Modern-day parallel universe. Jacques looks like Brad Pitt, and José like Antonio Banderas. Some supernatural stuff. Special guest from Shrek II.
Summary: In which everyone screws up at least once.
***
"Heaven has a road, but no one travels it; hell has no gate, but men will dig to get there."-Chinese proverb
***
"Come on, come on. Pick up."
Bzzt. *Hello?*
"Guess who just ran by me."
*I'm not in the mood for pretty maids' games, bo'sun. Is the shipment in?*
"It's secure. And my pants are all muddy because the spitting image of Bootstrap splashed them."
Attentive silence.
"No lie. It's the son…and come to think of it, the first one that passed looked familiar, too."
*If the other one's not his goddamned blood-relation, then don't bother. Get Turner. Or don't come back. I'll go to see you instead.*
Click. Static. Dead air, they sometimes called it.
***
"That damned well wasn't what I wanted to happen!" Jack whirled away, furiously waving his hands about, and prayed that by the time he turned around, the new batch of problems would've whisked itself away.
Well, he pivoted, but he remained in the room above the bar, with men still missing and Jacques still wearing that hangdog, irritated face. "And how were we supposed to know that?" the other man demanded.
Slumped in a chair at the side, José jabbed his cigarillo into an ashtray and leveled a glare at Jack. "You said to watch Norrington. You never mentioned anything about Will deliberately provoking him."
"Because I thought Will would have enough brains to discuss a plan of action with you two before he started," Jack snapped. He flopped into the sofa and glowered disgustedly at the door, which should've been creaking open with a pair of apologetic brown eyes behind it. Instead, said eyes were bobbing in tequila, angry, and off doing God-knew-what-but-save-the-fool-anyway in the middle of late-night Tortuga. "Those two have been tiptoeing around each other for days, and I figured Will wouldn't want to do it only by himself. And anyway, I just told him to find out if Norrington was planning anything extra. I did not tell him to warn off the stiffass. Or to poke about in the man's lust-cabinet."
"Then perhaps you should've informed Will that he wasn't supposed to be obsessing over any of that. Since none of it is important to the current situation." Jacques raked both hands through his hair, spiking the shortish blond locks into an angry crest. His shoulders hunched, ratcheting up the tension in the air, but he didn't make any move other than to slosh himself a whiskey at the minibar.
Damnation. Quite a few more people had answered Jack's calls than he'd expected, and he'd tracked down his companions for a celebration only to find out that they'd lost Norrington and Will somewhere in the city. One thing right, and another wrong. Or was it one thing righted, and another wronged?
Never mind that; words were naturally tricky things, and anyway it was actions about which Jack had to worry. He stood up and consulted his compass, then studied the backwards spiral of a dust speck two inches from his nose. "We'll talk about this later. Jacques, you're on James. José and me'll go after Will. Savvy?"
"Savvy," the other two echoed, sounding slightly more hopeful.
"Good." Jack was turning to go when a hand lightly touched his shoulder. Then a cheek pressed against his head, and breath warmed his neck.
"I'm sorry. Will's very fast when he wants to-I'm sorry. I should've kept up." Jacques' voice was more guilty than apologetic.
Sometimes Jack wondered why he put up with his pair, and sometimes he didn't. He blew out a breath and turned to frame the other man's bowed head in his hands. "Stop that. No point in blaming yourself for Turner having a brain that shrinks whenever Norrington's involved. Honestly, I should've just taken care of it myself, and locked Will in the trunk."
A rusty snicker floated out of the shaggy blond hair, and Jacques nodded. Moved a little closer, and tilted his head so Jack's fingers slipped down to graze the soft patch of skin behind the ears. When Jack started to rub circles, first there and then moving along the hairline, the other man softened even more and made tiny pleased noises. A tongue flickered, ghost-quick, over the inside of Jack's wrist.
"As much as I enjoy watching this," broke in José's rather strained voice, "Will. Is upset. And he has two swords-"
They all winced. "Maybe I should've given him a few more talks when he was growing up," Jack muttered. "Right. Call when you find Norrington, Jacques, or else head back to Gibbs' at dawn. We'll do the same."
"D'accord." The other man pecked at Jack's lips, then leaned back and fluttered his fingers at José as he left.
One thing seen to. As for the other…Jack started trying to put himself in the head of an angry young sword-swinging Brit-Latino with a good splash of American. Will would…not stare at him the way José was, as if the other man suspected the state of Jack's sanity. Will already knew Jack was crazy, and brought it up as often as possible.
Of course, the other side of that coin was that Jack knew Turner still tended toward the so-called gentlemanly thing: namely, working himself into a puppy-sulk and not deigning to foist the details of his private life on anyone, even if he clearly needed to knock open a few valves. There wasn't a forge, or any place that could be quickly converted into one, in Tortuga so that left one other possibility: the beach. Maybe Jack hadn't hit all the bases every parent should, but he'd made damned sure the boy had fallen in love with water. "Swimming. José, don't suppose you've got any idea where?"
Shaking head, and rueful smile. "It would figure that being able to hide from us was one of the few things we could teach him."
"Damnation." Jack considered the long loopy stretch of sand that doodled a quarter of the city limits and made a few calculations. "You start at the north end, and I'll take the south. And don't start anything; I've had about enough for the night."
***
Will didn't freeze up very often. In fact, he could've counted on one hand the number of times his muscles had decided to put a choke-hold on his nerves.
Thanks to James, however, that number had just jumped to the other hand.
Norrington and his fucking hang-ups, as if he were the world's one and only sufferer. As if having a great big hole in his chest made it all right to start hacking chunks out of other people-
Shit. It wouldn't hurt so much if Will didn't actually like the stiff-lipped bastard. So if his stomach was knotted into painful bowties, then he did like James. Was that why he'd given up one of his precious swords? And it had been without a second thought, like he was just expanding himself instead of losing a piece of his blood and sweat. Those blades were his flesh-the closest to children that he would probably get-and it always hurt like the devil when he had to sell one. The first time, after the buyer had left, he'd had to run for the bathroom and retch until excruciating dry heaves had come. The second time, he hadn't had a choice; it'd been after Jack's first try at Barbossa, and the money had been needed for the doctor's bills. Then, days had passed before he'd finally believed that the crusts of blood beneath his nails had really washed away.
Number three hadn't been more than a sting, but that had been because he'd made it for Jack, and given it to Jack. So much effort had gone into ensuring the sword would suit the other man that in the end, it'd been less offspring than a favorite visitor, wonderful to have around but not sorely missed.
Something nudged at Will's foot, startling him out of his thoughts. When he looked down, solemn green eyes stared up, an eerily familiar expression in those murky depths..
"Or maybe I've finally lost my wits," Will muttered, his chuckle souring on his tongue. "Close proximity to Jack, or something."
Two little paws imperiously planted themselves on Will's ankle, and a silent demand was transmitted.
"Bet that's what Commodore Norrington, or whatever he was, looked like, barking out orders to his men." Too tired to resist, Will bent down and picked up the small ginger furball, which was oddly free of the usual parasites. One of its paws, patting at his chest, felt strangely thick, and when he pried it off, he found that its pads weren't arranged in the usual pattern. If it were a human hand, he would've guessed a swordsman, but that was patently not a possibility. "You like swords, cat?"
It almost seemed to nod, then suddenly scrambled out of Will's grip and up his shoulder to the hilts, which were sticking up from behind. When he tried to tug it back, it miaowed in protest and sunk sharp little claws through his shirt.
"Fucking burr. And I'm calling you Puss, because that's what your damned caterwauling sounds like." Will reprovingly tapped the beast, but didn't bother with any further tussling. He wiped at his forehead and cheeks, then exited the alley and wandered vaguely seaward. Since they'd all gone to ground to avoid Barbossa's men, over two years ago, he hadn't seen more of the ocean than the occasional glimpse of flat soulless blue on the TV. He loved the skeletal beauty of the desert, but he also missed the shifting three-dimensionality of the waves. It was the closest sight he'd ever come across that matched the feel of steel twisting beneath his hands, weaving itself along his tools.
Swords. Very few people really knew how to truly appreciate them. Even fewer saw past the bloodshed and cherished their inherent marvel. "At least I've got some company."
"Mew?"
"You want a story? Okay. I can do that." Will grinned his bitterness at the world. "I'm really good at that. Unlike Jack, who has no idea what plot structure is."
Kneading. A tail curled about Will's neck, brushing off the accumulated layers of sweat. "Meow."
"Sorry. Shouldn't criticize when I haven't shown I can play my own fucking cards, should I?" They turned a corner into a mass of writhing drunks, and Will steadied the kitten with a hand as he ducked the clothes flying out. When they were clear of that, and had the street more or less to themselves, he took up the thread of…monologue, technically. "I should just be wearing one sword, but that jackass forgot his and-fuck, I can't believe I was trying to return it. If he doesn't want it…"
Which hurt. "And let me explain, Puss. Something my mother told me, when I was kneehigh to a pile of dogshit: a lot of people can make a good sword, but only a few have the balls to make a great one. Because the movies got that right. Metal is thirsty. Just look at all the dumb wars fought over gold."
"Mrraow." The little hairwad was licking at his ear. Tiny rough rasping tongue, it had.
Felt good, actually, but not as good as it could've been, and yes, Will was susceptible to that itch. He definitely wasn't an eunuch-and damn Jack for that embarrassing little episode. Jacques hadn't stopped laughing for a week.
But at least they'd understood, when he tried to explain about why he got up so damn early to hike out to his forge. It would've been much more convenient if he'd just gone for one of them, but instead, he had to get stupidly masochistic and be attracted to fucking conflicted Norrington. "Great. I'm all wound up about a guy who probably doesn't know Toledo steel from the rod up his ass. But yeah, metalworking. Mama told me that in the old days, they used to make a sacrifice while the smith was doing his stuff. There was this one legend, about a bell. The poor guy cast and recast it, but it always had a bad tone."
As if sensing the coming darkness in his words, Puss huddled against Will's neck. He absently scratched between its ears.
"So one night, his wife sneaks in while the metal's melting down. And she throws herself into the crucible. After that, the bell rang with the voice of a mourning woman, rich and deep and powerful as hell." The skin on the back of Will's neck abruptly rose in bumps, and prickles seeped into his hands, crying out to feel a hilt. He ignored all that for the moment and kept on walking as if he wasn't being followed. The beach was a growing shimmer of soft beige, and it was open space that he was going to need. No point in fighting in a cramped side-street if the other person didn't want to.
"Now, you would say that's insane and immoral, and you'd probably be right. But it was what worked. It is what works." Will's throat was getting dry. He hoped the fight would be over with in time for him to make a bar-stop before everyone passed out for the morning. "A bell's huge. Blades aren't, so they don't need as much. A papercut will do, and a few strands. That makes sure my swords can't be turned against me, so I don't mind. But what I do mind…"
Being treated like a plaything. Like a pawn. Like a goddamned scapegoat for poor little Jaime's issues. "I made these as a pair, you know. My blood and hair in both, and a lock of Mama's hair. The handkerchief Jack used to wipe her face clean, when he found her. She told me to do it, way before she died. She said to keep the sword for the one that…"
"I didn't mean it as an insult," a low, rasping voice said.
And Will froze. For the second time of the night, and it'd been two very eventful years since the time before those. Even if it hadn't been annoying and frustrating to the point of murder, it was still embarrassing. "Well, it was," he snapped, not turning around. "I'm beginning to think I made a mistake. Actually, I know I made a mistake."
"I was…too angry to remember. And very drunk. I'm still drunk, in fact. Which does guarantee you an apology in the morning, once I stop throwing up."
The kitten sniggered, which was good because Will was not going to cave in to this particular stalker. "Like I care about a few meaningless words. God, what's the point of giving you a sword if you don't know how to use it?"
By that, Will didn't mean just forms and katas and what-have-you improvisation. Swordfighting was life, and was death. Choice between two extremes, with an endless rift in between. It was the real leap of faith, and that, James obviously didn't have anymore.
That…Will was rapidly losing. "I wish I'd never met you. Or that that fucker had shot me, because then I wouldn't owe you shit," he growled, shaking the ice from his limbs and walking as fast as he could toward the beach. It jounced Puss and drew ferocious complaints from the kitten, but Will refused to listen.
***
James' head was starting to throb, and his mouth tasted as if someone had filled it with ashes. He'd lost his senses, his sword, and now he was losing something he couldn't yet describe but could very much feel.
And that cat Will had picked up kept twining about to flash him an arrogant grin.
He was, quite possibly, at rock-bottom when even marmalade fleabags had a better situation than he did. "I heard a tale about the Black Pearl."
Will was still walking.
God damn it. James gritted his teeth against the headache's malicious pulse and ran after the other man. He reached Will just as the pavement merged into sand, and then he passed Turner, swerving to block the other man's path. "Wait."
"Now what?" Will pulled the kitten from his shoulder and cuddled it to his chest as it hissed at James.
"A…woman…" James had to catch his breath. All he did these days, it seemed. "She was a witch-wife to a pirate. When the authorities finally caught up with him, she cut his body down from the gallows and stole a ship, all by herself. Impossible, of course, but-then the story says she lashed his body and herself to the wheel. Sailed into a storm."
A faint flicker of something penetrated the opacity of Will's eyes. "When it came back out, the two were gone, but the ship lived on. Went through pirate captain after captain, like an addict with a kilo all to himself," he whispered.
Relieved, James lifted a hand to massage one temple. "I have a-had a hobby. Trying to find records to back up old sea tales. The Black Pearl wrecked itself on the Mexican coat, a few miles south of Veracruz. It was very shallow water, and by the time government officials reached it, everything including the timbers had already been scavenged by the locals. A very small part of its treasure was eventually tracked down, but…"
Will didn't speak, and for a moment nothing moved, not even the cat. Then grayed light skittered across his cheek as his face turned down and to the side, as if he were sick of everything. Most likely true. "Why did you follow me? Did you want your sword back?"
"My sword?" James repeated, his mind temporarily dropping behind his hearing. "I thought you said-"
"It's not the kind of gift I can take back." The other man stabbed his toe into the sand, then kicked out so the grains sprayed across the stinking miniature swamps that dotted the pavement. "Or weren't you listening?"
"No, I was." It was like trying to reset his ribs one-handed, but James painfully put his thoughts together into a coherent, hopefully convincing truth. "I followed you because I wanted to talk to you."
Disbelieving meow, but Will's expression didn't shade toward mocking, and that reassured James a little. "Well, we're talking," Will muttered.
"And I have no idea what to say. I simply…wanted to talk." Because that had been what James had sworn to do in the car, and that had been what he'd failed to accomplish in the bar. Because even with the awkwardness and the constant threat of explosion simmering beneath every word, talking to Will was surprisingly easy.
Too easy, perhaps, and that was why things went wrong. James hadn't had a true conversation in months, and now all the stifled words were bubbling out without regard to order or sense or propriety. Or anything except a sudden, shockingly strong need to speak.
"The rest of the legend," Will abruptly said, "Claims that in that village near the shipwreck, there was a swordsmith. He took the timbers and metal from the ship, he gathered a few gold coins and some jewels, and he made the greatest sword in the world. Which he called, of course, the Black Pearl."
The faintest hints of tequila hung about Will's breath, acid sweet, and when James edged a little closer, he could just catch a whiff of lime. There was a small scar behind Will's left ear, only now exposed because the other man was looking around James and pushing the hair that normally covered it out of the way in aggravation.
"Look-" Will started to say.
But then Turner was backed up to the side of an abandoned car, and tasting even sharper than he spoke, all bitter sugar and angered flame, and James couldn't remember whether it had been a push or a pull. Or who'd done it. Didn't matter, what with the unexpected delicacy of dark eyelashes slowly falling over dazed eyes, and the strange dance of tongues, old as life and new as every kiss. James' hands were suddenly full of dirty silk, his calluses catching on tangles, feeling the oils and the dried sweat. It wasn't disgusting-it was real. Real as the heat spiking from the join of their mouths to the join of James' legs, real as the smell of sea lust and beast fur and cold steel.
Damned lucky thing the cat didn't mind, because James would not have taken an interruption very well. Not when the storm in his stomach had smoothed into languid tropical ripples, when his mind had managed to break out of its self-eating loop for one stretching moment.
Time eventually had to snap back, though, and when it did, it left red-slicked welts all over his insides. And he'd thought that he'd already been bled dry.
"What is this?" Will demanded, holding off James with both hands. "You said you only wanted revenge."
"I don't know." Honesty was going to be James' killing grace someday, but he'd had too many layers stripped from him to dissemble anymore. "I want Barbossa's head. I want my wife, alive. I want you. I don't know! I don't know where you fit!"
Instead of the harsh rejoinder he'd expected, the other man was silent. Then Will reached behind and unstrapped one of the swords of his back. James' sword. "Here."
"If you're giving it to me against your wishes-"
"I'm done with giving," Will snapped. He grabbed James' leaden hand and forced it to close around the scabbard. "Listen. Get your head straight, for the love of-" broke off, all the energy suddenly vanishing. When he spoke again, it was with the voice of an old, broken man waiting on the seashore. "I've been thinking. And I didn't tell you that story in the bar because I wanted to warn you off Barbossa. Not really. I told you that because I wanted you to know revenge is messy, and nasty, and it'll take things from you…we killed José's half-sister, you realize?"
"I know it's less than pleasant. I'm prepared to accept whatever consequences result from my actions." The words tripped off James' tongue, a response ingrained into his flesh after so much sympathetic disapproval from old friends, colleagues. In those first few days after Port Royal's razing, it'd seemed as if he had had to fight for the right to be simply outraged. People expected a man to be crushed by tragedy, and it visibly terrified them when they discovered a ferocious wrath instead. "I still-smell the blood. Do you understand? They all burned."
Then he did as well, when fingers softly touched his brow. They trailed down his face, almost a caress except for the deliberate flick at the still-healing cut along his jawline. When James hissed and jerked back, Will also stepped away. The other man put down the cat by a pair of old ragged boots, patted it once on the head, and then stood up to present an impassive expression to James. "I'm going. And if you follow, I'll cut off your head. I don't want to see or talk to you again until you figure yourself out. You can chat with Puss, if you need company that badly."
And with that, James was staring at a retreating back, feeling every heavy footstep on the underside of his skin. He felt bruised, and worn, and he seriously wondered what kind of miracle was still holding him together. "Also, what the hell was he referring to?" James irritably muttered. "I-"
I want Barbossa's head. I want my wife, alive. I want you. I don't know! I don't know where you fit!
I'm prepared to accept whatever consequences result from my actions.
He'd meant both statements-when he had said them. But a changing truth was not a truth, but a lie, and James had sunk a little deeper into the muck without even noticing. Contradicting himself, touching Will and then trying to deny it'd happened, it'd done anything to him. Wanting the warmth, and forgetting the mind that came with it. "Christ, what am I doing? I think I'm worse off than the day-the day of the funer-"
"Meow?" A fuzzy orange wart had sprouted on his leg.
James picked up the kitten and smiled ruefully at its inquisitive face. Then he bent over and buried his nose in its fur, uncaring of mud crusts and fleas and all the other unimportant details. His sword was still gripped in his hand, the plain sheath digging its edges into his palms, as if to split his unworthy hands in two. "You still smell like him."
"Mrrr." It drooped and purred against his chest as he slowly retraced his steps, trying to find his way back to the bar.
Will was right: a muddled mind applied to vengeance was a recipe for bloody disaster. James mourned and wept and howled, but he still wanted to live. Elizabeth would've wanted him to go on, and not to uselessly throw away his life after killing Barbossa. What would that accomplish, he could hear her vibrant voice saying, except proving that he wasn't any stronger than the other man? That his legacy would have nothing to it beyond Barbossa's death, and did he truly want to be defined by such a horrifyingly cruel man?
And Will was right: James wasn't going to clear up anything by continuing to run after the other man. When he was looking at Will, everything…complicated. Mangled and mauled until he was too dizzy and hurting to know where he stood. To know the difference between what he wanted to do and what he needed to do.
So James was going to find a quiet spot and settle matters for good; he was arranging his cards only one more time, and then the chips could fall as they pleased.
***
About fifteen minutes into his search, José tripped over a sword.
"You're lucky that was still sheathed," called a laconic voice. Will crawled out from behind a pile of driftwood, looking exhausted as a field laborer tumbling off the truck.
"And you're lucky I don't take you over my knee." José plucked the end of the scabbard out of the sand and dusted off the grains. "First running out like that, and then letting yourself be separated from your weapons."
Growling, Will snatched the sword back and crumpled into a defensive heap. "Fuck off. It's been a shitty night, and I don't need another lecture."
So José noticed. One careless, moping Turner, one sword missing, and a vague feeling of combustion at the edge of the beach. It all added up to a really lousy equation, which was why he let Jacques play with the numerology and just stuck with bones and blood. He quietly took a seat next to Will and dug around in his pockets until he came up with a loop of string.
"Aren't you going to call Jack?" Will mumbled, more to his hilt than to José
Twist string over knuckles, and pinch it between thumbs and index fingers while the little fingers drew out the rest of the loop. Weave that piece through the hole there, and gently tug until it was a miniature coastline José had framed in his hands, with tiny glowing dots bobbing along the dark red yarn. "Do you want me to?"
That visibly surprised Will, and it took the other man a few minutes to stop staring. "But…"
"Jacques would do what he would do, and I'm doing what I do." A deft twitch of two fingers collapsed the spell, and José was once again holding a mere loop of string. He tucked it back with his rum flask and switchblade, then wrapped his arms around his knees and looked at the sea. It was deep black-blue, with silver lace edging each crest, and the tide was ebbing, exposing small tide pools full of fluorescence. //Christ, it has been a while.//
"You missed this?" Will's glance skated off the side of José's face, and then the other man suddenly flopped over José's leg to nestle against his thigh. "Oh, right. You haven't been back here since we got you."
"It's not the city I miss." Warm breath was gusting against the crotch of José's pants, which were beginning to become somewhat uncomfortable. Normally, he wouldn't mind, but that kind of reaction wasn't right for the situation. When he tried to shift away, however, the sand slipped beneath him and he actually ended up even closer.
Then Will nuzzled him, too slowly for the contact to be anything but deliberate. He bit back his groan and pulled at the other man's shoulder. "Will. Do you know who you're doing?"
Will's head shot up, chin hard and eyes like thunder, and fingers tightening on the sword. For one endless second, José thought he'd gone too far, been too clever.
The next moment, Will laughed, and nothing relaxed because it was the laugh of the walking dead. "Jesus. I'm sorry. Just as fucking shitty as he is, trying to use you like-no, I'm shittier. A real fucking son of a bitch, who's playing just as he was taught to play."
José knew that last handful of verbal broken glass didn't refer to Jack; he'd been around long enough to know how deep the connections ran between Will and the other man. But he hadn't been there when Barbossa had crushed the first try, when Jacques had spent a month in a hospital and Will had come in every night, stiff-legged and bloody-faced and flush with the money for the bills. When Jack had called in favors from Singapore to Morocco to get himself a patch of land so sacred even undead pirates couldn't step on it. He'd only come in afterward, when the other three had been secure in their desert stronghold, only coming out often enough to keep their hands in.
It nagged at him sometimes, when he could feel the vibrations of things he didn't know about, except from dropped hints and the occasional drunken ramble. Even more when it was the memory of a wave that he knew he'd never understand without riding it. If he even could do that. Some came along only once in a life, and never again.
But when it came down to the end of the sea and the beginning of land, José wouldn't have his life any other way. He'd fucked around when he was younger and stupider, probably acting too much like his bastard father, but it was how a man finished that counted, after all. "You know I love Jack?"
Will didn't blink; his eyelids seemed frozen open. "Well…yeah, once I think about it. Never figured you'd mention it, though. It just seems to go with the purring and everything."
"Then let me say this: even if I'd never met Jack, I'd still like to meet you." Which was no lie, though it was difficult for José to imagine Jack without Will somewhere in the picture, or even Jacques without Will. The great advantage of being able to sense that level of linkage was that José knew just how far they'd allowed him in, and how far they might let him go, sooner or later. There were richer and handsomer men than himself, but his world was a hell of a lot better.
Speaking of that, one part was still very depressed, flashing big brown eyes at him. And that always had been a weak point of his. "Incidentally, I mind when you're being an idiot, but I see nothing wrong with cheering you up," José added, punctuating his words with a slightly lewd smile.
"As long as I remember whose name I should be screaming, right?" An identical grin gradually bloomed on Will's face, and his hands pressed down José's sides. Then he paused, fingers on the zipper, and turned serious. "Just don't yell for Jack. Makes me feel like I'm fucking my stepmother."
"I never saw anything wrong with that." José batted away the slap and laid back, folding his hands underneath his head. //Never could tell which were the mistresses and which were the wives-oh, God!//
His nails ripped into his own scalp, flashing pain down to ram against the sudden flush of heat that melted his spine from end to end. Wet swirled lightning into his cock, shocked the flesh straight and stiff, and his hands went limp, dropped out of his hair to be crushed into the sand by his head. Held there just as securely as if they'd been bound.
He arched into a sky of velvet black and pinpoint white, then collapsed onto a bed of shifting, searing sand. Fire-water was lapping at his edges, eating them frayed, and he thought he could feel his muscles unraveling one-by-one.
Palms flattened against his thighs and stayed long enough to leave yet another set of prints on his bones and skin, then slid up and back to round his back, buttocks, hips. One rough fingertip shoved down his loosened waistband to rasp the outline of his hipbone, and then he was being lifted and shoved down impossibly deeper. //Ah, fucking Mother of God, you're going to fucking-why aren't you choking-//
Wisely, Will didn't answer that directly, but instead let his lips and tongue and teeth create a wordless, beautiful, teasing rebuttal. Really fucking convincing argument, José muzzily thought as his mind shorted out, section by section.
When the last fraction began to go into the blinding white, he tried to wrestle one hand free and warn the other man. But the wrist wouldn't budge, or the elbow had locked, or something stupid, and so he was reduced to simply banging his knees against Will's shoulders.
In response, a cheeky grin flitted somewhere on the borders of José's vision, and then a finger slipped behind his balls, rubbing and scratching at very thin, very sensitive skin and fuck. Whoever'd taught that to Will should shot.
No, should be thanked. Maybe. It was a little hard to draw moral conclusions when a climax was blasting his soul right out of him.
Once he'd done with flopping around on the sand, he took prompt advantage of Will's cuddling up against him and nosed into the other man's pants. Lovely, lovely skin Will had, all tanned and citric-sweet, with just enough salt to tell José that this wasn't some absurd fairytale where the heroes always got their miracles before they learned a damn thing. This was fucked-up glorious life, with a friend in need writhing ever-so-prettily on the beach, and the sand flying in José's eyes and the hands squeezing the blood from his shoulders were just as essential to that as the fleeting look of rare freedom on Will's face.
"God!" And the other man's sticky bitterness gusted over José's tongue, him swallowing it too fast for the taste to stick in. Will didn't move until after José had licked him clean and done up their pants, and then the other man curled around to rest head on José's hip and rub hand over José's belly. "God, that was good."
"You could've always asked, you know." A purr was creeping up José's throat, but he bit it back so he could hear Will's reply.
"Yeah. I do." Nuzzle, and knuckles kneading into José's stomach, soft-hard-soft, with a little skritching at the end. "Thanks."
All right, job accomplished. Now he could purr. Even if a little wisp of submerged memory was nagging at his brain, telling him he'd forgotten to do something. Well, it could wait; José curved into the caresses and let the contented sounds rumble out of him.
***
"Take Turner alive, and whole. No games, you hear? Or I'll cut off your feet and lock them up so you'll have to hop your fucking way back."
"Got it, bo'sun. We going now?"
"Yeah, we're going."
***
As soon as the bastard rounded the corner, Jacques was going to introduce fist to temple, sling unconscious Brit-prick over his shoulder, and get back in time to have first crack at smacking some sense into Will. Honestly, he'd seen high school girls act less foolishly during Cancún Spring Breaks.
Norrington's footsteps slowed as they approached the crossroads, but they picked up again almost immediately; Jacques counted them, took a silent breath, and stepped out-
"Mew?"
"Christ!" The other man literally skipped back a step, eyes shocking open at Jacques' sudden appearance. On the other hand, the kitten James held actually dared look peeved.
"Mrraow." It stretched out its neck and glared.
"You…you…" Jacques spun around and checked that the world was still mostly how it was supposed to be, then whipped back and jabbed a finger at the damned little furball. "You, sir, are lucky I can feel Will on you."
Interestingly, at that point Norrington blushed from the base of his throat to his hairline.
"Otherwise I'd take away your mittens and make you into one," Jacques continued, pointing at the cat's white paws.
James blinked. "You're talking to the…"
The other man looked a little unsteady, so Jacques took the liberty of removing his colleague from James' grasp. He wrestled with the wriggling ginger fluff until he'd gotten it in a position where it couldn't claw him. "Now, then. Where'd that stupid, stupid swordboy go? And why the hell hasn't José or Jack called yet? Can't be taking them that long, unless they were distracted…"
Little slit-eyed expression of contempt. Jacques wondered if a quick dunk in sewage water would encourage cooperation.
"You…you were going to attack me. Only you didn't, because I was holding a cat." Apparently, James' mind had finally deigned to acknowledge reality. "I'm still drunk, aren't I?"
"Salaud, am I speaking to you?" Of course, the answer to that was obvious, so Jacques didn't bother waiting for a reply. He tucked the kitten under one arm and hooked the other around James' neck so he'd know where at least one prime piece of idiocy was. "You're a grown man. Could you act like one?"
The muscles lying beneath Jacques' arm stiffened, and the other man yanked himself free. "Look, I know I haven't been behaving very well, and-"
"Ce n'est-" anger tangled Jacques' voice and mind, washing him over with memories of broken-springed backseats of Marseilles taxis, dying whores in Paris alleys and Mexican shit on his soles. It took him a good minute to banish the stench back to where it belonged, and to remember he wasn't spitting up blood, but acid. "That's not it, you useless jewel-eyed fuck. All men want. That's the game of life. It's when they try to pretend they're better than they are that I call foul."
"What? You're saying you'd be happier if I-if I fucked Will raw and then threw him over?" James' voice was harsh as smog inhaled through a bleeding mouth, and his eyes were stars of hell. Faster than Jacques could dodge, the other man had whirled to face him, and was shoving him back by mere angered presence. "Is that what kindness is in your twisted world?"
"Yes. Yes, it is. Because then you'd be no different than the rest of them, and he'd forget you in a second." The cat was a wiggling knot of heat against Jacques' chest, as restless as his mind and heart. He wanted very much to smash a hand through that glass envelope that surrounded Norrington and yank the other man out of that museum to blind grief. Rub his face in the dirt and show him what pain was. Living.
Death was the cessation of pain. Death was what came when people stopped being able to care, and that could happen just as easily by an overload of feeling as by a numbed indifference. "Damn you. He gave up a sword to you, and went after you to return it, and you-you don't even realize how your indecision's going to kill him. I could hate you for that. I could make you suffer in ways that you cannot even begin to imagine."
A thousand shards of jade raked over Jacques, and the steaming breath of a predator saturated his face as the final fragments of blackened, pitted glass fell away from Norrington. "You have no idea what I'm going through right now. So don't you dare make presumptions like that."
***
The sea was boiling. Not literally, but figuratively, and not so every addled fool walking down the beach could notice it. But Jack could, in every bit of excess force as waves crashed into sand, as darkest blue went to black.
He slipped out the compass, and the sight of its unwavering pointer briefly filled him with relief. But then his cell rang, too innocently, and over the water, the air thickened into mist. Muttering prayers and charms and everything else he could think of, Jack eased out the phone with shaking hands. "José?"
*Found Will. We're coming…wait a minute.* The already faint voice grew even harder to hear, forcing Jack to fight for every word. *Will…by that stack…not right…*
"José?" Jack glared at the slashes of white that rippled across the ocean, for once not relieved to have the advance warning. His stomach was dropping like a barometer before a stormline, and he was choking on the intuition that whatever he did, he'd be too late.
*Click.*
"Damn it!" Only the fact that Jack needed to check in with Jacques kept the phone from receiving a watery death. Jack stabbed the numbers into the glowing screen and began to run for the nearest car. It wasn't his, but he cared even less about that then he normally would.
Not all treasures were gold, but there were some Jack was willing to defend to the death.
***
It was probably an old whores' cliché, but a good bout of sex really had cleared up Will's mind. The whole situation was his fault.
He'd been the one who'd decided to listen to James and bring him home. He'd been the one who had decided to just trust the man, on pure feeling alone, and then he'd compounded his stupidity by treating James as an equal partner instead of as a source to be cultivated and then gently-or not so gently, depending on the other's resistance-set out of the way. Will had been the one to bend the rules, and now they were whiplashing into his face.
Not to mention the sudden darkness that skittered just out of sight. It didn't matter too much, though; Will knew what he had to do. Keep Jack and James from killing each other, because damn it, that was where things were heading, and because he loved the one and might love the other.
Beside him, José abruptly jerked up from the cell phone and squinted at a heap of junked cars, just beyond where the beach ended and the city began. "Will, by that stack. The shadows…they aren't right."
Will carefully reached behind him and pulled his sword off, then slowly unsheathed it. The blade reflected a swish of color on a nearby rooftop. "No shit."
Then there was no more time to talk.
A howling mass sprang from the roof, and Will reflexively went down, loosened himself and waited for it to separate into men. He saw the opening appear and flowed up, swung around and slashed back to guard himself. Blood showered across his field of vision, and his return slice was a little slower than he wanted it to be, because it'd had to cut through flesh and bone. So on the next step, Will pushed himself faster, until the speed of his feet and hands matched the punches and metal flashing by him.
Guns had snapped into José's hands as soon as the cell phone had been tossed aside, and the other man was picking off targets with impeccable precision. And not missing a beat when their attackers lurched back into the fight, bony foreheads still streaming brains. //Fucking hell. Are these the zombies?//
"What the fuck did you call us-" the snarling mouth vanished a welter of red as Will's sword sliced lengthwise through it.
A bullet seared past Will's cheek as José temporarily put down a dreadlocked skeleton, and then the other man was ducking so Will could cut a swath through the crowd of maniacal grins. And it was a crowd, because no matter how fast they killed, Barbossa's crew just kept coming back up. "Count of three, and then I say we do a little B and E," Will muttered.
"You're adorable when you're being criminal," José laughed. Then he popped out two pieces of metal, and while Will held off the others, he snapped them together into a really, really big handcannon.
"Do I want to know where that was when we were blowing each other?" An elbow got past Will's defense and put a throbbing lump in his jaw, so he kneed the fucker and cut off that arm.
"Three," was José's succinct reply. He raised the gun, pulled the trigger and splattered undead flesh across half the street.
They rammed through the thinnest part of the ring encircling them and didn't cut off the acceleration till they'd also burst through the nearest door. Will took great pleasure in slamming it in the enraged faces of their pursuers. Then he quickly heaved boxes in front of it and scanned about to make sure there weren't any other openings, which fortunately were absent. It was some kind of storage room…
…and he could smell blood, fresh and too strong to be from the stains on his clothes and sword.
"I always wondered why all of you never talked about them," José said, steady and quiet. "Never mind. I'm going to tear them apart for this."
"Where?" Oh, Christ. Will could feel the thick sticky scarlet carving into his flesh, a mark he'd sworn never to get again. "Damn it, José, where?"
The laugh was brittle, and cracked against the darkness. Will could barely make out more than the sharp curve of a wounded-wolf smile. "My leg." Staggering step up, and a hand settling on Will's shoulder, meant to be reassurance but turning into a desperate grab for support. "They're doing something out there. Can feel the patterns change…it's going to blow the door."
Fuck. Will glanced about, frantic for an idea, and as he did, he bumped into one in the form of half a car. Back end, but when he investigated with his free hand, he found that the trunk still had a working lid.
It was a good thing José was with him, because Jacques would've instantly known what Will was about to do. And Will was sorry because he knew how much this was going to hurt the others, but it was the only thing he could do. He needed to get to Barbossa before anyone else, and this was the easiest way. "Sorry."
He raked a hand up José's arm into hair matted with sweat and kissed José so hard he could taste Jack and Jacques in the other man's mouth. Will filed that with the memory of James, wet and tequila and finally breaking, and then he slammed the pommel of his sword into José's temple.
The other man fell without a sound. Will had barely enough time to find the injury, a marlinspike still embedded in José's thigh, and to wrap it with his torn-off sleeve. Shitty work, but it'd keep José from bleeding to death while Jack and the rest caught up. Which wouldn't take too long, but wouldn't be soon enough to stop this.
He owed Barbossa a reckoning, anyway. So much of his life twisted around that bastard.
***
Jacques opened his mouth to reply to James' statement, but then the other man flinched. The cat began to make soft frightened noises, and James instinctively slipped his hand over his sword hilt.
Around them, however, the streets were as quiet and peaceful as they probably ever were in a city like Tortuga. Prostitutes simpered, and drifters of all shapes and colors drunkenly staggered about the shady corners. Transactions of every imaginable persuasion continued to be negotiated and interrupted under a gradually darkening sky, which seemed to scowl at the little vermin it reluctantly sheltered.
When the cell rang, obscenely cheerful, James nearly cut off a random passerby's head. As it was, the drugged-out stick suddenly leaped away from them and splashed through several puddles of raw sewage at a dead run.
"Hello?" Jacques was saying in a tight, fierce voice. His eyes had narrowed to hard stone slivers, and he no longer lounged in place, but moved with the spare razor movements of a hunting cat.
Which reminded James. When he didn't immediately see the kitten, he figured the animal had been scared off by their heated argument, but then he caught a glimpse of orange. A tail tip, poking out of Jacques' pocket.
Snap. The other man shoved his cell into another pocket, then stood back and looked at James. "Will."
"What happened?" was out of James' mouth before he realized he was speaking.
"Do you really care?" Jacques turned away and began walking very fast. A few moments later, he was running, and James was hard-put to keep up.
Did James? Well, he had to, or else his guts wouldn't have wrenched about quite so badly when Will's name had fallen, corpse-stiff, from Jacques' lips. And he wouldn't still be recalling the taste and feel and press of half-ruined kisses stolen from anger. Nor would he now be wondering what Will was like when he wasn't hostile. What it would be like to be Jacques or José, or even Jack, and have that easy rapport.
But, said his reason, any relationship that deep had an equally steep price attached. He'd heard bits of the stories behind it all, and scented the faintest whiff of the blood involved. He should have a decent idea as to what it would take from him.
And where had his rational thinking been before? James silently demanded as he pounded after Jacques' flitting form. Where had it been when Barbossa had torn his life into pieces, then kicked him in the stomach and left "one to tell the tale"? Where had it been when he'd learned how to steal and lie and trick his way through the world?
Where the fuck had it been when he'd remembered how to carry a sword, and how to carry a heart?
"Jacques-" James panted, dodging past a tangle of writhing bodies and hopping over a heap of scrap. He didn't finish his sentence, because he still didn't know how. The road had changed; it'd once led from point A to point B, from smoking wreckage to a bloody head at his feet. Now, he couldn't see the end because it was blocked by a shining silver blade and a pair of serious brown eyes, beautiful humor occasionally dancing into them.
Or perhaps that could be an end. Something to carry him past Barbossa's demise, and onwards.
James hadn't gone into his quest blind, after all. He'd seen other men lose themselves in revenge, and then fall apart when the dust had settled on the clotted blood because in the end, they'd had nothing left but the anticipation of death. He'd known he had been straying toward that path himself, and he hadn't cared then.
Now…he'd changed worlds. He should learn how to live in his new one.
Please, God, don't let me walk in on another body. I can't bury any more; the graveyard in my chest is full and will collapse into my lungs if it receives another funeral. And I will die, stifled in myself.
***
Jack arrived just as Jacques did, and a moment later, James skidded to a stop, panting so hard his ribs seemed about to shatter.
All eyes were on the Frenchman, however; Jacques weaved his head back and forth, but otherwise moved with deadly certainty as he silently led them through a tangle of alleys. And then he screamed, a short ferocious keen that might have split the roof of the sky in an older time.
Ragged shapes dropped off from nooks and niches about the street, which was cramped with piles of debris. They never stood a chance, really; Jacques kicked up a two-by-four from the ground and bashed in the throat of the first that came at him, then whipped it into the second's chest. Bone crunched.
Air pressure changed to Jack's right, and his sword came out to fling a red splash into the wall. Then the man collapsed with a gurgle, and stayed down. Which startled Jack and Jacques so much that they almost missed the last two ambushers.
A knife slashed an inch from Jack's ear, and he swirled back just in time for Norrington to put a bullethole through the attacker's forehead. The other one went for Jacques' side, but Jacques merely sidestepped, grabbed the man by a shoulder and headbutted him. He tossed the unconscious body to Norrington and then went around a corner, back stiff with simmering rage.
Exactly one second later, splinters of wood and metal blew out in a tremendous explosion. Ears too deafened to even ring, Jack rounded the corner just in time to see Jacques enter a dank little storage room, which had been abandoned for months, judging from the thickness of the mold on the objects within it.
"Will…" said a thready rasp from behind Jack.
"He's gone." Jacques cut loose with a volley of French curses, his shoulders so hunched that viewed from behind, they seemed to disappear.
Regular thugs in the alley. Far too much blood around for just them, and besides, there weren't any other bodies. And where the hell was José?
"Rraow!" A streak of orange went from Jacques' coat to a junked car and sat on the trunk. Jacques was over in one step, and he carefully repocketed the kitten before hauling up the lid.
And that was something Jack had never wanted to see. The room spun for the second it took for him to shift gears, and then he was gently lifting José from the trunk. "Norrington, stop gawking. Go outside and get me a car. You can put yours in the trunk; I'd like to parley with the jackass later. Jacques, see if there's a trail."
"He went after that-that salaud. Fils de pute-Will is so fucking brainless, I should…and this is your fault, Norrington! He went because he thought you couldn't kill Barbossa, but you could damn well fuck up Jack's try at him, and so-"
"Jacques!" Jack snapped. The other man's mouth clicked shut, and they exchanged a hard stare for several seconds. Then Jacques nodded and stalked out.
Jack set down José on the ground and checked the soaked bandage on the other man's leg. Not life-threatening yet, but they needed to stitch it very soon, or else it would be. "James?"
Who hadn't left. "Yes?"
"Listen. If Will wants you that much, then fine. But if you put another foot wrong, it'll be me you'll be facing in the sword ring. And it won't be a sparring match."
"Understood." Footsteps retreated, slow and uneven because they were burdened with extra weight.
Prices and payments. Jack had been willing to meet Death fairly for a very long time, but not like this. He brushed an apologetic hand over José's bruised, swollen temple, then shook himself. "Will, you'd better know what you were doing," he muttered. "Because if you aren't finished with it by the time I show up, you are a dead, dead idiot."
***