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This is not a Disney product, and any resemblance to a Disney product is inconsequential, no matter how intentional, and not for the purposes of capitalistic advancement.
Appointment with the Hangman
Captain Jack Sparrow shuffled, not because he wanted to but because the bloody irons dragged his feet down. Arms bound securely in front of him, he made his way down the corridor toward the square where he would be hanged.
Hanged. Barbossa had not appeared in the night to terrorize Port Royal. The town was not in an uproar. Will Turner had not burst in to beg him to help find Elizabeth. Therefore, Will had not bent over the pick up the bench.
Oh, what Jack would give right now for one last look at Will’s exquisite arse. He had to smile. He’d only had a few glimpses of it during the fight in the smithy, but in that dream, that fantasy, he’d feasted his eyes every chance he’d got. Feasted his hands. His mouth. His cock.
Jack felt a little twitch in his trousers. How pathetic. Here he was, on his way to his death, and he was lusting after a man he barely knew.
It seemed so real, though. How could he have imagined that smell of nutmeg and vanilla? How could he have invented the feeling of Will’s tongue sliding across his, twining around it, licking the backs of his teeth, of Will sucking his tongue and nipping at his lips? How could he have only dreamt of the excruciating heat of Will’s arse, the intensity of Will’s kisses, and that purr… he couldn’t quite believe the purr wasn’t real.
Now that he thought of it, Bootstrap had purred. Bootstrap had purred often. So maybe he did make the whole thing up.
The sun was bright, painful to his eyes as he entered the courtyard. The whole town was there. What an entertainment it was, to see a notorious pirate hang. There was jeering; there were taunts; Jack ignored them. He shuffled along, eager to have this done with. It was clear it was going to happen anyway. It was probably for the best.
Will Turner stared down at the rocks in disbelief. Dumbfounded. Dazed. Defeated. Jack was gone.
There’d been a look of surprise on Jack’s face, and then he was gone over the edge. Will ran to the brink, but Jack was gone. When Will looked down, a great wave had washed away from the shore, and the jagged rocks pointed up at Will menacingly, taunting him.
He’d barely registered the blur of red, and the slice of sharp steel through a torso. Awful it was. Butchery. Nagaraj roared when he swung his sword, Will heard the sickening, sucking sound of the blade being pulled out, dripping with life.
Will’s stunned eyes met those of the pirate. Nagaraj leered at him, malice in his eyes, blood filling his mouth. Norrington swung his foot up to plant it on Nagaraj’s chest, and kicked hard. The Snake tumbled down and Will watched as his bleeding body was broken on the rocks below.
Jack was down there. Will hovered at the edge of the cliff. If Jack was at the bottom, so Will should be as well. He took a step forward and watched the waves wash over Nagaraj’s body. He leaned forward.
There was a hand on his arm. Norrington’s blade gleamed with the blood of Nagaraj. Will stared at the red drips falling down. The two of them were so close to the edge, the blood was falling over the edge, all the way down to where the twisted corpse lay far below.
“I’m sorry, Will.” Norrington tugged at his arm gently. “Come away from the brink.”
Will shook his head numbly.
“Will, I understand. But I need your help. We’ve got to help Elizabeth.” Norrington was pleading. He kept his voice a gentle as possible, he didn’t want to frighten Will, or prompt any rash actions. “Will, please.”
Will stepped back from the edge and turned to look at Elizabeth. “I’ll help,” he said roughly. There was nothing else he could do.
Jack was gone, not to be found anywhere.
Jack scanned the crowd from the scaffold. Yes, it did indeed look as if the whole town had turned out. Mildly flattering, it was, to know that he was notorious enough for so many to want to see him swing. Of course, in a town like this there wasn’t much entertainment, aside from the local brothel.
He wondered who really did run the local brothel. He’d never visited it, although he knew there had to be one; one couldn’t imagine a fort of this size without a brothel nearby. He remembered, or imagined, Marina DeMaurier. What a fine madam she was, with her piled up hair and her fancy gowns and her imperious manner. Must have been a fine harlot too, before she moved up in the ranks. He searched his memory for a young woman in Nassau Port so long ago.
Yes, that had really happened. Marina was young and scared and she needed money, and Jack had taken pity on her because she didn’t really know what she was doing. He hadn’t even bedded her at first. He’d bought her lunch and they’d spent the afternoon in a room where Jack went over his business papers and Marina slept. She’d been exhausted, living on the street, hungry, scared. Then he’d had dinner brought up to the room and they ate again. Lord, the girl had an appetite, and he remembered finding that very attractive. She told him stories about her sisters and her brothers – especially her younger brother Jacob, who had a different father and looked different from the others, and was always getting in trouble.
Jack squinted in the sun. He hadn’t imagined that at all. He could remember Marina clearly. He’d laughed at her stories, they had some rum, and he’d felt almost as if he was courting, not buying a night. He’d kissed her pretty cheek and told her she was under no obligation to him, and they went to sleep together fully clothed. Then he woke up. She was kissing him and telling him he deserved his money’s worth. She felt so good, warm and soft, with her arms around him. She smelled like sunshine, and her unpractised, awkward kisses had made sure it hadn’t taken long for him to change his mind.
Jack frowned. Had she really become a madam? Or did she take the money and go home and get married to some nice young man… damn, they were already reading the charges. He’d missed whether or not they’d called him ‘Captain’.
He looked over the crowd again. Where was Will?
Will carefully placed Elizabeth down on the beach. Her leg wasn’t bleeding anymore, but she was dreadfully pale and had not regained consciousness. Norrington knelt beside her with a groan. He touched her forehead. “Please, Elizabeth, this is all my fault. I didn’t want you to be hurt. You don’t have to come back to me, just come back!”
Elizabeth sighed. Her eyes did not open.
Will wondered if the grief on Norrington’s face was present on his own. He couldn’t tell. He felt numb all over. He couldn’t remember carrying Elizabeth down the path to the beach. He couldn’t remember anything but the sight of those rocks.
Norrington fumbled with his jacket, and Will was shocked to see the spread of rich red staining his white shirt.
“You’re injured,” Will said. So much blood today. So much.
Norrington grimaced. “Nagaraj got me, while my blade was still inside him.” He sat down on the sand gracelessly. “There must be someone who can help Elizabeth.”
Will got up mindlessly and walked to the pool at the base of the stream. He didn’t think about Elizabeth discovering him and Jack beside it. He couldn’t. He found a bucket by the pool, probably left there when the Pearl was getting ready to sail. He filled it and stumbled back to Norrington. The wound was deep, but not fatal. Norrington had carried his half of Elizabeth down from the watch hill and bled into his tunic without saying a word.
“Take off your shirt, I’ll use it to bind the wound. Let me wash it,” he said, and he scooped up some water and let it fall over the cut across Norrington’s chest. He watched the blood trickle down Norrington’s torso, pink, diluted by the fresh water.
“Will?”
Will didn’t move.
“Will, answer me,” Norrington said. His voice rose with his panic. There was something frightening in Will’s eyes, something that was…
Dead.
Will tried the word out. First in his mind, then he spoke it out loud. “Dead,” he said. It sounded so… final.
Jack couldn’t see Will anywhere. Of course not. Will was a fine, decent human being. He wouldn’t care that it was the only entertainment in town. He wouldn’t watch someone hang for pleasure. He would be at work, ignoring the whole spectacle. Hard at work with his sleeves rolled up, lovely forearms tense with effort, sweat trickling down his throat and chest.
Now Jack would never get the chance to lick those forearms, to run his tongue along the paths of veins and muscles, to nibble gently at the inside of the elbow and over the peak of the bicep, to explore the curve of his shoulder and latch onto the pulse at his throat and suck hard enough to leave a mark, but gently enough that Will purred.
Jack closed his eyes as the noose was placed around his neck. There would be no rescue, so his last moments would be spent contemplating the truly fine things in life. Unfortunately, the only things that came to mind were things that, apparently, had not actually happened.
He didn’t care. He let his mind fill with the image of Will Turner naked in the surf, and Will Turner naked in his bed. Will writhing under his hands and mouth. Will clutching him tightly while his cock erupted between them. Will purring at every twitch and wriggle of Jack’s fingers deep inside him.
Will smiling at him. Just smiling. At Jack. Because he loved Jack.
This whole hanging business was so bloody unfair.
“Get him into the boat, quickly!” Jacob commanded Norrington.
Norrington dragged Will to his feet and led him to the longboat.
“I’m so glad we found him here. We’ve been worried sick about him.”
Elizabeth had already been moved to the boat, where she lay between two seats.
“Are you well enough to row?”
Norrington nodded and picked up an oar.
Will stared at nothing, eyes unfocused, his whole body lax. He couldn’t row. He had no reason to row.
Jacob bit his lip. He had no idea what to say to Will, what to tell him. He just had to get him to the Pearl.
Jack felt the noose tighten. The command was given, the trap door fell from beneath his feet and he felt himself fall down.
Will Turner sat on a stool in the captain’s cabin on the Black Pearl. His eyes ached. They felt as if they were full of sand, they were that dry.
The feel of Tessie’s strong arms around him failed to give him comfort, but it did serve to release his tears. After he soaked her blouse through, his father had taken his turn, trying to comfort him but it was nigh impossible. Will had never cried like that in his life.
Everything was a blur, people running to and fro, fetching medicine, caring for the wounded. He’d been hauled up onto the deck by Alex and Jonathon, both beside themselves, fraught and desperate. Okonkwo had talked to him. So had Anamaria. He couldn’t tell what they were saying at first, but Anamaria was dragging him to the cabin.
It was Bootstrap who had spotted Jack in the water, hauled him up on the deck, dripping seawater, unmoving, pale as a ghost.
Will blinked. He had not thought it possible to run out of tears.
He turned his head and looked on the motionless, colourless face of Captain Jack Sparrow.
“Will, you’ve got to come out of there. Come out and get some air, eat some food.”
Will ignored Kay. He refused to leave the cabin. He didn’t want to eat. He didn’t want to feel the wind in his hair. He wanted to sit here, beside Jack.
Jack was never this still. Even when he was sleeping he moved. He mumbled in his sleep. His eyes darted under closed lids, his fingers twitched and moved and sought. His limbs wrapped around, or draped over, or entwined with Will’s.
“Jack,” Will whispered, with his voice hoarse, throat sore from crying. “We can’t be apart. I can’t live without you.” He traced his fingertips over the neatly-sewn scar on Jack’s forehead, the one Rina had sewn up so carefully. The skin was held together tightly by tiny black stitches, bloodless and stark.
“I wanted to throw myself off that cliff, follow you down, follow you where ever you go. You’re too much a part of me now. I can’t live without you.”
Aocmoilhuicpa, spawn of the great Lady Mictlantecihuatl Goddess of the Realm of the Dead, and Yacatecuhtli the God of Merchant Adventurers, avenger of the devastated valley of Chantico’s faithful, and all-round randy heathen god, reached out and let his essence settle throughout the cave that glittered with the treasure of pirates. The stone cask of cursed gold, his sole responsibility, his reason for existence, sat on a veritable mound of gold. It soaked up the surrounding glitter, a black hole, as Aocmoilhuicpa threw lazy sprays of his mistress’s light into the dank air.
Randy heathen god.
He liked it when Jack Sparrow called him that. It had a nice ring to it.
Aocmoilhuicpa was tired. Tired from his labours. He stretched out into every nook and cranny of the cave, counted the treasure, tasted the gold, smelled the lingering scent of the four men who had visited not that long ago.
Randy heathen god.
He would admit to that. Everything about Will Turner had made him randy. Will woke something in him that he hadn’t even known he possessed. Warmth. Hunger. Lust.
He existed for one purpose only – to carry out the curse of the Aztec gold. And he had fulfilled that purpose admirably. When the men invaded his cave, he’d intended to carry that out once more. But something had happened.
Will Turner had happened.
But in reality, Jack Sparrow happened. Without Jack, Aocmoilhuicpa would have only seen the good in Will, that purity of spirit that was so admirable. It was through Jack that he saw the rest of Will. That vision of Will had consumed him for a time – it was enticing. Entrancing. Hot and writhing and with a purity of an entirely different variety.
But as time went on, he had to admit, the focus of these feelings had shifted, and he found himself concentrating his considerable energy elsewhere.
The pirate. Captain Jack Sparrow himself. Rogue. Scoundrel. Duplicitous and carnal. Licentious and dishonest to the bone.
There was something about the way his sinew clung to those bones, the rattle of the jewellery in his hair as black as the night, the way his lean limbs swayed when he walked. And his hips. Aocmoilhuicpa was fascinated by the hips. In particular, the way those hips moved when he was fucking Will Turner. So eternally delightful.
He wished he could have him for his very own.
Aocmoilhuicpa sighed, or the nearest thing a randy, disembodied heathen god could manage, and the lights rippled over the treasure like a thousand candles.
Tired. It had taken all of Aocmoilhuicpa’s might to raise that wave up from the ocean, to lift the waters fast enough and high enough to catch Jack Sparrow before he was smashed on the rocks. He’d only just managed the feat. Jack had an unpleasant cut on his head, but he was not broken in two.
Now that nasty one - Nagaraj, they called him but Aocmoilhuicpa knew, because he knew everything, that his real name was George – that one was broken in two. Aocmoilhuicpa had yanked back his wave and watched with no small amount of satisfaction as the snake’s body was dashed against razor sharp edges.
He’d carried Jack gently, carefully, straight to his ship. There the older Turner, the one Aocmoilhuicpa remembered from years before, pulled Jack’s body up on the deck.
It felt good to act like that, not because he was obligated or destined or told to do it, but because he wanted to do it. He enjoyed the delicious sense of emancipation it gave him, to act of his own free will. He felt larger than he ever had in the length of his existence.
He had done it for himself. He had done it for Jack. He’d done it for Will.
Now, it was out of his hands. There was nothing more Aocmoilhuicpa could do. The fate of Jack Sparrow was no longer something he could alter.
Jack lay, pale and still as death.
“I know you’re there. I know you want to come back to me,” Will sniffed.
It was cruel, that Jack should somehow, by some twist of fate, improbable but not impossible, survive the fall from the cliff, and the depths of the ocean, and lie here before him unresponsive, hovering between life and death before Will’s eyes.
It was no wonder Jacob refused to tell Will why he had to return to reach the Pearl with such urgency. He didn’t want to give Will hope, in case Jack had died in the interim. It was no wonder Okonkwo hadn’t wanted Will to enter the cabin at all. The sight of Jack so lifeless was horrific.
But Will had entered, and not left since entering, and could not tear himself away from Jack’s side. He knew Kay and Tessie would eventually drag him out of the cabin, force him to eat. But he didn’t want to. He only wanted one thing.
“Please, Jack.”
Next: Chapter 96 Heaven
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