Lucid Dreamer's Fanfiction

lucid_fiction @ 2008-05-04T17:29:00

2008-05-04T23:29:04Z

This is surely unedited filth, but....what else do you want for having written it in an hour?? It was a nice work-out.

Title: Logistics of Ownership
Author: Lucid_Dreamer_
Rating: PG, probably
Word count: 1, 644
Summary: Jack steals Will's heart from Elizabeth, 20 years later.
Warning: I wrote it in an hour. Blegh.

“I always knew that I’d have to steal your heart from Elizabeth, lad, I just never thought it would be so literally,” Will froze in place when he heard the pirate’s voice drifting down the hallway. It had been ten years since he had last stood in this house. It had been ten years since he had seen his wife and his son. It had been twenty years since he had heard that particular, low, half-drunken voice.

“Jack.”

“Aye,” Jack weaved his way into sight, carrying the heavy chest in his hands, “I’d forgotten just how heavy this thing was.” The pirate had aged considerably well over the twenty years. His eyes looked more tired with more fine lines around them, there was visible gray sneaking its way from beneath his hat --- there were more trinkets woven into his hair than William had imagined possible.

“Where is Elizabeth?”

“Our favorite distressing damsel? Don’t worry over her, lad. I wouldn’t hurt a hair on her head,” Jack moved past him, carrying the chest with him into the kitchen. The kitchen was down a set of stairs from the back of the hallway. Will had thought that the arrangement was strange when he had first seen the house that Elizabeth had purchased and furnished as her own. Regardless, he had memorized every last detail. Having only stood in the house once, he knew his way around it as if he had lived there his whole life. He doubted that Jack had the same knowledge.

“No, you reserve that for the people who don’t directly try to kill you.”

“I reserve that for people who do incredibly stupid things, who steal my ship and…” Jack’s eyes became somewhat distant as he looked down at the chest, “….who are complete lummoxes aboard a ship.”

“….Most of the crew are complete lummoxes, Jack.”

“Look what I have!” Jack piped up, fishing the key to the chest out of his sleeve, “How incredibly stupid, leaving the chest with the mum and the key with the pup. Sentimental, aye, but still….incredibly stupid.”

Will felt his blood freeze when that key appeared from the depths of Jack’s sleeve. It made a quiet “tink” as it clicked against one of Jack’s rings, the pirate pressing it into his palm with a deft movement of his fingers. A slow smile crept across Jack’s face as he toyed with the key, leaning the other hand on the chest.

“What did you do to James?”

“James? Touching. William, dear William, will you please stop considering me to be some scoundrel who would come into your home and tie up your bonny lass and handsome yet somewhat of a duldrome son just to hold your heart in my hands. You know nothing about me at’all if you think that’s what I’m about.”

“What are you about, Jack?”

The key went into the lock with a sick scraping noise, the mechanisms going to work to allow the chest to open. Will watched with frozen fascination as it hissed and popped, and as Jack slowly opened the lid. Thud…thump….thud…… he could hear his own heart slaving against the cold metal of the box, beating with his rising panic. Jack’s long fingers dipped into the chest, meeting the eerily warm surface of the heart, slowly lifting it into the air.

“Jack,” Will reached out, grabbing Jack’s wrist, “Jack, don’t do this. If you stab the heart…”

“Who said I’d be stabbing the heart, lad?” Jack’s eyes burned up at him, dark and sultry even with the cataracts that Will could so plainly see, “I’d much rather be using it as leverage. Let go, William.”

William released his hold on Jack’s wrist slowly, his fingers trailing over the rotted piece of lace and a bit of leather that resided on Jack’s wrist. Jack watched him, blood slowly making its way down his other arm from the beating heart in his hand.

“Do you remember the Interceptor, William?”

“You got me pissed and tried to bugger me.”

Jack’s laugh was sharp in his ears, “Tried to, lad? I buggered you, and you wanted to be buggered. Else wise you wouldn’t ‘ave been the one what started it, savvy?”

“You think I started it?” Will didn’t really care what the pirate thought of that incident. He cared about the long fingers curling around his heart, seeming to absorb the blood, “I don’t remember it that way.”

“Aye, you did. You started kissing on me neck. Thinking of Elizabeth, kissing an old man?” Jack lifted his other hand, petting the heart like it was a small fluttering bird in his hand, “….Every night for a month.”

“Jack…”

“What I don’t understand, William, is how through all of this you could come to me and be buggered as you wished… but then it is still back to Elizabeth. How you could come to me….tell me you loved me, that you’d come with me….” Jack scraped a nail along the surface of the heart, “….an’ yet I could always tell you were trying to pull one over on me, lad. It was always about the lass, even when you were angry.”

“I was mistaken when I said I loved you.”

“Aye, I gather that,” with a simple motion, Jack was closer to him, leaning into his face. The man smelled of the sea, goat, unwashed body…and an odd mixture of spices that made the other smells slightly more bearable, “I gathered that when you said neary a word to me when I gave it all up for you, lad. I had the heart of Davy Jones in me hands…”

“You want me to be grateful for cursing me?”

“I want you to be grateful that you still breath,” Jack’s breath fluttered across his face, “I want you to be grateful that you can come an’ see your tart, that you do have a son.” His long fingers convulsed, pushing hard against the heart. Will swallowed hard, meeting the pirate’s eyes.

“I…thank you, Jack.”

“Thank you, Jack,” Jack sneered, then leaned his head on William’s shoulder, “that is all, then.”

Will turned his head slightly, trying to look at the pirate. From this close, age didn’t seem as friendly to Jack as it initially had. If the man hadn’t been such a bastard and wasn’t holding his heart, Will might feel inspired to pity for him. Perhaps he really had been cruel to the old pirate. He remembered telling him that he loved him…. He had meant it, at the time. He could remember coming to Jack on the Interceptor, watching him at the helm and hungering for him. He could remember a secret meeting when Jack had come back to Port Royal once. He clenched his jaw and imaged, for a moment, that he could feel the greasy pillow between his teeth again.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” Will found himself leaning in, kissing the cheek that was turned towards him. Jack’s eyes rolled and he lifted his head again, weaving for a moment before pressing his body against William’s.

“I come all the way to this backwater port battered by hurricanes to hold your heart in me hands, and all you have to say is a pitiful ‘thank you, I’m sorry’? I’ll die a happy man, then, knowing I was right.”

“Die, Jack? I heard that you were chasing the Fountain of Youth…”

“Does it even remotely look as if I found it?” Jack pulled back from him, waving the heart in the air, “All I found was a stinking marsh full of alligators and an old man without the slightest inclination of what I was talking about. Evidently, he drank it all, and what little good it did him.”

Will bit his lip and looked at the pirate again. It was hard to imagine anything that came out of Jack’s mouth. It was even harder to imagine him dying. He was suddenly glad for the lunacy that was Jack breaking into his home and ranting at him. At least this way, he didn’t need to fish the pirate out of the water and ferry him to the land of the dead himself. He found himself imagining what Jack would look like, his face loose with death, all of his characteristic decorations stripped of him. Will shook the image out of his mind, finding it too hard to bear. Maybe there still was a bone in his body that loved Jack… just a little.

He reached forward, taking Jack’s wrist in his hand again, pulling the pirate back towards him. Jack looked up at him with angry eyes, the cataracts dimming that chocolate brown that Will had loved. Reflexively, Jack’s fingers squeezed the heart and Will felt the constriction in his chest even as he leaned forward and pressed his lips to Jack’s.

You’re bound to lose your heart mate…

Jack’s arms wrapped around him as he sank into the kiss, the heart beating against Will’s shoulder blade.

…if you lock it away…

Will could taste rum, the sea, and something unpleasant, but most of all he could taste Jack. He could taste everything about the pirate, every moment of his life that pushed the breath in and out of his chest. He could taste all of those times on the Interceptor, he could taste their secret meetings, and their glances at each other. He could taste his love for Jack…and Jack’s love for him.

“Jack…do you love me? Still?”

“I never quit, mate. There’s two…no, four things I love in this life. Pearl, rum, freedom…and you.”

“Touching.”

“Aye, you touching me is included in that.”

Will lowered his head, kissing Jack’s throat and the pirate tilted his head back, lifting the hand that held the heart. Elizabeth may have owned the gruesome, beating, thing but the logistics of ownership had never stopped Jack.

Fire

2008-05-04T23:25:13Z

rating: PG for language and violence
summary: Jack refuses to transport slaves on the Wicked Wench and Beckett makes him pay the price.
pairing: Jack/Cutler, Jack/Pearl (in a way)
warning: Ship death, kind of... and there's some rambling that's fanon. This bit is intended to link into a bigger bit... but that hasn't been written yet. Oh, yes, and this has not been beta-ed. Sorry! Some links into DMC.
disclaimer: All your characters belong to Mouse. Thanks to jacquesmoineau for clueing me in on this part of 'history'. ;)
word count: 4257

Cutler Beckett closed his eyes, just allowing the feeling of the sea to permeate his skin. It was easy for him to understand how men fell in love with the sea, how they left their homes for its blue expanses and the mysteries it held beneath the waves. It was a beautiful fantasy, but in reality… those men who fell in love with the sea fell in love with their own demise.

He opened his eyes to look at the ship they’d been chasing for days. She was considered one of their own, flying their colors…a beautiful ship, that was certain. However, this particular ship had departed from her course and had taken quite a costly detour. It was only after the ship had departed from port that Beckett learned of the captain’s apparent moral distaste for the cargo he was to be transporting. It was of no surprise to him that this particular captain hadn’t bothered to look at the roster to know what he had in his hold. It was enough for the man to be out on the sea, regardless of the task assigned to him. As long as he was on that ship, he was happy.

The ship in question was the Wicked Wench. She had quite a reputation about her and it had been a surprise to the British Navy when she had trolled slowly into port. She was a beautifully crafted frigate that had been lost to pirates in the year 1699. When she came into port at St.Kitts in 1708, news of her return spread quickly. The word about her apparent captain spread even quicker. He was a young man who looked as if he had narrowly escaped death too many times. Upon coming into port, he gave the crew up that sailed under him, calling them all pirates, rapists and murderers. He had quite a lurid story to tell about having been kidnapped from a small church for some obscure reason. Apparently, he’d murdered the captain of the cut throats and taken control of the ship. The strangest thing about the tale was the fact that he’d volunteered for the navy-- upon the stipulation that he captain the Wicked Wench. It was discovered that he had served in the Royal Navy some years before, but had been discharged on account of being an alcoholic that could not be controlled. It took some convincing, but it was decided that he’d repented from his former disposition and that he was a fair enough sailor. The Wicked Wench would not, of course, belong to him but it was agreed that he could captain the ship. Any other benefits of being a captain ended once he stepped foot off the ship. Relegating her to simple missions insured that the young man wouldn’t progress in rank and would easily be sated in the imaginary seat that had been set for him. It was imagined that it would be easy enough to wrest the ship from him in a few months time. Two years later, “Jack” Sparrow was still captain of the Wicked Wench. His crews liked him well enough, finding him to be of an agreeable nature, and his services were decidedly valuable. The sight of the Wicked Wench sailing along even the simplest supply route deterred pirate attacks on the other ships-- something that could not be afforded.

In those two years, Cutler had come to know Jack when they were in port. Naturally, Cutler was of a higher rank than Jack since his title of captain extended beyond the confines of his ship. This often times put Cutler in the position of giving orders to Jack. Through the conversations he had had with the man they had become friends and he sometimes found himself in the position of offering Jack guidance--helping him survive the realities of the British Navy. The time they had spent together had also allowed Cutler to come to trust Jack, and think of him as a little brother in some ways.

That made this ordeal especially painful. The sight of that ship struck a chord in Cutler’s heart. He would have to deal punishment out on his ‘little brother’. The cargo that Jack found objectionable had consisted of a sound sixty seven Africans, ready to be taken to the colonies and sold as labor on the plantations. The objection was of no surprise, Jack often spoke passionately on the part of his fellow humans (a point that Cutler had trouble seeing); the objection also showed how much Jack really was to be trusted. If he could let personal opinions so sway his ability to sail his ship then he would never be suited for anything other than the dull little tasks he was assigned. The fact that he had departed from his course and evidently dumped the cargo (so they heard from the captain of the Glorious) made the matter worse. That was blatant theft of valuables and the departure with a ship of the Royal Navy didn’t look too good, either. It marked Jack as a pirate. Cutler laughed to think of it-- but found the label fitted to the man he was thinking of. He’d always thought Jack would turn to some form of piracy. He didn’t have a head for the decency of structure and form that the institutions of the navy had.

It wasn’t long before Cutler boarded the Wicked Wench. The sailors that stood on her deck looked nothing like the ones who had set out with Jack a few weeks earlier. He wondered at this fact for a moment before continuing on to the helm.

“Your crew changed,” he said as he made his way up the stairs. Jack was at the helm, eyes down. It was a posture that Cutler knew well… it meant Jack was ready to be yelled at.

“I had to change crew.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

Jack looked at him from the corner of his eye, some of his dark hair slipping from the loose tie that held it bunched behind his head, “They were threatening a mutiny. They’ll make their way back to you, I’m sure. They’re only a couple of islands down from here. I picked this lot up at the same time. They’re trust worthy.”

“They’re pirates.”

“They’re sailors, looking for work.”

Cutler sighed and gestured for Jack to follow him down to the captain’s stateroom. So grand was this beautiful ship that the captain not only enjoyed a cabin, but an entire stateroom with room enough for a formal table setting. It made Cutler sick to think about it. A man he wouldn’t trust to hold his wig stepped to the helm in Jack’s place.

Jack stopped inside the doorway, his head tilted downward. Cutler took a moment to actually look at the other man. He had the potential to be a real beau. His features were nearly perfect, high elegant cheek bones that hinted at good blood, sensitive lips, and dark brooding eyes. It was hard to equate this fine looking young man with an act of piracy, or the men that were now crewing the ship. One of Cutler’s men stepped past him, carrying a bundle in his arms. He saw Jack’s eyes flit after the man and so reached out to touch his elbow and draw his attention elsewhere.

“Jack…I know you. I trust you. One could even say that I love you, as if you were my own little brother…,” Beckett took a deep breath before he could continue, “Unfortunately, you’re a disobedient little brother and must be punished. Do you have any idea how much that cargo cost the company? Me? It could be the end of my career. What will be said of me, Jack, when it is learned that I cannot keep control of one man? That I cannot keep him from stealing my cargo and…and dumping it wherever he pleases. One insignificant man, who isn’t even really considered a captain!”

He led Jack by the arm towards the back of the state room, “Surely, this cargo cost more than your job is worth. Or this damned ship you’re so adament about. Who would have guessed you had such deep morals that you would put those things at risk. You understand, in the face of a loss that large, I do have to punish you. What you have done is considered an act of piracy. I’m as appalled to say it as I am to have to follow the appropriate measures. However, because I do care for you… I cannot stand the thought of marring your face with such an ugly letter. That can go elsewhere.”

The sailors that accompanied Cutler were quick to seize Jack by the arms, just as Cutler had ordered before they boarded the ship. Cutler lifted a short iron from the table, where the sailor had deposited the bundle, popping open the lantern above the table. The iron would not get as hot as it normally was for branding, but that was unnecessary. This was merely a formal act. He could hear the men behind him struggling with Jack, pinning him down against the table, one arm folded over the other on his back. Cutler smiled softly to himself as he took the iron from the fire and approached Jack. The smell of burning hair was foreign to the branding process and added a particularly odd touch to it in Cutler’s mind. Next, there was the sizzle of skin… he tried to drown out the pitiful sounds Jack was making, bucking and squirming beneath the two sailors. The simple fact was that Jack was a small man… he could go nowhere pinned beneath the brutes Cutler had brought with him.

With the branding done, Cutler set the iron aside to cool, gesturing for the men to turn Jack around. The smaller man was shaking in their arms, not daring to look at the arm that Cutler had just mutilated. He made a soft sound in the back of his throat and Cutler stepped forward, running a finger along that throat, tilting Jack’s head upward. Jack’s eyes were closed but moving rapidly beneath their lid, no doubt scheming some way to make this situation less real, or how to get away from it all.

“I didn’t want to do this Jack. None of it,” Cutler murmured, allowing Jack’s chin to drop, “I didn’t want to pursue you. I didn’t want to have to discharge you, brand you a pirate and…reclaim your ship. None of it. I was hoping that we could simply talk about everything… however, you understand, orders must be followed. You know that the penalty for piracy of this scale isn’t a simple mark upon your skin. You have seen it often enough to know it is death. There’s a way to escape it. Tell me where the Africans went and how I can recover them.”

“I’d sooner die,” Jack’s eyes opened, large and dark. It was interesting to note that the tears Cutler had expected weren’t there. Instead, Jack had seemed to absorb the pain into his posture and the way that he held his head. No real sign of weakness could be easily observed, except by those that knew him.

“For a group of savages. A waste, Jack… however, I am not one to deny a man his wishes. I can’t face the sight of you on the gallows, you understand. I’m afraid that a different sort of justice will have to be administered here. Men…. Captain Sparrow has resisted his arrest and tried to flee. The ship was destroyed in the chase, yes? Take him to the deck.”

For one moment as the men hauled Jack towards the deck of the ship, their eyes caught. The look in those dark, gorgeous eyes was unreadable, completely beyond Cutler’s comprehension. He felt as if he was gazing into a dark pool. So enraptured was he by this gaze that he did not see the flicker of movement, the slide of a shoulder that allowed a wrist to come out of one of the soldier’s grips. Jack was on him in an instant, those dark eyes still holding him captive. So quick was the entire proceeding that Cutler did not feel the knife. He heard the distinct ripping sound of fabric. He felt the oddly cool warmth of blood flowing.

“Jack…” the name choked in his throat, hardly making it past the lips he could not help but curl into a smile. He wanted to say ‘what do you mean by this?’ or something ridiculous like that… but the only thing that would come out was the other man’s name. He looked down at the knife that was only a hilt protruding from his side. There still wasn’t any pain, which was the most disconcerting aspect of it all. His legs were getting weak even as the soldiers grabbed Jack more forcefully, calling for the ship’s surgeon. Cutler stared after them, slowly sinking into a chair, trying to understand why Jack would do something so foolish as stab him.

Now he understood that look in Jack’s eyes. It was the look of a man who knew he was about to die-- and was ready for it. It was the look of a man who had faced his death before only to come out of it triumphant, holding his would be murderer’s head in his hands. He seemed like such a gentle honorable creature at times… but there was a streak of vengeance in him. This knife was the equivalent to the captain’s balding skull grasped in Jack’s hands of so long ago. This knife was the pistol fired in this very stateroom. Cutler imagined he could see the blood-- the corpse of the other man sitting across the table from him. That was ridiculous… the murder had occurred in the cabin. They had all seen the old blood stains, evidence of a body poorly but desperately removed. Would he face the same fate, a blood stain on the wood?

The surgeon was near him now, coaxing him to his feet. They had to get off the ship. All this time, his men had been steadily doing what they had been told to do. They had swabbed the deck of the Wicked Wench so that she shone in a greasy way that was almost unnatural. A few lanterns lay on their sides, emptied of their precious oil, adding it to the oil that had been spread across the deck with the small traces of gun powder that would ensure the ship would sink. Now, pain radiating throughout his body… Cutler needed that ship to sink more than anything. He lifted his head, looking around the deck with vision that was quickly blurring. Jack wasn’t putting up much of a fight anymore as he was being manacled to the mast. Funny, Cutler thought, those manacles had surely been intended for the slaves that Jack was losing his life for.

The soldiers were filing off the ship, careful not to track the copious amounts of oil on their boots, less a fire follow them over to the other ship. Cutler himself was transferred, carried in truth because he could no longer use his legs. With chattering teeth, he looked over at the other ship, full of villains. The crew that Jack had commissioned had surely been locked in the brig. A fitting end for them… it was a marvelous way to get rid of a lot of pirates all at once.

The ship was slow to pull away from the Wicked Wench, the sailor who was determined to have the best arm leaning over the side with a lantern on a pole dangling towards the other ship. It was a stupid way to start the fire… Cutler had had something of a more projectile nature in mind… but this would be effective. The lantern’s side tapped against the other ship, setting down precariously on the edge. Sails slowly unfurling, the ship began to pick up speed and pull away from the Wicked Wench.

The first sound that reached Cutler was breaking glass. The lantern had fallen from its precarious mounting, onto the deck…

Jack stared at the departing Valient, wondering what the soldier with the pole was up to. When the lit lantern came into view, Jack’s heart jumped into his throat. He had seen then swabbing the deck with a clear fluid, bashing and discarding the lantern. He’d seen a man sprinkling little rations of gun powder around the deck.

“Beckett…you bastard,” Jack hissed under his breath, watching the lantern balance on the rails. It wouldn’t be long before the ship tilted just enough, a swell allowing the fire to spread over the deck. There wouldn’t be enough time to get down to the brig. There wouldn’t be enough time to save the men who had helped him up river. He took a deep breath. He was only chained to the mast by one hand. That was enough to ensure that he wouldn’t be going anywhere in a hurry. All he had to do was concentrate on freeing that one hand. He looked down, trying to ignore the letter that brazenly presented itself on his arm. P. Pirate. He’d show Beckett a pirate when he got free. He took a deep breath, picked up the irons with one hand and pulled.

Glass shattered. There wasn’t enough time.

The iron resisted the tugging of his hand, clinging desperately to his wrist. The stringent smell of oil catching fire burnt Jack’s nose. There would be no time at all once the fire hit the gunpowder. He crouched, reaching out in what could prove to be a fatal move if he wasn’t fast enough. He laid his palm against the deck, covering it in the oil. If the lantern came too close he would catch fire as easy as any timber. He tried to ignore the sound of it rolling, the sight of the bright hot trail it left behind as it went. He brought his hands together, rubbing them as if he was washing in a basin, listening to the sound of the iron clinking instead of the steadily growing roar of the fire around him. There had to be time. He would make time. He pulled again, squeezing his fingers together, contorting his hand, pulling harder out of desperation. There was a popping sound behind him as the lantern hit one of the small pockets of gunpowder. The mast shook, the collection of irons clanking against one another. Pull…pull…

“Dammit…come on, come on, come on!” he grit his teeth together, pulling so hard he was certain that it would be his hand that separated from his wrist before it ever slipped free of the chain. Pull… he almost fell backwards when his wrist came free, flailing his hands in the air for a moment and then quickly drawing them close to his body. The deck was a sight from hell, ringed in fire. The popping he had heard had been a small explosion, opening a part of the deck to the below. Distantly, he could hear the panicked cries of the men in the brig.

For an instant, he was seized with an incredibly sadness. His life had changed on this ship. It was this ship, in some ways, that had saved him from a life he did not want… it was this ship that proved to him that he was a survivor. He felt the tears well in his eyes that had been absent when his skin had been marred. There were worse injuries in this would than those inflicted on something so ludicrous as flesh. The loss of this ship would be…

There wasn’t enough time to take it into consideration. He ran, making his way down to the brig, trying to beat the fires that were raging all around him. The whole entire ship was groaning, as if she was ready to go down in an instant. He was certain he wouldn’t make it as a piece of the deck fell in his way, bringing with it oil, fire… and gunpowder. His next thought was about the cannons he was standing amongst, the discarded bits of powder, the barrels… he ran, listening to the snapping sounds behind him. A second later, the world fell apart. It seemed as though nothing but fire and ash existed, turning things upside down. Jack’s shoulder cracked roughly against a cannon, which was quickly getting hot and hurt to touch. He felt as if the very fabric of his clothes melded to his flesh in the instant of contact. There was another loud booming sound… and the distinct hiss of water. In normal situations concerning fire, he would have welcomed that sound… but on the ship, it meant nothing good was about to happen. He quickly abandoned his mission to save the other men, praying softly as he ran through fire and water, trying to reach the upper deck.

There was no fresh air left in the world. Poking his head above, to the surface, there was nothing to breath but smoke and more ash. Water was crashing over the deck, bearing with it burning chunks of debris. The oil refused to be doused… but at least the ocean would render the gunpowder ineffective. He climbed up, trying to get an idea of the damage. She was listing badly to one side, her scuppers dipping below the water. A mast had fallen, flames eating it all the way into the ocean. The sails themselves were nothing but shreds, black and eaten away. The only thing that seemed intact was a single long boat, which appeared to Jack as if it was a vision. He dashed across the deck, ignoring the flames that clung to him, that burnt his clothes, his flesh, his hair, seizing the longboat, pushing it towards the water that was making its way up the deck. He wouldn’t be able to cast it so easily alone. He’d have to use the opportunities that the sea offered him. He pushed debris out of the way, crying out when the fire began to consume one of his hands. A plunge into the sea helped… but he was almost afraid to pull it out again, afraid that the oil would catch fire yet again. The boat was soon buoyant and he pulled himself in, pushing away from the wreckage his paddle, rowing as fast as he could. There was another booming sound within the ship. Another keg of gun powder. Part of her deck erupted, throwing chunks of wood and fire into the sea. Through the wreckage, Jack could see the Valient, only far enough way not to get caught in the destruction. None of them would be paying the Wicked Wench much attention. Their captain was surely dying. That would be a more important matter than the sinking of one ship.

Sinking. He stopped rowing and looked at the Wench. Her stern was sticking into the air, pulled into the awkward position of a ship that was being crushed beneath its own weight, unwillingly dragged into the sea by disaster. He remembered the first time he saw her from the perspective of a long boat. She was dark and dangerous, sitting like a squat beast in the water. The women next to him had shivered, but no more than he had. He remembered long nights spent in the brig, praying. He remembered the death and destruction on the deck… the turning point. He remembered his first look in the captain’s cabin, a pistol in his hand, blood on the floor. He had paid for every inch of that ship with his pride, with his honor, with his blood and any sense of innocence he had possessed. She couldn’t sink.

It was a moment of madness, but it couldn’t be helped. The stern slipped beneath the surface, driving the bow downwards, leaving behind it the broken parts of the masts, debris and burning sails. Jack felt himself in motion, felt the slap of the cold water on his face before it ever occurred to him what it was, exactly, that he intended to do. The stern was disappearing in the water and Jack felt for a moment as if he was watching the great ship sail away from him into the night. He swam, his lungs already burning, the salt of the water notifying him of every wound and burn he had gained in the ordeal. He pumped his legs, powering himself further downward, closing his eyes against the stream of bubbles that trailed behind the ship.

His fingers were the first to tap against the stern, grabbing onto the rough wood. There was no more swimming to do. The Wench would pull him along with her, or… or he could pull her. He could do that. He held on, pushing his feet against her stern, desperately trying to pull her even as she was pulling him. Madness, pure and simple, beautiful madness. Bubbles streamed around him as he pulled and for one glorious moment, the ship stopped and seemed to back… he was doing it! He was bringing her from the water! The darkness that he thought was the water grew darker, closing around his eyes and face, swallowing him whole. His lungs burnt and the world began to fade. The last thing he felt was the texture of the wood beneath his fingertips.

Mixed batch of Remus/Sirius

2008-05-04T23:21:06Z

Here's four more. :-) I thought there was five, but it lied. Again, very mild...with the general disclaimer that I own nothing.

027. Parents

When they were young, they had often compared stories of their parents. James’ parents were older and doted on their only son. They were a pleasure to be around, Mrs. Potter always quick to provide sweets to the lads and Mr. Potter accepting them all as if they were his own children. Peter’s mother was similar, doting upon him while at the same time gently chiding him. She was a worry wart and quietly pecked her son into a kind of submission.

Remus’ mother was nice, but quiet. She often seemed to be withdrawn, catering to her own demons with drink. None of the boys had ever met Remus’ father. He had felt responsible for Remus’ condition --having insulted Fenrir-- and had quietly left one night after his first transition into a werewolf. In turn, Remus had felt responsible for his mother’s own condition. She had started to drink shortly after. Yet, she left him alone, only bothering him when the moon began to get full. She was one of the reasons that the scratch of a record player always made his hair stand on end-- it always seemed to be the first sound he heard in perfect clarity before his transformation.

Sirius almost never talked about his parents. His father had a very hands-off attitude when it came to him, allowing his mother to take over the household. There was no secret as to what their stand-point regarding blood-lines was; all of them had heard the Howler that Sirius had received when his mother happened to learn that he had not only been sorted into Gryffindor but that he was quickly making friends with children from less pure families that were not so strict. James and Remus knew the truth about the night that Sirius had fled Grimmauld place; and why discussing the cruciatus curse in Defense Against the Dark Arts made Sirius’ breath hitch. Still, Sirius considered the night that he had spent with Remus worth all of it.

061. Winter

Sirius’ breath hung in the air as he looked down at the snow. It had been fresh the night before when he had run through it, feeling the crystals pack between his toes. The wolf had run beside him, stopping to bury his nose in the snow, scenting some creature that had long since passed into memory. Sirius could smell it too, those nights when he roamed the grounds as a dog. He imagined the scent wasn’t as vivid to him; despite his appearance as a beast, his mind was still a man’s. It was hard for a man to imagine the tiny toes of an animal that had run beneath the snow days before he ever thought to search for it. It was hard for a man to imagine what that scent meant; was the animal healthy? Was it good to eat? He had resigned himself to the fact that he would never know and had simply watched Lupin burying his snout in the snow.

He paused, running his eyes over the pair of canine tracks in the snow before him, accompanied by the occasional dug out spot. He could see where they had walked and ran, where they had jumped around each other yelping and where they had tumbled over one another in a frenzy that was half play and half real aggression. He could see where they had laid down together, curled around each other… and where Prongs had come upon them smiling as only a deer could.

Sirius jammed his hands in his pockets and smiled to himself. Despite the cold, he had to admit that he loved mornings in the winter. The snow allowed him to relive some of his best memories in quiet peace, it allowed him to walk the footsteps of his best friends, and to once again sit down where their bodies had met briefly. He could imagine no better way to spend his morning.

051. Water

The water in the basin felt warm as Sirius dipped his hand in, bunching the washcloth in his fist. He lifted it, squeezing the excess water out before looking at Remus.

“You should go to Pomfrey,” his voice was quiet, almost drowned out by the quiet sounds of water flowing through pipes, “get all of these looked at… or they’ll scar.”

Remus didn’t look up at him, staring down at his knees. He looked thin and sick, wrapped in the blanket from his bed that Sirius’ had made a habit of bringing to the Shrieking Shack. The last night of his friend’s transformation had been the worst. They had all been late in joining him and he had spent a portion of his night gnawing at his own paws and clawing his face-- something that had become unusual since they had begun keeping Lupin company. Sirius felt especially responsible for the gashes on his friend’s body; they had been late because of him. If he hadn’t been talking back in class…

“I’ll wash them out, but please… promise me you’ll come with me to the Hospital Wing?” Sirius reached down to lift Remus’ chin, surprised when teeth met his flesh. He looked down in surprise. Remus’ thin lips were pulled back to reveal sharper than normal white teeth, one slender canine sinking into the pad of Sirius’ index finger. A single drop of blood seeped from beneath his skin before Remus drew back, burying his face against his boney knees. Sirius just looked down at his hand, too surprised by the action to do anything about it.

An hour seemed to pass before he sat down on the bathroom floor beside his friend, setting the basin down between them. He dabbed his finger with the washcloth, only wondering at it vaguely. Could he be infected by a bite inflicted by a werewolf…when he wasn’t transformed? Or did the fact that Remus was still suffering some of the after effects matter at all? The blood washed away easily, but the angry little wound didn’t want to close as easily as other small punctures seemed to. He sighed, dabbing it again.

“Let’s try this again. Can I see your hand, Moony?” his voice sounded shaky in his own ears; he could only imagine how it sounded to Remus.

“…won’t heal right,” Remus muttered, burying his face further against his knees, his hair laying over his arms.

“What won’t?”

“…bite,” Remus looked at him for a split second, his eyes red and raw from crying. Sirius started to reach for him, but thought better of it.

“So? We’ll match a little, is all. Come on, Moony. Give me your hand so I can get some of that grime off of you.”

Remus uncoiled slightly, offering out one of his battered hands. Sirius took it immediately, curling his fingers around his palm. He could feel the tacky sensation of blood beneath his finger tips, could hear the quick inhaled breath as his fingers accidentally collided with the mate to the angry bite he could see on the top. He apologized quickly, trying to wash the wounds as gently as possible.

“…you won’t catch it,” Remus’ eyes flashed at him again before hiding behind his lids, “…I’m only contagious when I’m the wolf.”

“I wasn’t worried, Moony,” Sirius said truthfully, dipping the cloth back into the water in the basin, “and I want you to know that I’m not afraid of you, either, so you don’t need to cry.”

“I bit you,” Remus’ voice was choked, “…I didn’t mean to. I bit you and… and I could taste the blood…”

Sirius squeezed the cloth out and started dabbing at the wounds again, “I’m still not afraid. I’m still not worried. You have bitten me plenty of times while transformed, when I was a dog, and you know what mate? I’m still not worried. Still not scared. Let me see your face.”

He moved again to lift Remus’ chin. This time, Remus’ thin fingers wrapped around his wrist. Sirius stopped, watching as Remus lifted his free hand and took the cloth from him, unfolding his fingers and pressing his wounded index finger to his lips. Sirius smiled as he felt the peculiar sting of saliva against the wound, accompanied by the soft press of Remus’ lips.

“I’m sorry,” Remus whispered.

“Let me wash your face, mate, then we can worry about that.”

083. Shy

Remus Lupin was somewhat older than his classmates, a late admission, and an odd admission. He was grateful for the fact that he was able to attend Hogwarts; and that the Headmaster had gone through so much to accommodate the presence of a young werewolf on the grounds. Despite the fact that he was grateful for everything, he found that he was terrified. He had never been around so many young people in his life-- he had never been around so many people in his life.

The Hogwarts Express was crowded with children around his age, to students returning to finish their later years. He had found himself a quiet box and had curled up in the corner of a seat with a book. The quiet didn’t last for long. He was soon joined by two other first year students. The first boy was skinny and awkward, his hazel eyes framed in round, black glasses. His hair stuck up in the back due to an unfortunate cowlick. Remus wasn’t sure how to react to this boy; his nature seemed kind and easy going and yet capable of the simple malice of children.

The second boy appeared to still be carrying his baby fat. His face was round with bright, beady eyes set into it. His hair sat atop his head like straw on top of a pumpkin. He seemed eager to please the other boy, attaching to an obviously stronger child with a type of fascination that spoke of a need for protection and belonging. Remus watched them both from behind his book as they settled into the seats across from him. The boy in glasses was talking enthusiastically about quidditch and how excited he was to watch the games at the school. The other boy was agreeing, wringing his hands as he nodded. Neither of them attempted to speak to Remus, and he was glad for that. He was shy and knew already that his voice wouldn’t come from between his lips if they asked him even a simple question. He could feel their eyes on him when there was a pause in conversation, glances that spoke of a desire to ask those simple questions.

There was another pause in conversation as the door to their car opened again. A dark haired boy peered in, determined that there was still room left… and yet lingered in the doorway. Remus felt the strange boy’s eyes flicker over him and stop before moving to the other boys. His shy nature demanded that he bury his face further into the book, but curiosity made him look. The boy was taller than the other two and awkward in his seemingly sullen refusal to enter the car. His hair was black, jaw length and unkempt except for the strands tucked behind one ear. He was dressed in older but well kept robes. Remus noted that it seemed as if a badge had once been sewn to the chest of the robes, but had been removed by careful hands. The boy moved one hand, pushing more hair out of his childishly handsome face before it seemed as if he had finally made the decision to stay in this car. He brought his bag in front of him, moving to stow it away in the compartments above them. Remus lowered his book long enough to note the name inscribed on the leather bag. Black.

A flush rose in Remus’ cheeks and he suddenly felt more shy and ashamed of himself than he ever had. Black. This child, neatly and busily stowing his bags, came from the house of Black. Always Pure. Remus had heard a lot of things about the House of Black. The family line went back for ages. They were obsessed with maintaining pure blood-lines and were known to be somewhat obnoxious about it. Before this strange boy had the chance to say a word, Remus had already determined his personality. He’d also determined the fact that he would never speak to this boy.

“I hope it is alright that I sit here,” the boy’s voice was soft. Remus glanced up from his book, jolting as their eyes met. There was something in his gaze that defied the judgment that Remus had just passed on him. Remus swallowed, feeling his cheeks burn hotter than ever.

“T-Th-that’s fine,” Remus squeaked, looking away, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the book. He listened as the boy sat down with the soft sounds of fabric against fabric. He could hear laughter being restrained from the boy with glasses. Remus had stuttered and it was only natural that the boy wanted to pick on him for it. Weed him out for being shy and different.

“My name is Sirius. What’s yours?” the boy spoke.

“James Potter,” from the boy with glasses and the cowlick.

“Peter Pettigrew,” from the round faced boy. The sound of hands grasping, one pump, and being released. Then Remus could feel the gaze on him again. Sirius Black was staring at him in anticipation, his gaze speaking of a desire to know more about the shy boy hiding behind his book.

“Sirius Black. What’s your name?” a pause, then the boy pulled down his book, “I asked you what your name was.”

“R-Remus Lupin,” Remus tried to pull his book back up, wanting to hide his quickly reddening face in the pages again. He looked at the three fingers that were holding the book in resistance, noting the bits of dirt beneath the other boy’s nails. His fingers were long, almost out of proportion to the rest of his body. No doubt he would only become more lanky and awkward as he grew.

“Lupin?” Sirius raised an eyebrow, “…Didn’t your father insult a werewolf or something?”

Remus could feel the other boys looking at him more closely, curious about Sirius’ recognition of his last name. It was something that Remus was curious about himself. The story of how he came upon his condition was a mystery to him. His mother made sure to speak very little of it, and his father simply wasn’t there to ask. He knew he had been an out-going and inquisitive child until the night that a monster broke through his bedroom window. He couldn’t remember much of the incident, luckily. He did remember snatches in his dreams, and conversations between his mother and father. He had surmised that yes, his father had paid insult to Fenrir Greyback and Remus had been forced to face the consequences. Sometimes he wondered if his father left out of guilt, shame or maybe disgust. He tried not to think about it. Regardless, he couldn’t help but wonder what was being said about his family and if anyone knew the price that Remus had paid for his father’s error. He hoped they knew nothing.

“Yes. I was very young and don’t remember,” that was all that could be said about the incident. That was all that he wanted to say to these three boys.

Sirius smiled and for a moment, Remus expected to hear some tired old werewolf joke. He anticipated the sting that he would have to keep to himself, anticipated having to hold his words behind his teeth… and deflated.

“Sorry to be so intrusive, it was just something I had heard my mother talking about once,” Sirius gave him a simple, genuine smile and let go of the book gently so it didn’t snap back in his face, “…has anyone had any chocolate frogs yet? I’m looking for Morgana, and haven’t been able to get a good one.”

“I’ve got her!” James Potter piped up, reaching for one of his bags, “I’d be happy to trade, too. I’ve gotten her twice now and I don’t like doubles.”

Peter was busy getting his own cards while Sirius produced a stack to trade and compare. Remus curled into his seat, holding his book in his hands and watching over the edge. He couldn’t help but smile to himself as he watched the three boys spreading the cards out between them. There were some benefits to being shy. The bold are never capable of watching themselves. They could never be aware of the subtle movements of their fingers, or the way their lips could form into clever smiles. Curled in his seat, Remus Lupin did not regret being too shy to join them.

As If I Never Knew You

2008-05-04T23:18:21Z

Author: Lucid_Dreamer_
Title: As If I Never Knew You
Rating: G, maybe a PG for the word "bastard"
Word count: 994
Summary: Remus writes a letter to Sirius, after he is sent to Azkaban, that Sirius will never get.
Disclaimer: They belong to JKR, I just play with them.
Comments: Yes, please. ^^ Very much appreciated.
Author note: I wrote this in twenty minutes, soooo...yeah. Spur of the moment. Sorry if it reads like I wrote it in twenty minutes, heh.
--------------------------

Sirius,

Sometimes, I want to pretend that I never knew you. That you were never one of us, never there when we roamed the halls or guffawed at something—something, no doubt, that you or James had done. I can’t pretend you were never there, though, because it was always you and James. You two were our leaders, our heroes, somehow dodging all of the rules that I was terrified of. I can’t pretend to know what Peter thought, then. He was always so eager to please James and you, Sirius, that I can’t… I can’t think about it. Another useless casualty. I want to pretend that I never knew any of you, other times. I sit back in my chair and pretend that you never started to try and annoy me into friendship, that you never brought James over to help you in your task and finally recruited Peter. I sometimes wonder if he became a friend in those moments, helping you gang up on me, to try and find out my secrets. He was so unlike the two of you, so quiet and good. So…ordinary.

You were never ordinary. You were Sirius Black, another snobbish brat from the Ancient House of Black, a known breeding ground for “darker” wizards. I noticed you when we first arrived at Hogwarts, you should know. You were a beautiful child, above all of us and so full of life. I was certain you would be sorted into Slytherin. Only an idiot would be oblivious to the history of your family. Then, the unexpected…a Gryffindor like myself. When you were sorted, you seemed disappointed at first, and then glad as you came to our table. Smiling. I learned that the disappointment I had seen on your face then and nothing to do with you and everything to do with your family. Your mother sent you a Howler, the first one I had ever seen. You just stared straight ahead at dinner, as if it wasn’t screaming in your ear for the whole Hall to hear. Then you smiled…

Your smile. I loved it so much. I loved how it was always there, just under the surface, even when things got tough. I loved how it always seemed especially warm for me on the mornings after the moon. I loved that smile that I imagine only I saw, that meant that you were content with the world, one arm draped over my body. I want to pretend that I never saw a single one of those smiles. I want to imagine you as a cur all throughout school, constantly frowning and glowering. I want to imagine that you never told me that you loved me and you never held me gently. I want to imagine that you only said cruel things like the others did, that you only tried to hurt me. I want to imagine all of these things because the Sirius Black I knew… the Sirius Black I knew was so brave, so loving, and so so loyal I cannot possibly begin to imagine what has happened. The Sirius Black I knew would die before he would ever let any of his friends be harmed. The Sirius Black I knew is not the man who’s face haunts me from the pages of the Daily Prophet, screaming; he is not the man who betrayed his best friend and his family to meet their deaths; he is not the man who murdered Peter and twelve muggles.

The Sirius Black I knew must have died sometime, without me noticing… for which I feel an immense amount of guilt. We shared a home, a bed, a life… and the man that I loved silently slipped away to be replaced by a sick shell of himself. I’m sorry, Sirius, that I let that happen. I’m sorry that I let you slip away. I’m sorry that I wasn’t there when you needed me. I’m sorry that you felt pressured into doing these terrible things. I’m sorry that I loved you, and I’m sorry that I cannot love you anymore. I’m sorry that I hate you now, and can see no way around it. I cannot forgive myself, nor you for what has happened. I cannot forgive myself for being blind to how much of a bastard you really were, in the end, and for still wanting to love you despite it.

--Remus

Remus Lupin looked down at the letter he had penned, running his fingers through his hair. He had no intentions of sending the letter to Sirius, or of anyone else ever reading. Still, he hated himself for his inability to push Sirius out of his heart. He hated himself more for his inability to see what Sirius had been up to, Quietly, he folded the letter, pressing in creases with precise and practiced fingers before lifting it off the table and pushing the edge into the candle. He had written this letter twenty times now, and twenty times he had watched the carefully folded piece of parchment catch fire and slowly disappear in his fingers. Twenty times, and he still couldn’t pen down exactly how he felt. Twenty times…

The flame was climbing up the paper, eagerly devouring the words that he had written, climbing towards his fingers. Perhaps that was the best way to describe how he had felt. His carefully constructed life, with everything in its perfect place despite some flaws and some dangers had suddenly caught on fire. The flame started slow at first, the steadily climbed its way through the words and memories, through the people that he had loved, leaving him alone with blistered fingers and a broken heart. In the end, he was always alone.

He dropped the paper when the flame touched his skin, watching it smolder in the dish beside the candle before reaching for another piece of parchment.

Sirius,

I wish I had never known you…

Don't Regret a Single Day chp. 3

2008-05-04T23:16:36Z

Title: Don't Regret a Single Day, chapter 3.
Author: lucid_dreamer_
Rating: G...there's some kissing.
Disclaimer: All characters and locations belong to JKR.
Comments: Yes, please.
Characters: Sirius, Regulus, Walburga, Remus. Sirius/Remus
Summary: Marauder's Era, sixth year. Sirius remembers the last day he spent with Remus before leaving Hogwarts; not yet prepared to actually move out he starts on his "brilliant" plan to escape his house and visit his friend. Unfortunately, he is thwarted by his mother and brother.

Don't Regret a Single Day

♥ ♥ ♥
“One day, we’ll have our own place. We’ll have our own squeaky floors and wonky cabinets,” Remus smiled over his shoulder, hugging himself against the cold, “…and I’ll grow herbs on the windowsill. I’d say you would, but judging from your luck in herbology they’d all die. And we’ll have a dog.”

“You already have a dog,” Sirius replied, stepping up behind him, looping an arm around his waist. He nuzzled his thin shoulder, wishing that they wouldn’t be getting on the train soon to go to their own respective homes. He wished they could make that house that Remus was dreaming of on the bank of the lake---of course, that would mean they’d have to deal with the squid, but Sirius could live with that. Anything, for Remus.

“I mean a real dog, Padfoot,” Remus laughed lightly, “not you. I prefer to have you around more often than not like this. I mean, it is nice that I can request for you to transfigure so I don’t have to listen to you anymore, but---”

“Hey!”

They both laughed, Remus dropping one of his hands to knit his fingers with Sirius’. He didn’t have to ask Remus how he was feeling, if he would miss Sirius as much as Sirius would miss him. This was one of the many stolen moments where they got to be themselves…where they got to be together. All other times, they pretended it didn’t exist. Sirius still threw himself over James, draping his lanky body over the other boy at any given time of the day. Remus would just smile and look down at his book… Sirius didn’t know that that colour that rose in Remus’ cheek was because of a very real jealousy. He just assumed it was as a result of Remus’ naturally shy nature. There was so much unsaid…

“I’m going to miss you, my Moony.”

“I know. I always miss you. More than you could know.”

“We’ll see each other this summer, I promise.”

“Please don’t promise me that,” Remus stiffened in his arms, almost pulling away, “please…you know it isn’t true. Your mother… you remember what happened when she found out that you had snuck out to be with me. I don’t want that to happen again.”

“But…”

“Shh. Just…shhh,” Remus turned in his arms and kissed him lightly, “I don’t want to think about it. I just want to enjoy this.”
♥ ♥ ♥

Sirius had wrapped him in another hug, hooking his chin on his shoulder and wishing that Remus would let him make promises. He had kissed the other boy, trying to get through to him how much he really meant… it seemed like it had been ages ago. He had last held Remus in his arms two weeks previously, catching him one last time before they all boarded the train, before they all had to pretend that they were different people. The Marauders! May we never be up to any good…

For all of his desire to get out of Number 12 Grimmauld Place, Sirius Black wasn’t ready for the drastic transition that would be. He was, however, quite ready to be up to no good. After yet another strenuous meal with his family (during which Walburga had declared that Regulus was her favorite son, that Regulus had half a brain in his head, that Regulus blah blah blah…Sirius had stopped listening, instead opting to carve his mashed potatoes into interesting shapes) Sirius was busily pushing open his bedroom window. As part of the magical fortifications that his father had placed on the house in a fit, the windows were nearly all plastered shut. Opening one often times created a great deal of fuss--- in one of the guest bedrooms, the window would begin to howl and shriek like it was being murdered. Another window would recite poetry (Sirius still had no idea what kind of deterrent that was) and his bedroom window would begin to sob and eventually scream. The voice sounded very much like his mother or perhaps one of his aunts, prompting him to immediately slam the window closed once he would get it open. Tonight, he was determined not to slam the window. In fact, he was determined not to let the thing start to screech.

Even though he was not willing to remove his person from the house entirely, just yet, he was quite willing to sneak out in order to see his friends. In particular, he was willing to sneak out to see Remus. He had plans, plans that James had put through for him knowing the lack of communication that existed between Remus and Sirius during the holidays (Sirius was thankful that, for once, James kept the questions to a minimum). He wedged the window open just wide enough for it to begin to cry; coincidentally the same width that he needed in order to slide through. As a human, it would be impossible. He’d never be able to get his footing on the other side of the window. The roof was steep and to top it off it had rained. However, as a dog, there was a greater chance of keeping his balance. He’d have four feet then, four feet with claws and clever toes that could navigate the shingles better than his boots could ever dream. If he fell, he also seemed to have a better chance of not breaking his neck.

He’d never heard of a dog falling off a roof and breaking its neck… then again, he’d never before heard of a dog on a roof. Still, he transfigured himself, feeling the familiar itch and tingle that indicated that he was about to sprout fur and the strange stretch that always seemed to last forever before he was again standing on his paws. He slipped through the window, hardly feeling the bitter cold of the air and turned around in time to see the window slide back into place, sniffling forlornly.

It occurred to him that his father had a mild obsession with sound in that last fit of madness that had called for all the fortifications (Sirius was sure he’d been pissing off the wrong people)… and that Sirius shared that obsession with the way things sound. He had spent a lot of his time figuring out how to make his baseboards whisper, how to make a stair scream, and a pair of trousers sing----a very long story. Now he was listening to the soft scraping of his own claws against the wet shingles of the roof, propelling himself into single-minded motion. He had to get down, he could use the old tree at the side of the house, and he had to get far enough away from the house to transfigure back. He couldn’t risk being seen. He couldn’t risk---

“MUM! DAD! THERE’S A GRIM ON THE ROOF!” Regulus shrilled as Sirius shimmied past his bedroom window. In retrospect, Sirius would realize that he was single-handedly responsible for Regulus’ obsession with his own impending doom. At the time, it was just terrifying. He tried to hurry himself up, feeling his paws starting to slide with his haste, twisting his elbow in a way that he was certain no dog was supposed to move. He took a moment to try and regain his footing when the window beside him started to chuckle. The next thing he knew, he was staring into the face of Walburga Black.

His mother didn’t look very different from a dog’s point of view. She had the same scowl, the same yellowing in her eyes from a propensity to drink, and the same strangely papery skin. He could smell the alcohol on her, he could smell her anger at seeing him, and another strange odor that he couldn’t identify. Was that a potion of some sort? All thoughts of what his mum smelt like, exactly, were cleared from his head as she extended her wand. Her wand was simple, slick and black, with what seemed like an overly sharp point. It was leveled with his nose, making the hairs itch on his snout. Surely, she was about to strike him dead, to kill her own son on the roof of the family home. That would be a good one for the papers.

“Aquamenti!" Sirius heard his mother say the word and couldn’t help himself from making a puzzled expression. Why on earth---a jet of water shot directly into his eyes, causing him to lose his footing and slide down the roof. He was still trying to clear the water from his vision when he felt his back feet slip off the side, followed by his body and….suspended in midair, he wished he had fingers to grab onto the gutter, only a moment before he hit the ground.

Chapter 1 ♣ Chapter 2 ♣

Don't Regret a Single Day chp. 2

2008-05-04T23:14:21Z

Title: Don't Regret a Single Day, chapter 2.
Author: lucid_dreamer_
Rating: PG, for this chapter due to language.
Disclaimer: All characters and locations belong to JKR.
Comments: Yes, please.
Characters: Sirius, Regulus, Walburga and Orion Black, James, mention of the other Marauders in photographs. Sirius/Remus.
Summary: Marauder's Era, sixth year. Walburga Black encounters conflict with her eldest son. Sirius finds the perfect way to leave his mark on Number 12 Grimmauld Place.

Don't Regret a Single Day

“—that is why it is important to preserve our bloodlines, our ancestry, our very heritage as wizarding people. We are not lowly like the muggles, or the mudbloods, those incessant pests that have stolen the magic from us. We were born with it in our veins—“

“Unless you’re a squib.”

Walburga Black squinted down the table at her son. Sirius wasn’t looking at her, unlike Orion and Regulus, instead seeming to focus his attention on the green beans on his plate. Regulus followed her gaze, staring at his brother with wide eyes. All Orion did was cough into his napkin. It was always up to Walburga to discipline the boys. Sometimes, she wondered why she went to such lengths to keep Orion alive. The Blacks all seemed to totter off early in some way…why didn’t she let him just go? She drew herself up in her seat.

“I wish that you’d been born a squib, Sirius Orion Black! If it were that way, then I wouldn’t have to worry about the way you’re portraying the family! Marauding around with that blood-traitor, Potter and that worthless Pettigrew. Let us not even mention Lupin…that half-blooded half-breed! Better it that you died in the crib!”

Orion wheezed, Regulus snickered and Walburga enjoyed the sound of Sirius dropping his fork on his plate. It was all too easy to pick at the boy, to get beneath his skin… one day she’d be able to browbeat him back into line. One day, he’d get tired of it all.

“You worthless old bat,” Sirius hissed between his teeth, “you have no idea what the world is like now. You just sit in here, cooped up all day, dreaming up all the vicious things you could say to me and all the ways that you can think you’re better than everyone. That isn’t a life!”

That streak of rebellion had not been in the plan. Walburga pushed herself to her feet, her chair screeching against the wooden floor. Sirius was already on his feet, a thin boy at the end of the table, shaking with the rage that she had wanted to stir in him. Now, if only she could direct that rage…

“Sirius. Please. You’re only a child, you can’t possibly pretend to know what you’re talking about. Besides, you’re no doubt blinded by the lies that your so called friends tell you. Just look at this, Sirius. If it weren’t for them, well, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Go to Hell!” Sirius shouted, pushing his chair in roughly and storming out of the dining room. It was perfect, too perfect, Walburga thanked him for it, even.

“How very…muggle of you, Sirius!”

She listened to the heavy sounds of his footsteps as he stormed upstairs to sulk in his bedroom. He would come around, despite the rebellion. He’d come to see the err in his ways. He had to. He was really the only hope the family had. As good as Regulus was, as loyal as he was to the family and the idea of purity… he wasn’t strong willed. She looked at her younger son, laughing quietly at the situation and prayed that Sirius would come around. Sirius could make something of the Black family name. For all of his stupidity in ending up in Gryffindor, Sirius had talent that Regulus lacked. There was a bright future for that boy… if he could pull his head out of the liberal bullshit that he’d buried it in. She shook her head and sat back down.

“Walburga,” Orion wheezed, “don’t you think you were---“

“Be quiet, you old fool,” she raised her hand to silence the second cousin she had taken as her husband in order to purify the bloodline, “I was not being too harsh on him.” Some said their marriage was compensation for the overly generous nature of her younger brother. She thought that was preposterous. Nonsense, utter nonsense. She watched as Orion tried to eat some of the green beans that Kreacher had brought out to them, the vegetables sliding off of his fork. What an utterly useless husband… no wonder his spawn was so touched in the head.

♣ ♣ ♣

The picture of Remus was the same as it ever was, that content expression on his face while he pet the large dog, running long fingers through the thick black fur. Sirius had been asleep when the picture was taken, but Remus had pet him so often in the shape of a dog that it was not hard to imagine what those slender fingers felt like. He took a deep breath, trying to ignore the fact that he had sniffled, picking up the photo and hugging it to his chest. He wished that it would change, that he could talk to Remus. Remus would know what to do.

“What should I do, Moony? I can’t stay in this house another minute.”

Remus’ slender, bandage covered hands brushed through the sleeping dog’s fur again and the picture continued to provide no answers. Sirius sighed and set the picture aside. He had to contact at least one of his friends, and there was one simple way to do that. He went back to his trunk, digging through the contents for something about the size of a small book--- the two way mirror.

“James.”

It took some time, but James’ confused face appeared in the mirror, “Cor, mate…you scared me. What’s wrong? You look…”

“Mum’s…well, she’s being my mum.”

“Rough.”

“I can’t stand it, Prongs. I haven’t heard one positive thing out of that old bag in five years. I hate it here.”

“So….leave.”

“I can’t just up and leave,” Sirius stared into the mirror, baffled at his friend’s suggestion, “I don’t have anywhere to live, James. You know that. Besides, mum would hunt me down and skin me. Probably wear it as a hat. I can see it now---“

“You can stay here,” James brushed his fingers through his hair, glancing away from the mirror, “you know my parents love you. They’d about piss themselves if I told them you were going to come and stay. You know how they feel about your parents...”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You do that, mate. Hey… what d’you say you and I get together soon? Even if you decide to stay in that pit.”

“Yeah…yeah, sounds like a plan.”

That had hardly been the comfort that Sirius had been seeking…and yet. And yet, it had provided a plan. He knew that the Potters would be more than thrilled to have him stay with them. They’d said as much on one of the many occasions that Sirius had been over for dinner and had let his mouth run a bit too much about life with Walburga and Orion Black. Under the Potters’ roof, he wouldn’t have the same restrictions he had in Grimmauld Place. He would actually be able to see his friends. What a concept. He would actually be able to see Remus…
All there was to do, then, was to formulate the plan. He couldn’t just whisk off into the night without saying anything. He always had to have the last word –a trait he was sure he had, unfortunately, inherited from his mother—or at the very least the last “ha!”. He wrapped the mirror up again, shoving it back in his trunk and pulling out one of the posters he had bought. It was a barely clad blond muggle woman sitting astride a motorcycle, her head thrown back so that her curls fell down her back. The motorcycle was cherry red and the poster was truly a marriage of two things guaranteed to make his mother blow a gasket. It was as long as his arms were wide, the largest “abomination” he had dragged into the room yet. It was horribly wonderful and it was going to be affixed above his bed…permanently. Taking out his wand he guaranteed that that poster was as permanent a feature of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place as the portrait of his mother. With a self-satisfied smile, he pulled his bed away from the wall, sitting on the skewed furniture and pointing his wand at the baseboard. Another little tampering that he had been working on…
James and Sirius had been able, with a little help from Remus and experimentation from Peter, to get one of the stairs leading up to the fifth year dormitories to curse up a storm whenever it was stepped on just right. That just right way was something that Peter, with his awkward gait, was perfect at accomplishing. Just the right way and the warped voices of four boys trying not to be recognized would tell you exactly what they thought about your mother, thank you very much.
The baseboards in Sirius’ room, whenever the bed was moved, wouldn’t curse. They didn’t howl, or scream. They very simply whispered, in a voice that was quiet and yet impossible to ignore. That whispered voice told the story of meetings on the train, of successful pranks that had drawn the boys closer than any brothers, and of the difficulties of loving a werewolf. That simple whisper was more powerful than anything that Sirius had put on his walls.

Chapter 1 ♣

Don't Regret a Single Day Chp. 1

2008-05-04T23:13:42Z

Title: Don't Regret a Single Day, chapter 1.
Author: lucid_dreamer_
Rating: G, for this chapter.
Disclaimer: All characters and locations belong to JKR.
Comments: Yes, please.
Characters: Sirius, Regulus, Walburga and Orion Black, Kreacher, mention of the Marauders in photographs. Sirius/Remus.
Summary: Marauder's Era, sixth year. Sirius contemplates his family in contrast to his friends upon returning home to Number 12 Grimmauld Place.

Don’t Regret a Single Day

The windows on the upper floor of Number 12 Grimmauld Place had a light glow about them, indicating the low burning of a lamp. It was likely that Sirius’ father was up there at that moment, sitting in one of his armchairs in the room he had claimed as his study, reading the Daily Prophet. It was either the Prophet or some book that would be better off covered in cobwebs…something about the dark arts. When Sirius had been younger, that hadn’t seemed wrong or out of the ordinary. He had assumed that it was The Way Things Were and there couldn’t possibly be any alternatives.

He glanced at his younger brother lugging his trunk onto the curb, the silver and green material of his scarf falling out of his jacket. Sirius moved to help him, remembering when they were both young enough to fall for it. He could remember hearing the words ‘rotten mudblood’ in his own, high-pitched young voice as he clambered for any insult to throw at his brother. Mudblood, blood-traitor, half-breed, rotten, useless, good-for-nothing…

The insults were still familiar, but they weren’t originating from him anymore. He’d given up those words when he’d met real mud-bloods, blood-traitors, half-bloods, and half-breeds…and realized that the notion of blood-purity was complete and utter bollocks. He knew the meaning of those words and phrases, and he knew that his friends didn’t meet any of those dreadful definitions.

“I can get it myself,” Regulus hissed between his teeth, “…I still don’t understand why mum and dad didn’t come to pick me up, at the very least. Why did I have to go with you…”

“Dad’s under the weather. Mum wanted to stay with him,” Sirius let Regulus struggle with the trunk himself, shaking his head. It was true. Their parents hadn’t come for them at the train station because their father, Orion, was ill…and it really wasn’t that far for them to travel. Sirius had considered pointing out the hypocrisy of having the children travel on their own by common means when insisting that the Blacks were anything but common… but he had held his tongue. In all reality, he wished he didn’t have to come home for the summer holidays. It would be so much easier if he could just go and bunk with James instead of making the emotionally arduous journey into the depths of the Black family home. He could even stay with Remus… Peter was out of the question because Sirius knew that Mrs. Pettigrew abhorred him (she often called him a no good trouble-maker who was just trying to take advantage of Peter for who knows what) and because Sirius knew he’d get dreadfully bored. Peter was only entertaining in passing… and Remus, well. There were a lot of issues with staying with Remus.

“Regulus, darling! You’re home! Sirius, you worthless blood-traitor, help your brother!” Walburga Black shouted from the doorway. She put her hands on her hips, scowling across the yard at her two sons. Sirius looked back at her, dropping his own trunk and roughly grabbing Regulus’ from his brother’s hands. He hauled it to the doorstep, pushing past his mother and dropping it inside before going back for his own. Regulus watched him with a stupid expression on his face, as if he was uncertain about whether or not he wanted to laugh about the situation. There was nothing that pushed Sirius’ buttons more than their mother. Regulus knew that. Walburga herself knew that. Even their father knew that. Sirius was shaking with anger by the time he got his own trunk inside, again pushing past the figure of his mother to chuck it in the entry way.

“Worthless cur,” Walburga muttered as she closed the door, “…lacks ambition. Anyone can get into Gryffindor if they’re stupid enough…that’s all that is….”

Regulus was smiling lightly, levitating his trunk up the stairs now that they were in the comfort of their home. Sirius just felt his cheeks burning as he reached for his again, deciding that it was probably best if he carried it. Any attempts at magic would probably result in something he would regret… the trunk really didn’t want to get to know his mother’s head better. He could hear her mocking him about the fact that he decided to carry the trunk as he made his way to his bedroom. His bedroom… it was another point of conflict between himself and his family. Sticking charms had ensured that everything he put on his walls stayed that way. Occasionally he could see scratch marks from where his mother had given up on her wand and very simply attempted to claw a poster off the wall. Won’t work, won’t work…James and I practiced for days to get this one just right… The posters were things he had purloined on the few excursions he had taken with Remus into the muggle world and banners from Gryffindor. The posters were of motorcycles, machines that contained a certain amount of passion for him…and muggle women. Those, he mostly kept up because he knew the effects they had on Walburga. They were dangerous to have, but not as dangerous as what he really wanted to put on his walls.

He dropped his trunk in its usual place at the foot of his bed and started to unpack his things. There was another pennant to be stuck to the wall, another carefully folded bunch of posters… and his pictures. The pictures he could never bear to leave behind. They went with him back and forth between Grimmauld Place and Hogwarts. At Hogwarts, he could leave them in his trunk… he had James, Remus and Peter there to keep him company. Here… he carried the framed picture of them all to his bedside table and set it down, taking a moment to look at it. For one moment they were all still, smiling up at the camera and behaving… the next, James had a fist full of leaves that he was shoving down the back of Sirius’ shirt. Peter was almost doubled over laughing as Remus just smiled and shook his head. That smile… Sirius returned to his trunk and got another photo. James leaning back in his chair, running his fingers through his hair… Lily Evans would walk by in the background and there would go the chair, James and all… Peter, looking confused at the table in the Great Hall as he opened a birthday present from all of them. The look on his face when the box emitted a giant puff of smoke in his face… Remus, looking tired and slight sick, a book in one hand, the other hand occupied stroking the fur of a large, bear like dog. There was no ignoring the bandages on the boy’s hands, but… there was a look of contentment in his eyes as his fingers combed through the dog’s fur. The dog, Sirius, was blissfully sound asleep beneath his hands, his paws twitching in his sleep. There was nothing in the world that Sirius cherished more than his friends. His heart sank as he thought of the months it would be before he could actually see them again. Walburga and Orion wouldn’t let him out to visit his “disgusting” friends. He certainly couldn’t bring them here…

He reached for the last picture in the trunk. It was another group shot. Peter and James were struggling over the stolen Snitch (Peter wanted to try his hand at catching it before it got too far, but James was insistent that poor old Pete didn’t have the reflexes)…and there was Remus settled against Sirius’ side in the background. They were both laughing, then Remus would turn and…just barely perceptible… Sirius thought it rather looked like Remus was whispering in his ear… Remus pressed his lips against Sirius’ jaw, shyly, too fast for it to be anything more than an accident to anyone who didn’t know better…

No one knew better. It was just between him and Remus. It seemed only natural, but there was always that danger. There was always the danger of being found out and Sirius was afraid for Remus more than he was afraid for himself. It wasn’t enough that he was a werewolf.

“…so poor old Kreacher has to see to it,” Sirius heard the house-elf before he saw him peering around the doorjamb, “…Mistress Black wants her disgusting, disgraceful, blood-traitorous son downstairs. Oh, and the other one, too…”

Sirius pushed himself to his feet, stepping out into the hall and watching Kreacher walk to Regulus’ room, summoning the children. Surely, it was dinner time. It was time for a lecture on what it was to be a Black…. Sirius wished that he was anywhere but Number 12 Grimmauld Place. He wished he was somewhere where he had no regrets, somewhere where he could lay his head against Remus’ chest and be told that everything was alright….at the same time that he could run with James and pull pranks, while Peter laughed. Anywhere but…

Thank you to manga_ghost for a Britpick. ;)

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

2008-05-04T23:09:43Z

Title: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Author: lucid_dreamer_
Rating: PG-13
Summary: pre-DMC; James Norrington sails into the hurricane and loses everything.
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to the Mouse.
Warnings: Character death, violence
Pairing: Norrington/Gillette
Note: Thank you to arkangalesk for encouraging me to write this morning. This was coughed up in an hour, because that's how I write, so forgive it.

James Norrington could not help but notice how strangely beautiful even the ratlines were, outlined against the brilliant flash of lightening in the sky. For that brief second, all the spars tangled in shredded sails and loose rope was poetic-- something beautiful in all of the damage that had been done. All thoughts of beauty were washed away with a cold spray of sea water as the Dauntless’ deck heaved; the waves were becoming more and more violent. Already the wind had made a majority of the sails foot-loose at the very least, not to mention shredding the jibs and topsails… and yet.

And yet the Black Pearl was out there, somewhere, in the same mess. He had followed her around the cape, he had followed her onto dubious seas and now into this cursed storm. Jack Sparrow had sailed his ship straight into the gale, sails pregnant with the wind… and James had foolishly followed him. He had watched the black sails as they gained on the other ship, watched the flicker and shift in them as the wind grew stronger. The skies had darkened, and Jack made no sign of changing his course.

The longer James chased the Black Pearl, the more firmly he began to believe that she was a cursed ship. Surely, God must be laughing at him now as he pushed his ship and his crew into an increasingly worse storm while letting Sparrow cut and run as if it was nothing more than summer rain.

No man in his right mind would press on… and yet here he was. He knew full well that if he did not catch Sparrow, if it became known that he allowed the pirate to escape the noose, he would loose his commission as Commodore. He already knew that everything was hinged on getting the Black Pearl while she was, hopefully, weakened from the storm. If he could catch Sparrow, then he would not have to worry about returning to the rank of Post-Captain--- he would be able to prove himself to the admiralty and take on a commission as Admiral.

“Commodore!” his worries about the situation were interrupted by a shout, “Sir, we can’t continue like this! We need turn back, the foremast is weak and is sure to take the others with if it decides to go!”

James turned his head and looked at the acting flag-captain of the Dauntless---Andrew Gillette. The man had served beside him and under him for years. James trusted him more than any other person in the world. Andrew was another risk to James’ standing in the Navy… the man had his heart and they had all too often taken to each other for physical comfort. Looking at Andrew, James knew the just how desperate and incomprehensible their situation was to the crew. The normally unshakeable Irishman was soaked to the bone, his fiery red hair freed from its queue, dark and plastered against his head from washes of seawater. His jacket was torn, his cravat hanging loose around his neck, and his features were taut and nervous…

The whole ship groaned, shaking underneath the stress from the wind and the waves. James tightened his grip on the helm, long ago having shoved the helmsman aside. Of course Andrew was right. They couldn’t continue like this… the Dauntless wasn’t going to make it…

“We can’t turn back,” he shouted in return, “we’re too deep in the storm, we’re going to have to weather it out!”

The deck rolled again, the whole of the ship groaning and shuddering beneath the strain. James could see Andrew out of the corner of his eye catching his balance on a railing, gasping as another spray of seawater washed over the deck. He made it to James, grabbing onto the helm for support.

“James,” he panted, out of breath from straining himself, “James…listen to me… I know. I know what is at risk, but we can’t go on like this. I can’t, in good conscience, let you steer us into this storm. We’ve already lost men…”

“Captain,” James moved Andrew’s hands off the helm proper, pushing them down to the binnacle instead, “might I remind you---”

“Might I remind you that you appointed me flag-captain of this particular ship, James. You can address me formally all you like, but that is not going to check me in, it is not going to change my opinion. Stand down or bear away by your own will.”

Andrew’s features were set, his mouth held into a grim line. James could not believe what he had heard-- that this man, his most trusted officer, his lover, was prepared to forcibly seize his command from him. Had he really gone so mad that Andrew would speak against him? He narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth to say something when the deck beneath his feet shook.

There was another lightening flash, illuminating cable that had come loose, dragging what used to be the fore topmast across the deck with it. The spar was shattered at the foremast, splintered pieces of wood scattering across the sea-slicked deck. The mast slid off the side, ripping away with the heave of the waves, the cables and smaller rigging jerking… the whole ship shuddered as the bowsprit and main mast threatened the crack under the pressure.

“Cut her loose! Cut her loose!” Andrew was gone from his side before he could say anything. James watched as the man ran down the slick deck, pulling a knife from his belt. He was joined by a lieutenant and some of the marines, desperately hacking at the cables to free the dragging mast from the rigging it had tangled itself into.

A strange sound penetrated the roar of the storm; it sounded to James as if a hundred of the men were all screaming at once, in concert with a peculiar thrum that was beyond his comprehension. Lightening flashed and he could clearly see the outline of the main-mast plummeting towards the deck, towards the men who were hastily trying to save the ship from her other fallen mast far too late.

“Andrew! ANDREW!” James’ voice was swallowed by the wind; by the thunderous crack as the mast fell onto the deck, planking splintering around it, cables and torn sail settling atop it. A pulley lashed through the air, catching one of the men that hadn’t been crushed by the fallen spar and throwing him across the deck. James didn’t pay any notice; all he cared about was the fact that he could not see Andrew--- somewhere in that mess, there was Andrew.

He should have turned back. He should have never decided to chase Sparrow into the storm. Damned be the admiralty, damn his aspirations, damn everything that had been going on inside of his head…damn him for thinking he could make it. He grabbed the first cables that he came to, heaving them roughly away, ignoring the sound of tearing sail. Waves crashed roughly over him, tearing the breath out of his throat, making his heart thunder even louder in his chest than he thought possible. He felt his ankle roll painfully as he stepped onto broken plankings-- there was a man beneath the sail, pinned beneath the mast. For one painful moment, James thought it was Andrew… he would later feel guilty for the sense of relief that had come over him when he realized that it was just the lieutenant. Just.

Scrabbling, ignoring the splinters that jammed themselves into his skin, ignoring how the wet rope burned him when he pulled too hard, ignoring the chill of the sea, James searched madly for Andrew. Pushing aside a piece of planking, he noticed a crumpled form pinioned by a broken piece of planking just past the devil seam; threatening to fall overboard with the next deep roll of the ship. Everything about the form was achingly familiar to James--- the curve of a calf in a ripped stocking, the width of the shoulders, the matted red hair.

“Andrew…” the name was swallowed by the storm, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. James desperately tried to pull up the shattered plank, uncertain if it was seawater or tears that stung his face. The deck rolled and he found himself clinging to Andrew to keep himself from plummeting overboard. He coughed, spitting water back out onto the deck, vaguely aware that Andrew was holding on to him. He looked down, vision blurred by spray, and saw long pale fingers bunching his vest and coat. James looked up and met Andrew’s gaze; looking into those slate-gray eyes, he felt for a moment as if the storm did not exist. There was only that moment between them, holding desperately on to each other. There was another thrum that reverberated through the ship… but the sound was obsolete, lost in the feeling of Andrew’s cold lips against his own.

Book II, Chapter II

2008-02-29T05:22:57Z

Title: Thoughts on the Caribbean: Andrew Gilbert Gillette, Gentleman, Book II, Chapter II
Author: Lucid_Dreamer_
Rating: R, for sexual talk and the F word...and some good ol' 18th century buggery.
Archive: With permission
Disclaimer: Lt. Gillette and Com. Norrington, and the world of POTC belong to the mouse. I'm only fooling around with them for personal entertainment. The text is VERY LOOSELY based on Tom Jones, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy and other 18th Century texts. Lucid_Dreamer_ makes no claims to these texts, pieces of these texts, no the ability to accurately mimic any aspects of them whatsoever. This piece of fiction was done for entertainment only. I am fully willing to present any references for historical mention and description upon request.
Summary: Andrew G. Gillette compiles a book of letters sent between himself and James Norrington as a gift for an (assumed) estranged Norrington.
Warning: This piece is a very crude, rough imitation of 18th Century writing, pulled off in a pseudo-epistolary style that may be barely tolerable to those not familiar with it. This piece is not intended to be aesthetically pleasing in the way that some fics are... for the best reading of this, please find your own inner James and Andrew voices and read it out-loud. It *really* helps.

Chapter II

Port Royal, Fort Charles, and the Esteemed Captain Norrington Investigates Sodomy

July 2nd

After Long desiring to be on Land again, we have Arrived in Port. Port Royal is in a Fine way this Time of the Year, despite the Occasional Gusts and Spits which Hint at the coming of such storms that have brought Destruction upon this Sometimes Miserable Little Island in the past. It is Safe to say that all the Crew rejoiced in touching Foot to Land and Immediately set out to Waste their salaries on Women, Liquor and Surely Gambling. I am Elated to be rid of Gov. Swann and family and the Young Turner boy. For some Time it seemed as if Captn. Was interested in taking the boy under his Wing. Good that the Gov. thought the boy unsuited for a life at Sea, and far too young to Enter into the Life of a Midshipman regardless. Apparently, a Blacksmith has seen to undertake him as his Ward, so washing Captn.’s hand of the Charge. ~~I should Hope James is as Glad in this as I…~~
Fort Charles is in such a State! Some of the Battlements have begun to Crumble so that One must Fear for their Lives when setting foot upon them, less they Dash themselves on the Rocks below. The Admiralty would surely Seek to Improve upon these Conditions if they so cared about our Port Royal and the happenings Here. Perhaps if there were more Hangings of Miscreant Pirates at Gallows Point, we would Garner more attention… Captn. Norrington is a promising Man in this Regard, as he Loathes pirates as much as I if not with more Ferocity. Indeed, he is Highly Remarked upon for his Skills as a Pirate Hunter. Were it that we encountered Those who wrought destruction on the merchantman we Rescued Young Turner from---! That would have been a truly Splendid Battle worth remarking Upon. Alas, the Journey was Fairly unremarkable save for the Bilious Rages of the other Lieutenants and myself at the Many Incidents of Skylarking on part of the younger Midshipmen so inspired for Turner and Miss Swann. Rest assured, no good can come from such a Friendship. It is improper for Young Ladies and Young Gentlemen to so Conspire with Each Other and become such Friends at such an Age--- However, they are not my Children, nor are they my Wards so my Words are Meaningless in such matters.
As to more Serious Matters than the Friendships of Children--- we have Hardly been Ashore more than a Day and Already the Captain has been Requested to look into Incidents of Fornication and Sodomy amongst the Crew…some of this Surely Results from the Intention of Philandering but Certain Aspects give me cause to Pause and raise in myself such Apprehension. There were no Incidents reported to James or Myself of Sodomy aboard the Vessel--- we have all Slept in Close quarters with little Privacy ~~save the Captain’s captain, and then no such Reports came to our Ears~~ and little Chance of Pursuit of such Pleasures of the Flesh. The Charges also give me Pause when One Considers the Law. There need be Two Witnesses… Were such Men so Hesitant to Bring up the Matter with Captn. Or myself? -------------I must Not Let Myself Wonder at Such things for I may soon Develop some kind of Vapors from over Exertion of Breath. I have done Nothing before the Eyes of Men that would Cause me to Worry so and yet---- it is Natural for me, Also, to Worry for James and Pause in Thought of that. Could such Charges and Request for Investigation be an Attempt to----- Really, I must Stop This.
As I was Saying, the Weather in Port Royal is Fair…

♣ ♣ ♣

Dear Reader, it is Obvious from my Letter that I became Consumed with Anxiety upon my Arrival back in Port Royal when James was asked to Investigate a Matter of Sexual Crime…Two Matters. One of Sodomy and the other of Fornication. The charge of Fornication gave me Little Pause---it is no Secret amongst Men, nor the Fairer Sex for that Matter, that the crime of Fornication is familiar to the life of a Sailor. Were it Not, I fear that all Men on the Sea would go Mad and Brothels would Ache for Business. Such Men who cannot Find a Wo-man to Fornicate with Occasionally Resort to Sodomy aboard the Vessel. Once they are Off, they again Resort to their Carnal Activities with Women of Ill Repute and some Ladies. It Struck me as Strange that a Man, so Released upon the Port, would seek to rid Himself of his Lustful Desires with another Man unless so was his Inclination. You will Understand, Dear Reader, when this Gave me Pause--- Especially so when James was so Specifically asked to Investigate. I worried for his Neck as well as Mine. It was not Unheard of that Traps be set for Such Sailors with Inclinations to Bed their own Sex so that they may be Tried and Accused with the Proper amount of Witnesses to the Shameful Act----I came to be Reminded of Captain Rigby and so Composed the Testimony of some Terrible Youth that had been Set out to Lure my own Captain into a trap. One can Imagine that this Rose in me a Certain Degree of Jealousy--- Surely I had been the Only One for Whom James had Raised his Lusts.
‘O, he press’d my hand, Kiss-ed me…
---prest his privy parts into my hand---
---became glib an’ pulled away my breeches and prest ---
It was all Too Much Pressing and Lusting for me to Truly Contemplate. So Thinking of Formerly Esteemed Captains who dared Partake of the Love of Men, I went to Consult with James in his Quarters. Dear Reader, I became Quite Heart Broken as he Listened to my Concerns and did not move to Look at me in the Eye, nor to press Kisses to my Lips or Give any Indication that he Remembered the Incidents Between us that Caused me such concern for our Necks. He Simply tended to his Papers as I spoke, Occasionally nodding his Head to give Indication that he had heard me Speak. Finally, I Could stand such Treatment no Longer and Requested that He Look me in the Eye---!
“My Dearest Andrew,” he Spoke at Last, “please, do not Worry so. Trust me when I say that I have Spent enough Time Worrying over such Issues for Both of us to Succumb to Vapors at any Moment. I have Feared more for my Soul and your Neck in the Last Twenty-four Hours than is Possible to Imagine. Please, be Calm and sit awhile While I finish Here. Then, we Should talk of What, exactly, is Going on Between us and this Sodomy Business. Before then, I will have to Assure you that it is Not I nor You who is to be Investigated, but a Midshipman. He was Taken Drunk and may have Lapsed in his Judgments to Allow for his Body to be so Abused by another Man in a Public Place.”

So I Waited in Quiet Observation of the Captain in his Duties. Dear Reader, I must Pause from Description of my Worry at that Time in Order to impart to you a Detail so Fine that it Bears sharing lest it be Forgotten in Time. James had Beautiful Hands. To Watch his fingers press a Quill Whilst he Wrote was to let Ones Imagination Wander and to Allow for Lusts to Raise at the Thought of such a Touch. His fingers Were long and Fine, with Smooth Nails and Soft Skin. The tips of such Fingers remained Soft beyond my Ability to Imagine, for Surely he Bore the same calluses as I---Yet, his Hands did not seem so Roughened by the Work that he did. When such Rough nature was Noted of his Hands, it was Never Disappointing----it only Served to Heighten Whatever Sensation Arose at the bidding of those Beautiful Hands. To Look Closely upon them was to Notice the Appearance of a Variety of small Scars all Men of the Sea bore and yet Seemed Appealing on the skin of James’ Hands. These hands, though Beautiful, always had a touch of Cold about them as if it were Impossible for James or I to Heat them Properly. Do Believe I tried the Best I knew, from Wasting Breathe Upon them to Pressing them in the Joints of my Arms and Thighs. The Cold, though Jolting at Times, never Detracted from his Ability to Raise my Lusts nor fulfill our Passions Together. I sat Thinking of Such things as I’d want to do With his Hands while he Wrote Until he Woke me from My Reverie and asked if I should Enjoy a Drink with Him.
He seemed to Forget my Fears of Discovery with the Taking in of a Brandy, Something which Both of us Should have Best Avoided for it was not Long before I was kiss-ed Deep and Long as I Enjoyed and Held in the Comfort of his Arms. I had no Wonder of the Privacy of his Office, only the Taste of Brandy upon his Lips as they Prest mine (this Pressing I did Enjoy thinking of) and his Hands sought to Uncover and Unmask my Body to his Touches. How could I have been Heart Broken that he did not Share my Glances? How could I have Wondered if he wanted No More of me after that Brief but Interrupted Encounter in the Cabin of the Ship? It was Clear to my Seeking fingers that his Passions were as Raised as mine----
“So,” he Interrupted my Contemplations of the Fact that he was Wearing Far too Much Clothing, “the Account that I have read…”
“Yes, James?” I said, Trying to relieve him of his Breeches and Hoping that he Would Understand my Need.
“Was Very Descriptive. It said that the Midshipman was Witnessed becoming Quite intoxicated, at which point he was Advanced upon by Another man. The midshipman was quite Young and apparently Beautiful of Face. They went to the Back of the Pub…”
I could not Believe that he was telling me this as I stood before him, Undressed and Wanting.
He continued, “Where the other Man pressed kisses upon his Face and Hands, and so Undid his Breeches and put the Midshipman’s hands to himself, like so…” He demonstrated with my hand, Causing me to Touch his Arousal, “whilst he Undid the Breeches of the Midshipman. The Prostitute whom Reported this Remarked that it was not Long before she and Another Lady as well as a Gentleman Witnessed a Very Brash thing! The other Man took our Midshipman and turned him So before the whole of Them…”
He took me by the Hips and Turned me so that I was facing his desk, my Back to Him. I cannot Lie and Say that I was Not Raised to Excitement by this turn of events. I finally Understood what it was that James was Attempting to do and so I said his Name, Hoping to Impart my Desire for Him through This.
“He made himself glib with Spit and Prest his Privy Member against the Midshipman’s Fundament and began such an Attack…”
So it was that James Imitated the Actions of the Other Man upon your Midshipman, Pressing against me with such an Instrument that, though I had Held it in my Hand, I had not been Prepared for the Sensation that it Raised throughout my Body. I then Braced myself against his Desk, Unaware that my Fingers had Press-ed into the Wet Ink of his Documents whilst he Attacked me with such Passion that Words cannot describe it. I felt his Arm wrapt ‘round my waist and his Fingers, Cold and Smooth, take Me and Excite me so.
“Of Course,” James Then Murmured in my Ear and I wished it Then That he would not Speak but Instead Concentrate his Energies on Fucking, “they were Stopped before they Reached the Conclusions of such Activities…”
I reminded him none-too-kindly that I should Like to Reach the Conclusion of what we had then Started, but Could not Keep it in Mind to if He were Going to continue Telling me of the Sodomized Midshipmen. I did, after all, have my Own Sodomizing to Consider and Weigh Before I could Help in any Investigations of the Matter much less Listen to the Conclusion of the Report. I spilt Myself upon his Hand and it was Not Much Longer that he Fell against me, Panting and Laying Kisses upon my Shoulders.

Dear Reader, if you have Found Offense in the Account of our Further Investigation into the matters of Sodomy, please----I Bid you Write to Me and I will Reply to you. I cannot Guarantee that these Replies will be Kind or More than the Question that I will Present here. Were you Charged to Investigate the Case of Sins of the Flesh, would you not Desire to know more of the Mechanics of this Sin before you Continued on your Investigations? It is hard to Imagine how one Man might Press against the Body of Another unless you have Witnessed it to some Degree yourself. James and I needn’t be Punished for our Pursuit of Knowledge, only the Destruction of Documents crucial to the Fort which James spent many Hours Recovering from my Clumsy Fingers in the throws of…Investigation.

Book II, Chapter I

2007-10-01T18:19:16Z

Another shorter chapter...catch up here.

Title: Thoughts on the Caribbean: Andrew Gilbert Gillette, Gentleman, Book II, Chapter I
Author: Lucid_Dreamer_
Rating: R, for sexual talk and the F word.
Archive: With permission
Disclaimer: Lt. Gillette and Com. Norrington, and the world of POTC belong to the mouse. I'm only fooling around with them for personal entertainment. The text is VERY LOOSELY based on Tom Jones, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy and other 18th Century texts. Lucid_Dreamer_ makes no claims to these texts, pieces of these texts, no the ability to accurately mimic any aspects of them whatsoever. This piece of fiction was done for entertainment only. I am fully willing to present any references for historical mention and description upon request.
Summary: Andrew G. Gillette compiles a book of letters sent between himself and James Norrington as a gift for an (assumed) estranged Norrington.
Warning: This piece is a very crude, rough imitation of 18th Century writing, pulled off in a pseudo-epistolary style that may be barely tolerable to those not familiar with it. This piece is not intended to be aesthetically pleasing in the way that some fics are... for the best reading of this, please find your own inner James and Andrew voices and read it out-loud. It *really* helps.

Book II

Containing Much in the Way of Woe and Worry, but also Pleasure, conveyed through a Series of Recollections and Journals

Book II, Chapter I

From Grenada to Port Royal, the Interference of Miniature Women and the Loathing of Youth

May 16th

Grenada. Expecting departure in the Morn; Passengers brought aboard. I have expressed my Displeasure in being a Passenger Vessel to the Captain: he continued to Assert that we were Escort. Passengers are new Gov. of Port Royal, Weatherby Swann and his Family. His Wife is sickly and should not be Traveling, especially not aboard our Vessel where we have already Experienced Illness. His Daughter is especially meddlesome with far too Keen an Interest in Sailing--- I fear this Interest extends to Piracy as she does know a far number of shanties related to that loathsome act. What man allows his child--?

The Hands and I have engaged in a game of Whist to await the Dawn and again Sail. I am not Over Fond of the game as far too many Tempers rise in its Course. I Asked the Captain to Join and he declined…

♣ ♣ ♣

It was After such a play at Cards that I made to Seek the Captain’s company in his Cabin. We had long since Returned to our own tired Hammocks, portioned from one another and the Guns since we had been allowed to Air the decks of Yellow Jack. I found it Disheartening to Lay to Rest so far from James--- and Refused myself the knowledge of the Nature of this Feeling. I Knocked upon his door in such a Manner as he would Know who I was Without Calling out. It was some Time before he came to the Door and I Feared for his Health as he looked quite Tired--- I should Mention, Dear Reader, that Looking Tired was nor so unusual for James as he Oft Overworked himself to such a Degree that I could not help but Worry myself over Him.

He Bayed me Enter and Pressed Lips upon my Own in Greeting--- Dear Reader, I tell You that You would do well to meet such a Man as James Norrington. Tho’ Fortunate in this meeting, you would find Yourself unable to Resist such words that come from His Lips and bay you do Things you Know you Shouldn’t. Despite the Grim Countenance which he Wears as Captain of the Ship, there is a Certain Sweetness about his Eyes and Lips which so greatly softens his airs it is Easy to Forget Oneself in his Presence. This, combined with small Beer partaken with the Men, and I could find no Resistance to Him as such a Kiss became something More. I Believe it that I stammered something of Ganymede for James Soon laid a Finger upon my Lips and Requested that I be Silent if I were Going to Worry so Out-Loud. To which I replied that I my Worries were over Propriety and the Manner of Which we were going About This Sin--- I had no White Handkerchiefs with which to Signal him my Desires, nor a Bench on which to Sit. He Looked at me with Great Confusion and so I put my Arm around him and Kissed his Face and Asked that we should sit. Despite my Worry over Discovery and Prosecution, I found my Lust Raised by the Mere Closeness of James and that Touch of his Finger against my Lips.

He Sat first upon his dunnage and I followed, sitting Astride him so that I may Kiss him with Ease and so he Looked upon me and asked, “Is this the way of it?” Feeling his Thighs pressed Close between Mine, I Sought to Silence him with a Kiss, drawing his Tongue into my Mouth whilst untying his cravat so that I may Have at the Skin of his Throat. Dear Reader, you may think me too Forward in this, but Please do Understand that my Desire for James was not Small--- many Times had I thought of such Handsome Men, none more Handsome and desirable than James himself and raised my Lust to such a degree as to be Improper to describe Here. I so Desired this that to Continue my Please that stood on Decency, Propriety and Law seemed almost More Lewd---Dangerous as This was. Once I had Relieved him of his Cravat, I sought to Taste the Skin of his Throat, relieved when he Obliged me and Leaned his Head back. At this Time, his hands were also Upon me, caressing my Thighs and Seeking to relieve me of my Coats. No Sooner had we sat upon the Chest than were we in a State of Undress so that I could not tell what Belonged to me and what to Him--- only that we were so Wrapped in One Another’s arms, so Absorbed in Kissing that the undressing did not Occur to us as Such. I found Great Delight in the feeling of his Skin, and More in the Taste of it that I do not Think that I have Ever been more Drunk of anything in my Life. So Aroused, I Allowed him to pull down my Breeches and lay hand to me, asking again if this was “The Way of It”. I Wished it then that I had more Experience than the Molly House so that I may Answer his questions, but only Replied to his Soft Question that he Should Hasten to Fuck Me if he were going to Hold me So and Whisper Anything in my Ears-----

Dear Reader, it was at this time that I First Began to Believe that there was Truth about Bad Luck coming to ships as had Women aboard them. There came a Knock upon the Door even as James was Asking how Men should partake of such Sport as the fairer sex and I was much Prepared to Show him in order to Satisfy our Lusts. Such a Knock was Follow’d by the Voice of the Young Girl, Elizabeth, asking Whether the Captain should come out and Address her Father about the Sailing of the Ship. This, no Doubt, was Surely Requested for the Girl’s benefit as Gov. Swann never seemed Inclined to have such an Interest in Sailing. I have Said that this is Where my True Belief in the infausting Nature of Women at Sea began--- it is also where my Intense Dislike of Ms. Swann began for she would come to Ruin a Number of Liaisons between James and myself from that day Forward. We made Quick to Dress and make our Way to the Deck where we were Greeted by Weatherby Swann and I was left to Control my Lusts.

There is Nothing in this World that should raise my Passions more so than Watching James walk for’rard and aft any Ship with Hands folded behind his Back. Never was there such a Gentleman as the Figure of James Norrington, and Never has such a Gentleman so Touched me in my Life. O’er the course of this Voyage from Grenada to Port Royal, James and I found Few Occasions in Which we had Privacy. I Looked forward to our Arrival Home, and to the Fort that we may find more Time in which to Exercise our Passions and Lusts on Each Other. Unfortunately, the Journey to Port Royal was not so Delicate and Kind to Us for we came upon a Merchantman so Damaged as to leave no Crew Surviving---- only Will Turner, another Youth Seemingly Sent in order to Cause Duress to James and Cause Punishment to both of us for our Sins with Each Other. Had I known the Nature of the Children that the Supreme then Carried I fear, Dear Reader, I would have throttled them Both.

Book I, Chapter V

2007-09-28T16:24:58Z

This chapter is quite short in comparison to all but the first... but ah well. Chapter 6 will end Book I. Catch up here.

Title: Thoughts on the Caribbean: Andrew Gilbert Gillette, Gentleman, Book I, Chapter V
Author: Lucid_Dreamer_
Rating: G
Archive: With permission
Disclaimer: Lt. Gillette and Com. Norrington, and the world of POTC belong to the mouse. I'm only fooling around with them for personal entertainment. The text is VERY LOOSELY based on Tom Jones, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy and other 18th Century texts. Lucid_Dreamer_ makes no claims to these texts, pieces of these texts, no the ability to accurately mimic any aspects of them whatsoever. This piece of fiction was done for entertainment only.
Summary: Andrew G. Gillette compiles a book of letters sent between himself and James Norrington as a gift for an (assumed) estranged Norrington.
Warning: This piece is a very crude, rough imitation of 18th Century writing, pulled off in a pseudo-epistolary style that may be barely tolerable to those not familiar with it. This piece is not intended to be aesthetically pleasing in the way that some fics are... for the best reading of this, please find your own inner James and Andrew voices and read it out-loud. It *really* helps.

Book I, Chapter V

A Letter of Contrition and Honesty

April 24th.
To Andrew G. Gillette, Lt.

Dear Friend, it has come to my attention through a mutual Friend of ours that I have been over Rough on you and have cause to reassure you that my intentions of continued Friendship are genuine and that my Threats upon your Head and Nature were in Jest and so Poor Taste. I found our last meeting to be unsatisfactory and Cold, as if you were keeping yourself distant from me still. I cannot find Blame in your actions--- in feeling Spurned by you I have Abused you and have become Demanding of your time, which you have Sought not to lend me. I should have Respected your wishes instead of threatening, however Unrealistically, your place aboard my ship. Regardless of any Dismay in Each Other that may exist between us, you are a Capable and Respectable Lieutenant that I should be Thankful for having aboard my Ship. The Supreme is better for your presence aboard her.

Please, Dear Friend, before you read on make a promise to me that you will not Show this Letter to any other man, be he friend or foe, for I am about to Speak honestly of something very grave. It should be our Necks together if this letter should come to reside in the hands of any other but yourself.

I wish you to know that I find no Blame in you for what occurred between Ourselves in my quarters under the influence of Drink. My actions were my own, and so Inspired was I by Drink and the Tale you told me that I could no longer resist my Inclinations. You have been a Good Friend of mine through the Pain of my Family and the time aboard this ship, and I must admit that I have as a result become Very Fond of you. It would seem from the Notes that you have Written to me that you are afraid that you have Seduced me into the Actions that I took on that night. I must assure you that this is not True, for you were very Chaste and Honest, even in your Drinking and it was I who dared to Succumb to my own Desires for you. I had a great Want to hold your Hand in mine, and a Greater desire for a Kiss. Should this have brought you Offense as well as the Fear for our necks, I do apologize--- while I must admit that I would do it again had I the chance-----------

I have never seen a Molly, much less been to such an event as you described to me, nor have I myself ever gone to Bed with another man. I have only given or received such kisses as are common in Greeting, and none so Born from passion. I do not claim to be a Pious man in this, I simply have Never been Moved into such passion by Another. I Fear that you have begun to raise such Passions in me, and though I Fear it I also desire to keep your Company, if you will have me. I Beg of you, Andrew, do not keep me at arm’s Length any Longer for it greatly pains my Heart. I Owe you many apologies for the strife that I have caused you these last few days and ask that you Forgive me my blunt and offensive speech. I beg that you Forgive me my actions should they not Agree with you and should you find them cause for more Offense than the Pleasure. I cannot Lie and say that I do not Hope that you find the same Pleasure in my company that I find in yours.

With Sincerest Apologies
Your Most Humble and Obedient Friend

James H. Norrington, Capt’n.

♠ ♠ ♠

April. 25th

S.W. by W. Doldrums abated at last; land sighted. Nav, expected two days sail to port with current wind. I give my own estimation of one, should the wind continue in Increase. More crew dead of fever and continued need of surgeon; the many Ill should have some effect on our time. I Greatly Anticipate again being in Port. I have received another Letter from the Captain begging me of my time and remain Hesitant in accepting his Apologies. I Fear that I have been a Corrupting Influence on the Captain as he admits that my Stories have had Influence on him and that he has become Over Fond of me as a Result. I Cannot deny my own Feelings for him and admit that it is a Great Temptation to see him Again… I do Miss the Company of my Friend and should make measures to Revive such a Jovial Relationship as we have Had.

♠ ♠ ♠

Book I, Chapter IV

2007-09-26T19:40:43Z

Holy Smokes, another one? This one is more serious in tone...just a warning.

Catch up here. That is a link to the main page of this fic. :)

Title: Thoughts on the Caribbean: Andrew Gilbert Gillette, Gentleman, Book I, Chapter IV
Author: Lucid_Dreamer_
Rating: PG for olde fashioned sexual talking and 18th century style homophobia
Archive: With permission
Disclaimer: Lt. Gillette and Com. Norrington, and the world of POTC belong to the mouse. I'm only fooling around with them for personal entertainment. The text is VERY LOOSELY based on Tom Jones, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy and other 18th Century texts. Lucid_Dreamer_ makes no claims to these texts, pieces of these texts, no the ability to accurately mimic any aspects of them whatsoever. This piece of fiction was done for entertainment only.
Summary: Andrew G. Gillette compiles a book of letters sent between himself and James Norrington as a gift for an (assumed) estranged Norrington.
Warning: This piece is a very crude, rough imitation of 18th Century writing, pulled off in a pseudo-epistolary style that may be barely tolerable to those not familiar with it. This piece is not intended to be aesthetically pleasing in the way that some fics are... for the best reading of this, please find your own inner James and Andrew voices and read it out-loud. It *really* helps.

Book I, Chapter IV

Thoughts on Mollies, Sin, Good Drink, and Inconsiderate Friendships
A Chapter of Law and Great Anxiety for Myself, the Author

Gentle Reader, I find that I must take the Time now to Remind you of my Station at the time of these Occurrences aboard the Supreme. I was, at that Time, First Lieutenant to Captain James Norrington. I was Considering another Commission as Captain that I had been offered, but I knew that I would Decline in favor of being Near to James. As our Friendship had grown aboard the Ship, I found the Concept of separating myself from him to be deplorable. Never had I known such a Just and Fair man, nor such a Good and Willing Captain. This being said, Dear Reader, I must add that as a Lieutenant on one of His Majesty’s Ships, I have seen my Share of Crimes. I Fear that, before I am able to Continue, we must Discuss these Crimes.

When I was a Midshipman and Sixteen years of Age, I recall being Called to deck in order to Bear Witness. Two Men, good Sailors both, had been discovered Below decks engaged in Sodomy; indeed they had been taking part in that most Base and Bestial of acts Right before some of their Fellow Sailors. I was Gripped with fear when it was Made Known to us the Punishment for such a Violation against God and the Articles of War. The Captain of that Ship, not an Overly kind man of any Persuasion, announced that one of the Men was to be Flogged as a Reminder of what he had done. The other, who the Captain referred to as a “Despicable Molle” was to be Hanged. This Punishment was not Unfamiliar to Me--- indeed, I had Read of it Before. However, I have never Bore Witness to such Behaviour amongst Men nor the Consequences of it. Surely, the Word “molle” or “molly” was not Unfamiliar to me, Either. These words had been Pressed against my own Name in Schooling… something which I have No Desire to Delve into at this point, Dear Reader. We still Know too little of Each Other. ------ Having Beheld a Hanging of the “Mollie” I was in the Grips of night Terrors. My fellow Midshipmen attributed this to the sight of Death and Punishment. I attributed it to meeting eyes with the Mollie and finding Recognition. I was Afraid then that I would be the next to be Hanged. I still have that Fear, as all who engage in such Acts do. However, I am too Old and Worn to act much on that Fear any more and Wish nothing more than for my Words to be Read and understood by their Intended Audience.

Dear Friend and Gentle Reader, I can Assure you that such Memories and Thoughts crept into mine own Mind as I read the note that James and Penned. These thoughts made themselves more Apparent as I made my way to his Personal Quarters and rapt softly on the door. I Knew for Certain that James was not inviting me to Engage in any such acts so close in Quarters to the other Lieutenants, but my Mine has never taken the simple Reassurances of Knowledge. Waiting for him to Answer the Knock, I could not help but think of Hangings and Court Martials, of Floggings and the Joining of Bodies that only existed in my Imagination--- such an Imagination which did not seem to exist except for the Contemplations of Carnality. These Imaginings continued when James answered the door, Quite Undressed. He was in his Nightshirt and trousers, holding a candle in hand and looking in Want of Sleep.

“Andrew, how good of you to come and keep me company,” I recall his words. He stepped aside, allowing for me to Enter into his chamber, “excuse my dress, I was not Anticipating you heeding the note.”

“Yes, sir…I’m sorry, but I found that I could not sleep and thought to take you up on the offer of company. I apologize that my visit was not anticipated,” I had Replied, desiring to Accuse him of Temptations and Implications which he Surely had no intentions of. He turned his Back to me and I Imagined the Hell that would await me if I continued to Watch him So.

I Imagined myself in a Molly-House, with a veil about my head, preparing to be marry’d to Him and to Join with him in another Chamber. Do not think, Dearest and Gentle Reader, that my fear of Punishment has ever kept me from Seeking Pleasurable company--- if not to Join, then to Watch and become Knowledgeable. It was on Leave before this Occasion that I had taken Time to seek the company of Mollies simply to Know. A most Dangerous task, should anyone come to Know of it or my Intention in Knowing. The House had been one Belonging to a man, who made a Practice of Inviting the Molles who gathered in the Nearby Pub to his Home so that they may be afforded Privacy. Some suspected that he Built his Home very near so that he may take Advantage of the Youths that did frequent the Pub and gather about himself other Men to partake in Sodomy. I was Invited, on account of being a “Bride”, along with some odd Forty other Men---!
Many of these Mollies were quite Ridiculous, parading about in the Fashion of Women and Speaking as Women and Dressing as Women. Then there were Others, like to myself, who but Followed these Mollies and kept Quiet in order to Partake of the Party but to be Unnoticed by those who may Inquire unto why we had Joined such a Troup of miscreants.

I made Mention of myself Earlier being considered a “Bride”. They called me such because None of them had ever Seen me Before at such a Meeting. Being a “Bride” meant that Many made Bid for my Favour, that I would be Marry’d to them at the House and Join with them in a prepared Room. I was not Ready to accept such Favors and Offers, but much drink had put me in such a Gay mood it was Hard to Resist the Joviality of many of these Men. Upon reaching the house, they all seemed to Fall to one Another, with a great deal of Kissing and improper Touching. One Molly who had been making Bid for me all night Sat himself upon my Lap, his legs on either side of Mine and Kissed me So; ---- I had Never and have Never received such a kiss from a Woman that Stirred me more. Many a Kiss I have Received since that stirred me to Great Passion, but these Kisses did not Fall from the lips of a stranger in a Molly House.

It was of these Events that I Thought as I watched James sit again in his chair, picking Quill up in practiced Fingers and pressing the tip to Parchment. I made to sit Myself upon his Sea Chest, thinking his bed too Suitable for such Impure thoughts against God and Country and did but wait for him to Say another word to me. Being so engaged in Finishing a Report before he would speak to a Friend, I instead found myself Watching him for Some Time. I watched the Curve of his Lips and the Bend of his Wrist and wondered at myself for my Desire to sit across his Lap in such a way Befitting a Molly. I wondered then if it was Sin to Desire for a Greater Sin that had to Ability to ruin man, dishearten Women and Indeed laid threat to Family, Country and all that we hold Dear. Reader, please, I beg that you Write to me and tell me your Thoughts of this Sin so that I may feel Clean of it at this time of Writing to you. I should Crave your thoughts as I then Craved James, and should Read them in the same Devouring way. Should they be unappealing to me, my Dear Reader, I should but Stack them Face down with my Reports so as not to Waste Good Parchment on such Sins of the Quill.

It was again Some Time before James turned to me and Spoke, telling me of the Report he had just Written and Speaking with such need of Obedient Ears that my only addition to the Conversation was as such. He spoke in the way of a Man who has no one to Listen to him Bemoan the Weight of the world Upon his shoulders; he spoke in the Way of a Man who works himself Overmuch and is Loath to Confess himself to this simple Fact of his life. I made the suggestion of Drink in the face of Illness and Lack and we Partook of the fine Brandy that he kept within the Sea Chest I had sat upon. Through this Decanter we Revived ourselves and Sat quite Close as we shared our Thoughts with one another and Spoke of things that Officers do desire to Say of their Crew but Fear to utter less they be deemed Unkind. It was at this time that James, Leaning his Head upon my shoulder, told me more of his Wretched Family and the life that had Lead him to Becoming a Lieutenant and Captain so Young in his Life (as I should make Mention that James is Younger than myself)--- and I Shared much of my Life and Fears, and my Lips became Quite Loose and my Mind quite drowned as that I do not Remember Much of what was Said Between us. I can Remember, quite Clear, the way in which James Smiled when he had too much Drink, and the sound of his Laughter at my Worries. Above this, I Remember the sensation of his Hand upon Mine and his Kiss. It was Nothing, no more than a Kiss that one friend gives another in simple Greeting, and it was Everything. He drew away from me Then and asked if I had had enough Drink and if I thought I could the Sleep. I Feared that I had Seduced him and in such Fear I agreed and Returned to my cot in such self-Loathing that I found no Sleep and could not pay Attention to my Tasks the following morning.

♠ ♠ ♠

April 21st

Still no wind, no rations, and the Illness continues to Spread.

I worry greatly over the Captain, for we have over-Drank ourselves. I fear his head aches more than Mine own and that he Regrets our Companionship. I Fear I have taken to my own Kind of Fever, as I have made to Lose three Belaying pins through the Course of the day only to find them in Unexpected place. I should never mind myself to the Sails and leave such tasks to the Crew; I’d no Mind for Anything today, much less the task of Navigation. I have made Notice that I fear I am Ill. The other Lieutenants have made Well to stay clear of me. ~~I wish it that James would Speak to me…~~ I have no Desire to Discuss the events of the Night with the Captain.

♠ ♠ ♠

Dearest Friend,

The Officers have notified me that you are not feeling well, and I am afraid that this has to do with your concern over our company the previous night. I assure you that I have no Thoughts on the subject, Ill or Otherwise and would ask that you come again to console me of my sleeplessness. Perhaps it should be that we do not partake of drink again for reasons Known to yourself. You are my Good Friend and I would hate to think that a Lapse in my judgment is cause of your Illness.

Dutifully yours,

---James.

♠ ♠ ♠

My Dearest James,

I am Afraid that I will be Unable to join you again in your Quarters, for I Fear I may lose what Resolution that I have. I have Shared with you my Disappointing Youth and Trust that you will be able to Ascertain for yourself what I Mean in my Rejection of your Offer regardless of Promises of Sobriety. I wish but to do my Duty to God and Country and cannot Conceive of Lending myself to actions that would Forsake either.

Your Friend,

---Andrew

♠ ♠ ♠

Lieutenant,

I am afraid that you have misunderstood my intentions and have construed them into something which the most certainly are Not. You are my Friend, Andrew, and I cannot Bear to see you suffering. You will come and Speak with me.

Your Captain,

---James H. Norrington.

♠ ♠ ♠

Captain,

Your evocation of your Rank does little to sway my resolution on this Matter.

Your Faithful and most Dutiful First Lieutenant,

---Andrew G. Gillette

♠ ♠ ♠

Andrew,

Your spurn me and I cannot pretend to Understand it, for my only Desire is to be your Friend in this time. Why do you resist my attempts?

--James

♠ ♠ ♠

My Dearest Friend, James,

I am not Spurning your Friendship, no am I Resisting such an Attempt. I am Resisting myself and my own Desires and as such I cannot be so Near to you. Understand that, in Writing this to you, I am risking a Great Deal and have no Desire to see your face after it has been Discovered. Do not seek me and Attempt to Console me of myself, my Faith and my Duty for this surely will be my End. You are so Great a man that I refuse to be your Downfall through Implication, Thought, or Sinful Act.

Your Ever Faithful Friend,

---Andrew

♠ ♠ ♠

My Dearest Andrew,

Should I ever make to discover another Note of that Nature slipp’d beneath my door, be certain that I will make to Hang you or at the very least Flog you for your idiotic nature. I say to you that this risk in seeing me does not Exist, nor does my Desire to console you in your Faith, Country and Duty. My only desire, Andrew, is to become close to you again as we were before you started this tirade against me. You cannot be my Downfall, as surely as a man’s downfall is his own doing. I beg of you, come to me tonight? If you truly are Ill, I should believe it when I see it with my own eyes that it is not Stubborness that you are afflicted with.

Yours,

--James

♠ ♠ ♠

My Dearest Andrew,

I’ve received no Reply from you, nor have you come to me. I see you during the day, on deck and you will not Look at me much less Speak to me as if I am your friend. How can you claim that you are not spurning my Friendship and yet behave in this way? I demand it, no Order it, that you will keep me Company. Should you refuse me again, Andrew, I will have to take Drastic measure and assign you to some Task that you abhor. I find myself missing your companionship.

In truth, if you no longer desire to be my Friend, then I may release you at next Port to do as you will and find Service aboard another ship. I will not tolerate such inconsideration of Friendship.

Yours,

--James

♠ ♠ ♠

I can assure you, Dear Reader, that I was not Forced to leave the Supreme and find service aboard another Ship.

At last!

2007-09-25T02:36:43Z

Title: Thoughts on the Caribbean: Andrew Gilbert Gillette, Gentleman, Book I, Chapter III
Author: Lucid_Dreamer_
Rating: G
Archive: With permission
Disclaimer: Lt. Gillette and Com. Norrington, and the world of POTC belong to the mouse. I'm only fooling around with them for personal entertainment. The text is VERY LOOSELY based on Tom Jones, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy and other 18th Century texts. Lucid_Dreamer_ makes no claims to these texts, pieces of these texts, no the ability to accurately mimic any aspects of them whatsoever. This piece of fiction was done for entertainment only.
Summary: Andrew G. Gillette compiles a book of letters sent between himself and James Norrington as a gift for an (assumed) estranged Norrington.
Warning: This piece is a very crude, rough imitation of 18th Century writing, pulled off in a pseudo-epistolary style that may be barely tolerable to those not familiar with it. This piece is not intended to be aesthetically pleasing in the way that some fics are... for the best reading of this, please find your own inner James and Andrew voices and read it out-loud. It *really* helps.

Book 1, Chapter III

The Problem with Letters, Notes on a Ship, and Excerpts from the Personal Journal of Andrew G. Gillette
due to a distinct lack of letters from one James H. Norrington

My Dear Readers, it came to my attention that after promising a letter from James on the last time we met, I Failed to provide one. This Failure occurred even after I made Great Fun of our method of Delivering letters aboard the Supreme. I am Most Certain that you anticipated some Note from James with Gay details of our Times Together aboard the Ship, Especially since we made such Sport of Delivering them. The Note in question that I intended to Share with you was procured in such a Game. I found it Pinned to my Hat, a neat Silver pin poking through the Fine Felt—and so Leaving a Mark—and so had a word with James about this method of Delivery. It became apparent All Too Soon that he had made an Attempt afore at pinning the note to my cloak. He later told me that the Water I felt through it was not as a result of this attempt, but as a Result of my Imagination. I Retorted, stating that I haven’t any Imagination at all being a man of facts. We both Laughed, though I was quite Serious at the time.

All of this being Said; I am Afraid that I do not have a small Note to share with you, Dear Reader. So many of the Notes that I discovered Pinned to my garments were of such triviality that I have saved Few. I found this to be True of James as well, as he often Cast my Notes away. The few that I did save are not yet Suitable for your Eyes as we have not yet Reached that part of the Story. To Compensate for this Gross Lack of Letters for you, Gentle Reader, I shall gladly Include some pages from my Personal Journal.

Gentle Reader, as you Go On, Please be reminded of the Fact that I include all of these so that you may Better Understand what our Lives were like. I have already included for You a chapter about James and Myself. It is only Suiting that, whilst I search for the rest of the Letters, I provide for you details of the Setting. As a Reader myself, I have found it Most Helpful when the Author takes the time to Describe the Setting of the Scene or Story. It is like Being lead by the Hand through the Gardens, the Houses and Roads the Author wishes for you to See. I hope that I am able, here, to take You by the Hand and guide you through the decks of the Supreme and later through Port Royal, and the Dauntless. Should you find some Grievance with the Descriptions I am Providing for you, please be Aware of my Mailing Address. I should love to receive a Letter from you with a far Superior description of my ship than even I could Provide to You. Should you be inclined to Write such a passage to me, please be certain, Gentle Reader, to include some tinder. I would Hate to be Without it when the time comes to Warm my Feet with your considerate Writing.

April. 17th

S.W. by W; out of potatoes and mutton. Yellow Jack in the lower decks; Mess Cook in particularly poor shape. Jacobs accused of skulking and neglecting work; cobbed. Men are keeping their sprits up with Grinning; caught the newest midshipmen skylarking about...

Though I normally take great Comfort in these paltry notes, I have no Taste for them tonight. I am most Troubled about the Health of the men. The Surgeon caught me ‘tween-decks and pulled me Aside to Inform me of Yellow Jack making its Way through the men. We may soon have to strike such colours as to inform others of our Condition. I pray it does not get so Grave. The most troublesome of Cases is the Mess Cook. The Surgeon informed me that his Skin has Turned a most Putrid shade of Yellow, he has been most Sick to his Stomach and has incurred bleeding from his Eyes, of all Things. He Turned quickly, and I Swear I will see to it to take the Cat to my own Back if he lasts until Tomorrow’s Forenoon watch. So far the numbers are Few; they have been Confined to the sick bay. Still, I cannot help but Worry.

♠ ♠ ♠

April 18th

S.W. by W; out of potatoes and mutton. Beer looking Dubious. Mess Cook perished and given Burial at Sea; men in sick bay taking a turn for the worse. Struck colours. Men in especially poor spirits.

I am quickly Becoming as Disparaged as the Men. Though the Supreme is normally a jovial vessel with few Serious Problems, Yellow Jack is making a right mess of everything. James left another note for me Asking that I Meet with him in his Cabin. I Fear even for his health, though I have not known the man to become Ill in the Months that I have Known him, Nor have I ever heard of him Becoming Ill. He looks very strained and Restless, no doubt because of the state of the Men. We have agreed to change Course: Being gravely in Need of Supplies and Surgeon there is no other real Choice…

James produced a Fiddle from his cabin and played for us for some time in an Effort to raise our Spirits. Some of the other men joined in and Danced. I could not Help myself but to Sit quite Near and Listen. I have never known a Man to have so many different Talents all at the Same time, nor have I ever witnessed a Man with such a Head for the Navy with an Equivalent ability to raise the Hearts of his Crew with the ministration of his fingers
upon the strings of an instrument. I was amazed at the Deftness of his fingers, which are quite Long, as he played a tune which quite reminded me of my Mother. And then as he played a slower song, which was Terribly Sad… an Expression of such Remorse and Melancholy passed over his face I could not help myself but to wonder what this Great man was Thinking. ~~I found Myself wanting~~ I believe I shall go and Pray for him.

♠ ♠ ♠

April 19th

I have no Care to provide such trivial details of the voyage, for I believe that I have Cursed this patrol---! Surely, this must be so. I woke this morning to find the Supreme dead in the water. There has been No Wind since Late Last Night. This is no Coincidence and I feel as a bloody Catholic desiring to Confess my Sins. Is it really a Sin if you have taken no Action? Never having been of an Overly Religious inclination, I cannot say. All that I can Say is that I dearly Hope that Thought does not Equate to Sin for Otherwise I should hang soon. We have had no Instances of such a Defiance of the Articles of War aboard the Supreme, or indeed, Beneath James so I cannot say for Certain how I would be Treated. He does seem a Fair Man, but a Law Abiding Man all the same… Regardless of James’ personal Thoughts, it would be my Death.

Still I cannot Help but Think… Watching James perform on the Fiddle last night Inspired me to such Thoughts as no Man should think ~~of another~~. Now I find myself Writing of such things that Should not be Written and thinking of it all the more for my Avoidance of the Subject. Damn me. If only I could Learn to keep such thoughts at Bay, I would not have Landed myself in many of the Situations that have continually Beplagued me and Lead me to where I am Now. Not, of course, that my Current standing is a bad one; no, I am most Fortunate in that my Life has lead me to a good Commission, a good Ship and a good Captain. I must Pray, though, that these unbidden Thoughts do not lead me down the same Road once again. Edward is not Here to save me from Myself, and the close confines of the Ship are much worse than those of any School---!

♠ ♠ ♠

I assure you, Gentle Reader, I am most embarrassed of myself for Leaving such an Entry in my Journal. I am terribly Blatant in my Desires and Thoughts. That is an aside; for I wish to describe to you the Supreme at this time.

The Supreme was a small, Daughty, ship suited for Nothing more than the Simple Patrols that she undertook. I believe that this ship was an Insult to James’ skill as a Captain, and yet it was Aboard her that he came to Prove himself an Apt and Skilled Leader of his Men. Being an Older Vessel, her colours were Quite out of Tune with the rest of the Fleet--- we had no head to bring her in and Slick her sides with Fresh and Expensive paint. Her crew, to that Point, was rather unwilling to make a Trip to the Tailor much less the Shipwright unless it was absolutely Necessary. Our Mess Cook, who perished on this particular Cursed journey, doubled as the Surgeon since our ship was far too Small to be afforded such Pleasantries. Many of us doubled as One-Another when illness took hold and there was no one afoot who could do the tasks Required to keep her Sailing. Being abandoned of the Wind did not help situations, nor did it help the Spread of Illness aboard. It certainly did not Help my Thoughts as I spent an Increasing amount of Time in James’ personal Cabin with the other Lieutenants and the Captain himself in an effort to keep ourselves in Good Health and Good Spirits while we waited for Wind. The plan was to Bring the Supreme into the nearest British port in order to retrieve Supplies and Hire and new Cook and Surgeon to look after the Ill while we attempted to voyage back to our own Home Port. Our Patrol had, after all, gone on far past our expectations due to intolerable Weather conditions and the Blasted wind. Surely, Gentle Reader, you have no more Head for this kind of Talk if you have never yourself Sailed. Though I recommend Sailing to anyone, for it is an arduous but Fulfilling Life, I do not Recommend Reading of it unless you have Personal Experience… less you find the author rambling for some time about Issues and Schedules which cannot matter to you Less than what your Neighbour had for Dinner last Tuesday (unless, say, you supped with your Neighbour, in which case I should hope you know what you dined upon).

It was during one of these Occasions in which I was Bunked in James’ cabin, that I Awoke with a start. The other Lieutenants were Sound Asleep about me, but the Captain’s tall figure was Stooped over me as he Struggled and Fussed with a Silver pin in an attempt to attach to my Blanket a much folded note. The appearance of this note was as one that has been Run Over by fingers many times in Thought as the Writer deliberates delivering it to the Reader. Having Issued many of these Notes in my time, I am familiar with the Signs. I tried not to give James any inclination that he had Woken me with his Struggles and tried to lay quite still as he continued to Fuss with the Note. This grew increasingly Hard as my Thoughts strayed as they Should not during such times to that Sin for which I seem to have a terrible Leaning Towards at Times. I waited Until James was quite finished and had returned to his own Sleep before I dared to Unpin the Note and Read it.

♠ ♠ ♠

Dear Friend,

I am finding these nights restless and cannot afford myself sleep because of it. Should you face such similar circumstances, as I am guessing you do from the long hours you spend writing, I would appreciate it if you would join me in my personal quarters. There is little room, as you know, but enough for us to keep each other company in such Times.

Yours,

--James

♠ ♠ ♠

Gentle Reader, if your Thoughts could turn away from Sin at the Reading such a note I ask that you lend me your Resolution and Earnest Heart so that I may find it in Myself to Resist such Leanings still in my Life. Should I have been Able to better resist such Inclinations and Yearning I am certain that I would have spared myself much Pain and Suffering in the years that I have lived and Served away from the privacy of my own Home.

Book I, Chapter II: Thoughts on the Caribbean

2007-06-13T21:19:10Z

Title: Thoughts on the Caribbean: Andrew Gilbert Gillette, Gentleman, Book I, Chapter I
Author: Lucid_Dreamer_
Rating: G
Archive: With permission
Disclaimer: Lt. Gillette and Com. Norrington, and the world of POTC belong to the mouse. I'm only fooling around with them for personal entertainment. The text is VERY LOOSELY based on Tom Jones, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy and other 18th Century texts. Lucid_Dreamer_ makes no claims to these texts, pieces of these texts, no the ability to accurately mimic any aspects of them whatsoever. This piece of fiction was done for entertainment only.
Summary: Andrew G. Gillette compiles a book of letters sent between himself and James Norrington as a gift for an (assumed) estranged Norrington.
Warning: This piece is a very crude, rough imitation of 18th Century writing, pulled off in a pseudo-epistolary style that may be barely tolerable to those not familiar with it. This piece is not intended to be aesthetically pleasing in the way that some fics are... for the best reading of this, please find your own inner James and Andrew voices and read it out-loud. It *really* helps.

Chapter II

Concerning The Characters

I, the author, discovered the response to the last letter in the most unusual way. It should be noted, dear Reader, that a majority of the letters following this one were not received through proper Post. They were delivered by hand, or left in places that we knew we would find them. This way of delivering the Post became a sort of Game between James and I--- I could Never wait to Discover where he left the next one. I am Uncertain as to Whether or not he took as much Pleasure in the whole process as I did. It is most Unfortunate that we did not get to Discuss our thoughts about such things more Completely.

Whilst I am on this digression, dear Reader, please allow me to go further. I realize that these last few Letters seem awkward at Best, limiting you to the mere words that are on the page without a full View of the world around it. This is the unfortunate circumstance of being a Reader. You must Trust me, the Author, to supply you with the little Details. This is unfortunate, because that leaves the Details to my discretion. You may Desire to Know what kind of Uniform the Captain was wearing on a certain day… and I may Choose to tell you about the quill he used instead. You may Desire to know his thoughts on a certain Subject, as I indeed do at times, but you are limited to what he presents to us in his letters. You, the Reader, and I the Author, have a similar situation in that regard. Neither one of us can know anything other than what we are being Told. There is no reason to Worry over this, gentle Friends. I have been Told on a Number of Occasions that I am a trustworthy and Forward Individual who would do well to speak his mind with a Quill. Much the same could be said for our dear Captain Norrington . He deserves our Trust and Willingness to follow whatever he Tells us. He is, after all, a Wonderful Leader and Careful gentleman. Should you find yourself in a state of Worry over what is being said, please do not! I am here to guide you, and if you cannot Trust dear James… then where does that leave me?

As a Reader myself, I very much enjoy it when the Author takes the time to familiarize us (the Readers) more completely with the featured Characters. In order to accomplish this, I have decided to describe myself and James Norrington to you. I shall begin with myself.

I could be quite droll and provide Nothing More than a Physical description of myself. I do not Believe that a man’s physicality is all that composes his character, so I shall begin in a different way. I was born in Sussex, England, to Ruth and Admiral Charles Andrew Gillette IV. It is a shame that I was not given the name of Charles Andrew. However, due to a series of unfortunate circumstances that lead to the Death of a Close family friend, I was to be named after this Friend. At the last moment of my Birth, my father decided against this, desiring instead that his First Born be named after himself. This action was vetoed in between my mother’s Sick Bed and my Father’s study. This resulted in a mixture of names. Initially I was supposed to be Charles (Gilbert) Andrew Gillette V.

My beautiful mother, however, thought that this was all too much of a mouthful and my father was being a bit of a bore about the whole issue. She maintained that I should be named after Gilbert Howard Jenkins… I suppose that her attending maid about Lost her Head running back and forth between my parents as my mother Laboured in birthing me. Certainly it was she who must have uttered the complete mismash of names that is “Andrew Gilbert Gillette” with no numerals to be attached for I am the first to bear that awkward name in my family. I was baptized as such after my birth due to the continued confusion of my dear parents—both insisted that the other had chosen the Mixture and neither would Agree to take the Blame for themselves.

My younger brother’s name was thus agreed on far before he was even conceived, and put down in a contract which both my mother and father signed. Edward Charles Gillette came into the world in far less confusion than I did. The naming of my sisters, my father left entirely up to my Mother--- who as a result, named them after her own mother and sister. This is how my sisters came to be called Sarah Elizabeth and Theresa Elizabeth. My mother was ever indecisive, and concluded that neither of them would want to go by their middle names anyways, so what difference did it make if they were indeed the Same name? After Sarah and Theresa were born, my Mother and Father made one more noble attempt at having Children. This lead to the birth of my younger brother Stefan. Unfortunately, Stefan died of tuberculosis when he was still quite young. I have been told, by my Mother in her later years, that Stefan is not the only deceased sibling that we have. Before I was born, there was one who did not even Bother to come out of it. Between myself and Edward, there had been a daughter who died before taking her first breath. Sarah and Theresa followed a phantom pregnancy…and after Stefan, I can hardly blame my poor dear Mother for wanting to quit the whole thing.

I can recall, as a young man, my mother telling me--- “Andrew, please do remember when you have a wife of your own, that it is quite appropriate to keep your knob in your trousers.”---- Before that point and quite after it, I never heard my Mother speak a word of profanity. This duty was relegated to my Father, who employed a good deal of profanity every time he no doubt heard the words from my Sweet Mother “keep your knob in your trousers”. I am certain that this is the only advice that my Mother ever gave me where it concerned women.

I digress in my digression. I was born in Sussex, and went to a boarding school when I was eleven in order to learn the military arts. My brother Edward would follow a few years later. This boarding school was located in the poorer part of London--- something which my Mother never learned, yet I trust my Father knew well. My Father also knew that I had no real desire to be in the military. I had told him a number of times that I very much desired to be a gardener. Pleasure gardens were quite Grand then, and I wanted nothing more than to have a Hand in creating one. My Father would have None of this, However, desiring a different Life for me Entirely. Lucky for both of us, I actually turned out to have a Head for the Military. Not so much as my Father, surely.

When I say that my Father had a Head for the military, I speak in quite a Literal fashion. No doubt you have Seen a great number of Paintings of Great Military Men with their Wigs in Full Dress looking quite Smug. A great Number of these men appear to have Heads disproportionate to their bodies--- either far too Small or far too Large. My Father would have been one of the Men with too large a Head ---- I do not mean offense with this. My father’s jaw and brow were both strong and square. His nose was settled straight in the middle of his face, and it was a grand thing but slightly crooked and bulbed at the end. This was no Accident of Life. Very simply, he must have been Born that way, for I possess a very Similar nose. My jaw and my brow rather take after my Mother. I am quite round in the face, with only hints of that Strength of my Father’s. I have been told that it is far easier to see my Father in me when I am in Bad Humour. It is also said of me that I look like my Mother more often--- I hope that this is an appraisal of my generally good moods rather than an insult to my dignity. Not that my Mother was not a handsome Woman—it is exactly that. My Mother was a handsome Woman, and she would have looked dreadful in Men’s Fashion. It it my hope that my appearance is better than it would be for Mum.

As my appearance does continue to relate to my Father’s, let me continue to elaborate. My Father and I share the same basic Frame of body. We both are shorter in stature, but with a broad build that allowed him to be somewhat overbearing--- I imagine the same is true for me, as I can hold my own quite alright.

My Father and I have the same eyes--- they are what is called “almond” in shape, and a particular shade caught between Brown and Green that has been called “hazel”. I have called them Mossy-Mud eyes, but this was particularly frowned upon my Mother who happened to adore my Father’s eyes. My Father’s hair---which I thought was White until the day he took his wig off in frustration at my brother Edward when I was five years of age and he was three--- is somewhat of a mousey brown colour. This I did not happen to inherit from my Father. Instead, I was graced with somewhat of a duller version of my Mother’s hair. Her hair was a brilliant bronze-and-copper colour depending on the light that it was viewed under. My own leans more towards the copper colouration, given a more rodent-like hue due to my Father’s involvement in the process of my making. Edward is the more unfortunate soul, possessing hair that could have been transplanted from Father’s scalp to his own before it managed to gray any further. Theresa and Sarah are both blond—something which I continually attempt to puzzle out but then forget about before I can make any kind of issue about it. I do not doubt my Mother’s loyalty to my Father. I simply doubt the process by which a humungulous goes about choosing what features to retain of its Father and those to absorb of its mother. Being as my sisters are twinned, they must have made the decision together--- as they do nearly all things now that they are grown.

I had no similar companion in the womb whom I could plot with and so must have been left to my own devices when it came to such Choices. Had someone properly informed me of fashions at the time of my Birth, I am certain that I would not have chosen to have freckles across my face. I detest them, and my Mother insists that they are from the Scot side of the family, which would be Her side.

Freckles aside, or perhaps Somewhat due to Them, I had a rather terrible time of it in School. This was not due to the School itself, nor the Work, nor any of the Subject Matter. It was simply due to my Relations with other Students and the Propensity of certain People to allow their mouths to Run. Be certain, Dear Reader, that I shall better acquaint you with this tale once We Know each other better. To make it quite Short, I did not finish school as I was supposed to. Instead of attending University, as my Father and I had both Hoped, I began work immediately. I was hired as a midshipman off the street, given somewhat more Credence due to the Schooling I did have and Prior experience on a ship --- this is a horrid experience that I choose to recount on no occasion Short of too many Spirits for my own Good --- and was soon promoted to Lieutenant. Since then, I have spent a good amount of my Time moving in and out of the definition of Lieutenant. I have had so many different numerals from I to V that I no longer have a care to have one permanently attached to my name. I have declined a promotion to Captain as I have no desire to command an entire ship and much Prefer to Serve James as I am now. That is an aside.

I am Afraid, and Perhaps you are Relieved Dear Reader, that I cannot Deliver so detailed a description of James Norrington. I would be glad to, if I knew the details. We have never had a true occasion to Discuss the Manner of his Birth or the Pertinent details of his family life. I can, however, describe him to you and Impart to you Some Sense of what an Affable and Gentle man he was.

From what James has told me himself, I can say this about his upbringing: It was rather Horrid. His Mother died when he was still quite young, and his Father remarried not long after, as Men are Wont to do when they are too Pious for Prostitutes--- I mean no Offense. This new Wife bore his Father two more surviving Children, and treated James rather terribly. Believe me, Dear Reader, when I say that I Wish I knew more of this Tale. I do know that James went to a similar School as Myself, completed, and did not Suffer the life of a Midshipman for long if at all. He worked his way Quickly through the Ranks, already on the cusp of Captaining by the time that I met him Properly. He would not be a Post Captain or under consideration for the post of Rear Admiral or Gov. Swann’s Commodore for many years yet. Indeed, he occasionally served as First Lieutenant above me rather than Captain during those years. In the time of these first letters, as I mentioned before, Norrington had gained the Supreme as his own vessel. She would temporarily be under the command of another Captain when he had to return to England for his Father’s funeral. Due to his Connections, the Supreme was returned to him upon his return to Fort Charles.

Recalling my First Meeting with James will allow me to Better Describe his physical appearance. Allow me, Dear Reader, to try my hand at Comedy in this description. If this attempt should fail, please, do Write me and tell me of your displeasure with it. Upon Reception of your Letter, I shall seek to revise the passage to better Amuse you. I will then send you a bill for a quid—- a steep price, to be certain, and yet I Believe it should not be Considered so. You are, After All, purchasing a portion of my Memory, something which I have been told is quite Valuable. Were I to complete your Alterations to this Comic scene, it will have become Your Comic Scene and I should Divorce myself from it entirely---- so long as I receive the quid. If you should like, we could perform an exchange. You could write to me of some Dear memory of yours in a particular Manner. Then, I could take that Memory and criticize the Manner of your Writing and Recollection until you can no longer Recall what it was that you set out to write about in the First Place. You would do this to my piece as well, and we Should Not owe each other a quid each--- for the confusion and anxiety Caused to the Other would be payment enough for such an Occurrence.

It was nine of the clock when the new Captain arrived aboard the Supreme. We had only just chased off the last Captain--- a Dreadful but True Occurrence--- when he should be so Quickly Replaced by a man other than one of the Lieutenants. I have Perpetually Denied myself the promotion, and was less surprised by the Presence of this new men than the other Four Lieutenants. They very simply gawked. In order to imitate this Scene in your mind, properly, Reader I suggest the use of a Mirror. Please, go to your Glass now and gaze into it. Once you are satisfied with your appearance, please distort your Face. You should do this first by Dropping your Jaw so that your Mouth is quite Wide. Once you have done this, please do Not leave your brows slack nor your eyes part-way shut. Open your eyes as Wide as your Mouth and raise your brows far above them. Now, you have replicated the look upon many of the faces of my colleagues. I imagine that my own Expression may have been similar if not more dignified--- I was surprised at the Sight of this Man for an Entirely different reason. I imagine that, were You so Inclined, you could draw a straight line with nothing but a piece of chalk and the Captain’s back to guide you. His Uniform was a Vision of Perfection and a Reminder that many of us were Due back at the tailor’s. It was apparent, as I Looked at him, that the proper number of buttons and stitches had changed since the Last time we saw “proper, updated” Uniform.

I know quite well that I could talk about his Coat alone for some length. His face, in part, is what surprised me. I had never Seen such a handsome face cast into such a Stony expression and yet been so drawn to a Man for what I perceived as an air of Kindness beneath the Disciplined Veneer. Return to your Mirror, dear Reader, and stare into it until you are able to Look Through yourself and yet straight into Yourself at the same time. That, my friend, is what being looked at by James Norrington felt like. I noted at that time that his eyes were Green, much like a Raw Chunk of Emerald I had seen once. They were not Brilliant, but Dark and Brooding. These eyes were set into as straight and handsome of a Face I had ever had the Fortune of seeing. At the time, his Mouth was set into a thin and resolute line. I would later discover that this dear Man could indeed Smile in such a way as to Warm an entire room, and that his hair was a deep Brown in colour.

“Lieutenant”—he said, and I knew that his voice was Warm and demanded Respect---“please explain to me why you Appear to have Nothing to do aboard this Vessel whilst everyone else Scurries about you.”

To which I replied—“Captain, I apologize for my discretion. I was simply awaiting orders. I have an unfortunate Condition of Obedience, Sir, and the sight of your Uniform so triggered it in me. What are your orders, Sir?”

“Tell me your name, Lieutenant.”

“Andrew Gillette, Sir”--- alas, I fear I am beginning to Attempt to Tell the story on my own.

• • •

Excuse me...

2007-06-09T07:24:34Z

Thoughts on The Caribbean

2007-06-03T01:14:30Z

New fic: Gillington. ^^ Yes, my Gillette's name is Andrew G(ilbert). Deal. :D He's a silly fellow and it suits him just fine.

DEDICATION

To the Honorable

JAMES NORRINGTON, Com.

Dear Sir, I have taken the time and effort to compile the greater portion of our correspondences during and after our Service to Port Royal.

To you, Sir, I owe the inspiration for such a compilation as this. After all, it was you who wrote me concerning whether or not I have actually kept a single letter you penned me. I offer this as humble proof that I indeed have – and I have cherished every word that was put to paper by your hand.

May I first warn you and any other readers that a number of these letters are very Personal and Dear to my heart. I would not share them --- except for this occasion in which I have such a burning desire for this compilation to be formed and to find itself in your hands. I have undertaken this task with no intentions to Offend –-- instead, it is my great desire, Sir, for you to read this compilation and recall all that we have Seen and Done together. In so doing, Sir, I hope that my words may warm your heart. It has been far too long since we have seen each other; I pray that this reaches you in good Health and Spirits.

SIR,

Your most obliged
Obedient and humble friend

Andrew Gilbert Gillette

A dedication from the author Herself,

I have undertaken the task of writing out Lt. Gillette’s experiences in this manner because I believe that it will be enjoyable. I ask for patience with this work of fiction, which I am modeling after the 18th century style of novel and letter writing. Much of my inspiration comes from Lawrence Stearne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy and Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones. If you enjoy this style of writing, or have any tips to steer my towards a more authentic means to my end, please do share. I enjoy commentary. I must also state here that the characters presented in this work of fiction do not belong to me. They belong to Pirates of the Caribbean, and so Disney. I gain no profit from this work of fiction, it is only intended to entertain.

This said, I would like to dedicate this piece to my friends who have tolerated my strange endeavors into the land of fiction. I sincerely hope you enjoy this particular piece of tripe as it gets moving.

Your most obliged
Obedient and Nor-so-Humble Author

Lucid_Dreamer_

Book I: Containing a small number of Letters and Thoughts about such letters as is necessary to acquaint you, dear Reader, with the History of one Lieutenant Andrew Gilbert Gillette and James Norrington, Com.
Book I, Chapter I.
Book I, Chapter II.
Book I, Chapter III.
Book I, Chapter IV.
Book I, Chapter V

Book II: Containing Much in the Way of Woe and Worry, but also Pleasure, conveyed through a Series of Recollections and Journals
Book II, Chapter I.
Book II, Chapter II.

Pieces, chapter 8

2007-03-09T17:24:52Z

It wouldn't let me post this with the others because it made the post too large.

Title: Pieces, part 8
Author: Lucid_Dreamer_
Rating: NC-17, language and sex
Pairing: Orlando Bloom/Johnny Depp
Summary: Orlando finds Johnny in the bathroom.
Disclaimer: The occurances within this work of fiction are exactly that, fiction. This was written for pleasure only with no intent of profit.
---------------------

Johnny leaned his head back against the wall, relishing the feeling of cold porcelain against his heated skin. There was something about dry bathtubs that called his name when he was distressed, from the age of four up until a few years ago. He’d gone to the bathtub to cry after a fight between his mother and father, ignoring the efforts of his sister to try and comfort him-- he’d again retreated to the bathtub after a bad trip on cocaine (after which he never touched the drug again, truly believing that it was Bad Shit). He’d found himself in a bathtub after fighting with Winona, fighting with Kate, and after a nasty fight with Vanessa over alcohol. She’d climbed in after him and they had both sat in the tub like idiots, looking at the bathroom around them and not saying a word, cold porcelain eating into their skins.

Vanessa, what an angel. She had pulled him out of the world where he needed the alcohol, needed the opium, just to continue on with the day. She’d pulled him out of the world where he needed to retreat to bathtubs, curl his knees against his chest and escape from the bad that was happening around him. And here, where she was thousands of miles away from him, she had driven him back to the tub. He looked at the curtain, listening to the distant sound of Orlando calling his name. Had be been thinking about Vanessa?

No. No, he knew he hadn’t. Being with Vanessa was one thing. Being with Vanessa was close to being in heaven fucking an angel. Being with Orlando was something different, something more earthly and consumptive. It drove him crazy. He ran his fingers through his hair, looking at the door and thinking about everything that had happen. There was a nice bruise forming on his knee for his efforts, trying to move to straddle Orlando and pushing himself off the couch. Orlando’s skin had been nice and hot, as warm to the touch as it looked. The move from contemplative touching into frottage had seemed best-- he hadn’t been sure if he was ready for Orlando to grasp him and jerk him to orgasm when all he wanted was to be close to him, to feel the heat of his body. He hadn’t been ready for full out sex, and falling into the routine of dry humping had been best. Best… Johnny wasn’t sure exactly how he would describe it. Orlando’s thighs had been heavy and muscles against his own, squeezing unconsciously every time they jolted together, rubbing their erections together through the fabric of their boxers. That was definitely different than anything else he had ever felt in his life. He’d never thought that being hard against something that was hard in return could feel so good-- but it provided a friction that was indescribable. Substantial, uncontrollable… it was the feeling that any moment everything could turn on its head and get a whole lot rougher. Untraditional and enticing. He’d never thought of anything like that before. Sex with Vanessa was like good food. He knew that when he was done, he would be fulfilled and sleepy, mulling over the flavors and textures in his mind while burying his face into the back of her neck, enjoying the scent of her hair while they dozed together. The pseudo sexual experience he had had with Orlando was like… it was like scooping a handful of wet sand off the beach and shoving it into your mouth, pushing the granules down your throat without regard of what it could do to the tender flesh of your esophagus and without expectations of flavor or satisfaction. It was all about that texture, all about that mouthful of wet sand eager to conform to every tooth, to the shape of the tongue, and to fill the stomach-- immobile and indigestible. How could you shove sand in your mouth and think about fine dining? How could he grind his hips into Orlando, lose himself in the heat of the other man’s body, and think about Vanessa?

“Johnny?” on cue, Orlando’s voice was at the door. The door’s knob shook when Orlando touched it gently. Johnny imagined his long fingers tapping against the faux gold veneer of the knob, one trailing downwards before withdrawing, gaining the experience of cold moisture (as door knobs always seemed to be oddly moist) and disappointment. The door was locked and the knob was eager to betray that fact, catching at an odd place and disallowing itself from turning any more. Johnny imagined Orlando looking at the knob, standing in the hall way in a state of undress, muscled legs sketched out of blue silk boxers. The curve of a hip just emerging from the band, elastic conforming around it, the shape of a sun rising or setting just along that band making his pelvis into a hazy, uncertain, sky. He could imagine the rivulets of muscle on Orlando’s stomach as the younger man slouched his shoulders just slightly, young face distorted with concern and self-loathing. Orlando was oddly good at self-loathing for being such a literally bright personality. Johnny wondered if he was, in fact, better at it than Johnny himself-- just very good at hiding it.

“Johnny? Come on, I’m sorry,” Orlando’s voice continued through the door, accompanied by a soft whine from the dog. Was the dog’s concern a result of what Sidi could smell on Orlando’s skin, a mix of adrenaline and other hormones coating his skin through the excretion of sweat? Or did the dog, in some way, understand what was going on? Perhaps the dog could see everything that they couldn’t and would be able to tell them exactly what they could do if only he had the ability to force his tongue into the movements of English. Without lips his speech would be clumsy and hard to understand, but that was to be expected from a dog. They suffered from that condition anyways.

The doorknob jiggled again and started to make a raspy noise that hinted at the application of a paperclip. Why were bathroom doors designed to open so easily? Was it because people didn’t want to pay to put a deadbolt on the bathroom or was it because of too many stupid kids like Johnny had been who busily occupied themselves in the act of self adornment (mutilation) when things got rough? He absently wondered how many other kids had tried it in an RV, combating the rough rolling motion of the machine on the road, trying to get just the perfect cut to convey that feeling that hung around their heads… those words that couldn’t be cleaned from their ears with any amount of swabs. The lock popped and the knob relented, turning all the way and allowing the door to open. Johnny watched Orlando come through the door, Sidi hanging out in the hallway as if he should have been clothed in a dressing gown, a worried mother trapped in a fury mis-gendered body. Where was your nightcap, Sidi?

“Oh, God, are you alright?” Orlando was to the tub, kneeling on the floor in front of it. He reached out and touched Johnny’s leg with hot hands that made him want to recoil. There was something sitting in his throat holding his tongue, preventing him from replying to the things that Orlando was saying to him, small hands with sharp nails holding the linguistic muscle by the root. Moist saliva coating it’s malicious little paws.

“Johnny? Johnny, talk to me. You’re scaring me,” Orlando was shaking him by the shoulders, trying to knock him out of the trance that the porcelain induced. Johnny turned his head to look at him better, blinking his eyes into focus and wishing that his glasses weren’t out in the living room. He couldn’t see Orlando’s face clearly like this, distorted as it was by his increasingly bad vision. His eyes shone white in photographs, when the flash hit them in a certain way, not the normal red eye. He could do something about it, but…

“I’m fine,” the little beast finally released his tongue, “please, I’m alright.”

“You scared me.”

“That’s what you said.”

They stared at each other, Orlando leaning over the tub, his skin dark against the porcelain side. Johnny felt like he was sinking into the wall, letting the cold absorb him into the porcelain itself. If he was a bathtub, well, that’d be an interesting like. You’d get to see a lot of naked people, and probably not in ways that you wanted to see them. Plus, bathtubs couldn’t smoke. It would probably be a dreadful like. He wondered if the tub longed for a smoke or some other kind of tangible pleasure as payment for it having to constantly look at asses, privates, and the bottoms of feet. It probably had to listen to some pretty damn bad singing, too.

“I’m sorry for what I said. I just get paranoid,” Orlando was stroking his leg, tracing the line that distinguished calf from shin, “…I want to be with you so badly, and I’m afraid this isn’t going to last. I’m afraid I’m dreaming. I’m just… you know, I’m scared to death. I’m scared because I love you so much, and here you are in my apartment, there you were kissing me and touching me and it scared me. What if I wake up tomorrow and you’re not there?”

“I’m going to be here tomorrow.” Lame response, but what else could he say? How to reply to someone confessing that they love you and it scares the shit out of them? Bravo, you have accomplished basic human emotion. Welcome to love. Love was so often combined with that strange breathless terror that it was almost more natural than having sex to feel that way. I love you, I love you, I love you, the world is going to fucking end! Love and fear went hand in hand, as inseparable as snow from the concept of moisture. Love couldn’t exist without some kind of fear involved.

“You are?”

“Of course I am. The couch thing… I wasn’t doing that just because I wanted to pacify you. It felt right then, and I wish it hadn’t stopped,” Johnny leaned his head back against the tiles of the wall, “…it was so oddly perfect. I wanted it, I wanted to be with you. Don’t worry about me thinking about Vanessa. She’s my girl. You and her… you’re so different, so beautiful in your own ways, yeah? I can’t think about her and be with you because I miss things then. I couldn’t think about you and be with her, either. You both need all my attention.”

“I’m not sure how I feel about that,” Orlando said softly, sitting more fully on the bathroom’s floor, “but… well, I’m not going to make you choose between us. I mean, your family and me.”

“I wasn’t really talking about that, but thanks for assuring me that I don’t need to choose,” Johnny couldn’t help but smile a little, “I was trying to console you, though. Let you know that I can’t think about her when I’m with you.”

“I got that,” Orlando said, then there was another stretch of silence between them. Orlando looked down as if he was trying to hide a blush and asked, “You really want me?”

“Yeah, man…I never thought I would want a guy. You’re addicting, though. I don’t want to stop kissing you, I want to get as close to you as possible and never let go. It’s so weird. I thought…”

“You thought Vanessa was the end all and be all of relationships?”

“Yeah. But this…it’s so different, so--” his words were silenced by Orlando reaching through the space between them, pulling him closer and drowning his words in a kiss. Different, a mouth full of sand for the sake of swallowing the grains and being content with that. He reached up, grabbing Orlando’s arms and holding him as fast as he was being held, pouring himself into that kiss. Maybe things weren’t ruined after all. Maybe this whole fiasco was needed, a slow progression before jumping head first into the pool. You don’t test the depth of water with both feet. Now he wanted to swim.

He pulled against Orlando, but the younger man was the stronger party, pulling him to his feet and out of the bathtub, pulling him up against his body and kissing him hard. How easy it was to resume the act of passion, implying that the curiosity of desire could perhaps win any battle against other emotions. Desire was the secret weapon of the body, appearing when it was least expected and changing your life as it sailed through the air in search of a target. Desire had made him fall in love with a woman’s back, and now desire had him pressing against a younger man, desperately pulling at the remnants of clothing. He felt his own boxers fall from their place on his hips, guided by hand that traveled from his lower back to push the fabric away. They both did the awkward pants step and resumed kissing, bare skin touching bare skin.

“When I was younger,” Orlando murmured, pausing to suck on his ear lobe, “I didn’t want to know that I liked other boys. I tried to ignore it. But I would watch Don Juan DeMarco, look at you and…”

Orlando shifted against him, allowing his growing erection to shift and slide against Johnny’s body. Johnny turned his head, making Orlando look into his eyes, “Now come on, I’m not going to have any of that. I don’t want to hear about fan fantasies or boyish imaginings. If you’re going to fawn over me, do it in the moment.”

He followed the words with a kiss, trying to make sure that Orlando knew he wasn’t trying to be mean, “Like…I just want to kiss your lips right now, they look so soft. Or, I like the taste of your skin…”

“But I haven’t tasted you,” Orlando nuzzled against his cheek, running his fingers through Johnny’s hair before making an unexpected move. He bent his knee, lowering himself until he was kneeling on the bathmat. Johnny couldn’t help but look down at him, a young beautiful man, kneeling at his feet, longer fingers wrapped around his hips. Orlando shifted one of his hands to grasp Johnny’s cock (sand was thick and bitter), stroking it for a moment before kissing the head. His lips were soft and moist, his tongue hot against that most sensitive part. Slowly, too slowly for any man to stand, he pressed those soft lips around the head, taking it in and sucking him as if he was some kind of delicacy. His tongue flicked along the underside, no doubt connecting with his hand at the base, driving Johnny insane and making him harder by the second.

“God…”

“Mmm,” Orlando formed the sound around him, driving it straight into his pelvis, making him buck his hips. He repeated it before pulling back, laying another delicate kiss on his head before, “I like the taste of your skin… and that ridiculous face you’re making.”

Johnny laughed, relieving the tension that had been building up in his body about the situation. Yes, this was alright. He hadn’t forced Orlando to it, and it felt good… there was something about the way that Orlando washed his tongue over his skin that made it better than any other head he had ever gotten before. Perhaps it was true that men were better at giving oral sex to other men since they knew exactly what they wanted from it themselves. Orlando’s mouth was around him again, drawing him deeper into his mouth, that lovely vacant feeling of an open, waiting throat accompanied by the press of a tongue. Johnny closed his eyes, leaning his head back and allowing his body to shake with the feeling, to give voice to the moan that was building in his chest.

“Hold on, baby,” Orlando breathed against Johnny’s cock, then pulled away, leaving the disappointing cold air behind. Johnny opened his eyes and looked at the younger man, turned on his haunches, going through the cabinet under the sink. He was idly masturbating himself, leaning in an awkward way to go through the bottles under the sink. Finally he turned back to Johnny, holding a blue bottle with a purple lid in his hand.

“Lube. I usually use it when I’m wanking. I hope you don’t mind…” he was looking up at Johnny, the hand that was holding himself now idle.

“Why would I mind?”

Orlando didn’t provide an answers, settling himself back in front of Johnny, spreading the lube on one of his hands and rubbing his fingers together. His other hand was back on Johnny’s cock, guiding it back to the warmth of his mouth. Johnny watched him for a moment with hooded eyes, as he took himself in his hand, masturbating with the same rhythm he was employing with his lips and tongue. Johnny allowed his eyes to close again, reaching down to tangle his fingers in Orlando’s hair, not driving the movement but simply encouraging it.

Then, the unexpected. The wet rhythmic sound of Orlando beating himself off stopped and was replaced by the feeling of his hand pushing between Johnny’s legs, cold lubed fingers pushing upward past the heavy muscles of his buttocks to press against his asshole. One long digit threatening to penetrate him, rubbing the lube into the spot while Orlando’s tongue curled around his head, released, slid along his shaft, took him in deeper…

“Nmmm…” Johnny wasn’t sure if the sound was one of protest or desire but that finger continued to rub, spreading the cold lube, and finally just barely pushing inside of his body. Something forcing it’s way in, pushing through that ring of muscle… it was an odd sensation that was hard for him to grasp. The finger was cold and firm and he clenched around it, holding it in place. Only up to the first knuckle, only that smallest piece of flesh inside of him.

“Is it alright?” Orlando was nuzzling against his belly, probably looking up at him and wondering if his lover had gone catatonic, “I can stop, if you want… otherwise, you’ll need to relax.”

“Nnn…it feels…different,” Johnny didn’t want to look down at him, didn’t want to open his eyes and see the concern on his face. It was worse that the intruding finger was still. It had been more tolerable when he had been rubbing…

“Yeah, it will until you relax and I can get in more…but then, it feels good.”

“You’ve done this before?” Johnny now opened his eyes and looked down at Orlando. It was an odd sight to see the young man leaning his head against the hollow of his hip, idly kissing his penis, casting glances upwards at him. It was almost hard to imagine that this boy had his finger where it was, but then again, it really wasn’t.

“Well…yeah. Like I said, I use this lube when I wank.”

“So you do this to yourself?”

Orlando nodded, his blushing cheeks hot against Johnny’s skin. Well… Johnny stroked his hair some more, then pet his cheek, giving him the best (least uncomfortable) smile that he could manage, “I’ll try to relax.”

One finger later, Johnny’s hand tightened in Orlando’s hair. He couldn’t help the bucking of his hips, as much as he was trying to hold back, trying not to gag his lover. The slick, lubed finger sliding in and out of his body was madness, different from the still point that it had started out as. The digit stimulated parts of him that he had never been aware existed, making him certain that he was going to cum at any moment, but wanting to hold back as long as possible. Sheer madness.

“More…more…”

Orlando was obedient, pausing in his ministrations to add more lube, and slowly insert another finger. Johnny’s muscles burned, admitting the fingers into his body and quivering with the anticipation of what they could do. What was it that Orlando was rubbing in there? His prostate? Is that what that was? His hips twitched, and he felt that burning coil in his belly tighten even more. He wouldn’t be able to take much more of this.

“I’m going to cum, I’m going to…” he gasped, and Orlando took him in deeper, swallowing him whole, pulling him past the point of shaking orgasm. His muscles were still twitching as Orlando swallowed in short intervals, drawing saliva and hot semen down his throat and making Johnny feel like he was about to cum all over again. The movement of the fingers in his ass didn’t abate, either, as Orlando licked him, then looked up at him with a smile.

“This has been one of the strangest, best nights,” he said, and kissed Johnny’s hip, “…my turn?”

“I’ve never given a man head before,” Johnny pushed the brown hair away from Orlando’s forehead, stroking and petting the hair that he was sure he had been pulling as he reached orgasm, “but I could try…”

“No, that’s alright,” Orlando said and pressed his fingers in deeper, making his point without saying more. It wasn’t a return of head that he was after. Johnny bit his lip, unsure of whether or not he wanted to… those fingers were good, but how would it feel when they were replaced by something that wasn’t as versatile? He looked down, judging the length and width of Orlando’s cock and wondering if he would be able to handle it, so soon, inside of him. Orlando must have sensed his hesitation because he kissed his hip again and said, “…but you can if you want. We don’t have to…”

“I don’t know. I think I’d like to, but I’ve never…”

“Neither have I. I’ll be gentle though, I promise. I just… God, I want you so badly.”

“…Yeah, I want you too…”

Johnny found himself redefining praying to the porcelain god. The top of the toilet was cold against his cheek, giving off the scent of water that was too hard and too chlorinated but (thankfully) not bad. His hands were wrapped around the lid, pressed firmly against the bowl and occasionally sliding from the press of his weight. The position was certainly awkward, but it was the best they had been able to come up with in the small bathroom that would save his already bruised knees from the hard floor. Orlando was behind him, inserting a third finger, taking the time to stretch him out as well as stimulate him, no doubt masturbating himself while looking over him. It was a truly vulnerable position, and Johnny wasn’t certain if he wanted to go on with it. He vaguely wondered if this was how female virgins sometimes felt in the back of cars with their legs spread, a boyfriends fumbling fingers delving into an untouched yoni (not even coming near to her own, better, experiences of masturbation) before he finally slaps a condom on his awkward penis and climbs over her to invade most the space of the car’s seat. Orlando’s fingers weren’t fumbling and did feel good…a kiss on his back.

“You alright?”

“Yeah…yeah, I never thought I’d hug a toilet like this, but I’m fine. Kind of nice, in that…bizarre hugging a toilet way.”

“You ready?”

“I think so.”

Orlando withdrew his fingers, and Johnny could hear him rustling around-- putting on a condom, adding more lube-- before a hand returned to his hip. The other one was occupied guiding the tip of his cock. It was more awkward than that initial finger, hard and spongy at the same time, slowly pushing the stretched muscle ring open again. He resisted the urge to clinch up, tighten around Orlando’s head and instead closed his eyes and concentrated on his breath. The fingers had been good once he had relaxed, this would probably be the same.

“That alright?”

“Yeah, yeah…”

“God, I want you…I want to fuck you,” Orlando was lost in the usual litany of lovers trying to be slow about their love, bending over Johnny to shower kisses on his back, helping to support him by wrapping his arm around his hips. He slowly pressed more of himself inwards, slowly filling Johnny until…

“Stop, stop…too much,” Johnny had been gritting his teeth, resisting making a sound but the pain generated by the slightest movement was getting to the unbearable point. Orlando stopped, nuzzling against his back and asking if he should pull out. Johnny could only shake his head. The pain would subside, it would go away once his muscles relaxed, once he coached himself into relaxing and letting the penetration continue. He probably only had an inch, maybe two in his body. The edge in his voice had been familiar. He’d heard the same tone from Vanessa the first time they had tried to fuck after Lily-Rose had been born. It had taken him almost half an hour to get fully inside of her, having to stop every once in awhile to give her time to adjust. Would he be leaning over the toilet that long?

“Ok….ok, more…” Johnny said, shifting his body to be more comfortable, allowing Orlando to push in a bit more. A few more inches… a stop… a few more inches…stop…then a kiss, followed by the feeling of Orlando’s scrotum against his body. He had every inch of him inside of his body, clenching his muscles around him. It did feel different from the fingers, less mobile, hard and…well, rude if that made any sense. Johnny bit his lip and once more assured Orlando that he was fine with everything.

Movement, slow at first, changed the feeling. He was eating sand again, shoving the substance down his throat, cracking it between his teeth and slowly filling up that void inside of him. Absence and presence, with every thrust Orlando shook Johnny’s body, overtaking it and returning it to him. Johnny seemed almost separated from the entire incident, standing aside to watch the thin frame of his own body be bent over a toilet and fucked by a much younger, stronger man. It was almost Greco-Roman, something that had gone on through the ages between them and would probably continue. Thrust…and Johnny knew this had happened before, he had felt Orlando’s lips on his shoulders, and been filled to the brim with him and laughed afterwards under some long ago sun. Things were right, and it was perhaps not sand that he was swallowing but plaster, adding this moment to another line of monuments forever memorialized in a hall dedicated to their lives. Here, the lovers met again. Here, they joined beneath a tree. Here, they joined in an alleyway, a bed, a stable, at night, in the afternoon, created life and destroyed their own. Here, his thighs had wrapped around Johnny’s, allowing Johnny to press down into a waiting vagina, here Johnny had ridden him hard, each time with a different name and a different body. Orlando was moaning, singing out their song of passion that Johnny knew he was giving voice to as well. This would be a sculpture of modern, crude love in a bathroom, two men giving over to something that only Orlando was able to say. This sculpture would join the others and gain some relevance in their journey through time. Another meeting, to be reenacted again when they were once again reborn.

“Fuck…God, you feel so good…”

“I love you,” Johnny blurted, interrupting Orlando, looking over his shoulders to meet the other man’s dark eyes. Orlando paused, looking back at him and slowly smiling. He stroked Johnny’s back with hands that still had lube on the fingers, giving him another thrust.

“I know…I know, and I love you, too. So much.”

Orlando came in that moment, thrusting harder into Johnny than ever before, holding tight to his hips while his body convulsed. Johnny was quick to reclaim his feet, standing on shaking legs while Orlando pulled the condom off of himself and flushed it. Johnny watched him clean up, going through his own motions of cleaning up after their encounter, wanting nothing more than to fall into his arms. He could still hear his own voice admitting love for the man that he was watching, could still feel him inside of himself. He wondered if that feeling would ever go away, even though he already knew it was fading.

He couldn’t wait anymore, he pushed his way into Orlando’s arms, wrapping his own around his waist and leaning his head against his chest. Orlando’s lips were against his forehead, kissing him again and again, nuzzling the line of his hair and no doubt smiling. The warmth from those lips could be nothing less than a smile. In those arms, Johnny felt like an entirely different person, joined for the first time with someone as distant and lonely as he was.

He understood the pain in Orlando’s voice, the thing that drove the younger man to tears, that drove him to confess his love on the phone. It was the partner to the thing that lived in Johnny’s chest and ate a hole in his flesh, it was something that strived to fill that emptiness with its being, to be part and parcel of that beast and let them both know that they were completed creatures now. They could step away from Frankenstein’s table, the electricity was done running through their bodies and they were now living creatures composed of many different parts, beauty composed in flesh, stitched together and held in place by the existence of the other.

He couldn’t help but laugh when he felt Orlando’s teeth graze his shoulders, biting down lightly. He’d felt that before through his shirt, and knew what it meant now. You’re mine. Mine, mine, mine. It had never been any different.

Pieces, chapter 5-7

2007-03-09T17:23:32Z

Title: Pieces, part 5
Author: Lucid_Dreamer_
Rating: PG, language and pondered death by decor
Pairing: Orlando Bloom/Johnny Depp
Summary: Johnny arrives at Orlando's home.
Disclaimer: The occurances within this work of fiction are exactly that, fiction. This was written for pleasure only with no intent of profit.
----------------------------------------
Orlando wondered if it was humanly possible to spend two hours arranging cushions and accomplish nothing. No matter what way he put the bright rounds, they somehow seemed wrong. He didn’t dare look away from the couch because he knew that the same view would be applied to the rest of the flat. He’d notice a picture hanging crooked, or a dust bunny lurking around the corner or some other miniscule detail that no guest in their right mind would notice in a year. It was always residents who noticed the worst part of their houses. Even though he knew that, he reached for the cushion again and moved it a half inch to the side. Better… no, damn.

The sudden fastidious cleaning was due to nerves. He also knew that, but again, knowledge did nothing to soothe his nerves. Indeed, it seemed to make it worse because he was then aware of his reactions to his tensions, and being aware of his reactions made him nervous about others noticing his tension or thinking about what he was thinking to make him act in such a way. Maybe some primal scream therapy would help.

Another half inch, that colour behind that one and… no, it wasn’t right. Sidi looked up at him from beside the coffee table and gave him a low whine. Certainly, the dog could sense his tension. Dogs were good about that kind of thing, that, and lowering your blood pressure. He remembered some comedian talking about dogs taking your blood pressure while the cat sneakily drained the blood out of your body to sell… some bloke who’s name he couldn’t remember, but he remembered him being funny. Maybe he’d ask Johnny, even if Johnny seemed to have darker tastes than dogs taking your blood pressure.

Johnny: the cause of all the movements of the pillows from one end of the couch to the other, all the rearrangements of furniture that had no doubt upset Sidi, and the hours spent cleaning his own house. Johnny was supposed to be there at any moment. He would be staying a few days to try and sort things out.

Orlando wondered what kind of mad man he was to allow the man into his house, so close under his skin when he had no idea what he wanted. Still, having Johnny here meant being able to breathe to an extent and carried with it the hope that Johnny might align his thoughts in a more favorable position to Orlando’s own. He looked at the colored cushions and imagined wrapping his arms around Johnny’s slender frame, pulling him down on that couch--to hell with how those cushions were arranged-- and snogging him square on the lips for the time that they had spent apart. Probably wouldn’t happen. He already know, despite his hopes, that this visit would be fraught with tension. Tension he could handle in some respect, since it was a tension he had dealt with for as long as he knew Johnny (who had probably been oblivious to it). Not that he wanted to have to handle that tension.

He picked up a cushion and pressed it against his face, muffling his breath with the fabric. Death by décor. Sidi whined and bumped his nose against Orlando’s knee. He pulled the pillow away and looked down at the dog, “I wasn’t really doing anything, Sidi. What kind of death would that be? You’d see it all over the rags: Bloom Offed By Own Couch. Dog Only Witness!”

Sidi just whined and hopped up on the couch, messing up the careful arrangement of cushions. Hours gone with the flop of one furry body. Oh well, at least the furniture was getting better use-- couches were meant to be curled up on, not to be looked at. He hugged the pillow to his chest and sat down on the couch by Sidi, looking at the clock on the wall above the television. Sidi’s head plopped into his lap and he reached down to scratch behind the dog’s velvety ears. Tick tock, tick tock, damn Johnny and his constant ability to be somewhat late. Sidi groaned and for a moment, he was certain that the sound was coming from his own chest and not that of the dog.

The sound of a knock on the door was so expected that it caught Orlando off guard. Sidi was up in an instant, telling the person on the other side of the door exactly what he thought of him in so many words murdered by the fact that his mouth was that of a dog’s and he could not properly form the words. Perhaps he was just barking. Orlando followed the dog over the back of the couch, making his way across the carpeted floor and reaching for the door knob-- the receive a static shock. Damn socks on the carpet. Sidi bounced around his legs, barking and carrying on, even as he opened the door.

Sidi thrust his head into the hall, greeting the intruder with a wagging tail and curious nose. Johnny looked down at the dog for a second, then elegantly stooped to pet him, give him a kiss on the nose and remind him that they had met before (had, indeed, shared a meal when Johnny wasn’t being observant of his food from the catering table). Having him there in the door way made Orlando want to go straighten the cushions again, as if it would be cushions that would persuade Johnny’s affections.

“Why don’t you come in?” he said instead, reaching for one of Johnny’s suitcases, bringing the personal items into his home, setting it down beside the door. Johnny followed with Sidi, pulling his hat from his head and hanging it up on the hook by the door that Orlando had no use for and had never really thought of a use for. It seemed like Johnny was meant to be there, but Orlando tried to resist such delusions.

“Thanks, and thank you for letting me stay for a few days. Appreciate it,” Johnny seemed to be speaking as if his reason for being here was not Orlando but some greater business above Orlando. Staying at Orlando’s was not the purpose of this excursion, simply a part of it. Sometimes Johnny was so good at lying that he had himself fooled. Even though Orlando suspected this to be the case with this particular awkwardness, he said nothing. It probably originated from the reasons he gave to Vanessa for crossing the water and turning up in England.

“Yeah, no problem,” Orlando nodded, “uh… there’s a spare room down the hall there, that I made up for you. We can take your things back there. Should be nice for the few days.”

That damned tension, and he had only been around Johnny for a few seconds. His chest tightened around the delicate organs contained within his ribcage and he bent down to pick up the suitcase again, leading Johnny to the room. The original intent of the room was to be used as a studio, but he just didn’t have his heart in the arts lately. He felt suddenly shameful of a painting sitting on an easel in the corner that he hadn’t touched in months, and for the clay on the desk. Neatly wrapped pieces of a human body which he couldn’t compel his hands to complete. Maybe delving back into the fine arts could be therapeutic for him. Maybe, when Johnny was gone.

Johnny set down the second suitcase and looked around the room, his eyes lingering on the unfinished artwork that Orlando had shoved to one side of the room to make room for the spare bed (which, until this time, had been unassembled and in storage). That shame rose to Orlando’s cheeks again and he resisted saying something to excuse his art. It didn’t matter what Johnny thought of it.

“You paint?” Johnny was at the easel, looking at the half finished vagueness that wanted to call itself a painting. Orlando knew the subject, but hoped that it remained obscure to the man standing before it now. It was rather abstract (something he didn’t always enjoy unless he had a reason for it).

“Yeah, a bit. And sculpt. I like that a lot better… but I haven’t done anything in awhile,” Orlando sat down on the bed, watching Johnny stare at the unfinished pieces, feeling as if Johnny was looking at his organs and making judgments about their suitability as such. How’s your kidney today?

“I like it. You should do more… you have to do what you want to, or you’ll go nuts,” Johnny turned back towards him, cocking his head to the side and (unconsciously, Orlando hoped) mimicking the pose of the darkened man-shape in the painting. There was a light smile on his lips, bringing with it that hope that Orlando had felt prior to trying to smother himself with a couch cushion. Maybe things would be alright.

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. I’d like to finish the painting, at least,” Orlando looked past Johnny at the man-shape, wondering if he could possibly lighten it in any way. Give it to Johnny as a gift one day. Too much hope, maybe. He flicked his gaze back to Johnny, an alien presence in his apartment that somehow belonged, like a mantis sitting on a hose. The colours were right, sure, but there was something off about the substance. He came over and moved one of his suitcases, sitting down on the bed beside Orlando--suffocating--and cupped his hands in his lap. This gave Orlando the opportunity to take part in a guilty pleasure, looking closely at Johnny’s face and wondering what was going on beyond those eyes. His dark hair was pushed back beneath a bandana, face unshaven but patchy regardless, and eyes heavy with a lack of sleep. He’d probably taken that awful train that was a claustrophobic’s nightmare… it passed beneath the water, connecting England to the main land. Johnny’s eyes hooded for a moment, then opened wider as he turned his head to return Orlando’s gaze.

Formalities were over and there they were, sitting face to face on the spare bed in the spare room intended to be a studio, half finished art work around them in a way that was somehow appropriate. Things that were started but never given a proper conclusion, created fantasies that may never be completed… Orlando wondered if he should take the clay out of Johnny’s hands, wrap the heart shaped bundle in wet paper and put it away to be used later. But he was taking metaphors too far. He wasn’t clay, he wasn’t malleable in Johnny’s hands and he never could be clay. He was an artist if nothing else, and he could mold that clay with his own hands. Anything else would surely be an abomination, like colouring in a picture at school that another child had drawn. No, Johnny wasn’t the artist prepping the ball of clay. Johnny, an artist in his own right, did not create something tangible from nothing. He created illusions, beautiful to listen to or watch, but in the end unsubstantial. It was wholly depressing, and Orlando worked to pull his thoughts out of their surroundings.

“I don’t know what it is,” Johnny broke the silence, reaching out to brush (suffocating) hair from Orlando’s face, “that you do to me. It isn’t like Vanessa, but it… it isn’t nothing, I know that. That’s why I wanted to be out here, I wanted to be close to you so I could work off of experience rather than memory.”

Johnny was a man of experiences. Orlando remembered the houseboat that Johnny lived on while they were filming so that he could experience sleeping, living, eating with the water constantly moving you from where you should be standing still. If he’d been able to hook up with a band of eighteenth century pirates for a week to experience first hand what they lived through, he would have.

“I don’t want to be research, Johnny. I don’t want to be used like some… something you look into to play a part better. I don’t want to be used like that,” Orlando bit his lip after he spoke, wondering if he had just dashed all possibilities of being near Johnny, if he would have to be a research project to get close.

“No, and I don’t want you to be used like that. I just want to figure out what I feel.”

There was no way that Johnny could do that and not use Orlando in some way. There was no way to get out of the corner he had steadily allowed himself to be backed into. By the end of these few days, Johnny would either decide that he might love Orlando a little bit, or he would leave Orlando heartbroken and wanting to die by décor all the more. There was no way to get out of being hurt even the slightest bit unless he told him to leave right now-- something he was unwilling to do at that particular moment, sitting so close to the other man, breathing in his scent and mentally gasping for breath. All of his resolutions about not being a damned ball of clay came down to this moment when he felt more pliable than ever; perhaps he wanted to be played like a guitar, used to make beautiful figments that would never be fully remembered, used for a brief while and then set aside in favor of that throbbing thing called life. Sure, Johnny loved each of his guitars, but it was not the way that Orlando wanted to be loved. He wanted the love of people standing on the same little square of earth, reaching out for each other… not the love of a man for an inanimate object that would bend to his will. Why was it, then, that he found himself weakening, wanting to close the gap between them? He recalled and imagined the taste of smoke on Johnny’s lips, how dry they seemed, yet warm. He wanted to try them again, to… to mold Johnny to his wills, take him in his hands and create something new.

Make something new… Johnny was like old clay that you find in the back of your closet, the moist bits of paper that were meant to retain it’s moisture long since dried up. It was that clay that would be cracked, crumbling and falling apart with only a vague semblance of remaining pieced together. That was perhaps one of the most terrible things about the man, how together he could seem when he was falling apart. Such clay only needed to be wetted down again and it could be molded, it could be shaped. Perhaps it would never be like new again, but it could find some use in the world. What was the world coming to that two people could love each other like a guitar and a lump of clay?
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Title: Pieces, part 6
Author: Lucid_Dreamer_
Rating: PG, language
Pairing: Orlando Bloom/Johnny Depp
Summary: Johnny and Orlando talk.
Disclaimer: The occurances within this work of fiction are exactly that, fiction. This was written for pleasure only with no intent of profit.
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Being at Orlando’s flat and thinking about being at the flat were, naturally, two entirely different things. In Johnny’s mind he had been able to come here, satisfy his curiosity and leave no worse for the wear and ready to give his love and devotion to Vanessa. Arriving, he had found his constitution weakened by simply being in the younger man’s presence. Being void of the sucking feeling was one thing. It fled as they moved from conversation to conversation, talking their ways around one another, chewing on this or that subject in regards to the feelings of the other, careful to avoid really talking about what was under their skins. Then, the exposition of emotional muscles and sinews would have done nothing for either of them, leaving them to stare at the exposed corpus with nothing to say in reply to it’s continued existence. It simply was.

They simply were, too. Johnny leaned his back against the counter in Orlando’s kitchen with his eyes hooded, listening to the sizzle from a frying pan and the soft sound of bubbles breaking the surface of a liquid coming from a pot near at hand. They had settled themselves in the kitchen, each taking charge of one aspect of meal preparation. It was going to be a simple meal, really. One that they could both agree on, with the exception of a few ingredients. Spaghetti. Orlando was busily sautéing some vegetables to go on his noodles before the sauce (something that was near blasphemy to Johnny) while promising that he’d do a few mushrooms for Johnny to put in his sauce. The things were slimy, sure, but coated in tomato sauce they could find themselves in a state of being tolerable. He was in charge of the sauce itself, keeping it at a low temperature, letting it just begin to boil. In theory, they were both watching the pasta but he didn’t worry about his share too much-- Orlando had a certain way of cooking it in his mind and while he spoke collaboration with the pasta it was clearly a lie. He intended to cook it his way.

Johnny turned his head ever so slightly so as to be able to watch Orlando out of the corner of his eye. The thick frame of his glasses distorted part of the view, but it didn’t matter. He could still see most of the younger man, shaking his skillet as if he knew what he was doing with it, lost in some kind of thought. There was the smallest of smiles on his lips, curling them gently upward while dark curls rested against the back of his neck. There was something serene about him in that moment, something that had been missing the last time Johnny had been with him. Something, like most things that were within a person, that could never really be named by an outsider. It could only be observed and speculated upon. Regardless of what it was, it made the boy beautiful to look at. Now, those were not the thoughts of someone who simply couldn’t care less and felt nothing.

Felt nothing… that was how he had hoped it would be when he got to this place. He’d discover that he really felt nothing at all for the young actor and would be able to leave with the comfort of that knowledge. But he was wrong. Lingering eyes did not linger because they found nothing to look at. The absence of the sucking feeling was, in a way, feeling nothing… but it was a way of feeling nothing that in that absence generated more emotional attachments. Drugs and drinks could take the edge off of something you were feeling in your day and make you feel another thing in the absence of that edge. Addiction and craving. Affection and a little bit of desire. The real thing he would be struggling with now was the subject of worth. Could this boy, these moments, be worth Vanessa and the children? Could the absence of that pain be worth his family, the stable life he had been nailed down into at last (hallelujah!)? He looked down at the glass in his hand and thought of himself as being greedy, to need all of them as much as he did. Vanessa stabilized him, kept him from doing stupid shit, the children were his heart and soul, and Orlando… Orlando made the world a better place to be in. Could he be balanced…?

“What are you scheming over there?” Orlando’s voice broke him from his contemplations and he allowed his eyes to focus again, still resting on Orlando who had by now turned to face him. He was smiling more openly now, one hand on his hip as he gazed back at Johnny. There was something beautiful and wonderful about the expectation that cornered the edges of his smile, the thing that made his skin glow golden. He knew Johnny had been thinking about--and staring at--him.

“Scheming? I never scheme.”

“You certainly lie a lot,” Orlando said in response, still smiling, and Johnny wasn’t certain if he actually meant what he said. It was true that Johnny lied, and very true that he lied a lot to Orlando. He was very suddenly on some dangerous ground, Orlando grinning at him like a winsome Cheshire cat that seemed intent on catching him in the act.

“Do I? It must be compulsive, as I’ve never noticed,” he replied carefully, setting his glass down on the counter beside him and taking the pot off the stove. Orlando had taken over the whole process of cooking since Johnny had allowed himself to wander off into la la land. It had been longer than he had thought.

“Regardless, I made your fungus for you,” Orlando pointed at a dish of sautéed mushrooms on the other counter, waiting for sauce to be mixed in with them. He continued to watch Johnny in a way that almost made Johnny nervous. The Cheshire grin was still in place.

“What are you smiling at me like that for? Did you poison them?”

“Sure did. I thought I’d go out with a bang, kill you, then go and smother myself with a pillow so that the vultures could have something to talk about.”

For a minute, Johnny had no idea what Orlando was talking about, then it dawned on him. The constant plague of their lives whenever they dared to go outside--paparazzi. Johnny never bothered to read what they wrote about him, but he did bother with the photographs. He hated it when those rats took pictures of the kids to sell. The kids hadn’t made the decision to sell themselves as Johnny and Vanessa had. They were just babies that could make the rats a buck. Whenever he saw them, the intense desire towards cannibalism rose in his gut. He’d said as much before and was thus far glad that they had taken him seriously. Still, Orlando’s commentary about vultures reminded him of those insidious people and of the fact that he probably couldn’t go outside less he feed the Hollywood rumor mill. Damn.

“Fuck ‘em,” was all that he could find to say as he carried the sauce to his mushrooms, ladled in his portion and returned the pot to Orlando’s care. Stirring the mushrooms into the sauce, he glanced over his shoulder to see Orlando arranging his own plate, his face somewhat drawn now that he wasn’t grinning insanely. Essentially, the talk had shot the cook in the foot and the injury was quickly turning into a mortal wound.

“Hey, where’d the smile go?” Johnny returned for his pasta, reaching around Orlando to get at the noodles, “I was just getting used to it and now here I am left to look at that sad face.”

“I was just thinking,” Orlando stepped aside as he spoke, giving Johnny better access to the pasta he was aiming for, “about this and them and…”

“You know what helps, at least in my opinion?” Johnny poured the sauce on his noodles, “Never say the word Hollywood in your house, don’t think about it, don’t think about work much less talk about it and don’t ponder what your vultures would print in some rag. Just relax and be normal, right? It helps.”

Orlando nodded, picking up his plate, “I know. I try.”

Mortal foot injury. Johnny had to try to fix things and quick. He jabbed his fork boldly into the spaghetti, got a mouthful and shoved it in.

“Dith ith gweat,” he said around the mouthful. Orlando’s face was caught somewhere between an expression of horror and amusement, lips pulled back to show his teeth, eyebrows arched.

“You’re such an American,” he finally said, relaxing into a laugh.

“I know. It’s great, hm?” Johnny smiled back at him, picking up his plate in turn, allowing the fork to rest on the edge, “But is there somewhere we can sit down and eat? I’d rather stuff my face in a lazier sitting down position.”

“Yeah, the table,” Orlando was still shaking his head, leading him to the small table in the middle of the kitchen. Such tables usually had decorative purposes, but with the lack of a dining room it became functional. The chairs were comfortable, the kind that a body can sink into despite appearances. Johnny gladly sat down, setting his plate down in front of him. Orlando sat down beside him, knees bumping into Johnny’s for lack of anywhere else to go underneath the table. Like a genie summoned by rubbing a lamp, the subtle clink of forks on plates brought Sidi out of hiding. The dog sat down beside Orlando, looking up at him with pleading eyes. Johnny watched Orlando dangle a piece of spaghetti over the dog’s head for a moment before turning to his own plate, cutting the pasta into pieces as he was accustomed to doing at home so that it was easier to eat. It became a habit when one had small children, to cut any larger portion of food up into smaller bites even if that food wasn’t destined for the stomach of a hungry child but your own gullet. Vanessa did the same thing and it often served as a point of amusement when they went out together. No children present, and still feeding themselves as if they were.

Orlando set to his meal once Sidi had slurped down his share of noodles, quietly chewing. Johnny was aware of the subtle press of his knee, the way that Orlando shifted ever so slightly (subconsciously?) in order to get close to him. His knee was a hard smooth pressure on the outside of Johnny’s own, warm in a way that it couldn’t be through both of their pants. It was a warmth produced from that pressure and all of the language behind it. Sure, the words that came out of their mouths may have been nothing more than idle conversation but the things that they were saying through a much older language than that formed by human tongues were deeper, laden with more meaning. It was a language of bodies, conveyed through subtle shifts in muscles, glances and posturing. It was a language that both of them knew well, having learned how to conform it to their needs and say what any one character needed to. Sometimes it failed, but for the most part… he pressed his own knee against Orlando’s, into that warmth, confirming the bond that the younger man was seeking. Yes, I notice you. Yes, I feel you. Yes, I want you to touch me. A familiar dance with Vanessa, but pleasant nonetheless in these unfamiliar surroundings.

Johnny spun little bits of spaghetti around his fork as Orlando reached for the napkin on his lap-- or that was what Johnny thought he was doing until he felt a warm hand on the inside of his leg. Orlando’s palm easily contoured to the curve of his knee, fingers trailing along his thigh, making his skin tingle through his jeans. Johnny tried to avoid acknowledging the action, eating the spaghetti that he had scooped onto his fork, ignoring the way that Orlando was blushing where he sat. The hand continued, warm and pleasant, no longer cupping his knee but warming his thigh in a slow stroke. It was such a move that Johnny had himself used on Vanessa in a restaurant, slowly inching his hand up her thigh, pushing aside the fabric of her skirt to get to her bare skin, caressing and stroking until he reached his goal. All the while pretending to be innocent, pleasant conversation continuing between them as if nothing was happening underneath the table. Orlando reached the end of Johnny’s thigh, allowing his hand to rest in that juncture. Johnny hadn’t realized until that moment that he had slowly been spreading his legs to accommodate the touch, allowing Orlando to reach further, touch more and ultimately tease him. He reached beneath the table, taking Orlando’s wrist with soft fingers before he could progress any further. Orlando instantly took the touch wrong, taking his hand and it’s pleasant warmth away from Johnny, pulling his hand out of his grasp.

“I’m sorry,” he said, now actually picking up his napkin and wiping his mouth with it. His cheeks were flushed, and he looked down at his plate as if he could bury his shame in the half eaten pasta. His breathing was oddly shallowed, faint and quick. Johnny guessed that if he repeated Orlando’s actions on the boy himself, Orlando wouldn’t be able to hide what Johnny had stopped him from discovering.

“No, please. Don’t be?” Johnny reached for his hand, but found it unavailable. Orlando was busily bunching his napkin, still looking down at his plate, “Orlando…come on, it’s ok. I didn’t mean to make you stop.”

“I’m full,” Orlando suddenly set the napkin on top the table, lifting his own plate and whisking it towards the sink. Johnny watched him pass, only able to focus on his back as he moved away from him, busying himself with washing his dish and the dishes that they had produced in cooking. Johnny sighed and followed after him, bringing his own plate to be washed, finding himself standing and watching Orlando leaning against the sink, washing furiously. If he could stop shooting the boy in the foot, things might have been alright.

A few hours later, and Johnny found himself laying in the bed of the spare room, staring at the ceiling. Sleep was going to be impossible. He’d excused himself saying he was tired, leaving Orlando to watch television in the living room alone. An hour had already passed and the TV had gotten a bit louder, the sounds changing to something more regular and planned. No doubt, Orlando was watching a movie. Johnny sighed and rolled on his side, burying his face in the pillow. The bed had never been slept in, the linens were new… yet they carried that distinct scent that was Orlando. It was a scent somewhere in the range of vanilla, coconuts and mangoes, all mixed together with an underlying saltiness that was typical of skin but not unpleasant in the least. Perhaps the pillow was one of Orlando’s own, taken from his bed to give Johnny something to put his head on. After all, the source of the scent seemed to be the pillow. He sighed, bunching the pillow under his head and allowing himself to linger on that scent. Linger on the scent, and the thoughts he had resisted since Orlando had stood up from the kitchen table. What would it have been like if he had allowed Orlando to continue? What would it have felt like to have that seeking hand cupping over him, tugging down his zipper… is that what Orlando had wanted, or was it just to touch him, to dwell in that feeling of the firmness of a thigh beneath his fingers? He rolled again, pressing the pillow beneath his chest, bunching the comforter underneath his hips.

What would it be like to bed another man? He’d only ever had sex with women; which could produce some bizarre things in and of itself. He could remember going to the one hour photo place with Winona, laughing and holding on to each other. The clerk looking over the counter at them, snapping her gum between her teenaged teeth and saying ‘I liked your pictures’. Home pornography was never a good idea when it was processed at a one hour photo place. He’d never tried that again. He could somewhat remember his first time, but it was a memory that was relegated to the farther corners of his mind, not willingly coming forward to be remarked upon. It was awkward, from the kissing to undoing her bra, trying to handle a condom with excited shaking hands… the idea of being with Orlando in such a capacity made him nervous. With his blatant ignorance of what he was supposed to be doing, it was all too easy for him to imagine himself being kicked out of the bedroom, a sheet wrapped around his waist, and being told to just go home. You fail at mutual masturbation and the whole gay sex thing, Johnny, go home. Not that it was sex that he really wanted from Orlando. It just felt like the natural course of things. Natural… he pushed his hips against the bunched comforter, allowed his mind to wander again. Ziiiip…the taste of tomato sauce on his lips, kissing over the table….

The television got louder, and Johnny cracked his eyes open in time to see a faint shadow pass by the door, accompanied by the clicking of nails against hard wood. So, Orlando was keeping the dog up, too. Johnny had known that Orlando was an insomniac since working with him on Pirates. He’d had Orlando over on the house boat, and had woken up to Orlando standing in the doorway of his bedroom, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a shawl. He had said something, but Johnny couldn’t remember what it was. He had been coming off, working his way into a hang over through the magic of sleep. The boy had appeared in the doorway, a ghost speaking in a different language. Now that ghost was out in the living room, watching TV at one in the morning and ruining Johnny’s fantasy. He sighed, climbing out of bed and looking at the doorway. He was fully prepared to walk out there and turn off the TV in his mind, but knew it wouldn’t be the best idea to go out how he was. His skin was hardly any protection from the cold that saturated his body now that he was away from the bed, and his boxers did little to hide the erection that he had been tending to. It would be impossible to have a heart to heart with Orlando about his sleeping habits if he went out sporting a boner. Johnny shook his head and rooted through his bag until he found his robe. Sliding his arms into it, wrapping it around his waist, he opened the door and made his way down the hall.

Sidi had flopped down at the end of the hallway, stretching out on the cool wooden floor. He looked up at Johnny forlornly, as if asking him to force Orlando to go to bed and turn off the noise so that Sidi could reign over the apartment as Johnny was certain that dogs did when no one was home. He gave the dog a mental reassurance, stepping past his furry frame and standing in the mouth of the hall.

In the living room, Orlando was sitting on the couch, his knees hugged to his chest. At firs glancet, Johnny wasn’t altogether certain if the boy was still awake or if he had nodded off. He allowed his eyes to linger on him for a moment, fueling the fire he knew he shouldn’t have been allowing to burn this far already, before looking up at the screen. He could hear his own voice, see his own strange visage, kneeling over a dead man. The snap of a rubber glove…

“I suppose I should thank you for not shoving it up your ass.”

“This guy is a scum bag,” Orlando said in a voice even quieter than the TV, showing that he was awake but not bothering to turn his head to look up at Johnny. Watching Orlando, Johnny resisted the urge to grab the remote and turn off the TV. He didn’t want to look at himself portraying Sands, he didn’t want to hear that voice, so familiar to him and yet so different as the voices of all his characters were (perhaps only to his ears). It was his most common reaction to seeing something that he had made. Turn it off, ignore it, pretend it just didn’t exist so all there was of it in his mind was a string of experiences. Experiences were better than the stream of film that the director decided to keep, piecing it together with this and that piece and leaving nothing of the reality behind making the film. No laughter in between takes, no inside jokes with the other actors. He sat down on the couch beside Orlando, taking a quick glance to find the remote. Clasped in Orlando’s hand, it wasn’t going to find it’s way into Johnny’s hands and the movie wasn’t going to stop.

“Yeah, he is,” Johnny decided on replying and sighed, looking at Orlando’s fingers curled around the remote, “he’s pretty nasty, but you know… he’s like one of those people that can be a complete ass, but somehow is likable in a weird, screwed up way.”

“I know some people like that,” Orlando still didn’t look at him, eyes fixed on the screen, “kind of frustrating, right? Because you want to like them, you really do, but you can’t get past the fact that they shoot the cook when something is too good. Or they’re always talking circles around you, wrapping themselves up in this blanket of obscurity until you’re not sure if you’re rooting for them or you just want to kill them for their own sake.”

“Something like that,” Johnny knew that Orlando was talking about him. The high spirits that had carried them through dinner had finally succumb to that mortal shot in the foot, dragging Orlando downward. Johnny had taken a cue from Sands and shot the cook by reaching beneath the table and grabbing Orlando’s hand. It had been too good so he had destroyed it. Any sign of having been aroused left his body with a crashing wave of guilt. Guilt in response to guilt… in more ways that one, they were both gypsy children wandering the same road but only occasionally catching glimpses of each other. Orlando was probably feeling guilty for wanting to touch Johnny, and now Johnny was sitting beside him feeling guilty for having stopped him. Little seagulls bobbing on the waves that only occasionally glimpsed the tops of each other’s heads. He’d be the seagull with the soda pop rings around its neck, unable to really do anything about it but hurting nonetheless, lacking the knowledge of why it hurt. He just really didn’t want to be Sands in that moment.

“At dinner, yeah? I didn’t mean to stop you. I just didn’t--”

“Didn’t want me,” Orlando finished his sentence for him with no regards to what he was actually going to say, “I understand. I’m sorry. You just pressed back, and I was happy and…”

“And you’re getting ahead of yourself. I didn’t say I didn’t want you, and yeah, I pushed back. I liked it, Orlando. That’s why I stopped you.”

“You stopped me because you liked it?”

“Yeah.”

“Stop toying with me, Johnny,” Orlando’s grip on the remote relaxed and Johnny snatched it, turning off the television before he could ever hear Tonto’s Giant Nuts playing the song that he had written for that character. He didn’t want Sands in his mind, then. He didn’t want to look at the world in that way, much less finding himself critiquing his performance. What he needed to do was focus on Orlando. He’d given the remote up without resistance, curling further into himself so as to hide his face and obscure the fact that he had started to cry.

“I’m not toying with you,” Johnny felt himself freezing up, wanting to reach out and comfort Orlando but at the same time hesitant to do so. Why, he wasn’t sure, but he sat on the edge of the couch, watching the younger man’s shoulders shake with the tears that he was trying to hide.

“Isn’t that what ‘figuring it out’ means? You’re going to come here, fuck around for a bit, decide you don’t anything to fucking do with me and go home and that’s it. Isn’t that what it means, Johnny?”

“I thought so,” why lie? There’d be no point in it now. If anything, it would only hurt Orlando more and that wasn’t the goal.

“Fuck you,” Orlando looked up at him for one moment, eyes red and intense, brimming with tears. Then the face was gone again, buried in his arms, “fuck you, Johnny. You piece of shit. How could you do that to me?”

“I thought so until I actually got here,” Johnny tried not to flinch at Orlando’s words, tried not to betray to him that he was hurt by it, “and now that I’m here…no. It’s different. I don’t want to just fuck around for awhile and leave. No. I want to…I need to be with you. I like being here, I like sitting with you. I like listening to your voice…I like you, Orlando.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re going… you’re going to go back to her and you’re going to forget about me,” there was no hiding the fact that he was crying now that his subtle tears had turned into sobs. Johnny bit his lip…get the fuck over it, man. You can’t sit here and tell him you like him and then let him dehydrate himself crying. Yeah, you’re going to go back home but…

“I can’t forget you,” Johnny said softly, reaching out. He tugged Orlando into his arms, forcing the younger man to rest his head against his chest, “yeah, I’m going to go home to Vanessa, but I won’t forget you. I need you, Orlando. You make things brighter… you make me feel…complete.”

Orlando resisted his touch, trying to push himself away from Johnny’s body. At the word ‘complete’, as if he had a mental trigger, he gave up the fight and rested his head against Johnny’s chest, pressing his tear burned cheeks against the bare part of Johnny’s chest that showed through the V of the robe. Hesitantly, he relaxed from his fetal position, wrapping one arm around Johnny’s waist. The other made an attempt to wrap around Johnny’s back, parcel to Johnny’s arm wrapped around Orlando’s shoulder, but it only rested curled against Johnny’s shoulder blade, making the position uncomfortable for him. That didn’t matter, however, so long as he could keep his arms around Orlando and make the younger man feel more at ease. Orlando sniffled, nuzzling against the bare skin of Johnny’s robe with wet, hot cheeks, forcing more of his skin to be exposed. All Johnny could think to do was use his free hand to push Orlando’s hair away from his face, running his fingers through the dark curls and stirring up more of that alluring scent--better than what lingered on the pillow--as he attempted to comfort him. A tear trickled down Johnny’s chest, losing itself beneath the robe on his stomach, a reminded that Orlando was still crying despite the comfort of Johnny’s arms. Still crying and in need of proof of Johnny’s words. Proof could be spoken through bodies far better than through words.

So he allowed himself an indulgence. He pressed his own face against Orlando, burying it in his hair, breathing in that scent. More salt now that he was closer to the actual person rather than the pillow, the mango coconut scent revealing itself to be a kind of shampoo. The hair was soft against his lips and cheeks and he nuzzled in against that spot on Orlando’s neck where the skull no doubt joined the vertebrae beneath layers of flesh, creating a soft crook on the back of the neck. Lips followed the nuzzling, seeking the salt of his skin through gentle kisses along the back of his neck, feeling the stray hairs that were won’t to climb up necks against his lips, pausing to moisten them with a flick of his tongue before continuing. Orlando was absolutely still in his arms, holding his breath as Johnny pressed his lips again and again to his flesh.
-----

Title: Pieces, part 7
Author: Lucid_Dreamer_
Rating: R, language, sexual situation
Pairing: Orlando Bloom/Johnny Depp and a reference to Dom/Elijah and Orlando/Dom
Summary: Love on a couch is the dog's bullocks, but thoughts are just bullocks.
Disclaimer: The occurances within this work of fiction are exactly that, fiction. This was written for pleasure only with no intent of profit.
--------------------------------------------

Memories were composed of a series of moments and events which could fall into a series of categories: vivid, beautiful, emotional, tragic, blurry, horrible, nice, bad…the list could go on forever. With this particular series of events, Orlando was at a loss for how to categorize it, exactly. Truthfully, his brain had stopped functioning when he had first felt Johnny’s lips against the back of his neck. It took the chunk of neurons and gray flesh awhile to catch up. Hardly a surprise with the eclectic emotions of the day. How could he have gone from crying one moment to… to this the next? Surely, it had been Johnny’s words, an admission of completion that Orlando wasn’t entirely certain he trusted, but it could be situational. It could be the bare skin that his lips had all too easily found, it could have been the loose robe that was now somewhere on the floor. It could have been any number of things…

Orlando wiped the back of his hand across his eyes, clearing away the remainder of the tears that seemed determined to come despite things. He looked up at Johnny and bit his lip. How would he categorize this later, looking back on it? Good, certainly. It was good. Blurry, in some ways. Emotional…beautiful… Johnny was straddling his hips, pushing him down into the cushions of the couch with one hand, pulling up his shirt with the other one. Arching his back, he bent over Orlando, bringing those lips back down to his skin. How had they gotten here? Kissing, Johnny had tilted his chin up…it was so blurry, they had been kissing. He could remember Johnny shifting, trying to get at him better and sliding off the couch, cracking his knee against the ground (“fucking hell”), tugging him over to kiss him from the floor before getting back up…the robe disappeared somewhere in there…and here they were. Johnny’s lips found his own again for a heated instant, then those hands demanded that the shirt come off over his head. The couch was scratchy against his back, but Johnny’s hands were cool against his chest, petting his skin, pausing to pinch his nipple. He was sitting up again, looking down at Orlando with a self-effacing smile that Orlando knew well. It came with compliments, it came with achievements and self-doubt. Sometimes, Orlando hated it. It was hard to get through to Johnny sometimes and comfort the emotion that drove that peculiar expression. You don’t suck, mate. You’re not terrible, you’re not ugly, hell you’re beautiful… not that such words could possibly matter.

“Hey, have you done this before?” Johnny finally broke the heated lack of words between them, sitting back on his haunches and pressing his weight against Orlando’s legs. If he were sitting just a bit higher up on him… well, that could wait, couldn’t it?

“Done what?” Orlando asked, looking at Johnny’s hand on his chest, following the arm up to his shoulder. Tattoos. Johnny didn’t so much have skin as he had tattoos and maps of his life. There were the tattoos in ink, stories that readily told themselves to other people. Jack’s name on his arm beneath the diving sparrow spoke of the little laughing boy in Vanessa’s arms that Orlando had once met. The name Lily-Rose Melody on his chest described the birth of his first child, a beautiful little girl that Johnny absolutely doted upon. Wino Forever spoke of commitments made and broken, memories that were later altered to speak of commitment to other, non-human things. It was sometimes easier to have a relationship with a bottle than an actress. Then there were the tattoos that hid their stories, tried to evade the eye, and would never be outlined in ink. They were tattoos that Johnny had most likely given to himself, formed from long ago broken skin and spilt blood. Orlando had an urge to ask, but already knew he wouldn’t get real answers.

“This. Have you ever been with another man?” Johnny’s voice was slow, following the tempo of his hand moving across Orlando’s chest. Orlando watched the long fingers trace invisible patterns, pause at his nipple and give it a squeeze. It was a nice, stuffy kind of pain that he received from that simple action, a pain that made him want to sit up more and kiss Johnny… and that wasn’t necessarily from the pinch. He thought about the question, drawing the words into his mind and comparing them to his memories. Had he really been with another man before? Well, in some capacity, even if he tried to keep such things distant. He’d certainly kissed his share of men, and Heaven knows what he did when he was drunk in New Zealand. A blurry memory responded to his inquest, presenting itself like a villain lurking in an alley way.

Drink had been free and well received. They’d all been drunk, and Orlando had been leaving the party, wavering his way up towards his room. The elevator had seemed like it was taking forever to get back down to the main lobby. He was feeling sea sick from simply standing by the time the steel-finished doors had slid open… to reveal something he had never really imagined. Dom had Elijah pinned in the corner, kissing him hard, one had down his pants moving in a distinct, rhythmic way. Too drunk to do much else, Orlando had just stood and stared for a long moment before Elijah made a sound that caused Dom to turn his head.

“Orlando.”

“Dom…Elijah…I’ll just…”

“No, come on, mate. It’s alright, we can cool down for a moment,” Dom pulled his hand out of Elijah’s pants and pressed himself against the other man’s small body, gesturing for Orlando to come on into the elevator. If he hadn’t been drunk, he wouldn’t have taken the invitation and entered. He wouldn’t have stood beside them, hanging his head while they kissed and touched, seeming to forget that he was still there. Twelve floors. Ting…ting….ting….

“Dom…remember Orlando…” Elijah’s voice was soft, far from his boisterous laughter that had endeared the other actor to Orlando. He spent much of his time with the hobbit actors because they seemed so much more alive sometimes, hitting the town with each other, playing pranks, going out and doing things. All the time that he had spent with them, he had never pictured what was transpiring in the elevator at that moment. Sure, Dom seemed to cling to Elijah but it was innocent friendship. Hah. It was rather easy to be fooled sometimes when you didn’t want to acknowledge something.

“He can join in,” Dom’s voice was accompanied by his hand on Orlando’s arm, pulling him closer. He couldn’t really resist, the alcohol in his system delayed his reactions. He lifted his head and looked up at Dom holding his arm, hips firmly ground against Elijah’s body, pulling him closer.

“I’m ok, really,” Orlando rooted his heels, not wanting to see the hurt in Elijah’s eyes that Dom seemed to be ignoring or was just oblivious to, “you go on without me.”

“Don’t have something against it, do you?” Dom turned his head and kissed Elijah before looking back at him, “I mean… we always figured you were a batty boy.”

There really was nothing to say in return to that. Figured he was? How did they figure that, when he spent most of his time talking about sheilas, jumping off of things and…maybe he was better at suppressing the emotions than he was at hiding his attractions. Maybe they were looking for it, watching what he watched without letting him know. Maybe…

“Dom, cut it out. Leave him alone,” Elijah said and squirmed away from Dom and the corner he‘d been pressed into. He was zipping up his fly, waiting for the elevator door to open up, to disappear behind a door and no doubt cry about Dom’s invitation to Orlando. Orlando had the urge to reach out to him and comfort him, but that would just be taken wrong.

“Fine, fine, I’ll leave him alone.”

A few more moments passed Elijah got off the elevator and wandered down the hall after giving Dom another kiss, telling him to call him, looking hurt all along. Floor ten. Orlando was two floors more, and Dom lingered in the mouth of the elevator, watching Elijah leave before retreating to his corner. He was drunk, and when he got drunk it was sometimes worse off than all of them combined. Hen would either be hyper, or he could be surly. Sometimes he would say things that now didn’t seem as strange. Orlando wondered what floor he was staying on, but more importantly…

“Why do you think I’m a batty boy?”

“Got a kind of sense for it, sometimes,” Dom looked over at him, pressing his back into the corner where Elijah had been, “and there’s something about you. Man, you‘ve hot those eyes, and those lips…you know, you look like you want it.”

“I’ve never done anything.”

“Is that saying that you’d like to, or you just never have?”

It had turned out that Dom was on the twelfth floor, five rooms down from Orlando’s. Orlando made his slow way back to his room about an hour later, not entirely sure of what he was thinking, had been thinking or what anything meant. He swore to himself that he’d never drink again and knew he didn’t mean it. Opening his door, he realized that his fly was still down.

“Kind of,” he replied at last, picking up Johnny’s hands and kissing the fingers, “but I was drunk, in New Zealand. Really, I’ve never let myself like anyone…I mean, guys. Upbringing and all, I can’t stand the taste of the guilt. I feel like my mum is about to burst into the room whenever I let myself think about it.”

“Is that why you keep looking at the door?” Johnny laughed, giving Orlando one of the first smiles that he truly felt to be genuine. Stunning. He suddenly wished that he had never followed Dom back to his room on the basis of curiosity. It would be nice if he had never done anything before, in some kind of bizarre bridal way. He could just be Johnny’s that way, something that he--oddly--wanted to be. A world where he was just Johnny’s… but could there be a world in which Johnny was just his? No, not with the tattoos that spoke so freely on his skin, not with the gap in their ages, not if he wanted the man sitting on him now to be the same man. What was saving yourself about anyways?

“Yeah, might be part of it,” he returned Johnny’s smile.

“Well, I have to admit I’m disappointed because I have no idea what I’m doing and I was hoping you were on the same boat,” Johnny looked down, his hair falling in his face. An interesting admission accompanied with a shift of weight. Orlando reached up to brush the hair out of his face, leaned up to kiss his lips.

“I don’t really know, either, Johnny,” he said and nuzzled against his cheek, “…so let’s just relax and see where it goes.”

The words were more to himself than Johnny. Just relax, just let it carry you, try and ignore the mess of feelings and thoughts that were driving him away from the couch at the same time that they were shooting straight into his crotch. Kissing, it was easy to lose himself in the other man, to just be as long as he was breathing his breath. To act on the feeling coiling in his gut was something else entirely. Here he was, laying on his couch with the man he had been pining over sitting atop him, pressing his weight into his groin, with no idea what he really wanted to do with him. Touch? Yes, he did want to touch him. Be touched by him, certainly. How far did he want to take it now?

He slid his other hand along Johnny’s leg, feeling the texture of the hairs in his skin, ignoring the small ridges that hinted at the occasional scar and finally arriving at the conclusion that he was still wearing his boxers. An interesting couple they were, one in his under things and the other in jeans. All clothing issues could easily be solved. He could sense Johnny watching him but couldn’t meet his eyes, not while he did this, not when he was unsure about how Johnny would react. How far did he want to take it? He ran his hand along Johnny’s hip, squeezing before tugging at the front flap of the shorts, freeing Johnny from them. Johnny reached down and took his hand and Orlando expected to be guided through jerking him off. Instead, Johnny pulled the hand away from himself, kissing Orlando’s fingers.

“Wait a second, alright?” the other man murmured and then lifted himself up a bit, reaching to undo Orlando’s jeans, “Take them off.”

Orlando pulled his hand away from where Johnny had it pinned against the couch, pushing his jeans down his hips, kicking them off of his feet. They landed with a desponded thump somewhere off the end of the couch, leaving Orlando in his shorts and socks. Or had Johnny meant his shorts, too? He thought about pushing them off, but Johnny interrupted his thought process, putting his weight back down on his body. He wriggled, sliding both of his legs between Orlando’s, taking his hips in his hands and pressing himself against him. For a long moment, Orlando couldn’t help but be confused. With his legs pressing against the outside of Johnny’s, he felt like a bored girlfriend stripped down to her skivvies, enduring some dry humping before actual banging just because her boyfriend liked that kind of thing. Did Vanessa go through this routine? (Don’t think about her. Just, don’t.) Johnny was kissing the side of his neck, licking, and then he shifted his hip, thrusting against Orlando. Point made. His body pressed against Orlando’s created a nice pressure, but with that thrust there was a certain connection, a joined rubbing of erections, that thrilled him. He found himself wrapping his arms around Johnny’s back, pulling him closer against his body, urging him on with his own responsive thrusts. He turned his head, seeking Johnny’s lips. This certainly hadn’t been what he was expecting, but it was more pleasant than not. He no longer felt like that bored girlfriend waiting for her boyfriend to get on with the damned show… this was one of the better parts of it, something he’d never really thought about but was glad that Johnny had considered. Was he lying about never having been with a man?

Johnny made a soft noise in the back of his throat, pressing harder against Orlando… and be damned if he couldn’t stop his mind from drawing more bizarre conclusions. Was Johnny here, rubbing himself against Orlando… thinking about Vanessa? He couldn’t repeat the action with his own hips, stuck suddenly in that thought. Was he thinking about having Vanessa on the couch, fucking her, while he was physically doing this with Orlando? Was this some kind of pseudo-imitation of that act? Johnny must have sensed the sudden shift in mood because he slowly stopped, pushed himself up on his elbows and looked down at him with concern written all over his face. His lips were pulled downward, accentuating the little purse of muscle and skin directly below them. The expression almost made Orlando want to laugh if he wasn’t so upset. Why were his emotions everywhere?

“Did I do something wrong? You’re getting soft.” Was he? Orlando looked down, bumping his forehead against Johnny’s shoulder. He didn’t really need to look to know that Johnny was right. He could feel Johnny that stiff and solid, against his own softer bits. How embarrassing, to let a sudden rash of jealousy get in the way. He covered his face with both of his hands and wanted to sink into the scratchy upholstery of the couch. What colour would he be, then? Blue with pinstripes? Probably, because the stripes could be a different colour to get distracted by, a different emotion to jump to at a second’s notice.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured through his hands, “I just had a thought and…”

“…a thought?”

“Yeah. It’s stupid.”

Johnny sighed above him, shifting most of his weight off of hips, “What is it?” How could he sound so caring and so impatient at the same time? Orlando wanted to lie to him, but knew that he wouldn’t be able to. Knowing that Johnny was staring at him, expecting an answer made him want to vomit the truth just to avoid more questions. He could tell the other man to never mind, but then he would lose the warmth of his body entirely. Johnny would probably get up in that case, go into the bathroom and finish himself off, go to bed and never think about coming back to Orlando. Or that’s what his mind kept saying to him.

“I’m a blithering idiot, and I know it, alright? I am. I’m sitting here, yeah? Thinking about how much I’m liking this. I didn’t know what you were doing at first, but it’s nice… and then I blow away the moment by thinking ‘he’s thinking about Vanessa, isn’t he?’ Christ.” Well, there it all was, out on the table and ready to be inspected. Johnny seemed to be holding his breath, and Orlando’s skin felt distinctly colder where the other man had been resting a moment before. He looked down along their bodies, at their legs still tangled together, shorts all wrinkled and mussed from where they normally would be. What a great way to blow a perfectly good time. It was still too easy to imagine Johnny getting up and going back to his room. All signs of arousal were fading fast and he looked rather…crestfallen, really.

“Is that what you think? That I’m thinking about her?” how could he get lighter with his words?, “I’m hurt. What purpose would it serve me to think about her? I’m not just doing this to make you happy, I wanted it too. Shit.”

“I don’t know…” no answers, just silence. His mind, so willing to cook up that stupid shit was so reticent to answer for it. Why would Johnny be thinking about Vanessa? Could you think about a woman and fuck a man? Not that they had been fucking, of course, but it was the principle of the thing. Was it all that different? He tried to pull Johnny back against his body, but the other man resisted, pushing himself up and off the couch and disappearing down the hall. Gone, and cold. He sat up, looking down the darkened hallway, but Johnny wasn’t there anymore. Only Sidi, woken up by Johnny stepping over him was there to stare back at him.

“Johnny?” there was always a way to fuck things up more than they already were.
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Pieces, chapters 1-4

2007-03-09T17:17:16Z

Title: Pieces, part 1
Author: Lucid_Dreamer_
Rating: PG (alcohol and language, I suppose)
Pairing: Orlando Bloom/Johnny Depp ((Damn right, it is RPS))
Summary: Orlando tries to drown out the emotions he doesn't want to feel in a party atmosphere and alcohol, Johnny pulls him out
Disclaimer: The occurances within this work of fiction are exactly that, fiction. This was written for pleasure only with no intent of profit.

The world seemed like a blur of colour as Orlando wandered through the party, slightly tipsy from a couple of mixed drinks that had been offered to him. Regretfully, he had taken them and downed them as quickly as possible. Regretfully, for the simple fact that the booze seemed to have given his feet minds of their own. His feet carried him past blond women, brunette women, women with dark black hair, and unnatural colours that God certainly did not intend to exist. He knew the smile plastered on his face was exactly that--the smile of a man who was indeed plastered through and through, but he couldn’t care less. It was nights like these that he wanted to get caught up in the party, wanted his feet to move on their own to the women, wanted to lose himself in the absolute beauty of being pissed.

His feet stopped and he found himself staring at a dingy pair of boots sticking out of the cuffs of a pinstriped suite. Great, another suit in the place. He looked at his own black shoed feet, protruding from his slick black pants and giggled when he heard himself speak to them, “Aw, feet, that’s not a Sheila… that’s…that is a suit.”

“A suit?” a familiar voice said from above the feet, and a hand reached out to lift his chin. He found himself staring into a pair of purple sunglasses surrounded by shaggy blond-black-brown hair, a partially unshaven face hidden somewhere in that mess. There was a slight smile on the man’s lips, but Orlando found himself looking at the cheek bones that those strange sunglasses were supported on.

“Christ, Orlando, you’re a drunk,” the man laughed, and Orlando smiled at him. Yes, he was a drunk. He was a drunk and he couldn’t say anything to the owner of those cheekbones and glasses. It was Johnny. Johnny… prior to working with him on Pirates, Johnny had been one of those untouchable screen idols. Orlando had seen all of his movies, had watched them while curled on his couch, one arm wrapped around his knee. He admired the man. Then he met him, and while he certainly still admired him, he came to appreciate the fact that he was just a man. A man with some weird personality traits and likes in the world, but still just a man. A beautiful man. Orlando leaned his cheek into Johnny’s hand unconsciously, then pulled back when he realized what he was doing.

“Johnny, hello, Johnny. I didn’t know you were here,” he tried to make himself sound as sobered as possible but knew he was failing. He could feel the flush of alcohol in his cheeks, and the restlessness of his feet beginning to itch in his heels. There was another blond somewhere that needed to be romanced. There was… Johnny standing there looking at him with a look of pity, as if he understood the reason behind the mixed drinks, behind the movement that strived to continue in Orlando’s feet, crawling along the arch into his toes.

It wasn’t possible for Johnny to be able to see the forces that drove the glass to Orlando’s lips, especially not with those ridiculous glasses on his face. He had the sudden urge to take them off, throw them over his shoulder and watch Johnny scramble after them. He already knew that wouldn’t happen. Johnny would probably step on them himself before chasing them like some obsessed loser caught up in his possessions. The things that seemed to matter the most to Johnny about anything that he wore were those things that had been with him forever, lacked brand names and looked like utter trash. His eyes were on the boots again.

“For a little while, at least,” Johnny was saying, “I heard that you were here and I thought I’d check up on you. Good thing, too, by the looks of it.”

Johnny’s hands were on his shoulders, gently turning him, taking control of his restless feet and guiding him. Only Johnny could do that. It would have to be Johnny. God himself could come down and take his hand, but it would be Johnny that would lead him away. It would be Johnny that he saw every time he closed his damned eyes. It would be Johnny that he found himself thinking about when he was in the shower, his forehead pressed against the tiles of the wall, an ache that started in his wrist traveling to his elbow… it would be Johnny’s voice that he heard in his ear when he was falling asleep. It would be Johnny that he just couldn’t forget, that he couldn’t push away from himself like every other insignificant infatuation that he couldn’t allow himself to indulge in. It was just another stupid boy-love, it had to be. The things that he felt for boys were always so fleeting, always so… insignificant (or, at least, that was what he forced them to be). Dammit, they had to be fleeting. But Johnny… it would be Johnny that would stick himself so firmly into Orlando’s mind that he just couldn’t shake him. Sure, he’d felt the attraction before when he’d been nothing but another Depp fan. The pain started when he actually met the man. He looked down at the rings on Johnny’s hand. He remembered everything so clearly.

His carry on bag was heavier than necessary, pressing against his hip, jolting him every time he passed a row of seats. It hurt, but he ignored it. He was too giddy about being on the plane in the first place to have any mind for pain. His eyes darted around the rest of the passengers, some who had their heads lowered not giving a damn about what was going on around them. Others were watching him. Sometimes, it bothered him, but now… he just smiled and followed the stewardess. She was talking, leading him to his seat, blathering on because she was probably nervous. Her blond hair was done in neat curls, clasped behind her head to look more formal. She had a cute smile and a giddy laugh.

“Can I take your bag, put it in the overhead?” she was saying, facing him now, one hand reached out to take the bag from him. He nodded, pulling it from around his shoulders and handing it to her. There was an empty seat to the left of her. It was an aisle seat, which he hated, but the window seat was already occupied by a slender man with his nose buried in a book. A purple bandana protruded from the top, holding back dark hair from a high forehead. Orlando had known that the seats were repurchased and arranged in such a way that he would be able to get to know his coworkers better. He was certain he would be seated next to Keira Knightley, maybe Jack Davenport but… Johnny Depp’s eyes flashed at him from over the cover of the book, framed in an old ugly pair of glasses that made Orlando smile. He felt his knees weaken and it was all he could do to resist being an idiot about it.

He sat down after the stewardess had allowed him past, chewing his lip and thinking of something to say that sounded remotely intelligent. He opened his mouth to speak--

“Before you say anything that you’re going to regret, hello. I’m Johnny,” Johnny usurped the moment, plucking his hand up into a firm handshake, “and you are Orlando Bloom. A pleasure to meet you. Do you like flying?”

“Yes, well, I guess so. I mean--”

“I hate it. I plan to get pissed, and you, my friend… are going to join me.”

Pain rose in Orlando’s chest as Johnny’s hand relinquished his and shot up to the call button. Sitting beside him, demanding alcohol for the both of them, was one of his favorite actors. Everything about him was so clear and beautiful and yet so obscure at the same time. He almost felt like rolling his head back and screaming, pulling his hair out by the roots-- anything to get rid of the feeling that was rising up from his stomach, pushing into his chest and forcing all the air out of his body.

Staring at Johnny’s hand on his shoulder, he felt that thing in his stomach again. It pushed against his organs, cramming its feet against his lungs and evacuating all the air from his body. He almost felt like he was about to vomit on Johnny’s shoes; or faint. He raised his hand, taking Johnny’s wrist and gently pulling the hand away from his body. He couldn’t take the contact now. Not how he was feeling already.

“Come on, follow me…” Johnny shifted the grip, sliding his own fingers around Orlando’s wrist. He felt his fingertips come in contact with the bracelets that Johnny wore, with the black cuff with the dog bone on it before skirting across the other man’s palm. Johnny was leading him again, pulling him away from the light and sounds of the party; from the girls that Orlando had been trying to get drunk on. He flirted with them, trying to kill the beast that was determined to suffocate him with the feelings that he couldn’t have.

“What do you want in here, Johnny?” Orlando hugged himself, looking around the side room that Johnny had dragged them into. A few tables were in it, candle holders on the top decorated with false flowers. Blunted chips of glass were sprinkled in perfect circles around the floral holders. Orlando resisted walking over to one of the tables, scooping the glass into his hands and swallowing it all.

“To make sure you’re alright. You’re being a little bit manic,” Johnny leaned against one of the tables, lighting a cigarette despite the fact that smoking in the place was illegal. He probably forgot. Or didn’t care. The smoke swirled around him as he blew it out his nose. Orlando felt himself jolt when he met Johnny’s eyes. They were staring at him, through him, as if Johnny knew everything that Orlando refused to know.

“Yeah, I am. I… you know, don’t you?”

“Know what?”

“That… that I’m going abso-fucking-lutely insane,” Orlando laughed, letting his feet take him back and forth. He ran his fingers through his hair, suddenly regretting his drinking for a new reason. His tongue was loose and no amount of clenching his jaw was going to keep him quiet.

“Hey, hey…kid, come on. Relax a bit,” Johnny’s hands were back on his body, the fingers curling around his shoulders, thumbs pressing into the cloth of his suit. The cigarette was smoldering in the corner of his mouth, weaving blue-ish smoke into his ragged hair, curving around the rim of his fedora.

“I can’t, Johnny, I can’t relax… not…” he pulled away from those hands, from that smoke wreathed face and leaned against one of the tables, grasping it as if it were a lifeboat. There was nothing he could do anymore, no way that he could resist. The glass glittered at him, jiggled away from its original position by his hands grasping the tablecloth. They were small enough, they could fit down his throat easily… maybe better with a drink of water.

The last blessed bit of oxygen forced itself from his body and he pushed himself away from the table, grabbing Johnny’s wrists and pulling him closer. The cigarette was in his hand now, a hot spark that his fingers passed over in their journey to those bedecked wrists.

“Orla--” he cut Johnny’s words short, pressing his lips against his, desperately needing the other man’s breath the survive. The taste of smoke filled his mouth and Johnny’s arms tensed, grasped in his hands. The other man was trying to pull back, to get a word in about the situation, but Orlando couldn’t let him. Johnny’s lips were dry and hard at first, but he was relaxing into the kiss, already slightly parted from the name he had been unable to finish. Orlando drank in the smoky breath as if it were the finest oxygen in the world, releasing one of Johnny’s hands to lift his own, caressing the unshaven jaw.

That little bit of freedom was all that Johnny needed to torque himself away from Orlando, leaving a bracelet hung on one of his fingers. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and looked down at the saliva on his skin as if it were an alien being. Orlando watched him, feeling like the world had slowed down to the pace of molasses-- or as if there should have been some slow, dramatic music in the background, a director sitting nearby with some headphones on his ears, slowing the film down for a more dramatic look. Tragic.

“What the hell, Orlando?”

“I…. I’m sorry, Johnny.”

Silence. The world blurred again, pinstripes into paisley carpet and white table clothes. Purple sunglasses into blond-brown-black hair and chocolate eyes. His head was spinning and there was nothing for it. Warmth spread across his cheeks and the weird appearance of the world became apparent when the first tear touched his lips.

“Christ, Orlando, don’t cry,” Johnny plucked the bracelet from his fingers, then took his hand, “you’re drunk, you don’t know what you’re after. Come on, I’ll take you to your hotel.”

“No… no, I mean, I am drunk but… I know what I’m after. I know I kissed you. I… I had to.”

Silence again. Orlando wiped his hand across his eyes, trying to clear his vision of the tears. Johnny was reached for his sunglasses, tucking them into a pocket in his jacket. Without the benefit of the glasses, Johnny’s eyes looked tired. They darted over Orlando’s face, seeking something. Maybe it was a sobriety test. Orlando couldn’t help but laugh at the idea of Johnny performing sobriety tests with a mere glance. That was giving him too much credit.

“Had to?”

“Yeah. I can’t explain it, Johnny…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…”
He watched as Johnny slipped the bracelet back around his wrist and reached out with those hands to hake his own. The fingers curled around his palms, gently caressing. The touch was like electricity running through his skin, jolting his lungs into drawing air back into them.

“Orlando… shut up.”

Johnny tugged his hand, drawing him forward and kissing him lightly. Orlando felt his chest expanding, breathing in everything that Johnny represented to him. He pulled the other man closer, wrapping his arm around his waist, and kissing him for all that he was worth.

He could see the glass glittering on one of the tables, like little stars fallen to earth. He felt like he was exploding into little pieces, holding Johnny in his arms, glittering intensely in the mundane world. He wanted the moment to last forever.

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Title: Pieces, part 2
Author: Lucid_Dreamer_
Rating: PG (yucky imagery)
Pairing: Orlando Bloom/Johnny Depp ((Damn right, it is RPS))
Summary: One month later, back at home, Johnny is with his family trying to rid himself of the sucking feeling in his chest
Disclaimer: The occurances within this work of fiction are exactly that, fiction. This was written for pleasure only with no intent of profit.

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Johnny drew the hot air into his lungs and held it, eyes shut tightly against the brilliant sunlight. His lungs burned in reaction, unable to hold breath for as long as he was demanding. They screamed and he had the desire to reach for the cigarette smoldering in the ashtray next to him. It wouldn’t be that hard. He would just reach, exhale as he did so, pick it up and bring it back to his lips. Inhale a different kind of warmth, blow the smoke through his nose. He exhaled but didn’t reach for the cigarette just yet. He could wait.

Lily-Rose shifted, turning her head the other direction on his chest, wrapping her dark hair around her face. He sighed and reached to pull the locks away from her nose and mouth, gently pushing the hair away behind her ears. He could now see that she had fallen asleep since asking for a big snuggle from her daddy. Johnny smiled lightly and reached to the side, snuffing the cigarette in the ashtray. He’d rather let Lily-Rose nap where she was than smoke, that at least was true. He glanced over as he was snuffing the cigarette, looking at Vanessa lounging on her chair, laying face down so that she could get the sun on her back. Her hair was wrapped around one of her shoulders, her eyes shut tightly to protect them from the sun. Baby Jack seemed to be the only one who was enjoying the shade, corralled as he was in his play pin, smashing blocks together and laughing. Johnny smiled and leaned his head back. There was nothing better than just sitting with his family. Nothing that seemed to come close to filling that void in his chest. Nothing but…

His cell phone was ringing, vibrating so hard that it was close to knocking itself off the side table. He heaved a sigh and picked it up, looking at the small screen on the front. The usual display of the time and date was replaced by a name in all Caps: ORLANDO.

Orlando. Why was he calling now? Johnny chewed his lip and considered rejecting the call, letting Orlando talk to his voice mail. It had been a month since he had last seen the younger actor at a party in L.A. It had been a month since that side room. Looking at that name on the phone’s small screen, he could remember the blush that had risen under Orlando’s olive skin. He remembered the feeling of the other man’s lips against his, soft and supple. He also remembered the chime of glass against glass, the texture of a table cloth against his fingertips… lighting a cigarette and thinking about Vanessa. He’d pictured her wearing the purple top that came low around her shoulders, holding Jack on her hip and smiling. He pictured what she had looked like pregnant, all swollen belly and stick limbs. How he had kissed her stomach and wrapped his arms around her. He had taken the time to get Orlando back to his hotel, see to it that he got into bed. True, there was a temptation to stay with the younger man… but Vanessa kept appearing behind his eyes, reminding him of how her hair smelt, how the children’s eyes looked when they were smiling at him. He left the room then, and L.A. the next day.

Orlando had called him the next day and Johnny had listened with half an ear, feeling trapped. No, he had never really intended to let all of that happen. No, he didn’t know what he had been thinking. Sometimes, his impulses got the best of him. Orlando wanted to see him again, wanted to come and visit him or invite him to come and visit. Johnny couldn’t say the things he was really thinking to the owner of the plaintive voice on the line. He put on yet another mask and sounded enthused, all the while trying to swallow the guilt he felt at the sound of his own voice.

He pressed the button on the side of the phone, directing Orlando to his voicemail. He couldn’t wear that mask, not with the weight of his daughter’s head on his chest. Not with the sound of Jack’s laughter in his ears. It was a mask he would have to wear when he was away from this place, when that sucking feeling in his chest grew. Vanessa, Lily-Rose Melody, Jack… they all filled some of that void. They all worked to make him feel somehow more complete than he ever had before in his life. No other woman he had ever known had been capable of filling that void. His children just helped seal her into the special place.

But he still wasn’t entirely whole. No, sometimes he still felt that tug in his chest when he was sitting with them at dinner, when they were laughing together, doing everything that a perfectly normal family should do. There were no raging fights, the children didn’t have rootless existence… still, sitting with them, a smile on his face he felt a desire to go into the bathroom and add to his scars. It had been awhile since he had cut himself, since he had attempted to poison himself in some way or another. He’d replaced that need for pain with his tattoos, that need for stimulants by drinking off the people around him, feeding off their emotions.

Sometimes he felt like a strange kind of shark hiding behind a human skin. Weren’t predators always pretty in some kind of way?

He suddenly hated Orlando for calling him, for starting that sucking feeling his chest when he should have been so happy. He had everything he could ever want now. He had a loving partner, two beautiful children, the ability to support them in whatever dream they had. Suck, suck, suck.

“Baby, daddy has to go in real quick,” he murmured in Lily-Rose’s ear, gently lifting her. She didn’t fully wake, and he held her in his arms, carefully transferring her into a lounge chair that wasn’t directly in the sun. She didn’t need to wake up to find herself bearing a nasty sunburn. He kissed her forehead and made his way inside, trailing his fingers on the back of a sofa. Suck, suck, suck. Sometimes he wondered if he wasn’t have a strange form of heart attack.

Standing in the bathroom, looking into the mirror, he knew there was something that he wasn’t telling himself. It was something that he didn’t want to hear, something that would shatter his whole view of existence and what it meant to be happy. He set the phone down on the counter and looked into the mirror, looking at the bags under his eyes, the cheekbones that were too sharp, the jaw line that was too weak, too thin… it was impossible for him to see what others saw when they thought of him as attractive. He saw the androgyny, yes, but that wasn’t attractive. He’d hated it when he was getting money for being good looking. It was ridiculous. Perhaps no one else got as close to him, no one else looked at his eyes in the same way, or the plains of his face with the same scrutinizing eyes. No, no one looked at another person like they look at themselves. He looked down at the phone telling him that he had missed a call. His chest sucked as he pushed it under a washcloth, turned the sink on and cupped cold water into his hands to splash on his face.

Water droplets hanging off his eyelashes, he remembered the glittering glass on the table top. He was kissing Orlando, reaching around him to support himself against the table. It had started out as a light kiss, something that a hesitant school boy would bestow upon the first girlfriend that he had. He tightened his grip on the table cloth when Orlando’s arms wrapped around him, tightening around his waist and pulling him closer. He could feel everything about Orlando, pressed against his body, pressed against his lip. He felt like he was being consumed in a way, like… like Orlando was trying to devour him, to fill some kind of void within his chest. Drinking that emptiness away… he had felt himself freezing up even as Orlando was pulling his hat off his head, running his fingers through the multicolored mess of his hair. Drinking the emptiness away. Pulling that pain out of his chest, filling himself with it. Johnny had pulled away, wiping his hand across the back of his mouth and showing Orlando a patent Ed Wood smile to hide his fear.

Complete, healed… maggots were used prior to major medical advancements to clean wounds. They would be set into a festering necrotic wound on a patient and trusted to eat only that dead flesh. Their fat white bodies moved squirmed and wriggled, heads working furiously to carve the death away from what was still living. They were still used today when it seemed like nothing else could possibly get rid of that necrotic tissue but a delicately designed monster who subsisted on death.

Johnny cringed as he looked at the washcloth his phone was hidden under, imagining it to have grown into a giant maggot that was all too eager to climb down his throat and eat away at the dead tissue that sucked at him within his chest. He wiped the water away from his face, rubbing his eyes and pushing the thoughts away. Necrosis and being a whole person. He couldn’t think about it anymore. He left the phone where it was and made his way through the house again, back out to his family.

Vanessa smiled at him when he stepped back into the sun, now laying on her back. She shielded her eyes from the sun with one upraised hand and said something that Johnny didn’t hear for the sounds in his own head. Ineffective antibacterial, burning acids trying to wash dead flesh from the living, corroding that which was still viable when it was at its worse. He sat at the edge of her lounge chair and stretched out along her body, resting his head on her chest and willing the thoughts to stop.

“I love you, Vanessa.”

Her fingers were in his hair, brushing it away from his face. He felt her lips on his temple, “I love you, too.”

Maybe he needed maggots.

----------

Title: Pieces, part 3
Author: Lucid_Dreamer_
Rating: R, language
Pairing: Orlando Bloom/Johnny Depp ((Damn right, it is RPS))
Summary: Orlando's sister tried to console him with facts, and Johnny calls in the middle of the conversation to get an ear full.
Disclaimer: The occurances within this work of fiction are exactly that, fiction. This was written for pleasure only with no intent of profit.

The phone’s screen felt cold against Orlando’s lips, slowly fogging with his breath as he stared at the wall. He’d already hung up on Johnny’s voicemail. He was getting tired of feeling breathless while the phone rang, he was getting tired of suffocating. He was getting tired of the damned mask that Johnny kept throwing up to deflect him. Johnny obviously thought that he was fooling him, but that unfortunately wasn’t true. He wished that Johnny could fool him, could lie to him so easily. That would make him feel better, at least.

He pulled the phone away from his mouth and wiped off the screen, scrolling through his directory. He could get back together with Kate. He’d broken it off with her in the midst of a fantasy of being able to breath again, of sleeping in Johnny’s arms… but he could get back together with her again. No, that wouldn’t work. For the first time since he had first felt that smothering feeling in the airplane he had been able to breath. He didn’t want to give that up. Not yet.

Orlando looked down at the phone, reading the name on the screen. Johnny. He had never really intended to call Kate and he knew it. He had scrolled down to Johnny’s name and stopped. It wasn’t as if he had to go through the contact list… Johnny was on his speed dial. Number four, right after his mom and sister. He snapped the phone shut, popped it open again and pressed the soft key. Four. Depp. A bad connection, and he knew it. Looking at the screen, he could feel his chest expanding, but not able to hold onto the oxygen his body needed.

What he needed was some kind of distraction, something to pull him away from that breathless feeling. That… he struggled to put his finger on the word--abandoned feeling. Yes, he felt abandoned. Tossed aside, another piece of junk that Johnny didn’t really need in his life. He was just some kind of trophy. Orlando’s fingers sunk into the key pad of his phone, and he pressed the device to his ear.

“Hello?” a woman’s voice, a slight, lilting English accent.

“Do you ever feel like Nicole Kidman?”

“…Who is this?”

“Orlando. Do you ever feel like Nicole Kidman in that movie… Moulin Rouge? I wish I lived in an elephant.”

“….Orlando, what’s wrong?” it was his sister, her voice straining into the familiar sounds of worry. She often worried about him, especially when he called her with random question. Apparently, that was his pattern when he felt like shit and didn’t really want to tell anyone about it. He had done it since he was a child. Finding out about his father had left him speechless. Sometimes, he wished more things had that effect on him.

“Nothing. I just feel like a courtesan living in an elephant. You never get that feeling, do you?” he pressed the phone into his ear harder as if that would allow him to crawl through the line and curl up in her lap.

“Is this about Johnny again?” she cut through the crap as efficiently as ever. That was one of the things that he loved about her. She seemed so capable of reading his mind, and he seemed so willing to tell her everything. He could confide in her with things that he would never dream of telling anyone else. He’d told her about his boy-crushes, he’d told her about that first girl, he’d told her about his nightmares-- and recently he had told her about Johnny.

“Yeah. He’s ignoring me completely,” he replied, curling up on his couch, wrapping his arm around his legs, “I just… I feel so used and worthless. I know it isn’t like he made me any promises or anything but… damn, I wish he wouldn’t treat me like some kind of disease.”

“He didn’t make any promises to you verbally, Orlando… but his actions are promises, in a way. People like to treat each other like shit, especially when they can’t really wrap their minds around what they want out of each other. You know, the man has a girlfriend and kids. He’s probably hurting over it, too,” Samantha ended with a sigh, and Orlando could imagine her biting into her lip, cocking her head to the side. She always tried to console him with facts and it rarely worked. He didn’t want facts, he wanted a solution. Something that would make it all better and absolve itself in a way that was pleasing. Like that ever happened.

“How can you say his actions are promises, assure me that he is hurting me, and then continue on to defend him? Come on, Sam, don’t waffle on me.”

“I’ve never met him, Orlando, I can’t analyze someone I’ve never met and give you a neatly packaged answer. I’m just stating the obvious. He has that…what’s her name?”

“Vanessa Paradis,” Orlando didn’t like the sound of the name rolling off his tongue, and he closed his eyes against the memories of Johnny’s smile as he talked about Vanessa and the children. Orlando couldn’t deny the appeal of that smile, so happy. Johnny loved his family.

“Yeah, well, he has Vanessa and his children. From what you’ve told me before he loves them a lot and he probably won’t dump them for you. You know, even if you do accomplish something and get somewhere with him, you’re going to have to deal with Vanessa and those children for as long as you’re near him. Not that I’m suggesting that you keep on with this, kid. I think you need to get out of the house, find another girl, find anyone and forget about it.”

“If only it were that easy,” Orlando sighed, and was about to continue but a sharp beep interrupted him. He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at the screen. There was an incoming call, the name listed neatly beneath Sam’s. Johnny. He pressed the phone back into his ear, “Sam… he’s calling me back.”

“Well, go on. Call me back when you’re done getting your heart broken. I always have band aids.”

“Thanks, Sam,” he said, then switched the line, “Hello?”

“What did you need? You didn’t leave a message,” Johnny rarely gave a greeting when he called or answered the phone, usually launching off into conversation. Orlando could hear a child laughing beyond the warm static of Johnny on the other line, another child talking rapidly.

“I…Christ,” the air sucked out of him again, and he couldn’t speak. He pressed his back further into the couch, closing his eyes tightly, “Johnny…”

“Are you alright, Orlando?”

“No, I’m not alright,” loose lipped, suffocating and without a drop of liquor in sight, “no. You keep… keep lying to me and pushing me away and I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what you fucking want from me and I hate it! I hate feeling like this, I hate not being able to breath, I hate… I hate you, Johnny. Sometimes I really do.”

Silence on the other end, except the sound of children. The sound of life. Orlando wanted to be a child again, where he could have such random outbursts of emotion and he would be consoled by a warm mother who would come and pick him up, smooth away his tears. He wanted to be a child again because then he would never have met Johnny, he would never have known what it was like to take the deepest breath possible and not be able to retain any oxygen. Walking suffocation. Sometimes, he imagined himself on set of one of the new Pirate movies just falling into the water and drowning before he ever hit the surface. They would pull him out and lay him on the deck, declare him dead. The autopsy would show no water in his lungs… he died in the air.

“Maybe we should get T-shirts,” Johnny’s voice pulled him from his fantasy of death, “and start the ‘I hate Johnny Depp’ club. Could be fun.”

“Shut up, Johnny,” Orlando was in no mood for joking, especially not about this, “you… you’re so fucking frustrating. You have no idea, you don’t understand.”

“No?”

“No, you don’t. You have no idea. You have no idea what this feels like.”

Orlando heard a door slam on the other end of the line, and Johnny drew a deep breath. Orlando’s breath hitched in time and he felt hot tears on his cheeks. How could Johnny dare breath on the phone, dare let Orlando hear what he craved? The urge to throw the phone across the room rose in him, but he pressed it against his ear in response, trying to breath in that sigh.

“I have no idea what it feels like? You fucking little weasel. If you’d stop calling me, maybe I’d forget about all that shit. Maybe I could get on with my life, but every time I turn around, I see your goddamn name. Why don’t you just fuck off and do stage acting like you said you wanted to and get out of my hair.”

The voice that came through the phone was rough, a near growl. Another mask. Orlando looked at the phone he held in his hand, trying to wrap his mind around the words that had just crawled into his ear. He had heard that Johnny could be aggressive but he had never encountered it before. He had never been cussed at, never been shoved away. But Orlando had the advantage. He could see that it was a mask, something that Johnny was putting on to cover himself up.

“Get out of your hair? Asshole, you didn’t… you didn’t have to kiss me back. You didn’t have to carry on and fucking lie to me, tell me that you’d see me again, that you cared about me. You didn’t have to call me, you didn’t have to do any of that shit. I would have been fine. Fuck, I wish I never met you. Some other jerk off could have played Jack Sparrow. All they need to do is act like a useless fucking drunk.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you? Is this why you called me? To insult me?” Johnny continued to growl, but Orlando could tell he had weakened the disguise. He could hear the real emotion under Johnny’s voice. It was a vague, choking wet sound. Orlando held the phone away from his ear and tried to think of something to say, something to bring Johnny away from the anger, something that would repair the damage he’d just done.

“No. I called you because I can’t take this shit anymore. I don’t want these fucking chimera’s, Johnny. I want you. I want to know you. You may be able to fool a lot of people, but you can’t fool me. Every time I talk to you, it is another mask, another charade and I’m fucking sick of it. I want to know what you think, what you feel, not what you think I want to hear from you. You can’t just keep me close but not close enough to be a threat to your happy little family. I’m not going to be some kind of fuck toy on the side. I’m not going to be a whore waiting to be paid, or romanced with songs. Fucking metaphors, you know what I mean,” Orlando cringed at the last thing he said. No, he knew he didn’t really feel like Nicole Kidman in that movie. If he felt like Nicole Kidman, his feelings would be returned. He wouldn’t be seeking the attention, the attention would be seeking him. He wanted to run outside and throw himself off the balcony. Maybe he’d break his back again, but at least he’d fly for a moment. That was more than she accomplished when she felt like shit.

“I don’t know how to do that, and you’re not a fuck toy,” Johnny was brief, his breath hitched in his throat. The anger in his voice was gone, replaced by… null. Whatever he was really feeling, it still wasn’t on the surface. Only his breathing was a hint, and even then it was a poor one.

“Then what the hell am I?” Orlando demanded, holding on tighter to the phone. It would keep him here, off the street, out of the air, “What the hell am I to you?”

Silence.

“You still don’t understand, do you? Fuck, Johnny. I love you. Did you hear me, even? I love you.”

More silence. Orlando snapped the phone shut, unwilling to listen to that silence, the vague breath that he wanted. He wanted to breathe, he wanted to be free of this feeling. He wanted… to fly. He got up off the couch and walked out to the balcony, hooking his feet into the railings and pulling himself up. Spreading his arms wide, he closed his eyes and loved the feeling of the wind against his face, pressing against his body and tipping him in such a way that he felt that he may really fall at any moment. Yes, he had just told him what he really felt. He’d just confessed to what that feeling in his chest was, named the monster that wasn’t letting him breathe. He could hear the phone ringing inside the flat, vibrating itself towards the edge of the table. He didn’t have to look at it to know it was Johnny. Well, Johnny could talk to his voice mail. Johnny could have a dose of his own medicine.

He lowered his arms, and looked over his shoulder towards the open door. Sidi was sitting inside, giving him a doubtful look, one canine eyebrow arched in the midst of his black face. Orlando gave him a vague smile and dismounted from the railing. The dog came to him quickly, lapping at his face and licking his ears. There was no greater friend in the world than a dog, sometimes.

“I told him, Sidi. I told that bastard what I feel,” Orlando heard himself laughing despite it all, laughing now that he had gotten that off his chest. That bastard. Why did he have to love him? He buried his face in Sidi’s fur and laughed, but mostly, he cried.
----------

Title: Pieces, part 4
Author: Lucid_Dreamer_
Rating: R, language
Pairing: Orlando Bloom/Johnny Depp ((Damn right, it is RPS))
Summary: Johnny returns the call.
Disclaimer: The occurances within this work of fiction are exactly that, fiction. This was written for pleasure only with no intent of profit.

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Johnny kept the ear piece pressed to his ear for what seemed like eternity, listening to the tone, utterly bewildered. Orlando had hung up on him but he hadn’t noticed for at least a minute, caught up in trying to think of a response. There was nothing he could say to the younger man’s testament of love. There was nothing to say. Whenever he got an unsolicited pledge of love, he found himself frozen, not sure how he should respond. Love was such a fleeting thing and so many people wasted it on things that were unobtainable-- sometimes he wondered if people only assumed that they knew what love was, wrapping themselves up in their assumptions until it was undistinguishable from the reality of it all.
--He often wondered that about himself.

He closed his phone, holding the small device in his palm, looking at it blankly. What the hell am I to you? Johnny didn’t have an answer. There was nothing clever to say in response to Orlando’s demand of placement in his world. No, there was no real name for what Orlando was. Hell, there was no way that Johnny could exactly put his thumb on what Orlando was to him much less share that information with the boy. How could he be expected to divulge when he had nothing to say, no confessions? He really hadn’t thought about the whole thing, had simply acted as he was wont to do… and now here he was sitting in the bathroom with Orlando’s anger clouding his ears, a hot phone in his palm.

“Johnny?” Vanessa’s voice was accompanied by a soft knock, and he could imagine her leaning her head against the door, her blond hair trailing down her shoulders, her petite features strained with worry, “Johnny? Who was that on the phone?”

She had probably been listening since he had slammed the door. Such acts of blatant anger always made her worry. Since he’d started seeing her, such things had worried her. That worry, accompanied with that sweet face and the sound of her voice had been a kick in the ass for him. He’d dropped the drugs he had been taking, he had cut back on the alcohol, cut back on all his self medicating tactics that sometimes pushed him into an uncontrollable state. She may have been chemical in some ways, but Vanessa was good medicine. He opened the door and looked at her, wringing her small hands, looking up at him with worried blue eyes. Looking at her back in the hotel, his life had changed. Kissing her had made him want to be a better man just to ease her mind, get that worried look off her beautiful face. He was pretty certain that that was what love was. Love was a feeling that surged throughout the entire body, aligning every cell and demanding them to be on their best behavior. Love was… fuck, he didn’t know what love really was. Not then.

“Orlando,” he leaned his weight against the doorframe, “he…”

“He calls you a lot. You were very angry, Johnny… but also very sad,” Vanessa reached for one of his hands and he let her have it, curling her tiny fingers (always cool) around his own. He felt the muscles that had tensed in his back starting to relax despite himself. Yes, he had been angry… but mostly he had been sad. She could cut through his bullshit like no other person that he knew, even Orlando who claimed to be able to see beneath it all. Knowing the bull shit is there and actually seeing under it were two very different things. He reached out to take her in his arms, suddenly wishing that she didn’t know him as well as she did, suddenly wishing that she could be tricked into the belief that there was nothing wrong. Neither of them really could be. He sighed, burying his face in her hair and making the decision that he needed to get outside and breathe. He needed to get away from the suffocating knowledge of her love and try to figure out what it was that he was feeling. He knew he couldn’t begin to figure that out if he continued to hold her. Sometimes clinging to the most comfortable things in life was like clinging to a shield… it made it hard to see what was really coming at you.

“Yeah. The kid has a lot of problems. I need to go for a walk, Nessa baby. I’ll be back soon. Just need to breath,” he was aware of himself releasing her, moving past her towards their front door. His jacket was in his hand without his realization that he had even picked it up. The door shut behind him in some kind of clichéd finality that he loathed as much as the feeling in his chest. No, his life wasn’t spinning out of his control. He could make it stop, he could stop picking at the scabs that compelled his feet forward, he could stop contemplating the things he was.

He could stop himself from wondering what it was to love Orlando, and if that strange sore feeling in his chest carried that name. Johnny ran his fingers through his hair as he walked and knew for certain that he had no idea about what was going on in his head. That was the only thing certain. He was losing it. He had the sudden desire to track down some poster, some video cover, anything with Orlando’s face on it just so he would have something to contemplate. Any such thing that he could find wouldn’t really bear Orlando’s face, though. It would be Legolas, or Will Turner, or some other character that the boy had played. What he really wanted was to look Orlando in the face, look him straight in the eye and think about him. Why did his emotions about the boy require such intense thought? He’d never questioned his love for Vanessa, not since he literally fell in love with her back. He hadn’t doubted his love for her when they fought, when she’d waged a silent war against his bad habits, trying to change him into a better man. He’d wanted it, he’d loved her more for every bit of it, and he’d understood.

This was somehow different, obscured by how close he was to Vanessa. Johnny had never thought of himself as a gay man, or even bisexual. He’d thought of himself as a straight man with an open mind to people. Sure, he’d had his fair share of drunken man kisses, strange occurrences that he wasn’t sure were reality or just hazes memories that were no longer accurate. Yet, if he were not with Vanessa and had met Orlando, let things carry out how they seemed to want to… what would he feel then? Would he be in England right now, instead of France?

He stepped into a niche in an older building, leaning his back against the stones that were either very cold or damp. His phone seemed to crawl into his hand when he reached into his pocket, and he raised it to his ear after scrolling to Orlando’s name. It had been about a half an hour since Orlando had hung up on him, a half hour for them both to cool down. That probably was an exaggeration. He could feel himself getting angry just listening to the phone ring.

“What do you want?” Orlando’s voice surprised him, cutting into the middle of a ring. Johnny heaved a sigh, licking his lips and pulling words out of his mind.

“I’m sorry I went quiet on you. I froze up.”

“I noticed.”

“…why do you say you love me?” cut through the crap, get down to the bone… he didn’t want to try and pull the answers out of obscure responses, he just wanted them as they were and as honest as possible. That could be asking too much from Orlando, depending on the mood he was in.

“Because I do,” Orlando’s voice softened a little, and Johnny imagined him sitting in the flat that he had never seen, maybe the dog sitting at his feet begging for a treat. He imagined him in a pair of tight jeans, a black shirt-- why was it so easy for his mind to trace over Orlando’s physical features, to wander over the plains of his face and body and remember? Was that significant?

“But why? You don’t really know me that well, Orlando.”

“So? You didn’t know Vanessa at all and you fell in love. I’ve heard that story about the hotel and you falling in love with her back. Not sure I believe it, but I have heard it. You don’t need to know someone’s every little dirty secret to love them. I don’t know. I get around you and I can’t breathe, I think about you and my chest tightens, I… I can’t stop thinking about you, though. I can’t stop imagining what our lives would be like, and I can’t stop going over kissing you in my mind. I miss you like crazy and… I don’t know, Johnny. It’s just a feeling with a name on it. Sometimes it hurts to think about it.”

“The thing about Vanessa is true,” Johnny sighed, shifting against the wall and wondering how to respond to the rest, how to try and share what he felt without sounding like he was lying, “and the kiss. I don’t know what to say about it. I don’t know how to answer your question about what you are to me. Hell, I don’t know how to answer any of that shit to myself much less how to try and articulate it. Bear with me, ok? Since I was a kid, I have gotten this feeling inside that I can’t explain. It feels like some fundamental part of myself is rotting away, is making a kind of sink hole in my flesh. I used to try and get rid of it, right? By self medicating. I’d take this, take that, drink up and feel like shit so that I wouldn’t feel like shit. Vanessa got me off that and has tried so fucking hard to convince me that I don’t need any of that, that there actually is such a thing as a simple life and I’ve believed her until that feeling came back. She’s been able to push that away, keep that shit at bay until recently. It came back. I want to drown it, I want to scream, I want to hit my head against the wall until it is nothing but a bloody pulp--”

“Johnny--” Orlando tried to interrupt, but Johnny pushed on.

“No. I’m not done, ok? I have to say this. I just want to die when that feeling starts, especially now, since it has been gone for so long, since it seemed to be solved. But you know what the must fucked up thing about it is? When I’m with you, when I was with you last month, you made it go away. I fully intended to go in that joint and get sauced because it was hurting so bad, but you made it go away. Kissing you… it seemed like you were eating it out, pulling it out of me, and I have no idea what that means but it scares me. It scares me, and I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know what I feel because I just want to be happy and I had that but now…”

“Johnny… I’m sorry,” Orlando seemed unwilling to say anything else, but the truth of it was that there was nothing else left to say. There was no way to respond to what Johnny had just confessed him. Indeed, Johnny had no idea what to say in response to it, he just knew that he had needed to say it, that he needed to work it out.

“I’m trying to work it out in my head, and I’m not making you any promises Orlando, but I need to see you again. I want to go out and visit you, try and run through this and figure out what it is that I feel. I can’t do that here, I can’t do that with Vanessa and the kiddies so close. I can’t see you, and I can’t see me through them. Can I do that, Orlando? Can I come by some time next week?”

“Yeah, of course you can,” there was too much hope in the boy’s voice, too much unconcealed hope that Johnny would decide that things would be better with him, that he loved him too. Johnny still had no idea what the hell it was that he wanted out of all this, what it was that his body was pushing for. How to get rid of the rotten flesh… it was too late to try and chew off his own paws and get out of the trap, infection had already spread into his limbs. He wanted to make a wild cry, run down the street and jump off the bridge, be born onto water and washed out to sea. That would make everything easier but it would sure be a shit end to his day.

He snapped the phone shut after a few more minutes of conversation and allowed his lips to tug themselves into a crude smile. No, he wasn’t running down the street to the bridge. He may have been a particle of shit headed for a fan, but at least moving towards those spinning blades was progress towards knowing something. He shoved the phone in his pocket and stepped out to the sidewalk barely missing a clump of dog shit that a negligent pet owner had decided not to pick up. He looked down the street and decided it was the old man with the little black dog, a loaf of bread tucked under his arm for later consumption. Pulling a cigarette out of his pocket and lighting it, Johnny watched the old man make his way down the street. The little dog bounced beside him, nails tapping on the sidewalk, as eager to eat the bread as the man was. To be able to consume must be a wonderful thing, he thought, pulling smoke into his lungs. He felt like that piece of bread, pinioned between an arm and it’s pit cloaked in sweaty cotton a hungry man on one side and a yapping dog on the other. Either way the end was the same: the bread would be devoured.
-----

Slip Away

2007-03-09T16:09:23Z

From: October 3rd, 2006

rating: G
summary: After an accident on the Black Pearl, an aging Jack is confined to Will's home.
pairing: Jack/Will, implied Elizabeth/Norrington
warning: Character death
disclaimer: All your characters belong to Mouse.
word count: 2431

The pirate was distracted. He was always distracted. He would sit for hours, completely oblivious to the presence of any of his friends, in front of the parlor windows. Many of the former crew of the Black Pearl believed that Jack had finally lost his mind in the face of being ignored in favor of the window. Will knew that it wasn’t the finality of insanity that held Jack to the window. It was that faint glimmer of gray blue in the distance or the occasional spiny form of a ship’s mast. The sight of a mast always caused Jack to tense. Those times, Will could hear the breath escaping from the man’s thin chest. Then the mast would disappear and he would relax again. Sometimes he would turn his head and look at Will with a familiar wry smile. Those times were getting more and more rare.

At sixty years old, Jack was in fairly good condition for the fact that he was alive. He didn’t move far from his chair in the parlor although he refused to blame the audible cracking of joints. Will would sometimes catch him in the act of rubbing his knuckles, muttering about the pain he felt in his hands. For his sake, Will pretended that he didn’t notice the aches and pains of age that the pirate was experiencing. He tried to treat him as he always had. Tried was the key word. It was hard to get the man away from that damned window much less to get him into bed. Will always felt bad after they retired to bed for the sake of a cracking hip or popping knee. The sight of Jack’s ribs, accompanied by the knobs of his spine, in plain view tugged the hardest at Will’s heart every time he saw the man in a state of undress. Those were the most visible indicators of what was coming. Jack Sparrow was dying, his body giving out beneath him. He’d stopped eating decent meals a month earlier. This week was worse. Will believed that Jack had had (maybe) one biscuit in two days even as he continued to drink rum like a fish goes through water.

Jack made a thin noise, bringing Will out of his meditations. He made his way over to the elder man, laying his hand on his shoulder. Jack responded by lifting his own hand, curling his thin fingers around Will’s palm. Will thought that the fingers felt too thin, too cold. He looked down at the hand and was reminded by that one startling moment when Barbossa had run Jack through. Surely, he had to be dead then. With a wry grin and a flick of his wrist, Jack had proved them all wrong. He’d been proving them all wrong since the day they’d met him. Even Elizabeth expressed a certain amount of fondness for the rogue and his tricks. She sometimes brought the Commodore’s children to visit. Those visits were rare now. The children were usually completely ignored or remarked upon as “rats”.

“Will,” Jack leaned his cheek against Will’s hand, “…help me up, will you, lad?”

“Where to, Jack?” Will asked softly, stooping to support the old pirate as he got his feet under him.

“Bed. I… I saw her, Will,” Jack looked up at him and Will’s heart broke. Those deep, chocolate eyes that were usually so sharp and full of cunning were dimmed. A fog seemed to have passed over them at last, leaving them unfocused and uncertain of reality. Will wanted to curse the window but knew it was the only thing that had kept Jack’s eyes so sharp for so long. That window had kept him hoping, kept that feeling of freedom alive in him even in his confinement to the little house.

Jack had been persuaded to leave the Black Pearl a year earlier. The persuasion came in the form of an accident that had broken his arm and relieved him of a finger. The arm hadn’t healed right and always remained frozen against his chest, the maimed hand curled like a dead insect. A fierce infection followed by pneumonia made it so that Jack’s age got the better of him and he could hardly move about the house on his own much less hold his own on a ship. He’d made Will promise to look after the Pearl, to keep her in harbor. Only within the last month the pirate had been persuaded to let the Black Pearl, at least, be free. She was handed over to the all too eager hands of a sailor that Joshamee Gibbs had hand selected, believing him to do service to Jack’s memory. The Pearl had sailed out of port for the first time in eleven months and had not been sighted since. Now Jack was claiming he’d seen her. Will was sure that the sighting was incorrect, but allowed Jack the fantasy.

“How’d the Pearl look, love?” he murmured, looping his arm around Jack’s thin back. He could feel the bones even through the shirt and coat that Jack wore. He had to stop their slow progress to the bedroom to allow Jack to cough. Laying one hand on Jack’s chest to support him while he hacked, Will thought Jack’s last name more suitable than ever. The chest beneath his palm felt as fragile as a sparrows, heaving under the cough as if threatening to split.

“Jack? Come on, love… come out of it,” he murmured, kissing Jack’s ear. Jack nodded as if agreeing that he needed to come around and stubbornly took a step away from Will. He tottered for a moment before Will regained his grip on him. The deformed hand grasped Will’s shirt with the three remaining fingers. A dying bird clasping at the paws of a cat… Will hated the thought and wanted to get Jack to bed as quickly as possible. It was hard not to let himself believe that he was smashing Jack with his grip. He already felt as if he had expedited this most eventual outcome by allowing the Pearl to be given over the other hands. Telling Jack that he, William Turner, was certainly not a pirate after all had been hard. He didn’t want to live in the swashbuckling footsteps of his father or the slightly more staggered ones of his lover. All he wanted was peace. He wanted to sit by the fire and read while Jack watched his damned window, and make the occasional sword.

Jack watching his damned window… there would be no more of that after tonight. Will helped Jack ease his frail body down on the bed, setting about the slow task of undressing him while trying to maintain his body heat. Anything he could do to extend Jack’s life… extend Jack’s life. Was he prolonging the man’s suffering in his selfishness? He looked down at the body that moved at his whim. Jack couldn’t move in protest, seized by another fit of coughing. He was completely at Will’s mercy. The cat again. Will shook his head and set about tucking the blanket around Jack. He brushed the back of his hand across Jack’s cheek and was again reminded of a skeleton at the same time that he was reminded of the dashing figure Jack used to cut. That glorious mane of beads, braids, dreadlocks and loose hair was gone now. Will had cut a majority of it off himself on recommendation of a doctor. The hair, the doctor said, was holding Jack’s illness around him in the form of old sweat and lice. In hindsight, Will regretted taking the shears to Jack’s precious head. The hair hadn’t grown back the same, laying in limp, thin shanks against his skull. It barely made it down the back of Jack’s neck to be tied in a loose braid. He’d insisted on Jack’s shaving as well. Between him and the doctor Jack had been transformed into an ailing elder gentleman. He knew Jack hated it, he’d heard it in fevered ramblings. When he was lucid, Jack never complained. He said (Will wasn’t really certain that it was sarcasm) that he liked the draft on his skull. Losing all that hair did transform Jack’s head into a skull. Will smoothed his hand over the graying hair and settled himself on the bed. Jack instantly reached for him with his good hand.

“Will…why did you turn the lamps out?” there was a faint edge of panic in Jack’s voice. Will bit his lip and put his arm around Jack, pulling the thin body against his chest. The room was ablaze with candle light.

“I thought it would be best for your eyes, since you were staring at the sun all day,” Will heard his own voice catch as he whispered and wondered if Jack was still good at catching him in lies. He wondered if it mattered… if the pirate wouldn’t tell the same lies for him.

“Good of you, love. I was trying to get a sighting… no head for arithmetic, however,” Jack leaned his head back on Will’s shoulder. His eyes were foggy, searching and pained. Will felt a tear escape over his lashes as he looked into those eyes. Jack had always been so good at hiding his pain. He remembered seeing Jack get stabbed. He’d been holding Jack’s hand, trying to pull him aboard the Pearl. A Spanish sailor took it in his head to try and win the battle by taking Jack out. He’d sunk a small blade as long as Will’s thumb into Jack’s thigh even as Will pulled. Those dark eyes never showed a sign of pain. The pirate had simply said, ‘Hold up, mate, some pest’s taking a bite at me’. Will wanted those unfamiliar, pain filled eyes to close and leave him alone or give over to the globes that should have been in their place. He turned his head at an odd angle and pressed his lips to Jack’s, closing his own eyes instead.

“Will…” Jack broke the kiss, “dear William… tell the crew… tell them you’re in charge, alright, love? She’s yours. Take the helm…”

The Pearl was there, always there. Even when she was no longer in the port, she was with Jack all the time. His good hand flailed in the air and Will watched, imagining the shape those fingers were forming. He could almost see the spokes of the mighty wheel, the mixture of peeling paint and burnt wood. Some of it was worn smooth by the application of the pirate’s clever fingers. He’d spent so much of his time there.

“Take it,” Jack’s voice was a thin hiss, barely escaping his heaving chest. Will took a deep breath, trying to fight back tears, guiding his hand along Jack’s arm and grasping his fingers, taking hold of the invisible helm they danced over. Jack’s fingers trailed along the underside of his palm, assuring themselves that the helm had been transferred, then dropped to his lap. They twitched, but Will knew that the man in his arms couldn’t lift the limb anymore. The last of his energy had been expended shaping the invisible helm, holding it in place until Will took it. In the madness of the moment, Will knew he could feel the wood beneath his palms. It wasn’t a real ship that had been transferred to him in this action, of course. It was Jack’s ideal of a ship, the dream of the Black Pearl that the pirate had carried with him, had looked for every day out the parlor window. Will felt his chest expand with the feeling of the helm, felt the desire to set foot on a rocking deck, to feel the wind in his hair. Freedom. His heart ached for it, ached for freedom from the confinement of the small house. He saw the room through Jack’s eyes for the first time and no longer wondered at the forlorn looks, the rapid loss of weight and seeming life force. Jack had been starving for what Will had in his hands now, for the feeling that gripped the younger man so strongly.

“Christ, Jack… don’t leave,” Will pushed the feeling from his chest with the words, “no, please… don’t leave now.”

“Hnn…” it was only a vague noise in the back of Jack’s throat. The pirate’s head seemed to gain an odd weight against Will’s chest, no longer supported by the strong muscles of his neck. Will imitated the noise unknowingly, letting go of the invisible wheel. His hands flew on their own to Jack’s frail chest, caressing and rubbing, trying to coax the heart back into beating.

“Please…please…Jack, no, I can’t take this…” one hand sought reassurance of a heart beat, crawling down Jack’s chest, the other laying against the sharp angles of his face. The thin expanse of chest was stilled and no warm breath washed over his fingers. The hand on the pirate’s lap twitched, the fingers curling in one last garish gesture, pinky curling down towards the palm, index finger arching high. A gesture Will had learned to mean that money had just made its way down the pirate’s sleeve. Will had learned to watch those hands, to speak their language. He was the only person he knew of who had managed to catch Jack in the process of stealing from him. He wanted that hand to move again, to find a piece of eight at the curve of his wrist, ready to be reproduced in a moment. There was no coin, there was no pulse.

“Come back, come back…Jack…come back….I love you….” Will’s lips brushed against the pirate’s ear. It was quickly cooling, a thin piece of cartilage pushed without life by the force of Will’s lips, “you can’t… you can’t do this….damn you…damn you, Jack…”

Another muscle spasm rocked the frail body, a twitch of the ruined arm that would have caused Jack an enormous amount of pain. The movement and the lack of response to it brought reality more firmly to Will. He could feel the burn of tears making their rough way down his cheeks. He eased his hand across Jack’s chest, pushing the arm back in place, arranging the frail body in his arms. He had to admit that Jack Sparrow was dead, but that he had received the greatest gift. To love him, to know what freedom tasted like to him. He looked around the candlelit room and knew he had to get out.

He had to find the Black Pearl.

Crocodile Tears

2007-03-09T16:08:08Z

October 3rd, 2006

Here's a little ficcie that Will decided to puke on me. It's Will's thoughts in the aftermath of DMC, at Tia Dalma's hut. Not the best, but -shrugs- it's short and its done so :P

Word count: 860

Will looked down at the drink in his hands, wondering at the contents of the cup... not really caring. His arms were still sore from having helped row the small boat up river. Still, he had been glad for the rowing-- the burn of his muscles had been enough to distract him from the pain he was feeling in his chest. Now that they were "safe" again, no longer in flight, no longer silently urging each other on faster his mind was again free to wander.

Looking over his shoulder to call out to them, seeing her backing him against the mast, head cocked to the side...lips touching...

Will felt his hands tense around the cup and concentrated on relaxing. All he could do was not think about it, not look at her. He tried to listen to the men talking about Jack-- Gibbs in his measured, fond tones--- but his thoughts kept bringing him back to different sounds. The sound of cracking timbers, of broken dreams. The Pearl had been Jack's dream, alright. He'd loved that ship more than anything else. It was hard to think about her being gone, much less her captain.

His hands fluttering at her hips, one falling slack, fingers trailing along the wood of the mast as if trying to share his pleasure with the ship itself... but it was Will's imagination. He couldn't see Jack's hands from where he stood. He could only see the movement of bodies together, kissing. When he was younger, he used to enjoy watching couples unabashedly kissing in alleyways. He would imagine himself as the boy, Elizabeth as the girl. He would imagine himself as the girl, sometimes, kissing that strong youth. He'd pushed those thoughts out of his head, usually. Usually, until he had met Jack Sparrow.

Jack Sparrow. Will sighed, looking down at the dark liquid in his cup. He knew he was just looking at the contours of his own face, the curve of his own cheek bones, the shape of his own lips... it wasn't hard to imagine his features changing, his eyes darkening to unfathomable depths while his cheek bones got higher, his lips more readily pulled into an easy grin, gold teeth shining through it. It was easy to imagine that dark mane falling around his shoulders. It was so easy, he soon found himself staring into Jack's face. He took a deep breath, watching the man's face reflected in the dark liquid. He'd pushed those thoughts way until he had met Jack. After their adventure, he had again watched kissing couples, only then embracing those odd emotions he had sought to rid himself of. He imagined himself as the blushing beauty, giggling as the young man kissed her neck. He imagined Jack's arms wrapping around him, his lips pressing to his throat, causing a blush to rise to his cheeks. The pirate had given him such embraces, kissed him and touched him in ways that Will had never imagined possible. He'd pushed the man away for Elizabeth. Staring into those imagined eyes, he regretted it. He regretted that he had not been the one standing on the deck of the Pearl kissing Jack. He knew Jack wouldn't let him stay he would have made him get into the long boat as he no doubt had made Elizabeth. He wondered what it was that they had said to each other, speaking passionately, close together.

Will closed his eyes, setting the cup aside. It didn't matter what they had said to each other. He knew what he would have said. He would have stepped close to Jack, making the shorter man tilt his chin up and laid his hands on his hips. He would have lifted one had to run his fingers over that rough mane of hair and whisper "I love you, Jack. I know I pushed you away, told you I hated you. That wasn't true, none of it. I love you and I wish I had stayed. Maybe everything would be different. Maybe we would be happy together."

Jack would have laughed, leaned up and kissed him, then told him to get off the ship. He would have told Will that it was what he wanted, to go down with the great ship. The Black Pearl... Will opened his eyes and looked around Tia Dalma's hut. Something was wrong about the way everything had gone, about the words that Jack had uttered. Abandon ship... she's just a ship. He'd had no intention of staying on the Pearl, despite his love of her. He had been in the middle of saying his good-byes to his beauty when Elizabeth had approached him. Will turned his head and looked at the woman who was draining her tears into her cup. Crocodile tears. Will had mistaken those tears for an expression of love, had hoped that the woman had shared his feelings for Jack... he could have lived with the kiss if she had cared. She was shedding her tears out of shame and pity for herself. Will felt his gut tighten, looking at her. Crying, and she had killed the man he loved.

First Entry.

2007-03-08T19:24:32Z

This is my new fanfiction/fiction journal. Please friend this if you wish to read my writing.

Thank you.