the Dalaverse

Lookit. "North and South of the River." More.

::falls down dead::

James/Jack/Will, disclaimer, yadayadayada U2 ("Drowning Man" this time).



NaSotR: These Winds and Tides



James woke up not because Jack left, but because Will had rolled over onto his arm and it had fallen asleep. After he managed to shove the slumbering man away and the arm stopped prickling as it came back to life, he noticed that his bed was roomier than it should have been.

Jack was standing at the window, clad only in moonlight. James rubbed sleep out of his eyes and saw that he was staring at his hands held out in front of him and weaving from side to side, like a cobra but with a more uneven rhythm. If it had been anyone else James might have thought it a sign of extreme drunkenness, but somehow he didn’t think that was the case. The scant cold light turned even Jack’s dark tan paler, almost corpselike. There was a madness in his sinuous twisting that chilled James in the warm Caribbean night. He had none of his usual merry insanity about him now, and James didn’t want to know what expression haunted his face to match whatever was haunting his body.

Carefully, hoping to avoid attracting Jack’s attention, James nudged Will. He was a light enough sleeper that he was awake almost instantly, his nostrils flared with annoyance. James clapped a hand over his grumbles of protest and pointed to the window.

Will breathed out sharply against his palm and his body stiffened. He batted James’ arm away and drew the coverlet back. James grabbed onto a wrist.

“Is he all right?” His whisper was hushed, tone reserved for churches and graveyards.

Shaking him off, Will replied, “He’s fine. Lingered too long ashore, that’s all. I’ll take care of him.” He leaned down to press a distracted, half-hearted kiss to James’ mouth before sliding out of bed.

Shuffling his feet across the braided rug, Will came up behind Jack. He stood close, off to one side so that Jack would barely have to turn his head to see him, and he didn’t touch him.

“Jack. You ought to come back to bed.” Will’s voice was low and even. He didn’t sound like he was scolding or patronizing, or even trying to convince. He was merely patient.

Jack’s head dipped down as he seemed to ignore the words. “Look a’ that,” he said, distantly mesmerized by the sight of his own limbs. “Can see the bones.”

“I can’t see them, love.”

“Oh no,” Jack said, nodding in agreement with himself or possibly with Will, “they’re covered, a’course, but I know they’re there. Always knew it was real. Rotting flesh and moon-bleached bones – in my head, true, but ‘twas real in the end.” He made his hands into fists, bringing them in close to his body.

“It was real enough. I remember. But this...” He took one of Jack’s clenched hands and held it to his own chest, to his heart. The other he brought to his cheek. Jack turned naturally with the motion to look at him, head tilted to the side. James didn’t understand the emptiness behind his dark eyes, but Will clearly did, and that was all that mattered.

“This is real too,” he murmured, smiling against the thumb Jack ran slowly over his lips. “I’m real, Jack.”

“You are. Aye, you are,” he repeated in a stronger voice, frowning a little. “Blood, and warm flesh.”

“Bones too,” said Will jauntily. “But underneath.” He rested his forehead against Jack’s and James could see more of Jack underneath the strange mood; he was perpetually annoyed at being the shortest of the three of them.

Jack grinned then and he was completely himself again, infectious and well aware of it. James felt the anxiety melt away from his muscles. He loosened his grip on the blanket.

“All my favorite bits o’ you,” Jack said fondly, pulling Will into his arms. Though his tone was light as air, he held Will so tight that all the other man could do was sigh and lay his head down on a bare shoulder.

Shivers broke in James’ chest and he closed his eyes, which had gone dry and itchy. Jack’s chin lifted as he caught the faint rattle of breath.

“Take me back to bed so’s we can stop terrifying poor James, now,” he instructed Will, slinging an arm across his shoulders and proceeding to hang off of him.

Will grunted in good-natured irritation as he lugged Jack’s ponderous self across the room and dropped him next to James, who moved over to make room for them both. Jack hummed softly as he settled back in, throwing an arm and a leg over James in his continuing delusion that anyone who shared a bed with him was prepared to be taken for a piece of furniture. Will draped himself across Jack’s back and they were all silent once more.

He waited to see who would fall asleep first. It was Will, after a sleepy and petulant “good night – again.” He was always the first to awaken, probably carrying over a habit from his apprentice days to that old drunkard Brown, so it only made sense that he was usually the first asleep as well. Will wasn’t made for insomnia.

Jack, on the other hand, could sleep or not sleep as he chose – and he rarely bothered to share the logic behind his choices. He kept up his humming, set to a tune only he could hear, until James was about to drop off himself from the strangely soothing drone of it.

The humming stopped and Jack said, “‘M all right, Jamie.”

“Truly?” James shifted an arm to let Jack’s slip around him, hand hooking under his shoulderblade.

“Truly,” Jack replied with a firm nod. “I may slip away from time to time, but I’ve got plenty of anchor to draw me back.”

A smile curved his lips in the dark. “I’m glad for that.”

“Me too,” Jack sighed. “I’ll let you sleep now.”

“Sleep with me,” James ordered dreamily, halfway gone from the sensation of Jack stroking the nape of his neck. “You and Will, you sleep with me.”

“Shhh, lad, we will. Never you worry about that.”

James slept, but despite the weight of Jack’s body and his words, it was a troubled sleep.

Lingered too long ashore.

Will’s explanation stayed with him in a way that was not intended. It stung at the time, of course, even though he knew there was no cruelty behind it. But in the next few days he played it over and over again in his mind, and he noticed what he might not have noticed without that offhand comment.

He would leave the bedroom for some reason, to get food or drink or to relieve himself outside, and he’d come back to a curious, tangible silence. Whatever Jack and Will had been discussing before he walked back in, it was as though it had been wafted out the window like an unwanted scent.

Jack had no more unnerving episodes, but he didn’t sleep well. It was beginning to show beneath his eyes, and James suspected he was being deliberately careless with his stick of kohl in an attempt to hide it.

Will showed signs of strain, too, his temper more easily provoked than it had been in the beginning. For whatever reason, he was usually short with Jack rather than James. Jack watched him, more cautious with his taunts and his feinting touches, but when he did manage to draw Will’s ire he took it without a word. His own sorrows were internalized, only swimming to the surface of his eyes now and again in the small hours of the morning, the best time to sail out with the tide. Sometimes they were locked together in a clench that never lost its passion despite all that was left unsaid, but more often James was tugged from sleep by Jack’s restlessness.

Privately James suspected that Will was responding to Jack’s mood more than anything else. He had no doubt that Will loved the sea and missed it dearly, but he was someone you could stick anywhere – rock, sand, earth, water – and expect to thrive. Will had chosen the sea, and of course he had chosen Jack; which had come first was irrelevant, because to him the two were inseparable.

The difference with Jack, James was willing to venture, was that he’d had no choice in the matter at all.

And so Will lashed out, and Jack withdrew, and neither one of them brought it up with James.

He lay awake in bed one night, Will dead to the world on his right and Jack tossing fretfully on his left. It didn’t take a moment’s thought to try to soothe him with an arm drawing him close, but Jack bit him. Checking to make sure he hadn’t drawn blood, James pulled a face at the back of Jack's head and wondered what sort of dream he could be having in which that would be an appropriate response.

On his other side, Will made a sort of mouth-smacking noise as he turned over onto his back. James winced. Sure enough, he was snoring within minutes.

What would it be like, to not have this any longer? To return to this bed night after night alone, as he’d done for most of his life – but now knowing what had gone on between its clean linen sheets, what he could never have anticipated, what he had lost...

The reality of it bore down upon him like a lover and then it became heavier, like the weight of a thousand stones, like the pressure at the bottom of the ocean. He chastised himself for bending so; it wasn’t as if this could have gone on forever. It wasn’t as if he’d thought it would.

But that was just it – he hadn’t thought. For the first time in his life he hadn’t thought. He had only wanted.

He was thinking now, and he knew that he couldn’t spend another second between them without screaming. If he had to be the one, so be it. Better to meet a storm head-on than to try uselessly to stave it off.

He wasn’t careful about climbing over Will as he got out of bed. Ignoring the yelp as his knee landed in a sensitive region, he pulled on the first shirt he could grab hold of. It was one of Jack’s, conspicuously grubby even in the dark. He ran a hand along the wall to guide him until he reached the study, where he gathered maps and charts in his arms.

When he returned to the bedroom, he found Jack and Will both sitting up, the sheets pooling around their waists. Will blinked at him in confusion, but Jack – Jack knew.

He dropped the papers on the bed between the two of them.

“Tell me,” he said, unsurprised to hear how harshly he spoke. “Tell me where you’re going so I won’t be there. I can’t remain housebound either, you know.”

Will’s eyes widened and then fell to the pile of maps. Jack was still studying him with black eyes. James was mildly resentful that they seemed to be saying he couldn’t hide. He’d never tried to.

“You could come along,” said Jack, almost inaudibly. Will sucked in his cheeks and looked up at James in such a way that he knew they’d discussed this already.

James dug his nails into his palms. “No,” he replied calmly. “I couldn’t.”

Will shifted forward to his knees, one hand on Jack’s shoulder for balance and the other raised as if to reach out. “Even –” He paused and cleared his throat of any note of pleading. “For a night. Spend one night on the Pearl with us.”

James closed his eyes, not wanting to watch them hear it – hear any of it. “If I did, I would never be able to leave.”

“That’s –” Will began, but Jack shushed him. James could hear the bedsprings squeak as Will turned to argue and he was glad that he didn’t see whatever in Jack’s face caused him to fall silent.

Fingers brushed his sleeve and he jerked away, his eyes snapping open. It had been Jack.

“Don’t,” he whispered, but it held no water.

“Jamie –”

In one fluid movement he was on top of him, pinning him to the mattress and smashing his mouth against rum-flavored gold and silvered tongue because he couldn’t stand to hear another word. Will had scrambled out of the way with the maps fluttering around him as James dove, but now he sidled closer, hesitating. Without releasing Jack from the punishing kiss, James locked one hand around Will's forearm. Jack was pushing the shirt up, sliding hands across his back and raising thighs against his hips; when they broke for an instant to let the encumbrance pass, Jack gasped long and loud.

After studying them for a moment, Will pressed himself along James’ back, kissing across his skin in a pattern not unlike the wings they’d drawn on him once. He slid a finger, already oiled, into James, who arched his neck and so caught Jack’s eyes, hot and despairing beneath him.

Will pushed into him with a stilted cry. Jack made no noise when James did the same, joining the three of them in a reflection of that first night. It was rougher, less considerate on part of all involved. There was no charming banter, only sounds low and sharp that might have been rooted in pain.

The fall was neatly synchronized – of course, after all this time, all these many times – and they let James claim the middle, wrapping around him like a shroud.

He awoke in the morning lying on his stomach, his arse faintly aching. He had half-expected to find himself alone, but it was still a blow that froze his body for untold minutes. A flutter of paper roused him, blown by a strong wind coming through the open window.

Catching it before it could be borne away, he saw that it was torn at one corner and splotched with ink. The first bit was in a hand with bold strokes and flourishes, exactly how he had imagined Jack would write. It trailed off abruptly, the ink streaking down the page. Will had picked up; he recognized the neat, concise lettering. Probably he’d snatched it away from Jack and that was the source of the blemished corner. They’d both calmed enough to sign it, though.

He pressed the paper to his face, imagining that instead of ink, it smelled like saltwater and rum and spices and embers.

Perhaps it did. Perhaps they’d keep the promises written out, stick to the areas they’d marked on his maps.

He had reasons to believe they wouldn’t, but they were as grains of sand next to the reasons he believed they would.