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suggestionsofthecaribbean · 6 years

Text

The Pearl: Elizabeth and James

Elizabeth grows tired of punishing her dog; she misses him too much. They reconcile.

CW: There is some discussion of James’ alcoholism, especially towards the beginning of the post.

Featuring: @norringtonsuggestions and @lizzyswann-turnersuggestions.

Shortly after arriving at the mouth of the river, they had been wracked by such an awful heatwave that not a single person on board the ship was able to maintain any physical display of impressiveness that entailed layers, and so Barbossa’s wig and Elizabeth’s hat and jacket vanished. His hair looked the worse for it, and hers rather the better, humidity making it a golden blonde cloud kept in place with a frizzy braid across her forehead. There seemed to be no point in posturing that she was not a female, and so the jumps and the chemise vanished too. Elizabeth had little enough cleavage to need modesty, and if any man held it against her - or wanted to - it was too hot for any of them to care.

If Barbossa, who had leered at her more than once in their past acquaintance and around whom she had never fully grown comfortable, noticed the sight of Elizabeth’s bosom, it must have been in the moments she blinked, which, small thing though it may have seemed, went a long way towards gaining her trust, and once he had said his piece on her boytoy their conversation had come easy. In spite of the last couple of years of her life and the company in which she’d spent them, she had never just had someone tell her pirate stories. He, for his part, disguised the enthusiasm he had for telling such a captive audience - moreso than when she had been his actual captive by far - rather poorly.

One thing was certain - if Barbossa had been careless enough the last time he’d captained this ship to be caught by the Dauntless, it would have hit the ocean floor long before Tripoli. She listened to his tales with all the folded up postures of rapt attention - or, if they were on the deck and she had to compose herself, with expressively wide eyes inside an otherwise carefully guarded face - and thanked the stars that the Interceptor had been, after all, less than the fastest ship on the Caribbean ocean. She doubted James Norrington realized what he had been saved from in Barbossa’s evading him - and earnestly hoped in their time together he never personally had cause to learn it.

Occasionally she stood on deck near enough Captain Norrington to notice the heat had affected his state of dress also, but she could not appreciate it. It seemed that three different crews waited with one held breath to see when she would play with her lapdog again. But mistress and dog greeted each other only once in three days, if it could have been called that. He was unwilling to speak to her without being spoken to; she met his eyes, nodded, and looked clearly away, in front of enough people for her to know she must have humiliated him. To his credit, as she walked away she heard him redouble his efforts to teach the younger of his crew knot-tying, with no aggression or impatience in spite of what he must have been feeling. She loved him better than she ever had for that, and wished she were among them. She recalled a curious mixture of memories - James Norrington at eighteen teaching her a bit of knot-tying upon being pressured to do so, when she was only 13, tolerating her presence remarkably well and earning the affection of both father and daughter; James Norrington of barely two weeks past, arriving to their hotel room in Tortuga, the day Jack Sparrow had died, dressed in pirate finery for the first time and enveloping her comfortingly in his cloak, kissing her on the forehead. Somehow she had gotten swept up in something with James that turned all of her real plans for her life into ashes, and now she couldn’t even be with him.

Long past evening and well into the night of their third day apart, Elizabeth bid adieu to Captain Barbossa and the only Jack among the living and returned to her cabin, which was, after all, only the same cabin she’d been in on her last “little visit”. Sleep did not come to her there, and she knew why not. Though she had entertained the thought of avoiding James until they came ashore at Tia Dalma’s, for his sake nearly as much as her own, the thought of him relapsing - and forcing her to do something about it - if she continued to avoid him was starting to make her feel an uneasiness in her stomach that threatening to turn into vomit.

The moon was an eerie sliver in the sky when she went down into the ship to knock on his cabin door. When it opened she stepped in, shut it behind her and embraced him tightly - quickly, needily, shutting her eyes and not letting go.

“Elizabeth-” It came out in a short gasp, equally surprised and relieved, and more than a little abashed. It was only a little cooler in the cabin, and lit only by a pair of lanterns- one provided, and one clearly moved down from another part of the ship- and what little light came in from his half of the lower windows at the stern, but James was rather more layered than he had been, and not expecting company.

With some confusion, he put his arms around her and gave himself a moment to let it settle in that she was here after all.

“I’m sorry,” she got out, without moving an inch, opening her eyes or relinquishing her hold. “I couldn’t stay away any longer-”

“It’s all right,” he said quickly. “I’m only glad that it’s over-”

“I don’t know if it can be over, but I had to see you -”

“I’m sorry for your timing,” he said awkwardly. “I know this does not speak well of me-”

Elizabeth froze, pulled away from him with a sinking sensation in her stomach, looked anxiously through the rest of the room, and then, surprisingly, kissed him deeply - then just as abruptly pulled out of the kiss.

She had been tasting him, to see that he had not meant drinking.

“- what on earth are you on about?”

James gestured vaguely at the open chest pulled out from under the suspended cot. There were clothes hanging out of it and stacked on the cot- more of the finery Giselle had purloined for his sake. He was wearing some of it, too. Elizabeth had interrupted him in the process of trying to see if some of the more sober items fit him well enough to bring on the next leg of their voyage. Even so, he was all too aware that there was no good excuse for the dark wig he had also decided to try on, even if he had undone the elaborate buckles, so that they fell in wavy clusters before his ears to the sides of his- presently, somewhat unshaven- face.

“I’m sorry- I know this is… shameless, when there are so many working on deck-”

“James, everyone else is asleep,” she said with a trace amount of irritation.

“From what you said I thought you were drinking - this, this is nothing. Jesus! Don’t scare me like that.”

She pulled the wig off his head and threw it bodily at the bed. James looked from where it had landed to her.

“I’ll take that as a no, then,” he said dryly.

“Trying to flatter Captain Barbossa by aping him, were you?”

“Trying to flatter you, by presenting myself more as I had the first round in Tortuga, as it would seem you liked it,” James retorted.

“I didn’t care for that part of it,” she said, resting her hand argumentatively on her hip; then, after a moment of crossness, broke into a smile and hugged him again.

“I was beginning to wonder if you might ever speak to me again,” he said, even as he hugged back.

She was reluctant to release him, or to bring this up - but the longer they held each other, the more it nagged at her, until she gently pulled away to look him in the eye. “James, don’t you know what you did?”

“I know damned well what I did,” he said as he began pulling off his coat. “And frankly, I would rather have been flogged than live with three days of your pointed disdain-”

“First of all, I couldn’t- I couldn’t do that to you. Second of all - it’s clear you have no idea what you did. So the Pirate King jeopardizes her standing with the other Pirate Lords for the sake of some useless pretty boy with a drinking problem, flogs him, and then dotes on him until his wounds are better - that seems like a better plan to you?”

“I never asked you to dote on my wounds! I’ve been flogged before- I can live with that-”

“As if I wouldn’t see you as soon as I could, after doing something like that,” said Elizabeth, with a faint echo of her earlier sneer.

“That,” he said, jabbing an index finger in the air toward her midway through pulling off the weskit, “is your affair, not mine.”

“No, James. This whole thing is my affair. You risked my reputation and your life for a hangover and a bloodshot eye-”

“I know that! Why do you think I’ve watered down my whole supply-”

Something else had occurred to her, and she started speaking as soon as it did, without waiting for him to stop. “My reputation and my life - James! James, listen to me. The last person Captain Barbossa didn’t like serving under was stranded on an island you could traverse in ten minutes, with one shot in his pistol. You’ve held that pistol, you’ve seen that island. But you wouldn’t be coming to get me this time, would you? You would be long since thrown overboard. Or traded to Cutler Beckett for him to have his fun with you before throwing you to your precious firing squad.”

“I know that- do you think I don’t know that? Elizabeth-” He put his hands on her shoulders, an uncharacteristically wild look in his eyes.

“Elizabeth. I was drunk in the hurricane. All right? I know the risks, I know the costs-”

She looked momentarily shocked, even horrified.

“When the boy went overboard- I needed something to make me move again, to end the paralysis and the taunting and the sound of the Admiral’s voice in my head. So I asked for a bottle. All right? I know this.”

“Can you even stop?” she whispered.

“I’m trying,” he said. “I- I don’t know.”

He shook his head, a little helplessly.

“I don’t know. I’m trying, but I don’t know-”

“James! If you continue to be a liability-- Captain Barbossa as much as said I’d be better off--”

She couldn’t get the words out, but she didn’t have to finish for James to get the picture. He nodded, without looking at her.

“Noted,” he muttered.

“I can’t do that,” she said, and her voice broke, startling him. James put his arms around her again and pulled her close.

“I’m trying,” he repeated. “I wish I could promise, but- I’m trying.”

“My fate is tied to yours- because I’m going on the line for you, and I’ll do it again if I have to,” she said numbly.

Elizabeth turned her face into his shoulder and let out a quiet sob. “I can’t lose you too.”

“I’ll… I shall endeavor to do my best,” he said, staring into the distance above her head. “You have my permission to stop me, of course-”

“I don’t need your permission,” she said with a tiny snort - an attempt at humor.

“I’m serious,” he said.

“So am I. I shall kill you if you try.” She turned her head again so that she could press a gentle kiss against the side of his neck.

“Thank God, some sense around here at last.”

“Oh, you should speak with Captain Barbossa, if you call that sense,” she murmured.

“I wasn’t drunk when my men routed his,” he said, with a laugh that died as quickly as it had arrived. The men who had survived that incident, save Gillette and Groves, had long since become food for the sharks off Tripoli.

“He claims not to remember you from that - he says all you naval officers are indistinguishable - though he might genuinely not. He died that night. I suppose it’s gone rather fuzzy and indistinct for him.”

Elizabeth stepped back to wipe at her face, radiating exhaustion, then embraced him again.

“Here- come sit,” he said, gesturing at the rather laden cot. “You need not be the Pirate King in here.”

“Only if you sit with me,” she said, without budging.

He had to move a few things aside and then steady the bed against the wall of the ship in order to sit on it, but his weight held it still for Elizabeth to join him. He put the wig aside rather more carefully to clear room for her and then patted the empty space. She climbed onto it and then onto him, curling up limply. James gave her an affectionate kiss on the forehead, leaning on the rope suspending the cot with one shoulder.

“To tell you the truth, I admire you,” he admitted. “My feelings on your disdain aside, that was remarkably consistent.”

“It only lasted three days,” she said, laughing weakly. “Unless I leave here without witnesses, then I suppose it can go on a little longer.”

James grimaced at this despite himself.

“If you suppose that will help-“

“There was one man I would have gone to for advice on this, but I couldn’t exactly do that, now, could I?” she asked, with a flash of temper.

“You could have messaged me! I know how this works-“

“It wasn’t supposed to be a game! You had to have some punishment - publicly and privately. You still don’t seem to realize how much you risked - You’ve hunted pirates all your life and you still don’t know how this works, do you?”

“I know exactly how this works- I could have advised you without thinking- ugh, never mind.”

“And what would you have said? Oh, just whip me. And then thereafter have Barbossa watching us and privately forming his opinions on how willing I am to forgive and forget.”

“The very fact that he’s on this expedition for Sparrow speaks- I hesitate to say to compliment him, but I will grant him a degree of amenability I will confess I would not have previously attributed to a man of his reputation,” James said, in an even, somewhat pensive tone, as this assessment was taking root in his brain even as he spoke. “There is, perhaps, a greater honor among thieves than I once believed.”

She poked him in the ribs. “You’re here too, James. Shall I say there is honor among traitors, too?”

“Indeed.”

He said this, however, with a dark finality. Every so often, it caught up to James that no matter how he liked to think of himself, he was by now so thoroughly steeped in treachery and criminal activity that there really was no getting out of it this time. Not that there ever had been; Beckett may have readily set him down amidst various young luminaries plucked from the Navy, but the armada’s ranks had been fattened out with desperate men eager to wipe various stains off of their records. James was merely the only one whose sins could be considered infamy rather than petty ignominy.

Sitting here in the dark with Elizabeth, reflecting on the poor account he had given of himself over the past few weeks, he felt ridiculous and unfinished and exposed once again. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. It encountered the rough beginning of a beard, and in agitation he moved it to the back of his neck instead, wondering, not for the first time, how quickly hair grew.

“If it’s of even the slightest consolation,” he said, after a long silence, “I have fiercely wanted a drink these past few days. I’ve abstained, of course, even through the tremors and the fever.”

“Would I could have been there to comfort you through those,” she whispered in the dim lighting.

He held up his free hand. It appeared to be flickering in the lantern light.

“It would appear you’ve made it in time.”

She kissed him on the neck again. James made a soft sound of relief as his hand found the back of her own neck instead, and with it her ravaged hair, softened by the humidity.

“I missed you so much,” she sighed.

“Am I in a probationary period at last?” he asked. “Or is this only a small assignation?”

“If you are obsequious enough to persuade Barbossa I actually care about your transgressions…”

“What kind of obsequiousness are you asking of me,” James asked, sounding- frankly- exhausted at the prospect alone.

“I thought you ‘knew how this works’.”

“I know very well how I am to behave in the presence of a superior,” he said, and he tapped the tip of her nose teasingly to make his point. “But to my understanding, Barbossa and I are peers under your command-“

“By my grace only, and if your - indecency topples my command, you will be at his mercy, insofar as he has any.”

“How fortunate,” said James. He was sweating now, more from the still-lingering drink in his system than from the weather or nerves, and he at last released the back of his own neck to wipe at not only his mouth, but his temples. It was just as well that she had pulled the wig from his head, he supposed; the buckles he had let down in imitation of his own hair would be quite damp and losing their wave by now.

“James, this is not a small matter. I’ve risked everything for you. Because I love you. Because I trust you.”

“I know,” he said. “Trust me in that-“

“I need to be able to trust you in more than your understanding, James.”

She sat up and looked at him fiercely. James looked back at her steadily, if blearily. His sclerae had gone back to their usual white, except for the deep red splash still edging up against the dark of his left iris.

“Elizabeth,” he said, “I’m trying.”

“I wish trying were enough-” she said, biting her lip, cutting herself off.

“There have been times I can’t even recall giving in and picking up the bottle,” he muttered. “And this place is as bad for trying to avoid it as Tortuga. These people seem to consider leaning on rum an amusing foible of the profession.”

“James. There’s nothing I can do but entreat you. My life is in your hands, James.”

“And there’s nothing I can say save that I am trying,” he repeated, striking his own thigh in frustration. “For God’s sake, Elizabeth- no one would hesitate to shoot a rabid dog. I’m sure it would scarcely be held against you to shoot a drunken one-“

“Is that what you’re asking me to do?” she asked in a low voice. “Give all hope up, wait for you to drink and then shoot you?”

“I am trying to avoid that,” he said, in a tone of such suppressed, despairing fury that his voice came from between jaws as locked as those of the rabid dog to which he had just compared himself.

“You know there was another solution to this whole thing,” she said. “If you were not so -” She struck him in the chest now in anger, punctuating her remarks - “so stubborn, and so prideful, that you insisted on proving yourself now -”

“And seen another seventy-five men hanged for my actions?” he retorted.

“They could have come too!”

“And how, pray, were we to get to you without a ship, and with this all but undefended-“

James seized Elizabeth’s hand and brought it to his chest. There was something rather large suspended from a strip of leather tied around his neck, disappearing under his untied shirt. Under her palm, it was the size of a large fist, throbbing evenly. Elizabeth shuddered and pulled her hand away.

“We could have found some solution, but in Tortuga you insisted that you be a captain of your own ship, and prove your merits. That’s all your vanity, James. Otherwise you could have been safe aboard the Empress, with me, and whatever inconvenience your sickness might have been in private, it would do me little damage to have a kept man with a drinking problem. Well, you have proven yourself a drunk, how’s that working out for you?”

“No worse than I already knew myself to be,” James said, adjusting the heart beneath his shirt as though it were somehow out of order. “I have very little left but vanity-“

He made an irritated, jerky motion at the clothes half-pulled from the chest and draped over the cot, finishing with a frustrated point at the wig before he crossed one arm over himself to hold the elbow of his other arm. He leaned his forehead into his raised hand, rubbing his temple with his thumb, and then exhaled sharply, throwing that raised arm down against his thigh again.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I have spoken out of my line.”

Elizabeth debated staying angry at him, at getting up and leaving - at redoubling her efforts to make him feel ostracized and alone until he understood how severely he had shaken her authority and taught her to fear for his life. But she had come here because she missed him, and there was no worse way to miss someone than to lie beside them and still feel as though they were not there.

“What can I do to help you?” she insisted, touching him on the cheek. “For my sake and yours. Let me try, too.”

“You might start by showing the rest of the crew equal censure for their own drunkenness, obvious or not,” he said. He hated the petulance in this request, but the general atmosphere of nigh-constant, joyous rum-sloshing had done his sense of stability no favors since he and the attachès of his crew had joined Barbossa and Elizabeth’s own contingencies.”It’s a nightmare to force oneself dry while one’s companions treat being rum-addled as a personality trait.”

“I cannot order the men of the Pearl to do anything without garnering extreme resentment, but it will be addressed. Though for your part - you know it’s not simply drinking that you were punished for. If you could better limit yourself - I know you can’t, but if you could, we would not be having this conversation.”

“I have never seen Barbossa partake,” he commented. “Perhaps if it could be passed off as the enforcement of his own standards-“

“He won’t like you putting words into his mouth,” she warned.

James closed his eyes. “I know, I know. I meant to suggest we might ask his assistance.”

“I don’t think you understand how unreasonable he is, on some level. He’ll want to be more than asked.”

“Lovely,” James muttered. “God’s teeth, I must look dreadful right now. I apologize.”

“You could not look better,” Elizabeth murmured, and smiled for the first time in several minutes, kissing him.

“Mm- pardon my doubts, but I know how you enjoy flattering me, and I am certain I’ll look better in the morning-“

He was laughing, though, and returned her kiss with one of his own.

“After your long absence,” she said, rolling her eyes affectionately. “Perhaps we should do this again. It has characterized most of our relationship, has it not?”

“Please don’t joke about that,” he sighed. “I already feared I had lost you as a lover, if not as a companion.”

“On the contrary,” she said, brushing her hand over his hair, leaning on his shoulder to look him in the eye. “I wanted you more than ever. I let my frustration with you fuel my contempt on deck.”

“Be that as it may, the whole experience left a rotten taste in my mouth quite separate from the vomit,” James said stiffly.

“You earned it,” she reminded him, a little too firmly.

“That does not mean I’ve any desire to repeat it simply to make the heart grow fonder.”

“Jokes, sir. It’s just jokes.”

He tried very hard to glare her down, but it was useless after that. James covered his mouth and looked away from her, shoulders shaking with barely suppressed, thoroughly worn-out laughter.

“All right, I’m sorry-“

“Thoroughly sorry?” she asked, caressing his cheek with a smirk. “Or shall I bend you over something after all?”

“I think if my head drops below my waist, I shall be sick,” he said, in as dry a tone as he could manage.

“Up against the wall, is it, then?”

“Good lord-“

“Just a quick swat or two,” she kept teasing him. “Be sure you’ve really learned your place.”

“With what-“

“Palm of my hand again, why?” She leaned in and spoke softly against his ear. “Prefer Barbossa’s cat-o’-nine-tails?”

James made a face. “Elizabeth-“

“I mean, we could do other things with you against a wall, James,” she said, settling in against him against, nuzzling his throat. “Though I’d rather not, as a punishment.”

“Elizabeth- Elizabeth, be careful, I could scratch you-“

“What, with this? I rather like it,” she said, voice low. She punctuated that with a kiss, and then another.

“Perhaps when I’ve enough hair to not look as though I’ve had a bout of fever-“

“Sickness becomes you. The appearance of it, anyway.”

“Is it the blood in my eye or the remnant of my hair that pleases you?” he said, though not so harshly as to accuse her of anything indecent.

“Let me have a closer look at your eye-“

There was no way to position himself for this that wasn’t extremely awkward, but he tried anyway.

“Mm. It’s both.” She burst into laughter.

“Elizabeth,” he sighed, exasperated.

She kissed him on his face very near the eyes, enough to bid him close them so that she could kiss him on the eyelids, as she had the night she’d blindfolded him in order to let him enjoy her.

“I love how you make me laugh,” she whispered, when the room had grown quite silent, but for the creaking of the bed and the boat itself.

“That’s a surprise. I never thought of that as one of my stronger qualities,” he said, without opening his eyes.

“Neither did I,” she whispered with unkind glee, her nose touching his.

“It’s good to know I can please you on multiple levels,” he said softly, opening his eyes again to look at her.

“Good Lord, James-” she exclaimed, then burst into laughter again. Elizabeth was not so loud as to wake anyone, but anyone who was awake and near enough might have gleaned her presence - and her mood - in snatches of sound. Still, within James’ small cabin she endeavored to keep her voice down. It lended a sultriness to things which were not intended to be sultry. “I did not come here for that, you know.”

“For what?” he said, lifting his eyebrows.

“Pleasure- at least on that level-”

“The level you assume I was speaking of, you mean.”

“I assume you alluded to it,” she laughed. “And have a very low opinion of my capacity for other satisfaction-”

“I meant only that I am gratified to be reminded that you are not put off by my… increasing inclinations toward slovenliness, shall we say.”

“You have a strange notion of slovenliness,” she said fondly.

“Elizabeth,” he said, a little more firmly, “if this is how you want me, you need only to say so. It would be less troublesome for me to think on if so-”

“Very well,” she said, rubbing his newly rough chin. “I think you should keep it.”

He smiled, as though waiting for her to clarify or add some kind of qualification. When none came, he laughed, a little startled but pleased all the same.

“I shall keep that in mind,” he said. “And on that note- excuse me- “

He cleared his throat, already preemptively embarrassed by the question he was going to ask.

“What of my hair? I know you said you find it suitable, but even so- I find it easier to consider spoken plainly, as foolish as that may sound. Spending most of one’s life in uniform gives one a rather skewed perception of these matters, and I am beginning to fear I’ve no taste at all.”

“I did prefer it a bit longer,” she admitted, “insofar as I can say I have any preference now that the accursed Navy wig is gone. But I don’t mind it like this,” she said, fluffing it and running her fingers through its short length with determined gentleness. “Besides, I suspect I am going to pull on it when it grows out.”

Her own hair was spilling over her shoulder and falling onto his chest as she leaned over him. He leaned back on one hand to give her more room as he kissed her.

“Pulling on it,” he repeated. “Well. We’ll see.”

“You’d take a lot of punishment from me, I expect,” she said, leaning in to kiss him, and then not doing it. She smiled, lips brushing his. “Mm. Wouldn’t you, James? Haven’t you done so already?”

“I never agreed to having my hair pulled on,” he teased, just before claiming a kiss in spite of her. She gave it to him willingly, pushing him backward - slowly, very surely backward. Within a precious few seconds, he was on his back, with her on his chest and her hair spilling toward his beaming face. Elizabeth slid fully into his lap, setting his bed to swaying a little. She held onto him and suppressed more laughter as well as she could, waiting for it to settle.

“This is why they make one wait until post-captain to bring a wife to sea,” he commented. “And why those given to out and out sodomy seemed to prefer it standing-”

“You’re still invited to do that, if you like -”

“Mm- I think not.”

“Might enjoy that more than simply kissing on a hammock-” she joked, brushing noses again.

“First of all,” he began, “doubtful. Second of all, you haven’t got the necessary equipage-”

“Mmmmm, poking holes in all of my fun,” she sighed, kissing him once more. “When I ought to be poking yours-”

“Elizabeth-”

“I know how much you love wordplay,” she said shamelessly, kissing him quiet.

He made a small sound of unoffended protest, but no more than that. It was enough to have her here again, and he showed her his gratitude through the warmth of his kiss.

She kissed him back a long time, as unendingly as possible. Eventually, she broke apart from him only to complain of something. “....these hammocks are very inconvenient for two.”

“It’s a cot,” he pointed out, “and it’s not exactly designed for two to begin with.”

“If you weren’t a drunk, we could be in my bed now,” she said, grumpily.

“That, madam, is entirely up to your discretion-”

“There are things in which Captain Barbossa does not need to be right. His assumption that you are most probably useless but for that thing between your legs is chief among them. I don’t think we should risk giving him a particularly unflattering view of our relationship until you’ve been dry a while. Or done something very brave, either way.”

James rolled his eyes.

“I see.”

“Unflattering to me, I mean.”

“Oh, but of course. Certainly no great reflection on a useless pretty boy with a drinking problem.”

She snorted in spite of herself. “You’re my mistress, James.”

He opened his mouth to object, and then abruptly shut it and looked away.

“It’s good enough a title for a great many women. I don’t think it should grieve you to own it yourself.”

“There has got to be a masculine counterpart with which one may work.”

“You know what the masculine form of ‘mistress’ is, James?” she said flatly.

He lifted his eyebrows, daring her.

“Let us just have it that I am your mistress - and you are mine.”

“Very well,” he sighed, laughing as he pulled her down for another kiss. She accepted this happily, rocking cot or no.

The cot swung and knocked against the wall. James startled and looked toward the hull, but on realizing what had happened, he let out another quiet half-laugh.

“We would wake up the ship if we tried anything.”

Elizabeth was quiet for a moment - quiet and sly. “...do you want to see if we can make it to my room without being seen?”

“Do you think that’s wise?” James asked dubiously.

“No, but where’s the joy in life without a little risk?”

“We’re not staring down an enemy fleet, Elizabeth- I’m not sure now’s the time to get overconfident-”

“James,” she said, quietly, urgently. “I’ve been here three days without you. I don’t think I can stand another.”

“I still don’t have a quondam-”

“You let me touch you without one before-”

“I know, but if you’re heard-”

“So we’ll find another strip of fabric and tie it around your mouth this time-”

“Oh, my God.”

She touched his lips with her fingertip, contemplating the sight of it.

“Elizabeth- I’d rather not-”

“Suit yourself,” she said, in a manner of disappointment.

“Not gagged about the mouth, at any rate,” he clarified.

“Well, with what I intended, you are the one who would need it,” she said smugly, rubbing his waist and then bursting into laughter, smothering it in his shoulder as quickly as she could.

“Greedy,” he chided her. “I was thinking I might make good use of my mouth, if allowed.”

Elizabeth stiffened in surprise, stretching out beside him and making a friendly attempt at nonchalance.

“O-oh? How’s that?”

James hesitated as he tried to figure out the least vulgar way to explain this and found himself short on ideas.

“Well, you know. Parting… you… with my…”

Vulgarity won. James brought his hand near his mouth. While looking straight at her, he just barely parted his index and middle fingers and licked between them. It was easier than saying it.

Elizabeth took a full moment of silence to process that before she burst into laughter, smothering it with both hands over her face.

“So… there you have it. That’s assuming, of course, the beard doesn’t give you any trouble-“

“Ooh, my God, James,” she said, still slightly muffled, before hitting him in the arm and laying back against him boisterously enough to set the cot swinging again. “That’s - that’s filthy -”

“No moreso than you sucking on mine would be!” he protested, with genuine offense.

“Which I haven’t done!” Elizabeth gasped. “Is that - is that the meaning of Giselle’s - mouth-tongue-eggplant emojis-”

“Yes-“ said James, rather desperately.

“Do you - is that done often?”

“I mean- I suppose? Relatively?”

(His voice has risen in pitch again.)

“Is it enjoyed?”

“It’s… not unpleasant-” James began cautiously.

“Do you want me to?”

“Let me have at you first, if you’d like,” he said, pressing his hand over hers. “The approaches are… different, but it’s less pressure for myself.”

“Pressure how? Surely as the virgin between us, the pressure is greater for me-”

“Less pressure for me to... perform it, shall we say,” James said, with a little ‘and there you have it’ sort of hand gesture.

Elizabeth lay stunned and silent beside him for a while longer, rubbing her thumb along his as she thought.

“Do you… do you want to go back to my cabin? I’m sure there is some way to frame this as the natural progression of your being punished-”

“As long as you’re not planning on flogging me now,” he said dryly.

“Not what you’re into, eh, James?” she asked with an audible smirk, leaning in to press her face against his throat again.

“It would be rather difficult to be, after the Navy,” he said, burying his hand- and the lower part of his face- in her hair. “I suppose some gentlemen probably develop a taste for it, but I don’t see the appeal.”

“What if I used for my whip something that barely even tickles,” asked Elizabeth, now out of plain curiosity. “I don’t care for the idea,” said James, with declarative formality.

“Pity.” Elizabeth let that hang in the air before she continued. “No, I was thinking more along the lines of you making it up to me. You cannot prove yourself in battle, but you can... ingratiate yourself…”

“I see,” said James, mostly because it seemed vastly more confident than telling her to go on.

“You open the door and tell me if anyone is there, and I leave when no one is there, and return to my cabin,” she said, as though declaring a battle plan. “Then, after a bit… you… follow me up…”

“...I see,” he said again.

He lifted his head enough to look at her, brow furrowed with concern.

“If you would like- if it’s- if I’m worth the risk,” he said, taking her hand in his and clasping it between both of them.

“Well, I don’t mind defending our cautiously renewed congeniality by saying you made a strenuous effort to assure me of the sincerity of your apology,” she said delicately. “If you are comfortable with that description, of course.”

“Right.” Of course there was a catch. James laughed wearily.

“Does it bother you?” she asked, in real concern.

“No,” he said. “I’m merely growing accustomed.”

He smiled at her to assure her of his sincerity.

“James, if it does bother you…”

“It’s a matter of accustomization,” James said carefully. “I don’t mind granting you your enjoyment, but this is still a rather solemn reminder of everything I have walked away from. I carry no regret for having chosen the side I did, but it often feels as though I am still looking on my old life through a windowpane. I can see it, I can hear it, but I cannot touch it.”

Elizabeth did not know what to say, leaning up on his shoulder again to look down at him nonetheless. She laid her hand over his cheek again and rubbed her thumb along his cheekbone. “You can touch me,” she said softly. “If that is any consolation.”

James closed his eyes.

“I know,” he said. “But you have become so magnificent, Elizabeth, that I hardly know what I am to do in your shadow.”

“Let’s focus on getting you sober before we plan on making you great,” she said with a sincere smile.

“I wanted you to find me great tomorrow,” he said, with a loose gesture around at the half-sorted clothing Giselle had scrounged up, including the wig.

“Greatness is not about appearance, James,” she said, snorting, “no matter what your time in the Navy may have taught you. And to be frank, I will like you better half-dressed than I like you dressed up for the rest of my life, so stop bothering.”

“It’s an easy way to make one’s mind ready to take it on,” James retorted. Elizabeth shrugged.

“True enough.”

“I thought you might agree with that point.”

“I do.” She smiled crookedly. “I love to look great.”

“It comes to you very easily, after all,” James said, his tone a tired drawl but his hand stroking along the edge of her jaw admiringly.

“And by that you mean that on the whole women look better and have more to work with than men,” she laughed, kissing the palm of his hand.

“That doesn’t hurt the assessment,” he agreed, his mood lifted at least a little by her kiss. “To be fair, most women seem to be better at knowing where to leave off their cosmetics as well-”

“We just need fewer of them,” she said amiably. “I think on the whole women are naturally more pleasing to look at. Only a very small number of men have naturally handsome faces - you are one of them, fortunately.”

“I try,” he said, in the flattest voice he could manage while still smiling as much as he was.

“Nothing on Jane Redding, of course,” she mused.

“Be that as it may, that woman is worse around a bottle than I am-”

“I noticed,” said Elizabeth in a sultry tone of voice, meeting his eyes meaningfully.

James’s eyes widened, and then scrunched in a frown.

“...ah, yes,” he said. “I’d forgotten about that.”

He sat up a little, sending the cot swinging again.

“What was it that you two did, given the… ah. Lessons I’ve been needing to impart-”

Elizabeth flushed. “We didn’t - not like that, anyway. We did… hmm. It was….”

She wasn’t sure how to say it, and on this cot she certainly couldn’t show him.

“She asked me what I do with you, and I - I said -” She attempted to meet his eyes, then quickly looked down. “Well, I told her what I was going to do with her. And I couldn’t take it back after. I mean. You know this King thing, I have to be consistent, right? I can’t suddenly behave like I’m in over my head. It’s all got to seem on purpose. But most of the swagger is just me bluffing. I am in over my head.” Elizabeth brought her hand to her face, moderately shielding herself from his gaze. “We…. kissed.” She squeezed her eyes shut, now thoroughly embarrassed. “We kissed a lot. And I… I touched her a bit -”

James was undergoing a bit of a face journey. By the end of it, he was frowning- not angrily, but thoughtfully, a little distantly.

“I see.”

“Here,” she gestured - on herself, not on him. It was a slow gesture - she brought her hands from her face down to her neck without opening her eyes, cupped her bosom, and finally guided them down over her hips. James stared at her, following the movements of her hands with rapt, nearly scientific attention.

“...I didn’t know women did that,” he said softly.

“My friendships have run towards flirtation, and... other things,” she confessed, finally opening her eyes to lay herself alongside him, more gingerly than before, still blushing from head to toe; “but until I did it, I did not know it either.”

“Well- it’s to be expected in... close quarters,” he said, and he cleared his throat.

Elizabeth glanced upward at him with a sharp look. “James, I take little pride in it. I’m not ashamed it was another woman, only of how poorly I handled it.”

“It’s- forgive me. I meant only quite literally that I did not know… women… did that,” he said, a little more emphatically.

“You can just say ‘same’ or something. You’ve already told me.”

“I know,” he said. “I just… had convinced myself it was less of a common experience, and certainly not one shared by a woman of your situation.”

He cleared his throat again.

“...I imagine it must happen quite often with nuns, though-”

“....it happens with far less provocation than that,” said Elizabeth delicately, avoiding looking at him again. “You know, just…. Playing out courtship and things of that - that nature. And sometimes girls share beds, you know-”

“-because no one thinks it will happen,” said James, with the distant look of a man who has made a sudden and unexpected discovery.

“Honestly? We’re told all our lives to prepare ourselves for marriage,” said Elizabeth, at last able to peek at him, relieved to see he was not looking at her. “But we are given very little idea of what that will entail. We’re bound to think about it quite a lot.”

“Did you and Amelia ever…”

His voice trailed off. This was not a conversation he expected to be having, least of all with Elizabeth.

Elizabeth flushed again. She had not thought about any of it that way before now, not even after everything with Jenny. “It came up-”

“Right,” he said, nodding.

James was silent for a long moment.

“Theo asked me,” he said.

He smiled tightly, and then looked toward the floor again.

“Then you know it doesn’t mean anything-”

“I know,” he said, “though I turned him down all the same. It was Theo, after all.”

“What do you mean? Doesn’t that make it easier?”

“Not if you’ve got to look at him on the same posts every day for the next several months!”

“That doesn’t…. Nevermind!” Elizabeth tried to resettle against him, but this conversation was mortifying to her, as well as physically and emotionally confusing. And she did not like it when the cot began swinging, so she wanted to minimize its doing so as much as she possibly could.

James steadied the cot with his hand against the wall.

“I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry, Elizabeth.”

“You didn’t,” she said, stretching out carefully, laying her head on him as if he were a pillow, as a truce. “It’s just…. It’s just confusing.”

He stroked her hair in silence for a while.

“It was never so elaborate as that,” James began. “Compared to what you describe, I mean to say-“

“Elaborate!” she began in protest, but found she did not want to defend her position almost immediately. “I- oh, nevermind. What was it like, then?”

Despite having brought it up himself, it took James a moment to pull himself together enough to even try to explain.

“It… well, you had to be careful. Never a man of your own post, if you could help it- or at least that’s how I saw it. I suppose some of the others found it a more... emotional necessity. There was a timeline of legality in place, after all-“

“Did you do this a lot?” she asked, curious and frank - and frankly, somewhat surprised. He had given her enough of an impression of stoicism that his dealings with her were still something of a shock to experience.

“I would not say regularly,” he said, after a moment of consideration. “Here and there. Never all the way.”

He paused.

“Not until Tortuga, if you count that-“

“Only if you do.” She paused, then colored and pressed her face very gently against his neck, tucking her head beneath his chin. “James, I’ve never - the things you’ve done with me. I didn’t even know that was done.”

“Well,” he said, “I meant to make a proper investment in whatever marriage I eventually achieved-“

“I mean I did not go that far with Amelia,” said Elizabeth, her voice higher than usual. “If you think less of my - purity, I suppose-”

“I don’t,” said James, “and even if I did, it would be monstrous to do so after months of submitting oneself to being fucked for rum money in Tortuga-“

“It’s different for men.”

“Not with what I’ve done,” James muttered.

It would have been very easy, at that moment, for James to slide straight back into the slope of self-pity that usually ended with a bottle, but Elizabeth’s presence was enough of a grounding force that he put his arms around her and kissed her hair.

“Yes, I suppose that would be rather different, to polite society, than Miss Bolger,” she acceded, nuzzling him.

“I know a certain degree of… laxity is practically expected in His Majesty’s Navy, but as an admiral’s son-“

“You could not have better distinguished yourself,” she said softly, kissing him on the jaw. “You’re all self-punishment, James. I know that you have made mistakes, but - you did not derail your life with mistakes. You’ve just had a lot of bad luck, really.”

James took a moment to take this in.

“All right, but the drinking-“

“-worsened situations that were already out of your control. James, there’s no saying a sober man would have saved the Dauntless, and you were scared,” she said, pushing herself up to cup his cheek and look down at him. “You can’t change what’s been done already. It’s like you wake up every day thinking you can, if you brood on it long enough.”

“I know,” he said. “I know-“

She kissed him gently.

“I know I will not always be this way,” he began. “At least, I hope I will not. It is… difficult, at times, to know what I will do with myself.”

“Good heavens, James, what do you think everybody else does?” she asked, laughing incredulously.

“Everybody else does not have their life laid out by twenty-“

“I did,” she said, looking slightly abashed, considering marriage to him was all but assured at that point in her life.

“...most men do not,” he conceded apologetically.

“You’re still young. Captain Barbossa said to me he didn’t set out to live at sea until he was ten years older than you are now.”

“I know,” he said again. “There are times I have to remind myself that I am.”

She snorted. “So this is what comes of telling an eight-year-old he’s got to be a grown man now.”

“A three-year-old,” he said softly.

He turned to look at her, with an even more apologetic half-smile, and she instantly kissed him, quickly and intensely enough that the cot swayed again.

“Oh - James - I am sorry, I am so sorry-” she said between hasty kisses. “I wish I could fix it-”

“Plenty of men manage it,” he said, “though I suppose they haven’t the admiral for a father-“

“I’ve decided,” she murmured. “I’m going to my room, and you are to follow me. I want you there tonight. All night,” she said significantly.

“Elizabeth-“

“I’ll sleep better,” she said nonchalantly. “I always sleep better with you breathing next to me.”

James pushed himself up, but only to get a better angle from which to look at her.

“...is that true?”

“How many times have I said so?” she asked, amused.

“I’m still sorting out what is and what is not flirtation,” he said, a little breathlessly.

“You poor Navy man. No mermaids to give you a reasonable estimate of the unreasonable behaviors of the fairer sex,” she teased him, rubbing his shoulder.

“Yes,” he said, “given their considerable preoccupation with eating Navy men,” James said, in an attempt at sounding dry. Unfortunately for him, he hadn’t yet lost that vague sound of being touched.

“And Mrs. Fenton too proper to flirt with you, you could glean nothing from her,” she baited.

“Too old to find it suitable, probably, if she ever noticed at all-“

“That was right around when we met, wasn’t it, James?”

He had to stop and think about it.

“Er, yes, technically,” he admitted. “I believe I very briefly saw you as an impatient child in your mother’s arms when I was perhaps nine, but I can’t say the moment left any significant impression on me.”

“That was a long time ago indeed,” she said quietly, before changing the subject. “I am sorry the attentions of a bratty twelve-year-old were less instructive than those of Mrs. Fenton would have been, but you bore them handsomely-”

“Did you carry feelings of your own so early?” he asked. “If you did, I was oblivious.”

“No,” she laughed shortly. “And we met at the same time as I met Will, though he was hardly talkative at that point in time.”

“Ah,” he said. “That’s a relief; I would have most likely been rather annoyed- or worse, flattered.”

He gave Elizabeth an unnecessarily severe look that swiftly turned to an abashed smile. He sighed and sat up enough to start trying to move the clothes back into the trunk so that he could follow her into her larger cabin.

“Thinking of myself at that age makes me feel a great deal less ridiculous now,” he admitted, “so I will take that much with gratitude.”

Elizabeth draped herself out on his cot while watching him pack, noting he was doing it as quickly as he could and enjoying his impatience.

“No, the period in which you had my…. Affections was more when I was 15 or thereabouts. In fact I think I harbored affections for you until I was nearly seventeen.”

“I never noticed. I suppose I was too busy strutting about and enjoying the way my career was spoken of when I was on leave. I thought it was a compliment to be left in Jamaica, you know.”

“Good Lord, James, you make it sound as though it’s a sin to have fun.”

“I never said I wish I’d been in the war,” he retorted. “I enjoy fun plenty, thank you-”

“That’s how you came off - for a little while, anyway.” Elizabeth paused, then smiled down at the blanket she was fidgeting with, with a little bit of mist-eyed pain. “That’s why my father encouraged you so much later; because I was a fool and I prattled on at him about it. Until I started to renew something with Will. Well; I say renew, I suppose I mean ‘create’, unless you really can have something with someone after one look, when you are twelve.”

“Ah,” said James, for the sake of having a reaction that wasn’t kicking himself.

“By the time I realized he was not just teasing me anymore it seemed there was nothing I could do to dissuade either one of you. I’m sorry I was such a coward about it.”

“It’s not a matter of blame,” said James, who was by now very occupied with his task.

“It’s true I don’t know what I could have said within the bounds of propriety to dissuade you when you had not actually made me an offer, but I could have done something, instead of pretending it would go away if I did not notice it.”

“Elizabeth,” he said, pausing with a deep purple shirt in hand, “do you really believe that matters now?”

“I feel that I used you very poorly,” she said, finally meeting his eyes. “And who knows what I might have spared either one of us, if I had been willing to acknowledge your feelings, and mine.”

“You wouldn’t be Pirate King,” he reminded her.

She challenged that with one affronted look.

“My story has only ever been part of yours,” he said as he finished putting the shirt in the trunk.

“I’m glad it still is,” she said with a small smile. “I thought I would never see you again, when you did not leave the Dutchman with me. When you cut the line, I thought for certain you would be killed.”

“...so did I,” he admitted.

“You’re an idiot,” she said, getting to her feet, though the cot made this less impressive a gesture than she wanted it to. She knelt beside him, shutting the trunk even though he wasn’t done yet. “Go on over to the door and tell me if it’s safe for me to leave.”

James nodded quickly and went to the door, peering out cautiously.

“All right,” he said in a low voice. “Take one of the lanterns. Mind that you don’t singe your hair.”

She did it, lingering in the doorway before she left. “Three years too late, but will you still have me, James?” she whispered - quick and furtive, eyes intense in the remaining firelight.

“Always,” he said, and he kissed her. “I’ll be up in a moment.”

“Good. I’ll be holding my breath.”

She vanished.

***

It was another twenty minutes or so before James returned the favor of lightly rapping on her door, lantern in hand. He had wanted above all else to be cautious, and give anyone who might have overheard Elizabeth moving about the ship time to roll over and go back to sleep.

The door opened less than immediately, as the cabin’s occupant was sulking in bed with a book, but when it did, Elizabeth pulled him in and kissed him deeply, only barely mindful of the lantern, which she released him to take and set down. Then he was hers again, and she didn’t have time for words.

“My apologies, Your Majesty,” he said, in a louder tone than he had been using earlier, in his cabin, before adding in a whisper, “I didn’t want to invite suspicion.”

Elizabeth’s chemise had fallen off her shoulder. “If I had really been holding my breath I would be dead,” she said in a flat whisper. There was a rush of color in her cheeks from the activity of kissing him.

“Are you sure it’s wise, wearing anything this delicate?” he asked, dubiously touching the fallen shoulder of her chemise. “If we’re found out-”

“I may sleep however I like, yes? And who is going to mind the sight, do you think?” she said a little too boldly.

“It’s not about minding the sight,” he said, glancing down at where her breast was just barely visible at the edge of her arm and following the curve down into her chemise, “but it’s not especially… imperious…”

He blinked. “Right-”

“I expect everyone is going to know in the morning,” said Elizabeth, pulling him backwards with her, “how you pleaded your case on your knees…”

“Elizabeth-”

He didn’t stumble past her, but only with effort. He had, rather counter-intuitively, put his coat and hat back on for the trip to the deck on which she was staying; it made him an undefined shadowy figure where the light didn’t hit him. Now, though, they were simply burdens for Elizabeth to deal with, though she did so with considerable patience. It was possible she saw him as a parcel to be unwrapped.

“I shall give no details but that you were very persuasive,” she said, divesting him of the outer layers, at least, before leaning back on the bed. It was not as large as the one from Tortuga had been, but she was sure they would think of something. “No one needs to know how I begged …”

“Do you intend to beg, Elizabeth?” he asked lightly, as he knelt one-legged at the end of the bed, silhouetted from behind by the lamplight.

“I will if I must, Captain Norrington,” said Elizabeth, reaching down to tenderly cup his cheek. “I feel as though it’s been a lifetime without you.”

He almost apologized for the feeling of his unshaven face on her palm, until he remembered she liked it. He leaned into her hand with cautious curiosity instead.

“I am at your command, Your Majesty. You know that.”

“But we are all someone else’s subjects, too,” she said wistfully, without elaborating. “Come up here and kiss me -”

Now felt like an ideal opportunity to really make it count. James practically leapt beside her, pushing her down against the bed with the force of his open-mouthed kiss; her gasp vanished into his mouth. He clasped each of her hands in his and held them down as well, with a brief enough pause in the kiss and a smug lift of the eyebrow to indicate that he knew exactly what he was doing. Hands unavailable to her, Elizabeth nudged him closer with her knees, situated over his hips.

“Don’t stop-”

“Do you like this, Your Majesty?” he asked, his tone was just short of mocking, teeth gleaming dimly in the lantern light. Elizabeth’s expression was torn between shock and delight, though she was trying to be affronted.

“Are you - are you challenging me -” she asked, making a very poor attempt at disguising her intrigue.

“If you permit it,” he said, though the way he straddled her then gave a very good impression of controlled force.

“I - I might-” she said, struggling to catch her breath. “Somehow this is very different from actually being held as someone’s captive- let’s not, ah. Let’s not tell Jack you can do this, when we’ve brought him back-”

James paused, looking into space. “Noted.”

He immediately set about kissing Elizabeth about the neck so as to not have to think of that too much. She responded with unchecked enthusiasm. She had been rather deprived of her dog as of late.

“In fact- the less Jack Sparrow knows of anything of which I’ve spoken tonight, the better-”

“Noted,” Elizabeth moaned. She was surprised by how much she was enjoying his new beard.

“Is this all right for you, then?”

“Oh, yes, James-”

“All right,” he said. “Tell me to slow down, if I must. All right?”

He released her wrists and slid his hands along the length of her arms, toward her body and downward, until he had found her waist, without easing up on the kissing. She buried her hands in his hair in the meantime, then guided his mouth up to hers; she wanted to taste him.

“Would you like to be ‘my king’ tonight, or only Elizabeth?” he asked, leaning his forehead on hers.

“Elizabeth,” she answered instantly; “--your Elizabeth.”

“My Elizabeth,” he repeated fondly, just before claiming her mouth.

#potcsuggestions #long post #ch: her majesty if you're nasty #ch: firing squad #pl: the black pearl

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