Rags of Time

Part 6

by

Pyrite's Gold

"The toe of your boot is sticking out from under the curtain."

"Is your bloody butler really going to notice that?"

"Yes he will, now hide it properly."

Sparrow scampered up from the floor and tugged the curtain into a better position. He had his breeches back on; the rest of his possessions were hidden away in various unlikely places. James pulled his nightshirt back on and arranged the bedclothes. Jack had only just scurried back under the bed when there was a knock at the door.

"Yes, come," James announced, and the butler entered. Jack squinted through the gap in the draping bed sheets to watch.

"Phillips, I plan on taking breakfast in here this morning. Could you have it sent up?"

"Very good, sir."

"Oh, I am rather hungry this morning. Could you have them send more than usual—argh!" The sentence was followed by a yelp and a jump as Jack had snaked his hand up under the sheet to pinch him on his thigh.

"Are you all right, sir?"

"Yes!" Norrington said with a flustered smile, grabbing at the offending hand and squeezing it. "Just a bit of cramp. Nothing."

"I shall have Miss Sloan bring up breakfast promptly, sir."

"Thank you, Phillips," he said to the closing door, and dragged Jack out from beneath the bed by his wandering hand.

"What the hell did you do that for?" he asked, almost angry until he saw Jack's face creasing with silent laughter.

"Thought the old man could use a laugh," Jack chuckled, smiling up at James with eyes deep and brown and heavy.

"You are a fool." James smiled back.

The maid brought a tray of food and placed it on the table, while Jack peered out from underneath the bed.

Jack couldn't help but smile at the shy little curtsey she gave as she left, and spun himself back out across the floor once the door was closed. He sat cross-legged as James rose to retrieve the tray and set it on the bed.

"What 'ave we got, luv?" Jack asked, rubbing his hands together and peering up at the tray.

"Just breakfast. Would you like coffee or chocolate? I'm afraid there's only one cup."

"Chocolate? Christ, this is Naval breakfast." He reached up and grabbed a slice of gammon, saw the beef and grabbed some too, licking his fingers as he finished them. James watched him with a smile as he buttered his toast. Jack looked like a child suddenly, being presented with a plate of sweets and cakes.

Jack exclaimed something quite high-pitched as he saw the small jar of honey and grabbed at it, and began eating it by the spoonful. His face melted into some form of bliss as he worked his tongue around his mouth, licking at the spoon and his lips.

"Would you care for anything to go with your honey, Jack? Some jam, perhaps?" James smiled, brow raised sarcastically.

"Is there any?" Jack asked, and then saw the other small jar and made for that too, eating it spoonfuls at a time.

"I was actually thinking more along the lines of toast, or pastries," James said absentmindedly, almost entranced by Jack's childlike glee reveling in eating sweet things.

"Are you going to eat all of your breakfast sitting on the floor, Jack?" James asked as he put toast and bread and pastries on a plate for him.

Jack gave him a lopsided smile through the hunk of bread and jam he'd just bitten off, and jumped up to land on the bed, sitting opposite James with the tray between them.

The tray quickly became a stretch of sea in their conversations—the sugar pot a jut of land, the coffee pot a mountain range, and the toast racks and sugar tongs and spoons and jars became ships and boats as Jack slid them around the silver base, recounting stories about achievements at sea and the near misses of sea serpents and rivals, all in between mouthfuls of pastries and fruit. James snatched implements from his hands and replaced them in more appropriate positions when the stories became too fanciful.

"You could not have made so sharp a turn to port in a ship the size of the Pearl," he chided.

"The sugar tongs ain't the Pearl, luv, she's the bread basket. I'm talking about a little sloop I once owned—well, acquired. Well—you get the idea. Gimme back the tongs so's I can tell you what happened."

Jack continued with his story, taking sips from the cup of hot chocolate as he went, flapping his hand at his mouth when it was still too hot but not letting it interrupt his tale.

With breakfast finished, and Jack scraping the last of the honey from the pot with his finger, James leant down to place the tray on the floor, tugging the bed sheet with him and revealing the mattress beneath. James looked down at where the other man had lain—the once white linen now grubby wherever he had moved over it.

"Jack, when did you last take a bath?" he asked, looking over at the other man who was now licking the jar.

"Wot?" said Jack, lips sticky.

"A bath, Jack, when did you last bathe?"

Jack followed his gaze down to the linen sheet.

"You mean a bath—actually submerged head to toe in hot soapy water?" he said in between sucking at his finger.

"Yes, Jack. A bath."

"Singapore."

"What?"

"I last had a bath in Singapore. Can't spare the water on ship, can't afford a bath house round these parts. Have to make do with cloth and bucket." He winked at James and gave up on the jar.

"Maybe there are just some questions I should not ask you..." James said, pinching at the bridge of his nose.

The last of the water was brought for the spacious tin bath. James wondered how Sparrow had managed to keep quiet for long enough hidden under the bed.

As the footsteps of the maid edged away down the stairs Sparrow emerged from underneath the bed, muttering that he couldn't remember the last time he'd had to skulk around like that.

"Get in, then. It's your bath," James said as Jack stood there, wide eyed and slightly unsure.

Jack removed his breeches and dipped a foot tentatively into the water. He smiled and winked at James as he slid in, reclining back against the higher end. James watched as the man's body relaxed into the hot water, his head tipping back to rest against the tin. The longer braids of hair dipped into the water, bobbing gently.

James looked away to stop from staring, and busied himself by collecting Sparrow's possessions from the various places they'd been hidden. He kept glancing towards the bath, saw Jack lather up the soap and scrub at his skin with the washcloth. James retrieved the boots from behind the curtain. Jack rubbed the soap along the length of his arm, humming a tune as he went. James found the sash, began wrapping it up like a ball of wool. Jack examined his fingers, picking at the tar around his nails, working them into the cloth. James carried Jack's heavy coat over to the bed. Jack lifted a leg out of the water and began soaping his foot.

"Quit your scurryin' around over there and come over here, you'll crane your neck peeking like that. Bring the rum with you—third inside pocket."

James flushed a smile at how obvious he had been. He found the hipflask and knelt down beside the tub, resting his arm on the rim and his chin on his elbow. Jack smiled at him, carried on scrubbing at his foot. Water trickled down his arms, lapped at the skin halfway up his chest. The water was already colouring from the layers of grime it seeped from him, suds becoming slightly brown. The wet braids stuck to his back like wet cloth, small streams of water running from them, trickling over the raised scars. His skin looked bronzer, darker for the water on it. There were whirling pink scars on the inside of his arm, almost like the whorl of knotted wood. James reached out a finger and ran it over the skin there, feeling the indentations and featureless smoothness of it. Jack stopped washing his leg and looked at James, met his eye.

"How did you get this?" he asked softly.

"Ever stuck your arm down a sea serpent's throat?" Jack replied with a twist of his brow.

"No," James said with a cynical smile and frown.

"Well, I wouldn't recommend it. The bugger ate me hat. Had to get it back."

"Indeed."

Jack winked and returned his attention to his other foot, humming the occasional disjointed refrain.

The man should not be here. The slow panic burst in James's chest again at the very thought of it. And yet he was here—he felt reality skew around him, felt disbelief at his own desire for the man to be here with him. And did not really want to think too hard about why.

Jack reached over the side of the bath to swipe the hipflask from James, bringing him back from his worrying. He took a drink and handed it back, gesturing for James to have some. James did not usually drink this early in the day, but then he didn't usually have a pirate taking a bath in his bedchamber following a night of the most delicious passion he had ever known. He took a long drink of rum.

"Did you really bathe in rum with another man, Jack?" James asked quietly.

"Aye, I did at that," Jack chuckled.

"Who was he?"

"Now that would be telling'."

James watched as Jack smothered his chest and neck with suds, splashing them off again. The sunlight from the window caught the streams of water, glistening over his throat and trickling down over a nipple.

"I don't believe you would have wasted all that rum."

"Who said we wasted it, luv? We drank it all."

"You drank an entire bath full of rum?" James asked with raised eyebrows.

"It weren't a bath full. We bathed in it, not had a bath in it."

James's eyebrows made their way higher up his brow. Jack stopped his rinsing and leant closer, the kohl surrounding his eyes smudged by the warmth of the water. His eyes fell back forever.

"We had a bath," he continued, smiling around the words. "You know, as a cat does. Poured it on and then licked each other clean."

James felt his eyes widen, his breath quicken at the image in his mind—Jack naked and twisted around someone else, sticky with sugary rum and saliva, head thrown back as it was licked from his skin.

In one quick movement he brought the flask to Jack's shoulder, poured rum to run over his collarbone and down his chest, dipped his head to catch it with his mouth, running his tongue firmly up over the skin, sucking at the liquid. Jack leant back against the side of the bath, drawing James with him and causing him to lose his balance, splashing a hand into the water to steady himself against Jack's stomach. Jack snatched the flask from the water and took a mouthful, pulling James further towards him and kissing his roughly, rum spilling between their lips.

James rose from his knees and leant closer, leaning on the edge of the bath with his hip. Jack twisted and pulled him over, splashing into the water so he lay on top of him gasping.

Jack sucked at his lips, thrust his tongue against his mouth and made a hitched sound in the back of his throat. James pressed his hands to Jack's stomach and chest, felt the warm water soak his nightshirt. He pulled Jack with him as he sat up, knees either side of Jack's hips, wrapping his arms around the man and raking fingers over his back, into his hair and around his neck. Jack's hands grabbed James's hips and thrust him closer. James gasped and raised his body, pressing his hips forward and down as he felt Jack's hardness against his own.

"Skin. Skin, skin, skin," Jack muttered as he tugged at the sodden nightshirt, trying to pull it off. He slung it to the floor and pulled James to him. He caught James's eye with a wicked smile as he poured rum onto James's chest, pulling him closer and licking and kissing at his smooth, firm torso. He twisted his tongue around a nipple, jerked his hip to spark the friction between their cocks as he sucked and nipped it between his teeth.

James felt his head slip back as he moaned quietly, a shudder running down his back. Then Jack's hips were rolling and twisting as James tried out the motion too, and found a pace and angle that slid them together maddeningly, a pulsing pressure running through them as their cocks pressed and moved against each other.

James made a frustrated cry through clenched teeth, the need in him sudden and strong. Jack nudged him forward to meet his gaze, green eyes desperate and imploring and full of something else entirely. Jack felt his own chest swell, his fingers gripping tighter around James's hips at the intensity between them suddenly. He slipped a hand between their stomachs and took hold of both their members, pressing and pinching along with the rolling of their hips. James's eyes flared at that, his face desperate and wanting and tender, young and vulnerable suddenly despite the force with which he gripped Jack's shoulders, grinding harder against him.

Jack's breath hitched in his throat as it became too much to hold back from the want deep in James's eyes. James gasped as he came, his face fell forward against Jack's temple as it tugged out of him, fierce and needed and running through every part of him as though his blood carried the feeling. Jack's body began to jolt beneath his as he turned his head to kiss James hard, pressing their mouths together with force as they spilled into the water. James whimpered quietly into the kiss as his body began to slump.

After a moment James sat back and stretched his legs out, sitting back against the other end of the tub. He was uncertain suddenly if he could meet Jack's eye. He had not anticipated doing that until it had begun, and the need in him had shocked him.

Jack retrieved the hipflask from beneath the water and took a swig, uncharacteristically quiet as he did so. When James finally looked at him he saw the same mild shock he was sure was apparent on his face. He waited for some clever quip or dismissive remark, but none came. Jack only stared at him, occasionally sipping from the flask, until a minute passed and James couldn't stand the intensity of his gaze any longer. He looked down at the water, saw the two streams of seed dispersing, hanging heavier in the water as blood would, but colourless. Merging. Two made of one. Mine and thine, James.

It was too much suddenly, this assault on the stability of his life and body. Jack drew him like a siren, he realised, and was just as dangerous. And still the man stared at him, blank faced with ever-thinking eyes.

James rose from the bath and fetched the towel, drying himself with more force than was necessary. He heard Jack get out of the bath behind him, and did not want him to come closer. He heard his wet feet padding over towards him and straightened, but did not turn round. Jack snaked his arms around James's body, pressing the side of his face between his shoulder blades. They stood in silence, the only sound the droplets of water tapping on the wooden floor.

"This is madness," James whispered, his voice taut in his chest.

"Aye, it is, love."

"You should go."

"Aye, I should."

James let the towel drop and placed his hands upon Jack's, pressing them closer into his chest and stomach. He turned and slid his arms around Jack, holding tight against wet skin as Jack rested his chin on his shoulder. They stood there a moment.

"Will you stay?" James whispered.

"Aye, till dark."

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