Do There Embrace
The deck of the Flying Dutchman was going dark before James's eyes, the stabbing pain in his chest fading into a coldness that made it impossible to move or breathe. He wished he could have kept his sword in his hand. It had been a good sword.
Then he was being lowered to the deck, retching and coughing up sea water. He wasn't sure how he'd gotten into the water or why he had apparently been dragged back out again. He glared at the shadowy figure looming over him, determined that his resolve would not be broken by this second chance at a life in chains.
"I don't fear death," he rasped out.
The voice that answered wasn't the one he expected.
"Yes," Will Turner said, "but do you fear me?"
James looked up at Will. He looked older than the last time James had seen him, and considerably more imposing. Of course, on that occasion, Will had been in the process of being hit over the head with an oar after repeatedly falling down, which might not have shown off his best qualities.
"Is there anything you could do to me that would be worse than death?"
"That depends on how dead you are," Will said.
"How dead am I?" James asked. It seemed an important question.
Will looked him up and down. "Basically, you're dead," he said regretfully.
"I knew that." James looked Will up and down in return. "Your heart ..." He trailed off, wondering how one delicately asked after someone's state of mortality.
"Is in a chest," Will said. "Unfortunately, not mine."
"Elizabeth," James said, remembering suddenly that she had been there. She had, indeed, been the reason he had gotten himself killed. That and a sense that there wasn't any other option that he would actually enjoy more.
"She's fine," Will said. "And she's the king of the pirates. It ought to suit her."
James felt that he couldn't really face an explanation of that at the moment. "Beckett?"
"He's dead. Davy Jones is dead, too. I'm the captain of the Dutchman. Elizabeth is the pirate king. Jack is ... Jack."
"And I'm dead," James said. "Wonderful."
"I thought you might like a drink," Will said.
"I thought you'd never ask."
They went below, where Will opened a bottle of rum and poured them both generous amounts. James tossed his off and held his glass out again. Will refilled it.
They drank in awkward silence for a while. The cabin was free of its previous encrustation of coral and seaweed, although a gigantic pipe organ still filled half the room. James wasn't sure how it was proper to address his former romantic rival and the present captain of the Flying Dutchman, but he felt he knew just how to address the rum.
"How can I drink if I'm dead?" he asked finally, when the rum had done its work to remove a great deal of his awkwardness.
Turner shrugged. "How am I talking to you with my heart not in my chest?"
"Well, you ... I have no idea."
"I think you're technically undead," Will said. "There's a difference."
"Like the pirates?" James still had a vivid memory of white bone revealed by moonlight.
"Well, that was a curse. You're not cursed, you're just ... pausing in your journey."
"You're making this up as you go along," James said.
"You have no idea," Will said, throwing himself down on the bed to sprawl against the pillows in a way that made him seem younger again. He held out his glass for more rum, and James refilled it. "I have a job to do, and I have this ship, and I have some charts that don't seem to bear any resemblance to real geography, and I have a crew many of whom are ... well, basically mad as hatters."
"They do seem somewhat less ... appallingly strange," James said.
"Well, yes. And a lot of them chose to leave. But most of the ones who stayed are the ones who've been aboard so long that they've nothing left to go back to. And it's apparently not easy to bounce back from having been a decorative part of the hull for a couple of decades."
"I can see that." James considered Will. "Do you even know how to navigate?"
"I'm not sure normal techniques apply."
"Yes, but suppose you wanted to go to Port Royal."
"I don't."
"But suppose you did."
Will looked both uncomfortable and amused at himself. "Wait for someone to die at sea somewhere nearby?"
"Learn to navigate," James said.
"I mean, it couldn't take that long," Will said, and then smiled sideways. "No, I know I need to learn navigation, among other things. Want to stay on for a while and teach me?"
James considered that. "Aren't I supposed to go on to my eternal reward, whatever that may consist of?"
Will shrugged. "Are you actually in a hurry?"
"When you put it that way, no." James held out his glass again, and Will refilled it most hospitably, pouring a generous portion into his own glass as well. James felt there ought to be some witty remark to be made about spirits. Perhaps more rum would assist him in finding it.
Some time later they were lying sprawled in Will's bed, Will having felt it might be awkward for James his first night aboard to sling a hammock a few feet away from the man who killed him. James felt it would have to be faced soon enough, but he accepted Will's offer to share his own bed for the night, not least because he was beginning to feel unsteady on his feet. He chose to attribute that to the strain of being reanimated rather than to the large portion of the bottle of rum that now seemed to be gone.
"The worst part is, I can't see Elizabeth except once every ten years," Will said.
"Do you want to?"
Will eyed him. "Wouldn't you?"
"Things happen to men who spend too much time around Elizabeth."
"You're already dead."
"It could get worse," James said.
"Surely you don't regret it."
James closed his eyes for a moment. "No. No, I don't regret it."
"Well, then."
"I'm just pointing out that she's the king of the pirates, and we're both dead. Undead. No longer alive in the ordinary and accepted sense of having beating hearts within our chests."
"I was stabbed by Davy Jones," Will said. "That's not Elizabeth's fault."
"Neither was Sparrow's unfortunately brief demise, but the pattern still remains."
"Actually that was," Will said reluctantly. "As it turned out, Elizabeth killed him."
"Well, then."
"Still, I love her."
"A common affliction," James said.
Will rolled over onto one elbow. "You must have loved her too. I don't think she ever knew that until the end."
"I did propose to her," James said. "I'm not sure what more I could have done short of taking out an advertisement."
"You could have told her you loved her."
"I mean, short of that."
"I hope she knows I love her still."
"How long have you been parted?"
"About three weeks."
"I should think she'd assume she still has your heart," James said.
"Well, she does," Will said. "She keeps it in a box under the bed."
James's head was beginning to swim. "This is all a bit peculiar."
"I had noticed that, yes."
James patted Will on the shoulder in what he hoped was a comforting fashion. "You'll see her in ten years."
"Ten years is a bloody long time."
"I can see that it might be," James said. He rubbed Will's shoulder, letting the warmth of it reassure him that he was not in the grave, wherever he might be. Will rolled over rather drunkenly and pressed his hand to James's chest. It was rather a distracting intimacy.
"I can feel your heart beating," Will said. "That's odd."
"I expect it's a ghostly manifestation," James said. "Pay it no mind."
"I think it's just that you're being ... temporarily re-animated."
"You're making it up again."
"If you were still a corpse you'd feel cold," Will said. Will felt warm himself, warm and solid and to some degree an anodyne against the last few months of disturbing sights. He thought about tentacles with a shudder, and then felt that the best way to avoid thinking about tentacles was to pull Will closer and kiss him on the mouth.
"You kissed me," Will said. He sounded troubled.
James felt a sudden and unexpected rush of bitterness that might have had something to do with all the people he hadn't kissed while he was alive. "Is this the part where you send me back to my watery grave for offending your moral standards?"
"Probably not," Will said. "It's just a little unexpected."
"I can see you haven't been at sea long."
"I thought they flogged men for that in the Navy."
"Now an unlikely problem for either of us to have," James said. He put a hand meaningfully on Will's thigh, and Will tensed and then relaxed into the touch.
"I take it you know what you're doing."
"Generally," James said. He let his hand stray higher. It seemed criminal to waste what might be his last opportunity.
"Ten years ," Will said in a strangled voice. "I can't -- wait ten years -- if you do that."
"That's the point," James said, and began unfastening Will's breeches.
"I see," Will said breathlessly. "Yes, I see what you mean --"
He clutched at James's shoulders as James shifted down so that he could take Will in his mouth. James was half-expecting some bitter taste of corruption, but instead it only tasted of salt. Will's hands were tight on his shoulders and his body was hard and hungry under James's own.
James sucked him, letting himself savor every second of it, free of the usual stomach-clenching fear of discovery. One last time, he told himself, one last time to feel hard muscles tensing under his hands and hold on fast as he sensed the consummation of his efforts approaching.
"Oh, God," Will gasped, and the taste in James's mouth as he spent himself was the taste of salt. James lifted his head, fighting the urge to curl up with his head against Will's belly and wait for Will to rest his hands on his hair; there was nothing so intimate between them, he knew, only a mutual hunger for any reminder of life.
"James," Will said, his hand on James's shoulder, and he wasn't sure what that meant.
He closed his eyes against confusion. "Just once more," he said, and Will bent his head toward James's and kissed him lightly before reaching down to unfasten his breeches. The touch of Will's hand was almost unbearably intense, his callused fingers rubbing against the sensitive skin.
A few hungry thrusts into Will's firm grip was enough to undo him, and he spent himself helplessly, shuddering and throwing back his head. He could hear his own breathing harsh in the sudden quiet, and feel his heart pounding in his chest. He closed his eyes and felt it slow but still not stop.
"We could do that again," Will said after a while, his head pillowed on James's arm. Davy Jones had smelled of awful rotting things, but Will just smelled of rum. His warmth made it almost possible for James not to notice the lack of another heart beating in counterpoint to his own.
"I was trying to achieve some emotional closure, here," James protested. All his best intentions seemed to be being thwarted. "To accept that there'd be no more chances for the pleasures of the flesh. "
There was a pause. "Does that mean you don't want to do it again?"
"Well, I wouldn't actually say that."
Will moved closer, his warm breath against James's throat where his shirt lay open, and it occurred to James that the grave might have its consolations after all.
*****
The grave's a fine and private place/
But none I think do there embrace.
--Andrew Marvell