The truth of it was he was in Jack's cabin because the crew disliked him so intensely that they wouldn't tolerate him among their own bunk. And Jack was in Jack's cabin because he was so disturbed by what had happened that he wasn't even sure he was able to remember it let alone speak of it or watch his crew tiptoeing around him because of it. And Elizabeth was not in Jack's cabin because she was in Will's, despite the fact that things between the two of them had been frosty as a nun's knickers since she had so neatly and cruelly kissed and trapped Jack against his own mast.

He would have preferred Elizabeth in his cabin and everyone else out of it. Along with her dress.

Jack rolled over and tried to pretend that his inability to sleep was due to Norrington's excessive and irritatingly loud snoring. He would have threatened to cut the man's nose of if he thought it would do any good, but the man was a most insubordinate prisoner at the best of times. The only thing he had done to Jack's benefit (and of course Jack was only concerned with things to his benefit) was to agree to erase his name from the pardon and write in Jack's. It might not stand up to as careful an eye as he knew Cutler Beckett to have but it would stand up to those who might try to apprehend him, and that was good enough.

The other reason Jack was unable to sleep, of course, was that this ship was not the Pearl. It wasn't his, for all that it was a good and worthy ship and would have made a fine vessel for Elizabeth the pirate or Will if he chose to turn merchant or anyone but Jack Sparrow, who required his beloved Black Pearl. The loss of the Pearl was laid on Norrington's pig-smelling and worn shoulders. If he hadn't run off with the thump-thump, Jack pouted, they wouldn't be aboard some second-rate brigantine.

Norrington rolled over to face Jack and proceeded to snore even louder, which Jack thought must have been deliberate in the midst of what had to be a pretense of sleep. He threw his pillow at him.

"Mmph." Norrington batted it away. "What the bloody hell was that for."

"You smell funny." Jack rolled over away from him.

"You're the one who had the bright idea to keep me prisoner in your cabin." Norrington seemed to be addressing the ceiling. "God knows what passes for thought in that skull of yours."

"My thought," Jack waved a hand as he spoke, not bothering to look too closely at why he was justifying his actions to a man he admittedly hated and who had tried numerous times to imprison or kill him. "Was to see to the securing of your health and welfare, as my crew is not so inclined to keep you breathing and in a somewhat intact state."

"Your concern for my welfare," he made a curse of the word. "Is touching."

"Oh, make no mistake, lad. It's not a concern for your welfare that moves me but a concern for the reward I'll be receiving when I turn your sorry carcass over to the East India Company as Beckett's accomplice in his ill-timed effort to take over their little empire."

And if either of them had cared about what happened to Norrington that might have had some effect. They went back to glaring at each other by way of the walls around them. The ship went back to rolling back and forth.

"Oh, sod it all," Jack muttered, and planted his boots to the floor with some determination. "Where's that rum."

Norrington opened his eyes at the mention of alcohol, no matter how much he might hate Jack. "If you're after the rum and so concerned for my welfare, make sure it's enough for the two of us."

The bottle flew at Norrington's head and bounced off his pillow.

"That was entirely unnecessary."

"Oh, grow up."

Jack flounced back to his bed and threw himself on it with a pout that contradicted his words of a moment ago. His quick slug of the bottle, followed by a burst of sputtering and another drink, did not help.

"Of the two of us, I should think you're the one with the most growing up to do."

"Ah, but my dear Norrington," Jack pointed the bottle at him and smirked. "Of the two of us, you are the one expected to be proper and forthright and all manner of grown-up things. When you're a pirate, no one expects you to act any better than you do, and therein lies the secret of freedom."

Norrington stared at him, his lip curling. "And was it that kind of freedom that cost you your Elizabeth?"

Jack hadn't meant to actually hit him with the whip. He never used it except to shake at people and threaten them with, and would have had a weak arm if pushed to discipline one of his men. Of course, that was why he had a bo'sun. But the point was that for all that he had a coiled whip in his quarters along with all the other accoutrements of captaincy, he never intended to use it. The leather hit Norrington's bare back with a crack that would have been satisfying if it had been anyone else. Jack refused to admit that he was even the slightest bit intrigued by the way it raised a streak of red along his skin.

Norrington erupted out of the blankets with a shout. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Bare feet hit the floor, and he kept his pants up only with the aid of a quick hand clutching them closed and at his waist. He'd had to borrow.

Jack's eyebrows shot up and he shifted, pointing at Norrington with that pouting expression that crossed his lips when he knew he was in the wrong. Not that he was, he reminded himself. Norrington was a wanted man. So was he, but that was hardly the point.

"Out of line, mate." An idea struck him as he nanced over and picked up the whip again, coiling it and stretching it between his hands. "Five lashes." His eyebrows waggled so that Norrington couldn't possibly mistake his meaning.

"You're sick."

"Up against the wall."

Hell, it might even make him feel better. He was surprised when Norrington rolled his eyes and stood up against the wall with a long suffering sigh that said he was going to put up with Jack's strange whims. Not that Jack even knew what the source of this particular impulse was, or if he had an inkling he was leaving it at that, but Norrington was putting himself so delightfully at Jack's mercy when the beleaguered pirate was at the one point in his life where he was least inclined to give it.

The first crack took them both by surprise. It drew blood, which almost stopped him from continuing, but the comment still echoed in his ears and the appellation of the possessive to her name served to remind Jack that she was not, had never been, and never would be his. That galled, both for itself and because it affected him in the first place. One woman was supposed to be as good as another. Something soft and warm and wanting in the dark and not important in the grand scheme of things.

Schemer. Elizabeth.

The second crack followed close upon that thought, and then a third, and then a fourth, and then a fifth. And on the sixth when he had lost what semblance of control he had had Norrington turned and grabbed his upraised wrist.

"Five lashes, you said. Only. Five."

He made the last words close against Jack's mouth and once again Jack was reminded of Elizabeth and how close she had been in those last moments. Did you really have to get that close to someone to stab them in the back? Jack supposed you did.

Close enough to notice something else, too. His lips formed a casual, leering smirk by which he was well-recognized in the slum-holes of Tortuga. "Why, Commodore Norrington." His voice was low. Purring. Dangerous, if the other man recognized it. "See something you like?"

They grappled. It was a poor and petty word for what resulted and Jack knew he shouldn't have teased, but Norrington was the easiest mark he'd found in a long time and he was feeling in a mood to spread some hurt. His insides were all twisted up, had been since the girl who had fed him to the Kraken had come to rescue him from that same beastie. The girl he still wanted as badly as he had ever wanted anything, perhaps all the much more because she had given him a taste of what he could never have.

Norrington tried to wrest the whip from him but Jack preferred than neither of them should have it. The leather coiled around the chair on the opposite side of the room and stayed there while Norrington tried to pull out of Jack's grip. Fingertips dug into the fleshy part between the bones of his wrist. He wouldn't give the pirate the satisfaction of hearing him scream, but Jack knew he wanted to. And to tell the truth (which Jack did more often than you thought) he wanted to hear him scream.

They wrestled each other to the ground and Norrington almost got away from him one or twice. Not the third time. After the third time he tried to buck Jack off of him and almost cracked him in the nose with the back of his head Jack ran his head onto the bunk and pressed his face into the sweaty linens. Norrington gasped, and breathed in his scent.

He hadn't meant to go there. Without a hand to hold them, though, Norrington's pants were down around his ankles and he'd only been leant the barest minimum of clothing. Even Will despised him now. Jack watched him for seconds at a time between their struggles and thought about what he'd said.

His shirt hung low and the air was cool around his flanks and Jack was full of anger. His insides all twisted up with fear and a pitiful, childish kind of hurt. Pathetic little whimpering. The part of him that would never have believed she could do it, not to him, had taken charge over the man who was proud of the woman he considering he had created. And all the hurt and anger and fear that he kept underneath his still swashing and bold exterior spilled out over the commodore.

It was rough. Both men knew there were ways to do this, how could you not? At sea for so long and needing something to take the edge off, and there wasn't always an island with a willing whorehouse nearby. There were ways. But Jack was more interested in pretending than in Norrington, and Norrington was more interested in survival.

How do you like me now, Elizabeth? How do you like me...

It exploded in Jack's mind, relief of the body and relief from thought for one moment. Reality came back one sense at a time, first the roughness where his fantasy had been slick and willing, the blood over Norrington's back, the wiry texture of his hair in Jack's fist. Smell, the scent of both of them all sweaty and sex in the air and blood. And vomit, though neither of them had. The stinking rancid smell of fear.

Taste followed quick upon smell and hearing, both of them heaving for breath. Sight was last, because he didn't open his eyes until he had pulled out and stumbled back and was standing a ways away from the crumpled man. Even then, he didn't want to look at him. Didn't want to see.

Jack moved to the table before he moved to the bed, shuffling with his pants around his ankles and grabbing the bottle before he pulled them up. Pulled his pieces on one by one and taking a drink between each fumbling grasp of his fingers. The bottle was half empty by the time he fell over onto Norrington's makeshift bed. He pulled the covers over himself and didn't care what the commodore did. Kill him in his sleep, for all he cared. Elizabeth did, every night, in his dreams.

Go to the top! For you have reached the bottom.