Debauchery, by Ladybee

TITLE: debauchery, chapter one
AUTHOR: ladybee (d_r_o_n_e)
FANDOM: PotC (modern AU setting)
RATING: G so far, this chapter at least.
CHARACTERS: Jack, Will, Norrington
DISCLAIMER: The characters belongs to Disney. The world they're in is mine.
ARCHIVE: Anyone want it? Just comment and let me know.
AUTHOR NOTES/SYNOPSIS: Written in response to penm's challenge, here: http://www.livejournal.com/community/pirategasm/155846.html [Essentially, modern AU, Jack drags will to a freak-scene club full of gays, drag queens, goths, fetishists, etc., where they unexpectedly run into Norrington.]
This challenge intrigued me since I spent well over a decade of my life in the kinds of clubs penm is talking about, both as a patron and as an employee. In fact, my first novel and half of my second takes place in those worlds. As such, I decided to set the story in Boston, instead of at some tropical Caribbean nightclub, since I know much more about American clubs than island ones, and Boston's where I live. I meant this to be a short little story, but it exploded and has turned into something that'll be posted in multiple chapters (i'm guessing somewhere between two and four parts, depending on if the rest of it gets as in-depth as this portion did).

Will had been working as a clerical assistant to Professor Cornelius Norrington at the Harvard Law School for nearly six months now. ("Doctor, Will. Dr. Cornelius Norrington, J.D. Doctor of Jurisprudence. How many times do I have to remind you?") He was good at his job, organizing the professor's dossiers and folios into neat and easily accessible filing systems, assembling Norrington's scattershot longhand notations into concise and clearly structured handouts and quizzes and exams, researching old cases and judgment precedents and lawsuit details at the library long after sundown if need be.
He'd been born in Hyannis at the Cape Cod Hospital and lived out his first ten years among the sunny beaches of Wellfleet, where he skipped school to go fishing off the docks and clamdigging in the Cape's shifting sands, smoking stolen cigarettes among the little clutches of straggley seaboard trees and blagging sent-back lobster tails at the backdoor of the Bayside Restaurant.
Exasperated, his mother had packed him onto the Provincetown ferry and shipped him off to Boston, to a boarding school for troubled boys. He'd pulled himself up by his bootstraps there, getting good enough marks in school to qualify for a scholarship to a community college where he got his paralegal certification, and then landed his assistantship at Harvard. Harvard University, he often marveled, and working for such a respected man as Doctor Cornelius Norrington. He was fortunate indeed, and proud of himself, of his self-made manhood.
On the balmy spring afternoon that he first made the acquaintance of Jack Sparrow, Will was drinking a double espresso and grading a stack of quizzes at the Blacksmith House open-air cafe. His red pen left cuts and slashes across the prim white page, the fifth in a stack of forty, and Will murmured to himself a weird litany he'd made up to lessen the boredom of his task, "Check, mate! Check, mate! X marks the spot!"
He finished grading the quiz, and set down his pen, already finding the task tedious. He rubbed his eyes, took another sip of his espresso, and allowed himself the brief luxury of peoplewatching. He surveyed the cafe patio, pensively. A few students hunched over notepads and textbooks along the far wall. A couple near the cafe's front door eyed each other and mused silently over hands of cards. A man at a table some ten feet away caught his attention. He was seemingly playing himself at chess, spinning the board on a lazy-susan after carefully considering each move.
Will watched as the man's thin hand hovered over a knight and an unusual artistic inspiration seized him. He shuffled through Norrington's gradebook, tore out a blank page, and begin to sketch the chessplayer in garish red ballpoint. A splay of knotty black dreadlocks arching out and over a half-shaved head. A sweep of a painted-on eyebrow, darkringed eyes, a cats-cradle of safetypins orbiting the ear cartilage. A shredded length of stocking wrapped with duct and electrical tape to form apparently permanent fingerless gloves. Strong features hidden among a braided goatee, and busy raccoon fingers that never settled into idleness, hovering over a coffeestained chessboard on which two saltshakers replaced the white bishops.
Will stopped, studied his subject closer. At least three observable layers of shirts and a pair of skinny black jeans consisting more of patches than of denim. Homeless, perhaps? (Will had met some street kids outside a concert once in highschool. This chessplayer reminded his of them, their hungry leanness, their darting eyes and tensile posture even in repose, a world-wisdom barely hidden with affected disinterest.) Knee high boots, a knife handle peeking from the top, green shoelaces, shins strapped round with double- and triple-wrapped belts that had slid down to bunch and stack around his ankles. A small flashlight and a multitool were clipped to O-rings dangling from a studded belt stretched across his hips.
Will turned his paper over and began a second sketch. This one was a simpler character study of the chessplayer riding a giant replica of the white knight, mapped out at first in a scattering of ovals and angles, details then rapidly appearing amid a flurry of bloody crosshatches. A sharp angle of cheek, locks blown aloft at the rearing of the horse. Just a final bit of shading, and...
"Checkmate," said a husky voice. Will jumped. The chessplayer fell clumsily into the chair opposite him but then arranged his limbs carefully, as cats do. Their eyes met long enough for Will to feel uncomfortable, but the man shifted his gaze intently upon the gradebook-paper portraits.
"I like 'em. Yer lines are very vital. Alive." His eyes blinked once, slowly.
"I'm...I didn't mean to..." Will was mortified. "I should have asked first if I could draw you. I'm sorry."
Will pushed the inkpen with his forefinger so that it rolled away toward the table edge spanning the distance between himself and the chessplayer. The man stopped it with the barrier of his caged fingers, then rolled it slowly back towards Will with the flat of his palm. The gesture was strangely electric.
"'I'm sorry...'" the man sang, then cocked his head to the side and asked, "What do they call you?"
"Will," he whispered. He knew he was blushing because his face felt fevered. He stared at the black semicircle of espresso in his saucer, still feeling cloddish, rude.
The man reached out and tipped Will's chin up. "Don't be embarrassed. Yer a talented artist. I'm flattered." His dirty hand smelled of tobacco, polished wood, stringy adhesive, and salty musk. Only later would Will consider how strange the gesture had been, for this street creature to have reached out and touched his face at this point in their acquaintance. "Are you going to keep these pictures?"
Will looked at his sketch, then to the pile of quizzes he had yet to grade. "No, probably not."
"Lemme trade you something for 'em." He slung a courier bag into his lap, flipped open its flap (to which a jolly roger patch had been crudely stitched), and produced a dark blue cloth pouch.
"You can just have them if you want them. You don't have to give me anything."
"Yes I do. Otherwise it's charity, and I didn't ask you for a handout." He pulled a deck of oversized, brightly colored cards from the bag. A tarot deck. "I can read your cards for you. Is that a fair trade?"
Will's eyes lit up. The idea of having his cards read by this strange street gypsy appealed to the townie boy that still lurked beneath his professional grownup exterior...how fascinating! Silly, of course, but fascinating nonetheless.
But his work. Norrington needed these quizzes finished to hand back to his class that evening.
"I'd like that, honestly, I would. But I don't really have the time." He gestured at the stack of papers.
The other man waved his hand dismissively, a tumbling twirl of a gesture that might have accompanied a singsong children's rhyme. He gathered up the cards, placing them tenderly back into the soft blue pouch. He carefully folded up the sketches and slid them into an inside pocket of the bag. Then he pulled out a flyer and pushed it toward Will. "Meet me later then. Here."
"CLUB TORTUGA presents DEBAUCHERY," it said. "Goth Glam Industrial Punk Darkwave Triphop Romo Electroclash Life Death Beauty Madness," with a Central Square address and, in small print, "$3 off admission with this flyer."
"Debauchery?" Will questioned.
"Tortuga," the man replied, as if that explained everything.
Will shrugged. "Thanks. I'll see if I can make it down there some time." Will put the flyer in the pocket of his coat. The man slung his bag strap over his head and pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up over his spiny dreads. The edge of the hood was ringed with squashed bottlecaps, pinched in half and glinting in the afternoon sunlight.
"It's tomorrow night. Meet me there...if you like." His eyes roamed across Will's sensible khakis and fresh white shirt. "Wear something else, though. They won't let you in looking like that."
"What? What for?"
"Dress code, friend. No jocks, no casuals, strictly freaks and fringe and flotsam. Just wear something black, or a dark suit. Something what don't make you look like a Harvard stiff." His smile took the sting from the words.
He picked up Will's cup and drank the dregs of the espresso in the bottom of it, turned toward the sidewalk and began to wander off haphazardly as if he'd been boozing, though Will hadn't smelled any liquor on him.
"Wait!" Will cried. "I never got your name."
The man stopped, grinned over his shoulder. "Name's Jack. They call me Sparrow, my friends do, when they call me." And he was gone.
To be continued...

Notes:
I chose "Cornelius" as Norrington's first name (instead of fanon-esque faves of John and Edward), because I like to leave connections to the original universe in AUs and I think the most famous person with the name Cornelius is Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. :D
The Blacksmith House is a real place in Harvard Square, with a bakery and cafe in it (Hi-Rise Bakery is its name). It's the house where Longfellow observed the local blacksmith he wrote about in his famous poem, "The Village Blacksmith".

TITLE: debauchery, chapter two
AUTHOR: ladybee (d_r_o_n_e)
FANDOM: PotC (modern AU setting)
RATING: R for cursing and adult themes (though no smut in this part)
CHARACTERS: Jack, Will, Norrington, cameos from Gibbs and Anamaria
DISCLAIMER: The characters belongs to Disney. The world they're in is mine. Contains song lyric quotations from the Irish Rovers, Firewater, and the Cure.
ARCHIVE: Anyone want it? Just comment and let me know.
AUTHOR NOTES/SYNOPSIS: Written in response to penm's challenge, here: http://www.livejournal.com/community/pirategasm/155846.html [Essentially, modern AU, Jack drags will to a freak-scene club full of gays, drag queens, goths, fetishists, etc., where they unexpectedly run into Norrington.]

As i said in the first post, this challenge intrigued me since I spent well over a decade of my life in the kinds of clubs penm is talking about, both as a patron and as an employee. In fact, my first novel and half of my second takes place in those worlds. As such, I decided to set the story in Boston, instead of at some tropical Caribbean nightclub, since I know much more about American clubs than island ones, and Boston's where I live. I meant this to be a short little story, but it exploded and has turned into something that'll be posted in multiple chapters (i'm guessing three at this point, maybe four).

A short walk up Massachusetts Avenue toward M.I.T., wending off on a darkened sidestreet, and Will was there. On the corner of the block stood an unassuming black warehouse building that housed the infamous Club Tortuga. Will had put on his dress shoes, a black suit, and a dark maroon shirt open at the throat. He felt a bit overdressed, but he didn't own anything else that might possibly be appropriate for a place like Tortuga. He joined the long line of partydressed weirdos leading up to the club's wrought-iron front gates, tried to unassumingly blend in to the crowd of rainbow-haired and tattooed we're-such-individuals, and knew he was failing miserably. People were staring at him like a tourist. A flamboyantly gay man in a white mesh shirt crowed at him, "Move along there, Mary! Nothin' to see here!" Will pretended not to hear.
His studied nonchalance was soon upstaged as a lone figure staggered around the corner, singing at the top of his lungs, "What shall we do with a drunken sailor? Shanghai the bastard to Australia..."
Jack Sparrow.
"But hark! What ho! I spy young master William, arriving at the most opportune moment, as it were, concurrent, I see, with my own appearance at this fine establishment!" Jack spoke as if he were addressing the entire crowd, though he was clearly talking to himself, unaccompanied. People turned to stare at him.
He'd traded his sweatshirt for a battered and patched trenchcoat, rows of gold buttons carefully sewn down either side of the front and large bucket cuffs attached with uneven red stitches at the sleeve hems. On his head sat a leather broadbrimmed hat, tacked up at the sides and held with screw-back spikes, in the fashion of a tricorn.
"Sparrow," some muttered derisively to one another, and "Sparrow!" eager others called out, waving, motioning him over. He swiveled his hands at them all absently and grabbed Will by the elbow.
"Never wait in a line at Tortuga, friend," he said, sotto voce, as he steered Will toward the front door.
Before Will could protest or ask why, the burly muttonchopped security guard unclipped the chain strung between poles at the head of the line and motioned them through.
"Evening, Jack," the man said.
"'Lo, Gibbs. Much obliged, as always." His fingers fluttered over the drawn-back chain.
"Need to see your friend's ID, of course."
Will fumbled for his wallet, produced the little plastic card. The man grunted, stamped his hand with a blurry black skull and crossbones, and waved them past the cashier. Will found himself in a high-ceilinged foyer, black and white checkered floor, three dark doorways flickering with colored light, out of which different types of music pulsed.
"First time here, no doubt, and a quick tour of the premises is in order, I'm sure," Jack said, grabbing his hand and pulling him through an alcove to the right.
"This here's for the serious dancers. Techno, house, breakbeat, dance, dance, dance. Two bars, DJ...mostly gays and fag hags and raver kids in here. Here's where you can pick up a little something something if you know where to look, tickets on the E train, or a few snow flurries, savvy?" The lights glinted off Jack's teeth. "Ah, but I'm sure you don't bother with that. You don't seem the sort."
Will looked around the room. The dancefloor was packed so full of writhing bodies that people spilled out of it into the walkways surrounding. Knots of lipsticked men and baldheaded women screamed jovially at one another over the rims of clutched drinks, and couples of variously-gendered combinations pressed themselves against the walls, devouring one another.
"Me, I think the music's bloody awful and the heat's unbearable from all the sweaty fucks out there bobbing around like corks in a toilet, but, each his own. C'mon, there's more." Again he grabbed Will's hand and pulled him trailing behind like a dumbstruck toddler into the second room of the club.
This one was larger, flanked by two long bars and a third making an island before a crashing hardwood sea of a dancefloor. A horde of outlandishly dressed people swirled and swayed to the music blaring from banks of speakers: "I watched the sun come up from the edge of the deep green sea," wailed the sorrowful-sounding singer. Men in dresses, women in suitcoats, some of them not wearing much more than undergarments, even.
"This 'ere's the back room. Much more interesting, quite, in fact. Every kind of outcast you can feature, finding a home here in the dark. Looking for family, or freedom, or just a fine fast fuck. You can learn what it means to live in here, or find yourself a path to dying. It's all what you make of it, friend. Debauchery..." Jack's voice sounded faraway, almost wistful, like he was talking about a glimpse of enlightenment instead of some seedy old nightclub full of perverts and misfits.
A long stage ran across the farthest wall, on which garishly dressed and made up dancers swung from poles and cage bars. In one corner stood bizarre furniture, strange equipment constructed of black-painted two-by-fours studded with eyehooks, dungeon gear--a rack, a standing cross, stocks--to which people were strapped. A thin black dominatrix beat them dispassionately with a cat-o-nine, her jaw set.
"That would be Anamaria," Jack's voice muttered in Will's ear as his hand flapped aimlessly in the general direction of the woman with the whip. "Best not to get on her bad side, as it were." He laughed knowingly and clapped Will on the back.
Will gaped, blinking, then straightened; this place made him feel like a country mouse in the middle of downtown, but he'd damn well try his best to put on a city air.
"Drinks all round, eh?" Sparrow said suddenly as if it were the best idea in the world--given the situation, perhaps it was, Will mused--and threaded his way through the crowd.
Will looked around again, marveling as if he'd just woken up to find himself on Mars, then scrambled to catch up with Jack, dogpaddling after him in his wake.
He'd squeezed himself into a position at the far end of the bar and was standing on the bottom rung of a barstool tracing circles in the air with his fingers when Will found him. "Eh love, give us a round down here!" he called out to the bartender, a skinny woman whose black velvet dress dripped from her frame like candle wax.
"Who's that drunken sot squawking at me down there?" she bellowed, barreling down the length of the bar as if she meant to start a fistfight. "It's that scurvy dog, Jack Sparrow!" She broke into a raucous laugh and cuffed Jack teasingly, jostling his hat askew.
"Careful with the goods, love," he drawled, setting his hat aright. "This here's my good friend Will. I hope you'll be treating us right tonight." He winked.
The woman turned, sized him up like a cut of meat. "Well then, Will is it? Any friend of Sparrow's is a friend of mine. You can call me Florrie. I'd shake yer hand but mine are all covered in beer and such. So then, the usual, I presume." She snatched up two cups and bustled off without waiting for a reply.
"What's the usual?" Will inquired.
"Rum Runners, friend!" Jack put his hand to his mouth, kissed his fingers and flung them skyward. "Nectar of the gods, and no mistake!"
Florrie appeared with their drinks, setting them carefully on two cocktail napkins.
Jack grabbed her sticky hand in his grimy paw and kissed it, saying, "A livesaver, you are, Florrie-me-lass."
She dropped a crude curtsy. "These are on me, you dirty grifter." She grinned and hastened away to take the order of a tall man with a mohawk at the opposite end of the bar.
Jack snatched up his drink and gulped half of it in one go, wiping his mouth on the outsized cuff of his coat.
"Now then, I owe you a card reading in exchange for that brilliant portraiture, don't I, Rembrandt Will? One more room in this place, and that's where we'll do it then. Come into my parlor..." He bowed sweepingly, staggering, his hands flipflopping in the direction of a doorway some feet away.
"Very well then." Will picked up his drink, took a long pull of it to fortify himself against whatever strange sights might await him, and strode purposefully through the open archway...
...And smack into Dr. Cornelius Norrington.
"S-Sir?" he gasped. His drink had sloshed a bit onto Norrington's...leather pants? "Oh dear. Oh...sorry, sir. Um."
Norrington's perennially poised and confident expression fell away from his face like shattered glass.
"Will?" He blinked twice, recovered a bit of his composure. "What the devil are you doing in a place like this?"
To be continued...
Notes:
The lyrics Jack sings are from two different songs of the same tune, the first being "Drunken Sailor" (Irish Rovers) and the second being "Snake Eyes and Boxcars" (Firewater).
Club Tortuga is loosely based on ManRay, an actual Boston nightclub.
The song playing in the back room at the club is "Edge of the Deep Green Sea" by the Cure.

TITLE: debauchery, chapter three
AUTHOR: ladybee (d_r_o_n_e)
FANDOM: PotC (modern AU setting)
RATING: R for cursing and adult themes (though no smut in this part)
CHARACTERS: Jack, Will, Norrington, cameos from Gibbs and Anamaria (chapter two) and OC Bonny Jenny (chapter three)
DISCLAIMER: The characters belongs to Disney. The world they're in is mine.
ARCHIVE: Anyone want it? Just comment and let me know.
AUTHOR NOTES/SYNOPSIS: Written in response to penm's challenge, here: http://www.livejournal.com/community/pirategasm/155846.html [Essentially, modern AU, Jack drags will to a freak-scene club full of gays, drag queens, goths, fetishists, etc., where they unexpectedly run into Norrington.]

Set in Boston, this chapter has a brief cameo from Bonny Jenny (an OC from my previous fics A Sea Change and Song of the Sea) in yet another generational incarnation, Jack and Norrington engaged in a bit of wordplay, and a whole lot of rum. I meant this to be a short little story, but it exploded and has turned into something that'll be posted in multiple chapters (i'm guessing four at this point, maybe five).

Before he could respond to Norrington's question, Jack blindly plowed into Will, unaware he'd stopped in the doorway, jostling the remainder of Will's drink all over Norrington.
"Whoa, then. Sorry, friend," Jack said. "Terribly, completely, utterly sorry about that. I suppose those pants were...very expensive, eh?"
Norrington sputtered.
"Sir," Will interjected. "Let me...let me go find some napkins. I..." Will shook his head, mortified, and made for Florrie's bar, grateful for the excuse to retreat to the back room. What the hell was Norrington doing at a club like Tortuga?
Norrington fixed Jack with a cold stare. "Very expensive indeed. I could have you thrown out of here, you know."
Jack smiled boyishly. "Oh, I don't know about that, now, friend. But let's not fight about this, shall we?" He held out his hand.
Norrington's lips tightened, his gaze unwavering. He didn't take Jack's hand.
Jack didn't withdraw it. "You look familiar. Have we perhaps collided before?"
"I don't think so." Norrington's tone was chill. "I'm sure I'd remember it. Unless it were, say, as ships passing in the night."
"Come now, then, sir," Jack's purr made the form of address sound salacious. "You obviously aren't green to a place like this, and no use crying over spilt drinks. Er, even for them as was spilt upon." Jack grinned. "You must know how we counter this sort of ill turn of events. The man who did the spilling buys the man who was spilt upon a drink. The man who was spilt upon, drinks it..."
Norrington's mouth twisted into a tight smile and he finally took Jack's outstretched hand, shaking it once, curtly, before dropping it. "...While listening to a proposition from the man who did the spilling?"
Jack rolled his eyes as if pondering something quite seriously. "Well, technically, it were Will who did the spilling, though I can't deny my own, shall we say, complicity in the matter. Now, clearly, you're already acquainted with young Will, though I'll bet not"--his hands drew spirals in the air in a vague encompassing gesture--"from this place, or anywhere similar."
"Astute. Will's my clerk. I don't anticipate any 'proposition' from Mr. Turner, other than that perhaps I forget I saw him here, in the company of...a man such as yourself."
"Turner, eh?" Jack put a finger to his lips in a gesture of exaggerated contemplation. "And Will would be short for...William, I suppose?"
"Yes." Norrington's eyes narrowed. "Not that it's any of your affair, if he hadn't introduced himself fully upon making your...'acquaintance.' Though, you'll be needing his full legal name for tax purposes, I presume?" Norrington's lip curled around the sarcasm. "I assume he's paying for the pleasure of your company."
Jack's fingers fluttered at his collarbone in mock affront. "Sir. You wound my sense of fairness. Only them as can afford it pay for my company. I fancy you probably don't pay *him* enough for me to ask it of him. But come on, friend," Jack placated, steering Norrington toward the lounge bar, tended by a thin young woman with spiky white hair, "I'll find you that drink, and you can be on about your business, and leave us to go on about ours, square?"

Will rounded the corner with a fistful of napkins in time to see Jack press a pint glass of Guinness into Norrington's hand and bow with a flourish, an actor at his curtain call. Norrington looked up, smirking, met Will's eyes, and touched two fingers to his temple before he turned and left the lounge.
Jack spun round to follow the direction of Norrington's mock salute and his face broke into a grin.
"Will! Will, my good friend. Don't worry about a thing, your chum Jack Sparrow has set things aright with the old boy."
"Jack." Will shook his head. "That's my boss. I work for that man. God only knows what he...I..." Will couldn't even think any further on the subject, much less articulate.
"Worry about it later, eh? He can't think too poorly of you. He's here himself, and dressed for the occasion."
Will considered; Jack had a point.
"I know what'll take your mind off it. Jenny's got a full rig of Captain shots set up and ready to fire."
"What?"
"Lord, luv, you are a green one. But I like you. Know that." Jack pulled him bodily toward the lounge bar, where a thin whitehaired girl grinned from behind a line of nine shot glasses filled to brimming with amber liquor.
Jack made the introductions, amid clouds transcribed by his own hands on the air. "Will, Jenny. Jenny, Will. Will, Captain. Captain, Will. Will, Jenny, Captain, Jack...'Captain Jack,' now I do like the sound of that..."
Jenny leaned over the bar and pulled Jack's hat down over his eyes. "Will you zip it and drink, before m' manager comes round the bend and sees me handing out freebies?" She handed a glass to Will and took one up herself, as Jack waved his hands about miming blindness.
"Jack." Her voice was stern, though she followed the rebuke with a giggle. Jack pushed his hat back and snatched up a glass for himself.
"Very well then. To what shall we drink first...Will?"
Will looked into the little cup of spiced rum. "To me still having a job come Monday?"
"To Will's continued employment!" Jenny pronounced.
"To Will," Jack said, and they clinked the three glasses, knocking back their contents. The undiluted rum hit the back of Will's throat and took the breath from him for a moment.
"Your turn, Jenners," Jack's voice sounded thick from the drink still lingering in his mouth.
"You know my toast, Sparrow." Will thought Jenny's gaze betrayed an old love, though she couldn't have been more than twenty-five.
"That I do." Jack's eyes returned her look with one of ancient familiarity, old friendship, eyes of frank intimacy but no intensity of love, neither old nor new.
They each took a glass.
"Take what you can," said Jenny.
"Give nothing back," finished Jack. They knocked the bottoms of the shotglasses on the bar before tipping them back into their mouths.
Will didn't understand the gist of the toast; it didn't seem to apply to him, though for the sake of camaraderie he knocked his own glass on the bar and gulped it down.
"Your turn, Jack," Will enthused, the rum painting a warm smile across his face.
"My turn." Jack held up his third and final shotglass, contemplated it like a gemstone, turning it so that the myriad lights of the club filtered through the topaz liquid.
The liquor in Will's brain sped around, unsettled him, held him close and suggested that these two strange strangers were on some level something akin to his friends, people he felt kindly towards. Jenny and Will took up the remaining two shotglasses. Then Jack leaned in as if he were about to impart to them a deep secret.
"To freedom," Jack said, and his voice was close but his eyes were far away.
"To freedom," Will and Jenny whispered. The clear notes of glass upon glass, and a sugar salt burn leaving a line of fire from lips to tongue to heart to stomach and then scribbling itself down all the tiny pathways of his blood.
Will was plastered.
"Right then," Jack said, almost businesslike. "Drink's fine, friends are finer, but I owe y'something, Will. Shall we see what the cards want to say?"
To be continued...

TITLE: debauchery, chapter four
AUTHOR: ladybee (d_r_o_n_e)
FANDOM: PotC (modern AU setting)
RATING: R for cursing and adult themes (a bit of Jack/Will slashitude in this part, though purely accidental, circumstancial, if you will)
CHARACTERS: Jack, Will, Norrington, cameos from Gibbs and Anamaria (chapter two), OC Bonny Jenny (chapter three), and Barbossa (chapter four)
DISCLAIMER: The characters belongs to Disney. The world they're in is mine.
ARCHIVE: Anyone want it? Just comment and let me know.
AUTHOR NOTES/SYNOPSIS: Written in response to penm's challenge, here: http://www.livejournal.com/community/pirategasm/155846.html [Essentially, modern AU, Jack drags will to a freak-scene club full of gays, drag queens, goths, fetishists, etc., where they unexpectedly run into Norrington.]

Set in Boston, this chapter features Jack doing that tarot reading he's been promising Will since chapter one, and an ominous run-in with Barbossa near the club's bathroom. I meant this to be a short little story, but it exploded and has turned into something that'll be posted in multiple chapters (i'm guessing five). Thanks to niqaeli for the jumpstart on my writer's block with this bit, and to daft for the beta.

Will saw himself blearily, as if he were looking at himself from somewhere outside his own body. He sat, folded into a huge overstuffed armchair like a dropped doll. Jack sat next to him in an identical chair before a mirrored coffeetable. In his hands was the large deck of brightly colored tarot cards.
This was it, Will thought, what he'd come here for, to have his fortune told by this weird gutter-gypsy of a man. Just as he imagined it, grander even, for the drink and the setting, the weird underworld of a nightclub that pulsed and throbbed with light and music and strange people with lives he could only begin to imagine. Will shook his head and tried to focus.
Jack began to carefully shuffle the deck, splitting it in sections and sliding the cards gently back together into a single pile. His eyes fluttered and closed, and his long hands folded the large cards easily into themselves. He spread the cards horizontally into a long overlapping line on the reflective surface of the table.
"Choose five cards, however you like. Don't turn them over."
Will did so.
"Now shuffle those five until they feel rightlike to you. If you have a question, keep it in your mind as you do so."
Will cut the cards, placed the bottom on the top, repeated this process a couple more times. He wondered how he would know when they felt "right." He went through them one by one, staring at the colorful painting replicated in quintuplicate on their backs, turning a couple upside-down, trying to think of a question. Should he ask what would come of his run-in with Norrington? Would it affect his future at Harvard? What of his acquaintance with Jack? What had drawn him to the man in the first place, brought him into this weird den of iniquity, a place he didn't fit, yet on some level wished he did? The cards felt smooth and warm, but slightly too large for his hands.
He started to feel nervous about futzing with them for so long, and handed them back. Jack Sparrow scooted his chair around to sit alongside Will. He held the cards a moment pressed between his palms, then laid them out on the table in an inverted V of three cards, with two underneath, a shape sort of like a child's drawing of a house. The cards obscured the mirrored glass of the table, reflecting back slivers of their faces between the bright-painted cards.
Jack turned over the one at the apex. A picture of a white statue of an Egyptian goddess, arms outstretched, on a bower of fruit and flowers. "The Priestess. She represents you, the core of you. She's your independence, brings you an increase in your confidence, the way y'know yerself. She also says you should trust your intuition."
"Trust my intuition," Will repeated.
The second card in the formation revealed a crystal surmounted by an arching rainbow, red bolts of lightning emanating from its center. "The Eight of Wands tells you of your intellect, how you will address what's soon to come." Jack's voice sounded further away and closer at the same time. "There'll be a misunderstanding. You must be honest and open, forthright about your beliefs to those who challenge you. You must know yourself, Will, and listen to others who know what you don't. If this creates conflict, you will prevail."
"Trust my intuition, and stand by what I believe. If this creates conflict, I will prevail." The rum made the thoughts tumble over themselves like somersaulting children. He tried to grasp at them, failed.
"The third card speaks to yer emotions. Your desires, if you will." He turned it over; it was upside-down. A caduceus. A hawk. Flames. Staves with animals' heads. "The Five of Wands, inverted. Fulfill your desires. Let go of fears and bitterness. Don't be scared like the boy that you were. Act. Free yourself from restraints."
Will whispered to himself again. "Trust my intuition, and stand by what I believe. Fulfill my desires and free myself."
"The fourth card speaks to the physical reality. Things that happen, in this world. The world of the body." A spiraling radiant sun, surrounded by the signs of the Zodiac. Beneath, two sexless angels with butterfly wings dancing, exalting, arms raised. Upside-down. "The Sun, inverted. Be careful working toward the fulfillment of your wishes. You may not choose the right partners if you don't trust your intuition as The Priestess advised."
Will clutched at Jack's worn sleeve, interrupting, "What sort of partners does it mean? Business partners? Friends? Lovers?"
"Time and experience will have to tell you that, friend." He sighed patiently and waved Will's hand away with a splay of his fingers. "You already know, or will know when the time comes. Yer wise, Will. Wiser than your youth, I can tell. Now. The inverted Sun also warns you that you're at risk; your success hangs in perfect balance, encourage yourself to surmount preconceptions, relax, express creativity. Forget Norrington. Allow yourself to dance, Will, or you will forget how."
A black snake of a dreadlock fell forward across his eye. He brushed it aside and turned up the fifth and final card. "These are your passions." An angelic woman in white. A swan, a dolphin, a turtle in a goblet. "Ah... The Princess of Cups. She's for freedom, loving yourself, sharing yourself with others who are worthy. She will teach you how to conquer jealousy."
Will struggled to remember all of the things the reading advised. Trust my intuition, fulfill my desires. Choose the right partners, allow myself to dance...gah. It was all spilling over and sloshing around in his head, mingling with the drink, diluting. Why had he drank so much rum? He knew he wasn't a drinker. Why hadn't he brought a notebook to write it all down?
Jack gathered up the cards and replaced them in their velvet pouch, hiding it away somewhere in the folds of his voluminous coat. He stood. "Now then, we're square, friend. And, if y'don't hold it against me, I've got to go shake the dew off my lily, as it were."
"What?"
Jack sighed heavily. "Have a pee, Will."
"Oh." Will considered. "Maybe I better come with you. My lily is...er. I think I could have a pee, too." He stood up shakily, and wobbled a few steps. "The shots...they seem to have got the better of me."
"Well. Hrm." Jack considered. "I've an idea. I'll help you. Not that I'm what you'd call stable, or a good man to lean on when you've got your rum-legs on. And you don't want Gibbs or anyone else seeing you leaning on someone or they'll think you're too drunk to be here and toss you out. We can't have that."
"No. Can't have that," Will repeated. "Bad enough Norrington saw me here. If that happened..."
Jack slipped an arm round Will's waist. "But it won't. Now, put your arm round my shoulders, but not like you're blasted, right?"
Will blinked.
"Bloody hell, Will. We're mates, here, aren't we? Pretend you're m'damn boyfriend, or best pal or some such, nobody gives a fuck. Just so we can get you to the pisser and splash some water on yer face."
"Right." Will draped an arm across Jack's shoulders and off they went weaving through the crowd.
"Left," Jack coached. "Down these stairs...left again..."
Will looked around. They were in a long, dark hallway, two lighted archways leading into tiled rooms. A tall man with straggly hair and a plumed hat stepped through the doorway of one of them.
"Barbossa..." Jack whispered, sounding alarmed.
Will had no clue what a barbossa was. He gestured in the direction of the man with the hat, "That must be the men's..."
Jack slammed him against the wall before he could finish his sentence, pressing his face into the hollow between Will's shoulder and neck, his arms pinioned in Jack's embrace.
"Will," he whispered. "Don't slap me for this. Trust me, it's in your own best interest."
And before he could ask, Jack kissed him. Kissed him the way Will thought men kiss women they love, deeply, voraciously, open-mouthed. Hands in his hair, fingers at his throat, lips like rum fire, teeth clashing together awkwardly. Will couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't understand, couldn't process, but for some reason he trusted Jack and didn't pull away. Will heard a chuckle over Jack's shoulder, and footsteps dying away as the man in the hat strode away from them down the hallway.
Jack pulled away, cool air on Will's lips where Jack's mouth had been.
Jack looked at the empty corridor. "Sorry, friend. You'll thank me later."
Will's head was spinning.
"Jack," he said. "I think I'm going to be sick."
To be continued...
Notes:
Jack's tarot deck is the Alistair Crowley deck.

TITLE: debauchery, chapter five
AUTHOR: ladybee (d_r_o_n_e)
FANDOM: PotC (modern AU setting)
RATING: R for cursing and adult themes
CHARACTERS: Jack, Will, Norrington, cameos from Gibbs and Anamaria (chapter two), OC Bonny Jenny (chapter three), Barbossa (chapter four), and oblique reference to Bootstrap Bill (chapter five)
DISCLAIMER: The characters belongs to Disney. The world they're in is mine.
ARCHIVE: Anyone want it? Just comment and let me know.
AUTHOR NOTES/SYNOPSIS: Written in response to penm's challenge, here: http://www.livejournal.com/community/pirategasm/155846.html [Essentially, modern AU, Jack drags will to a freak-scene club full of gays, drag queens, goths, fetishists, etc., where they unexpectedly run into Norrington.]

Set in Boston, you know the drill by now. I meant this to be a short little story, but it exploded and has turned into something that'll be posted in multiple chapters (at this point i'll stop guessing--I wanted to wind it up in one, but it ran away again and there's at least one more...arg!).

Will heaved the last of his guts into the cool porcelain bowl of the toilet. He wiped his mouth on some tissue and struggled to his feet. He felt much better. His head had stopped spinning and his thoughts were not so tangled and whirled. He pressed his face to the cool metal wall of the bathroom stall and closed his eyes as a semblance of sobriety returned to settle about his head.
"Are you...shipshape in there, friend?" Jack's voice from outside the door, tinged with concern.
"I'll- I'll be fine," Will rasped, his throat sore from the puking. He laughed a little. "I feel better already."
"Well, I have to admit," he heard Jack's boots, pacing across the tile of the bathroom, "that was a first. I have kissed a lot of people in my time, for a lot of reasons, I have, and those people have had a variety of reactions. Some, quite positive; some, well, not so much. But never, under any circumstances, have I kissed someone who's run to puke the entirety of his guts out immediately thereafter. Well, I guess there was that dancer from the Golden Banana who tried drinking me under the table that once, but technically speaking, it was she that kissed me, in that particular instance..." His voice trailed off. "You are...alright in there, right?"
Will unhooked the latch and pushed the door open, right into Jack's forehead.
"Ow! Ow, lord, Will." Jack put his hand to his head, bent to retrieve his hat from the floor.
"Oh god, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were standing so close..." He grabbed a fistful of papertowels, dampened them in the sink. "Is it bleeding?"
Jack waved him away.
"No, no. I'll be alright. It's turnabout for slamming you up against that wall on such short notice." He smiled, prodded his head with two fingers, winced a bit. He looked up at Will from the corner of his eye. "It's fine. I'm fine. Question is, are you fine?"
Will nodded. "What with the...the, uh, kissing and the puking, I'm about as sober as they come now."
"Right. Touche."
A beat, and they both burst into laughter. Will put the compress to his own head, still feeling a little flushed as the drink ebbed from his blood.
"Now, you want to tell me what that was about, that whole...kissing me...thing? Who was that man in the hat, and why didn't you want him to see me? Or you, or us, or whatever it was that you didn't want him seeing?"
"That was Barbossa," Jack said, as if that was answer in and of itself. "He don't need to see your face, not right yet anyhow, certainly not when you were a couple sheets to the wind. Though I reckon I can tell you now that you aren't so green around the gills." Jack began to pace, after a fashion, weaving in a sort of figure-eight around Will.
"There's a handful of ways a man like me, or a man like Barbossa, can make a living. Most of them aren't what you'd call legal, technically, but some's better than others. Some's pretty up-front. Everybody knows where everybody stands, or kneels, or lies back and thinks of England, if you're picking up what I'm laying down, as it were." He looked sidelong at Will, who nodded.
"Right. Others, well, not quite as forthright, but not underhanding either--perhaps a bit of tricksy, beggary, lighten a man's load who's got too much for his own good anyhow, spread the wealth around, if you catch the breeze I'm blowing here."
Jack stopped pacing and looked Will straight in the eye.
"And some ways, lets just say those ways lead to a world of hurt for all involved, a land of pain and an ocean of hopelessness." Jack's eyes were little windows to a dark old soul, black as the space between the stars.
Will blinked first.
Jack continued. "Me, I'm largely up-front, not always forthright, and I've been known to hand under, but only in very particular situations. Barbossa...well, let's just say he got accustomed to dredging the very bottom."
Will sighed; he was getting a bit impatient with Jack's roundabout way of speech. "Right then, so he's a bastard, and you're a whore with a heart of gold. Fine. What's that got to do with me?"
Jack looked a bit hurt, and Will regretted his brusque words.
"I'm getting to that. Friend." The word was a rebuke. Will was chastened.
"Few years back, three of us ran a bit of a ring. A brotherhood, if you will. Just a collection of men like ourselves, rent-boys and lifters and bum-rollers...pooling our resources, as it were. There's safety in numbers if you work beneath the boards, call the street your home. The three of us, you must know, were me, Barbossa, and Bill."
Jack paused. Will waited for him to continue.
"Well, Barbossa, he comes to us one night, says he's got a way to make us all a lot of money and fastlike. Says he's going to start trading horses, if you follow me. And no mistake, there's money and plenty in that, high demand from them as wants to buy." Jack slapped the crook of his elbow.
Will's eyes widened. "Selling heroin?"
"Shh, shh." Jack nodded.
"Anyhow, there's money in that, but there's darkness, too. Bill and I wanted no traffic with it, but he went on anyhow. She's a crafty mistress and sings a siren song that's hard to resist for them whose soul's inclined to darkwards, particularly when she starts to stretch your pockets towards bottomless. Before long, he'd started skimming off the top for himself, got a lot of our boys into it as well.
"Thought he could ride the horse and keep her steady, but that's never the case long, you get on her back and before you know it she's riding you. You feel nothing, not the wind on your face, nor the warmth of the summer night. Drink doesn't satisfy, food turns to ash in your mouth, and you forget any pleasure you took from the company of friends or brothers...nothing but the hole in your soul you keep trying to fill through a needle in your arm. Fellows we'd called friend became ghosts of themselves, living, but deadlike.
"He took all the money we'd saved, all the money entrusted to the three of us by all our ring of fellows. Took it and pissed it away into his horsetrade, into his veins. When we found out, Bill went mad, called him out on Cambridge Common. Fought him, man to man, and in a fair fight would have beaten him, but people don't fight fair in our world, Will. Barbossa had a knife in his boot, cut Bill up real bad. I got to the green and Barbossa had gone, there was Bill in a pool of his own blood. I went for help, but when I got back, Bill was gone too. Last time I saw him, that was. Don't know if he's living or dead." Jack paused, as if he might spare Will from going on to the end of the tale, then continued.
"Last thing he told me, lying there, bleeding to death, was this. Barbossa, as he wiped Bill's own blood off his thin steel knife, called Bill traitor." Jack shook his head. "Him, of all people. Mad from the drugs, he was. Knew how to cut Bill another way than with a knife to flesh. Swore he'd find Bill's son someday and kill him, too, like a dog. He knew Bill's son were everything to him, knew that for years Bill had been sending what money he came by to the boy's ma to help pay for his schooling. He left them, true, though not because he didn't love them. He left because he did."
Jack hesitated a moment, then put his hands squarely on Will's shoulders. The faraway look left Jack's eyes for the first time. "Will, did you know your father?"
Will's mind reeled as if the drink were back with a vengeance. Pieces were falling into place for a puzzle he'd long stopped thinking about, and he didn't want to see the picture they revealed. There couldn't be truth to this madness. Will pushed Jack's hands away but didn't break his stare.
"No. I didn't. He left my mother before I was born. What are you saying, Jack?"
"I think you might be Bill's son, friend. His name, his full name, his honest given name, was William Turner."
To be continued...
Notes:
The Golden Banana is a strip club in the Boston area.
Cambridge Common is a large public park area just outside of Harvard Square in Cambridge.

TITLE: debauchery, chapter six
AUTHOR: ladybee (d_r_o_n_e)
FANDOM: PotC (modern AU setting)
RATING: R for cursing and adult themes
CHARACTERS: Jack, Will, Norrington, cameos from Gibbs and Anamaria (chapter two), OC Bonny Jenny (chapter three), Barbossa (chapter four/five/six), oblique reference to Bootstrap Bill (chapter five/six), and Gillette (chapter six)
DISCLAIMER: The characters belongs to Disney. The world they're in is mine.
ARCHIVE: Anyone want it? Just comment and let me know.
AUTHOR NOTES/SYNOPSIS: Written in response to penm's challenge, here: http://www.livejournal.com/community/pirategasm/155846.html [Essentially, modern AU, Jack drags will to a freak-scene club full of gays, drag queens, goths, fetishists, etc., where they unexpectedly run into Norrington.]

Set in Boston, you know the drill by now. I meant this to be a short little story, but it exploded and has turned into something that's posted in multiple chapters. Everything gets wound up in this one--Will confronts Barbossa, there's a knife fight, a few revelations, and a last round of rum shots.

In short, Will exploded.
"What the hell kind of a trick are you trying to pull on me, Jack? What's in it for you? Because something certainly must be, though I can't figure out what. You expect me to believe that my father was some sort of...pickpocket homeless prostitute pal of yours? And that that man, that man that just walked out of this restroom not ten minutes ago, stabbed him to death over some bogus heroin deal? What'd you call me earlier, green? I might be that, but not so green as you seem to think. Surely you haven't cooked up this large of a batch of bullshit just to explain away in your 'fascinating shyster manner'"--here Will twirled his hands in the air in a mockery of Jack--"your reasons for some pathetic drunken groping in the hallway of a gaybar. Good lord, I don't even know why I came here in the first place."
Novas of red anger flashed across the black holes of Jack's eyes, and he stepped forward so that his face was a scant inch from Will's own. "Don't you? Really, now? Think hard, Will. I think you do. You've got the grime of the street in your blood, same as a sailor's got the salt of the sea. Believe me or don't. It's a simple thing to get to the bottom of. Go right upstairs, Barbossa's up there. Give him a good view of your face, see what he does. You do look just like your father, Will. Uncanny resemblance." Will took a step back, looked over Jack's shoulder at his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. He'd never seen his father, not even a picture.
Jack stepped forward, closing the distance between them again, and resumed, "Do me the courtesy of just a little respect, though, won't you? A whore don't ask for much in that department, but he do like to see just a scrap of it from his friends, square?"
Will took another step away, his back now against the cold metal of the stall door. Again Jack closed the distance and suddenly his body was pressed against Will's, his fist clenched in Will's hair, jerking his head back painfully. Their lips were the span of a breath apart as Jack whispered harshly, "And you can bet that if all I wanted from you was a little piece of something in a dark corner, I've got a million other ways to get it, much easier than you know. Tricks of the trade. You might have the street in your blood, but I'm drenched in it and I can never scrub it off. Pretty soon it drowns parts of you. A wise man such as yerself won't forget that." He let go of Will's hair, turned away with a mutter of disgust, and stalked out of the restroom. Will noticed that for a change, Jack didn't stagger. Will shook his head.
"Wait, Jack!" Will headed after him, caught up to him in the hallway.
"Wait. I'm...sorry. I'm sorry I said...what I did. But see it from my eyes, will you? It's too much. It's too far out there...You're some stranger I met by chance. I mean, I never knew my father. And the story you tell about your friend Bill, a man with my name, his name, our face... Good god, Jack, whatever you say is in my blood, I'm just some townie kid from the Cape. It's a lot to take in."
"Perhaps." Jack nodded. "Chance, you say?" Jack cocked his head to the side. "She and I have a long and troubled relationship, we do. Sometimes she goes by the name Fate, see?"
Will considered. "Right. Fate. Well, if this friend of yours, this Bill Turner, if he was my father, and if that man upstairs, Barbossa, killed him with his own two hands, I can't just let that go, can I? I have to know. I have to find him, ask him, confront him. What's he going to do, stab me right here in front of all these people?"
Jack shook his head slowly. "You're on your own, Will. He's crazy. But then, I suppose, so am I. And so, apparently, are you. We're all mad here." Jack laughed, walked a few steps away. His stagger was back and his hands flopped like a marionette's. Will followed, grabbed his arm, stopped him.
Jack sighed. "Confront him if you want. I won't be there to wipe your blood away like I did your Da's."
Will was surprised to feel tears in his eyes. He blinked them back angrily.
Jack reached out a hand and his fingers brushed Will's face, just as he'd done the moment they'd met. His voice sounded faraway when he spoke. "Leave, Will. This isn't your place. Not your world. You don't know what you're doing. Don't...do anything stupid."
Will's tears drowned beneath a little wave of madness. He knocked Jack's hand away. "Stop touching me, Jack. You're not my lover and, apparently, you're not my friend, whatever you like to say to the contrary." He turned and made for the stairway, leaving Jack alone in the darkened hull of the club's basement.

At the top of the stairs, Will scanned the crowd of made-up faces and sweaty bodies, and his eyes alit on the broad brim of Barbossa's hat. He began threading his way through the crowd.
"Barbossa!" he cried, and the black-clad man turned slowly. His face was haggard, his cheeks hollow like death's. He smiled with the grin of a skull.
"Yes?" he replied, drawing out the vowel in a condescending manner. "I'm sorry. Should I...know you?"
Will set his jaw. "I don't know. Should you? Take a good look." He lifted his chin so that the lights of the dancefloor played across the planes of his face.
"Hmm." Barbossa pretended to contemplate deeply. "Let's see...ah, it's coming to me now...no wait. Tch. Lost it. Enlighten me. Who are you?"
"Some years ago, you had a business partner, I gather, by the name of Bill."
Recognition spread cruelly across Barbossa's face like fire through treetops. "Ah yes. I believe I've placed your face now indeed. Where've you been hiding yourself, boy? I made a promise to your father. On his deathbed, it were. Said I'd take care of you...in m'own fashion."
He shook his right arm and a slingblade fell out of his sleeve into his hand. With a series of complex swings of his wrist, it opened in a whirl of knives.
"Before we dance, care to tell me your name?" Barbossa's teeth glinted pale yellow in the rotted cavern of his mouth.
Will gulped. He thought about everything he knew of bravery, from storybooks and Hollywood, and took a step toward Barbossa.
"My name is William Turner. You killed my father..."
Barbossa rolled his eyes. "Spare me the theatrics, boy." He lunged.
Will jumped back, felt the air from the swing of the knife inches from his stomach. The crowd had pulled back to form a circle around the two men. Will snatched a beer bottle from the hand of a man at the edge, smashed it over the back of a chair, and held the broken end before him like a weapon or a shield.
Barbossa laughed like the damned. "This is the sort of behavior that got your father killed. Crossing that thin line between bravery and stupidity." Barbossa sneered and lunged again, though he spun in a followthrough as Will dodged again, the heel of his left hand knocking the bottle away from Will.
Will stumbled and Barbossa seized the advantage, grabbing his arm, twisting, shoving Will against the wall of the stage. Barbossa wrenched Will's arm in the socket and an explosion of pain shot fireworks across his vision; Will bit his lip til it bled, determined not to cry out. Barbossa pressed himself against Will, leaned in to whisper in his ear.
"Tortuga security are in my pocket, boy. Their pay's my blood money. No one's coming to save you." His breath was awful, like starch and mold and decay. Will felt cold steel against his throat and flinched, tried not to swallow.
"Aren't you going to beg for your life?" he taunted. "Just like your dear old Pa?"
Will clenched his teeth. "Burn in hell," he snarled.
"I intend to. Save me a place." Will squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath.
"Drop it, Barbossa," came an authoritarian voice, followed by the sound of a gun cocking. Barbossa dropped the knife, let go of Will's arm, turned, slowly. Will scrambled to his feet, rubbing his twisted shoulder. He looked up to see his savior...
Norrington, looking smug, standing behind an earnest young man holding the gun he'd heard in one hand and a police badge in the other. "I think you have your man, Gillette."
Gillette nodded to two men at his side, who moved in with handcuffs and began reading Barbossa his rights. Gillette kept his gun trained on Barbossa, who sneered but remained silent. The officers escorted him none-too-ceremoniously toward the club's back exit.
"Sir?" Will was incredulous. "What...?"
Norrington smiled. "What did you think I was doing here, Will? I've been lending a hand to Officer Gillette of the Cambridge Police Department in navigating the legalities of undercover work on the Tortuga heroin distribution ring for quite some time. Barbossa's a slippery fish; we've never managed to catch him at something with any solid evidence on him."
"So, how did you know that tonight, that just now..." Will's voice trailed off.
"You could say, a little bird told us." Norrington tipped his head toward Florrie's bar on the far wall. She and Jack had one large cup between them, two straws, their dark heads close together as they gulped it down in unison.
"Jack Sparrow?"
Norrington nodded. "I thought he looked familiar. Gillette had tried to befriend him undercover, several of his men had, but he saw through them, didn't want to cooperate. Didn't trust them. Had his own reasons I suppose. Something...or someone...made him change his mind about that."
Will smiled in spite of himself.
"So, about the matter of what you're doing here in the first place, among these sorts of people? Since I know you aren't working with Gillette yourself... And Jack Sparrow, he's a grifter, Will." Norrington raised an eyebrow.
"And a good man. Jack..." Will considered. "You might say he's a friend of the family. In a way. And now that he's brought me here, I think, perhaps, I like this place in a strange sense. I'm not sure. I guess we'll see." He looked around the club, its dark corners, lurid murals barely visible above the heads of urchins and harlots and gypsies like Anamaria and Florrie and Jenny. At the far wall, Jack was laying out his tarot cards with exaggerrated care as Florrie leaned over the bar, rapt.
"So, this is where your true heart lies, then, is it?"
Will smiled. "Sir, if it's not too bold of me to say, I believe my private life is none of your business. Sir."
It was Norrington's turn to smile. "I stand corrected. Now. I'm sure Gillette has his hands full with Barbossa and his crew, and won't be needing my assistance for a while anyway. What say you and I go stand Mr. Sparrow to a drink for his trouble before I go?"
Will mopped his brow with the cuff of his shirt. "I think he'd be much obliged. I think we could all use a drink after this evening."
Norrington clapped him on the back. "Right you are, Will."

Florrie poured out four shots of spiced rum and Norrington handed them around. "This place is better off without Barbossa hanging around, that's for sure. Let's have a toast then, shall we?" she said, raising hers high. "To Officer Gillette."
"And to Jack," Norrington replied.
Jack smiled his slow smile. "To Will," he added.
Will looked from Florrie to Norrington to Jack, then to the small glass in his fingers.
"To freedom."
And together, they drank.

send RUM!
Back to shore