AUTHOR: Lady K. d'Azrael
PAIRING: Jack Sparrow/Captain Morgan
NOTES: Captain Morgan was a real person. My knowledge of him is sketchy, so don't e-mail me with historical lectures, because I don't care – it's a slash story, get over it. Kate's informative note: privateers are like pirates, but their actions were sanctioned by their countries during wartime - license to pillage, if you will. This story is set when Morgan was at the beginning of his career – just a young, ambitious buccaneer. I don't think in terms of time (though exact date of Pirates of the Caribbean's setting is unknown to me) that Jack and Morgan would have overlapped, but they're just unwitting playthings in my hands - ha ha ha!

Dedicated to: Laura – happy birthday! – written in fond memory of the FILTHY conversation that took place in Amsterdam and which is never to be repeated to anyone (I mean it! Remember: we swore it would go with us to our cold, cold graves!).

Also dedicated to: Captain Morgan's finest rum. It's rum-ilicious! And Dale Newte you still owe me a bottle after that incident with the punch!

Jack was in a position he had been in several times before: hands pressed together as if in prayer, but really bound with hemp rope at the wrists. He dazed off over the rippling sea and calmly awaited his fate. The Black Pearl was swarming with conquering privateers; the captain was coming.

"Well, well," said a rich voice with a pleasantly lilting Welsh accent, "Jack Sparrow isn't it?"

Jack was too dispirited to even add with his usual insistence "Captain Jack Sparrow," so he just nodded and asked: "And who is it that has the pleasure of capturing me?"

"You may have heard of me. I am Captain Henry Morgan."

Jack snorted bitterly. Bloody privateers, swaggering about as if they owned the seven seas. At least pirates were honest thieves, not hired pillagers.

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance, I'm sure," Jack said, wondering idly if he was going to be marooned somewhere, or whether Morgan would shoot him and have done. Jack heard the sound of the measured step of heeled boots on the planks as Morgan walked around to face him.

"Ah," Morgan pulled up the sleeve of Jack's loose linen shirt and glanced at his tattoos, "as handsome and as battle-scarred as the stories say. But I wonder . . . some say that you're mad, others that you're a raging drunkard – which is it?"

"Both, given the opportunity."

Captain Morgan was tall and active-looking, extravagantly dressed, with dark hair that fell in waves past his shoulders and only one gold tooth, which caught the sun as he smiled.

"I expect you're wondering," he said in his voice of a warm timbre, "what it is I'll be doing with your crew."

Jack didn't deign to respond, but gave Morgan a look that said he wasn't in the mood for drawn-out threats.

"I can't sail your ship with my few numbers, I expect you know that. I'll be keeping some to sail her under the watchful eye of my best men. The rest of your lot will be in the brig . . . well, I was going to say as hostages, but I don't expect pirates would think twice about deserting crewmates, would they? How does that code go? 'He who falls behind . . .'"

In an uncharacteristically coarse gesture, Jack spat at Morgan's feet. "Don't you lecture about honour, privateer. Just because you're not an outlaw doesn't make you any less the ruffian. My only hope is that some Spanish fleet comes sailing up over that horizon and blasts this tub to splinters."

Morgan laughed, it crescendoed and his face showed genuine amusement. "Ah, so there's another thing that's true: Captain Jack Sparrow does not fear death, nor any man." He pulled a rapier from the belt at his waist and Jack did not flinch. Morgan slid the flashing blade between Jack's hands and he felt it there: cold, almost liquid, before the privateer gave a sharp and forceful flick of his wrist and the ropes fell away. "I respect that," Morgan added in a confidential undertone.

It seemed that dinner would be an intimate affair. Jack sat facing Morgan at a table laid with fruit, vegetables and unsalted meat; Morgan's crew were only a few days out of port and so provisions were still fresh and in abundance.

"Jack," Morgan began, pouring red wine from a carafe into an elegant long-stemmed glass, "I'm interested to know all about you. Believe it or not, I've followed your adventures with great interest . . ." here he listed all of Jack's most infamous achievements, both the true ones and the absurd: vanishing under the eyes of representatives of the East India Company, sacking a port without firing a single shot, sailing off the map and along the underside of the world . . .

"The thing you have to understand mate," Jack said, having got back his natural loquacity after the indignity of capture, "is that a pirate lives by his reputation. After a while people sort of exaggerate of their own accord. That isn't any of my business, but it doesn't hurt to encourage them."

"So, they're not true, the stories?" Morgan looked amused more than disappointed.

"Depends how you look at it," Jack replied enigmatically, gesturing with the hand that held a bitten-into apple. "Buccaneers just like a good story is all, the taller the tale the better."

"You're a hard man to figure," Morgan took a sip of wine.

"You're not the first to say so." Jack took his feet off the table and gave Morgan a serious look. "Now let's be honest shall we, Morgan?"

"Please, call me Henry."

"Right Hal, now while I appreciate this dinner and all – very gracious of you – I'd like to know what you plan to do with my crew."

Morgan was a strange man, Jack decided, at this question the privateer sat back in his chair and touched his beard thoughtfully before giving him a direct look. "What would you do in my position Jack?"

"You can't ask me that. I'd never be in your position: I don't take other men's ships."

Morgan gave a short, sharp laugh. "Ah, but theft, raping and pillaging, that's more your style, hmm?"

"No different than yours."

"Britain is at war," Morgan's eyes took on a zealous intensity, "I'm doing my part to defeat her enemies, and if I make a profit along the way who's to criticise?"

"We could argue all night about this. I'd just like to know if you're planning on killing me and my crew. It's cruel to leave a man hanging on and wondering."

"It depends."

"On what?"

"How . . . acquiescent, how co-operative, you are."

"Make clear your meaning mate, I'm nought but a simple pirate."

"Well, put it this way: sometimes you drag a drunken man aboard at port, and when he wakes up you give him a choice . . ."

"So you're saying we've been press ganged, is that it?"

"That's it. And if you're smart, and I know you are, Jack - despite the posing at being a simpleton – you'll play along and make yourself a nice profit."

Jack was silent and contemplative for a while. "So you're just angling to increase your fleet is that it? Ambition to be Commodore Hal Morgan?"

Morgan swept his abundant, wavy hair behind his shoulders. "It's not delusions of grandeur, if that's what you're thinking. It's a simple case of fire power: it's a lot less risky to take a Spanish ship if there are guns blasting on both sides."

"Clear as crystal," Jack nodded, thinking 'coward'. "I'll make a deal with you: my boys and me will play along till you've got as much treasure as this old girl can hold, then you let The Pearl sail off over the horizon and we're quits. We'd be serving our time, buying our freedom."

"Ah Jack, you're a young captain, but you're a wily one. It'll be a pleasure to work with you, though of course you realise that I don't trust you and I won't turn my back on you for a second."

"I was taken that as read," Jack smiled. "Though I'm startled by your leniency. I heard Captain Morgan to be a fierce man who left none of his captives alive."

"Stories Jack, it doesn't hurt to be feared by reputation. Besides," he half-smiled, "It'd be another matter if you were a Spaniard. I've respect for the life of an Englishman, even that of a scurvy buccaneer like you."

"Very understated," said Morgan as he climbed over the rails of The Black Pearl from the longboat and regarding Jack. The pirate sat on deck swigging rum from a bottle and wearing a somewhat baroque crown that they had won from a captured Galleon earlier in the day.

"She's got a leak," Jack reported, "the first mate's overseeing repair." He offered Morgan the bottle.

"God, this stuff would send you mad and blind," Morgan said after he had swigged.

"But then that's where the money is, isn't it? – Rum running. Come to think of it that'd make a nice retirement job."

"Privateering not profitable enough for you?" Jack adjusted his crown which had slipped over one eye.

"Too dangerous. I know you think I'm a coward, but some of us would like to live to see old age."

"I never said you were a coward," Jack said, taking his eyes off the night sky and looking at Morgan for the first time. Morgan was dressed in a jacket of red velveteen with gold braiding. He always wore odd and ostentatious clothes, as if he took pleasure in sporting them just because he could. Like all privateers Jack had encountered, there was an odd mix in him of savagery and refinement – their wealth made them dress with an elegance which belied their fierce capabilities as sailors and adventurers.

"I am coward though, as are most men, which is why you fascinate me. I have a lot of respect for you Jack. You're a good seaman . . . a good pirate, if that's not a contradiction in terms." There was a beat of silence, then Morgan added: "Mad though, utterly mad. Some of the men say you've got a hare-brained scheme to go after the fabled gold of Cortez. I wonder do you do it for the thrill, or because you're cultivating your image? Jack Sparrow – seeker of the lost Aztec gold."

"You ask to many questions. And you try to understand men, which is pointless."

"You think so?"

"Thing is, you can know someone forever and they'll always surprise you. You should know that as a captain, for your crew might take it into their heads to be treacherous, or let you lead them for the rest of their days, who knows?"

"Is that a warning, Jack?" Morgan asked softly.

Jack shook his head. "Don't worry about me – some might stick to the code, but not me. I wouldn't abandon the men in your brig. It wouldn't be right, and it wouldn't inspire confidence in the others."

"I can see why you pretend to be mad - it makes you seem hard to predict, when really you're a strategist."

'An opportunist,' Jack thought, but did not say.

They sat still for a minute, watching the waves, fat and purplish in the darkness, undulating all around the ship. Rising an falling created the illusion of movement, as if the waves were rushing somewhere. It was impossible, aboard, to believe in stillness as on land. There was never stasis, always the rise and fall, primevally rhythmical.

"Why are you over here?" Jack asked. "It can't be for the hospitality."

"For the company, Captain Sparrow." And they lapsed back into silence. Perhaps because they were solitary, mysterious men and holders of responsibility, everything of importance in their relations with one another was tacit, their understanding mute and incommunicable. When they spoke to each other their conversations frequently became discussions or arguments that neither side really believed in. They were too different to collide; their minds an natures revolved in elliptical orbits whose paths overlapped but would never meet. It was a strange phenomenon to them both: Morgan was confident and free of speech; Jack had a habit of rambling on at length to entertain, to get himself out of trouble, or more frequently, deeper into it. It may have been that they cancelled each other out, or that they were in that one facet of their personalities strikingly similar, and both had realised that in the end, you can't kid a kidder.

"You've got no respect for anything, have you?" Morgan was laughing.

"Do you go to hell for impersonating a cleric of the Church of England?"

"In order to seduce a girl and rob her father? Purgatory at least!"

"Isn't that heretical doctrine, Hal? I thought you were against all Spaniards and papists!"

Morgan waved his hand dismissively and caught his glass as a lurch of the ship threatened to send it sliding off the table-top, "It's all one to me. I never could stay awake in church."

"It's just as well it wasn't you doing the impersonating then."

Morgan poured more rum into Jack's glass; they were in the captain's quarters of the privateer's ship.

"No Jack, I'm a weak man of no morals to speak of– you should know that by now."

"I'm drunk," Jack said, leaning heavily on his elbows at the table.

"Not just pretending?" Morgan did his impression of Jack's squinting, reeling gestures.

"No - pissed as a judge, mate."

"You surprise me – I thought you'd drink me under the table."

"I haven't admitted defeat yet," Jack said, grasping his glass resolutely, "I might be getting a second wind."

"I think I had mine and it's going. I'll have to wait for a third wind."

"They don't exist mate, they're mythical."

"Like the Aztec gold?"

"Who can say?" Jack grinned and winked.

"You know what I always notice about you?" Morgan grasped one of Jack's hands and held it within the soft, lambent circle of light cast by the single candle. "Your hands are filthy but your fingernails are immaculately clean. I think you're a gentleman pirate."

"Contradiction in terms," Jack said. He leaned across the narrow table and kissed Morgan.

It was Morgan who broke the kiss, his face stayed close to Jack's, he ran his thumb down the contour of Jack's cheek, the long effeminate nail leaving a light pink scratch in its wake.

"Do you think your crew would mutiny if they found out?" he asked.

Jack stood up and turned his back, hanging his battered tricorn hat on the bedpost.

"Why? Is this treacherous?"

"A little." Morgan turned in his seat, crossed his arms over the back of the chair and watched Jack undress. The pirate kept his balance effortlessly, his body adjusting itself to the ship's leanings instinctively as his hands pulled at the knot at his shirt front. His movements were not that of a drunken man, but with Jack it was always difficult to tell – he played the part of a madman and a drunkard too well: it was his way of concealing his true intentions. Morgan considered this and wondered what Jack was thinking about. He never asked, for it was one of his favourite games to circulate theories about the nature of the pirate's abstruse purposes. Jack's forehead was slightly paler where it was habitually covered by a red bandanna, and his torso faded from brown to cream below the neckline, as if the artist who had drawn him hadn't finished shading him. His forearms were blurredly tattooed in blue ink; Jack said that a crew-mate had done them during a storm, and that he'd been drunk and roaring, and blood had gone everywhere. Morgan had no tattoos, he associated them with criminals. Jack sat on the bed and pulled off his boots, the beads and trinkets in his hair clacked and jangled as he swept his dark, matted locks back from the side of his face.

"Are you coming to bed?"

"Of course I am. I was just admiring you," Morgan replied, shrugging out of his long jacket, which was blue with black trim and silver buttons.

Morgan, eventually divested of all his clothing, climbed on to the bed with Jack and they entwined their hot, dry limbs. Jack always wanted to tease Morgan about the cloying, floral scent of his body - for he washed with rose water. Jack smelled only of sweat and salt-spray, from standing on deck all day. The ship gave a sudden pitch that sent the rum and the glasses skittering off the table and they smashed discordantly on the floor. Morgan and Jack watched as the candlestick then slid with unreal slowness towards the table-edge then fell with a heavy thud, the light abruptly snuffed out.

"I think there's a storm brewing," Jack commented indifferently. Morgan was distressed, the torture of waiting with tight-wound nerves, not knowing the extent of the storm to come, whether they would survive. He hated being at the whim of nature and he hated the noble resignation of true sailors like Jack to the fickleness and terrible power of the elements.

"It could die down though, difficult to tell in these waters," Jack went on. "It'll be some hours yet at any rate – the men won't need us yet."

"Don't talk about it," Morgan said with a pained expression Jack was oblivious to in the darkness. Jack didn't say another word and they resumed kissing. Feet tread on the boards above them.

"What's that noise?" Morgan asked, sitting up.

"Nothing, don't think about it," Jack soothed. Their pupils were adjusting, eyes now making out monochrome shapes in the room by the moonlight filtering through from between the slats of the shutters, and Morgan could dimly see Jack's expression – there was something strange in it; he certainly wasn't drunk. This thought was banished to the back of his mind, because Jack pushed him on with obdurate kisses; he caught the vanilla hint of the rum wafting from that puddled around the heap of sharp glassy remnants across the room and tasted it on Jack's lips.

"I want you to take me," Jack said in a low, deliberate voice.

"Filthy pirate," Morgan laughed in his rich tones.

"Filthy?" Jack affected indignation, but let Morgan push him over onto his front. Jack felt the rich fabric of the bedclothes beneath his hands as he leaned on them, pushing his hips upwards. He felt sentimental towards Morgan all of a sudden, ridiculous though he sometimes was, with his privateer's hypocrisy, his rakish clothes and his rose-water, and Jack shuddered as the combed strands of his unlikely lover's hair brushed against his back and lips trailed on his spine. Their coupling was a montage of images to Jack, his mind distracted by prescient thoughts, but all the time brought back to moments when his awareness of Morgan was bewilderingly intense: the strong coil of his forearm around Jack's taut abdomen, the press of his thighs against Jack's own, his ragged breathing, the sweat that sealed them tight together and the stripping pain of separation with each withdrawing stroke. Rising, falling, whispered incomplete phrases passed between them of the basest things they could think of: "you like that . . .", "yes . . .", "harder . . .", "Jack, oh . . ." and random oaths and exclamations, semiotic speech without real meaning which conveyed how absorbed by lust they were. 'Completely ridiculous,' Morgan thought as they tumbled, exhausted back on to the bed, an assortment of limbs at odd angles, not 'one being', as the romantic novels like to say, but just a little confused as to who owned what and too drained to be overly concerned. Jack pressed his face against Morgan's neck – why was there a need for heat even when scorching hot? They didn't say anything, there was no call for joking or endearment, just sleep.

Captain Morgan woke and sun assaulted him in violent bars across his bed. There had been no storm after all, the winds had fallen in the night. He felt for Jack, who wasn't there, and wondered what time it was. Sitting up, his eyes were drawn to the broken fragments from the night before. Running in with the rum on the boards was a liquid of coagulated crimson, leading away in several limping toe-steps of one bloody foot to the door. Being shrewd man he instantly knew that he was betrayed – Jack had gone in the night, that was why he had stood in glass. Morgan's feelings were strangely clam and detached; he dressed calmly and went out on the deck, finding it in obvious confusion.

"Captain!" his first-mate cried on seeing him. "The Pearl is gone with all her crew."

"Oh? How did that happen?" Morgan took a certain pleasure in appearing calm.

"The prisoners were freed in the night, we found the guards beaten unconscious."

'Jack, treacherous Jack,' he thought to himself, half smiling. He had admired the pirate, and in his conceit he had severely underestimated him.

"And they've taken near all of the treasure!" the bo'sun called, sticking his head through a hatch from below. Morgan just stood on the deck and laughed until his crew began to suspect he had lost his mind, then he went below deck and drank rum.

The Pearl was making good time, Jack thought, clicking closed the lid of his compass. Morgan's ship was just an inky smudge in the far distance, like a careless fingerprint on the horizon. Jack was feeling a measure of regret; was it cowardice that made him sneak away rather than rise up with his men as armed insurgents? Was it a strange respect for Morgan, or if not respect, affection? He had thought about leaving a note, a taunting challenge or a consolation for his treachery, but in the end he had decided that he and Morgan really understood each other best when there weren't words in they way.

His reflections were interrupted by the sound of his first-mate's voice.

"Captain Sparrow?"

Jack turned with a bright, welcoming smile – a taciturn captain did not inspire confidence.

"Yes?"

"Me and the crew have been thinking, since everything's in an equal share, that should include the bearings . . ."

Jack fixed his face in a thoughtful expression at Barbossa's speech, but his eyes were wandering out towards Morgan's ship and dazzled by the light that was flicked up by the humped backs of waves that relentlessly rose and fell, carrying them towards Isla de Muerta.

- The End