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Title: The Will Jack Fell In Love With
Author: heartofslash
Fandom/Pairing: POTC, The Pirate Way, Sparrow/Turner
Rating: R
Disclaimer: This is about love. If you can’t put aside worries about copyrights and ownership of characters for the sake of love, then I pity you, I really and truly do.
Dedication: This little bit of Will and Jack loving is for pir8fancier – it’s all about the love. Mostly about the love, anyway.
The Will Jack Fell In Love With
“Honestly, I don’t know if I can do it.”
Will Turner’s shoulders sagged.
“It’s been too long.”
Will got up from the stiff-backed wooden chair. He had been sitting perfectly still, shoulders back, eyes trained on a candlestick perched on a shelf above Jack’s left shoulder. He was wearing what his step-mother referred to as his “Sunday best”. The breeches were midnight blue, the stockings black and without holes, the shirt crisp and white, the coat with all its buttons fastened, the boots gleaming dully. His hair was neatly brushed back and held off his face by a black ribbon.
“Jack,” he said, only mildly irritated because they’d only been at it a short time, “I happen to know that you, of all people, can do anything you set your mind to. What is the problem?”
Jack could only shrug.
“It is me? Am I sitting wrong?”
Was it even possible for Will to sit wrong?
Jack shook his head with a muted clatter of beads. His hair was tied back with a scrap of leather to keep it from distracting him.
“Am I not… an appropriate subject?”
On the contrary, Will was the ideal subject. Will was also the perfect object.
Jack shook again.
“Well… pick up a brush!” Now Will was starting to get a little vexed.
“It’s been over twenty years, luv. I don’t know if I remember how to do it.”
Will scowled at the paints on the table and muttered something Jack could not quite make out.
“What was that, William?”
Will sat down with a thud and glared at Jack petulantly. “I said, ‘That didn’t stop you the first time I fucked you.’”
Jack was glad he had not picked up the brush; he surely would have dropped it on the floor.
After all this time, Will had but to utter the word ‘fuck’ and Jack became flustered. But Jack could fluster Will right back.
“Fucking is different from painting,” Jack replied, with all the false dignity he could muster.
There was a little twitch at the corner of Will’s mouth when Jack said ‘fucking’. Jack was gratified.
“Jack, I saw the portraits you painted of you and your sister. They’re beautiful.”
“But they were miniatures.”
“I’m not asking you to paint my portrait across the sails of the Black Pearl! It’s not that big a canvas.”
Jack stared at the canvas. Precious it was, flawless and carefully sized with fish glue and primed with some sort of gesso-like compound. The paints had been assembled from items bought (or commandeered, one never knew when Mr. Shimura was involved in the procurement of supplies) from a chemist in Nassau Port. Jack knew Will had put a lot of effort into stretching the canvas and making sure Jack had everything he needed.
Jack owed him the portrait.
But something was not quite right. Will sat stiffly, all buttoned-up and tied-back. He didn’t look bad. As always, he looked rather delightful. But he didn’t look like… Will.
And what was the point of painting a portrait of Will if it wasn’t going to look like Will?
“Turn your head to the side.”
Will complied.
“Tilt your chin back.”
Will tilted.
Still not quite… Jack stepped forward and grasped the end of the black ribbon between thumb and forefinger.
He pulled.
Chestnut curls tumbled over broad shoulders. Will hadn’t cut his hair in years.
“Is that necessary?” Will asked as Jack’s fingers sifted through his hair, arranging and caressing.
“I assure you, it is of the utmost necessity,” Jack murmured.
Will came close to smirking before regaining his ‘portrait face’.
“Don’t be looking so formal. I want to paint the real Will, not some starched shirt. I want to paint the Will I fell in love with.”
Will’s brow furrowed.
“Just what to you plan to paint?” Will asked. Indignant. It gave the brow crease a wiggly part in the middle. Delightful, but Jack would never be able to capture all that nuance. He was too long out of practice.
Jack thought about the Will he fell in love with.
Fierce. Proud. Wielding a sword with breathtaking grace and agility.
No good – paintings like that always make the subject look mildly deranged.
Shy. Virginal. Bashful and worried about what Jack had in mind for him.
No good - try as he might, and blush all he liked, Will would never look innocent again. Not after all these years with Jack.
Sensual. Languorous. Draped across the bed after a good, long fuck.
Excellent. But not, technically, the Will Jack fell in love with.
“Must be something wrong with the light,” Jack muttered.
Will got up again. “Really? Perhaps we should try over here…” He crossed the cabin, boots thunking dully on the floor. Will stood beside the bed.
Jack stared at the boots.
Will removed his coat.
Jack licked his lips.
Will untied the front of his shirt.
Jack’s eyes flicked frantically from black polished boots to smooth chest skin and back.
Will sat on the edge of the bed. He touched the top of on of his boots and Jack made a strangled noise.
Not the boots. He could never paint Will in nothing but the boots.
Firstly, he wouldn’t be able to get past a quick sketch before succumbing to the lust.
Secondly, he didn’t want anyone else to ever see Will in nothing but the boots.
Jack held his breath. Just because the boots were off didn’t mean they wouldn’t go back on again after the rest of the clothes were removed.
But Will didn’t take anything else off. He gathered all the pillows together, along with the quilt, and made a pile he could recline on. He lay sideways on the bed, so the curls fell to one side, and stretched out his long legs.
“Is this better?”
Was it better? Had the sun come up that morning?
Will relaxed his features and his eyes took on that slightly hooded, languid look Jack loved so much.
“It’s perfect,” Jack whispered, picking up the brush.
Jack worked steadily until the light began to fail. He sketched in the general shapes, blocking out the light and dark areas with a piece of charcoal. He fiddled with the angles of the limbs to correct the perspective. Not matter what he did, Will’s hands ended up looking overly large, but that was only accurate, so he didn’t worry too much about the proportions looking less than perfect. He didn’t need perfection when he had ideal.
Jack discovered that the paints flowed onto the canvas with ease. He spent a good deal of time getting the curve of Will’s top shoulder just so, and the dark, inviting vee of his gaping shirt front was rendered with unerring accuracy. He was able to duplicate the shapes of shadows on the softly draping shirt (it was a miracle, but as soon as Will relaxed, the shirt relaxed as well) perfectly. He was able to give a hint of the slight gloss of the silk trousers. He lovingly recreated the little bulge of anklebone under black stocking so exactly, he could imagine the exact feel of the joint under his lips, and the consistency of the weave under his tongue, and the way the material would cling to the skin wetly after he was finished giving it the attention it deserved.
By the time Jack had worked his way through the technical aspects of it, shaded in the darkest areas, painted in these details that gave the painting some texture, and worked his way from the general shapes of shadow to light, from enticing shoulder to exquisite hip, from lean thigh to delicious foot, and back all the way up to paint Will’s face, Will had dozed off.
Jack couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t a very interesting task, posing for a painter. And Will had been on watch the night before.
Gone were the sultry eyes and wicked smile. Gone were the lovely forehead furrows. There were no lines or creases, except for a few faint scars. With his eyes closed, Will’s dark lashes fanned out over the top of his cheeks. His mouth was a bit slack, ever-so-slightly open, soft.
It was an easy decision. Will had never been so beautiful.
No, that was a lie. He had been that beautiful, and more so, at the height of passion, in the middle of a laugh, while expressing all manner of emotion. But he had never been so beautiful at the same time he was still enough to actually paint.
So that’s what Jack painted.
Will woke up as Jack was attempting to duplicate a single, errant curl that had fallen across his forehead.
“I’m sorry, did I move too much? Did I spoil everything?”
Silly man. Will had never, couldn’t ever spoil anything.
Jack showed him the incomplete painting. It was rough. The background was still only sketched in, and Will was, so far, rendered in stark darks of umber and lampblack and lights of while and a pale gold Jack had decided to use as the base colour for Will’s skin, with only a few choice areas worked up to any significant degree.
“Detailed painting can take dozens of sittings,” Jack explained.
“I’ll never be able to get in the exact same position again,” Will fretted.
“I’ll put you there. I’ve memorized it. I don’t even need the painting.”
“And you’ve painted me asleep!” Will despaired.
Jack shrugged. “You’re beautiful when you’re asleep.”
“But… what kind of a portrait is that?”
“It’s a portrait of you. I fell in love with you when I fought you that first time, and I fell in love with you when I came to know you better, and I fall in love with you a little bit more every time we make love, but the most I ever fell in love with you at one time was the first time I ever slept with you in my arms, listening to you breathe, feeling your warmth against me.”
Will stood up but he didn’t say anything.
Jack put the painting on the table. “So now I’ll have a painting of you sleeping, and the painting will show how much I love you.”
“You can’t show it to anyone; they’ll wonder why you painted a picture of me sleeping. You can’t talk about that sort of thing with other people. And besides, Jack, you don’t need a painting of me sleeping. You can see me sleeping any night you want.”
“True.”
Will slid next to Jack and pressed his long body close to him. “Every night. For the rest of our lives.”
Jack touched Will’s cheek with his fingertips. “Every night. So true. Next time you pose, open your eyes. I’ll paint over the face..”
Will purred. “With my eyes open, the painting will show how much I love you.”
It would.
“Do you want me to pose again now?”
“No, the light’s gone. We’ll have to find some other use for the bed.”
Will tugged the leather strip, and Jack’s hair fell down, unfettered. Will purred some more.
End
Back to: Pirates of the Caribbean
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