FicWad

Will loved watching Jack sleep, so long as it was a peaceful slumber. All too often, Jack would begin trashing around, trapped by nightmares generated from his brief stint under the curse of the Aztec gold. Seeing himself as a rotted skeleton had left mental wounds in Jack that had only just begun to heal.

These nightmares were not discussed. Jack didn’t want to be reminded of how often Will woke him up shivering with fear and adrenaline. Jack didn’t want to remember that horror he had felt when looking at himself in the moonlight, and how he had been forced to suppress it because of his fight with Barbossa. He didn’t want to remember that slick feeling of blood coating his hand from where he had made the cut for the blood debt. Jack didn’t want to remember.

And Will usually respected that. He would silently hold Jack as he shook with remembered terror until, often times hours later, Jack was calm enough to drift back to sleep. Will wasn’t ever able to sleep after one of Jack’s nightmares. He’d sit and keep guard, waking Jack before another nightmare could grasp his mind. Keeping the monsters at bay.

The crew also respected that Jack didn’t wish to discuss this weakness. When Will emerged from their shared cabin after another sleepless vigil, bags under his eyes and stumbling with fatigue, they automatically picked up any slack. They carefully cared for both their captain and his lover, unobtrusively maneuvering them back into bed far earlier than Will or Jack usually retired.

Which is why Will was watching his lover sleep now. Jack was so innocent in sleep, with none of the bawdy jokes and fluttering hand motions. The lines in his face softened and left a shining innocence behind that Will could never quite believe. Jack Sparrow, the infamous ladies man and pilfering, plunderer of merchant ships everywhere, looked like just anotherinnocent young man in sleep.

“Jack,” Will whispered, as not to wake his lover, “Je t'aime, maintenant et à jamais.”