🏴‍☠️ IC contact; Duplicity

[calicoat]

INBOX text / audio / video / action "Captain Jack Rackham. Leave a message, or speak to me face to face like an adult." code credit

Comments

[extramuralise]

[ The first and the last. Irving wouldn't presume to know their future, but he knows himself just well enough to feel certain that if things didn't work out with Jack, he couldn't do this again. It's already taken him his whole life to fall in love with just one person, something which was never meant to be in old life, or supposed to happen to him, here-- it just did.

(Not that it would occur to him to specify further. He still doesn't realize how impenetrable his logic can often be.)

And, hard as it's been, Irving's glad it happened. He doesn't need a straightforward, easily digestible fairytale love story, and he never did. If Jopson still assumes he's being manipulated or made a joke of somehow, or that he's only settling for the first man to actually... kiss him, then Irving doesn't even need his approval, either, as much as he still would like it. However imperfect or unideal some of it's been, however flawed they are, however mismatched they may seem or wrong it sounds just on the face of it, he isn't settling and he's definitely not being tricked. This is something real, and valuable, something they both needed, and there's just no easy way to make anyone else understand it.

Jack softening as he has does much to cool Irving down as well, though he still remains just as tense and bristled. Less defensive, and therefore less explosive, but all that emotion and adrenaline hasn't gone anywhere. He doesn't know where to put it yet, so for now he just holds it in. The words make him flinch, but it's in a more expected way this time, less that of someone being struck and more someone only bracing to be. It still hurts to hear it, but this time it doesn't make him recoil defensively and want to respond in kind, shout things back that he might not even fully mean, because it's clearer than with anything he'd said before -- especially when they were still using their devices to argue, maybe part of it's a tone thing -- Jack doesn't mean it unkindly. There's no kinder way to say it, really, if one is going to at all, and though Irving can still disagree with it all he likes, it wouldn't pain him so much to hear if he couldn't recognize at least some truth in it, if similar things had never once crossed his mind before.

Maybe he did waste most of his life with the Navy. But what else was there? What kind of other, better life could he have possibly deserved? ]

Of course I'm whole, Jack. What else would I be?

[ Broken? Incomplete? He shakes his head, taking a step forward towards Jack. Then another. Closing their distance. ]

I don't want to discuss this anymore, let's just-- let's move on now. Please.

[ He's braced, too, for the possibility Jack might accuse him of being cowardly, and it would be fair enough to do so, given how much Irving can't yet bring himself to admit or acknowledge. Or maybe Jack also feels as emotionally staggered by their fighting as Irving does and would appreciate some relief from it, considering they've basically been having an entire relationship's worth of arguments in one just now. Irving looks at him, eyes wide and uncertain, yet guarded, like he doesn't know where to go from here, or hasn't decided yet where he might want to, but extends an arm out in Jack's direction, holding out his hand. The gesture feels as good a place as any to start. ]

[calicoat]

[ If he were a more petty man, he'd call the argument won. If it's easier for Irving to drop it altogether than to defend the institution whose values caused this mess in the first place, that says it all, doesn't it? But this wasn't meant to be a battle. Jack's offense isn't born from the insistence that they find a flag that suits them both, but that Irving would, after all this time together, not understand what it means to him.

It's unlikely this crew is going to, technically, be a pirate crew in the first place, what with no prizes to take or other ships to plunder. Even if they were to come across one, with an inexperienced skeleton crew, trying to take it would likely be suicide. It's the spirit of piracy more than the act itself. The violence, after all, has never been Jack's strongest suit. He'a more interested in the refusal to lay down and accept what they're told, the search for a place away from the oppressive rigidity of the society they'd otherwise be trapped in. Isn't that exactly what they're doing here?

Jack takes his hand loosely, rubbing his thumb back and forth across his palm. It's as good a place as any, sure, but it doesn't resolve anything, doesn't stop this argument from restarting tomorrow, or festering until it explodes like a volcano beyond either of their control. He looks straight across at him, hurt still shining in his eyes, but lessened, slightly, by the gesture. ]

It was never my intention to hurt you, John. But I need to you to understand that I am not pushing you towards devilry, but freedom. Tell me you understand that.

[extramuralise]

[ As Jack takes Irving's hand, smooths over the palm gently with his thumb, Irving allows his hand to squeeze slightly around Jack's, using the connection to draw himself closer. The unguarded hurt in Jack's eyes is a rare enough sight for Irving -- not that it being a familiar one would make him feel any less terrible -- to wish he could somehow take it all back, go all the way to the start of this argument and just take the feedback about the blasted dove and skull narrative. The journey they took to get from there to where they've ended feels incomprehensible to him now.

Irving's own eyes remain large and wet themselves as they stare into Jack's, and he nods slowly. Yes, he knows. Maybe he's never acknowledged it in those terms even to himself before now, but if he believed anything else, would he even still be here? Could he have fallen in love with anyone he felt was not, in some way, saving him from something, rather than dragging him down into further doom and ruin?

No, he doesn't think so. Their differences are what they are, and there will probably always be differences there which threaten but (hopefully) still fail to come between them, but despite whatever concerns Jopson may harbor, Irving's fears about corruption and the state of his soul were never really about Jack in specific. ]

I don't want to hurt you either. O-or seem... ungrateful for what you've done for me. You know that I am grateful. I know how much you care for me.

[ The faint shadows cast by Jack across his face make Irving's eyes seem a washed out grey, like their combined pain has somehow drained all the color from them. He squeezes Jack's hand, barely blinking. ]

And I don't think that you're beneath me, either. However much I may still struggle with your... with... all the piracy, it's not that I look down on you or your reasons for it. But you know it's complicated for me, Jack. Just like I know how my Royal Navy career has been complicated, for you and... me both.

[ His gaze lowers slowly, dropping towards the floor. ]

I know your flag is important to you, I don't mean to disrespect that. I just thought ours should somehow... be meaningful to both of us. Represent the both of us.

[calicoat]

[ Jack squeezes back, the hurt still in his eyes, but more subdued, able to pull himself together as he takes in all of him, every word and every movement to make sure he’s not simply being placated because Irving is tired of the back and forth. He too, is tired of it, the escalation that could tempt them both to say things that can’t be taken back or explained away, not to mention the time being taken away from actually getting the flag figured out, but this is a place where the two of them differ. He’d rather shout it out and be done with it, and he’s been lucky that Anne is the same, that they grew into that preference together as a survival mechanism, their stations always too precarious to risk not being a united front for very long.

John Irving and Anne Bonny are two very, very, very different people. This whole thing would be redundant otherwise, wouldn’t it? The way that Jack has handled things has had to shift to meet Irving where he is plenty of times already, and he can do it again, as long as it’s honest, and not just putting the fight out further, more dangerously close to their departure (weather and Anne permitting) than they already are.

But it’s Irving, so of course it’s honest. He'd bolt for the door before lying to him, he’s never been able to, and he sure isn’t going to muster the fortitude to do so now, with heightened emotions and Jack’s hand in his. ]

It’s always been complicated, you and I. Wasn’t expecting that to change now. Come here.

[ Jack gives his hand a tug, to pull him into his arms for a tight, hopefully reassuring, hug. ]

It will. We haven’t found it yet, but it will.