🏴‍☠️ 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

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[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.