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Nassau is not a particularly charming bar.
It’s small, the lights always flicker because the entire district has problems with electrical lines and the smell of burnt wood lingers on the clothes due to the antique fireplace built into the farthest corner of the room. The walls are yellowish and the floor is sticky with spilled drinks from wasted customers. Right now, there’s one of them singing at the top of his lungs about a sailor and his matey and the sea that in the end swallows them both.
Jack Rackham hates that stupid song.
He glares at the man as he hits a remarkably high note and, as he’s excitedly moving his arms around, more beer spills from his already half empty pint glass.
Jack is five seconds away from exploding him with his mind. He's sure it will work if he narrows his eyebrows just right.
He looks over the clock on his left, hoping to see there’s only a few seconds left before closing time. Just one minute has passed since the last time he checked it.
The man shouts. The sailor has drowned and the matey has jumped into the waves to get him back.
God, Jack Rackham loathes that fucking song.
He wipes the counter with his towel before throwing it over his shoulder. Apart from the drunkard and Randall, who’s seated at Anne’ side of the counter, Nassau is empty.
It’s almost three hours until they clock out, the bar is completely deserted and that stupid song seems to never end.
Randall is telling Anne about his dear old cat, who loves to bring frogs to the door and always pees over the mats. She’s filling up his glass for the fourth time with straight rhum and Jack knows she’s thinking about stabbing Randall’s hand with a fork again. He wouldn’t stop her this time around.
The bell over the door starts to jingle and Jack sighs. He closes his eyes and imagines himself behind a stage, listening to a guitar being softly played and to a rough voice saying “We are many, they are few”. He just has to save enough money to be taken seriously. He’s almost there, he just needs a few other tips, to put on a few more fake smiles and to say hollow words through gritted teeth.
Jack flutters his eyelids open to do just that but, before he has anything to say about it, that fake smile turns into a real one. The drunk man is vomiting his last note, the sailor and the matey will forever live together among the waves, and Charles Vane has just entered Nassau.
He notices Jack looking at him and stops in his tracks to take the helmet off his head, swinging his long hair to let it fall down over his shoulders, a few strands adorned with rings. He has sunglasses on even though the sun is already way below the line of the horizon and a bandana is covering his mouth. Selfish as he is, Jack would like to know what Charles’ eyes look like when he notices him from across the room, if crow’s feet form at the corner of them, if a smile curls the line of his lips.
Charles lowers the bandana down to his neck with his index finger to reveal that his mouth is a thin line. He takes his sunglasses off and there’s just ocean in his irises, blue and tumultuous.
He nods at Anne, who nods back, a fork still tightly held in her hands as Randall shows her pictures of his dear puss. Jack mouths her “no” when she’s about to raise the cutlery over the open hand of the old man.
Charles sits on the stool right in front of Jack and taps his knuckles on the counter, his silver rings catching the light.
“Didn’t you have a gig on the other side of town tonight?” Jack asks, taking a glass and starting to load it with ice. He doesn’t even have to ask what Charles needs, he just knows.
“It’s in thirty minutes,” Charles says, taking a cigarillo out of his jacket and putting the end between his lips. Jack doesn’t wait for him to ask before fishing out of the pocket of his apron a matchbook. The letters of the bar printed on it are golden and Charles’s thumb follows the peculiar cursive that forms the word “Nassau”, captivated.
Jack leans his hip over the side of the counter and watches as the flame of the match Charles has lit dances over his features. “I wanted something to wet my throat with first.”
Jack serves him his drink. Whiskey Lemon, as always. Charles breathes in the cigarillo’s smoke and raises his eyebrow at Jack, who rolls his eyes and hands him over the ashtray. It has become Charles’ personal ashtray by now and the latter hums, amused in seeing it slide over the counter. He grabs it before it can fall on the floor and rests his cigarillo in the hollow dents of it. The smoke that rises from the lit cigarillo has a pungent smell to it that Jack has come to associate with Charles’ presence.
“We’re not the only bar in town, Captain.”
The first time Jack called him Captain, it had been for a joke. He doesn't even remember it anymore, he just remembers Charles scoffing, amused.
“If I’m your Captain,” he asked, “Then what are you?”
Hearing the question had caught Jack by surprise. He had called Anne “love” since they were in seventh grade but she never asked why.
“I don’t know,” Jack said and then, giving voice to his thoughts, “The person that always got your back?”
Charles had chuckled then, “Fuck you, Jack.”
Jack calls him Captain more often than not these days and Charles doesn’t really seem to mind.
Charles tilts his glasses before taking a sip, letting the taste of lemon drag on his tongue before sighing.
“I like it here,” he says, holding Jack's gaze. “It would be nice to be able to sing here more often.”
“This place is a dump,” Jack replies, pretending to clean an invisible spot on a glass over and over again to avoid that piercing stare.
Charles taps the glass over the counter before gulping it down in one go. He pinches the slice of lemon between his fingers and then sucks the pulp into his mouth.
“Then why are you here, Jack?” he asks.
It’s such a simple question. And it’s even a simpler answer. He highly doubts Charles doesn’t know. Jack has never been good at poker, he likes to think that he’s got the hang of it but the truth is that all he feels can be easily read on the lines of his face.
There’s no place Charles Vane has gone where Jack Rackham hasn’t followed him.
Charles knows. Of course he does.
It’s kind of scary, actually, how he can know something that Jack has tried to conceal so deep inside his chest that it has started to grow roots.
And yet, even if Jack is sure he already knows the answer, Charles asks. To tease him or to finally let him talk — Jack doesn’t really know — and there’s a part of him, that cowardice which he so desperately despises, that wonders if it’s really worth it, jumping off from the safety of a ship to live forever into the Sea.
Charles tilts his head, feline-like. The lemon he has sucked has left a smear of juice on his lower lip and Jack traces his thumb over it without even thinking. Charles’ lip is chapped when Jack's fingertip comes in contact with it. He often forgets to cover his face when riding his bike and the wind has started to find amusement in cracking the skin on his mouth.
Jack can feel Anne’s eyes burning through the back of his head and Charles’s even breath on his skin.
He ponders if this is what the matey felt like when he saw his sailor everyday. If the reason why he jumped to be with him is the same reason Jack has.
Jack grins. He hates that stupid song.
“I like to hear you sing, Captain,” he says, leaning on the counter, “Is that not reason enough?”
Charles shakes his head and gifts him with one of his rare laughs. He grabs Jack’s hand and squeezes it tightly. It’s warm and gentle and it makes each hair on Jack’s arms stand high.
Charles’ eyes are the ocean when he looks at him.
“Fuck you, Jack.”
Perhaps the matey wasn’t so out of his mind after all.