#jack is very good with his hands and cutler is very touch-starved

[reine-du-sourire]

How someone so brash, so loud, so ungainly, and so drunk can move about so quietly is something that Cutler can’t figure out.

You’re not here, Jack,” he says softly, dipping his quill into the ink bottle in front of him and continuing to write. He doesn’t turn around. His desk is piled high with documents, charts, ledgers, proposals; each demanding his attention. Everything and everyone demands his attention these days, it seems. “The shadows are simply playing their usual tricks with the windows and curtains again.”

“Just a figment of an overtired imagination,” breathes a low, gravelly voice into his ear. Calloused hands slip down over Cutler’s eyes. “Been staying up too late, mate. Startin’ to hear things. You’ve not seen hide nor hair of me.”

“No,” Cutler agrees, and puts down his quill so it won’t blot the paper. He sits still, ramrod straight as always, folds his hands neatly on his lap. Keeps his eyes shut, even when the pressure from Jack’s fingers on his lids is gone.

“Such a good little bureaucrat.” 

“I’ve been called worse by better.”

“No need to take that tone.” Warm fingers fiddle skillfully with the knot of his ascot and pull it off. Silk slides coolly away against Cutler’s neck. 

A lesser man might shiver. 

“Need me hands free, you understand,” Jack hums. He wraps the cloth around Cutler’s head, covering his eyes. It tightens as Jack ties up the ends. “And we can’t have you sneakin’ glimpses of pirates who aren’t here. Nothing personal.”

“Just good business.”

Jack chuckles. His fingers dance at the collar and lapels of the richly embellished jacket before removing that too.  He starts to knead at the muscles in Cutler’s shoulders, working slowly upward until his fingertips are easing out the tensions at the back of Cutler’s neck.

A lesser man would definitely shudder at the contact.

A greater man would perhaps not allow his head to droop forward, would not allow his normally impeccable posture to loosen. 

“That’s it, mate. Or that isn’t it, considering I’m not here and this isn’t happening.”

“No. It isn’t.” As if Cutler Beckett would ever permit himself to slump. 

To dip forward, and then back, barely in control of his own movements, curving obligingly to every compulsion of Jack’s fingers, being manipulated like putty in the hands of a notorious and thoroughly disreputable pirate.

Certainly not.

He scarcely notices Jack’s attention to his arms, wrists, and hands until the man chuckles again, digging his thumbs into Cutler’s palms and decidedly not eliciting a barely-stifled squeak. “Hands like a pampered noblewoman, you’ve got.”

A lesser man would be unable to come up with a suitable retort, but a greater man would perhaps not lower himself to exchange such sallies anyway. 

So Cutler doesn’t.

“Seen ladies with hands rougher than yours, anyway,” Jack hums. Lower and lower he goes, sliding the rings off Cutler’s fingers, one by one, before massaging each digit. Were this to be happening (and it is not) it would be the most wonderful sensation he’s felt in weeks. 

“I don’t suppose I’ll ever see those again.”

He can hear Jack’s grin. “The shadows like shinies, mate.”

“I’m sure they do,” Cutler murmurs, and feels Jack gently return his hands to his lap before turning his attention to his shoulders and back again.

He hopes the shadows remembered to lock the window. It wouldn’t do to announce the non-presence of an intruder who isn’t here in the EITC office. Cutler thinks he’ll need to invest in some heavier curtains. 

Jack performs some intricate maneuver that tears a strangled gasp unbidden from Cutler’s throat and Cutler doesn’t think anymore.