Will was used to wanting. For as long as he remembered he wanted. Wanted a father. Wanted his mother back. Wanted a little more food, a little less work at the smithy. Wanted someone to appreciate his work, someone to acknowledge his existence. Wanted Elizabeth. Wanted Jack. He received none of these things. None but the last.

He didn’t believe it at first. What would Jack possibly want him for? Elizabeth wanted him because he was the far lesser of two evils. She would far rather marry her childhood friend than the Commodore. Will had bore that dutifully, as he had always done everything everyone asked of him. He had rescued her from pirates, from Norrington, from every problem thrown her way, large or small. There had been two months of make-believe. Two months of setting a date for the wedding, of uncomfortable stiff clothes and stifling cravats, of imaging his future as he grew used to the feeling of Elizabeth’s hand in his. He imagined small children with chocolate hair and coltish limbs scurrying about the house. He knew he would tell them stories, teach them swordplay, both the boys and the girls, and feel a pang in his heart every time one would look too longingly at the sea.

But then Jack Sparrow had walked back into his live, as brilliant as he always had been. Will had thought that perhaps his imagination had run away with his memories. After all... Jack couldn’t really have been like that, could he? But he was. He wore just as much kohl, just as many beads in his hair and tattoos on his arms. He was as witty and gorgeous and still as drunk.

And he still had, apparently, whatever inherent gift it was that made Will throw caution to the wind. The Black Pearl spent only three days in port, and Will had been in Jack’s bed by the sunset of the third.

Once Elizabeth had known where Will’s heart truly lay she had not tried to keep him. She was never one to play second fiddle to anyone, not even Jack Sparrow. They’d sailed away with her understanding, if not her blessing.

Oh, he was in love with Jack of course. It was inevitable. Will was the sort of person who gave love freely. Not to say that he fell in and out of love every other week. No, it was just... if you were the sort of person who deserved love, who inspired it, Will would give it to you. Anamaria, he loved her for her free spirit, her refusal to live by anyone’s standards but her own. He loved the Black Pearl, loved the sea. Loved his mother, loved his father. He loved Elizabeth, although that love would be forever stuck in the transition between childhood friend and wife. Jack, now. Jack he loved in every sense of the word. He knew the best place in the world was in Jack’s arms, preferably on the Black Pearl with a new sunrise shining in through the window. Will loved sunrises, loved the beginning of new days rather than the ending of old ones. He knew he would love Jack through all of them.

But one day he would no longer have a place in Jack’s life. Or at least not a prominent place, and he knew that. One day someone else would catch Jack’s eye, something else would catch Jack’s interest, and Will would be of the past. But he was not so foolish as to think he would die for his love of Jack, because Jack had taught him to live for the horizon, to live for tomorrow even as tomorrow looked to be worse than today. So Will waited for each sunset, watching it drop beneath the horizon with guarded eyes. Tomorrow loomed ever closer. Tomorrow, the one thing a pirate longed for above treasure and the one thing that Will feared, because one day that horizon would not be the same as Jack’s, and he knew that. There was a price to be paid for what Will wanted. One he would pay most willingly. But until then... one eye on the horizon, and one on Jack.

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