Work Text:
prompt; I didn't realize for a long time that I was dead.
"I didn't realize for a long time that I was dead."
James raised an eyebrow in Samantha's direction. She wasn't looking at him; her attention was held by the waves created by the boat cutting through the bay water. Somehow she still knew that was poised to ask a question.
She always knew.
Without turning to face him, she corrected herself. "Or dead-not-dead."
"Dead-not-dead? Is that a new technical term I'm not familiar with?" Standing beside her at the railing, with the wind blowing across his face, he felt like he was going home. Which was ridiculous, of course. Home was wherever he chose it to be, but whenever he went out on the water he always felt like he was returning to his first life - the life of a naval sailor.
She bumped her shoulder - carefully covered and padded with layers of clothing and a fashionable black overcoat - against his own. "James Norrington, are you mocking me?" she asked, feigning wide-eyed shock. Her normally pale blue eyes looked gray in the fading light.
He raised an eyebrow again. "I was going to ask you the same question. You know I can't keep up with the changing language of the times. It goes completely over my head."
Her arm slide easily around his waist and patted his lower back gently. "I daresay that might be because you immerse yourself in history for at least fifteen hours a day-"
"That's my job-"
"- when you could spend some of it out in the real world where teenagers continually convert perfectly good words into some obscure gobbilty-gook." He could almost hear the laughter she kept hidden behind a perfectly straight face.
"I happen to like hist-" He cut himself short as her words sunk in and he looked at her like she had just grown two heads. "Did you just say 'gobbilty-gook'?"
She winked and grinned cheekily. "And now you just did, too. James, we're finally getting somewhere!"