Not So All Alone (a Hook story with two tacks to take) by Glacis. Rated NC17, no copyright infringement intended. Spoilers for Peter Pan (the 2003 movie). Please note rating -- NOT INTENDED FOR CHILDREN. That would be because it's smut. So if you're a child STOP READING and go away. Far away. If, on the other hand, you think Jason Isaacs is tasty enough to eat with your fingers, come on in. The water's fine. No big crocs here.

Well, one. But not for long. And so, on to the smut. Er, story.

"You're old!" they cried.

He tried to think happy thoughts, to remain in flight and avoid the huge, hungry, bloody determined crocodile splashing directly below him. "Blood!" he tried.

"You're all alone!" they cried.

"Death!" That worked for a little while, but still he sank. Snap! went the crocodile's jaws, inches from his heels. "Dead puppies!"

"And you're done for!" they cried.

Damn. Even dead puppies didn't work. Dead fairies, perhaps? Ah, blast and double damn, they were right. He crossed his arms, hook close against his left shoulder, sword crossing his right, and sighed, "And done for." Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, he sank through the air like a stone, directly into the gaping maw of the crocodile.

Good gad, but it stank. It was dark, too. And close. Thankfully, he'd been heading downward at quite a clip, so unlike when the nasty beast had eaten his hand (die, Pan, die!) the crushing jaws crushed nothing but air.

It was a very good thing he was adept at holding his breath, and the champion underwater distance swimmer of all the pirates (ah, the things one had to do to become captain...) as his experience stood him in good stead. As did his absolute fury.

Not bothering to open his eyes, Captain James Hook lashed out with both boots, swept out with both arms, cutting deadly true with sword and hook. There were a few tense moments as the crocodile thrashed, squeezed, convulsed, and it was a bit difficult to hack through the tough hide, but it was softer on the inside than the outside, and Hook was through and into the blessed sea long before he ran out of breath.

He finally opened his eyes, took his bearings, then kicked up toward the surface, making quite sure to slice open the crocodile's throat on the off-chance the beast could survive having its belly split open. A side kick and a twist to avoid the final death snap of the great jaws, and Hook was free of his nemesis at last.

Well, one of them. As he broke the surface and flung wet hair out of his eyes, he saw the other one, blasted fairies at his beck and call, stealing his ship and sailing it away toward the heavens, of all things.

Damn Pan. One of these days, he was really going to kill him. Really.

At the moment, Pan was out of his reach, however. And so, Hook did what he always did when Pan foiled him. He cursed filthily under his breath, and swam for shore, leaving the brat's demise for another day. As he pulled himself atop the stones leading to his black castle, he stood for a moment, waterlogged crimson velvet clinging unpleasantly, and shook his hook at the sky.

"You're a child and a fool, Pan, and will never be more than either. As for being done for... not this time!"

Then feeling a bit silly at the way his own words echoed back at him, Hook grumbled up the uneven stone steps to the heart of his castle, and took a very, very long hot bath. With bubbles. Lavender ones, to soothe his weary soul.

After a simple repast of cold meat, cheese, bread and stout red wine, he sat back, pulled the edges of his dark blue smoking jacket (it matched his eyes beautifully) closer about his throat (it was bloody cold in that castle) and wondered where Smee had got to.

Thought being father to deed, he called imperiously, "Smee!" There followed a long silence. Then a huffy sigh from Hook. Then a "Smee!" that could only be described as whining, followed by yet more silence. "Bother," Hook grumbled. "SMEE!" he bellowed.

"You bellowed, sir?" Smee asked politely from just outside arm's (or hook's) reach.

He wore his usual look of imbecilic innocence. At least the innocence was put-on. He also positively dripped with plundered treasure. Gold spilled from his pockets, jewels glittered in the brim of his hat and cuff of his pants, and an ornate candlestick stuck out at odd angles from the back of his vest. Hook's left brow slowly rose.

Smee blanched.

"What, pray tell, are you up to, Mr. Smee?" Hook asked with excruciating politeness.

"Promised I'd give up piracy, sir, when the children dropped me off the plank. Going to devote me life to good works, I am, and give all these ill-gotten gains to charity, I will!" From blanching to beaming in the space of a sentence. It was nauseating.

Hook's lip curled. "Those wouldn't happen to be MY ill-gotten gains you were planning on turning over to charity, now, were they?"

Smee nodded happily. Paled again, and shook his head fiercely. Hook shot him.

"Blast," Hook sighed, staring down at the corpse, "who's going to do the cooking now?"

Of course, he lived in a magic land, and he was the evil force counter-balancing Pan's good (according to all the literature, anyway) so he commanded quite a bit of magic of his own.

He made the castle do it.

As it turned out, the castle was quite a good cook. However, it was an astonishingly bad conversationalist. With Smee dead, his crew gone missing, Princess Tiger Lily and her tribe not speaking English (and shooting arrows at him whenever he came near), all the children gone so there was no one to terrorize, and Peter Pan still off with Hook's own ship somewhere in the far beyond, Hook found himself all alone indeed.

And bored out of his mind.

There were many, many things that were awful about being the only adult stuck in a child's fantasy land. One couldn't curse much, or really get drunk, or carouse, or have sex, and even the killing was oddly bloodless. For a pirate, it was pathetic, really. Stuck in Neverland with a bunch of fairies, too small to do any good as they were, and a bunch of Indians who wanted nothing to do with him. Hook heaved a sigh. Tore the last of the meat from the breast bone of the Cornish game hen (even the fowl were small in Neverland) and idly threw the bone out the window.

Froze.

Stared at the cracks between the stones on the terrace where the bone landed.

Leapt from his seat and stared harder.

Yes. It was. A flower! A straggly, bright disgustingly pink flower pushing up through the stones on the terrace. A maniacal grin split Hook's face.

"He's back," he hissed to himself, since there was no one else to hear. "Pan's back! Finally! Something to do! I'll go kill Pan!"

Disregarding how well THAT had worked out the last several times he'd tried, Hook struggled into his harness, dressed in crushed gold velvet for a change from scarlet, screwed in a nicely nasty hook, stamped his feet into his new crocodile-skin boots (he'd enjoyed having those made just as much as he'd enjoyed feasting on crocodile steak for a week after the beast's corpse rolled in on the tide), caught up his sword and went searching for his enemy.

But Pan was nowhere to be found! And truthfully, Hook searched everywhere. Pan was in none of his usual haunts. The mermaids finally gave up trying to pull him in when he cut off the heads of a couple of them, but still, they hadn't seen Pan. The Indians stopped firing arrows and throwing rocks at him long enough to tell him that no, they hadn't seen Pan, either. The fairies buzzed and dive-bombed him, but even after he stomped a few into fairy dust they wouldn't tell him where Pan might be.

It was all quite discouraging.

Disconsolate, he returned to his empty, cold castle. He felt incredibly lonely with no ship, no crew, no Smee, no Lost Boys, no Pan, nothing but himself and his new crocodile skin boots in his big echoing castle filled with loot. After another long bubble bath (lilac this time, as he liked the way it smelled), he took himself up to the tallest turret of his castle and stared sadly at the stars.

Only to see, of all things, Peter Pan himself, flying with an entourage of fairies into the sky.

The thought that he wasn't alone after all was such a happy one, Hook found himself floating! Higher and higher he went, until he was close enough to grab a handful of fairies and squeeze the dust out of them, all over himself. That, and the happier thought of finally killing Pan, gave him the boost he needed to follow the blazing stream of light.

All the way to London.

It was a big place, London. Lots of fog and towers and a bloody huge clock that Hook was sorely tempted to smash, but restrained himself. He didn't want to lose Pan's trail, after all. Catching a half dozen more fairies and stuffing them into his pocket for later, then buttoning it closed so they couldn't escape, Hook stealthily darted to the side of the building Pan now hovered in front of, hoping to flank his enemy and then cut him to pieces when Pan wasn't looking.

Except he got sidetracked along the way.

Looking in through one of the windows he saw what looked like several of the Lost Boys, only couldn't be, because they were both clean and fully clothed. Pan was close by, so Hook ducked further back along the side of the building.

And saw... a Wendy. A grown-up Wendy in soft rose-colored cotton with her hair falling about her shoulders. Hook wanted to dance with her. Before he had the chance, another person came in the room.

"All settled down for bed, Marion?" a voice asked.

Grown-up Wendy, or Marion he supposed, nodded and smiled. Oh! Her smile sparkled! Then the one who'd spoken to her came further into the room and Hook felt his jaw drop open.

What a stunningly handsome man! The pale blue of his pajamas made the blue of his eyes all the bluer. Even through the ridiculous spectacles. The nervous smile on his mouth made Hook want to pat him, and soothe him. Then Marion reached up and removed the spectacles, and the nervous smile softened, and Hook found himself holding his breath.

Marion leaned forward and placed a kiss on the man's mouth. Hook gasped, realizing THAT was what he wanted to do, but the sound was lost as Marion said sweetly, "As settled as they'll ever be, George. Nana's watching out for them."

George. The handsome man's name was George. And he was Hook's. All Hook's.

Then Marion kissed him again, and Hook amended his thought. George was Hook's, and Marion's. Hook didn't usually share, but, well, Marion was a grown-up Wendy, and he supposed, for her, he would.

Ah. George. Hook's very own darling. He waited for a moment, looking for the exact moment to snatch George up and carry him away, when Marion slipped George's top from his shoulders, and Hook was taken completely aback. Oh, my, but George was a very handsome fellow.

A moment later, as Marion's hands were stroking all over the fine chest revealed when she'd begun to disrobe him, George pushed the dressing gown from Marion's shoulders as well, and Hook found himself gulping. Oh, my, but Marion was a very beautiful lady.

He watched, smile growing wider and steadily more lecherous as the action progressed. He felt both exhilarated that he was a grown-up and therefore allowed to enjoy doing such things, and devastated that he was alone with no one with whom he could do them. He began to sink under the unhappiness of his loneliness, plans for a Darling-snatch fading away. Marion and George were quite satisfied with one another, and he had no place between them, and no one of his own.

It took squeezing every bloody fairy he had stuffed in his pocket to get back home. They complained, of course, but after he told a couple he didn't believe in fairies, then grimly showed the fairy corpses to the remainder, they obliged by giving him all the dust they could shake.

Once back in Neverland, visions of bare George and bare Marion twining round one another in his head, a foul-tempered Hook went searching for Peter Pan. He found him (Pan didn't make it all that difficult, what with sitting in the middle of a clearing in the forest in the bright sunlight taking a nap and sighing in his sleep over Wendy) but decided it wasn't worth the effort of trying to kill him.

Freedom wasn't worth much with no one left to share it.

Pan opened one eye, stared up at him, and nodded. Apparently Hook said that out loud. Hook sighed. Settled down in the grass next to Pan and absently dug the tip of his hook into the grass.

"I'll never grow up," Pan whispered fiercely, apropos of nothing.

Hook gave him a disinterested glance. "Idiot," he finally said. "You have no idea what you're missing. I, unfortunately, do." With that, he got up, turned around, and walked back to his castle. There was nothing for it but to do it.

The next evening, decked out in powder blue velvet with dashing silver trim, James Hook fairy-napped a score of fairies, shook out a load of dust, and headed back to London.

TACK ONE (Hook/George/Marion)

TACK TWO (in which another universe altogether is subverted) (Hook/Lucius Malfoy)