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Doctor Maturin’s smiles are a rare phenomenon, a wonder too precious to be dedicated to the fellow members of his own species, or so it seems.
He has no trouble with smiling at whatever new creature he has just found, beaming and cradling it as if it doesn’t have venomous stings or mucus all over it. It's such a tender, loving expression that it makes you believe that he could start singing lullabies at it any time soon – which he luckily never does. The fact that any human being can see it and discover that Dr. Maturin does have a soft side after all is merely accidental.
He does smile to those people he loves, with this quiet, almost secretive way of loving he has. In a sincerely affectionate way to greet Sophie, or whenever he obliges to Sarah and Emily’s occasional and ever so innocent whim. With a fairly conspiratorial air with Jack when Killick starts nagging around them. More politely when a former crewmate recognizes him on some distant shore, though it grows more open and sincere if said crewmate is not an officer but one of the lower deck hands, one of those who follow Lucky Jack from ship to ship, with a faith and a loyalty comparable to those that he himself professes for the man.
And to Jack, of course he smiles to Jack. Sometimes more with his voice, his gestures, his music even, rather than with his lips, but those are smiles nonetheless, and Jack can always notice them, and appreciate them as the rare marvel they are.
But as a general rule, when he smiles it's mostly for himself. He has this smug, half secret smirk he makes when he stoops to making plays on words (“because they have been cur-tailed”), or in his far more frequent covert mocking at poor Jack’s proverbs. A variant of it is the overly-proud gesture he makes whenever he manages to use any term that sounds vaguely nautical. It's hardly a smile, with his lips slightly pursed, his head held high, transpiring so much satisfaction; if he ever realised he's showing it, he would probably try to repress it with all his might.
The same happens with that almost-inexistent tugging at the corner of his lips when he speaks, rapidly and with a lot of vehement gesturing, about the wonders and merits of the latest species he has lain his interests on. His eyes gleam and are very open, his breath short, as if he's unconciously trying to transmit with that what he can not say with words: that it does not matter how many segments an annelid has, the important part, the transcendental, is the beauty in it, the perfection in nature, how you can perceive God’s work even in the simplest of earthworms. It’s not that he says it explicitly. Probably, he isn’t even aware of it, not in a conscious way. But there is a spark, a warmth in his speech that makes Jack’s heart beam in return, despite the fact that they are talking about, well, worms.