Title: "What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?"
Author: mala
Fandom: PotC
Rating/Classification: SAC, het, Jack/Elizabeth.
Disclaimer: Who, me? Shyeah, right! Disney owns our souls!
Summary: Way-hey, and up she rises. *g* May answer a crucial question of
Jack's from the movie, lol.
She wakes with a pounding headache. Her whole body throbbing. Sand in strange places, dried into her sodden skirts and ground deep into her skin. She has no head for drink. Table wine is nothing compared to bootleggers' rum. Perhaps that is why table wine is all the women of her class are allowed.
Because stronger liquor gives way to dancing and singing around a fire
with pirates. General libertine behavior.
And far worse.
Captain Jack Sparrow snores. A loud, rumbling, oafish, noise that makes her inch towards the warmth of the driftwood that has burned down to embers over the course of the night. It will have to be built up again. Higher. A thousand times higher so it may be seen by passing ships. She groans, holding her head as she sits up, listening to the creaks of protests issued by her knees and the place where her thighs join.
Before she even knew what they were, she had girlhood dreams of making love to Will. Of flowers and candlelight and promises. Of his body rising
over hers, his rough but nimble fingers leaving bruises on her hips as he
whispered that he loved her. 'Twasn't meant to be like this. Something given and taken on a vast beach in the middle of the sea. 'Twas not meant for Jack Sparrow.
But, lo, what's done is done.
She remembers that his hands were gentle. Did not leave behind traces of dirt on her skin as he edged the bodice of her shift aside and closed his
fingers around her breast. She has heard the housemaids speak in hushed tones about pain, about great pleasure and men who are "rutting beasts." Things from dime novels and lewd sketches. Conflicting. Like their bodies shrouded in sand and weighted down with the thick, cane-sugar taste of the rum.
Rum. Demon rum. It should be banished from creation. She stumbles as she stands...teetering barefoot...leaning against Jack's legs until she regains
her own.
Her father has always thought her exceedingly bold. Overly so. Too wild. In need of taming. Fettered by corsets and Commodores. Perhaps he is right.
As the flames licked and leapt like his tongue against her pulse, Jack
told her how she'd felt in his arms as he pulled her from the water. Soft and wet and blue-tinged. How he'd sliced her corset open to allow her to breathe. The cutlass going through the ties and whalebone, releasing her. Like he released her to clutch at his shoulders and bite through her lip. To whisper his name as they rolled against the bottles they'd emptied and he pulled her atop him.
Exceedingly bold. Exceedingly stupid.
The door to the bootleggers' hideaway is heavy, but it gives, easily, after a few strong tugs. Below are casks and casks of dusted-over liquor. And liquor burns. It burns high.
There were no flowers. There were no candles. And there were no promises.
Will will never need know.
But, lo, what's done is done.
And she can breathe.
--end--
July 10, 2003.