Adult-FanFiction.org : Movies

Ship in a Bottle	By : EvilE Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (All) > Het - Male/Female > Jack/Elizabeth Views: 4205 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 12
- 13
- 14
Chapter 13: Close Encounters

Elizabeth did not so much awake as become aware of movement near her. Her eyelids opened slowly, and she immediately closed them again, since they were heavy and she felt so weary... why couldn't she sleep? The room was a dim gray, and she guessed that it was very near dawn. A hand had woken her up, a hand on her bare side underneath a thin blanket. She opened her eyes again.

Jack. She was in Jack's bed.

Panic rose, constricting her throat. She was staring straight at Jack, who seemed to be sleeping rather peacefully, except that he had just reached for her and brought her closer. She blinked, regarding him in the growing light.

Deep down, she had always thought Jack handsome. Mentally, of course, she washed him and combed him and stripped off his rags and scarves and that well-worn bandanna, which he still wore and which was partially obscured by a flattened pillow. But now she had ceased to make those imaginary alterations, and accepted the smudges, the beads, the knotted hair, the braids. She looked at him as he slept, thinking how rarely she got a chance to see him this close without him doing something to either distance them or close the distance between them. Or without ruining the moment by opening his mouth, which now, in the quiet grey dawn of his cabin, was mercifully shut.

Her eyes explored the line of his cheekbones. They were quite high, elegant even, and she thought perhaps this was the feature that deluded her into believing him a gentleman on the inside, instead of a rogue through and through. His nose, centered perfectly between those admirable cheekbones, was less elegant - a few mounds seemed to rise along its length like the gentlest waves lapping at the shore. Perhaps it had been broken once or twice. Perhaps he was born with an unusual nose. But it suited his devil-may-care personality much more than those aristocratically raised cheekbones. All right, she ceded to herself. He looks like both a respectable man, and a scoundrel. I'm not entirely insane.

Next her gaze fell to his mouth. Her lips parted and she reminded herself to breathe as she took in the black hair that sprouted boldly from his upper lip, exposing only the playful dip in the center of it. That was pure pirate. Mysterious. Arrogant. Elusive. And his lower lip... her eyebrows rose and her eyes nearly watered as she examined its generous sweeping curve, so full that she could discern each tiny crease and fold, above the saucy triangle of hair that emerged from its base. A man had no right to have a lip like that, she thought. And he knew how to use it to his advantage - like everything else - by biting it thoughtfully, sticking it out in a pout, capturing her own lips with it... a small sigh escaped, and she told herself she ought to, had to, take her last look at Captain Jack Sparrow and move on with her life.

Then he suddenly opened his eyes, and looked straight at her.

It was as though a bolt of lightning had struck her, jolting her out of her private thoughts and sizzling right through her entire body. Part of it was surprise - she had thought him still asleep - and part was simple reaction to the clarity, the intensity of his dark eyes, the whites visible in the early light, the irises the color of rich, dark coffee and his pupils wide in the dimness of the room. Looking at him, looking back at her, was simply electrifying.

He didn't move at all, only regarded her. For a moment. He'd caught her looking, she knew, and she was still embarrassed, still scrambling to concoct a why and where and how. But her mind was foggy with exhaustion, and Jack's hand curled possessively around her side, making her even less able to think.

“Like what you see, love?” His voice was scratchy and deeper, much deeper, than his usual melodious tenor.

She sighed hopelessly, closing her eyes, and she felt him inch closer, rolling his body against hers. An unexpected shudder coursed through her at the realization that he was still naked. And so was she. She felt his beard brush her ear as his arms came around her to pull her against him.

“Can't you just say, 'Good morning,' instead of behaving like some skittish miss I've brutally ravaged?” he continued in the same light, soft tone, the warmth of his lips tickling the edges of her earlobe.

“Good morning,” she mumbled against his neck. None too happily.

“That's better. Never thought I'd be the one teaching you manners, bluestocking.” After a moment, he pressed a slow, easy kiss to her cheek, and released her. “It's near dawn. When did you and Mary plan to... er... exchange gifts, as it were?”

She sighed again. “At dawn. We're to meet in my cabin after claiming to need air.”

“Oh,” he said, sounding disappointed. Very disappointed. She looked at him, and his eyes were open, glancing up at the ceiling, smudges of kohl having expanded outside the line of his lashes making him seem almost pitiable.

She really didn't know what to say. She was miserable, too, he had to understand. “Jack,” she began in a tearful voice.

“No. No, no, no. Not that. Please. Not now.” He rolled toward her again, and she saw his lips were lifted into a perhaps sardonic smile as he brushed hair out of her face with the backs of his fingers. “Let's not talk now.”

He bent his head and kissed her, trapping her lower lip between his, and moving his head ever so slightly back and forth. She felt the kiss clear down to her toes. But it ended too soon, and he lifted his head and pulled away.

“Let's get you dressed and out of here, or else I'll keep on kissing you. Then it will be nigh noon before I let you leave, think how we'd both have an awful lot of explaining to do, hm?”

She nodded glumly, feeling devoid of words. She climbed out of the bunk and he followed. She found her shift in a white puddle of fabric on the floor and shook it out before dropping it over her head and tying the laces. She began to look for her dress, before she realized that Jack already had it and was holding out the bodice for her to step into. After she did so, her eyes fell on his body behind it. He was still naked.

She blushed, and hid her embarrassment by giving him her back, and he fed the buttons into their holes. It took a moment for him to complete the entire row. She recollected their exchange the previous night, how he had specifically recalled that he'd never gotten her out of, or into, a proper dress... which was fitting, since before he'd had Lizzy the girl, Lizzy the pirate, but not Lizzy the lady. The married woman. But he'd had her now, as well.

And didn't he know it, too, she thought, glancing at his sly expression as he finished the buttons and his eyes came back to her face for an instant, and she knew he was thinking about it too, about how she'd entered his cabin as an actress, in costume, and was now leaving, the same way.

But not the same, however much she'd like to deny it. Changed irrevocably. She was married to Will Turner, a man she idealized and admired and loved. And she'd willingly spent the night in the bed of a pirate.

She stood and fastened the skirt. He raised and closed his trousers.

“All right, then,” was all he said. He walked to the door and opened it, peering outside to see if anyone would see her go below to the cabin and suspect what had happened. He indicated with a shake of his head that no one was watching. As she passed him at the door he extended a hand against her stomach, arresting her forward motion. When she looked up at him questioningly, seeing an enigmatic expression in his eyes, which were partially hidden by heavy, lowered lids, his mouth opened, and then closed, as if he'd been about to say something but thought better of it. His fingers curled and uncurled, and he withdrew his hand.

She fixed her eyes on the door and exited, holding her head high. She didn't look back.

* * *

A short while later, Will Turner emerged from belowstairs onto the deck. His footsteps were slow and unsteady. In fact, he could barely walk at all, barely place one foot in front of the other. His hair blew loose behind his head, and his shirt hung open, mostly unbuttoned. He staggered a few steps to the deck rail and he leaned against it, his elbows sliding out to the side, his head coming down almost to rest on his hands.

He was totally exhausted. Elizabeth had been wild, like he'd never seen her, the entire night. He'd slept only between bouts of lovemaking of every possible kind, ways they'd never tried before, ways he couldn't imagine how Elizabeth even knew about to suggest to him. His eyes widened as he mentally tallied all the things they'd done. He had no idea what had put her in such an amorous mood, and his mind told him something was strange, out of character for his sweet, proper Elizabeth. But his thoughts got no farther than that, because he could no longer think. He was completely spent. He had fought his way up here to clear his head, to draw some air into his aching lungs, and could only hope he wouldn't topple helplessly over the rail into the ocean.

A bottle suddenly appeared right in front of his face. A bottle with amber liquid. Rum. Its neck was being gripped by four creased, brown fingers and a ringed thumb. He followed the hand to an arm, which disappeared into a graying white shirt before connecting to a brown tunic and a bronzed neck surrounded by black hair. Lowered, blackened lids. An inscrutable expression.

Jack.

With a groan he seized the bottle gratefully, violently twisting the cork out and taking several long, steadying drinks, before fitting the cork back in. The rum burned the back of his mouth and throat, but the warmth of it was just what he needed. He lifted himself off the rail a little more with his left hand, and used his right to pass the bottle back to Jack. He didn't look at him. It occurred to Will that it was early morning and Jack wasn't even bothering with a flask, but already working his way through a bottle. A glance to the side revealed that Jack's shirt was parted and being lifted by the breeze in its unfastened state. He wondered if Jack had perhaps passed a similarly eventful night.

Well, Will figured, as long as he was kept busy with Mary... he wasn't looking hungrily at Elizabeth. Which was good.

Will then turned to him, his lips parted, feeling as though he wanted to ask something, but Jack wasn't meeting his eyes. Jack had drawn up next to him at the rail, propping one elbow upon it, tucking his hand across his chest as he leaned forward. With his other he lifted the same bottle Will had just held to his lips up to his own, and took a long drink, tipping his head slightly backward before replacing the cork and wiping his lip with his right sleeve.

The two men said nothing, only stood and absorbed the rum into their troubled, rebellious insides as the ship rocked them soothingly. But a gull coasting in the early morning air off the port side of the Queen Elizabeth would have spied two men, one whose eyes were wide and moving with searching bewilderment, the other's still, focused, and narrowed in bitter resignation.

* * *

“Cap'n!” came the call from the aft deck. “Cap'n, come look at this!”

Jack was pulled out of his melancholy reverie by Gibbs' shout, and he pivoted on one foot - none too steadily, he noticed, and made a mental note to leave off the rum for at least an hour, say, until noon - and headed up toward the poop deck. He ascended the stairs carefully, slightly unsettled to note that his hips brushed first one side of the stairway, then the other, then the first again.

“Tell me it's good news, mate.” Jack peered at Gibbs through lowered lids as he took the spyglass from his fingers.

“Aye, well there's some o' that... and some other, too. Have a look see.”

Jack peered in the direction Gibbs indicated, and there, near the horizon, he caught a glimpse of black sails, swollen with the breeze... his heavy heart lifted. It was the Pearl.

And it was a beautiful sight, all dark against the blue water, and Jack could barely breathe for looking at it and imagining how fast they would go, how much plunder she'd hold, how he'd be the pirates' pirate again, and sail the free world without anyone to tell him nay. For that was what he really loved, he knew: freedom. The Pearl was a means to an end, the best, most expedient, most beautiful means, but a means nonetheless. She was just a ship, but she was his ship, and together they'd make him the happiest sailor on the entire great ocean...

“Well, my lovely Pearl. So it does exist.” He lowered the spyglass for a moment and looked back at Gibbs. “And the other?”

“Fer that ye'll have to look back the other way.”

Jack did so. And he saw the tiniest speck on the opposite horizon, so small he could hardly tell that it was a ship, but he could see a mast that appeared to be a toothpick, and tiny white sails.

The Dauntless.

Jack groaned inwardly and handed the telescope to Gibbs. “Match the Pearl's heading, but keep us out of sight. If we're lucky perhaps some fog will shroud us. We can't be too far from land - I've seen gulls - and if geography serves, there are a few islands hereabouts. Keep watching. We'll have to draw closer to her and observe the watches and crew before we can figure how best to take her without leaving her a sinking wreck.”

“Aye. What about the Dauntless?”

“Keep moving. Hopefully they haven't spied us. I can't believe that fool Norrington actually sailed them into the mist.” He rubbed his jaw pensively. “He must want me awfully bad.”

At Gibbs' appraising, somewhat perturbed look, Jack added, “We'll use his desperation to our advantage. By the time they catch us, we'll have the Pearl. We'll make a hasty exit. The witch said the mists last for two hours, but only as long as I've got the bottle intact. Once our ships are back through, I'll break it, since it will no longer be of use to us. The mist should evaporate.”

“And they'll be trapped in this world.”

“So much the worse for them.”

“Aye.”

“Follow the Pearl, and keep a sharp eye.”

“Aye, Cap'n.”
- 12
- 13
- 14
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Ship in a Bottle