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Count of Three	By : EvilE Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (All) > General Views: 3378 -:- 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
- 1-Count of Three
- 1
TITLE: Count of Three

AUTHOR: piratemistress

PAIRING: Jack/Elizabeth/Barbossa, but not really Jack/Barbossa, and implied W/E.

RATING: MA/NC-17. Nasty, naughty, you name it.

SUMMARY: Pre- and post-AWE. Jack and Barbossa simply must learn to share her. (The Pearl, of course.)

DISCLAIMER: These characters aren't stolen, only borrowed, borrowed without permission. For personal entertainment, not commercial purposes.

WARNING(s): This story has no plot. It didn't when I started it, and it still doesn't. But I am thoroughly grateful to lm_jillybean, who seems to have liked it anyway and gave me much valuable feedback.

A/N: Prompt #17, Jack/Elizabeth/Barbossa, must include the phrase “any time, any place.”

Count of Three

She was a peculiar lass, no doubt, Barbossa thought as he watched Elizabeth spar with Pintel on the deck of the Portuguese schooner Borboleta on their way to Singapore; half spitfire and half cold plotter of dooms, and he had the feeling a man never knew quite which side he fell on till it was too late. She'd come a long way from the princess in her nightie who'd dared to deliver him ultimatums; or maybe not, he thought, remembering how she tricked them into revealing the medallion's value, how she took the Commodore for a ride, and not in the way he wanted, either; even got one over on old Jack. More than one, unless he missed his guess.

Perhaps Will was the only man she wasn't tricking. Barbossa turned his eyes to the boy, who was still playing knife games with a perfectly good spot of deck, and frowned. No, that was wrong: she was on a mission and her beau was left out of it. Out of all of them, perhaps Will was the one she'd deceived most deeply, and perhaps without even meaning to.

Such a serious expression for such a young woman, he thought, continuing to stare. She was toying with Pintel, could have beat him easily, but he supposed she saw no fun in it. Besides, if she were finished sparring, she might have to talk to her fiancè. And even though the whelp had conspired in his own death, Barbossa couldn't help pitying the lad. Somebody ought to teach him the way of things.

Maybe Tia, for that task, Barbossa thought as she appeared from below, sending a snake's elegant, dark smile his way.

A clatter disrupted his thoughts; Pintel had been disarmed, and Elizabeth was wiping the sweat from her forehead - yes, she perspired, no matter what they said about glowing - and she was heading in his direction, flushed and panting with exertion. She was a little delicious, just then, a good picture for any young man's fantasy as he went to seek a barrel-hole.

“I s'pose I should say ye did well, but he wasn't much of a challenge,” Barbossa said to her with a smile as she drew up next to him.

“Care to provide me with more of one?” she replied, dabbing gently at her brow with a torn scarf she'd found somewhere. Jack's? She did mop her sweat like a lady, though. Not that he'd seen many ladies mop their sweat.

He grinned at her. “Ye think ye can best me? Not even Jack could best me without a pistol.”

She stiffened, and he knew he'd struck a nerve; interesting, that. “Jack's not the measure of us, is he?”

“Not anymore,” he replied with a sneer, and she gave him a sort of horrified little glance before she turned away.

That night it was dinner with the crew; not as punishment, but as a matter of course. Or courses, maybe - lots of them. Early out of port and the food was still good. Someone told a joke - a coarse one, as it happened - and the men laughed; Elizabeth didn't, and Barbossa caught her embarrassed glance from man to man before she climbed off the bench and pretended to be taking her trencher to clean it out.

“Darlin', come sit here,” he said as she passed, rendering the request a formality as he caught her around the waist with his forearm and pulled her down to sit on his knee.

She made a sound of protest and tensed to stand up; he held her fast. “Relax,” he said, drawing out the second syllable into a snake-charm. “He ain't even looking.”

For that, he received a glare. He grinned back; she'd be almost like a daughter to him, if he'd ever had one. He was probably almost as old as her father, too. There was only the little fact of them not actually being relatives that made fatherly affection a little bit of a stretch, on his part. When she shifted uneasily on his knee, the warm curves of her young bottom seated snugly on his thigh, parts of him were stretching. Just a bit.

She wiggled again. “Captain Barbossa, I really must protest-“

“Hush, missy, I'm not going to do ye harm, yet. Do ye want to get up and go hide, or do ye want me to explain the joke to ye?”

A rueful glance from the corner of her eyes; a sigh of resignation. When Will looked over a few minutes later, Barbossa knew he saw Elizabeth throw back her head and laugh, a long strand of hair tossed wildly over her shoulder, one of her elbows hooking amicably around her captain's neck.

* * *

When her world ended, she didn't want to seem ungrateful; that was why she wouldn't let herself cry. She got what she always wanted and dreamed, her marriage to Will, the chance for pirate adventures.

Even when her insides screamed, I didn't want it like this, she ground her teeth and threw herself into duties aboard the pirate ship she had hidden herself on, telling herself she was not alone, and that ten years was not such a terribly long time. She told herself she had a home, somewhere, even if it might take quite some time to get there, and she might find someone else living there when she arrived.

Two days after they reached Tortuga, she caught sight of the Pearl in port from the window of a tavern where she sipped ale quietly in the shadows. She made herself walk - not run - to the dock, and was disappointed, though not terribly surprised, to see Barbossa standing grandly on its deck in the afternoon sunlight, looking somewhat annoyed.

He saw her, too, from the rail; stared in his penetrating manner, folding his elbows across his expansive chest. “Well. If it ain't the Pirate King, to whom I'd be remiss not to offer my heartiest connubial congratulations.”

It ain't, she thought to herself, pinching her lips together before she responded. “Are you going to disembark, or do I have to climb aboard with a grappling hook?”

“That, I'd like to see,” he said, flashing a lopsided, yellowed grin before turning away to shout orders to lower the gangway.

He strode up next to her on the dock, placing his hat on his head, feather waving in the wind. “Let's walk,” he said, taking her elbow gently between his thumb and forefinger.

“So Jack has the charts,” she said a few minutes later.

“Aye. But we, the Pearl.”

“We?” She lifted a brow at him.

He stopped; narrowed his eyes at her. “By we, I mean me. And the crew, of course.”

“Of course.”

His chin came up; his eyes rolled down, and it was a sort of mad expression that made him seem crazier than he was. He wasn't crazy at all; he was quite astute, and cunning. She knew she was being sized up, and squared her shoulders involuntarily.

“So, Miss… what the devil should I call you, now?”

Elizabeth's lips parted, soundlessly; she hadn't thought about that.

He continued to wait, regarding her, one eye narrower than the other. “'Spose ye really are Elizabeth Turner, this time.”

She swallowed, her throat tight. “Yes… I suppose I am.”

“Very well.” A hint of a smile played about his lips. “Care to join us in our pursuit of immortality, Mrs. Turner?”

“Us? You're including the crew, again?”

Barbossa smiled, and something rippled through her: mistrust, of a high degree. “Certainly, us, the crew.”

Elizabeth didn't know how she'd survive the next ten years, let alone a lifetime or an eternity; but the alternative, to stay here, to wander aimlessly, friendlessly, was insufferable. “I'll come,” she said.

He grinned, eyes widening. “Good.”

“On one condition.”

Barbossa snorted in disgust. “And what's that? And what right have ye to set any conditions at all, I'd like to know?”

Elizabeth stood her ground, raising her chin defiantly. “Once we find Jack and get the charts, we take him with us.”

Barbossa's eyes and nostrils flared as he growled, “And why's that? Once we get the charts, we don't need Jack.”

Elizabeth was silent as she thought of the only man other than Will that had - however occasionally - seen to her well-being when she was in danger, and perhaps the only man she considered a kindred spirit. None of which she shared with Barbossa, but she suspected he would agree anyway.

“That might be true, but we can make him think we do. He's a sharp mind in a crisis, and well you know it. And further, he'll only let me into it if he thinks it's his idea. Think you can manage that, Captain Barbossa? Set out without me, and then turn back? Fool Jack into believing he's invited me himself?”

Jack might be a good-for-nothing, lying, cheating, stealing bag of wind, but he might have been the closest thing she had to a friend, any more.

“Me, fool Jack?” Barbossa said, grinning. “Any place, any time. But…” He eyed her, up and down, looking nearly through her, and blood seemed to beat strongly against her already-warm skin. “…I thought we said Jack wasn't the measure of us, any more?”

She gritted her teeth. “He's not.”

“He's your problem, then,” Barbossa suddenly said, turning away with a wave of his hand. “Keep him out of my hair, and he's all yours.”

“Agreed,” she said in her firmest, deepest pirate voice, earning herself a sneer from the captain.

* * *

Jack spied Tortuga first, on their return, and couldn't wait to lord the fact over his ex-first-mate, whose eyes weren't what they once were; in the early days Barbossa could have spotted a gannet at seventy-five yards and told a man the color of its tail feathers. Now he relied on the spyglass more, and delegated tasks of lookout to younger eyes.

“If you haven't noticed, we're approaching land,” Jack announced as Barbossa took large, greedy steps past the helm of the Pearl.

Barbossa stopped, his cheek curving as he smiled sidelong, tucking his hand inside his jacket at his waist. “Don't spy any voluptuous misses waitin' for us on the dock, do ye?”

“If it's dear Cap'n Swann we're collecting, I don't think voluptuous is the right word.”

“Vituperous, then.”

“Let's not forget vociferant.” Jack scratched his ear absently, as though already anticipating her shouting in it. “When you encountered her by merest chance-“ Barbossa grinned at Jack's choice of words- “you did make it clear that if we took turns being captain, she was to receive no particular treatment above that of any other member of the crew?”

“Have a heart, Jack,” Barbossa replied. “If the lass wishes to share me cabin, I'll not be inhospitable.”

“Share my cabin, you mean.”

“I managed to utilize it great deal more than you did, all those years after the curse. And as far as Elizabeth - well - I'd wager she won't look twice at ye, now that she's finally had her beau.”

“Nonsense,” Jack said. “You'll see.”

Barbossa's eyes were wide as the moon and half as mad-bright as he smiled again. “Oh, aye. I'll be keeping a close eye on the two of you, to be sure.”

Jack was left to ponder all possible meanings of that phrase, as they drew closer to the harbor.

When Elizabeth kissed Barbossa in greeting, right in front of everyone on the deck of the Pearl, Jack was surprised. Well, not surprised - more poleaxed. Utterly revolted. But he couldn't look away - she had walked right up to him and kissed him on the cheek, and the miserable lecher had the nerve to smile over her shoulder at Jack, taunting him. Jack was immediately sorry he insisted on getting Elizabeth from Tortuga before they set off for Florida. Some part of him had rather thought this would be his chance to have her to himself. Finally.

She turned to him, then, with a sly smile, and he knew she was going to kiss him, next, right after. He was a little disgusted by that, too, the thought of her kiss-hopping from Barbossa, right along to him. She didn't, though. She only said, “Hello, Jack,” and waited.

“Awfully free with those kisses of yours,” was what sprang to his lips, and he immediately wished he'd stuck his foot in, instead.

“For anyone who can withstand them,” she said, smiling, and then she did lean up and kiss him. Not on the cheek; on the side of the mouth, not close enough to be sex, not far enough to be entirely platonic. Inwardly, he groaned.

* * *

Three nights out; four bells and he was inside his cabin. Two in the morning. She sat up from the bunk, slowly, sleepily. “Captain Barbossa?” she murmured.

Jack stared. “What - are you expecting him?”

A sigh, a stretch. “Of course not. I only thought...” She yawned, loudly. “You had agreed on taking turns.”

“We had.”

“And tonight it's mine.”

“Tonight it was yours,” Jack corrected her, unbuttoning his worn gray tunic. “Now it's 'ours'.”

He could feel her eyes on him. On his back, as he stripped his shirt smoothly off, a practiced motion. She was silent, which was a good sign. No protests. He reached for his breeches.

“Jack.”

“Hm?” He unfastened them.

“Are you going to take off all of your clothes, right in front of me?”

“Well, if you face that way, and I face this way, I think I'd be, technically, in back of you.”

He sat and tugged off his boots. It took a lot of effort. She was still watching raptly.

He looked up. Their eyes met. There was a connection, a strike, a sizzle of energy and heat that leapt across the room. Her eyes fell to his chest, his arms, the fine black hair on his stomach, below. He liked her watching him. Her gaze felt like a caress.

Not enough of one, though. He stood up, his loosened brown breeches settling around his hips. He stalked toward the bed, his catlike and predatory gait indicating the worst of intentions.

“Jack,” she said. A warning.

“Welcome to maturity,” he told her. “You're not a blushing virgin any more. Either get out of my bed, with all due haste, or share it with me graciously.”

Well, fuck him if she didn't blush, right on cue, just a little darkening of her cheeks. He climbed in, right next to her, and she scrambled sideways. Not fast enough. He caught her around the waist, hauling her under him.

“Jack!”

“Enough. I asked you to come. You came. If you didn't want this, you wouldn't have.”

There was silence; perhaps because she knew he was right. “What I want, and what my duty is, are two different things.”

“A season for all things, Elizabeth, and this isn't the season for duty. Nor the night.”

His hands slid under the Chinese silk tunic she had taken to wearing since Singapore and the Empress; it was incredible on her skin, but not as incredible as his warm, calloused hands on the sensitive flesh of her stomach. Her muscles shuddered involuntarily at the touch, and he smiled.

“Go on, then,” he said, easing his grip and stretching himself out to full length beside her, waiting to see what she'd do.

* * *

She sighed, a venting of frustration and desire, an exasperated refusal and acceptance at once. Saying no was easier when she could tell herself she didn't want Jack, didn't crave his touch or his company or anything else.

“I am still his wife,” she said, staring away into the dark; it was almost as if she said it to the night.

“His wife of one meager evening,” Jack replied, trailing two fingers of her cheeks, the hollow of her neck.

“Hardly meager,” she said, and Jack snorted in disbelief. She leveled a cool gaze at him, taking in his arrogant smirk. “You'd like to imagine it was ghastly, wouldn't you? Poor clumsy Will and his virgin bride?” She rolled onto her side to face him, a self-possessed smile drawing out the corners of her lips. “I suppose I ought to let you go on thinking it, lest I damage your fragile confidence.”

“Tell me otherwise, then,” Jack replied, his palm sliding over bare shoulder, nearly reaching a breast before she caught his wrist. “Or show me.”

“It's wrong.”

“What is?”

She bit her lip. “You know what. Wanting… this.”

“Well, if it's the wanting that's wrong, and you'll want it, whether we see it to completion or not, we may as well just get on with it.”

“Leave it to you to justify adultery.”

“Think of it as putting me out of my most abject misery,” Jack said, eyes going round and placating as he raised his head to rest his chin on her shoulder; two beaded strands swung into place in front of his ears, and Elizabeth failed to suppress a laugh as she pictured a brown-eared Bassett they'd had back in Suffolk.

Jack took her laughter badly; his lip stuck out and he turned his face to rub his cheek against her collarbone with a whimper. She stifled further giggles and couldn't help herself; she looped an arm around his neck and drew him close in consolation.

A moment had passed when she realized it was the first real laugh she'd had in ages. “Jack,” she sighed, this time in plea, or resignation.

“Will he kill us? Would he?” Jack's head was immediately up, and he rose over her, his fingers stroking her cheeks possessively. “Think he doesn't understand? Think he doesn't already know?”

“He knew,” Elizabeth said ruefully, thinking of discussions below decks on the ship to the end of the world, of the look in Will's eyes when he'd left her on the beach, saying, I don't expect the world to stop turning.

“And you're expected to live chaste as an abbess, save for one day every ten years,” Jack murmured, drawing his lips along her neck. “I couldn't live chaste for ten weeks.”

“Or ten minutes. Apparently.”

“Elizabeth, please. Please. Please.” Each hoarse word was punctuated by a kiss, a scalding open-mouthed caress of her breast, a nipple. He coaxed with words and lips and fingers. “I can't not. Not with you… here like this. Under my nose, under me…”

She knew it was too soon to give in; she hadn't even gone half a year without Will, but then, wouldn't it be worse to betray him at nine years and a half? She pulled Jack away from her tender spots and curled against him, nearly naked, wanting to feel him close to her without her heart calling her an adulteress. They dozed for a while, but both woke to rekindling desire; he took to convincing her again, pleading his cause with kisses and skin sucked against his teeth, all along her body, her side, her abdomen, the inside of her thigh, eliciting moans of encouragement from her that she didn't really mean to let escape, and she wondered how thin the walls were, and if anyone would hear her crying out.

When he finally dipped his tongue deep inside her, she gasped at the strange pleasure of it, warm and firm and not the same as when Will had taken her. Jack did have a long, skilled tongue and he made excellent use of it, tonguing her repeatedly while nibbling at her with his upper lip and teeth. His moustache abraded her tender skin, but she could not find her voice to tell him to stop.

His eyes flicked open to glance at her once or twice, and their expression was teasing, knowing, he knew he was driving her insane, he loved to, he must, given the ardent way he was loving her with his mouth and tongue. She was desperate for release, her whole body tight; she was unable to breathe but in dire need of air, panting, now holding her breath, now letting it out, in time with his delicious thrusts... one two three and a shake of his head and she was pushed over the edge, coming apart as the waves took her and she shook violently against Jack's never-ceasing mouth.

Even to Will, she had never given herself with such abandon, and she was a bit surprised, and a little overwhelmed. Confused, she lay back, panting while Jack's fingers played over her thighs in triumph. His expression made it seem as though he wanted some sort of honor bestowed on him for his valorous achievement; she was too exhausted even to move.

It was then that she realized they were not alone. Captain Barbossa - Hector, he had asked her to call him and she refused every time - watched from the doorframe, arms casually folded across his chest, eyes lit and wild as he watched the two of them. He must have heard, from the deck. Been listening, been watching a most private moment between her and Jack. The most private moment of her entire life so far, when she'd reached that dizzying peak of melting abandon by rubbing herself unabashedly against Jack Sparrow's lips and teeth and tongue.

She sat up so hastily Jack knew something was up, and he followed her gaze to the door.

“Get out,” Jack said.

“And miss such a bea-u-tiful scene? I think not, Jack,” Barbossa said, smiling and taking another step in. “Go on. I'll just watch.”

“I said, get the hell out.”

Barbossa eyed Elizabeth, who fought the urge to cover herself, naked to his stare. His hands and body didn't move, just his eyes, and it was this that quelled her fear. She liked being looked at, she realized. Being looked at like that, like something worthwhile and wondrous. And Captain - Hector, she told her disobedient tongue - had never really harmed her. Helped her, even, and treated her like a lady, even when he was teaching her to be a pirate. So she didn't mind that he was looking, not really. She wondered what he'd thought about while he watched Jack; she wondered if he'd like to be in his place. Tasting her.

Hector. She couldn't say it; ugly, brutish syllables that fit the man perfectly, and that stood between them, strongly enough to protect them from perverting whatever mutual accord they had and twisting into something sordid.

Her failure to protest incited Jack's wrath and he leapt up from the bed, heading for the door with breeches open, erect cock swinging. “Out. Count of three,” Jack was saying.

Barbossa grinned. “Three sounds just marvelous t'me,” he replied, and cut an angle to Jack's path by heading for the bed himself.

“Don't,” Elizabeth said to him, as he sat down. His hands were in his lap, calm as can be. That was what was slightly appealing about him, she realized. The control. Jack was all heat and wildness and chase.

“Didn't I say I'd only watch, me girl?”

“I don't trust you,” she said.

He chuckled. “Ah, well, you're a better pirate than I thought.”

“Get out,” Jack said, exasperated.

She would allow Barbossa's large, rough hands on her, but not his kiss; he was too old, or ugly, or because she felt some kind of imagined loyalty, but she did allow his hands. He palmed a breast, reverently, stroking it with nimble fingers. He was fortunate to be able to touch her. He knew it.

Jack was still watching in what appeared to be confusion and horror and burgeoning desire. “Jack,” she said, in a cajoling tone that dripped, don't be silly, you're the one I really want. She realized Barbossa probably didn't know Jack had never taken her before, that he'd robbed them of their first time, alone. She willed Jack to realize it, but he was too busy figuring out how to show off, scrambling back into bed and finding a spot close to her.

Jack guided her across him, and she straddled his lap, taking him inside with a long groan, and there was an answering groan from Jack, from Barbossa.

Barbossa didn't reach for her. He reached for himself, instead, stroking long and firm. She had her back to him but she could see over her shoulder, behind her waist. Could see him touching himself.

She was kind; despite everything, being pirate and king and deceiver of men great and small, she was still kind, still felt bound to scoop up a respectable man from the mud even if she was not in love with him. So she reached back to Barbossa and brushed her fingers across him, and he hissed a curse. She wrapped her hand around him, and he groaned, leaning his cheek against the back of her shoulder as she rode Jack.

“God in heaven,” Jack whispered when he realized what she was doing. “You are brazen, aren't you?”

She shrugged, without smiling. Jack didn't care about her being brazen; like a spoiled child, he didn't like her attention elsewhere, even in a small way. He would be a possessive lover, she thought, but only when he thought someone else could take her from him. Behind her, where Jack couldn't see, Barbossa covered her hand with his, guiding her motions. She allowed it, matching his rhythm. She considered him a friend and he seemed to need her; it was enough.

* * *

“You didn't like my touching him,” she said to Jack, later, long after Barbossa had gone and she and Jack had passed hours alone, making up for years of lost time.

He looked at her sidelong in the dark, and gave a carefree roll of eyes and lift of brows. Don't matter to me, he was trying to say with the gesture, but she read past it.

“Would you expect a woman to be faithful to you?” she asked, and realized she wasn't only talking about Jack. “If there were years between you... if there were circumstances...”

Jack didn't answer right away, but turned toward her and gathered her close, his fingers playing over her collarbone, the center of her chest, her belly. “Depends on the woman,” he said finally, trailing his fingers back up the side of her thigh, her hip. “And the circumstances.”

“I'll always be his,” she reminded him as he touched his lips to her cheek. “And yet here I am, with you.”

Jack chuckled before he leaned closer to whisper, “No… you've always been mine... you just didn't know it, or were too proud to admit it.”

She stared. “Don't delude yourself, Jack. It isn't healthy.”

“Likewise.”

* * *

She was standing at the rail when she felt him behind her; he was different than Jack, taller, broader, older. Bolder, too. His hand spread slowly open at the front of her hip, hidden under the hem of her tunic; no one else would see, he had made sure of that. His hand on her was warm and possessive, drawing her gently back against him, hard inside his breeches, no doubt the reason he sought her out, and not the reverse.

To the others it probably looked as though he were simply standing behind her, looking over her shoulder out to sea. She closed her eyes, feeling how he nestled between the globes of her bottom. Somehow it was comforting. Not loving and needy, like Will, or burning hot, like Jack; just there. She didn't see the harm in standing there, in touching.

Until his chin came to rest on her shoulder, very lightly, and she had the impression he was catching the scent of her hair. “Don't,” she said.

“Don't what?” he taunted, his lips almost against her ear.

“This has gone far enough,” she said in a firm whisper. “I'm already divided between two men. Do you wish to carve me up farther?”

“No,” he said genuinely, sounding a little disappointed, nose and lips still brushing her bare shoulder inside her loose collar. “If I wanted to carve you up, I'd have drawn a dagger on you.”

“You'd lose,” she said, dropping her head forward as he pressed a gentle kiss to her neck.

“Cabin's mine tonight.”

“Is it?” she answered in as bored a tone as she could muster.

“Want to share it?”

“No.”

“You didn't seem to mind, the other evenin'.”

“That was different. Jack was there, and you invited yourself.”

“Well, now I'm inviting you.”

“Why? Because I'm the only woman within fifty miles?”

In answer, he reached down and pulled her back against him, hard; her breath escaped as he looped an arm tightly around her middle. “Let go,” she said, and it was a warning.

He held her a second more; then released her, and she whirled around, arm outstretched to slap him. He anticipated it, caught her wrist and pinned it between them. “Tired of every old pirate chasing after you, is that it?” he said. “Every man, 'cept the one you want?”

“Yes,” she nearly growled at him, twisting her arm free of his grip. “My husband, and not any of you.”

“Not true.” Barbossa grinned. “You only wish that were true, of Jack.”

“Leave me alone,” she hurled back, pushing at his shoulders. “Go grab yourself in your precious cabin.”

“I'd rather you-“

“Forget it,” she snapped, and shoving his arms aside, marched away from the rail.

* * *

When Jack wasn't captain, he was crew; he was as strong as the next man. Gibbs was officially second mate, since the two non-captains tied for first on their off-days. Strange to take orders from him, but Jack went with it. He took an empty spot behind Cotton at the halyard when they were hoisting the mainsail again after a mild, but windy, storm.

“Count of three, and haul away,” Gibbs called over the deck. “One, two, three, and haul.”

Jack was caught unawares at how quickly the halyard line moved under his hands. Christ, it'd been a long time since he'd done the regular things. He caught up as fast as he could, and chanced a look across deck to starboard; Elizabeth stood opposite, and her smirk when he their eyes met told him she'd seen.

When the knot was tied and they could ease up and let go, Jack made his way over a flat wooden locker and drew up next to her, pinning her to the rail with his gaze. “Have something to say about my hauling?” he whispered.

“Nothing at all, sir,” she said in mock deference, tugging his hat down more firmly. “Only, do try to keep up.”

“I've no trouble keeping up, and well you know it.”

“Cabin's yours tonight, isn't it?”

“Aye, it is,” he said, and only the constant presence of crew kept him from hauling her against him right there on the deck. “Are you so bold as to invite yourself?”

“And just for that, I'll let you wonder if I'll come at all,” she said, sidling away to join a small group at a line by the foremast.

He let her go, and watched. That was the best strategy with her, he concluded; a man should let her run along, and keep his eye on her. Otherwise, he'd either miss something extraordinary, or find himself in quite a bit of trouble.

She did come that evening, but not till midnight or after; he had been awake and waiting long enough to be in a prickly mood.

“Where were you?” he said petulantly as she slipped into bed beside him.

“With my other captain, of course,” she whispered before pressing a kiss to his cheek, and he stilled. “Jack - I'm jesting.”

“Sure you are,” he said. “Don't suppose I should ask which man you mean?”

She raised her head above him, brows knitted as her tone lowered to an even sarcasm. “Because if it were so easy to encounter my husband, naturally I'd visit him all the time.”

“Naturally.”

“Are you jealous? Of him?” she said, incredulous, and she didn't mean Will.

Jack snorted. “And for your information, it was my idea to invite you along. Barbossa didn't even want you on the ship. Just in case you were starting to think he fancied you.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes, flopping hard beside Jack. “Jack, you idiot; he and I conspired to include you.”

Jack eyed her sideways, remembering his conversations with Barbossa about the matter. “Did you, now? And when, precisely? And what makes you so sure that wasn't just what we wanted you to think?”

Elizabeth was momentarily silenced. Jack took advantage of the rare opportunity, and leaned over her, opening his mouth against her jaw.

“Come, darling, forget all that. I don't like to waste time; might be all we ever have.”

She stroked the back of his neck thoughtfully. “So when we find this Fountain of Youth, who gets to drink?”

“We do.”

“Who?”

“You. And I.”

“And Hector?”

She'd finally said it, called him by his first name; Jack lifted his head to stare, and he began to suspect some part of her was attracted to him after all. He didn't want to speculate; some young woman's need for approval, some warped paternal longing. He'd conveniently forgotten he was almost twenty years older than her, himself.

“You want him along, forever?”

“He doesn't have to stay here. On the other hand, we two might drive each other out of our minds.”

“Yes, you'd have an eternity to torture me,” Jack said, his hips falling into place between her thighs as she shifted, and a groan escaped him. His body nearly always betrayed him; he wondered, after hundreds of years, if he'd still want her.

“The more, the merrier,” she said, and he wasn't certain if she meant time, or men.

* * *

Of course Jack was the one she wanted, Barbossa observed, and not unhappily so. Barbossa watched Jack teach her to climb the rigging, and she was damn good at it, light and quick. Jack climbed ahead of her, shouting instructions, and they were both laughing as on occasion, she swung awkwardly from the lines, Pintel and Ragetti racing this way and that beneath her on deck in case she took a tumble. Barbossa begrudged them nothing; after all, he could still be dead.

“I made it almost all the way to the topgallant,” she said, eyes bright as her feet touched the deck again. She ran to Barbossa, knowing he watched, forgetting their differences in her exhilaration, in her need to know if the man who'd taught her most of what she knew about piracy had seen and approved. “Did you see? Were you looking?”

“Oh, aye,” he said reassuringly, his lips sliding easily into a smile on one side, the side that wasn't telling her what, precisely, he'd been looking at.

Her palm collided with his shoulder in a playful reprimand; she grinned in the sunlight. “These boots really don't fit. Going to go change them.”

“Oughtn't ye to ask permission to leave deck, since I'm the captain o' the day?” He felt suddenly as though he were teasing a rebellious, too-ambitious child.

“Please,” she said in a mock plea, shifting from foot to foot. He thought again of a small girl, which was odd, since he'd always seen the deep waters of womanhood in her eyes. “These are huge and I'm sliding about, constantly. Jack says he has others, smaller ones, tucked away somewhere in a chest.”

“Aye, does he, now? Wonder whose those were?” Barbossa said, but she was already bounding away across the deck, and he saw Jack slip from the shadows and follow her into the cabin, surreptitiously closing the door.

Boots, his ass.

* * *

It was mid-evening when he decided to venture in, not knowing what he'd find. A show like the last time, if he were lucky. He paused with his hand on the door, not knowing why, reminding himself he was the captain that day, and always, rightfully, if any truth be told.

Candles weren't lit yet, as the last rays of day still filtered in the stern windows. He could make out Jack's prone shape in the bed, curled to one side, softly snoring. But where was she?

“Yes, Captain?” he heard in a warm slur, and she was perched on the chair by the table, smaller-booted feet propped on the tabletop as she reclined. He couldn't miss the half-consumed bottle of rum at her side, and he presumed they'd been hitting the bottle all afternoon.

She looked at him daringly, clad only in Jack's shirt over her shoulders and middle, her bare legs making a pale bridge to the table.

“Drunk afore full night's the sign of sickness,” he told her, snatching off his hat and tossing it on the table as he strolled closer. Again, he felt the sense of authority tingling in his fingers, the strange need to protect her in his gut. She was thoroughly a grown woman, who could drink and seduce as she pleased.

“Hm, don't feel ill,” she said, leaning farther back and pulling her own hat over her forehead, thumbing the brim. “Feel quite well.”

“I'll wager ye do,” he replied, coming to stand next to her. “And I'm happy to hear you're well; another lass in your situation might not be looking at such a bright side, if ye catch my meaning.”

“Captain Barbossa,” she said with mock formality since she'd switched to Hector a week past, pushing with her legs to rock the chair back, “we are not able to choose what happens to us, only how we conduct ourselves under the circumstances.”

“Quite true. Though everything looks a tad brighter through a half-bottle of rum.”

“Good thing we've plenty of it, then,” she said, and the chair came to rest on the floor again, the side of Jack's shirt slipping back to reveal a pale breast, the arch of her waist.

“And ye've had plenty today, haven't ye,” he said, bending over her, more drawn by her resilience than her state of undress, her warmth calling him to lay a calloused palm on the center of her chest, absorb the satin softness of her skin. He didn't know what she'd do. He knew he was more likely Papà than paramour, to her, but something made him keep trying. The fun of nettling her, perhaps.

“Hm, think I have,” she murmured, neither reacting to his touch nor drawing away from it. She did glance at the bed, and Barbossa's eyes followed hers.

“Him, too.”

“Yes. It was an afternoon of celebration. We both had quite a bit. I don't indulge very often.”

She wasn't talking like a lass who'd had too much; Barbossa leaned against the table, watching her shift in the chair so that a line of bare flesh from neck to thighs was revealed between the edges of Jack's well-worn, graying shirt.

“How much have ye had, exactly,” he purred low in his throat, leaning forward to trail a finger down the path of exposed skin.

He didn't miss the slow blink of her eyes. “Enough.”

He knew he shouldn't, knew she'd knock his hand away soon, but he was a man who made a business of pushing his luck; his other side rebelled, the side that screamed he wasn't that old, yet, and he ought to let her know it. He leaned farther forward, his fingers drifting lightly over the strip of bare belly, down to a soft thigh. His lips brushed her cheek, her ear. “Enough to let me have ye, just this once?”

“Hmm,” she groaned in reply to his harsh whisper, as his fingers slipped to the inside of her thigh, her legs easing apart. His fingers were defter than Jack's, he'd wager, although he had no way of knowing for certain. He saw her head lean back against the chair, the top wedged under her nape, her hair swinging in strands behind it. She drew in her breath when he slipped a finger inside; she sighed from her throat when he withdrew it. She was warm and wet. Rum, Jack, him - the cause wasn't certain, but he certainly would capitalize on it.

It wouldn't matter that it was him if he kept her feeling good enough, he thought, twisting his hand and gently stroking her with two practiced fingers, bending them to touch her inside, and her hips arched against his hand as her lips fell open, the hat tumbling from her head to the floor as her chin came up.

Poor girl, she was still unused to a man's touch, starved for affection, and she was the sort of woman who could never be sullied. There was too much inside her, too much pride and dignity and presence of mind. She would never attract any man less, for having been with another, he concluded, watching her face as she began to move with the rhythm of his hand. He was harder than he'd been in years.

“Think he'll wake?” she murmured as he pulled her from the chair, sliding his hands inside the shirt. She turned her face from his; still wouldn't kiss him. That was fine, if she wanted to play that way. He turned her around away from him, guiding her against the table.

“No idea,” he growled from behind her, stroking over the gentle swells of her breasts, across her too-prominent ribs and flat belly. Someone really ought to fatten her, he thought incongruously, as he reached down to spread her thighs again. “Let us find out.”

He would never have thought to lay her down, to smother her with his body, to make her feel her possession in every pore. That was for Will, for Jack, maybe; he'd had that years ago, another woman, long-dead now, and it was a place he thought he'd never be again. Behind her was well enough, for both of them, it seemed, for when he unfastened his breeches and spilled out, she ground her bottom against him, and he didn't question motive - rum, loneliness, confusion - but found his way between her curves.

While he slid inside, she held on to the table, bottom lip pinched, and when he met resistance, he caught her around the waist with his still-clothed arm and drew back to try again. With a whore he'd have just shoved harder, but of course he didn't, now, and he damned himself for a fool. He should have undressed, felt her skin against him everywhere, but he wouldn't wish to waste the opportunity. In another moment she might come to her senses.

And this was their way, a gentle balance, some kind of perverted respect. He pulled back the shirt with his right hand and tasted the back of her shoulder, pleased to hear a soft sound of desire from somewhere deep in her chest, and her hands danced over the table in desperate attempts to hang on as he drove deep in earnest, sending her tumbling forward. The table didn't move. He had bolted it to the floor years ago.

She cried out, elbows resting on the table-top now, and he was so amazed by the feel of her that he almost didn't hear the shifting in the bed.

“Elizabeth, darling, I'm having the most dreadful sort of nightmare,” Jack said, and two sets of passion-stupored eyes lifted to find him sitting up in the bed, tangled in the sheet, a study of bronze and white folds, black hair melding with the shadows.

“You went and got the lass drunk,” Barbossa said, not pausing in his rhythm.

Jack blinked, still looking from one to the other in revulsion. “I got meself drunk. She must have got hold of it after… if you haven't noticed, making rum disappear's a particular talent of hers.”

“Among others,” Barbossa sneered back.

Elizabeth's eyes fluttered closed again. “If you don't both shut up this instant…”

“You'll what?” Barbossa taunted.

“I'll…” Her mind was fogged with the liquor, and other distractions. “I'll shackle you together, till you kill each other.”

Barbossa leered at Jack. “Seems she's after my ship.”

“My ship, you mean.” Jack rolled onto his back, folding his hands behind his head in a show of not watching, but his eyes flicked back to them, almost involuntarily, and in the fading light Barbossa thought he glimpsed a tenting of the sheet.

Barbossa spread his palms on the table, leaning forward to catch her ear between his teeth. She jerked her head away, but he only followed. “Ye can enjoy yerself now,” he growled. “He's not looking.”

In reply - or confirmation - of this, she turned her head toward Jack, and Barbossa saw them lock gazes, curiously. Would Jack leap up, defend her honor, insist on something or other, like he had before? Perhaps it was a test, of him, of her, of all of them, in a world that seemed to allow no absolutes, for any of them?

Jack's hand disappeared beneath the sheet, his gaze guarded beneath flattened brows. Do what you please. Elizabeth was silent.

“Do she even fancy it from the rear, I wonder?” Barbossa said, more of a taunt than a question; he was betting Jack didn't know.

“Yes,” Jack snapped.

“Actually,” Elizabeth said with a twist of her torso only possible for the young and lithe, “the angle's all wrong.”

“Is it, now?”

“Lie over me a bit more. If you can manage it,” she commanded, and he detected a hint of jibe in her tone.

He grinned. “Think me old back's got a bit more slack in her somewhere,” he said, and did as she asked. He was rewarded with her vocal response; if she minded that it was him, it didn't show, and one of her hands came up to explore the exposed curve of his hip, his side, still lean despite his age. “Does she know about… the other?” he said, again to Jack, and he felt Elizabeth tense with disapproval. He suspected there was nothing she hated more than to be discussed as if she weren't there. But there was almost nothing he loved more than teasing her, and so it went.

“Not in terms of experience,” Jack said, and his voice was somehow more strained, more gravelly. “Haven't gotten to showing her.”

“Oh, but that wouldn't be your place, would it, Jack?”

“If it's anyone's place it's Will's,” Elizabeth managed on a single exhaled breath, giving back with her hips as she took.

“I disagree,” Barbossa said playfully against her nape. “Let him be proper and loving, straight up the middle. Suits him well.”

A single snicker escaped Jack's lips at this, but he attempted to hide it.

“And so?” Elizabeth almost gasped, and he saw her fingers whitening with effort to clutch the table's edge. “What then?”

“You'd like that, wouldn't ye? All of us at once?” he growled against her hair, reaching around her hips to stroke her skillfully with the line-roughened pads of his middle fingers. “Your beloved beneath you, where you like him, meself deep in your bottom--” He changed his angle up only slightly, to let her feel a hint of what he meant, relishing her answering groan. “And Jack… well… 'spose we can let Jack have your mouth. Only fair… since you kissed him to death with it…”

His tease was delivered solemnly, but the image he painted struck a nerve in Elizabeth; a wild,

un-imagined depravity that overwhelmed her in its appeal… or else a well-suppressed improbable fantasy that he'd forced her to acknowledge. Either way she came against his fingers with a shudder and fierce cry, throwing her head back and straightening her elbows to keep moving with him until he swore and tore himself out of her, thinking that under the circumstances, a child fathered by him would certainly muck things up completely.

When he opened his eyes again, darkness had settled even more definitively over the sea, and the cabin was dim indeed; the only sound was Jack's heavy breathing, and Elizabeth's light footstep on the floor as she headed for the bed, for Jack.

He eased himself into the chair, and let her go.

* * *

On a clear, hot, humid morning, all three stood and marveled at the Floridian coast.

Jack and Barbossa had been standing by the helm, and she'd come up between them; Jack slipped an arm about her waist, and Barbossa lay a hand gently on her shoulder.

“If this succeeds, we'll have a rather long time to spend in each other's company,” she said.

“Three fierce pirates we'll be, for all eternity,” Jack quipped, his right hand gripping the spokes of the wheel.

“Four,” she said.

“Four?” Jack echoed. Behind Elizabeth's back, he looked curiously at Barbossa, who glared back as if to say, What? Can't count? Barbossa then lifted a palm to the center of his chest, and tapped it: thump-thump, thump-thump.

“Oh, right,” Jack said brightly, turning his eyes hopefully back to the distant shore. “Four.”
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