Recompense (Pirates of the Caribbean, Jack/Elizabeth)
Title: Recompense
Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean
Pairing: Jack/Elizabeth
Author: Latinlass
Recipient: mooglepuff
Rating: R
Warnings: A bit of blindfolding. Spoilers for Dead Man's Chest. Blatant unfounded speculation about At World's End.
Prompt: Jack/Elizabeth - two sides of the same coin. Would LOVE genderswitch and/or a bit of bondage (particularly incl. blindfolds) if it inspires, but pure banter orinteraction in a character exploration piece is equally adored. :D
Summary: What do you say to the man you've killed?
Nighttime in this sea is not what Elizabeth is used to. The salt stinging the tender cuts on her lips is familiar, yes. The constellations in the night sky are less familiar, but the lights hanging above her head are still recognizable as stars. Perhaps it’s the sharpness of the air’s scent that feels so alien to her-it’s similar to the way the blacksmith’s forge smells, searing and sour, but cut through with a fragrance that reminds her of nothing more than lilacs and raw meat, and the unlikely fusion makes her head feel light. The night breezes seem to hum as they sweep across the Pearl’s deck, brushing against the sleeping deckhands.
Elizabeth leans against the rail and stares into the strange waters below. If she listens closely, she can hear snatches of Will’s conversation with Barbossa in the captains’ quarters. They retreated at dusk to discuss the coming voyage to Singapore. For all his personal distaste for the man, Will has proved receptive enough to Barbossa’s suggestions, yielding to the captain’s years of experience on the sea. From the rise and fall of their voices, it appears they’ve disagreements aplenty, but neither has seen fit to storm from the cabin yet.
And Jack? Jack brushed off the idea that such a conversation could prove beneficial and retreated to his position behind the Pearl’s helm; Elizabeth thinks he claimed his perch early to prevent any further usurpation on Barbossa’s part. He has said little enough to her since her arrival, content enough with a barbed comment or two about her role in his death. And that makes her uneasy, for Jack is hardly the type to forgive and forget. What schemes might be working their way through the lopsided pathways of his mind? What does he want from her? She drums her fingers against the slick wood of the rail. This speculation is useless. She barely knows her own mind in this place, much less Jack’s, and if he wants something from her, he will seize it when he feels the moment to be right and not a minute sooner.
Perhaps he, too, has yet to know his own mind when it comes to her. Elizabeth glances up at the black sails rippling in the unearthly wind. Perhaps.
Or perhaps he wants what he wanted before, and you want it, too, a voice in the back of her mind chimes. She glares out at nothing in particular. “That's enough out of you,” she hisses.
“And what is it that you've got enough out of, if you’ll pardon me interrupting your moment of solitude?” comes a familiar lilt from behind her shoulder.
She pivots and stares into Jack’s kohl-rimmed eyes. “You’ve a talent for appearing where…” Where he is least wanted, or where he is most wanted? She cannot be sure, so the words stick in her throat.
He arches an eyebrow and strokes the twin braids of his beard. The flickering light from a nearby lantern catches the familiar glint in his gaze. “I’ve a talent for many sorts of appearances, love. The dramatic, the dashing, the subtle-well. Perhaps not the last. You’ll need to be more specific, eh?”
“I don’t even know anymore.” She shakes her head slightly, suppressing a shiver as the wailing of the wind grows louder.
“Dreadful place, this,” Jack says cheerfully. He must have noticed her shaking. “All manner of nasty beasties and wicked ghosties. And bonny Jack Sparrow in the middle of it all, trying to wipe the stench of the kraken from him.”
“You’ve succeeded in that.” And he has, for if he smells foul now, it is nothing compared to the stench of rot and decay wafting from the kraken’s maw.
“Ah. Well. Apparently some of my endeavors were productive, after all.” She’s never known a man’s eyebrows to be as expressive as Jack Sparrow’s are, able to convey amusement and disdain and something else, something smoldering, with just the faintest of twitches.
Elizabeth sighs. “Is that what you want? An apology for sending you to this place? I am sorry, Jack, I-”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt that curiously developed conscience of yours has been making a dreadful racket in your pretty little head.” He leers. “But chaining a man to a sinking ship as he awaits a horrible and best not contemplated doom at the many-toothed mouth of a ferocious seagoing menace requires rather more than a heartfelt tear and a furrowed brow if said chainer truly wishes to make amends. Savvy?”
She glares at him. Surely he wouldn’t dare suggest-but he would, and she knows it. “You would have done the same.”
His gold teeth flash in the lanternlight. “It’s what a proper pirate would have done, I’ll grant you that.”
“A captain goes down with his ship,” she says, stepping closer to him. “You know the Code as well as-better than-I do.”
“Yes, but when the ship is the Pearl and the captain is yours truly,” he says, doffing his tricorner hat and bowing to her with a flourish, “you’ll forgive a man for taking such things personally.”
“I would have preferred another way.”
Jack reaches his arm around her head and tangles his fingers in her loosened waves of hair, pulling their foreheads together until they brush. “Not as much as I would have.”
“I grant you that,” she says, a tiny smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“Generous of you, Lizzie-love.”
“I can be quite generous,” she says, meeting his eyes. She hopes that the glimmer in her eyes mirrors his own.
“And while I would love such generosity…” He lets his other hand trail down the side of her neck, resting at the hollow of her throat. “Once bitten, twice shy.”
“So to conclude: you don’t trust me,” Elizabeth says, trying to speak over the areas of her skin that have started singing after feeling Jack’s calloused touch again, after so long. “And I don’t trust you.”
“Methinks you’ve hit the nail on the head.” He nuzzles her cheek, the stubble of his beard scratching against her jaw.
“But I am sorry. And I do wish to make reparations.”
“And I believe you. As much as I can believe anyone,” he adds. She pictures a wicked grin sliding across his face and smiles.
“So how do you suggest we resolve this?”
“Oh,” he purrs, his teeth barely grazing the shell of her earlobe, “I can think of a few…gestures of good faith, shall we say? That is, if the good Mr. Turner has nothing to say about his beloved’s shocking behavior.”
Her mouth dries and hardens as though he’s sucked all the moisture from it. He would have to mention that. Jack’s other hand is tracing small circles on her shoulder, nudging the fabric of her shirt aside with each passage of his fingers. The wind kicks up and teases her exposed flesh more, caressing her skin with ghost touches that make her wish for the warmth of Jack’s hands, and she bites back another shiver. “Things are…unresolved between us,” she says. “He-he saw.”
Jack chuckles as one of her shoulders slides free of the rough cloth. He presses a kiss to it, his lips first reverent and then insistent, bearing down on her collarbone as his tongue flicks across the bony ridge to mark the expanse of skin as his. “Aaah,” he murmurs, his lips humming against the base of her neck. “And his poor heart wishes only to be wedded to the sea now, eh?”
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth admits. “I-”
And then he claims her mouth with a hard kiss, his tongue hot and insistent against her lips; she parts them and catches his lower lip between her teeth, tasting the salt embedded in all the cracks and welts and oh, this is Jack, the imperfections and the sharpness and the fullness of the experience, the giddy heights that he sends her senses spinning to when he grinds his hips against hers.
“Do you trust me?” he asks when he pulls away.
“No.”
“I expected nothing less.” He unwinds the cloth wrapped around the belt across his chest and tugs on it a few times. “Close your eyes, love.”
“You won’t make me walk the plank?” she asks.
“’Twould be a shame to waste such a fine opportunity as the one presented now,” he replies, which is not an answer that puts her at ease. “Eyes closed.”
She doesn’t know why she listens. She only knows that she does. She feels him swathe her head in the cloth until she can no longer make out any traces of light beneath her eyelids. She feels his hand clasp hers and does her best not to stumble forward as he raises her arms and promenades her around the deck.
“Are you playing at being a gentleman?” she asks him, voice wry.
“Playing at nothing, love,” he tells her in a way that lets her know that yes, he is. “Allow me to carry you below decks, for I’d hate you to break that pretty neck of yours in the descent.”
She slides her hand up his arm until she locates the curve of his neck, then wraps her arms around there tightly. Something pushes at the back of her knees and removes the support beneath her feet; the world tilts unsteadily around her at an angle, and she cannot help but clutch Jack’s neck more tightly. “Careful,” she hisses. “I am not a sack of potatoes.”
“You’ve the wrong sort of curves to be a sack of potatoes,” he agrees, his breath hot against her ear. “Hold on tight.”
They must make a pretty picture as they descend into the bowels of the Pearl-him like a swaggering buccaneer of old carrying his fetching prize to his quarters while she wrings her hands and sobs into his neck. But she’s hardly sobbing (although her nails are digging into his neck as a reminder for him to show some caution), and she doubts the fair maidens in those stories wore trousers. She also doubts the villainous pirates walked with such an uneasy gait-she feels herself pitch forward with every bobbing step Jack takes, feels herself sink lower in his arms, and does her best to drag herself higher up on his body. But she never falls, although there are times when Elizabeth feels her grip on his neck loosen dangerously. He catches her then and slides his arm higher under her legs, giving her a better base of support. She soon abandons any efforts to discover where he’s leading her; she feels him pivot to the right and left a few times, swerve in a broad arc once, but she cannot map such motions onto the picture of the Pearl’s below-decks that hangs in her mind.
At last, the journey comes to a halt. He sets her down and presses her against a hard surface that feels slick and sturdy under the exposed skin on the back of her neck. Will would take his time here, she thinks, exploring her body with his craftsman’s hands to find the spots that most need attention, but Jack touches her like a pirate, rubbing something firm and calloused-the pad of his thumb, she guesses-over one nipple in hard circles while he teases the other into a peak with wet sharp ridged…teeth. Yes. She slides down the wall and into his hands, and now there’s a rush of air over her skin as his hands ease the fabric of her trousers down, down until she no longer senses the roughness of clothes draped over her skin, only the slow air of the room and the warmth of Jack pressed against her, into her. She hears the hitch in his breath, tastes the need in his mouth when he kisses her hungrily, and buries her face in sweat-slicked skin when his nimble fingers find the right spot and bring her to completion.
He unwinds the blindfold slowly, as though he’s unwrapping a present. She blinks and sees his braids brushing her cheek, his hand grasping her waist.
“A proper pirate,” he murmurs.
“An improper pirate,” she corrects him. “We’d best dress before all the crew goes to check on us.”
He dons his hat first, as she thought he might. “That was the most enjoyable apology I’ve had the fortune to receive in quite some time.”
“Should I cross you again in the future, I’ll remember your preferred method of expressing contrition,” she tells him smoothly.
Jack chuckles. “I’ve a mind to see what plans the eunuch and the traitor have drawn up. And you?”
Elizabeth regards him silently for a moment. “I’ll accompany you. You may not trust me, but our goals coincide in this matter.”
“Our goals seem to do that often enough,” he agrees. “Let’s see if we’ve put those beastly winds behind us.”
Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean
Pairing: Jack/Elizabeth
Author: Latinlass
Recipient: mooglepuff
Rating: R
Warnings: A bit of blindfolding. Spoilers for Dead Man's Chest. Blatant unfounded speculation about At World's End.
Prompt: Jack/Elizabeth - two sides of the same coin. Would LOVE genderswitch and/or a bit of bondage (particularly incl. blindfolds) if it inspires, but pure banter orinteraction in a character exploration piece is equally adored. :D
Summary: What do you say to the man you've killed?
Nighttime in this sea is not what Elizabeth is used to. The salt stinging the tender cuts on her lips is familiar, yes. The constellations in the night sky are less familiar, but the lights hanging above her head are still recognizable as stars. Perhaps it’s the sharpness of the air’s scent that feels so alien to her-it’s similar to the way the blacksmith’s forge smells, searing and sour, but cut through with a fragrance that reminds her of nothing more than lilacs and raw meat, and the unlikely fusion makes her head feel light. The night breezes seem to hum as they sweep across the Pearl’s deck, brushing against the sleeping deckhands.
Elizabeth leans against the rail and stares into the strange waters below. If she listens closely, she can hear snatches of Will’s conversation with Barbossa in the captains’ quarters. They retreated at dusk to discuss the coming voyage to Singapore. For all his personal distaste for the man, Will has proved receptive enough to Barbossa’s suggestions, yielding to the captain’s years of experience on the sea. From the rise and fall of their voices, it appears they’ve disagreements aplenty, but neither has seen fit to storm from the cabin yet.
And Jack? Jack brushed off the idea that such a conversation could prove beneficial and retreated to his position behind the Pearl’s helm; Elizabeth thinks he claimed his perch early to prevent any further usurpation on Barbossa’s part. He has said little enough to her since her arrival, content enough with a barbed comment or two about her role in his death. And that makes her uneasy, for Jack is hardly the type to forgive and forget. What schemes might be working their way through the lopsided pathways of his mind? What does he want from her? She drums her fingers against the slick wood of the rail. This speculation is useless. She barely knows her own mind in this place, much less Jack’s, and if he wants something from her, he will seize it when he feels the moment to be right and not a minute sooner.
Perhaps he, too, has yet to know his own mind when it comes to her. Elizabeth glances up at the black sails rippling in the unearthly wind. Perhaps.
Or perhaps he wants what he wanted before, and you want it, too, a voice in the back of her mind chimes. She glares out at nothing in particular. “That's enough out of you,” she hisses.
“And what is it that you've got enough out of, if you’ll pardon me interrupting your moment of solitude?” comes a familiar lilt from behind her shoulder.
She pivots and stares into Jack’s kohl-rimmed eyes. “You’ve a talent for appearing where…” Where he is least wanted, or where he is most wanted? She cannot be sure, so the words stick in her throat.
He arches an eyebrow and strokes the twin braids of his beard. The flickering light from a nearby lantern catches the familiar glint in his gaze. “I’ve a talent for many sorts of appearances, love. The dramatic, the dashing, the subtle-well. Perhaps not the last. You’ll need to be more specific, eh?”
“I don’t even know anymore.” She shakes her head slightly, suppressing a shiver as the wailing of the wind grows louder.
“Dreadful place, this,” Jack says cheerfully. He must have noticed her shaking. “All manner of nasty beasties and wicked ghosties. And bonny Jack Sparrow in the middle of it all, trying to wipe the stench of the kraken from him.”
“You’ve succeeded in that.” And he has, for if he smells foul now, it is nothing compared to the stench of rot and decay wafting from the kraken’s maw.
“Ah. Well. Apparently some of my endeavors were productive, after all.” She’s never known a man’s eyebrows to be as expressive as Jack Sparrow’s are, able to convey amusement and disdain and something else, something smoldering, with just the faintest of twitches.
Elizabeth sighs. “Is that what you want? An apology for sending you to this place? I am sorry, Jack, I-”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt that curiously developed conscience of yours has been making a dreadful racket in your pretty little head.” He leers. “But chaining a man to a sinking ship as he awaits a horrible and best not contemplated doom at the many-toothed mouth of a ferocious seagoing menace requires rather more than a heartfelt tear and a furrowed brow if said chainer truly wishes to make amends. Savvy?”
She glares at him. Surely he wouldn’t dare suggest-but he would, and she knows it. “You would have done the same.”
His gold teeth flash in the lanternlight. “It’s what a proper pirate would have done, I’ll grant you that.”
“A captain goes down with his ship,” she says, stepping closer to him. “You know the Code as well as-better than-I do.”
“Yes, but when the ship is the Pearl and the captain is yours truly,” he says, doffing his tricorner hat and bowing to her with a flourish, “you’ll forgive a man for taking such things personally.”
“I would have preferred another way.”
Jack reaches his arm around her head and tangles his fingers in her loosened waves of hair, pulling their foreheads together until they brush. “Not as much as I would have.”
“I grant you that,” she says, a tiny smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“Generous of you, Lizzie-love.”
“I can be quite generous,” she says, meeting his eyes. She hopes that the glimmer in her eyes mirrors his own.
“And while I would love such generosity…” He lets his other hand trail down the side of her neck, resting at the hollow of her throat. “Once bitten, twice shy.”
“So to conclude: you don’t trust me,” Elizabeth says, trying to speak over the areas of her skin that have started singing after feeling Jack’s calloused touch again, after so long. “And I don’t trust you.”
“Methinks you’ve hit the nail on the head.” He nuzzles her cheek, the stubble of his beard scratching against her jaw.
“But I am sorry. And I do wish to make reparations.”
“And I believe you. As much as I can believe anyone,” he adds. She pictures a wicked grin sliding across his face and smiles.
“So how do you suggest we resolve this?”
“Oh,” he purrs, his teeth barely grazing the shell of her earlobe, “I can think of a few…gestures of good faith, shall we say? That is, if the good Mr. Turner has nothing to say about his beloved’s shocking behavior.”
Her mouth dries and hardens as though he’s sucked all the moisture from it. He would have to mention that. Jack’s other hand is tracing small circles on her shoulder, nudging the fabric of her shirt aside with each passage of his fingers. The wind kicks up and teases her exposed flesh more, caressing her skin with ghost touches that make her wish for the warmth of Jack’s hands, and she bites back another shiver. “Things are…unresolved between us,” she says. “He-he saw.”
Jack chuckles as one of her shoulders slides free of the rough cloth. He presses a kiss to it, his lips first reverent and then insistent, bearing down on her collarbone as his tongue flicks across the bony ridge to mark the expanse of skin as his. “Aaah,” he murmurs, his lips humming against the base of her neck. “And his poor heart wishes only to be wedded to the sea now, eh?”
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth admits. “I-”
And then he claims her mouth with a hard kiss, his tongue hot and insistent against her lips; she parts them and catches his lower lip between her teeth, tasting the salt embedded in all the cracks and welts and oh, this is Jack, the imperfections and the sharpness and the fullness of the experience, the giddy heights that he sends her senses spinning to when he grinds his hips against hers.
“Do you trust me?” he asks when he pulls away.
“No.”
“I expected nothing less.” He unwinds the cloth wrapped around the belt across his chest and tugs on it a few times. “Close your eyes, love.”
“You won’t make me walk the plank?” she asks.
“’Twould be a shame to waste such a fine opportunity as the one presented now,” he replies, which is not an answer that puts her at ease. “Eyes closed.”
She doesn’t know why she listens. She only knows that she does. She feels him swathe her head in the cloth until she can no longer make out any traces of light beneath her eyelids. She feels his hand clasp hers and does her best not to stumble forward as he raises her arms and promenades her around the deck.
“Are you playing at being a gentleman?” she asks him, voice wry.
“Playing at nothing, love,” he tells her in a way that lets her know that yes, he is. “Allow me to carry you below decks, for I’d hate you to break that pretty neck of yours in the descent.”
She slides her hand up his arm until she locates the curve of his neck, then wraps her arms around there tightly. Something pushes at the back of her knees and removes the support beneath her feet; the world tilts unsteadily around her at an angle, and she cannot help but clutch Jack’s neck more tightly. “Careful,” she hisses. “I am not a sack of potatoes.”
“You’ve the wrong sort of curves to be a sack of potatoes,” he agrees, his breath hot against her ear. “Hold on tight.”
They must make a pretty picture as they descend into the bowels of the Pearl-him like a swaggering buccaneer of old carrying his fetching prize to his quarters while she wrings her hands and sobs into his neck. But she’s hardly sobbing (although her nails are digging into his neck as a reminder for him to show some caution), and she doubts the fair maidens in those stories wore trousers. She also doubts the villainous pirates walked with such an uneasy gait-she feels herself pitch forward with every bobbing step Jack takes, feels herself sink lower in his arms, and does her best to drag herself higher up on his body. But she never falls, although there are times when Elizabeth feels her grip on his neck loosen dangerously. He catches her then and slides his arm higher under her legs, giving her a better base of support. She soon abandons any efforts to discover where he’s leading her; she feels him pivot to the right and left a few times, swerve in a broad arc once, but she cannot map such motions onto the picture of the Pearl’s below-decks that hangs in her mind.
At last, the journey comes to a halt. He sets her down and presses her against a hard surface that feels slick and sturdy under the exposed skin on the back of her neck. Will would take his time here, she thinks, exploring her body with his craftsman’s hands to find the spots that most need attention, but Jack touches her like a pirate, rubbing something firm and calloused-the pad of his thumb, she guesses-over one nipple in hard circles while he teases the other into a peak with wet sharp ridged…teeth. Yes. She slides down the wall and into his hands, and now there’s a rush of air over her skin as his hands ease the fabric of her trousers down, down until she no longer senses the roughness of clothes draped over her skin, only the slow air of the room and the warmth of Jack pressed against her, into her. She hears the hitch in his breath, tastes the need in his mouth when he kisses her hungrily, and buries her face in sweat-slicked skin when his nimble fingers find the right spot and bring her to completion.
He unwinds the blindfold slowly, as though he’s unwrapping a present. She blinks and sees his braids brushing her cheek, his hand grasping her waist.
“A proper pirate,” he murmurs.
“An improper pirate,” she corrects him. “We’d best dress before all the crew goes to check on us.”
He dons his hat first, as she thought he might. “That was the most enjoyable apology I’ve had the fortune to receive in quite some time.”
“Should I cross you again in the future, I’ll remember your preferred method of expressing contrition,” she tells him smoothly.
Jack chuckles. “I’ve a mind to see what plans the eunuch and the traitor have drawn up. And you?”
Elizabeth regards him silently for a moment. “I’ll accompany you. You may not trust me, but our goals coincide in this matter.”
“Our goals seem to do that often enough,” he agrees. “Let’s see if we’ve put those beastly winds behind us.”