A/N: I got tired of fluff and wrote something. Then I got tired of angst and wrote something else. The first is AU in deed, the second in thought – sort of an exercise in the extremities of interpretation.

Disclaimer: Despite fantasies and hare-brained schemes, I continue not to own this. By 'this' I mean the source material. The fic is mine.

The Anti-Fluff

"I'm not sorry."

He smiled at her, if such a thing could be believed, and the look he gave her was so knowing. His lips parted to speak. "Aren't you?" he asked. His free hand slipped softly into her hair and suddenly gripped tight. He yanked her head backwards, and her body had to follow; then he pulled in again, and she was trapped between him and the mast. "How about now?"

"Jack," she hissed.

"You don't have the key, do you, love?" he whispered against her ear.

He shifted just enough to fully lock her into place. He leaned against the mast and she was caught in the circle of his arm. She'd gotten into all kinds of disarray when he whirled her about; her shirt was rucked up, and she could feel the metal of the shackle and the warmth of his fingers against her bare side.

"Well, now, this takes me right back to the day we met."

Her breath hitched in her throat. His chains around her had been wrong and infuriating and thrilling then too, and then she hadn't just been kissing him. She shifted in his sham of an embrace. Somehow this situation was better if they met it face-to-face – front-to-front rather – if she could press the heat between her legs against the hardness between his and mock them both.

"You recall on that day you only almost escaped."

"Who said anything bout escaping?" His shackled arm had curled round her more truly, and now his long fingers slipped under her waistband, teasing the top of her cleft.

"I can't unchain you. Nothing you do can persuade me or offend me enough to change that."

"Hush, love, all's fair against someone who's just done something terribly unfair to you."

"There's nothing unfair about it! You would kill us all if you left this ship."

"As I see it, you've just killed me. Now I'm killing you, all right and proper. You, however, are now killing them, as you know William won't leave without you. Call out; tell them to go."

"Why don't you call, tell them to fetch us both?"

"I'm being good. Call out."

A sickening swell rocked the ship, and they heard shouts from the longboat.

"Elizabeth!"

"Go!" she screamed. "We can't make it. Just go!"

Another roll of the ship, and if they hadn't cast off lines down in the longboat, they'd be swamped. A moment later Jack and Elizabeth heard a shout, a struggle, a thunk that was undoubtedly an oar to the back of Will's hear, and then Gibbs's voice calling frantically, "Pull, lads!"

"Now we're both heroes," Jack sneered at her.

"Want to know what that tastes like?" she spat back.

His mouth was on her in less than a second, and it tasted, as it turned out, like blood. The kiss was full of teeth, and it was insane to want someone who was holding you prisoner even closer. She dug her hands into all the belts and sashes he had fastened around his waist and jerked him forward. He obliged, not just pinning her now, but crushing her against the mast. His free hand ripped her shirt away, and he pulled his shackled hand from the seat of her breeches to drag her leg up around his hip. She wrenched her mouth away from his to chide his slowness. "I'd rather not die a virgin, Jack, if it's all the same to you."

"Working on it, love," he gasped, but there was no time. She was tearing at his belts when the kraken surfaced. He was able only to plunge his hand down the front of her breeches and pierce her with two fingers. Her scream carried no pleasure, yet she pulsed around him as her teeth rent his shoulder and her blood coated his hand. Nothing to savor by decent people's standards as he came in his breeches and was swallowed by a sea monster still half-hard. For a death in chains, better than he'd expected. And this business with Lizzie, they'd finish it in hell.

A/N 2: Feedback of all sorts most welcome. Just, you know chain it to the mast and send it on down.