A/N: With any luck, this will be more than just a one-shot. Needless to say my apparent fascination with Pirates will not be enough to tide over my writing of this story, but despite my hopes for further musings in the future, that its outcome is uncertain and its plot... Well... Looking rather... Non-existent really.

Anne Bonny.

Anne Bonny. Such a pretty thing really, white skin, thin pink lips, light blue eyes... Such delicate fingers too. Jack had often watched what she did with her fingers, watched her pull apart a sheaf of tobacco, watched her sharpening her weapons. The deft fingers that wrapped like spider's legs around the pommel and hilt of her swords were the same fingers that took his chin in their soft enclosure and stroked fondly over his stubble in the quietest hour of the night.
Fondness was about as close as it got between himself and Anne Bonny. She was intelligent enough to not bore him to death with every second word - he supposed this might be because she didn't speak much anyway - and was intelligent enough to know that there were no chances of love between them. He didn't do love. In fact, if it came to a choice between saving himself without risk and saving them both at the risk of losing everything, he would probably forego her company for the rest of his life and just get himself out of dodge. Not that he thought much could kill her anyway. There was something decidedly witchy about Anne Bonny, something... Not evil, but certainly hellish.
He watched her now from where he was sat at the bar. She was sat on her own, in the darkest corner, predictably, fiddling with the pommel of a dagger. He remembered when she bought that dagger. She had three, typically, and broke one of them in a battle against a challenger to her fame and title. She had been moody and cantankerous since the battle, so much so that the crew openly avoided her, giving her a good meter's birth at all times. Having gotten it in the neck from her one too many times over the matter, and not having gotten laid since, Jack decided it was time to straighten her out and had gotten in her way. It was only after he had manhandled her in the direction of the market and thrown her into the smithy's tent that she began to warm up again.
She even gave him a hand job in his tent to exhibit her sudden good mood and apparent thankfulness. Hand jobs came thick and fast when she was in a good mood. It always put him in a good mood too.

He took a pull of his beer as he considered her and the dagger. She almost never used it for battle and the hilt was encrusted with jewels. He wondered how much it cost her to buy for such a thing could hardly have been cheap. He thought in the past that she never used it because she didn't want to break it like she had her last, but if that were the case he would simply take her to buy another one. There was obviously another reason, one he - for all his wit and intellect - could not fathom.

He had no sooner turned back to the bar to order another beer when a delicate pair of hands crept around his waist and under his belt like little mice. He was stock still in an instant and a low chuckle - a smoker's chuckle - sounded at his shoulder.

"Good evening, Anne." He said, as calmly as he could, holding up a finger to the bar-tender - 'One please'.

"Your eyes are just as quiet as your mouth, Jack." She said, another chuckle, fingers quietly working away at the buckle and cords of his trousers.

"What?" Genuine confusion in his voice.

"I saw you watching me." She said, retracting her hands the minute his beer arrived and snatching it up from the counter. "You talk too much, even with your eyes."

Ah, that old cookie. He supposed he did talk a lot, certainly a lot more than she did, but what she could say with a look he could say in a thousand words. So why waste the opportunity? He didn't learn to speak to let his tongue gather dust in his mouth, as some folks might say.

"My apologies," He said, far more in control of his language now her hands were no longer wreaking havoc upon his body, but watching with disappointment as she quaffed his drink. "I had no idea that keeping an eye on a friend was-... What?"

She was shaking her head, eyes narrowed, nose still buried in his beaker.

"What?" He repeated, eyebrows raised. "I'm not allowed to refer to you as a friend, now?" She rolled her eyes and slammed his beaker - now empty - onto the bar top and turning away. "Of course, a friend-" He mused, gazing at the bottom of his beaker "-Wouldn't have done me out of a full cup of beer."

Anne had left the saloon entirely and could just be seen through the doors, stomping away down the street. Knowing her she'd be going straight to the waters-edge to find some poor drunk bugger and cut them open from belt buckle to collarbone, unaccustomed as she was to not having him around to vent her frustrations on. And knowing him, he was about to get up and follow her before she actually did vent her frustrations on some poor bugger or other. Speaking of which...

Throwing a few coins down on the bar, he quickly re-buckled his belt and stood to follow Anne. For such a pretty little thing, she sure got a lot of bees in her bonnet. In a seemingly perpetual bad mood it was a wonder he still had a cock at all, the number of times she'd got her hands on it, and he'd seen her do worse things to a man's pride and joy than simply stroke it!

She was indeed down by the water when he found her. She had some poor drunk fellow by the scruff and was dragging him into the surf, presumably to drown him.

"Come now, Anne Bonny!" Jack called out to her, "Is that any way to treat a bastard who's down on his luck?"

She stopped where she was, the drunkard dangling from her right hand, apparently waiting for him to continue. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled with the near tangible tension in the air. She was inexplicably angry with him for some reason or other and more so than usual he thought, since she was willing to listen to him it meant this anger was calculated and thus far more dangerous than her usual fits of rage.

"Why not put the good fellow down and-" The drunkard landed in the surf with a wet thud, his liquor bottle rolling from his limp fingers. "And... Err..."

"Spit it out, Rackham."

"Let's talk about this. About your temper."

"Alright, friend." She agreed, sticking a hip out and putting both hands on her belt, fixing him with a black look. "Let's talk about my temper and how you go out of your way to rile it up."

"I-" He started, but she talked over him, voice raising in octave as she apparently got more and more into her speech.

"Let's talk about you watching me in the Tavern tonight. Let's talk about the way you always watch me in the Tavern at night, about how you always always beckon me over and have so much to say but you're so full of shit, aren't you, Jack Rackham, so full of shit that you never say anything worthwhile. You never tell the truth. You're a liar Jack, you're a liar and you can't even admit it."

"What?" He scoffed, taken aback by the ferocity of her grievance but still apparently none the wiser for its stem. Sometimes he forgot what an educated lady she was and could, much like the rest of the rich and fat, spend a lot of time talking very seriously about nothing at all. "What are you talking about?"

"You called me 'friend'!" She shrieked. At first he was so surprised by the uncharacteristically loud explosion that he thought she might actually turn on him with intent. But the next words to exit her mouth assuaged any of his then fears and replaced them with all too new and all too different ones. "Why don't you just tell me you love me?" She asked with a slight shake of her head, the swords he hadn't even seen her draw flapping at her sides as she shrugged to exhibit her confusion with the situation.

'Uh oh...' He thought, his usual hint of merriment at his own dire predicament completely gone, replaced instead with a feeling not unlike that of dread. Or perhaps doom.

"Look, Jack, I'm not fucking stupid enough to think that we're going to last forever. I know this isn't a fucking fairytale and I know that the likelihood of you leaving me lying dead on a fucking beach somewhere, with your fucking cutlass rammed down my throat of through my belly is likely going to be the way this is all going to pan out... But I also know that somewhere down in that pitiful, shrivelled little fucking heart of yours, you love me." She said, waving her swords around to illustrate her points. "And that 'this' - all of 'this' - could go to hell if you weren't so afraid of what they might do you if they found out you loved me, even the slightest little bit."

He held up a hand to stall her and for once, though he was fucked if he ever worked out why now of all times, she listened to him.

"Darling," He began, stalling a little because he honestly hadn't thought of what he would say to her, only knowing that he had to stop her from saying anything else either of them might regret. "I am not afraid of 'them', whoever 'they' are. It's just..." He licked his lips and thought again, "...I don't think you've thought this through."

Her jaw hung open at his words. "Not thought this-?" She began an incensed stalk over to him and he took a couple of steps back as she sheathed her weapons with more than the prescribed degree of viciousness. "Are you trying to tell me-" She took handfuls of his shirt and dragged him down to her diminutive level, "-That I'm wrong?!"

He averted his eyes and made as if to give a witty reply, but she shook him roughly - something he had never seen her do to anyone, let alone him - "Are you trying to tell me that all this preferential treatment you've been giving me these past three years is because I'll fuck you when no one else will and that that is it?!"

Now he thought about it he supposed the only reason he'd never seen her shake anyone was because no one other than himself would dare get close enough to allow her to put her hands on them. Fear surrounded Anne Bonny and the only times one came within reach were when one's time had come and the end was nigh. Or when one's name happened to be Jack Rackham, it would seem.

"Anne..." He could feel her rapid breath on his face, but their faces were so close that he felt uncomfortable looking her in the eyes. For the first time he thought he felt what the other men felt when they looked at her too long or got too close to her. Fear. But he had never been afraid of Anne Bonny. Not when she set her father's house on fire and danced on the porch in the flames, not when she'd murdered her husband at his feet... Was he about to start now? He closed his eyes and attempted to start again.

"Anne-"

"Look at me." She didn't shake him this time and after a few seconds of silence he rather wished she had, at least then the illusion of her still being angry at him could be maintained. Their relationship, such as it was, revolved around a mutual dislike of everyone else, a mutual contempt of everyone else, and survived on the mutual satisfaction of a particular carnal desire. He had always thought that Anne held a sort of a dislike for him along with the rest, but that his willingness to satiate her need for... Service... Balanced out that dislike into something more resembling of banal indifference. To hear the venom in her voice fade into sadness, misery even at his inability to meet her gaze was to assume that for her, their relationship ran a lot deeper than a quick fuck every now and again.

"Look at me, Jack. God damn it look at me."

He shook his head as much as he dared and in the following silence could almost hear her lip curl.

"I swear to God above, Jack Rackham, that if you don't open your eyes and look at me..." She paused, in which he could imagine her licking her lip in thought, just as he did. "I will not become weak. I will not break down. I don't love you enough to give you the satisfaction of seeing me degrade myself for your benefit, but I will hate you until the end of your days and if those days do not end by my blade then I will be sorely disappointed." Another pause. "So either open your eyes, or start running, Jack, because I will hunt you like no one else on this earth."

He almost chuckled. If that wasn't love then what was? He managed a shrug through the tough grip she had on his collar and cracked open an eye. "You know, Anne Bonny, for someone with such a stiff upper lip, you sure do have a loose tongue."

She narrowed her eyes and shook her head, both releasing him and shoving him so he stumbled in the loose sand and fell on his bum. Hard. Resisting the urge to rub his rump, he looked up at her with surprise.

"A loose tongue? You're one to talk." She said, hip sticking out again and hands back resting on her belt. She was looking mighty pleased with herself for some reason.

"Well then, maybe a bit of me is rubbing off on you." He suggested, surveying her legs and their relaxed stance.

She let out a huff of indignation and muttered, "It wouldn't be the only bit." Except she didn't get to finish her sentence before Jack had swiped her legs out from under her and sent her sprawling into the sand, limbs akimbo, flyaway hair obscuring her vision. Before she could even get an arm underneath herself or roll away, Jack had both her wrists in one hand and was holding them tightly above her head, pressed into the sand.

"Now then, Anne Bonny, my darling," Jack started, calmly removing her hair from her face with his free hand and hooking a leg over both of hers when she spat obscenities at him and kicked. "Let's talk calmly about why us fucking every few days amounts to a loving relationship between two consenting adults, shall we?"

The look she gave him could have blistered the paint off a main mast in a thunderstorm, but he carried on. "Let us pretend for a moment, that we do not, in fact, have an arrangement of fuckery and instead focus on the other modicums of our... 'relationship'. As far as I can tell, most other relationships involve patience, teamwork and no small degree of trust. Now you neither trust me, nor have the patience required to work with my schemes, which means we do not work well as a team and therefore do not have a normal relationship as many others would understand it."

She opened her mouth so say something, but he quickly resealed her jaw with his thumb under her chin. He tore it away again pretty quick lest she bite it off, but was able to carry on speaking unhindered. "A lot of people might say that a loving relationship is having your partner's back when they need you. Let's have a little think about how many times you've left me standing in the firing line when a little of your specialty help might have gone a long way, shall we?"

"You're the brains of the operation." She said snarkily, "It's your job to get yourself out of hot water. I just kill things. That's my job."

"Yes but you see, darling, a few well placed knives between a few offending ribs would have done old Jack the world of help now and again, don't you agree?"

A snort of derision. "Alright, I'll start with yours next time, shall I?" She rolled her eyes, "Don't try and beat me down with logic, Rackham, we both know you're skirting around the question."

"I am most certainly not skirting around the question," He said. He sort of hated it when she said 'Rackham' like that, as though his very name was meant as an insult to him. And it worked half the time too, he was insulted and the worrying conclusion he had come to - now that they were on the topic - was that she found the name Rackham an insult. He didn't like that at all and he was terrified to find out why. "I am simply telling you that you asking the wrong questions. The question you should be asking is not whether or not I love you, but whether or not you love me."

"What do you mean?" She asked, delicate, thin brows pulled together in a frown he would be an utter fool to mistake for confusion.

"I mean, Anne Bonny, that you're getting carried away and that all of this is a confusion you're making between a good fuck and-"

"You're not that good a fuck, mate." She chuckled.

"Well I'm certainly not your true fucking love, now am I?!" He growled, his own temper fraying as he drove her hands further into the sand. "You murdered him in front of me, remember? Put a knife through the back of the bugger's skull if my memory serves me rightly!"

She grit her teeth and shook her head, hair fanning out around her, hat being pushed aside. But she didn't speak. He thought he saw, in the dim light of the moon, a shimmer to her eyes that might have been tears. Did she regret what she did to her husband? He hardly thought so, she lived every day as though throwing off the shackles of marriage was the best decision she ever made. Maybe it was, God knew they had all been making some pretty fucking poor decisions lately, if murdering one's own spouse wasn't the worst it ever got.

He heaved a sigh and quickly scanned the beach lest any would-be attackers had spotted the pair grousing in the sand. They had a lot of enemies in Nassau who would love to make an opportunity of the situation.

"Look, Anne," He said softly, losing the will somewhat at the sight of what could possibly have been tears, "I don't want to change our status quo or throw our modus operandi into the balance. There are more important things to think about right now, like for example, how we're going to get ourselves off this Godforsaken strip of land and back into the water. We need to get on a ship and we need to get back to hunting."

She didn't answer, only lay staring up past his head at the clouds and brief glimpses of starlight that shone through them. Jack gave the beach another furtive glance but the only other occupant was the drunk laying a few meters away in the ebb and flow of the tide washing around his head. Given his imbibed state it would be a few hours before he showed any signs of coming to.

"Anne..." Jack licked his lips in thought. Despite their little spat and his embitterment towards her over her husband's demise given her professions of love towards him, they were still mateys in Vane's crew and, since Vane was no longer around, the only two left to guard each other's backs. Perhaps it was time for some sort of confession. "I am fond of you, I will not deny it." He could feel her eyes on him now, cold, daring him to continue along such a treacherous path. "I don't feel much like lying though, not to you, Darling. If I said I would feel much for you without our arrangement of fuckery I would be lying, but if I said I could do without you without some major motivation, that would also-"

"Just cut to the fucking chase, you son of a whore." She sneered.

He raised an eyebrow, but did as he was bidden. "I was going to say that would also be lying. We're not in a fairy tale, but I do believe I prefer your company over other people's and that were I to ever tie myself to someone for the remainder of my days I cannot imagine that person being anyone other than you."

She pulled a face. "What the fuck are you on about? I'm not marrying you."

"Marriage?! God no!" He pulled a face of his own. "God forbid it should ever come to that. I'm just saying that if it should, the person on the other side of my coin would most likely be you, because while I might not love you like a gentleman loves a lady, I do enjoy a good fuck and what you lack in linguistics-"

"Lack!?"

"You certainly make up for in the sack."

She shook her head and curled her lip. "Right. And I suppose that is meant to make me feel better? I poured my guts out to you and you admit you like fucking me but that's about it and I'm meant to be happy with that conclusion? You must be going soft on me, Jack."

Jack chuckled dryly and stroked his thumb across Anne's cheek, a safe action now her rage had been somewhat abetted. "Go soft on you, my dear? Never."

He put a soft kiss on her lips and her eyes shut. Thus the status quo was returned and Jack, if the fates were indeed as aligned as he thought they were - though God alone knew how he managed to have the scene play out in such a fashion - was in for one of those good fucks he'd just spent the last half hour debating.

A/N: I hope that is enough for some people, I'll try and write a little more of it tomorrow, eh?

Rate and Review, if it please you.

-Iets