Title: Dreadfully Late
Author: Ponderosa (ponderosa@dragonworld.com)
Pairing: Jack/Will/Elizabeth
Archive: Anyone with prior permission, others just ask.
Warning: [PG] Polyamory. Bad humor.
Spoilers: None.
Disclaimer: Characters belong to that crazy corporate machine, Disney. Plot, if you can call it that, belongs to me.
Notes: Written for Challenge #10 "Late" on the pirates500 livejournal community.
-=*=-
Elizabeth thrust open the doors to the cabin. She strode over purposefully to where Jack and Will were idling away their time playing cards at the Captain's table and set her hands on her hips. "Gentlemen," she announced in a firm voice, "It has come to my attention that I am dreadfully late."
"For what?" Jack asked absently. He dealt himself three new cards and frowned. His booted feet were propped up on the table, crossed at the ankle and twitching to a slow beat.
Elizabeth looked to Will, but he had the same expression of mild curiosity and utter incomprehension.
"Some fancy affair you've forgotten?" Jack teased. "Want us to swing the Pearl 'round and lay a course back to old Port Royale?"
Will took a new pair of cards for himself and his lips pressed together in a thin line (it was more in amusement than irritation at the lousy cards he'd drawn, but he was wise enough to pretend otherwise).
"What I mean to say," Elizabeth sighed and rolled her eyes, "is that if I should wake up and run for the side of the ship, it isn't the roll of the sea that has turned my stomach."
Both men looked as if they'd been struck upside the head when her words finally sunk in. Will lost his cards to the floor and his jaw dropped further and further open. Jack just stared unblinking. Neither asked which of them was the father (although they each wondered silently), but with how the three spent their evenings, there'd be no telling for years.
Recovering from the shock first, Jack scraped his fan of playing cards along his cheek. "So we'll be callin' the lad Jack, naturally."
Elizabeth saw Will's eyebrows gather together. The younger man crossed his arms over his chest and leveled Jack with a stern look. "Don't you mean we'll name the child William?" he said.
"I'm the Captain," Jack replied.
"And what does that have to do with anything?" Will scoffed. "I'm Elizabeth's husband!"
Jack pursed his lips and cast a sidelong glance at Will. He could argue that he was just as much Elizabeth's husband, in practice if not by law, but he let the remark slide. "What's wrong with Jack? It's a fine name."
"Well, what's wrong with William? You said yourself, some time ago, that it was a 'good strong name'!"
"Aye, but-"
Elizabeth waited patiently for a pause in their bickering. When it finally came (Jack and Will were busy drawing deep breaths in order to argue at a louder volume), she planted her hands on the table and leaned forward. "Praytell, my loves," she said, with a poisonously sweet smile on her lips. "What if the babe in my belly should prove to be a girl?"
The two men looked each other square in the eye. They nodded in concert, and a wide grin spread on each of their faces as they turned back to Elizabeth and answered simultaneously,
"Jacqueline!"
"Wilhelmina!"
Owari