* * * * * * * * * * * * How it happened, even Elizabeth would have trouble describing the exact transition, the gesture or word that started the whole surge of events. Maybe it was when he'd touched her cheek that other morning, wiping away cooking stains from her beautiful face. Or when he'd placed his hand on her knee. Or maybe even earlier then that, back at the very beginning, when he'd wrested her damp form from out of the water, the sight of her and her necklace giving him hope for the first time in years.

But if asked, Jack would simply say it was the sadness in her. He saw her need for comfort.

That he'd been too stupid, and too self indulgent to stop and think that maybe comfort from a pirate was not what a girl like Elizabeth should want.

She should want gold and diamonds and kisses on the hand.

But maybe, just maybe, a tiny bitter part of Jack wanted what Will and Elizabeth had, wanted to experience the life with that type of untouchable, breakable women.

Anyway you look at it, it was selfish.

And in the long run, extremely foolish.

It started so simply.

They were sitting on the kitchen floor, surrounded by cookies.

With no rum at hand (vodka is just not the same, and Elizabeth was refusing, for the moment, to drink anyway), and neither of the pair wishing to leave the house, especially without Will, they'd done the one thing that was both time consuming and satisfying.

They'd baked cookies.

Well, that's to say, Elizabeth baked cookies, while Jack hovered around, getting in the way. It seemed that no matter how many times she slapped his hands away, he some how always managed to eat some of the dough. And so, she'd just kept baking and making more and more dough.

So now, they were surrounded by cookies and feeling rather foolish. The original idea had been to find the BEST cookie, the roundest and prettiest (because Elizabeth, like me, values cookies based on how pretty they are) one to give to Will.

Unfortunately, every time Elizabeth pointed out a cookie worth giving to Will, Jack would take a bit of it to see if it tasted good. And then they had to find a new best cookie, because, well, Jack had eaten the last one.

It was all very difficult.
By the twelfth cookie, other then feeling kind of sick, Elizabeth was in hysterics. Jack had found a shot glass, and was proceeding to challenge Elizabeth to a cookie vs Shot game. (The rules are very simple, just like any shot game, except were one person eats a cookie each time the other one takes a shot. Then you reverse jobs. Very fun, and very fattening.)

Which of course, Jack won. Jack could outdrink an extremely thirsty hippo and all her friends if needed.

"You know," Jack slurred. "I'm an African Chieftain." He'd said dreamily.

Jack snapped blearily back into the present. Noticing Elizabeth he curled his moustache with his fingers, giving Elizabeth a flirtatious look. He handed Elizabeth a shot. She drank it.

"Blurk!" She shuddered. "Remind me to never drink again." Jack gave her an appalled look, but then realised she was joking as she held out her hand for another shot. He shuffled, so that his back leant against the cabinet. Elizabeth handed him another cookie.

Jack ran his hands through his hair, carefully removing his headscarf and placing it beside him. The African beads fell flat against the side of his face, the wooden hair ornament that usually stuck out at an odd angle look calm and fitting.

Elizabeth arranged herself so that she was sitting in-between Jack's legs, resting her neck on his collarbone, ready to drowse off. Her skirt was slightly hitched up from the way she was sitting, revealing golden, sun kissed legs that were so long and smooth Jack had to stop himself from reaching out to touch them. When did this girl go to the beach, he thought to himself, and why wasn't I invited?

"Tell me Jack," Elizabeth said, her eyes closed with sleepiness. She loved the feeling of his tanned hard body around her, the slightly erratic-ness to his breathing patterns, the way the beads chimed with each breath. So different from smooth, pale moonlight Will. "Who made you their chief?"

"Well," Jack started, rolling his shoulders slightly to get completely comfortable. "It all started three years after I lost the Pearl. Court robbing a certain Naval Captains wife of her so called chastity, though I know for a fact that she'd been robbed three times that day already." Jack grinned, and flashed his golden teeth. Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "I was thrown of the naval ship into the warm depths of the Mediterranean."

"Mediterranean?" Elizabeth asked, her geography having always been slightly off. Who needs to know about geography when your life revolves around parties and husbands?

"You don't know where it is, luv?" Jack asked, looking down at her. She shook her head attentively, craning her neck around so she could give Jack a sheepish look. Their lips were very close now; Jack could feel her breath blowing the hairs of his moustache. "It's this ocean in-between Europe and Africa and all those funny little countries round there. Beautiful, like our Caribbean, beaches were the sand's a dusty yellow. You know in France they have rock beaches?" Jack asked, verging of topic.

"They do not." Elizabeth said indignantly.

"Do to."

"Do not."

"Who's been to France?" Jack snapped. Elizabeth hid a grin. She loved making Jack angry. She leant forward and brushed her lips against his. She felt the softness of his lips where she'd expected cracked sailors kiss, the sweetness of cookies on his breath, and the barest touch of his tongue... Both of them broke away.

Jack widened his eyes doubtfully.

"Did that just?" He started. Elizabeth turned her face way from him, staring straight forward at the kitchen table. She moved her foot nervously, knocking the cookies on the floor around them.

"Uh huh." She said. Jack made a slight rasping sound, and Elizabeth obediently passed him is rum, before settling back down against his chest.

"Anyway, where were we?" Jack said, a slight faltering in his voice. "That's right, the Mediterranean. Anyway, I floated like a jellyfish for about fifth-teen minutes while the sun popped in and out from between clouds. Not a land mass in sight, and then what happens?"

"What?" Elizabeth queried distractedly, her fingers tracing her lips.

"Fishing boat appears out of nowhere. Beautiful boat, blue likes the sky above." Jack mused.

"Jack?" Elizabeth said quickly, turning around in his arms again.

"What?" He asked guiltily. People usually said his name like that when they were going to yell at him. Had she seen him pinching the silver spoons?

"This." She said, and put her hand on his face, her thumb resting on his beautiful cheekbones, stroking the tanned skin. "And this." She said, her other hand touching the beads in his hair, her nails dragging across his temple. "This..." She whispered, pressing her lips against his.

"Lizzie.." Jack said warningly. She shook her head. He stopped, closing his eyes. "You should have told me about the baby." He whispered.

She faltered, and then turned her head away. Jack seized her chin.
"Hey, hey. Don't cry." He said soothingly. "You're beautiful. And each sail has it's own wind to take where it will." His charcoal eyes were serene, and he put his hand over his mouth as though deliberating on the action he was about to take.

Then he kissed her, pushing open her mouth, destroying the bonds of friendship with one forceful kiss. He pushed her back onto the floor, running his hand up those long legs, touching that silken golden hair, the untouchable beauty of this sorrowful woman. Her legs twined around his waist obediently, her skirt falling around her waist.

She gasped at the deftness of his hands; at the way he holstered her off the floor, lifting her onto the kitchen table, working in such a deft manor to undo her corset. The roughness of his motions, the way he arched her back against the table so she wasn't sure if it pleasure or pain. And then she realised it was both, as his kisses devoured her neck, the swell where her dress court her breasts.

"Fuck, Lizabeth, shouldn't," Jack panted slightly, feeling Elizabeth's teeth brush over his ear lobe. His hands were going crazy, his mind only able to focus on the touch of her skin, on her slight moans. "Shouldn't do this, can't." He broke off as she kissed him on the mouth, yanking on his beaded hair slightly to pull him down to her. On the kitchen table, his hands had now worked their way up her skirt, and through her complicated undergarments. She pushed him away, embarrassed as she had been with Will, by the way the birth of her son had changed her body.

Jack raised an eyebrow, murmuring against her skin.

"Nothing I ain't seen before love." And his hands resumed what they had been doing. She shuddered slightly beneath his touch. His muddied pirate boots clipped against the wooden table, and her silken dress tore on a slightly risen nail on the table.

Later, he wanted to say he'd tried to mend her with his rough kisses, his fingers trying to put back the shattered pieces, to make her whole with his hands. That when he'd moved inside her, her skin had been like burning fire and her gasps a song. He wanted to say he'd taken her in the soft cool sheets of the bedroom upstairs, worshiping her body with his mouth, teaching her to love with his careful attentions, and that the fire he had conjured had melted the ice on her heart. That she'd up looked at him with her sorrowful brown eyes, and her wonderful sweet lips and found some joy.

But he would have been lying. She sobbed and shook beneath him, on the cold kitchen floor, a fine layer of sweat forming on her very mortal skin. And his hands had not been as kind as he wanted them to be, nor as gentle. That he allowed himself to be rough in a way Will would never have been with her, his kisses bruised her lips, and leaving red love stains on her neck.

He kissed Elizabeth's temple when it was done, and she wept in his arms. He helped her up, and allowed the fragile girl to lead him up the winding stairs to her marriage bed, where he'd taken her again in the soft sun light of the Caribbean.

Their dance was a silent one; there were none of the curses and play fights that there had been with Ana-Maria and Jack. Sometimes Ana-Maria would rake her fingernails down Jack's back, leaving red scars on him and blood beneath her nails. And this was not the sweet, worshiping love that Will gave to Elizabeth, where his hands would touch her so slowly, almost fearfully that she would almost die with anticipation.

What passed between the two of them, the pirate and the angelic noble, was a kind of comfort.

Their dance was a wordless dance.

* * * * * * * * * * * * . . .

Please R&R. This was a very difficult chap to write because I'm not a Jack and Elizabeth fan, never written to two of them together before.