This one I posted at Black Pearl Sails in response to the "aches" challenge there, but it's a story that had been brewing for a while before that. It ties in loosely to "The Weight of Water", and the circumstances of Jack and Bill's first meeting.
A fish tale, of sorts, about the one that got away.
CATCH OF THE DAYJack's head throbbed where he'd struck it on something when the red-bearded sailor had shoved him back into the narrow galley, after he'd been discovered as a stowaway.
After the cry had gone up above decks, and the man hadn't seemed very interested in Jack anymore. "Mermaid!" someone had shouted, and Jack never known a single word could hold so much terror. "Mermaid in the net!"
The cut he'd suffered behind his ear had bled down his neck, itchy and sticky beneath his collar. His legs and back ached from the time he'd spent curled without relief in the same position. A twinge in his right calf had become a full-blown, knifelike cramp some time ago. He made no move to reach for it, to try to massage it out. He had forgotten, for a while, that it hurt at all.
"Jesus Christ, where are the goddamned guns? Kill her! Kill the bitch, kill her, killherohjesusshesoutshesoutshes--"
His hands ached, knuckles rigid and locked, his nails drawing oozing crescents from his palms. He'd attempted a few Hail Mary's, but all the screaming distracted him, and he kept forgetting the words. Some part of him perversely longed for those screams when they stopped, because they had cloaked the other, quieter, wetter sounds that made their way to him in the absence of all other noise. They went on and on, muffled and indistinct, and somehow more horrible for it.
When he tasted blood, Jack's first thought was that he'd bitten through his tongue in his efforts to keep silent, but then he drew a breath, and realized he wasn't tasting. He was smelling.
Later, as his stomach ached, empty for some four or five days, Jack wondered if she really hadn't known he'd been there, or if she'd simply been too full to bother with him.