Oh God, I know all of you guys hate me right now. But to be honest, I just got terrible lazy and just didn't feel like writing anymore. I'm so sorry. But that's not important, is it. On with the story.
…
Jack could smell the sweat and exhilaration of his crewmen as they stirred around on the splintery main deck, brandishing their swords and whooping and howling like wild beasts. The adrenaline that darted around in the crisp day sky was thick enough to cut, and he breathed in swiftly, tasting the salty air in his mouth. Taking another hearty swig from the canister in his ringed hands, he rubbed his beard and rolled the stones in the braids.
"After today," he uttered thoughtfully, fingering the red and green stones attached to his coarse hairs. "Ye lovelies will have a few new mates, eh?" He found, secretly, talking to his precious jewels a rather comforting moment. Strictly the ones thread through his hair, he thoughtfully added, thanks very much.
"Who are you talking to?" said a perplexed voice from behind him. Jack wheeled around to face Henrietta leaning against his cabin door, her sea green sash wrapped tightly across her forehead.
Hand on his hips, Jack responded, "Never mind that, love. Is tha' damned fluff bird camouflaged an' all?" Gluing the spyglass to his kohl traced eye, Jack tilted backwards and looked off into the distance of the glittering ocean.
"Aye," she stated softly, hiding a look of excitement at the piracy that she had missed out of from all these years. She added almost begrudgingly, "Captain." Ungracefully, Henry balanced herself on the ledge of the ship, peering out into the distance as well.
"Won't be long now," he muttered, before flattening the spyglass with a crisp click. Marching authoritatively over to the crewmen who were in the process of climbing the rigging with cutlasses and rapiers wielded before them, he held out his arms. Tri-corner hat on squint, the sun reflected a monstrous shadow of the infamous Jack Sparrow on the auburn deck.
"Gentlemen!" He barked, and the voices subsided to an unearthly silence. "And ye two lovely ladies. Today we are to embark on an adventure of great wealth and pleasures."
Jack hesitated slightly before continuing. Extending a single, ringed finger, he bid, "Firstly, honor the pirate's code. Equal vote in affairs, no desertions, well ye know the rest. Disobeying the code will result in a deleterious fate for the man or woman who does so."
A second finger.
"Secondly, equal portions of the loot, o'course. Present all plunder on deck following the looting, we shall split it uniformly. And lastly, in case o' surrender, no exceeding violence to proceed post that acquisition. Failure to comply with these laws will produce a public punishment of equal lethality, AYE?"
"AYE!" they roared, raising and thrusting their weapons of choice into the stark blue sky, the metal reflecting bright scratches on the deck. Cotton's parrot squawked loudly, flapping azure and golden wings. Even Henrietta emitted a loud AYE, swiping the air with her lustrous sword.
Despite herself, Henry found the commanding captain to be rather admirable. Only in such a situation, of course.
Usually repulsive, she mused. Usually.
"Well," he said, brandishing a soft smile. "A pirate's life it is." Crunching his lips in a circle for a moment before opening them into a gaping hole, he hollered, "Anamaria! To the helm, lassie."
"Yes Cap'n!" Anamaria bounded off the wheel, dark hair flapping behind her.
Waltzing rather femininely to Henry's side, Jack wrapped an arm around her waist, allowing one finger at a time to reach the curve of her hips. Uneasily giving in and accepting this gesture as an ungraceful attempt to make peace of previous events, Henry relented.
"Henry, dove," he said softly, placing a cheek on her cheek before she could object. The pirate captain spoke quickly, afraid of any other painful incidents that involved Henry's fiery hand and his sensitive cheek. "Darlin', I know ye're all accustomed to this an' all, but be cautious.. Not all pirates are as roguishly handsome and.. "
Attempting to object, Henry twisted her neck in hopes of freedom, and instead, found her tanned cheek planted firmly onto a pair of clasped lips. The pair of slightly chapped lips were inching themselves slowly, as if independently, towards her own. A few, drawn out seconds passed before Henry realized what was happening.
"..incredibly courteous as I am to ye, savvy?" he concluded his sentence, releasing her from his lips before slightly wincing in expectation of a sharp slap in the face.
Twisting out of his encircling arm with a slight stammer and ignoring the false statement as well as the cowardly wince, she shrieked fervently, "What was that for, you flea ridden dog. What was that for!" Against her will, a flustered blush was creeping up her throat to her cheeks.
Jack, pleading ignorance to such a heinous crime, tilted his head and arched a brow.
"What?" he innocently inquired, eyes widening for a naturally dramatic effect.
And the captain marched off onto the main deck, sashaying his hips and smirking slightly before barking out orders to veer the course slightly to the left. Watching the gesticulating pirate captain wave his arms around in fussing around with the ebony sails, Henry's hand absentmindedly reached up to her cheek, grazing the part of her cheek that had collided with the captain's lips with an unfamiliar feeling.
Disgusting, she reflected with a sour taste in her mouth. She eyed the Jolly Roger with mock contempt as it watched down to belittle her with a toothy smirk, identical to Jack's. How could a man be so repulsive?
Her thoughts were interrupted by a reverberating voice.
"Onward, men!"
…
Naturally, the pirate captain had enjoyed such an incident with the ever so volatile and quick-tempered Henrietta, but he found a sense of incompleteness in just a quick peck on the cheek. Honestly, Jack hadn't even had the chance to whet such an insatiable craving with a mere slap on the bottom or et cetera. Nevertheless satisfied with escaping from Henrietta's scorching slaps and often biting words, Jack focused on the ship approaching closer and closer in the distance.
It was a small ship, to be certain, and nothing compared to the burnished and swift condition of the Black Pearl, but it was often that the small cargo ships contained products necessary for human survival. Recoiling inwardly at another night of picking maggots out of biscuits, Jack rubbed his chin distastefully.
As the Black Pearl cut through the glassy ocean and soon wheeled so that it was parallel to the smaller one, Jack stepped onto the main deck and called over the drop in front of him. His crewmen stood in a dense crowd behind him, baring blackened teeth and spinning blades in between their fingers. Henry stood among them, her sea green sash fluttering in her short hair.
"Ahoy," Jack called over the ledge, cupping his hands over his lips. "Ahoy there, hello." He waved a dark hand.
"Aye, Jack Sparrow?" said the captain of the opposing ship. He wore a pair of fine pressed breeches and a cotton shirt made with a rich colored twine. A large, floppy hat was pressed snugly onto his head, looking quite uncannily like a little man underneath an umbrella.
"Ooh, ye've heard of me," Jack mused with a clasp of hands. "Surprisin' that you don't refer to me as cap'n, hm? Any'ow, I'm not a bad man, to be certain, ye can ask me crew members, but ye see, we be running a wee bit low on things like, say, food an' fresh water an' appropriate attire.. Well this proposes quite the predicament-"
"The point, Sparrow?"
"We're goin' to loot ye," Jack simply stated. "Savvy?"
There was a silence before the rival captain unfolded from his hunched position, nudged his floppy, brimmed hat squarely across his forehead and raised his hand. With the crack from the snap of his fingers, twenty dirty and scraggly heads popped out from across the ledge, all armed to the teeth with blades and cutlasses.
"No." The opposing captain stated with the widening of his arms.
"Regretful," said Jack. "Oh, and nice hat." With that, Jack whipped out his pistol and shot the bullet squarely through the brimmed material. Untouched, he widened his arms in the mirror image of the challenging captain before barking out orders.
"Onward, men!" He roared, swiping out his finely crafted sword with a drawn out clang. "Gibbs to the galley, gather as much fresh fruit an' vittles as your blundering arms can get. Strike that, Perry, go with 'im. Shamson, go below deck. Tar, weapons, and whatever else ye find, hm? Anamaria and Cotton, go for the wealth, if'n there be any on that plank of wood."
"An' all those not mentioned, swords out!" The weapons simultaneously pointed upward, followed by guttural, throaty snarls of the crewmen behind him.
"AYE, CAP'N!"
…
As the crewmen ungracefully scrabbled like rats to the ledge and over the rigging and across the tumbling waves to the smaller cargo ship, Henrietta could feel adrenaline course through her veins, making the nerves in her fingers tingle with a newly aroused excitement. Brandishing her sword with a loud slice of metal, she prepared as the challenging men from the tiny cargo ship approached like a stampede of cockroaches over the Black Pearl's ledge.
"Whas' a pretty thin' like you doin' on here," One inquired as metal met against metal. The man had on a shirt that looked like the consistency of rotten meat, and his breath retained the smell thereof. "Wouldn' ye like to spend some time with me instead?"
Henry dodged a thrust from the rusting metal, stepping on her heel slightly before swiping her own sword across his sleeve. The dark, moldy material slipped off easily, as she stepped backwards, preparing to parry and flick her arm across the foul man again.
"Not particularly." Henry retorted, carving a small gash into his stomach. The man shrieked in pain, looking down at his bloodied shirt in fury.
"Me bes' shirt!" he hollered, glaring at Henry with a ferocious expression. "An' that hurt!" He swung his sword with both hands, as if to slice her in two.
"Oh really?" she inquired, bending slightly down to catch the blade before it hacked through her toes neatly like butter. Spinning around the thick, wooden mast before dodging the filthy man's spearing sword. The blunt material stuck into the dense wood with a satisfying thud.
"Ah-hah!" Henry proclaimed triumphantly, her countenance of satisfaction melting away as she heard a soft cluck coming from behind her.
Wheeling around, she spotted a rather chubby man grabbing Chick y by his leg and waving him around in the air like a rag doll.
"Lookie what I gots 'ere, boys," The portly man roared, flapping the panicked looking chicken around in front of his face. Chicky flailed his wings in alarm, shrieking in a way that Henrietta's ears had never heard before. "Fresh meat!" There was a pause, "'Ey.. Whas' this?"
"Let him go!" Henry found herself shouting, even despite her usual self control. Just then, a looming shadow from behind her lunged towards her turned back, and just as she whipped back around, the figure dropped, paralyzed to the ground, blood dripping from his chest. Looking up, she found Jack, his profile marred only by the glaring sunlight behind him, shoving a pistol back into it's holster.
"Go get that damned fluff bird." Jack urged with a thrust of his hand. Henry needed no other encouragement as she vaulted towards her beloved pet. With such an anger, she had no problem spearing men from behind them, skewering arms and legs and limbs to get the intruding pirates out of the way.
"Give me that animal." she ordered, pushing the razor edge of her sword slightly against the man's throat.
The man compromised for a moment, eyes darting from his hand where Chicky was entrapped in grubby fingers, and below him, where a woman of smaller stature pushed a razor against his throat. Considering the odds of the situation, he naturally let the frightfully terrified chicken go, the bird landing with a disgruntled cluck onto the splintering floor.
"Why thank you." Henry said snippily, carefully letting loose of the blade and bending down slowly to pick up her beloved pet from next to the man's rather odorous boots.
"No, gel, are ye daft-" A voice cut in from behind her.
But regretfully too late, the noisome boot came flying to her face, the rough leather digging deep into her soft cheek flesh. With a strangled gasp, she fell to the floor, completely positive that the sky had somehow tilted and all was falling. Henry reflexively tongued the inside of her mouth, blood flooding the caverns of her cheek.
There was a swift sound of metal meeting against flesh and the portly man slumped next to her, pressing a hand over his own wound. Henry collected herself and managed to spit some of the flooding blood from her mouth before she was forced to reflexively swallow.
"Are ye alright, ye addled gel?" Jack asked, his own breath harsh as he pressed grimy hands over his own scratches and wounds.
"I'm fine, captain," Henry said, still tonguing the inside of her cheek with an annoyed state of mind. Her tone much too snippy than what she had hoped. Henry struggled to find the words to thank him, thank the man that had saved her life one too many times. "Captain.. I just want to.."
"Ye'll make up for it later," Jack whispered, heartily winking. Sword brandished, the pirate captain bounded off towards the main deck of the Black Pearl, leaving behind a befuddled Henrietta, a displeased chicken and many wonderings as to how exactly the captain would want his payback.
…
Anamaria and young Jonathon leaned against the door of their captain's quarters. The air was still now, the Black Pearl calm and relatively quiet. The cargo ship was long gone, hurrying away fairly quickly when the cannons were drawn and the majority of their goods and weapons having been "mysteriously" transported from their ship to the Black Pearl's.
But the rather violent charade was now nothing in comparison to the adrenaline rushing idea of eavesdropping on the captain's private quarters. Something was going on in there, Anamaria knew.
"Shh, lad," Anamaria ordered, straightening her hair out and pressing an ear directly onto the door. "In chance o' getting caught, we'll be assigned to ten days tops o' chores under deck."
The young lad complied, bobbing his head furiously. Mirroring Anamaria and pressing an eager ear against the door, he nudged in closer to get a better earful of the muffled conversation. Stifled as the words were, they could both understand completely what was going on.
"No, I won't do it," Henry stated furiously. Her voice was strangled, and as usual, highly agitated "No today, no tomorrow, and no for however many times you ask me."
"Tis' not a favor o' some sort! Unless ye plan to do some unspeakables wit' me, which, with yer tightly guarded femininity, " Jack put quotations around the last word. "Ye owe me!"
There was a loud rustle of heavy cloth as Jack flapped his arms around in front of Henry's face. The annoyed Henrietta waved his protruding limbs from out of her way.
"I don't owe you anything, captain." Henry seethed through gritted teeth. She seized Jack by his jeweled beard and spoke directly into his face. "Nothing."
Jack sighed and rubbed his hands over his kohl traced eyes, muttering curses and jinxes in his head. "Don't try to reassure yerself, lass. I know exactly what I'm worth." Releasing himself from the rather painful position, Jack rubbed the beads on his facial hair. "Ye'll have to square wit' the fact that I saved yer life on numerous occasions someday."
Henry sighed huffily, leaning back in her chair rather ungracefully, almost tipping herself over. Crossing her boots on a rather luxurious counter, she whispered, "Fine, let's see it."
There was a rustle of heavy cloth and the sound of a dresser being opened and closed as Jack grunted before belting out two triumphant notes "Ta-da!"
Young Jonathon, who had been eavesdropping rather silently for the last ten minutes or so, struggled to suppress a laugh. Tittering softly into his hands at first, he released himself from his stifled position and openly guffawed. Right into the captain's quarters.
"They're goin' to do it, Ana!" Jonathon exclaimed. Apparently naïve and still quite curious on the matter, the young lad found the incident quite amusing. Perhaps a bit too amusing, as he was unable to stop the laughing even after the door swung open and Jack stood at the doorway, hands on hips, a small frown on his face.
Anamaria hesitantly got up from her snooping position and sneakily tiptoed away. And much to Jonathon's dismay and curiosity, Henry was fully clad in her clothes, Jack did not have his breeches pooled at his feet and both did not look like they were about to do it or anything at all.
Instead, he found the pirate captain holding a grand, frilled burgundy dress in his arms, and a rather annoyed looking Henry glaring dissatisfiedly at the magnificent pile of cloth in his hands.
"Oh alright!" she exclaimed, snatching the dress and pushing Jack out of the room with a strong heave. The door slammed, the lock clicked, Chicky fluttered around in surprise and Henry left Captain Jack Sparrow staring at his wooden door, open mouthed and frazzled.
"And we're not doing anything!" said a voice from behind the door.
Jack eyed the door irately, bobbing slightly from heel to toe before softly whispering to a curious Anamaria and Jonathon with a devilishly wicked grin.
"Don't be fooled," he said sneakily. "We 'ave. Hundreds o' times. Thousands, maybe." He made a wide semicircle with his arms, sweeping them across the air. "Henry's quite ashamed of admitting to such pleasurable times, eh? Eh?"
The two stared at the captain, hiding impulses to roll their eyes. Jack put his hands together and snapped his jaw shut.
"Nevermin' that, ye two below deck. I want all the cells cleaned out and sparkling clean by morn."
…
She stared at the dress. It was mocking her, for sure, as the ruffled, burgundy dress sat in a heaping pile of rippled cloth at the edge of Jack's bed. It was magnificent, to be quite honest, but Henry found the idea of being constrained in a wee corset with her bottom looking like a flouncing umbrella quite unappealing.
Henrietta put her hand on the silky material, absentmindedly admiring the red and cream trimming, the soft texture of the fabric and the vanilla lace at the bottom. Chicky closed his eyes lazily by the bed, preening his still cluttered feathers.
"Oh fine, it'll only be for a portion of the evening, anyway." she reconciled with herself, picking up the rather heavy dress and plopping it over her shoulder. "Better that I wear it than him, I suppose."
…
Jack leaned against the door and fidgeted with the beads in his hair. Tangling and intertwining with each other, the frustrated pirate captain exasperatedly let go of the dreads and swung them around, only to fall back and smack him in the face. Allowing himself a sigh, Jack attempted to string some beads onto his hair once more, only to let the circular beads drop onto the floor with soft clicks.
"Damn," he said, and went down on all four, peering in between crevices and cracks in the floorboards. "Where are ye, where are ye.."
He lifted a small, globular object from a break in the wood. "There ye are!"
"Hmm, rock." he said in remorseful realization, and flung it over his shoulder.
Henrietta cleared her voice impatiently from behind him. Jack, who had been so deeply focused on finding his beads, had not seen, heard of felt the door open from behind him. A triangular, orange glow streamed from the ajar doorway and Jack looked up slightly to see the sweeping, burgundy hem of Henry standing at the door, hands clasped behind her back.
"What are you doing down there?" she asked, stepping over him rather clumsily and almost tripping on the fold of the luscious dress. The bouncing hoop of the material was even harder to manage to she had thought.
"Looking for me jewels." Jack simply stated, lifting up one his dreads for her to see.
"Interesting, figured you'd be searching somewhere reasonable. In a drawer, in a desk, between your legs.."
The pirate captain rose from his four legged position and ignored the comment, preparing himself to stop himself from bursting out laughing or stifle his jokes at he pure image of Henry, in a dress!Jack could hardly wait to feast his eyes on the painting that was to be his dear Henrietta, his dear, lovely, feisty Henrietta, clad in the most womanly thing that she had probably ever took sight of.
And he looked up with a smile, his grin fading away instantly as he drank in the spectacle that was her.
"Wow."
…
Alright, I know I promised cuddling, but I just couldn't fit it in! It will be in the next chapter, promise! In the mean time..
Please review! It's like oxygen. Haha, thinks of Moulin Rouge But seriously, give me your feedback and find your way to the purple button at the bottom, thanks very much. (: