The next day, Jack blinked his eyes open and rather hoped to find himself aboard the Pearl. But there he was, lying on the sand, trapped on the damned island where Barbossa had tossed him with the sour-spirited but beautiful Elizabeth Swann.
He'd promised her a shelter, he remembered. He heaved himself up to stand, the usual twinge of a hangover notably absent this morning. He rose and put his hands on his hips, staring at the way Elizabeth was still fast asleep on the warm sands, curled on her side in her thin underdress with her knees tucked up a bit. Her golden hair, knotted from the salt and wind, blew over her face a little, concealing her prettiest features. It was probably for the best, Jack thought. He ought not stand there and watch her sleep.
He huffed and walked off toward the tree line, gathering up as many freshly fallen palm fronds as he could into a pile. He'd need loads and loads of supple green leaves for this project. He gathered dozens of fronds and then lugged the armload of them back over toward the area where Elizabeth had built her obscene signal fire. He shook his head at the memory of the burning, exploding rum, and he set down the palms.
Jack searched through the palm branches until he found one that was Y-shaped. He stuck it very firmly into the sand, digging around it to deepen how far into the ground it went. He dug until he hit wet sand, and then he buried it up again. He did the same thing with a second Y-shaped branch about his body's length away from the first one, burying it just as deeply. He found the longest branch he had, much longer than his body, and placed it between the two Y-shaped branches to serve as the ridge pole. Then he began to stack branches at an angle, in thick layers, against the ridge pole to form the roof of the shelter. He shoved them up against the sides to make a three-sided shelter, layering the fronds thickly. Then he lay some of the remaining palms on the ground of the shelter to protect Elizabeth from too much exposure to the sand; her skin would quickly irritate if she lay on it night after night.
Finally he stepped back and studied his handiwork, putting his hands on his hips and nodding rather proudly at himself. He'd done well, he thought. All that training on that island off of Bali had served him well, for once.
"Is this my shelter?" asked a quiet voice from behind him. Jack turned round, and he held out his arms in a mocking grand gesture.
"I present to you, Miss Swann, the governor's mansion of this illustrious isle."
"No, it's… I'm rather impressed, if I'm honest," said Elizabeth, "and very grateful, I must say."
"Oh. Hmm. Well, there's a pleasant development in our relationship," Jack drawled. Elizabeth's full lips parted a little, and she rolled her honey-coloured eyes just a bit. She scoffed and started to move away, but just then there was a rumble of thunder in the distance.
Jack looked up to see rolling grey clouds on the horizon. He raised his eyebrows.
"Storm coming in." He stated the obvious. "We'll be needing this shelter soon enough."
"You think it will hold up in a thunderstorm?" Elizabeth asked incredulously, and Jack smirked.
"You'd be surprised how much wind and rain a good solid shelter like this one can take, love. You'll stay nice and dry. If you want to." He flashed her a crooked smile at that last bit, and she choked out an offended little noise. But then there was a bright white flash of lightning on the horizon, and another deep rumble of thunder, and Elizabeth turned to see what Jack saw - the clouds were edging closer. She chewed her lip and insisted,
"Ought we not try and eat something before the storm hits?"
"I like the way you think, love," said Jack. He pointed at her, and then at the tree line. "Coconuts, tout de suite. And after the storm… we feast on fish, eh?" He stalked off toward a grove of coconut palms and picked up two fallen coconuts, weighing them in his hands to measure whether they had water. He and Elizabeth drank the water out of them and ate the meat, and by the time Jack tossed the coconut shells onto the pile of fire material, the storm was bearing down upon them. The wind had picked up substantially, the air was wet and heavy, and lightning was flashing nearby.
"Right. Into the shelter with you, then," said Jack, and Elizabeth actually hesitated.
"Where will you go?" she asked, and he made a pffft sort of noise as he waved a hand at her.
"I'm Captain Jack Sparrow, love. Savvy? I've waited out countless terrible storms at the helm of a ship. You think I can't sit through a little thunderstorm at the foot of a coconut palm? I'll be just fine, love; you'd be awfully crowded in there with me."
"But, Jack," Elizabeth began to protest.
"Elizabeth, I'd much prefer not to hang for impropriety, of all the things I'll likely hang for," Jack said delicately, holding his hands up and twiddling his fingers. And it was the truth, too. He'd rather be called a rogue and a blackguard for stealing ships and cargo than for robbing a young woman's virtue, even if all that meant was lying too closely with her in a shelter on an island. Someday, someone was going to rescue them off of this island, and he wasn't sure he could trust Elizabeth not to rat him out for cuddling up beside her during a thunderstorm, even just to take shelter.
It began to rain, and Elizabeth's caramel eyes looked a little sad. She shook her head and whispered,
"I'm not dry now, Jack, and neither are you."
"Well, then, it seems my shelter is entirely irrelevant," he shrugged. Elizabeth dragged her top teeth over her bottom lip, which made Jack shiver a little. There was a sharp crack of lightning and thunder simultaneously - it was close. Elizabeth startled, and Jack reached for her shoulder rather on instinct.
"Go," he said. "Go get under cover."
"Come with me," she insisted. "You built the thing."
"Elizabeth," he said, shaking his head.
"It's Miss Swann," she said very meaningfully, putting distance between them. Jack tipped his head and vowed,
"I swear to you, if I hang because I went into a shelter for a storm, I'll haunt you forever, Miss Swann."
But he followed her to the shelter, and he bent down to follow her inside. There was scarcely enough room in here for one person, let alone two. Jack tried to shove himself against the side of the shelter without destroying it, but there was no way around how closely he was lying to Elizabeth. She rolled away to face the wall of the shelter, and he found himself spooned against her from behind. He gulped heavily, reaching up to scratch at his chin.
"This thing is remarkably waterproof," Elizabeth observed in an awkward-sounding voice as the sound of rain thrashing against the palms sounded over and around them. Jack sat up just a little and stared out the open side to see that the rain had intensified into heavy grey sheets. A violent flash of lightning reverberated around them, and Jack lay back down.
"Works well, doesn't it, love?"
He shouldn't call her that just now. Love. It felt inappropriate to call her that, lying behind her with her tucked up against his body. He could feel her bum against his groin, which was better than anything he'd felt in a good long while. He'd had many women - many women - in his life, but they'd all been mediocre, and most had been whores who had had many, many men. There was something oddly alluring about Elizabeth Swann. Her bite, her feisty nature, her obvious natural beauty… she had an appeal that very few women had. But she was so young, and so abjectly unavailable, even here on this desert island. Even here in this shelter Jack had built for her, in the middle of a raging thunderstorm, she was forbidden fruit.
"Jack?"
"Mmm?" He jerked back to reality at the sound of his name from her. She asked quietly,
"How long do you think Will has to live?"
Jack huffed a breath and licked his lip. "I dunno, Elizabeth. I promised you that once we get rescued -"
"Once the Navy rescues us, you're going to be tried for your crimes," she told him, "and I'll be dragged back to the Governor's Mansion and made to marry James."
"The Commodore." Jack nodded slowly. "Lovely fates all around, then. Perhaps I don't want to be rescued."
Elizabeth was silent at that. She finally murmured, "I wish you had a ship so that we could go rescue Will."
"Funnily enough, I also wish I had a ship," said Jack lightly, "though my motivations differ ever so slightly from yours."
"Why did you become a pirate, Jack?" asked Elizabeth, and the question seemed to come out of nowhere.
"I was born a pirate, love," Jack told her. He thought of the brand upon his wrist and considered telling her about his years spent working for the East India Trading Company, the way Beckett had branded him a pirate after he'd refused to transport slaves as cargo. But instead he said in a cocky tone, "I was born on a pirate ship in the middle of a typhoon."
Elizabeth snorted where she lay. "Another of your fantastical stories," she said dismissively, but Jack scowled and assured her,
"That one's entirely true."
Elizabeth began to roll to face him, which made him want to skitter away from her. He had nowhere to go, though, and he suddenly found himself with Elizabeth inches away from him her face so close he could have kissed her with incredible ease. He stared, wide-eyed, at Elizabeth as she arranged her head on her forearm and demanded,
"How am I meant to know what's true about you and what's just legend?"
"You aren't. It's all part of the mystique, my dear," Jack smirked, but then he swallowed hard and nodded. "I really was born on a pirate ship. Spent damn near my entire childhood on them. It's been all my life, really. I'm a pirate through my veins and to the marrow of my bones. And I'm nowhere near apologising for it, so best get used to the idea that you're lying in a shelter handmade just for you by the most piratey pirate that ever pirated."
Elizabeth actually smiled at that, and Jack's smirk grew a little bit. He'd amused her. He rather liked that thought, the idea that he'd made her grin. She'd spent most of her time on this island scowling angrily at him, but now she was staring at him with a little smile on her face. Suddenly her eyes fluttered shut in fear, for a clap of thunder sounded so near overhead that it seemed the storm would swallow them whole. Jack sighed and asked,
"Mind if I sing? An old shanty I learnt in that storied pirate youth of mine."
"No, I suppose I don't mind if you sing,"
Jack decided to skip the boring first verse of the song he had in mind and go straight to the second. He cleared his throat and sang quietly,
"Let charming beauty's health go round, with whom celestial joys are found. and may confusion yet pursue, that selfish woman-hating crew. and he who'd woman's health deny, down among the dead men, down among the dead men. Down, down, down, down; Down among the dead men let him lie!"
Elizabeth watched him in awed silence, even as the storm raged outside their shelter. Jack smiled at her as he sang the third verse about Bacchus - a bold move - and the fourth verse about love and wine. By the time he'd finished, the storm had calmed down substantially, and there was no more lightning or thunder. The rain had eased into a drizzle, and Jack murmured to Elizabeth,
"I think the worst of it's gone, love."
"Oh." She nodded, her cheeks pink and her lips looking more full than ever. Suddenly Jack felt a flush go through him. He wanted her. Her swallowed hard and studied her beautiful features, her honey hair, her smooth chest revealed by her underdress. He thought of the spark within her, like a fire about to catch, and he trembled just a little where he lay beside her.
He wanted her. He was going hard for her. He needed to leave, now, before anything happened.
"I'll go check on the damage, then," he mumbled. "Make sure our fire-pile's still in place, eh? He slithered out from the shelter, grabbing his effects from where they'd been at his feet, and he left Elizabeth inside. She called after him,
"Jack!"
He crouched down at the entrance of the shelter and peered inside, clutching his wide leather belt and holster in one hand and his cutlass in the other. Elizabeth propper herself up onto her elbows and stared at him. Her chest rose and fell quickly beneath her thin dress, and she nodded.
"Thank you, Jack," she said.
He let the drizzle soak his dreadlocks as he scratched at his chin and shrugged.
"It's Captain, love."
She rolled her eyes and flopped back down onto her back inside the shelter. Jack's cheeky smirk disappeared as he rose, feeling a coil of want in his belly.
"I'm going to check the reef for fish while it's churned up from the storm," he called, and he dropped his effects except for his sword, marching barefoot down to the shore.
Author's Note: Hello, friends! These two are edging closer to not hating each other, huh? How long before they actually like each other? Mwah hahaha. Thank you so much for reading. PLEASE REVIEW if you can - I would really, really appreciate any and all feedback on this story.