Enjoy this torrid tale of lust and desire between Jack and Lizzie! Reviews are always welcome! This will be a four-part story.

He hadn't touched a drop of rum in three weeks. Not even one bloody drop. Of course, at first it hadn't crossed his mind that it might be three weeks...a few days at the most...maybe three...or four...and he'd condemned himself to hold out for five, then six, because he certainly wasn't going to stop after making it that far, aching throat and fantasizing about tipping the bottle back until the entire damn thing was empty going to the devil.

Now he was wondering whether he had taken a temporary vacation into lunacy without noticing, the very notion of expecting her to run into his bed, arms, or wherever destination he fancied on a particular day, though the bed would be the ideal one, seemed preposterous now, outlandish, utterly illusory.

On nights where there was a particular level of frustration he did plenty of looking at rum, and there was a fair amount of undoing every single argument he had made against drinking it until he was balanced on the edge of the desk chair nearly lunging for the damn...vile drink.

Sometimes true, Lizzie darling, sometimes true. Not that he would bloody know it right now because…and he hadn't known it then either, on that lovely little island, at least not after the little chit burnt all of it.

Perhaps he ought to just take one drink in light of the memory to make up for her heroic efforts to get them rescued. Here's to you, rum that was incinerated by the very same woman that was currently incinerating him…

It would only be one drink, he could stop after one drink, certainly...then again, he had told himself that about one kiss too, just one kiss and he wouldn't want any more, but what a damn farce that had been, should have known it too, with the way that his traitorous body, mind, mouth, eyes, whichever, had willingly abandoned the helm of the Pearl just to go talk to her, aggravate her, see her eyes grow challenging, sparking at him like a...he was a damn captain for Christ's sake...not a lust-sick puppy being led around by a woman...beautiful as she was…

...then why can't you just take one sip...just a quick one...just enough to…

...enough to what? It wasn't like one sip was going to do the job...he wagered even that it would make the current state of his vexation worse…

It must be the cruelest design of the gods, those damnable bastards that had probably put him in this position while laughing merrily around the vision of him sitting there glaring at the bottle of rum on the desk like he wanted to send it crashing into the wall...and they were probably drinking rum...but the fact that it would both send him spiraling even further into whatever abyss was waiting for him, not that he wasn't already dipping feet, legs, torso down it, and sabotage several aspects of the event that he had stopped drinking the bloody rum for in the first place, it made him want to throw a childish fit.

The whelp was gone, off to be a Jones impersonator, or whatever the hell...not here was the important take away...not present, not in the vicinity, not babbling about saving Elizabeth, not babbling about how many swords he had made, not whining about his idiot father, not trading his ship for anything...as far as he was concerned, Will Turner was currently non-existent, and thank fuck for that. There was only so much hero complex that he could take before he wanted to whack him with an oar again, and if that hadn't been satisfying, he didn't know what was.

...And that was as far as his celebration got before it came to a screeching halt, because apparently, it didn't matter whether Will Turner was here, there, in town, not in town, in the bloody ocean, she still didn't seem to want much to do with him, which was the paramount argument for why he should just say fuck expectations and drink the entire bottle of rum sitting in front of him.

Setting his face into a scowl fierce enough to ward off anyone with the unfortunate idea to speak to him at that moment, he willed his brain to think of something else besides her for the love of God.

His ship, his damn gorgeous ship that he was still captain of by some grace of the world, or eating, or the weather patterns that day or tomorrow or the next week, why prostitutes found it necessary to hang on him like he was wearing them as part of his uniform, if the Kraken was real then perhaps dragons were real too, imagine finding one of those...literally anything fucking else.

Why the color blue existed, why the color red existed, why the British Navy paraded around in those unfortunate outfits, why the bloody fuck men's wigs were ever invented, the time when Norrington accused him of having a wooden sword, the fact that he was considering getting a new coat, how much he truly hated his father, how much he truly wanted to tell his father that he hated him, every day for the rest of his life…

It was a damn inconvenience that when a person refuses to think about something specific, that thing insinuates itself into every single damn thought. What would his new coat look like on her? How would she look at the helm of the Pearl? Like a beautiful Pirate King, which she certainly was...why precisely he no longer gave a shit about prostitutes...would she like to go with him to find a dragon?

Sinking further into his chair, he groaned at the unfairness that was being shoveled onto him, couldn't drink rum, couldn't get angry over not drinking rum because he had made the choice not to drink it, couldn't get angry at anyone else over not drinking rum because then she would ask questions, his chances of trying to entice her to him had run out, so that tactic was dead and gone, yet she didn't seem to be trying very hard to entice him...the most he got out of her was her staring at him and the usual smile and sharp comment...not that he minded either of those, sharp comments from her brightened his day, but he would be a lying tar if he said he wouldn't prefer an entirely different noise coming out of her mouth…

Stop. Thinking. About. Her.

Not that saying it again was helping, but he would repeat it a million more times until his brain actually listened, instead of offering up images of how she would look under him as he moved above her, how her breathy moans would sound in his ear, how she would feel inside...and he really got into trouble when he wondered how much pleasure he could give her...Jesus Lord and the high heavens he was done for...cast about on the rocks like a sailor thrown from his ship during a raging hurricane...Hurricane Lizzie more like…

When had it started, exactly? When he had pulled her out of the ocean before laying her down on the dock, realizing a half a second later that she might as well be nude with how see-through her wet shift had been, or when she had gazed hard at him with a gun to her head and shackles behind her neck, as if daring him to kidnap her...damnable woman, beautiful, stubborn, smart, as smart as him if he were to admit it, curious, so damn curious about everything, usually using him as an information book…

"Jack, what does this part of the ship do?"

"Jack. what does this pirate code mean?"

"Jack, have you sailed here and what was it like?"

"Jack, what would happen if…"

"Jack, have you ever…"

Jack, Jack, Jack...it was getting to the point where just hearing his name in that curious voice of hers had him dropping whatever it was that he was doing to listen to her question...and he loved answering them, loved the way she listened to every single word he said like they were instructions to save the damn world…

...but she hadn't asked him the one question that he had made the mistake of convincing himself she would the moment the Flying Dutchman disappeared from sight…it wasn't even a question, more a statement, a demand, a proposition, an offering, a proposal of activity...

"Jack, please make love to me."

And it had taken on a hundred more variations than that, sometimes involving her bursting into his cabin stripping all of her clothes off before shouting at him to take her, sometimes he stumbled upon her touching herself and she begged him to help, once in awhile she would sneak up on him while he was quietly working on something or other and whisper in his ear that she was ready...but none of those scenarios seemed to quite fit…

Because they're fantasies, you blithering idiot…

But fantasies were all he was going to get, he told himself, his scowl deepening until he thought his face might sink into his head.

So drink the damn rum.

No, have to keep waiting. Maybe tomorrow…

Said that yesterday...but yesterday didn't count because he barely saw her…

...said it the day before too…

Drink the rum.

Can't, knowing fate it would be the moment he took a gulp that she decides…

Does it really matter if you're drunk?

Yes.

Why?

Because the damn woman had gotten so far under his skin that he gave up drinking so that he might be sober the first time he made love to her…

But that's never going to happen…

Yes, it bloody will...it has to...if it doesn't then he would cart himself off to the asylum because he had been hallucinating desire from another human being…

It's been three weeks…

He knew how long it's been...He'd counted...and hands don't develop an ache from doing that unless it has been far too vigorous for far too long…

Longer than three weeks…

A fact that was becoming more and more tangible with every second he sat pouting in the damn chair.

But that was far less dangerous than the other fact that had been doing a slow infiltration, a quiet and smooth take over of his emotions, thoughts, decisions, his heart too but he would be damned before he admitted that it had gone that far yet...it was much safer to stay on the side of lust…

Not that lust was any easier to ignore, as it was making itself so damn present that he was threatening to set the fucking chair on fire with how heated his skin was, like he had caught a fever...maybe he was sick, it would a good explanation for why him, Captain Jack Sparrow, had taken on the behavior...holy ever-loving Christ…

No. There was no bloody way that he was going to compare himself to William Turner, no damn way, he was not pining after Elizabeth the same way the whelp had, absolutely not.

Except that he was, picturing and pondering and imagining and wondering, a million different scenarios and 'I wonder what's'...what had the woman done to him? This went beyond infatuation, even though he would like very much to pretend that that's all it was, it would be a lie, no doubt, but a very nice and comfortable lie.

It went beyond anything he had the skill to deal with, beyond his natural ability to kick his feet up and salute whatever problem was bothering him with a 'I'll care tomorrow or maybe not because life is finite and caring about problems is a waste of time anyway'...he had an inkling that if he died...really died, she would even follow him to the afterlife if there was one to torment him in the grave. He was living the sensation of having beached himself on an entirely new uncharted spit of land where everything may or may not possess the ability to harm part of his person...or perhaps this was far too similar to Odysseus and the sirens...even though sirens and poisonous snakes weren't really that far apart considering they could both end up getting him killed…

...but the analogy wasn't even about poisonous snakes or sirens or anything besides the far more dangerous entity of a beautiful woman named Elizabeth Swann.

He was in love with her, so damn in love with her that he had given up rum for three weeks, allowed his every waking moment to be consumed by thoughts of her, felt positively giddy when around her, if he even smelled her presence he would grin to himself like a fool, in love with her, like it was a foreign language he was having a ridiculous amount of trouble learning. What was that about not admitting that she'd taken over his heart? Maybe he was more worried about admitting that he had already admitted it to himself.

...but...he had seen...glimpses...half-sights, 'blink and you'll miss it' moments, moments where he was tricked into believing that maybe her gaze contained a little darkness, a little more heat and fire than normal, or her stare lingered a little too long, and went a little more south than necessary…and it wasn't like he had just started experiencing these hallucinations, no, no, they had been dancing around him like a murder of crows flying around his head ever since that insanity-inducing voyage to Isla Cruces.

Then, he had been so sure that she had been casting glances, as if they could be called glances, more like she was trying to memorize his form to draw him later...glances at him from one end of the ship to the other, a few times he caught her smiling for absolutely no damn reason, smothering it as soon as she found him looking in her direction, and she had seemed to have a fascination with his hands…

But now, he was experiencing the rather terrifying sensation of wondering whether all the memories you thought were real are actually entirely fabricated and made up, because she wasn't...barely wasn't replicating or repeating any of the behavior she had teased him with on that voyage...although, he was so sure that he had caught her tracing her lips just a few days ago, but she was looking away before he could tell if she had been looking at him…

He distinctly remembered one night when he had decided...a spur of the moment thing really...to take a dip in the ocean while they were anchored for a little while...he hadn't even spared a glance at the right side of the ship when he had crossed the deck, shedding all of his clothing besides his breeches, but on his way back up, he swore that he saw something sprinting away, with a flash of blonde hair and a gasp like a little kid that had been caught with their hand in the cookie jar…

It had been Lizzie on deck, he knew it, and she had stayed there while he swam, the entire time...waiting for him to come back up...what she had planned to do, he had no idea, because she had fled before he even had enough evidence to convince himself it was her. But that didn't bloody matter to his body because it gave him a scenario...several scenarios to fantasize about for the rest of the week...Lizzie in the water against the Pearl, clutching a rope for dear life as he...Lizzie on the deck of the Pearl, Lizzie against the main mast, carrying Lizzie to his cabin, carrying her out of his cabin, in the crow's nest…

His hand probably still hated him.

Maybe even started hating him a long time ago, but that hadn't stopped it from twitching, drifting...sneaking over to the laces on his breeches like it had a mind of its own...evidently it could deal with its emotions far better than he could.

He wasn't going to touch himself.

...Why?

Wasn't helping.

For a little while it does.

Ten minutes. Maybe thirty.

Better than nothing.

Sometimes nothing is better than something if you can't have anything.

...What?

Nevermind, the point is...what was the point again? Certainly not how her mouth would feel around his…

He groaned again, both internally and externally, then did it once more to really express the...frustration was too tame of a word at this point...vexation, disgruntlement, grievance, but that sounded like someone had died...he just really hated everything at that moment.

Drink some rum.

No.

Then open your breeches.

Double no.

You're running out of reasons not to do either. Or is three weeks not a good enough indicator for you?

It didn't really matter because he was doomed to wait for however long it took, not like he had decided that, rather it had been decided for him, and if it really was to be that way, he needed to find that damn fountain sooner rather than later...the image of him grizzled and gray with sagging around his eyes and wrinkly old skin still lusting after the unattainable maiden Elizabeth Swann did not appeal to him.

Then drink. You'll be sober tomorrow again, and you can-

No, he would be drinking tomorrow again if he drank tonight...

So? You just said she isn't going to make any moves…

Then, 'maybe tonight' had him dragging his hands over his face, ignoring when one his rings caught him in the eye...maybe tonight...he had more of a chance of the fountain coming to him than he did of maybe tonight…

He was laughing at himself now, a pathetic chortle that was threatening to turn itself into a pained whining...because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't stop his brain from littering the stage of his thoughts with elaborate scenes of him doing various things to Lizzie, or her doing various things to him...or both at the same time…

No, no, no, this was not the path that...well, there it went again, and he sat back in the chair again like he had been deflated, defeated, the last blow of the battle dealt upon him, all he could do now was put up with it until it decided to stop torturing him. For now.

He had amalgamated an entire plethora of favorite...what did he call them? Fantasies? No, that implied they were never going to happen...he really wanted them to happen...wishes then?

How would her voice sound...quiet, a seductive whisper...would it get deeper? Raspy, like a swirl of smoke? She would whisper in his ear as he took her, or maybe not...maybe she would gasp and cry out and clutch at him...her nails in his back…

Her mouth would be wet, warm, she would be awkward at first, but he would show her...his hands in her hair, he would show her all of it...as long as he bloody stayed conscious for it, because having her mouth around him may very well kill him. Then he would put his mouth on her, taste her, learn every precious valley and peak of her body, while she thrashed and grabbed his head, completely lost to what he was doing to her…

...not that he wouldn't be lost too, just the thought of her beautiful face pulled taut into that moment of abandon as she came had his hand drifting again, towards the ties, wanting to undo them, this time having a reason straining uncomfortably against the cloth…stroking himself through them...that would be fine...that would do...what would her reaction be the first time she saw him...widened eyes…a look of wonder on her face?

Christ, he wasn't even sure he would be able to pay attention if the way his heart was trying to escape his chest currently was any indication of how her undressing him might go…

...her mouth gliding smoothly down his length, then back up, her saucy brown eyes staring up at him as if challenging him to appear unaffected...he wouldn't disappoint her there...he wanted her to see what she did to him, what she had been doing to him, nearly every night when he took refuge anywhere quiet when the wanting took too much control from him...

...her legs wrapping around his hips as he drove into her, her body cradled by his arms curled around her shoulders, one hand fisted into her hair, the warm wetness of her wrapped around him with every stroke…

Fuck.

Rum...breeches...breeches...rum...both...no, just one...breeches it is then…and he scrambled to undo them, cursing when his hands chose that moment to become half-functional, dragging against the ties with more creative curses, then finally they came loose, an almost embarrassing groan torn from his mouth when he wrapped his hand around his alarmingly hard cock, resigned to the climb, the ascent into madness that he was both powerless to resist and powerless to stop once he started it...maybe what scared him the most was the thrill of being powerless, lost to the complete unraveling of his mind, soul, all of them, body too...with the unraveler being Lizzie, but it wasn't like he needed to tell himself that again...it had always been her and would always be her, and he bloody well wished to heaven and earth, hell and damnation that it was her hand, her mouth, her sweet quim wrapped around him, because eventually his hand just wasn't going to do it anymore.

Seems just fine right now.

"Oh, Lizzie darlin'…"

And there is the only reason why...

Damnation seemed to be the only destination in his future, was probably already there but had just refused to admit it...refused to admit that he had admitted it...admitted nothing...would never...already did...a hundred, thousand times...every time he came with her name a shout from his lips he was admitting it...every time her golden hair and beautiful smile and musical laughter created chaos in his brain he was admitting it…

Then he did come with a fury that nearly destroyed the chair, her name a low growl of near anger instead of the usual shout...and as he sagged bonelessly, uncaring about whether or not he just fell to the floor in a heap, the thought danced and paraded around him yet again…

He was in love with Elizabeth bloody Swann and there wasn't shit in the world that he could do about it.

He didn't even want to try.

Liked it.

How fucking terrifying was that...