Night Swimming

“Well, what I didn’t make tonight singing, I think I made up for selling beer. Why did the entire population of Tortuga decide to start drinking beer instead of rum?”

“No idea, luv. I wouldn’t drink beer unless there wasn’t rum.”

“You’re an exception. Come to think of it, you’re an exception to pretty much everything. And you’re not going to try to drown me again, are you?”

“There’ll never be a better night for it, luv. Full moon, spring tide, crew off doing whatever they’re doing. Besides, you’ll never get better if you don’t practice. And you haven’t discovered that swimming is fun, yet.”

“It isn’t fun, yet. It’s work, and it’s bloody hard work. And I’m still not convinced you’re not trying to drown me.”

“It doesn’t have to be work. It can be fun if you let it.” Damn it, there’s that grin again. It could be fun, at that…

“All right, Jack. But if we go tonight, I’m not going tomorrow. I’m behind on my sleep already.”

Twenty minutes later, they were in the water under the pier again. Anna was paddling around, keeping her head above water, and Jack was floating lazily on his back, in and out of the bars of moonlight coming through the cracks in the pier.

“This isn’t half bad, is it?”

“No, it isn’t. It’s nice, actually.” Anna stopped paddling and rolled over on her back, floating. The water was cool, and the moonlight striped her skin with silver. She thought she might be beginning to understand why Jack loved the ocean. The water held her in a comforting sort of embrace, whispering against the pier and against the Pearl’s side. Anna felt almost as if time had stopped, and the world had shrunk to a sphere of water and moonlight, holding her suspended in the middle of it. The water moved past her body, over her skin, through her hair and away, like hands running over her. Her mind drifted off from her body, and her eyes drifted shut without her realizing it.

Jack had been watching her, making sure she didn’t get caught in a current or hung up in the pilings or some such thing, and he saw her close her eyes and give herself up to the water. He had suspected that if she got used to being submerged in water, she would like it. Right again, Jack, he thought. Not that many people in Tortuga ever willingly submerged themselves in water in the first place. Unless they got caught in the rain, people tended to bathe in stages, from ewers and basins, or rain barrels. Willingly getting wet all over, and doing it without clothes, was something only children did. Then again, Anna had never had much of a childhood, and from the look on her face, she would be down here every night if she could. Introducing Anna to the ocean was like introducing young Turner to piracy. She was completely taken with it, and from the look of her, she was several oceans away just now. The moonlight silvered her wet skin, and her hair drifted around her like ink in the darkness. She could have passed for a mermaid, at least from the hips up.

Jack let himself drift over beside her, and slipped an arm under her knees and one under her shoulders, lifting her from the water and letting her hair drape over his arm. She squeaked in surprise and clung to him, and he smiled.

“You weren’t falling asleep, were you, luv?”

“Not really. Just elsewhere. There’s something about the moonlight and the water, and being alone down here.”

“It’s amazing, isn’t it? If all I had was the Pearl, the ocean, moonlight and rum, I could be happy.”

“What, no treasure?”

“There’s treasure and treasure, luv. Money’s one thing, but this is different. This is freedom.” Anna looked up at him, hearing the tone of his voice change. Jack looked as if he were several oceans away himself, and made of moonlight and darkness and a wild desire to be part of the ocean again. For no reason other than the fact that he was there, Anna snaked an arm up to the back of his head and hauled him down to her and kissed him. That startled him, and he dropped her, and she fell back into the water with a splash that got water six feet up in the air.

“Ow! All right, if you were trying to teach me not to take you by surprise, I’ve learned it.”

“No, I didn’t mean to do that. You distracted me, is all.” Jack reached down to her, and she took his hand and was hauled back to her feet. “No permanent damage, is there?”

“Only to my pride. Bruises go away eventually. I think I landed on a rock, down there.”

“Well, since that’s what sand is, you’re right.” Anna sighed.

“Jack, how’d you like to drown?”

“Thanks all the same, luv. I can think of things I’d rather be doing. ” He swept her off her feet again, and since he was paying attention this time, he managed to kiss her without dropping her. She held onto his shoulders and kissed him back, and therefore missed the fact that he was walking deeper into the water until her hair started to float out around her.

“Jack, what—“

“Trust me, luv. I won’t let you drown now either.” He didn’t, even though she eventually wound up with her legs wrapped around his waist, and his hands flat against her shoulderblades, supporting some of her weight. Making love underwater changed all sorts of things; different angles and pressures and motions, and when they both found release at the same time, it knocked Jack off his feet and Anna wound up keeping him from drowning instead. They floated together under the pier, not saying anything, listening to the water lapping against the Pearl.

Anna finally started to feel waterlogged. She managed to get Jack’s attention, and the two of them waded back up to their clothes and got dressed, and Anna wrung out her hair and tied it up in a knot. The salt water in it felt funny, and she wanted to wash it out. There was enough water in the rain barrel up at the house, she thought, and…she felt Jack’s eyes boring holes in her back, again.

“Yes, what?”

“Just admiring the view. There’s something about a woman playing with her hair…”

“Oh, I haven’t even started yet. The whole mess needs a wash when I get back. I just don’t want my shirt soaked before I get there.”

“You’re no fun at all, you know.”

“No, I’m not. I’m tired, and I’m waterlogged, and my hair’s full of salt, and if you’re going to come watch me wash it, start putting one foot in front of the other.”

“Well, if you’re going to be that way about it…can I help?”

Oh, right, I forgot about the hair fetish. “All right. Just as long as it gets washed and I get to sleep before sunrise.”

It was a close thing, but they did get to sleep before sunrise. With Jack alternately helping and hindering things, Anna got her hair washed, combed it out, and settled in her armchair, draping her hair over the chair back to dry. She did that every time she washed her hair, because it was cold when it was wet, and she hated having cold, wet hair sticking to her back. She was tired enough that night to sleep in the armchair, and did that, completely unaware that Jack hadn’t left again.

Jack, for his part, had made use of the bed. He was tired too, but the bed felt odd without Anna in it. He had never slept in her bed alone. To distract himself, he thought back to when they had been floating around under the pier. His mind had been drifting, and he had suddenly realized that the Pearl approved of Anna. Sometimes in the dead of night, in the middle of the ocean, Jack would get a sense of what his ship was feeling, but he had never felt anything from her in port. He thought she probably spent her time tied up to the pier catching up on her sleep. Apparently she had thought this was important enough to wake up for, and he ought to pay attention…after he got some sleep himself.

When Anna woke up again, she had a crick in her neck, and some of her hair had snuck back into the chair with her. At least it was dry, although it desperately needed brushing. She hauled herself out of the chair and walked into the bedroom for her hairbrush, and stopped dead in the doorway.

Jack was lying on his back in her bed, where she had more or less expected to find him. What she hadn’t expected was the fact that since he’d had the bed to himself, he’d worked himself around until he was completely sideways, with his head hanging upside down over the near side of the bed and his feet hanging off the far side. She had no idea how he’d managed that, and even less idea how he managed to stay asleep with his head upside down like that. “I guess it’s like everything else. If he’s going to do something, he’s not going to do it halfway.” She was tempted to wake him up and watch him figure out why the world had turned upside down, but she decided against it and left him alone. She took her hairbrush and her hand mirror out into the front room and sat down at the table to restore some order to her hair.

About halfway through the process, she heard a thud in the bedroom, and Jack appeared a minute later.

“Morning. Was that you falling on your head?”

“Yes, damn it. Lovely way to start a morning, too.”

“Well, at least up until that point, you must’ve been sleeping pretty well.”

“I was, come to think of it.” He took the hairbrush out of her hand and started brushing where she’d left off. “Pity you don’t have anything to braid into it, luv.”

“With this much hair? That’d look ridiculous.”

“ Oh, I don’t know.” Jack laid the brush down and started braiding. “If I did it right, it wouldn’t be that bad.” Bt the time he was done, there was one thin braid starting behind each ear and the rest of her hair was loose. “Now if you had something to braid into those…”

“The problem is, the rest of it’s still in my way.” She unbraided it all again and put it up the way she usually had it, in a single braid coiled around the back of her head.

“You’re no fun at all, you know.”

“Well, yes, but you keep coming back anyway.”

“Can’t help it, luv. The Pearl would probably bring me back here even if I didn’t steer her.”

“She knows you.” Anna got up from the chair and headed for the front door. “And I know your crew, and if I don’t get to the tavern now, I don’t open tonight, and if I don’t open tonight, they’ll take somebody else’s place apart. So unless you want to come help me, go amuse yourself elsewhere until tonight.”

“And how are we going to amuse ourselves tonight, then?”

“I want to go swimming again.”
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A/N: To my reviewers: Thank you!

This will have an ending as soon as I think of one. I cut it off here because it was getting out of hand.