It's My Life

Anna woke up the next morning with something like an entire military procession, complete with snare drums and horses, tromping around inside her skull. “Oh, ye gods, I knew there was a reason I don’t drink that stuff…now what was the reason I did?” She rolled over, carefully because of the pain in her head and the strange half-painful itch in her back, and saw Jack sleeping beside her.

“Oh, right. Reason not to get out of bed in the morning.” She wondered briefly which was the better reason not to get out of bed; Jack, or the hangover. “Jack, of course. The hangover’s not nearly as nice to look at.” She didn’t get the chance to watch him sleep very often. He was usually awake first, and if he wasn’t, he always seemed to know she was watching him and that would wake him up. This time she got away with it for all of three or four minutes before he was looking blearily at her.

“Morning, luv. Head ache?”

“Like hell, thank you.”

“There’s a cure for that.”

“If it involves moving, it’s right out.” Jack grinned and rolled over, half pinning her to the bed, and kissed her. She had developed quite a taste for him over the past years, literally and figuratively, and he knew exactly how to play on that. The fact that she knew he was doing it didn’t change her reaction to him.

“Well, it does, but you’ll like it.”

“Oh, like that, is it? Well then.” She kissed him back. “Have at it.”

“Dangerous, luv. You shouldn’t tell a pirate that sort of thing.”

“I think I’ll live.” She grinned back at him. “Unless you aren’t, as they say, up for it.” Jack groaned at the pun, and let her feel exactly how up for it he was.

“Nothing wrong with me, luv.“

“What are you waiting for, then?” That was the last coherent thing either of them said for quite a while afterward. It was extremely hard to be coherent when Jack had her body on his mind, and even worse when she found herself at his mercy and he knew it. He might be a pirate, but that also meant he was an opportunist, and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, sometimes it was quite nice…like right now, when he took advantage of the fact that she had stopped paying attention to where her hands were, and had brought them down between their bodies and made her bring herself almost to the edge of her climax before he finally slid in himself and undid her completely…

Considerably later, Anna had forgotten her headache, her healing tattoo, the tavern’s business, and everything else but the blood thundering in her ears. Jack’s head was somewhere around her hip level, and grinning like a fiend.

“Still alive?”

“If I’m not, I don’t want to be.”

“You liked that, did you?”

“You have to ask, after however many years?”

“Got me there, luv. I just wanted to hear it.”

“All right, yes then. Jack?”

“Mmmm?”

“You wouldn’t marry me, would you.” It was a statement, rather than a question. Jack sat up and looked at Anna, bewildered.

“Well, I hadn’t thought about it. Do you want to be married, or do you want to be married to me?”

“I want to be married. You’re the only one who would have me. So…”

“So. You wouldn’t want to come to sea, though. Would you?”

“Ye gods, no. I’m not a sailor, and I know it. But marrying you would at least give me something to look forward to.”

“You lost me there, luv. In English?”

“These days when you come to Tortuga, I never know whether you’re going to show up here or not, and I never know whether or not you’ll have decided there are better things than me to occupy yourself with. If we were married, I’d at least have a reasonable suspicion you’d show up here once a trip. I could handle being lonely if I thought it was going to end eventually. If I can’t have freedom, I can at least have hope. And you’d have a place to come back to, if you want one.”

“What you mean is, we’d make the current arrangement formal, is that it?”

“I know better than to tie you down, Jack. You wouldn’t like it if I came with you; I’m not a pirate. I’m a singer. And you know there’s no way you’d give up the Pearl. So what I’m asking you is, will you give me a life? Not your life, a life. Something to get me up in the morning tomorrow, and the day after that.”

“I get to sail off, and you get to stay here and hope. Doesn’t sound entirely fair to me.”

“Life’s not fair, Jack. I’ve known that forever. I just want it to be a little less unfair.”

“What would you do if life was fair?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Indulge myself. Live in a place I don’t work in. Remember how to sing just because I want to. Learn to swim; that always looked like fun. Things like that.”

“Those are little things. Is that all you want, really?” She’d never mentioned getting married, he noticed.

“For now, yes. I’m sure I’ll think of other things, but those are what I want now.”

“Well, some of them are easy. How’d you like to learn to swim today?”

“Today?” She rolled over to stare at him, and her back reminded her about the tattoo. “Ow. Not today. How long does it take a tattoo to heal, anyway?"

“Oh, about a week and a half or so. All right, no swimming today, then. What about finding you another place to live instead?”

“Well, maybe. Know any good ones? And by good ones, I don’t mean third-floor rooms over a tavern and down the street from another tavern.“

“What fun is that?” Anna glared at him and reached behind her for a pillow to hit him with. “Relax, luv, I’m teasing you.”

“Well, stop that. I’m hungry, so I’m getting up. You?”

“Starving. Shall we?”

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A/N: Thank you again to C.J. Davis and KiLLeRqUeEn329 for the reviews! I just wish I knew where this story was going. I'll take suggestions if anyone has any.