PotC fic: Keepsakes (Jack/OFCs, PG-13, 4/5) Title: Keepsakes Author:shyaway Rating: PG-13 Pairing: Jack/various OFCs Disclaimer: Pirates of the Caribbean and its characters belong to Disney. Summary: Five women reflect on what Jack Sparrow left behind, with laughter and regret, with gratitude and dislike...
Eve had made her first conquest of the night. She'd seen off Petronella to lay claim to the nervous young man. Actually, she thought, casting a professional eye over him, he was just a lad and had likely only recently discovered the joys of the flesh. Nevertheless she thought she had seen him in the Half Moon before and despite his nerves she was sure he knew what he wanted. Looking into his blue eyes and mustering her most beguiling expression, she introduced herself.
"I'm Adam," he replied.
Eve heard that one a lot. She carried on regardless. Entwining herself around him, she asked breathily, "What would you like me to do for you, Adam?"
He opened his mouth to tell her. His gaze slid past her shoulder.
"Scarlett!"
Eve turned to look. Scarlett had just entered the room, fresh from a client and rather dishevelled. She tugged at her bodice provocatively. Suddenly Adam was out of Eve's arms, across the room, and in Scarlett's clutches, and Scarlett was hustling him up the stairs.
For a moment Eve stared after them dumbfounded, unable to believe that it had happened again. Then she screeched, "That one was mine!" and hared after them. She dodged whores and patrons, banged her wrist against a table, nearly overturned a lamp, and was within five feet of the stairwell when someone seized her arm. She was pulled to a halt. It was Mother Whybourn, the bawd.
"Let them go," she ordered. "You don't want to scare off our customers, do you?" She pressed Eve down into the nearest empty chair and left her to rub her wrist. The clientele, far from looking scared, had been watching avidly, hoping for a catfight. Eve glared at them. One brave enough to approach her was sent packing with her words blistering his ears. After that she was left alone to brood on her ill luck that evening. She could almost believe that her namesake's curse had been visited upon her.
Eve was not her real name. Like most of the other harlots of the Half Moon ("Tortuga's finest!" insisted Mother Whybourn) she had given herself a new, more alluring name on entering the world's oldest profession. Hers was the name of the original temptress. The women who were her sisters and rivals likewise chose names redolent with seduction. Guinevere, like Arthur's beautiful, errant wife. Elinor, after the old King's mistress. Petronella "because it sounds fancy," she explained.
And then there was Scarlett. The Half Moon's star attraction. Her pseudonym played on both her colouring and her status as perhaps the most notorious scarlet whore in Tortuga. She could have used any name that took her fancy, any name at all, and it wouldn't have mattered: her customers, both the new and the returning, would still have clamoured, "We want the redhead!" And she did have a lot of repeat business. Most of the whores had their regulars. Scarlett, to Eve's mind, had more than her fair share. Some had been lured away from the other women. Others had always been Scarlett's. There were far too many in both categories. Eve's annoyance rose in her throat till she could have choked on it. I'm not jealous, she repeated to herself. I'm not jealous. I'm not –
There was a sudden commotion at the door. Eve looked up to see what causing all the bustle. She understood as soon as she ascertained the new arrival's identity. That man could never walk into a room unnoticed. "Well, speak of the devil," she breathed. Here was the perfect way to get back at Scarlett.
Jack Sparrow, for of course it was he, was along those who were tacitly understood to be Scarlett's. The other women knew that they were not to approach her property, no matter how many of their clients she appropriated for herself. One who had once borrowed one of Scarlett's regulars had paid for it with a black eye from the redhead and an upbraiding from the bawd, who could charge more for Scarlett's services than for any other. But if there were one man for whom the whores would have risked Scarlett's anger, it was Jack Sparrow. Captain Jack Sparrow, as he would have it. Eve wasn't sure what he was captain of, but it was a whim easily humoured. Scarlett was lucky to have a lover to easy to please.
Lover was probably not quite the right word. On first arriving, Sparrow had gone to Mother Whybourn and asked for Scarlett, and being told she wasn't available, agreed to wait. Just as Scarlett would have wished him to. But while he was seated with his companions, he was appraising the girls with serious intent. Eve, who had often had to listen to Scarlett bragging about her kohl-eyed pirate, decided that the other woman was really, really fooling herself.
It was an open secret that Scarlett fancied herself in love with him. All knew her most prized possession was a piece of coral he had given her, and there was a rumour – to Mother Whybourn's dismay – that she no longer exacted payment from him. Eve had observed Scarlett taking the coral out of her pocket and pressing it against her heart. She wondered just what it was that Scarlett saw in Jack Sparrow. Well, she amended to herself, it was obvious what the woman saw in him. He was the handsomest gallant ever to set foot in the Half Moon.
Apparently Guinevere thought so too. She was eyeing him, working up the resolve to brave Scarlett's displeasure. Eve leapt up to stake her claim.
" ... Avery, can you believe it?" Sparrow was saying to his companions while keeping a lecherous eye on Guinevere. "They even called it 'The Successful Pyrate'. Bollocks. No one had a thought to spare for Avery by the time he died. He –"
"In other words, why would anyone write about Captain Avery when they could be writing about Captain Sparrow?" interrupted the younger of the two men with him, laughing. Sparrow good-humouredly laughed too. He was prevented from responding by Eve seating herself next to him on the bench and announcing her presence by draping herself over him. He twisted around to look at her, and leered.
"Well," he said, snaking his arm around her waist, "look what I found."
Eve gave him her most winning smile, played with his shirt collar, ran her hand along his thigh. She glanced sidelong at Guinevere, who glowered back. Eve grinned all the wider. It was as easy as this, then, to steal Scarlett's glory.
Sparrow accepted her attentions with heartening enthusiasm, but he was in no hurry. He turned back to his friends and started harping about Henry Avery again. It seemed that someone in London had written a play about him detailing his exploits on Madagascar. Sparrow was evidently of the opinion that his own life story would make much better material.
He had been away from the Caribbean for a long time. No one knew for certain where he had spent those years. Eve learned from the ensuing conversation that he had been back to England ("I … made the acquaintance of the king's daughter") and to the South Seas ("rich pickings"), that he'd been to Madagascar ("not a patch on Tortuga") where he had been made king in Avery's stead, that he'd had a sojourn with the East India Company ("escaped right under the noses of seven of 'em, right after they gave me this," he said, showing Eve a brand on his right forearm. "They'll still be talking of it now") and there was mention of a place called Atlantis. Eve didn't know where that was. Nor did she care to find out. As much as Sparrow liked the sound of his own voice, she was getting tired of it, and Scarlett would be back any moment. Any other man she would have told to shut up and get on with it, but she couldn't risk losing her talkative prize.
"Come and tell me more upstairs," she urged him.
He was insultingly reluctant to be dragged away from his audience, and he carried on talking all the way up the stairs. By the time Eve got him to her room she was wondering how Scarlett put up with his narcissism.
---
So that was why Scarlett liked him.
Eve couldn't say she cared for him much more herself, though. He was watching her through slitted eyes and looking far too pleased with himself. That was supposed to be her job. At least he had stopped talking.
"As I was saying, we were a mile off the coast of Hispaniola, on the Black Pearl, and there were four Spanish schooners –"
"Oh, God," Eve said involuntarily. Why couldn't he just leave?
Sparrow broke off. His expression was unfriendly. Eve cringed, waiting for the blow, the last one had knocked out a tooth, Mother Whybourn always said to NEVER make them angry, but too often she snapped at them and they answered her with their fists –
He didn't hit her. Instead he got out of bed and started dressing. Relief made her belligerent. "I bet you haven't done half those things you said."
"You'd lose your bet, then, love," Sparrow said. He had his back to her. She had to admit that it was a very nice back, scars and all. "I've done at least three quarters of them."
"Why do you want to go pirating, anyway? There're better ways to make a living. You could at least stay on land – and not wear make-up," she added.
He gave her a gilded smile. "You're the one with white paint all over your face, darling. Ceruse, isn't it? Tastes terrible."
Eve scowled. She wished he would hurry up. He was taking ages; shrugging on his waistcoat, tying his headscarf, buckling on his belt and sword, donning his hat. Finally. She was glad when he threw a shilling onto the bed and left. Really, the man was insufferable. Scarlett was welcome to him.
---
Scarlett was furious when she found out. "You –" A torrent of abuse gushed out. "You – whore!" she finished, and slapped Eve across the face, twice. Eve was damned if she was going to take all the blame and pointed out that Jack had been perfectly amenable to being poached. Scarlett shrieked with rage. She boxed Eve's ears.
"What did you expect? No man ever went to a brothel to be faithful!"
"But – why couldn't he have waited –"
Eve just nursed her smarting face, feeling thoroughly aggrieved. She'd slept with Captain Jack Sparrow and all she'd got was a cauliflower ear from Scarlett.
The other woman's rage had subsided into resignation.
"You're going to forgive him, aren't you?" Eve said.
"I suppose so."
"He'll only do something else, you know."
"Probably," Scarlett agreed.
---
Jack had scarpered very happily, not wanting to spend a moment longer in that harpy's company. He didn't even wait for Gibbs and Michael; he met them later at the Faithful Bride. Also, he had a nagging feeling that it would be best not to run into Scarlett.
It might have been that thought that made him halt a few months later when, the next time he was in Tortuga, he found his feet carrying him in their usual haphazard unsteady way to the Half Moon. Or it might have been that he really didn't want to see that crosspatch Eve again. Whatever his main consideration was, he turned and went in the other direction to Mrs Carswell's establishment. Giselle would give him a warm welcome.