Sinope's Fiction: Rum and Angels

Title: Rum and Angels
Author: Sinope at (no spam!) gmail dot com
Rating: R
Pairing: Jack/Bill, Jack/Will, Elizabeth/Will
Summary: Water-deprived visions, True Love, scratchy sand, and lots of rum.
Disclaimer: This is an unofficial fan work. No profit was made; no ownership is implied.

The thing about being trapped on a desert island with nothing but rum to drink is that, when you wake up on the first morning with a hangover like rabid seagulls trying to escape from your skull, the only thing to do is get so drunk again that you don't feel it until the next morning, when you're glad that you passed out conveniently next to the rum bottles because you're not capable of opening your eyes to look for them.

The third morning, though: the third morning you reach for the pistol that you carefully tucked under a brittle, tawny scrub-bush, and you think about how much more pleasant one little bullet would feel compared to this, and you remember that rum runners may not be here for weeks, and your finger has already started to press the slim trigger when you notice that there's an angel standing in front of you.

You realize, of course, that there's no way that an angel could be standing in front of you, given that angels generally don't moonlight as rum runners, and the only reason that you don't tell the non-angel to fuck off so you can shoot yourself is that he looks remarkably like Bill Turner, which, as Bootstrap Bill is no rum runner and certainly no angel, intrigues you slightly more than the prospect of making your hangover go away permanently.

Given that even the rough swishing of the waves sounds like cannon-shot roaring through your brain, then, it comes as a pleasant surprise when the non-angel opens his mouth but doesn't actually say anything audible, and it comes as an even more pleasant surprise when he kneels beside you to take the pistol out of your hand and the rather excruciatingly white light doesn't emanate quite so brightly, and you can see that angels, it seems, prefer to visit people in the nude, which in the case of pretty Bootstrap Bill is certainly a pleasant choice.

Speaking of positive choices, in fact, it seems that not pulling that trigger was one of them, given that footsteps are sounding behind you and footsteps mean rum runners and rum runners mean a way off this damn island and if Captain Jack Sparrow knows anything, it's how to bluff his way onto that ship and into his revenge, and the footsteps have almost found you when the angel who is not Bill Turner smiles, hands you back your pistol, tosses you his compass and a bag which you will later discover is full of gold, and promptly disappears.

All of this is why, eight years later, you're lying on that beach next to a beautiful woman who is thoroughly drunk and coming onto you, and given that you're equally drunk you start to forget that you don't swing that way, that she can't swordfight until you're both glistening sweaty and panting, that she won't push you onto the deck of your commandeered ship and kiss you so long and hard you feel splinters in the back of your neck, and that she wouldn't taste like iron and sweat and salt and molasses and painfully desperate need.

So you're lying on this beach, and the sand is crinkled and itchy as it sticks to your skin, but this lady prancing about in her undergarments is still a lady and not a whore and not Will, someone who deserves soft pillows and bedwarmers and anything but hard sand, but given that you're about to die you might as well get one last fuck, and that's your last thought before you take another swig of rum and pass out to dreams of angels and black sails and undressing Will against the wall of a smithy rippling with heat.

When you wake up, though, there are no angels and no naked men and not even a bloody ship, nothing but the smoke of all your blessed rum evaporating into the painfully blue sky, and just as you're wondering once and for all how Will could love such a bloody bitch, you understand what she's doing because, most irritatingly, it makes sense, and there will be no angel for you this time and no way to retell the story to your own advantage: this is True Love between two slightly crazy but generally sensible children, and there's not much you can do in the face of such optimistic, heroic, improbably brilliant, and overwhelmingly frustrating Romance.

Instead, you sprawl out on the sand and stare up at the billowing gray-on-blue, and in the middle of your still-slightly-drunk self-pity, a grin suddenly splits your face as you begin to hum, We're beggars and blighters and ne'er do-well cads, drink up me 'earties, yo ho. . ., and somewhere you know that Bootstrap Bill is dancing with some handsome merman and laughing.

finis.