A man just isn't himself when he's gotten drunk, declared his total indifference to his girl, and walked off her balcony.

As morning approached, and with it sobriety, Will Turner reflected that he only regretted the bit with the balcony. That had led to his current predicament.

At least the tree had broken his fall.

He dangled by the seat of his pants, literally—a spiky branch had caught in his trousers and miraculously held him suspended thirty feet from certain death. Of course, he'd lost all feeling in his nether regions half an hour ago.

Adding steadily to his predicaments, a pair of officers had come by earlier in the morning. Mostly they'd been there to jeer, but they'd also charged Will with malicious lingering and were even now trying to find a ladder tall enough to reach the hanging young man.

Luck, however, was with him—as a blacksmith, he was on good terms with the carpenters of Port Royal and knew for a fact that there was no thirty-foot ladder to be found.

Or perhaps luck wasn't with him at all. The primary problem remained: how would he get down before he really became a eunuch?

The solution was rattling the branches below him. Will dared a look down and saw a tricorn hat ascending just ahead of a mass of hair.

Jack Sparrow winced as he came level with Will's trousers. "Ouch," he murmured, and sliced the branch that had been Will's deliverance from certain death.

If it hadn't been for the haycart cunningly placed below the tree, certain death would have taken her revenge for the near miss. As it stood, though, Will lay gasping on the straw with his crotch afire.

+ + + + +

"So you left your bonny lass." Jack had insisted on hearing the whole story as soon as he'd driven the haycart to the nearest hostel, wanting to know everything from the drink to the tree to the officers, and even to the rescue (although that had been largely his part).

"I left her." Will winced as Jack began massaging his genitals. "Must you do that?"

"Are you a eunuch?" Will shook his head as a new wave of pain filled him. "Would you like to be one?"

And there was only one logical answer to that.

"You're in trouble with the law. 'Malicious lingering'?"

"Well—ouch!—I think Governor Swann was rather... agh!"

"Unhappy?" Jack tried, rubbing harder. Will closed his eyes and tried to bear the pain. The awkwardness of the situation couldn't even make it past the pain.

"Yes—unhappy. Oh, God, that hurts!"

"Water, now. Get in the tub." Jack patted him on the back as Will looked from pirate to bathtub.

The blacksmith stood, trying very hard not to whimper as he stripped. He didn't want to look down—he was afraid of what he might see.

"Why were you conveniently on the road with a haycart, Jack?" Will asked, slipping into the lukewarm water. It actually felt better.

Jack stroked his mustache and beard, trying to look clinical as he surveyed the boy's private parts. He would live—yes, indeed, and from the looks of things, he would be fine. "Port Royal is the wrong place to be Captain Jack Sparrow, love. So I'm trying to be inconspicuous."

Will looked glum. "It's looking to be a bad place to be Will Turner, too. I may have to get my own haycart."

With a sage nod, Jack muttered, "Aye. Or a ship—they're known to be a bit faster than haycarts." He rolled up his sleeves and advanced on Will.

"Just—take your rings off—they catch the skin."

The pain had gone. In its place was something else, something deeper and wilder but equally able to stretch Will's mouth into a moan.

"It'll stop hurting soon," Jack said comfortingly, but Will gripped his shoulder and his powerful blacksmith's arms hauled the pirate's face close to his.

"It has stopped hurting."

One very surprised pirate, with a handful of very aroused blacksmith, was pulled into a kiss full of teeth.

+ + + + +

On the whole, Jack reflected as he curled his fingers in Will's wet hair, life would be happier for everyone if Will got into a spot of trouble more often.



__________


The Challenge: As per darkeyedwolf's request, this fic features Will in trouble, Jack coming to his rescue, snogging between the aforementioned parties, and an absence of Elizabeth. As per her suggestion, it also contains the line "I left her."