Will liked Elizabeth's family... up to a point. He got along with her father almost perfectly, in fact. He had made it into batty Aunt Ethel's good graces by some stroke of fortune, and if he hadn't been as fortunate in dealing with Grandmother Mary, Grandfather Henry liked him quite well. The various cousins whispered gleefully with Elizabeth over her fine taste in men....

And there Will hit that point.

Cousin Nathaniel probably had no idea he'd been overheard in commenting on Will's strong jawline and "delightful" build. And the thin little man would have died of shame if he'd known that his ambition to "just toss the lad down and have my way with him" had reached Will Turner's ears.

Would have died of shame, and Will had whirled, quite ready to kill him with it.

He'd said some things that made Nathaniel blush to his Alpine cheekbones and Nathaniel had countered with icy rebuttals that never quite became denials.

There might've been a bit of swordplay. Well, actually rather a lot of swordplay. The details were sort of hazy, but somehow or another Cousin Nathaniel had finished pinned to the wall by his dress coat, which was in turn pinned to the wall by Will's sword.

And Elizabeth was angry at him? Her own cousin—her own male cousin!—had been discussing with her exactly what he planned to do to her fiancé! It was just... Will's mind passed over most of the adjectives it knew and settled somewhere between "disquieting" and "terrifying." And no doubt the fight had been some kind of twisted aphrodisiac to that man.

It wasn't often that Will found himself so agitated that he couldn't sort through his thoughts, but for those few times he'd found that the sea provided the best solace, and not four months ago he'd realized that he had enough money to buy a small boat of his own. On the blue-glass waves, every thought seemed clearer and every moment longer. Few nattering voices followed him; even if he strained his ears to the edge of his hearing, the closest sound was usually the faint, swooping melody of a chantey from a boat almost a furlong away.

After that encounter with Cousin Nathaniel, the least Will thought he deserved was a bit of time alone.

Unfortunately, though, he was well out to sea before he realized that he wasn't really alone at all. Under a cloth, curled into a sleepy ball amid spare rope and canvas, was an all-too-familiar individual, who clutched a rolled sail as though it were a lover.

Will wondered that he hadn't heard the snoring earlier.

"Why are you on my boat, Jack Sparrow?" he demanded, quelling the urge to give the man a sharp kick.

The pirate jerked awake and assessed the situation, giving the sail a pat as though it still slumbered. "Tell me that again, love?" he said, replacing his hat on his head and rubbing bleary eyes.

"What are you doing on my boat?"

At this, Jack gave him a quizzical look. "Didn't know it was yours, lad. What are you doing with a boat, Blacksmith Bill?"

In the process of relating how he came to have a boat, and why he came to be on it, the entire mess with Cousin Nathaniel somehow thrust itself into the tale and shoved all more pressing matters (such as why Jack wasn't on his own ship) out to make room.

When Will had concluded his story, Jack tapped his fingers together and leaned back against a coil of rope. "Sounds as though dear Cousin Nathaniel is guilty of Being an Aristocrat—which is not to be mistaken for the similar crime of Being a Sailor, you understand."

"But you're a sailor," Will said, then wished he hadn't. There were very few directions that this conversation could go from that point, and he didn't like a single one of them.

Jack, being Jack, had to follow the very worst one. "And wedded to the sea off the coast of Bristol. But even married men need to dally now and then, and face it, lad—there's not much to dally with on the sea. Without your father I'd have gone mad... er... earlier."

He never expected to be hauled up by his coat and thrown into the sea.

"That's a lie!" Will shouted.

Jack only rolled his eyes and retrieved his hat, throwing it aboard Will's boat. "I don't see how the situation merited that," he muttered, then set about getting his effects onto the boat before clambering back in himself.

"Whatever else my father was—even a pirate—he was not... not that!" sputtered the blacksmith, trying desperately to tack and in quite the wrong era to do so successfully.

"Look, love." The reasonable tone made Will cease his efforts. "It's a matter of can or can't again, and while you can deny what I say this time, you can't go 'round denying everything that doesn't fit in with your rather dim concept of the world."

All air fled his lungs. Will took a deep breath as he sunk to the floor in the bow of his boat. "My own father. And... and you."

Jack grinned. "Don't say you've never fancied Captain Jack Sparrow."

"Never."

"Not once?" It was hard to say whether Jack was more insulted or disappointed, but Will clung desperately to a hope that it was insulted.

"I have never fancied you."

It was at this point that Jack lunged fit to rock the boat.

He got thrown into the sea again for his trouble. As the wind shifted and Will managed to adjust his sails properly to meander back toward shore, he once more crawled back onboard.

"I can't believe you fancied me! I was trapped on a ship with you for almost a week!" He rubbed his mouth as if trying to wipe away the memory of the kiss.

Jack tossed his coat onto the floor with a satisfying, soggy splat. "You're your father's son, you know," he said as he undid the straps on his boots to empty them out. "He also threw me overboard the first time."

If Will hadn't had a rope in his hands, the pirate would have gone once more to meet his wife. "There will be no second time."

"Would you wager on that?"

And there was a second time. And a third. And if Jack had the human decency to clean his clothes even once a year there might have been a fourth, but as it was Will whispered, "I'll put this rope around your neck and hang you from the mast."

But as Port Royal came into view, he realized that all animosity toward Cousin Nathaniel had completely evaporated.


--------------------------


To the reader, who might well be distressed by such narrative gaps... Jack had a perfectly logical explanation for napping on Will's boat, and this was that Anamaria and Gibbs were currently trying to con the Navy into believing that the Black Pearl was now a legitimate merchant ship, bought by them from the previous owner (but he looked to be a real thieving bastard and might have stolen it). Naturally, in order to be convincing, the thieving bastard in question could not have been present and was quickly decamped.

This effort was not even a partial success. However, Jack managed a quick recapture the next morning, and Commodore Norrington, much-peeved, took out his frustration on Elizabeth's Cousin Nathaniel.

Take that how you will.