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Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: R
Pairing: Will/Elizabeth, Jack/Will, Jack/Will/Elizabeth, James/Jacques.
Feedback: Good lines, bad ones, etc.
Disclaimer: Does not belong to me.
Notes: Ripping off every movie ever seen by the author that involved something going on beneath the U. S.-Mexican border. Modern-day AU. Jacques is a kind of fandom-owned original character that looks like Brad Pitt. José Gaspar was a real person; here he looks like Antonio Banderas just because the author said so.
Summary: When things go screwy, they go screwy with a vengeance.
***
“Well, he’ll have to. No, no, we can’t—hang on. The church bells are going off again.” James barely stifled a sigh at the tolling nuisances. It wasn’t as if London didn’t have Big Ben and its city-street bustle to interfere with life-or-death cellphone conversations, but after a while that was relatively easy to tune out. Mexican churches, on the other hand, seemed to be secret sonic weapons that were impossible to ignore. As if eight-year-olds weren’t hawking fake Rolexes on every streetcorner; the damn things only told the time for two hours, but that generally was long enough for most.
At least at this time of the night, the bells were short. Before the last echo had died off, James was off again. A few quick checks had conclusively told him that José could be nowhere else but wherever that black car had taken him, which proved James’ guess. Normally that would have been a wonderful ‘Ah-ha!’ moment, but right now it was just frustrating. It didn’t matter a whit that he was right if the world was about to blow up, and perhaps that wasn’t a very British attitude, but then, he was currently playing the expatriate part. Expatriates were allowed to deviate from the standard set of eccentricities.
“Are you still there?” he said. “Oh, good. Listen, I need a specials team, probably with at least three…what do you mean, there’s none available? I have a very high-placed contact that I have to retrieve.”
The other end babbled something about Culiacan and a big showdown, and anyway, Cancún was only a city-sized tourist trap, so wasn’t James overreacting just a little?
“I am stationed here, and he is primary contact for the entire region,” James icily replied. He turned a corner, stepped over the drunk lying across it and headed towards his car. Damn tourists meant he had to park hundreds of yards away, but the urban sprawl meant he couldn’t simply do without a car. And the public transportation here mostly consisted of cute donkeys with which stupid out-of-towners would pay ten dollars to have their pictures taken, so that was out. “That makes him my contact, and I insist on retrieving him.”
The other end insinuated something about well, then, there was James’ duty all laid out for him and would he please try to remember that he was on vacation, not gone renegade?
“Obviously not, considering what I’m forcing myself to listen to.” Snapping shut the cell satisfied James’ irritation for the two seconds it took for him to get into the car. Then James sat and stared at the steering wheel. He was tempted to punch it, but that would result in a loud honking and he didn’t feel quite that dramatic.
On the one hand, he needed to get José back, and not merely because without the man, James would be terribly lost in regards to the ins and outs of the Mexican underworld—José had an impressive network of fail-safes and blackmail stashes to be tripped and released if he died before sixty, and among them was evidence of a certain youthful indiscretion from James’ Oxford days. On the other hand, he didn’t particularly want to make whatever struggle for power that was going on into his own war.
It took a minute to persuade himself into doing what he’d realized he would have to do within the first second. James sighed and threw his car into gear. Then he promptly slammed it into reverse, wincing at how the gears ground.
The kid that’d magically appeared behind James’ car didn’t even bat an eye. He sauntered around to the driver’s window and stuck in a package of cigarettes.
“I don’t smoke,” James said. Even back here, the streets were so thick with people that he couldn’t go fast enough to lose the boy.
Who swapped cigarettes for gum and prostitute calling-cards.
James resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Thank you, but I don’t need either of those. I’m not in the market.”
The boy shrugged. “You sure, mister? No secrets here. You need, I can help.”
Eight years old, James reminded himself. He probably didn’t have a complete grasp of how much of a wanker he sounded like. “I don’t need that. I need to find someone.”
Eyes lighting up, the boy held out his hand to make the universal gesture of rubbing fingers. This part of Mexico really had gone down the drain since the last time James had been here; the boy should have waited at least till James had outlined his request. But time was precious, so James forked over two ones. “José Gaspar. Someone just snatched him—”
“It’s all over town,” the boy said, dismissively waving his hand. He produced a lollipop and unwrapped it, then stuck it in his mouth. “Somebody like him, it’s going to take a lot to find out who’d have the cojones.”
“Oh, for…you know what, this isn’t that amusing.” Neither was putting up with this damned mob, so James parked the car again and got out. He popped the trunk and spent a few minutes deciding which nondescript black duffel bag to take with him.
Probably the one with the explosives kit. He didn’t think he’d have the time to use something more subtle like a wiretap or a laptop with the latest covert surveillance software installed on it. James slung the bag over his shoulder and closed the trunk, then stared at his keychain remote till he remembered which button set off the auto-self-destruct and which one was for the door locks.
“Hey, mister! Where are you going? We just got started!” the boy hurriedly called, running after him. The pattering of little sneakers attracted quite a few cooing tourists, which quickly peeled away the boy since they were about a thousand times more likely to open their wallets than James was.
Well, so much for the traditional way of tapping the grapevine. James ran down his checklist while he hiked towards the edge of the town’s center. Priests didn’t seem to take their vow of secrecy too seriously here…but that was an awful lot of alcohol that James would have to justify to Accounting later. He supposed he could go and try to pick up a woman in a bar, but that had a good chance of entangling him in the wrong mess. There was—no, that only worked if he was in Russia.
On second thought, he was going about this in entirely the wrong way. José was missing and Jack Sparrow had come out of hiding after nearly a year, and the two events had to be connected. Therefore, if James found the one, he’d be much more likely to find the other. Which considerably simplified matters.
James went into the next liquor store he saw and bought their most expensive bottle of rum. With it under his arm, he let his feet aimlessly wander while he counted to one hundred. Then he stopped, unscrewed the top of the bottle, and started to pour the stuff into the gutter.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, mate?” someone shouted from a nearby window. They sounded terribly outraged.
“Never believed Dampier, but I suppose he was right about that. Just like a charm,” James muttered. Still pouring out the rum, he slowly spun around till he spotted a gun aimed at him. “Ah. Sparrow.”
* * *
As reunions went, Anamaria had seen worse. This one was pretty free of kneecapping and other forms of mutilation.
Will had walked up to the door, taken a deep breath and set his shoulders. He’d looked like a man that was about to confront something deeply unpleasant, but who was going to be calm and polite and sensible about it.
Then the door had opened and a half-dressed Jacques had leaned out. “I heard something…?”
Even then, Will had kept his temper. He’d been keeping his temper so well that the deeply appreciative look Jacques had given him had completely flown over his head. “Hi. I’m guessing you’re the blond. Where’s Jack?”
“Will!” Jack had pushed Jacques aside, beaming. “Bit on the late side, but I can forgive you that long as you’ve not scratched her.”
And that’d been when it’d started to go badly. Anamaria had seen it coming and had been sure to step back, but not so far that she didn’t have a good view.
Jacques leaned against the doorframe as he finished buttoning up his shirt. “Good swing.”
“You’re French,” Elizabeth chimed in. She’d taken a good look at him, but surprisingly enough, hadn’t seem to think much of the man. Her eyes were busy tracking Will and, to a lesser extent, Jack.
“Girl’s got a better one,” Anamaria said to Jacques. Which Anamaria wasn’t about to forget, but on the way over she’d decided she might be able to forgive a girl who could rattle on about hollowpoints like anyone else would lipstick shades. “Jack, watch the table. I like that one.”
Elizabeth put a finger to her lips and chewed on it. She tilted her head. “So what happened, exactly? Will just sort of mumbled and avoided the question.”
“Well, not that I was around for most of that foolishness, but way I heard it, Jack was pretending to trade Will for codes into Barbossa’s headquarters. Y’know who he is, right?” Anamaria winced as the two men rumbled up against her gun cabinet. Fortunately, the doors and apparently the racks all held. “So what happened between you two?”
Blinking, Jacques slowly turned to look at her. “Mr. Sparrow’s been kind enough to make a…very interesting proposal. I think a change of locale sounds lovely.”
It’d better be a change of country, because once Barbossa found out, Jacques was a dead man. Speaking of that, they’d better get moving anyway because Anamaria, for one, didn’t intend to get caught in this any more than she had to be.
Will and Jack had crashed through the doorway to Anamaria’s bedroom, and so everyone else had to walk over to take a peek. But before they could, a shaken-looking Will staggered out. His face was drained of so much color that Anamaria’s heart skipped a beat.
“Will…” Elizabeth breathed. “You didn’t.”
He looked at her, blinked hard, and then looked at her again. Then he stepped aside and flopped onto the couch, leaving Jack swaying in the doorway. Jack apparently had just rediscovered the upright position and was holding his jaw like he wasn’t sure how the hinge work. Shouldn’t have been a problem, considering how much he talked.
“Think that was a little unfair, Will,” Jack mumbled.
“Unfair?” The feet went down and Will’s head came back up graced with an incredulous look. “Excuse me? You were going to trade me for a goddamn bottle of rum! And now you call me up and demand I come down to Mexico, and the first thing you say when I show up is—”
Elizabeth decoratively plopped on the couch by Will and turned into an artistic shoulder-drape. He didn’t seem to notice, but Jack twitched a little; Anamaria cursed upon seeing that, since she didn’t have her camera and her bet with Gibbs required at least photographic proof. “I thought it was a code,” she said.
“No, it was a bottle of rum. Which okay, I knew was your weak point five seconds after I met you, and it had a key you needed in it, but my God, Jack.” With a sigh, Will slumped back and stared at the ceiling. The corner of his mouth twisted like he was going to say something, then twisted back the other way. Then he pulled himself up and took Elizabeth by the arm. “Oh, forget it. Here’s the keys to your stupid car. Now stop bothering me.”
He tossed them over his shoulder and Elizabeth promptly snagged them out of the air, looking horrified. “Will! That’s our transportation!”
“That, girl, is the Black Pearl, so watch how you’d be referring to her,” Jack said.
“So is this always how it is around here?” Jacques murmured to Anamaria. For someone who’d come off as having less brains than a can of stewed tomatoes, he’d been remarkably sensible so far.
She shrugged and checked her watch again. Damn Jack and his need to build up to a dramatic exit, but they weren’t going to get out in time to avoid at least a scuffle. She could almost hear the music warming up.
Anamaria frowned, then checked the window. Actually, she could hear it—one guy in a nice suit was paying the mariachi band across the street to crank it up to cover the sound of a half-dozen other men in nice suits sneaking up her stairs. She snorted and reached over to her dresser, then pulled out her favorite assault rifle. “Nah. But it’ll be in a moment when the explosives start going.”
“I’m not all that fond of bangs and smoke—they smudge up silk so badly,” Jacques drawled. “So if you don’t mind, I think I’ll just—”
No, he wasn’t. He wasn’t because some dumbass had started early and hadn’t even given Jack, Will and Elizabeth time to warm up to their threeway screaming fight before they’d kicked in Anamaria’s door. Goddamn it, but the security deposit on this place had been shot to hell.
Might as well get that done properly, Anamaria thought as she hit the floor. She snapped off the safety on her gun and let off a warning round, then got to it. Lord knew it’d be the only thing to be done right for the next week or so.
* * *
José had been in more than one tough situation during the course of his life, so he wasn’t caught entirely off his guard. Theoretically speaking, anyhow; being handcuffed and shoved into a car trunk without so much as a fountain pen left on him, and without even knowing why, was not exactly a simple situation from which to extract himself.
Though it did help that the stupid cartel men all wanted to drive American, and of course now all American cars were mandated to come with funny little safety devices like handles on the inside of car trunks.
He’d gotten his hands around to the front before the car had pulled away from the curb, but José wasn’t about to leap out of the thing while it was in motion. He flattened out against the floor of the trunk and let the changes in acceleration tell him where they were going. Two rights, a string of lefts and a long straight…oh, damn it. They were going to Anamaria’s. He knew he should’ve been paying more attention to all the visits he’d been getting—actually, he should have been out of town the moment Will Turner had walked into the bar.
The car finally rolled to a stop, so José sensibly slid over to the side. If they were going to pull the trick where someone shot up the trunk, that position gave him a ninety-three percent chance that they’d miss his vital points. He listened to many other cars pulling up, to their doors opening, to heavy treads walking purposefully about. Not yet.
There was a muffled crash and a yell José recognized as Anamaria, followed by several exchanges of gunfire. Still not quite.
Silence. One groaning man stumbling near and then against the car, banging along its side till suddenly he slipped and fell to the ground. He didn’t get back up. Still not the time.
Someone else walked up, someone with a distinctly clipped tread. They loudly unscrewed a bottle and splashed its contents on the ground.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, mate?” shouted a horrified Jack.
Now. José slammed the lever down and forced the hood up with his elbow. He dove over the side as soon as there was room; his back protested at the cobblestones, but he made himself keep rolling till he was on his feet.
Norrington blinked rapidly as he capped his rum bottle. “Oh, José. Well, that was easier than I thought.”
“I’m flattered to think that my plight would attract such prompt attention,” José gallantly replied. In all honestly, he was feeling a bit miffed that Norrington, who actually was paid for this sort of nonsense, was standing there with not a hair out of place while José’s suit was…more than a little dusty. Someone was going to die for that.
Someone was walking out the door. José automatically kicked up with his foot and popped a gun into his hand.
Jacques raised an eyebrow. “Some day there won’t be a gun on the ground and you’ll just look silly.”
“Yes, but the day I finally have my vacation away from here always seems to be tomorrow, so I have no fear of that.” José relaxed and took a good look around, counting bodies. Enough were scattered around outside and flopped on the stairs that ran up the side of the building to tell him who had won, but he wasn’t quite sure how good of a victory that was. It was awfully quiet. “Norrington, this is a midlevel courier. Note the acceptable suit, the Caucasian looks and the mild personality. They pick them to move among the higher class of tourist that passes through my fine city.”
Not that José had anything personal against Jacques, or even knew him all that well—as far as he remembered, they’d been introduced over a cocktail at the last big druglord-bribes-official bash and had promptly gone in opposite directions to chase possible bed company. It seemed Jacques felt the same way, for he merely stepped over the body in the doorway and wandered out into the open.
“Jacques, at your service.” He made an exaggerated bow to Norrington that was slightly longer than it needed to be. When he came up, he looked strangely impressed. “I’m no longer with Barbossa and happen to be looking for new employment, so…”
“I’m on vacation, not stupid,” Norrington sighed. He looked Jacques over, then turned his head aside and coughed into his fist. “And you smell more strongly of rum than this bottle does, so I’d wager you’re in no great need to be looking at the front of my trousers like that. Where’s Sparrow?”
Oh, so that was what Jacques had been up to. And despite what he’d said, possibly what Norrington would be up to, if his professionalism ever cracked to let him do more than flick his eyes up and down Jacques’ body. No wonder José hadn’t been able to bend this agent into his plans; he’d been suggesting the wrong sort of brothel.
“Sparrow?” Jacques looked empty-headed. He was nearly as good at that as that blonde girl Turner had been dragging.
And speaking of her, José thought he heard her laugh trilling down a nearby alley. He glanced at Norrington, then quietly slipped around the car and into the side-street. A body there gave him the broken watch clasp he needed to pick his handcuffs, which he did while continuing to walk.
“José.” Norrington didn’t make it a question.
“I’m curious to see why, exactly, my night’s been ruined in such fantastic fashion,” José called back. He was close enough to hear voices—and car doors slamming. He took another step.
“Then satisfy your curiosity with—damn it, why didn’t you say they were leaving!” James snapped, bursting ahead of José. He sprinted around the corner just as a very distinct engine revved up. “Goddamn it!”
Jacques sauntered up next to José. “British intelligence?”
“But apparently not French,” José calmly replied, swinging around to point his gun at Jacques’ head. “What did Jack ask you to do?”
Click. Something hard and cold pressed against José’s temple. Apparently James was not only faster on his feet than he looked, but also quite good at being sneaky. “Excuse me, but this is my interrogation. And don’t push me, José. I still haven’t adjusted to the time zone and now I’ve ended up in the clichéd Mexican threeway.”
Both José and Jacques had to cough. “Wrong…how do you say, figurative expression?” Jacques said. “Though if you want me to correct you, I’d be more than happy to.”
“I’d rather think you’re the one that needs correc—oh, damn it all, you’re just going to take that entirely the wrong way. Put down the gun, José; we’re going back to my car and then we’re having a talk.” James lowered his gun and pivoted, then stalked off, apparently unconcerned about whether or not José would listen to him. “Don’t think about it, José. I left a duffel bag of explosives at the front of the alley and facing this way, I can shoot it in plenty of time to blow up this entire block.”
“Practical or suicidal?” Jacques asked.
José rolled his eyes and reluctantly slid his gun into his waistband. “He’s English. Both, obviously.”
“Ahem,” James snarled.
Strangely enough, Jacques’ bland expression fractured a little to show genuine interest. “How very interesting. This is much more fun than carrying things to and fro.”
* * *
“Oh, my God, I love this!” Will’s girl shouted. “This is incredible!”
“This is a city street still and holy Christ that was a curb that was a red light why the hell did I no why the hell did Jack let you drive?” Will whimpered.
Jack finally managed to hook his arm over the top of the backseat and hauled himself upwards. The car went soaring over a pothole and he damned near went into the frontseat himself, but managed to anchor himself in time. Or rather, Anamaria did. “Sorry, Anamaria. And Will, I didn’t do anything this time. She—”
“—caught the keys.” For the split second that Will’s face was visible, it was green. Then his girl hung a right so hard that it was on fire and Will slid out of sight.
The Pearl was moaning up through the floorboards, poor lady. Least the blond Jack had picked up didn’t take corners like they were meant to be shaved down to the quick. Which slammed Jack back to the floor, not on Anamaria. Lucky for him, since Anamaria was looking like she was in a biting mood and that way, Jack could…he jerked himself back up just as they slammed to a stop.
“God, that was awesome,” Will’s girl giggled.
The Pearl rumbled in agreement and Jack made a face. Females were so finicky it just wasn’t fair, honestly. No predicting them.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Will weakly said. He coughed and Jack shot up just in time to catch the sharp end of Will’s look. “No, actually I’m going back to pissed off. Fuck, you care about this car more than me.”
“Will, this is The Pearl.” It was a good point, Jack thought. He’d given Will a pretty reasonable explanation of the unreasonable, incurable attachment he had to her, and he’d thought Will had gotten it. Least, Will had sighed and curled close like he had, and no, wasn’t quite the time for nostalgia.
“And what about the rest? Give me a break.” Will flopped into the corner, then put his arm over his head. “Or at least tell me I didn’t just shoot another bunch of cartel men and get another price on my head.”
Jack put his chin on his arm, and his arm across the top of the backseat. He hmm’ed thoughtfully and the girl glowered at him, like she had the least notion of what was going on. “Will…”
“Hi. I’m Elizabeth.” The girl stuck out her hand. She didn’t seem particularly offended when Jack rolled his head to stare at it instead of taking it, but then, she didn’t look like she was going to forget either. “I’m planning on getting home at the end of the week. I have exams to take and I am not missing them.”
“Oh, for…I was going to get another car. I know a guy and he’s all right because Anamaria introduced him, not you.” That last little tweak of Will’s being towards Jack, of course. Then Will frowned. “Wait a minute. Did you just say you cared about your grades?”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes and dramatically fell forward so Will got a good noseful of her breasts. “Oh, Will. You’re so mean. I care about a lot of things.”
Interesting way she had of not-expressing expressing it, Jack thought. But never mind that, because they were still in town and he really needed to get the plot together. Preferably somewhere with a good supply of rum and a paucity of bullets.
“Much as I’m laughing back here, I’m thinking we’d best be on our way,” Anamaria chimed in, right on cue. She elbowed Jack aside and gave him a good kneeing on her way out of the car, which was decidedly not in the script.
“Good idea,” Will said. Then he got out of the car in the opposite direction.
This left Jack in a bit of a quandary. He lurched to the one side, then to the other, and finally he just flopped back onto the seat. It was frustrating, really, how people never managed to understand the meaning of a proper schedule, and with all the nice little planners and some such that were being sold round nowadays.
“I’ve got your keys.” Elizabeth dangled them in front of Jack’s nose. She looked surprised when her fingers were suddenly dangling nothing at all.
“And I do appreciate their return, but I’m a bit too busy right now to properly thank you, so do please take an IOU,” Jack called back over his shoulder. Then he took off after Will. He figured Anamaria could keep, and if she decided to keep without being in further partnership with him, then he could always break into her hideyholes again. She didn’t run away from a man. Will, on the other hand, had a tendency to head for places where Jack wasn’t friendly with the local immigration officers.
* * *
“My cover is completely blown,” José groaned, head down on the table. “Thank you very much for the rescue, Norrington, but you’ve made it so I can’t ever work in this town again.”
Not in his former capacity, no, but James seriously doubted that José would ever be without career choices. The man didn’t strike him as that type. “So one last time for the record—nine years ago Barbossa and Sparrow broke up their partnership. Or rather, Barbossa broke it in favor of joining with the Colombians.”
“He put Jack out in the desert in the trunk of his car, which had no gas.” Jacques seemed much more sanguine about the whole situation. His foot also needed some lessons in respecting the space of others.
James reached beneath the table. A moment later, he allowed himself a slight satisfied smile at the pained expression that had sprung onto Jacques’ face. “Having miraculously survived that attempt and having garnered some interesting allies, Sparrow’s now back for revenge. Is that correct?”
José nodded, while Jacques leaned back and toyed with his shotglass. He ruffled a hand through his hair, then let the locks fall back into his face. They were a beautiful gold and looked silky and all that, but really, if Jacques thought James wasn’t madly trying to figure out why Sparrow had sent out the man, then he was too much of an idiot to be worth the attention.
“All in all, it doesn’t sound like something that requires MI6’s attention.” In the middle of James’ sentence, his cellphone buzzed. He sighed and flipped it open to see whose ID it was: Groves. He’d detailed Groves to…right, to track Turner, so he supposed he had to answer the phone.
“Doesn’t destabilization of the whole region worry your country?” Head tilted, Jacques tipped the shotglass’ contents into his mouth. His tongue flicked around the rim to lick up the salt crusting it.
Groves was babbling something about exactly how close did James want him to be and what happened if the mark crossed trails with Gillette’s mark, as if the man had never been through training. Then again, Groves’ breath was strangely uneven; James thought for a moment, then put his face in his hand.
They were on vacation, he reminded himself. Vacation. Which had come with specific orders to enjoy himself and not get MI6 involved in any more causes. “Then it seems you might have company for a while, Groves,” he finally said.
*Thanks, sir!* The last word was a bit mangled in the other end’s fumbled attempt to turn off the phone.
James turned back to Jacques and reached across the table to take the other man’s glass away from him. “Of course it does. But Barbossa is a frustrated midlevel employee who’s not been doing well, thanks to his men’s tendency to snort their product instead of selling it, and Sparrow appears to be one of those idealistic smugglers. He smuggled just for the joy of doing it, not for monetary reasons. This does not make an apocalypse.”
Jacques raised his eyebrows and leaned forward. “You’re very sure of yourself,” he murmured.
“I’m very content with where I am as well. Agency policy firmly prohibits association of agents with persons that may be participating in affairs deleterious to British interests.” The glass went on the sideboard; James put his fingertips on Jacques’ forehead and pushed him back. “José? You’ve been very quiet.”
The other man slowly lifted his head, rubbing at his eyes. He put his hands down flat on the table. “May I have my gun back? I need to go have a word with Jack.” When James didn’t move, José closed his eyes and sighed, putting a hand to his head. “Look, Norrington, it’s like this: Jack has this car. Well, actually Will has it, but it’s Jack’s. This car is very important. It used to belong to Major—”
“Him?” Well, that put an entirely different cast on matters. “Dear Lord, why didn’t you mention this sooner?”
“Why didn’t you mention it?” José hissed at Jacques.
Who snorted and made a rude gesture. “Excuse me if I didn’t realize that someone like Norrington would be interested in the biggest English failure in Mexico since…oh. That’s very large.”
“I know, I keep hoping they’ll come out with a more portable model, but…oh, never mind. Come on.” James shoved the rocket launcher at José, then headed for the door.
* * *
Will got about ten yards before he finally gave up. He didn’t need to draw on his incredibly puny knowledge of movie clichés to know that if he got too far, something like a street parade or a shootout would get in his way. Some conversations just didn’t let people run away from them.
With a sigh, he turned around. Jack promptly ducked and Will sighed again. “I wasn’t about to shoot you. I left all the guns in the car.”
“Have you gotten stupider since the last time?” Jack screeched, shoving a hand-cannon at Will. He threw himself into the bargain as well and so they ended up stumbling into an alley off the alley in which they were. “This is Mexico!”
“Yes, and I clearly don’t belong here, so I’m heading back. If I can get hold of Marco tonight, I’ll be back in my apartment by sundown tomorrow.” Wishful thinking to be honest, but Will was hoping that if he wished very, very hard, for once he’d get exactly what he wanted. “You’ve got your car and you’ve obviously got a lot going on, so I’d better go. God knows I wouldn’t want to interrupt your turf war or anything.”
He pushed the gun back at Jack, who distractedly took it. Distractedly, because he was doing some odd peering into Will’s eyes. He leaned in close with his hand on Will’s shoulder for support. “You drunk, mate?”
“No, you’re smelling yourself,” Will muttered, turning his head away. He tried to get up his hands to push the other man away, but Jack swerved so instead Will somehow ended up pulling them closer. Will immediately dropped his hands. He breathed more shallowly in an attempt to not get sloshed off the rum fumes that coated Jack, but that made him go a little lightheaded.
The corner of Jack’s mouth tugged up just enough to expose a flash of white. “Just joking with you, Will. I didn’t think you were.”
“Figured. You always are joking, aren’t you? Except when it’s not funny anymore.” Like their respective positions, which probably made it look to passersby that they were in the middle of a Tijuana transaction. But to Will, who was stuck in the damn stance, it was the least funniest thing since his father had up and died of lung congestion on his first day home from…wherever he’d gone on his years-long business trip.
Jack’s smile slowly flattened out, but he didn’t move. His eyes flicked over Will’s face purposefully but not according to any apparent pattern. His arms and legs didn’t seem to be suffering from the cramps that were slowly gnawing at Will, making him shift and slide beneath the press of Jack’s weight.
The other man hadn’t changed all that much. He didn’t even seem to have any new scars, and given the way they were standing and the thin, loose clothing Jack favored, Will had most of Jack’s body covered—wrong word. Damn it. Rum still wasn’t that bad a smell on Jack, and Jack still wasn’t a great idea.
“Get off me,” Will eventually said. He wasn’t very happy with how low his voice had become, but at least he managed to say the words.
“I wasn’t going to trade you, not for truth. I just needed a moment to get the man off his guard—that’s how it worked out, anyhow.” Jack patted Will on the shoulder the way any other man would if he’d been offering comfort. But as friendly as Jack could be, he wasn’t all that good at comfort. Things in his world were pretty much sink or swim, and swimming was a solitary thing, he’d once explained. “You made it through another year of college all right, I see.”
Will snorted and squeezed his hands between them. “Yeah. Yeah, I did, and I still have another year left before I’ve my degree, and that doesn’t even count graduate school.”
“It’s not like I had time to explain,” Jack said. He was eying Will slantwise, clever and cautious like a bird watching a hand holding out bread.
Well, Will wasn’t a pigeon-lady, and Jack wasn’t a birdbrain. One good push and Jack was off of Will. “You did afterward, didn’t you? I seem to remember there being a good five minutes between when we were done and when I finally snapped out of shock to steal your damn car. Your car. Jesus Christ, and the first message you left was to tell me to bring it back—nothing about how I was doing, so don’t start pretending now that you gave a damn.”
He shouldered his way the rest of the way out from between Jack and the wall, then stalked down the alley. Halfway through, he stopped and listened. Then he turned around to see an empty street. His chest clenched and his gut hurt a bit, but he wasn’t inclined to stay around and figure out why, so Will shoved his hands in his pockets and kept walking.
About a hundred yards later, a familiar car drew up next to him and honked. Will turned to snarl, but instead had his jaw nearly fall off his face. “That’s Jack’s!”
“Finders keepers,” Elizabeth grinned. She slowed the car to a crawl and reached over to pop the front passenger door. “Come on.”
“No—no, Elizabeth, get out of there. I told you, I can get another car. I don’t want Jack bothering me anymore and that stupid thing is his baby,” Will snapped. He backed off, then pivoted to avoid a streetlight.
She had to pull in the door to keep it from getting a big dent courtesy of the same streetlight, which kept her from talking to him for about thirty-five seconds. After that, it was right back to wheedling with that big, perfect, fake smile on her face that wasn’t so cute anymore.
“Oh, come on, Will. Just from the little I’ve heard, he really owes you so the least he could do was give you a smooth ride—”
“He already did that.” Which came out as bitter as Will wanted it, but a hell of a lot louder than it should have. Shit. He wasn’t even drunk.
Elizabeth drew back a little, like she was afraid he’d throw off her easygoing float of a groove. Then she shrugged and leaned out to wave her hand at him again. “And anyway, he didn’t exactly come back for it. He took the keys, and I waited for a good five minutes before I hotwired it, but he didn’t show. By the way, hot as you look with a gun tucked into your belt, you might want to pull your shirt over it.”
What? Will glanced down at himself, then cursed and yanked the gun out. He looked around for somewhere to hide it, but short-sleeved shirt and jeans and so that was how he ended up climbing far enough into the car for Elizabeth to pull him in the rest of the way. He angrily threw off her hand and twisted around to face the open door…then sighed, pulled the door shut, and flopped into the seat. He stared at the gun for a few seconds before shoving it in the glove compartment with the other one.
“How very fucking thoughtful of you, Jack,” he muttered.
Elizabeth gave him a sympathetic look that actually failed to include either manipulative intent or sarcasm. She even continued to drive at a decent speed instead of a terrifying one. “You know, Will—we’re in Mexico. You know what the best thing to do in Mexico when you’re depressed or upset is?”
“The obligatory mind-bending bar-crawl?” On second thought, maybe there was manipulation in Elizabeth’s weird insistence on staying with Will. But the more he thought about it, the more he didn’t mind that. Or didn’t care—same end effect. At least Elizabeth was relatively straightforward about it, whereas Jack just had to cloak it all in…in…
He might as well get drunk. He already was goddamned incoherent. Goddamn it.
A second later, Will was slumped back and trying very hard not to let his face fall into a girly grimace. He clutched at his hand and stared at the unmarked dashboard. What the fuck was this car made of beneath all that black leather?
“Punching things never really makes you feel better; it just fucks up your hand for the next morning when you need that to get the aspirin bottle open. Now, you know what really works?” Elizabeth said. Her voice sounded different. After a moment, Will pegged the change as being that briskly airheaded tone coming back into it. Before, she’d almost sounded like someone to whom he could seriously relate. “Let’s get a lot of those poofy-looking cocktails and slam them back.”
“Why not straight tequila?” Will had to ask.
“Because we’ll need the little umbrellas and olives to throw at random people.” She got that out with a straight face. A plastic face.
He was afraid telling her to knock that off would make her drive crazy again, but after further thought, Will decided they were going to get drunk together anyway so it wouldn’t matter. “Elizabeth? Why do you keep pulling that stupid cheerleader routine? It’s not like I still think that’s really you. You’re not really that stupid.”
Her mask went stiff. Not like it was going to crack, but like he’d hit a live nerve and she was about to bean him with it. Which she nearly did once her foot hit the accelerator.
“We are getting so drunk,” Elizabeth finally said, and there wasn’t an ounce of false cheer in her flat voice.
* * *
“So what exactly is in the car?” Jacques asked.
James ignored him and kept typing on the laptop, struggling with the top-notch, utterly unfathomable new tracking software. A car like that couldn’t hide in the factory that had made it. Any moment it’d…there it was. Now to figure out where the other people that’d be after it currently were.
From the other end of the table came an impatient tapping of fingers. “Somewhere in that car is the way to locate about twenty million in gold that the Spanish government lost three hundred years ago. Norrington, you realize Jacques is here solely to keep us diverted from Jack, don’t you?”
“And I seem to be doing a terrible job of it, too.” The words were spoken to James’ cheek as Jacques leaned over him. Before he could stop Jacques, the other man had tapped a few keys—changed the tracking frequencies. The screen flickered, then cleared to show…Barbossa’s positions. “There we go.”
James caught Jacques’ hand and held the other man in place. “As far as I know, MI6 has never managed to successfully bug Barbossa’s operations.”
Jacques smiled with his lips closed. From this angle, his eyes betrayed a good deal more intelligence than James had previously assumed the man had. “Perhaps you aren’t the only one on vacation.”
The fingers stopped tapping. “Norrington. How many intelligence agencies are running around this town right now?”
“You’re the one that’s supposed to know that, José. It looks like you could use a vacation yourself,” James sighed. Then he realized he was still holding onto Jacques and belatedly let go. “And that’s how you explain Sparrow, Jacques?”
The other man was still crouched over James, breath tickling James’ ear. “Oh, no, he was work. Fun work, but still…well, you know. Ends when the report goes to those above.”
“I meant why you’re helping him at least somewhat, never mind your motives. Sparrow isn’t the sort that gets agency sponsorship,” James icily replied. He batted away Jacques, then glanced across the table. “José.”
“I think I’ve lost my touch. I can’t even spot an agent now.” José had his head in his hands so his expression couldn’t be seen, but he sounded genuinely distraught.
Wonderful. The last thing James needed was to have to coddle a contact out of a depression. For a moment, he was tempted to put his head in his hands, but he gave himself a firm shake. José still had useful knowledge of the local power distributions, and that was going to come in handy if James was going to do what he suspected he was about to. “Doubtful. You just need—”
“—a vacation?” Jacques said.
José dropped his hand from his face and stared at James through narrowed, slightly bleary eyes; James idly noted that José looked a good deal more approachable like that than when he was being the resident bulletproof go-to man. “You need me to help make a plan. All right. But can I kill him?”
He pointed to Jacques, who snorted softly and sank back into an elegant slouch. The man’s nonchalance was rapidly losing its mindlessness and looking more like professional jadedness.
“Sadly, no. I don’t intend to be the one who restarts the old Anglo-French war nonsense.” James went back to his computer. “Now, I have limited resources. I need an edge. Any suggestions?”
* * *
After their third round, Will began to open up. By their fifth, he’d let Elizabeth put her head in his lap and was telling her his life’s story. His pronunciation remained shockingly good, but his inhibitions were definitely…not there. He didn’t even jump when she pulled his hand into her hair.
“It’s just…man, I had everything planned out. I wasn’t going to react to him. I was just going to hand over the keys, tell him to not make me change my phone number again, and then go. Enjoy Mexico, be a geeky tourist,” he was saying. His thumb absently rubbed across her temple as he lifted his sixth glass, which had four layers of brightly-colored liquors. The red one was rapidly disappearing. “But hell, that went to…hell. I don’t know.”
“You still like him?” Elizabeth wasn’t quite as drunk as the number of empty glasses on her side of the table suggested. She liked Will, knew he was a nice guy, but wasn’t figuring on going that far. One never knew, hence why they had retreated to the hotel bar instead of seriously hitting the clubs.
Will’s head thunked onto the table a moment after his glass did. He was bent awkwardly so he could look at her and still avoid the alcohol now dripping over the table-edge. “I shouldn’t. Not after what he pulled. I’m young. It’s been a whole year. Why? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Well, neither of the ‘l’s usually do.” She suppressed an inward sigh at his confused look. Right, drunk and male anyway, so needed it in smaller words and more of them. “Love and lust. Two things I don’t do.”
His eyebrow went up. “Are you kidding me? With the way you act?”
“Exactly. ‘cause everyone likes to look, and looking’s free. But you go beyond that, and then you start to pay.” It slipped out, frankly. It sounded clever and all, and that was why Elizabeth said it, but it was also a little bit truthful and that was something she didn’t like doing either. She figured that Will was too drunk to hear that part.
Except he wasn’t. Or he held his drink better than he looked—something around there, because his eyes narrowed. Warning sign: Elizabeth immediately pushed herself and consequently him up, waving for another round of drinks.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Will snapped, grabbing for her hand. “I’m not so far gone that I can’t tell when things aren’t fair. I just told you everything, Miss I’m-The-Daughter-Of-Spies.”
“That was a joke, Will. I’m not really.” Elizabeth tugged at her hand, but he held on and the bench was a little slippery. Her thigh collided with his thigh and she involuntarily sucked in a breath. “Okay, I was serious. And it isn’t as fun as everyone thinks.”
Or it might have been that his eyes sucked the air out of her, because they were deep and dark and very, very much not going to let this go. He should’ve been drunker.
Will smiled a little. “The plants around this table are going to have one hell of a hangover tomorrow.” He laughed at her expression. “Like I said, that act of yours doesn’t fool me anymore. And I like you better without it.”
Elizabeth’s disbelief was hopefully making itself known, because as if she hadn’t heard that line a million times and every time it’d been a lie. Suddenly she wasn’t having so much fun anymore. She started to push herself off Will, but he still had her hand. “Let go.”
“What, you can dish it but can’t take it?” Will said, and his breath smelled enough so that he had to have been drinking some of the cocktails. He pulled her back so they had to tip up their heads to avoid nose-collision. He really was pretty well-built for a geek.
She rolled her eyes. “How immature do you think I am?”
In reply, he slowly let go of her wrist, flapping his fingers so she knew he wasn’t going to coerce her. Nice boy. Not so nice was how his eyes were just daring her to back off, to prove that she was a safe little girl beneath all that big talk.
She wasn’t. But there was jumping in feet-first and then jumping in feet-first without even checking to see that what was below was water and not, say, a cauldron of concentrated hydrochloric acid. Elizabeth just didn’t like getting burned during her moments of relaxations. Which of course was why she grabbed Will by the top of his hair and yanked him into a kiss so hot that it melted the bench.
Or something. They were on the floor, and then they were stumbling out of the bar and for the elevator, wrapped tightly around each other. He’d tucked in his shirt at some point, probably because the bar looked fancy so he thought he had to be neater or something, and Elizabeth’s fingers were ripping it back out. His hands roamed over her breasts and past them to bang on the elevator buttons. He hit the wrong one three times. “Goddamn it. People are going to see when we stop on their floor.”
“Yeah? Who can’t dish it now?” she murmured. Leaned up to bite his earlobe and he gave her a soft hiss, a hard thigh rubbing between her legs so Elizabeth suddenly had to remember about yeah, that. Or yeah, who.
Well, poor Jack but clearly he and Will were on a break, and Elizabeth wouldn’t have gone to Mexico with Will if she hadn’t liked him a lot more than the usual bunch. Long as they were doing stupid things that stayed in Mexico…she pushed her hand between them, found out he pulled on his jeans left-leg-first, and stroked her fingers down his erection. He groaned just as the elevator chimed open.
Scuttling feet. Elizabeth groped behind herself for the ‘door close’ button and jabbed it while Will made a feast out of her neck. He went at it like he wanted to not only savor every inch, but make sure it didn’t feel neglected compared to what his hands were doing up beneath her shirt.
“Elizabeth?” Will gasped. “I don’t—I—just so you know, this isn’t because of Jack. I’d want to do even if—” he stopped and looked her in the eye “—well, he hurried things along because if I weren’t like this, I’d never have the balls to just—”
Forget liking, because one look at Will’s earnest, open expression—in this kind of situation, for God’s sake—and Elizabeth felt something inside of her twist. It was screaming warning sign but she wasn’t really listening because they were finally at their floor, and she was frantically pulling them into their room.
The door had barely closed before she was throwing her back against it and pulling him after her; Will got the message and let her shove down her jeans, then boosted her out of them. She banged her head, but that ache quickly disappeared under the onslaught of sensations that teased at her nipple, circled hotly about her bellybutton before stroking firmly between her legs. She threw her arms around Will’s neck and pressed down on his shoulders. Went stiff, then slowly limp as he deftly worked his fingers inside her. “No, left, up, up, oh, oh, God.”
Yes. Yes. Maybe she’d have to thank Jack for teaching Will about the proper use of fingers, and for driving Will to this point. Or maybe she didn’t want to think about that because now Will was settling her on his cock and God, it was hard in the right places and hot where she needed it to be and just perfect. And screw Jack. Screw him for screwing up Will so much that Elizabeth had discovered some kind of maternal instinct. Because this right now definitely wasn’t about maternal instinct; this was about two people getting together and for once having good, great, wonderful fun together. It didn’t feel hollow. Elizabeth didn’t feel hollow—she felt filled to the point where she just needed to explode, and not because she needed to lose the pressure. Because she wanted to be one with the pressure and the flow and oh God Jesus yes.
And fuck, she thought a few minutes later. This wasn’t going to stay in Mexico.
“This isn’t our room,” Will noted about the same time. “I think we—”
Someone burst through a door nearby and Elizabeth slapped her hand over Will’s mouth, listening. Many men speaking rough Spanish were stomping around and hitting things, breaking things.
Will pulled down her hand, then eased her off the door. “That’s our room,” he whispered. “I told you we should have ditched the—oh, sorry. You were incredible, and I mean that sincerely. But we should have ditched the damn car.”
This really wasn’t going to work, Elizabeth thought. No, not at all.
***