Disclaimer: Blah blah blah. Consider it disclaimed.
While it's not entirely necessary to have read my other, big works first, these little morsel are really intended for those who have already at least read my Honest and Dishonest Men. I would recommend reading Significance as well before attacking these, just so's you know what's going on in all subsequent cookies to be posted.
This particular cookie was taken someone between the end of
HaDM and the beginning of SignificanceCards and Cookies
"Jack Sparrow, you're cheating!"
"Me, cheat?" Jack grinned impishly, a rather poor facsimile of the "innocent" expression the situation really called for. "And ye forgot the 'Captain'."
"So that's what you call it, eh? 'The Captain.'"
Jack stared at her, his look caught somewhere between a glare for her mockery at his reminding her of his all-important title and an amused expression at her teasing. "'The Captain'," he said, going along with her jest, "doesn't ever have to cheat to get some."
"Never mind that," Gwen said without even the barest blush. "What have you got up your sleeves?"
"Well, that's the question of the century now, isn't it? Ye figure that one out, and I have a friend, by name Norrington, who would love to talk to ye."
Gwen sighed. "Hang Norrington," she said dismissively. "You stop palming cards."
"I'd love to. Blighter tried to stretch me neck once or twice."
She raised an eyebrow at him.
"Sure, sure, no more card-swiping."
"So you confess you were. This last hand was forfeit then," Gwen insisted.
Jack sighed in an exaggerated longsuffering sort of way and acquiesced to her simple demand with a nod. He then gestured erratically at the tabletop. "Fine. Deal."
Gwen eyed him for another long moment, shuffled the cards reflexively a time or two, and dealt them out. They were playing a simple no-wilds, five-card draw, so after clipping their respective five cards down on the table, Gwen gathered up her cards and fixed Jack with her best game-face. Jack grinned pleasantly at his own cards, acting entranced by them, ignoring the warning her eyes were shooting at him. He knew very well that this was "her" game. He really didn't bother himself with playing all that often, while she, on the other hand, was the reigning champion on the Pearl. He was on her turf... and not abiding by the rules of engagement.
Gwen frowned at her cards (a generic perhaps-they're-good, perhaps- they're-bad sort of frown). The Kings of Hearts and Diamonds, the Jack of Hearts, the Ten of Hearts, and the Two of Spades. The Two was certainly out, but should she trade the King of Diamonds and hope for the Queen of Hearts, or forfeit the ten and hope for more kings?
As she deliberated over her options, she thought she heard the suspicious sound of cards flicking against each other- that dry, soft, muffled-clicking sound she knew so very well. Her eyes snapped up in an instant. Jack was innocently toying with his cards, shifting and rearranging them as though he were grouping them according to his best options. He met her gaze evenly with a look that reminded her of a schoolboy, guiltlessly oblivious of the mischief he was suspected of, a half-smile of amusement touching his lips and eyes.
Gwen stared at his hand of cards a moment more, looked back at him, and then turned her gaze back to her own hand.
Well. She usually enjoyed astounding luck at gaming, an effect of an inherited blessing or charm of some sort and the reason for her habit of winning at the crew's card-tables. Chewing her lower lip thoughtfully as she considered this, she finally decided to take her chances at getting a straight flush. This strategy decided, she looked up at Jack again.
He smoothed his mustaches with finger and thumb of one hand, ran the hand over his scruffy jaw, and tugged lightly at his braided goatee. Then, giving his cards one last evaluative glance, he said simply, "Me shirt."
Gwen glanced down at herself, taking stock of what she had left to bet. "Skirt," she said, having already lost her shirt to him, amongst other things, leaving her upper body clothed only by her cotton support garment.
The preliminary bets set, Jack passed on the opportunity to trade in any cards. Adding her Two of Spades and the King of Diamonds to the discard, Gwen drew again for herself.
...The Queen of Hearts, and the Two of Hearts. A flush. Had that bloody two been the Nine of Hearts, she would have had a straight flush. Had it been the Ace of Hearts, a royal flush. Well. Not the greatest hand in the world, but there was still a chance. Her eyes flicked up to study Jack, to see if any glee or disappointment seeped through his mask of apathy.
Jack's appearance didn't betray a single thing, but his bet did. "I raise ye every stitch I've got left," he said cockily.
Gwen merely smiled deceptively at him as she considered his chances of really having anything worthwhile. To bluff or not to bluff. To call or to fold. Well, what were his chances, really?
"Likewise," she said after a moment.
Grinning devilishly at her, Jack simply flipped his cards face-up onto the table. To hell with letting suspense build.
Three Aces, and the two black Kings.
Gwen automatically revealed her own all-Hearts flush. But before Jack could demand his "payment" of her- his full house definitively beat her flush- she had risen from her chair.
They had been playing at the corner of the table in their- well, in Jack's cabin. Now, Gwen stepped around to stand beside Jack, and rather than stripping out of her own clothes, she reached for his shirt.
"'Ey!" Jack yelped as she skillfully tugged the garment over his head. "Last I checked, I won!"
Gwen wordlessly presented five cards- the five he had really been dealt in the last hand- that she had just found lost within the sleeves of his shirt.
"When did you start learning sleight of hand, luv?" Jack asked, smiling innocently.
She merely lifted an eyebrow at him.
He grinned back, looked at cards, looked at the cards on the table, and looked back to her, still grinning in the same devil-may-care way a puppy might use.
"No more card-stealing, you said?" Gwen prompted.
Jack nodded toward his Ace-and-King full house on the table. "Stole those before ye made me quit," he confessed boldly. "Didn't say I couldn't still play 'em."
Gwen sighed. "You're incorrigible."
"Thank ye," he said with a roguish grin. In the same instant, he caught her around the waist and pulled her down onto his lap. "You lost, but I cheated. Think that means we both end up naked?"
Gwen laughed as she straddled his thighs, her skirt riding up to accommodate the action. "Is that all you ever think about?"
"And rum," he said, pulling at her clothes. "And the Pearl..."
His hands slid into the waist of her skirt as he lightly bit at one now-bared nipple.
"Jack!"
His tongue flicked out over the pebbled nub, and he grinned up at her. She ground her hips downward, and he yelped. "Wench."
He stood abruptly then, his hands under her thighs as she locked her ankles at his back and her arms around his neck. He started to set her down on the table, but she stopped him.
"I don't want any more splinters, Jack."
He grunted his acknowledgment of the request and turned, looking around the room. For a second he even looked down at the rug on the floor. Then he shook his head and carried her toward the bed. "I've still got rug-burns," he told Gwen offhandedly when she grinned at his indecision.
He let her slide down to her feet beside the bed. She tugged at his trousers and-
A knock came at the door. "Hungry, Cap'n?"
"Very," Jack answered automatically, his voice husky, his eyes half- lidded as he skimmed his gaze over Gwen's familiar curves.
"I mean, not really!" Jack hurriedly amended. "We will be... I..." He snagged a shirt from the floor, tossed another in Gwen's direction. Hurriedly tucking the shirt in, he spared a glance at Gwen before opening the door.
The cook strolled in bearing his tray with the captain's evening meal. Of course, Gwen's portion was included as well. For all practical purposes, she lived with the captain in his quarters and dined off of his tray. But she was still one of the crew, too, so this special treatment was casually overlooked by the crew. The men scarcely envied her her affair with the captain himself (though one or two might envy him having her), so they didn't begrudge her the extra benefits.
As the cook set the tray on the table, he nodded toward the cards still lying on one corner. "Playing cards? Who's winning?" he asked genially.
"I am."
Gwen and Jack exchanged a look at the simultaneous claim.
"You cheat," Gwen told Jack.
"It's a tie," Jack told his crewmember in the same instant.
The cook didn't comment. "Cookies tonight," he said cheerfully. He grinned at each of them in turn as he left. "Cap'n. Gwen."
Gwen burst out laughing as soon as the door clicked shut behind him. Practically swimming in the shirt she'd rushed to put on a moment ago, she nodded toward Jack's torso, still grinning. "Looks better on you."
He looked down at himself. At Gwen's shirt. Luckily for his ego, she tended to wear men's shirts anyway these days. But it was still a few sizes too small, really, compared to his own loose and baggy shirt, the one nearly consuming Gwen alive. He stripped out of it as Gwen crossed the floor.
"Cookies," she said unnecessarily, ignoring everything else on the tray and snatching one up. She took a bite from it.
Jack stepped up behind her, took the treat from her hand, took a bite himself, and set it back down.
He pulled her back against him then. "Cookies later," he insisted, pulling the too-large shirt over Gwen's head.
"Cookies now," she replied, turning to snatch up the half-eaten cookie as she pushed him back toward the bed.