SEXUAL TENSION & ATTRACTION PROMPTS / NOT ACCEPTING.
𝚂𝙴𝙳𝙽𝙰 𝚆𝙰𝙻𝙺𝚂 𝙻𝙸𝙶𝙷𝚃𝙻𝚈， 𝙰𝚂 𝙸𝙵 𝙷𝙴𝚁 𝙱𝙰𝚁𝙴 𝙵𝙴𝙴𝚃 𝙳𝙸𝙳𝙽’𝚃 𝙼𝙴𝙴𝚃 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙵𝙻𝙾𝙾𝚁．he’s been following her pryingly for a while, and by now he could tell, by the way she swept the floorboards in her borrowed robe and long dark tresses, that she is not a creature made to walk as they do. but, jack picked with a hinted complacency, she— adjusts. in that, she’s not unlike every single man aboard. a quick learner, she ghosts the cabin with torn-edged maps flapped slowly in her hands, a glint of sharp understanding in her eyes sometimes forewarning a question or a comment. she’s in her environment, jack muses, though her wry half-smile persevering beyond his sight and milk-white skin belong lower than lamplight and wood, to abyssal depths. reading about the last charted corners of the world, her world, must be strange to her; but if she’s dissimulating, then she’s maddeningly skilled at it. not better than he is, but it deserves recognition.
for a while, she falls silent. an unpleasant feeling of suspension slips in, and jack is almost tempted to raise his gaze from the compass on his desk, open and reassuringly still, to find sedna lurking pointlessly in the warm candlelight. she doesn’t need it, he knows. she could point things to him that were only in his wild-running fantasy, and he would not doubt that, somewhere in the darkness impossibly thickening, they were there. they existed. but she adjusts. her adjustment lies in pretending, mostly, but captain sparrow has no objections. her dance is an underwater dance, slow-moved and speckled by a shifting chiaroscuro; it seems to jack as if she could perceive and go along with the flickering of candle flame or the rocking of the waves. she’s not truly reading the maps, assuming she ever was.
the harmless act gets increasingly more intriguing as the siren sinuously slips from his peripheral vision. out of sight to any less than committed watcher. he does not turn to pursue her. maybe she expects him to, but jack knows better than to indulge her kind. the lure begins with the eyes. no song can forebode a greater ruin than the subtle, serpentine temptation to see. odysseus knew that well. he snaps from his thoughts and flicks the compass closed. he can feel sedna shift like a shadow behind his seat, the old paper in her hands giving a rustling noise. for some reason jack finds himself protective of the secret of the compass, as he is of any secret. he runs his thumb over the black enamel, pretending to wipe a speck of dust, wondering if she believes any of it.
only then he hears it: a deep breath, behind him. a curious sniff at something palatable but foreign, a mysterious fruit hidden in the crook of his neck. sedna’s breath is inhumanly cold against his ear, bare from the loose tie in his hair. for a moment, jack wonders what is it she feels. sea salt, undoubtedly. there’s dried crusts of it peppering here and there his dark locks. the sweeter smell of expensive rum, stolen near jamaica. whatever it is, the siren keeps it to herself.
jack sparrow considers speaking, but not too seriously, and almost in lack of a better idea. he leans slightly into that cold breath, and suddenly yields to the urge of turning his face to her. the lure begins with the eyes, and he’s not surprised to find her steady gaze searching him, her lips pursed into a wry smile. tempting, jack laughs inwardly. “what?” something gleams in his glass-green eyes. a hint of mischief, perhaps. he’s close enough to breath into her own breath, and he does, inhaling that inhuman coldness as he would an arctic wind. deep to his lungs.
