#reddhaed

       Jack's dark gaze was drawn to it like a sailor lured by the call of a siren. An inauspicious wanted poster for some ne'er-do-well or other, nailed to a a nearby brick wall, but wilting like the rest of them in this intense heat — and Jack might have just wandered on past if his eye hadn't been caught by the familiar likeness put to canvas. He swiped it from the wall. Jack Sparrow. Wanted dead or alive. One hundred pounds. Not bad at all. They had the hat, the facial hair, the coat. Replacing pirate boots with whatever those abominable shoes were was certainly a... questionable choice on the artist's part. And his expression was rather severe, all things considered. But, other than that, he could not complain at the likeness. It looked like him.

       Unfortunately.

       Unfortunately given that he turned a corner into a bustling street and saw several more of those posters — along with two redcoats on patrol, standing right beside one. All they had to do was make eye contact with him and... well, Jack didn't fancy a chase through the streets in this sort of heat. So he eyed up the crowd for his chance to slip into the throng and be carried away from them, and landed on a young woman — or rather, the parasol that she was carrying.

       “ I'm ever so sorry, my lady, could I just borrow that right there — ” Before she could object, Jack had swiped the parasol from her hand and shifted her around to face him, ensuring that his back was now concealed from the two soldiers. Content that he wouldn't now be recognised, he turned his attention to the poor, unfortunate party to his subterfuge. “ Oh. ” Any other words of apology he had to offer quickly died in his throat. He recognised her at once, though it took a moment for Jack to put a name to her face. “ Miss de la Cour? ”

       The true power of her position here was in the smaller things sometimes: of having all of the keys in this place hanging on her belt, including a duplicate of the one she and Dave had given to Sera — one of the few rooms off-limits to everyone else, kept exactly how she wanted it and never ever offered to anyone else. This meant that even when her beloved had locked herself inside for privacy, Giselle could get in — and she didn't think twice about turning the key in the lock and opening the door now. There was nothing the two hid from each other, nothing they did not share, and she'd seen Sera in all kinds of positions — though this time she did not need to look on enviously at her and Jack Sparrow mid-fuck.

       They were together, of course — Jack's head was cradled in her arms as they lounged on her bed ( they'd already been at it for a while, by Giselle's calculations ), but not currently in flagrante at least. As she turned to lock the door shut again, she heard Jack's voice behind her. “ Here she is, darling. ”

       Giselle turned to approach the pair. “ I always know you're here because she disappears for hours. ” She wasn't bitter, not about this at least; this was the way Giselle and Jack always talked to each other.

       Jack smiled, cat-like. “ You almost sound jealous. ”

       “ Fucking Dave, ” she exclaimed loudly, as if it was obvious that he was relevant to this despite not being in the room. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, entering their personal space as nonchalantly as she had entered the room, Giselle reached down to pull off her shoes. “ There's some tart downstairs and he won't tell me who the fuck she is. ”

He looks down at her completely unimpressed. "And who's fault is that huh? Cause it's certainly not MINE."

"Seriously do you have ANY concept of how to behave in public? THIS is why you have RP PROBLEMS."

       Amongst the din of the tavern around them, the bustle of patrons and fellow adventurers, of drink and cards and other pleasurable pastimes, hours has passed and Jack hadn't taken his eyes off of their new travelling companion. Some might have called him enchanted, but he was in perfect control of his own mind: entranced though he might have been by her red curls and playful tone of voice, it was their conversation that mattered most. Jack knew how to talk in order to get what he wanted from people, but he could count on one hand how many times those conversations had been effortless. With Sera, he talked, he laughed and, more importantly, felt understood. How she had managed that in one afternoon he did not know ( maybe there was some kind of fey magic involved ), but it only proved that he and Billy were right to let her tag along with them as they headed for the Sword Coast.

       Jack didn't bat an eye as Sera reached for his hand and guided it up her arm. The soft flesh of the inside of her wrist made him feel a little dizzy, but it was nothing compared to the warmth of her neck under his fingertips. They'd gotten closer too — their table might only have been small, but it meant that Jack had hardly noticed her lean in, their foreheads now only inches apart. Everything else around them had fallen away long ago. Now it was just his fingers, her eyes, her lips. He gently brushed his thumb along her jawline. He wanted her, he did — it would have been so easy to just give into the desire that their sudden, inexplicable intimacy with one another had induced.

       Six months ago, he wouldn't have hesitated. Six months ago, it wouldn't have mattered.

hi hello i have some thoughts here are some thoughts

in terms of timeline this is really quite impossible I think but wow Henry could so easily fall into the category of sailor boy from the port who gets flirted with and actually a plot of him sticking his stupid impulsive self into the middle of an unhappy marriage has been a little bit on my wishlist for a bit now simply because I realized he's perfectly that brand of unwise but again with th. the timelines ;dlkfjg;ldkjfg I don't know how far either of us is willing to bend on the front of being attached to Lottie's Jack at various points in his life but gosh if that were not the case here I would be flinging this full force instead of this sideways pitch

timelines and continuous universe held in mind, then, I wonder how far into her life you've planned? Henry's definitely frequenter of many a pirate port and he's served on more than one ship in his life -and in the alt main, continues to do so- so flinging the two of them onto a crew could work? The main throughline of the alt main verse is that Henry is chasing other myths, legends, etc. around, so there's a lot of potentional to send them after the same treasure or trove or etc. where he'd be acting as the sort of ...consult (and ship hand, but y'know) but then also sticking them in close quarters for an extended time right, with the added bonus of them being two people who know veeeeeeeerrrrryyyyy different sides of Jack. That might be interesting

alternatively and in the name of shaking the timeline grief: we could throw them both Modern and have them meet strangers-cross-paths-while-both-traveling style. Henry would be out and about for the sake of adventure and his little travel journal publication, and maybe Sera is off in some remote corner of the world trying to buy time before reemerging in the public eye to do damage control on her reputation? This is definitely more plot than dynamic I have no idea where it would go but it might be fun to toss them into some nonsense- they get stuck in said small out of the way place because of natural disaster? Keep running into each other at random and figure, fuck it, what if we sit down and talk since we've been traveling parallel for three cities, now? He knows all the cool wild places where weird and magical(-feeling) things happen, and maybe he wanted to do something new with his writing project thing so he said "give me your perspective" and at first she's suspicious because she's famous and shit but he genuinely has not one clue about that and just plucked her from a crowd of tourists at random. This low key sounds like a pitch for a romcom, I'm realizing, but that was not the intention I just think Henry+befriending people via being weird and wild and upfront is fun

maybe this is cheating I don't know but I have a mermaid OC on my multi (@talesgolden) who is ...not completely adverse to mankind but isn't blindly trusting either and right this very second I have no idea what could have brought them together, exactly, but I do know Lír is hiding from some things going on in the sea and could have taken to land, that's a distinct possibility. And then there, even on land, she'd have a connection to the tides in both a literal body-of-water fashion as well as a "tides of fate" fashion and I think she would make for a very cool ally, a sort of soothsayer type of person Sera calls on, maybe? To plan her mischief so it falls favorably in with the machinations of the world already going on and are promised more success. Also someone with uncanny charm (that is actually siren song) on your team seems like it'd be favorable.

God sometimes he just wanted to bash her stupid fucking face in. The fact that he'd have to hunt around for someone to replace her was a strong part of why he DIDN'T.

"Well that's rough for you since you opinion doesn't actually matter. I'm the boss here so it's YOUR PROBLEM REGARDLESS."