Slowly, so slowly so as not to disturb him she slipped her limbs out from under his. He was heavy, solidly built and there was something so unsettlingly pleasant about feeling that weight on her. It shouldn’t be pleasant, it should feel confining and intrusive, but it didn’t and she was troubled by that. That her head pounded with a dull throbbing ache only made her peevish about the whole thing. Her pounding head and slight nausea that promised a need for the rail if she didn’t do something about it chased away the shreds of guilt she’d felt about her drunken sketches of the unconscious man’s torso. It would have been a simple thing to elbow him and demand he get off of her, but she wasn’t ready to face him, or his smile. So she screwed up her determination and did it herself. 

She had to shift and reach down to his well-muscled thigh and lift it off of her to get enough room to slide her own thigh out from under his. She did her best not to note how firm and taut his thigh was under her hands, even asleep Monsieur Jax was a lovely specimen. That was his danger, was it not? She extracted herself, shifting and wriggling in a manner that wasn’t seemly but was effective for the purpose. Free, she stood and swayed, biting back a groan as the world spun and her gorge rose. But she hadn’t drank so much that she’d succumb like some green sailor and she bit it back and stared blearily down at Jax as she let things settle. Her eyes traveled again to his bare chest, his shirt torn in places and then up to his face where she spotted a smile.

A smile?

That rat bastard was smiling? Was he even asleep? Did he sit there and let her handle him, struggling out from under his weight and all the while was awake? So like him, eyes close, not a word and she was already irritated. She ground her teeth and scowled at him, the expression as appealing as it ever was. She would have stomped her feet or cursed or slammed things about if it wouldn’t have likely made her head explode on the spot. So it was not mercy or strange tenderness for the aggravating man that made her quietly fill the bottoms of two clay mugs with herbs and then slip out of the room, it was for her own sake.

She winced when the morning light hit her eyes and closed them almost all the way shut, closing off the sight of everything but the floor right in front of her feet. She didn’t want to see the knowing smirks or the amusement of the men around her as she made her slow way to the galley for hot water. She’d treated plenty of hang-overs in her time as ship’s Doctor and the only time she ever gave them hell for it was when it interfered with their work. Otherwise she simply held her tongue and gave them the vile beverage she was about to consume which was as effective as it was unpalatable, as all good hangover cures were. Perhaps that was why almost all of them held their tongues as she made her way almost unseeing to the galley. A few called cheerful good mornings which she would have returned with a one finger salute were she not carrying two mugs. It was probably just as well. They would have been amused by her ire and it would hardly have been befitting an officer, pirate or not. 

She made it to the galley by memory alone and while the blessed dimness of below decks was a relief the hammering of the cook’s cleaver into some bit of pig was not. She winced and whimpered and had to raise her voice to be heard over the din. The cook, a ruddy-faced man named Breg, had diced with the late Cooper and while he wasn’t a loyal friend of the mutinous Cooper he clearly took pleasure in the pain of Cooper’s executor when he slammed his cleaver down and loudly asked what it was she wanted. 

The exchange wasn’t pleasant, but it was brief and she was in no state to assert her position and he knew it. She would pay for this lack at some later point but just then all she wanted was hot water for the tea and to get a certain grinning helmsman out of her cabin. Hot water she got. As she left the cabin, certain that death might be more pleasant than her head and belly at that moment she wondered how the hell Breg had made pouring hot water into two mugs, loud? 

She made it back though the gauntlet of grinning, knowing eyed Sailors with no further incident and then paused before her cabin realizing that with two mugs of hot tea and her throbbing head there was simply no way to open the door given her currently handicapped state. Of course, perfect, just what she needed. She wasn’t even certain Jax hadn’t fled the moment she’d left. She rather hoped he had, she was in no mood to see his grin or pay up to that absurd bet she’d made and lost. What had the payment even been? 

Cursing under her breath and longing for the dimness of her cabin with a need so great she was breathless with it she used her toe to knock at the door, three soft little raps that made a fireworks display against the inside of her head. Pain had such a pretty color. 

“Jax.” She hissed, using his name without really thinking about it. “Please open the door. Quickly.”