She was unamused, he had called out who is there like he hadn’t known it was her. She would have rolled her eyes if it wouldn’t have hurt so bad. She scowled, that hurt, but not nearly so bad and she wasn’t certain she could stop herself. She let him take the mug as she passed him but she couldn’t bring herself to look at him though she did reply to his assertion that she was growing to like him with a derisive snort. 

Underlying the snort was something very akin to panic, because he was wearing her down. He was aggravating, annoying, boorish and still he’d been present for her recent chains of breaking and had somehow gotten more out of her than she was comfortable with. He’d winkled it out of her and she didn’t know how. Did he just aggravate her to the point of indiscretion? Or was it some part of his boyish, irritating charm. It was the smile, dammit, she blamed that cursed, bright smile and the way it made the corners of his eyes crinkle. Curse him. Thinking hurt and he was making her speculate when she should be drinking.

But then he was moving, talking of going and she turned almost on instinct to tell him to stay, to drink the damn tea and let her come up with some plan to extract him without risking her reputation or cutting into her cold, carefully gained authority. She didn’t get the chance, as her bleary eyes fixed on him she watched as he pivoted and vomited forth all that he’d drank the night before. It poured forth in a great font, an unnatural cocktail spiked with bile and it filled the small cabin with an unmistakable scent. 

She was no shrinking flower, not any longer. To be a surgeon one needed a certain intestinal fortitude. To be a sailor one needed a certain earthiness. To be a pirate one needed a lack of squeamishness. She had learned much that was not academic in the navy and even more as a pirate and any shred of delicate nature she’d once possessed had been peeled away by the reality of what she’d needed to face along the way. But there is something so primal, so instinctive about such a level of sick that she felt her stomach churn, indicating that it would like, very much to join Jax who was just then sipping at his tea. 

She would not. She was not some hack who couldn’t hold her liquor, she had slurred first, she’d give him that, but he’d passed out first and now he’d puked, she was not going to give him any further concessions. She stared at the mess he’d made, her eyes wide, hard and surveyed the pattern of spatter with an obstinate thoroughness. He’d hit no books, that was his saving grace. 

She looked up to him as the ship pitched lightly, some of the sick rolling towards her across the floor to lap at the toe of her boot. She raised a golden eyebrow, her mouth forming a tight smirk. 

“Pussy.” She said, a strange, dark gleam of humor in her eyes, her honeyed voice doing something unintentionally suggestive with the word. “I did not know this was your first time drinking, Jax, or I would not have pushed you so. I will water your rum next time.”

Next time? What the hell was she talking about? There was not going to be a next time. This time she violates his privacy with her sketches, what indiscretion would be next time? To cover her confusion she forced herself to saunter, as if her head wasn’t ready to spilt open, over to her table where she pulled out a basket of clean linen bandages, nice and absorbent and tossed him a wad. It would do until he got a mop in there.

“You made the mess, you clean it up. That is always how it is. But first you must drink your tea.” 

She sat then, propping her feet on the table and watching him as the puddle of vomit slid towards her sketchbook where it lay on the floor.