By Jedishampoo

Rating: R

Pairing: Jack Simpson/OFC

The damp, chilly streets of Portsmouth in January 1793 offered no solace to Jack Simpson as he huddled in his thin greatcoat. The thought of his destination offered no solace either, just a knowledge that once this call was made he was done with this filthy little town. Obligation would give way and he could indulge the justifiable anger he felt at having to return to Justinian.

The anger had fueled him before. Jack had watched as younger, weaker officers bypassed him for greater glory, and Jack had retaliated with bullying and coercion, exercising his power where he was assured of it. Even so he’d been offered one opportunity after another, and time and again he’d been denied. This most recent rejection had been the last straw.

His worn shoes clopped on the worn cobbles in the late, empty evening. They slowed, then halted, as he reached the dingy doorway of Number Four, Bright Street.

Jack didn’t bother to straighten his collars or smooth back his thinning hair before he rapped upon the door. The slattern who lived here didn’t deserve any effort on his part and likely wouldn’t appreciate it, anyway. Showing up at her door was effort enough.

The door opened. A few homey smells—of a fireplace, cooking, old flowers—assailed his nose and invaded for a moment the smoky, despairing fog that hung over the inaptly-named street. Jack felt briefly like a man coming home, a naval officer returning to the sanctuary of a hearth and welcome. But the feeling was fleeting. The fat, florid face of Polly Smith and the squall of whining children hit his eyes and ears, again reminding him of where he was and what his naval career had earned him.

"Oh, it’s you." Polly’s coarse syllables served to dispel the last illusion of a comfortable household.

"Happy to see me as always, are you, Polly?"

"You’re always welcome ‘ere, Jack. That’s why you come, ain’t it?" With a resigned grimace, Polly opened the door a bit wider to allow Jack entrance.

"Keep your philosophizing to yourself, woman."

"I does what I likes," Polly said, ignoring his warning as he pushed past her. "As do you. Don’t know why you ain’t found another woman, Jack. You’re an officer in His Majesty’s Navy, ain’t you? And a lit’rary gennulman and all."

Jack only snorted in reply. If he’d wanted to, he could have told Polly about the solicitors’ and tradesmen’s daughters he’d been introduced to when he was acting lieutenant. He could have told her how these girls terrified him with their pert manners and neat clothing and scathing eyes. But he did not.

He merely stalked into the small sitting room and fell into a worn, stuffed chair. The rips in the upholstery had been fastidiously mended, but the stuffing was sadly misdistributed. Jack adjusted himself to try and find a comfortable position, then gave up and glared about him.

The room was dark, illuminated only by a few smoking tallow candles. A small coal fire sputtered in a grate across from him. There were no children in sight, but their mewling and whining carried from other rooms through the thin walls. He watched as Polly, with her coarse round face and round bottom and enormous bosoms, set the latch on the door and shambled over to take his coat. She put it away and seated herself in a wooden chair before the fire, then rested her hands on her stomach and turned a calm gaze upon him. A few sweaty strands of hair escaped her mobcap. They glinted a brassy blonde in the flickering of the coals.

She made to reach for some sewing at her side, then hesitated. As she leaned, her fat breasts nearly fell out of her faded blue gown. "Dinner’s mostly put away. ‘Ave you eaten?"

"Yes," he answered, turning his eyes away from the sight of her chest, and hating himself for the twinge at his groin. It was short work to find another outlet for his frustrations. "Can’t you quiet those damned children?"

"As you wish," Polly said, then put a work-reddened hand about her mouth. "John! John! Get in here, sharpish!"

"No need to call him," Jack mumbled, suddenly uncomfortable in other ways he could not describe.

"Might as well see him as not," Polly said in her ever-apathetic voice, then yelled again. "John!"

A side door creaked open and a boy of about nine entered. He had pale blue eyes and yellow hair. He looked like any other street urchin, but cleaner than most. His clothing had been mended as neatly as the chair upon which Jack sat.

The boy stopped short upon seeing Jack. He lowered his eyes and clasped his small hands at his back.

"John, you remember Mr. Simpson."

"Yes mum." The boy raised blue eyes again, this time curious, to look at their guest. "The Navy lieutenant, is that right, sir?"

Not anymore, thought Jack, but didn’t voice it aloud. He wasn’t sure he wanted to, just yet, to these people. "Mmm," he finally assented, inclining his head in a sardonic gesture which would surely be lost on the boy.

It was. The child rocked on his heels, mouth turning up slightly at the prospect of a visiting naval officer. "Are you going to war, sir?"

"Like as not," Jack allowed, and shifted again in the lumpy chair. He couldn’t stand the boy’s curious, bright eyes upon him, marking him, recognizing him. He lost what little patience he’d mustered, and scowled. "Out with you."

Polly sighed. "Keeps your brothers and sisters, quiet, d’ye hear, whiles I entertain our guest?"

"Yes’m." His excitement dimmed, the boy nodded and scrambled out the door.

"Don’t care for children," Jack said, once they were alone again. With the end of his patience his dam of restraint had broken somehow, and he continued. "The so-called men on the ships. They’re all children, and I don’t care for them, either. Snotty little scum. All of them, especially that pretty face Archie Kennedy. They all think they know something because of who their fathers are, and they know nothing. No. I despise them all."

"Hmph." Polly seemed to accept this tirade with equanimity. She picked up her cloth and thread and began to sew, eyes squinting in the dim light at her small stitches. "Never did care for anyone, did you Jack? Why should you start now?"

"Stupid bitch! I send you a few shillings every month, don’t I? Don’t I?"

Polly sighed. "Yes, you does, Jack."

"Well, you can stop counting on it. My promotion was disallowed. And I think now I will keep my midshipman’s pay for myself. You can dun your children’s fathers for your bread."

Polly glared and shook her needle at him. "I does well enough with my sewing. I keeps my children fed and clothes on their backs."

"You’d need more than seamstressing for that," Jack sneered.

"Not so," Polly said, then seemed to lose her momentary anger. "I’m a good seamstress."

"You’d earn more doing things you’re better at." Once Jack had said it, he felt the arousal biting at his belly again. This time he did not try to suppress it. He could feel his face flushing. He stared at her.

Polly glanced up from her sewing. A small grin crossed her lips, and if it was somewhat resigned, Jack chose to ignore it. She stood, smoothing down her dress, then stretched out a pudgy hand. "Won’t you come into the other room, sir?"

Jack was in no mood for her games, though he stood and took her wrist, following her as she opened another door that led to a tiny bedroom with a tiny bed. An odd yet familiar lust tore through him again the sight of it and the old-flower smell of her room, and he was already painfully hard by the time she halted with her calves against the thin mattress.

Jack didn’t speak as she plopped her rear onto the bed and reached out her deft seamstress’s fingers to pull at the ties to his breeches. He had nothing to say. He couldn’t be courtly to her, couldn’t explain why she excited him so, with her fat curves and her coarse manner and the hint of barely-constrained poverty that hung about her. He only knew that this was what worked for him—the no-nonsense fingers and the willingness of women like Polly Smith. Women who had to be asked for their favors made him angry, impotent.

Polly was everything he’d remembered. She pulled down his trousers and clasped his genitals, her fingernails curling around the back and scratching the sensitive skin. Her other hand brushed, businesslike, up and down the length of his stiffened cock.

"Now who’s happy to see me, Jack?"

"Shut up," he said, almost out of rote and without his earlier mean conviction. On impulse he tore off her mobcap, taking a strange comfort in the sight of her frizzy, dyed masses of hair.

"As you will." Polly gave his erection another painful grasp, then released it to reach around to the back of her gown. After a few grunting movements her massive breasts fell free from the tight blue fabric.

Jack surged forward, the sight of the resplendent flesh a magnet to his hot, aching skin. Her hands clasped his buttocks and she squeezed. The tight movements rasped his erection with an almost transcendent pain against her breastbone.

But after a few moments she pulled away to recline her form against the bed, as if she had other ideas about tonight’s activity. Jack didn’t much care. When she pulled up her gown and spread her thighs, the sight of her dimpled white, bowed knees and the patch of dark hair between them soon reasserted his lust.

Jack fell atop her and fumbled briefly at her breasts, kneading the soft skin in his fingers, then shoved his cock inside her without other ceremony. The tight heat pulled at him, and he closed his eyes to concentrate on the rhythmic motion, the in and out, in and out, that was almost like work but was required for release.

She didn’t make much noise but Jack cared not. No pretense was necessary, only the availability of her body for his needs. It was good, he had to admit, to be inside a woman. Perhaps other things and the anger were better but for now he could allow some slight appreciation for her slick grip on his cock and the large, soft belly that cushioned every thrust.

A few minutes brought the sweat that came with all work, forming at his neck and in the crack of his buttocks to sting him, but soon the heavy pain clenched at his thighs and he could hardly move, except for a few final thrusts. Then his lust and his seed were torn from him. He gasped once and fell atop her, burrowing into the mountains of her flesh.

Once sated, Jack was weak in both body in mind. His acrimony had oddly vanished, to be replaced with a strange emptiness and newly-discovered sagacity. With a capricious thought he decided that perhaps the moment called for some small verbal offering.

"Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place," he whispered.

"You’re not impressing me, Jack," she mumbled. "That’s from the Bible, it is. Even I goes to church."

"Shut up," he said, but again without conviction. He closed his eyes against the pillow of her breast. It came to him at last, in that moment of weakness and insight—the reason for his lack of success in the Navy, his desire for women like Polly Smith. Now he knew it he could accept it.

In future he would try harder. He would learn. He would show all the snot-faced boys, the Archie Kennedys of the world, just how far a man like Jack Simpson could go when he set his mind to it. With this filling his thoughts, Jack rolled to the side of the bed, squeezing himself between Polly and the wall. He laughed.

A few hours of untender ministrations and fitful sleep later, Jack let himself from Polly’s house, pulling his collars again against the morning’s unremitting fog. Bright Street was beginning to come to life despite the weather. Hawkers called their wares, clerics their Saturday sermons.

Jack’s stomach rumbled. Despite all good intentions he’d not wanted to remain for breakfast, had not wanted to face that whining miscellany of children. But a quick check of his pockets revealed that very little was left of his lieutenant’s pay. He would save his few coins for extra rum rations on the ship. He would need them.

He waved off the meat-pie vendor, but didn’t see the man come up on his other side.

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent!" The street-penny preacher waved a Bible at Jack, and held out a cupped hand.

The moment froze. Jack forgot all the knowledge gleaned in those few brief hours at Polly’s. The weakness vanished, spewing from his nose with an exhaled breath.

Jack swung a tightly-bunched fist. He felt an almost sexual pleasure at the crack of his knuckles against the preacher’s jaw, and an almost spiritual elation as the man spat blood and tumbled to the cobbled street. The gasps of the onlookers were music to his ears.

"Goddamn them all," he said aloud to no one, and wended his way to Justinian.