Rum, Will had decided, was an acquired taste. It was, quite honestly, the most bloody awful drink in the world.

Or so he had thought at first.

He had admittedly known little about spirits. He hadn’t done much drinking, but when he had indulged, it had been a good ale. He had had wine on occasion, especially in those few months as Elizabeth’s fiancée, and he neither liked it nor disliked it. It was just another drink. A different flavor. It was more expensive, and from what Will could tell, for no real reason other than the class it afforded.

Rum, now. Rum was shocking. Bittersweet and cloying and almost acidic. It burned either your throat or your stomach, depending on how quickly you swallowed. It also, Will soon discovered, went to your head shockingly fast. Jack was a remarkable man to be able to walk as crooked a line as he did. It was amazing that he could walk at all, with what he drank.

But Jack’s drinking never was and never would be a problem. He drank to drink. That’s all. It didn’t made him angry or violent, as it was wont to do in some men. It didn’t make him more lecherous, because only God knew how that could be possible. It made his accent thicken and his eyebrows waggle with disarming irregularity. Nothing that was harmful. It was amusing, and sexy, and Will wouldn’t have made Jack change. It did grow on you. As all vices do.

As for rum, Will had been moved from distaste to dislike to toleration to acceptance to... well, to almost actually liking it. After all, there was the rum that Jack’s lips and mouth would forever taste of, the rum that his mustache was inevitably steeped in, the rum that fell onto his clothes and chest and almost any other place you could think off. Will had begun to associate the taste of rum with the taste of Jack. So yes, rum was an acquired taste. But then again, many things are.

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