for ambitious_woman The Bastille

[quitehomoerotic]

Relaxed.

Relaxed was something Jack Harkness rarely felt. In fact the concept of relaxation seemed an alien one to him. But yet here he was, that was how he felt. The muscles in his body were looser than they'd felt in far too long, and pains that had held there through stress and worry had, at least for now, melted away to nothingness.

It was morning, and he opened his eyes to a world he'd come to find he liked. A place that while it was nowhere that he belonged, he'd been surprised to discover that there was a space for him. A welcoming space with a welcoming face. He wasn't sure if it was something he deserved but for once, for a time, he wasn't going to worry about that.

When he woke, beside him he saw Reinette sound asleep. It made him smile and he pressed a delicate and small kiss to the skin at her shoulder. He stayed there a moment, just smiling and watching, and he whispered to her, "I'll be right back."

And so he rose from the bed. His intent was to find food. He'd take a morning walk, just a short one in the pleasant summer morning that he could see filtering through beyond the window, and then he'd venture to the kitchens and procure themselves something.

His clothes were near, and he dressed in them, item by item and then his coat (as if he'd go anywhere without it), and out into the corridors and halls of Versailles he went.

He wasn't on his guard, of course, why should he be? Short of clockwork what need he worry about right now? And really, should he encounter clockwork, he'd merely turn it off. No, here he felt happy, he felt safe, and so that guard he had learnt to keep up, was down.

And so it was his downfall.

He found his way to the rear gardens, nodding politely to footmen on his way (people that usually he made no effort to even acknowledge). But they had noticed him. In fact they had noticed him long before he noticed them. They had been noticing him for quite some time. They had noticed him in gardens and they had noticed him behind closed doors. And Jack had no idea.

And he wasn't prepared.

Entirely unprepared for the troupe of guards that met him in the gardens. It was as though they had been waiting, as though they had sought him out (and they had, of course). And as strong as Jack could be, he was not prepared, and so he could do nothing when he was met with a blow to the head, and another blow that knocked him to the ground. Another and another until he felt metal shackles on his wrists held behind his back and a tear of fabric between his lips to quiet his shouts.

And he was taken away.

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[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

At his assurance, Reinette felt herself ease slightly. Falling back into something just past sleep yet not entirely away. It was not a luxury she normally allowed herself. There was simple too much to be done and too many appearances that it was crucial she maintain. In the past year, her pace had only grown more frantic.

Even now her mind was collecting and reviewing what would be required of her in that day. Except that no, this was not France. Nor was this her home. And because of that she would have to rely on Jack for certain things, and what she could take on would be limited. It was both a struggle and a relief.

She was not certain which resonated more.

Reinette closed her eyes and when she opened them the sleep was fully pushed away.

"I would like that," the words came soft, but precisely. "Though if they are much like the fashions you procured before, I cannot imagine 'we' shall be needed. Despite your aspirations to be a lady's maid. I should be able to handle them on my own."

Reinette did not point out the amount of time she spent staring at the undergarments he provided for London, confused but refusing to ask for Jack's aide. It was neither here nor there in her mind.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Hey!" Jack said, all mock affronted. "I'd make a great maid. Especially a French one. You know I've probably got one of those outfits somewhere..."

He shot her a wink, and he was sounding a little more like himself. It may have not been entirely genuine, but at least the lie was worn more easily. A step closer to it becoming truth.

"And actually, I got you plenty," he said, and he gestured to the ridiculous number of bags piled up against the side of the nearby armchair.

"Bit of everything. You pick."

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

"And just what sort of outfit is that?"

Something in Jack's tone suggested to Reinette there was a strong possibility she did not wish to know, and so even before he could answer she was rearranging the robe where it was gathered as she slept and brought herself to sit and then stand.

She was somewhat taken aback by the amount of bags. And she was a woman accustomed to owning a great deal of clothing.

"So I see."

Reinette began to gather the bags by their various handles, but even then she could only hold half at best.

"This may take a moment."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Oh wouldn't you like to know," he said with an over-dramatic wiggle of the eyebrows.

He shifted as she did, stepping up and over, and just as she reached for the bags, he reached for some too. He could be chivalrous. Sometimes.

That, of course, and he wanted to feel he had a use again.

"Here, let me," he said, scooping up more than he could really manage, just to prove a point to himself. He took the bags, and carried them into the bedroom.

"There's a bit of everything. Must be something you like in there."

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

It occurred to Reinette that she held at best a third of the bags that Jack did. And even then it did not seem quite that. She sent him a sharp glance, but did not comment on the matter, choosing instead to follow him into the bedroom.

Still scattered with various oddities the only entirely free space was the bed, and so Reinette deposited the many colored bags there before turning her attention to Jack once more.

She very nearly said thank you before recalling their conversation the evening before.

"I have no doubt that is true." She glanced around again, briefly before ger gaze tilted towards his. "How could I not?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Mirroring her, Jack dropped the bags down to the bed before smacking his hands together, somewhat triumphantly.

He didn't leave the room after that though. Instead he leant himself against a wall, arms crossed over his chest.

"You sure I can't watch?" he asked, smirking slightly. It was like he was trying on his own clothes; seeing how they fit and if he could wear them as well as he hoped.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Reinette did not move from where she stood, the brightly colored bags around her creating the suggestion of an oddly assembled garden. But she did smile, and almost dangerous tilt to her mouth.

"Are you certain that is all you would do?"

The smile tasted strange on its inception. Not because she feared it no longer suited her, that she was somehow changed. Rather it had been a long, long time since she had shared it with anyone. Something just past a year.

But then, because Jack could think she was in any way implying something else?

"After all these are now considered my clothes, are they not? And we must consider your personal vendetta against my wardrobe. I would hate to see them damaged so soon."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"No," came Jack's response. One word, singular and laced with an intent (or at least a reach of one).

It was hardly suave or smooth, and nor was his next move, but it was reaching. Him reaching, the need to be himself and to prove to himself and the world that he could be.

Because that's what his whole day had been: proving. Proving he could go out. Proving he could do all the normal things he knew he was fully capable of. And proving now, he could be 'Captain Jack Harkness'.

But he wasn't there yet. He wasn't there yet, but he wouldn't listen.

He took a step over, and another, standing behind her so that the back of her robe touched against him. His hands moved out, touched her waist. It wasn't unpractised or anything but smart. But it was imprecise. Not as natural as he could be.

"How about I help you with that," he said, his fingers curling around the towelling rope wrapped around the robe.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

"No," Reinette echoed, fully prepared to continue to trade the easy word. She had just moved to examine the first bag when she was aware of noise and movement behind her, and the feel of Jack's body and the length of him pressed against her back. For a moment she closed her eyes. This was a part of her life that had been allowed to fall dormant in the time after Jack left. Because initially, that was precisely how it seemed. He had left for, how had she said?

A grand adventure.

She felt no need to take someone to her bed to prove a point. It was not that way between them. So that in the end month was layered onto month and the last time anyone had been so close to her? Other than Louis' single fumbled attempt at a physical renewal of their relationship some ten months before was the night that followed Jack's day.

"Intriguing, because that does not feel like no, Jack. It feels like yes."

She had not said his name enough, she thought. Since coming here. She needed to say it more. He needed to hear.

And so she was at a crossroads. To reject him now would be detrimental. Reinette knew that. To fall into it without questions could all too easily be read as false, or pity. She would have to be natural, even if this necessarily was not.

The truth would have to be somewhere in between. Reinette turned slowly, white fabric catching where he stood close.

Her fingers reached to splay over his own where he held part of the robe.

"Just one bit of fabric. Hardly a corset. I can manage, I think."

Her gaze flickered upwards.

"What else might you help me with?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

He could kiss her, he thought. He could lean in and kiss her. Kiss her lips or her neck and put the demand and the command and the 'Captain' into it.

But this was Reinette. And as she looked at him, she looked at him. It was very nearly unsettling.

He was reminded, for a moment, of a time in a hotel in wartime London. He was there then, for a second, shaken from his stance now and then both times at the same time.

And then he was here.

Should he back down? Realise he made a mistake. Too heavy handed. And he didn't know how not to be. No-- no that wasn't right. He did know how not to be, but he just wasn't being. He wasn't there yet.

But he wanted to be, and that was a good sign, wasn't it?

He wanted to be, but he knew too she deserved more respect than he'd shown her in that movement. Maybe if she'd been anyone else, he wouldn't have cared. Maybe he could have used someone else as a tool, a way of bringing himself forth.

Not her, she wasn't that.

And so his head ducked down a little, and his voice spoke soft and apologetic.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have."

He faltered.

But it was worth noting: he hadn't moved back.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

She watched him, and she ached.

Physically ached, if not in the way that he did. But that was it, was it not? She knew that ache, Jack's ache, intimately. To be lost somewhere within one's body. To have it never fully do as you would have it. To always battle that sense of loneliness not because you are standing in a world of strangers but lost within one.

And all the while it is yourself. And all the while you cannot even manage a proper conversation because the words never quite meet. It never fully connects. And the world feels colder still.

It was never warm, that feeling. She could feel it spreading to her core.

Still she traveled carefully, but precisely. Her eyes lever left the space where Jack's would be when he finally looked up again. Of course he did not realize that in bringing his head downward only brought his face that much closer to his own. Her chin tilted slightly, so slightly. To remind him of that fact.

And the palm of her hand slipped further up Jack's arm. Past the touch that was his into one that was entirely her own. And that was all she would allow. Could allow.

Her voice carried low.

"Have you done something, Jack?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

It was frustrating to see ones self as if through a mirror and watch how the reflection seemed somehow wrong. He could see how it should be, and how he wanted to be, but strive as he might he felt like he was reaching for something just out of grasp. Held only inches away, but his fingers could do little more than brush it.

"I don't know," he said to her in a quiet whisper.

"I want-- I need---" but what did he need? He couldn't say. It didn't make him feel strong, any of this. And he wanted to feel strong. He wanted to feel like himself.

He repeated again.

"I don't know."

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

"Jack."

Reinette repeated his name again, with the same quiet purpose. She shifted slightly, as well, within the space they occupied. To remain still for too long would perhaps place a challenge that did not need to be there. The half step and the measured breath could see your to your destination as surely as two brisk strides across the room. It was her way of reminding him.

There were a great many things she could say then. That is all right to sense a change. To be altered in some fashion. It would never be the journey she would have wished for him, never that. But she was a different person than the woman that initially met Jack Harkness. He just needed to know himself again.

Reinette eschewed all that for something that was far more direct.

And yet somehow less so.

"Must we know?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Yes," came his answer, almost immediately. Emphatically. Yes. He needed to know. He needed to know who he was.

"You know that's the worst thing," he said. "Of all of it. All those months. I can change myself. Like the click of my fingers and I can look like I should. I can sound like me and stand like me but I'm not--" he trailed, huff slightly.

"I can make people believe it," he said, as though that was explanation enough. He had a feeling to her it would be.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

"But you cannot make yourself believe it," she finished carefully but without any apology. To pretend that she was unaware of what he referred to would be disrespectful to what Jack was going through. There was far too much honesty between them.

And honesty would remain. She would not coax Jack into some semblance of how he felt he should be through placating words and falsehoods. It was far too likely to fail him later.

"So you snap your fingers, and you wish to be Jack again?" Her brow knitted slighted as Reinette's gaze moved over Jack in a gentle caress. "Of course it is not that simple. You are not that simple. How could you be?"

Something in her posture softened slightly. It might be her words. In might be the memory of their last day in the labyrinth. It might simply be Jack, and how she cared for him.

"We discussed this, do you remember? There is more to you than that."

Reinette smiled up at him.

"Do not worry on where you are not but see where you will be. Sort in through. Find your way. That is what this place is for, is it not? Why we are here?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Careful," he said and tried to smile, "talk like that and you'll damage my hard earned reputation."

His reputation, of course, as something of a heartless man. He'd been told he was that. But he wasn't. Far from it.

"Funny," he said, "sometimes all you've got is time, but you don't want it. And you know for a guy that's done pretty much nothing but waiting, I can be pretty impatient. I just..." he shook his head. He didn't do vulnerable well, and he certainly didn't do talking about it.

So he changed the subject.

"We'll go out," he said decisively. "You get dressed and we'll go out."

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

For Jack, of late, he spoke a great deal. There were a great many words and the filled the space between them. But they carried very little weight. At the very least in the beginning, and then the end.

But as for what sat between? Reinette's gaze darkened slightly. She did not even address his command, and an attempt to alter the course of their conversation. She simply would not have that.

"Waiting, Jack? I told you, quite clearly, the day you kept company with a tree and I asked that you stay. There is only one rule. We do not wait."

Her expression softened then, the tightness in her features finally falling away and if only for a moment briefly showing precisely, exactly how she felt.

Reinette's fingers moved to brush the of his hand. They curled there slightly before traveling across his wrist, past the place where fabric and skin met, the movement careful and measured. To his arm. His shoulder. Briefly brushing more skin exposed at his neck before her hand came to rest on his check, thumb tracing the planes there.

"We might move slowly. So slowly that I times we still feel irritatingly still. But we are still moving. And we do get there, all the same."

She searched for his eyes to see if he understood.

"Jack."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack let out a somewhat frustrated breath. Oh yes he knew what had been said, but that didn't mean he ever followed what he himself agreed to.

He watched her, and then when her hand moved he watched that. His eyes fell to her fingers and followed as they moved over skin and fabric and skin once again. He let out a shaky breath as she did it. There was awareness there, and a little more than that. Something inside, not quite definable.

"But sitting and waiting for it to happen doesn't help it along," he pressed. "There's only one person who can do it and that's me. And I have to."

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Reinette closed her eyes briefly, the tilt of her chin conceding his point. She understood Jack's frustrations, perhaps even more than he fully suspected. It was one of the few things she had still kept somewhat guarded. It was painfully difficult to be lost within one's own body.

The angle of her chin sharpened lightly as she withdrew her hand, though not without one long, lingering brush of her thumb.

"All right, then. All right. But I do think Jack, sometimes we are meant to linger in the discomfort. It pushes us. Because who we are, the people that we are. It is not always easy. So it is only logical that reaching there again should not be either. As long as we are walking somewhere, Jack? And not running? Then by all means I will change and we can go."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"I've lingered long enough," he said, "14 months and that's plenty. I'm done with that, and I won't sit around and wait for things to change. I'll change them. Me."

He nodded, as if it added emphasis to his words, punctuated them somehow, and he shifted his hands to his hips.

"Oh we're not running," he said, "nor are we walking. I'm driving."

There was a glint of a smile then. "Trust me, you'll love this."

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Reinette's gaze flickered to Jack's hips as his hands settled there, and as her eyes returned to his face she felt herself smiling. It was answer enough. Even without his words.

It was enough.

"How promising," she conceded. "But you will not hold it against me if I form my own opinion? It is a rather difficult habit of mine."

Her eyes shifted to the bags, many and varied.

"And I really should see about getting dressed then." She glanced at the door. "It should not take long, I think."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Hold it against her? "I might," he responded, ever such a smile on his face. "If you're lucky," he added, in a whisper. His tone enough showed he was referring to something quite different to that which she were.

Still trying, of course. But a little more natural. Slightly closer.

He looked back to the door. "Guess you want privacy for that huh?" he said, faking disappointment, still teasing.

He smiled again.

"I'll be waiting."

And he turned and headed to the door, looking at her for just a moment before pulling the door shut behind him and going to wait on the couch.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

"Only lucky, Jack? That is what you want me to be?" Turning herself and her attention towards the bags Reinette found the old banter flowed in a way she might not have expected moments before. "Of all the things I might be in such a situation, I can think of a great many more that a far more intriguing."

There was a glance over her shoulder, a far too innocent smile.

"But if that is what you prefer? Of course. Lucky."

After Jack's departure Reinette turned her attention to the task at hand and could not help but be slightly overwhelmed. There were more colors and styles within the bag than outside them. A great many in fabrics and styles that were completely unknown to her.

In the end she settled on a dress. While it was still not what she was accustomed to, it at least harked to what she had already managed for London. A soft rose shade and made of prettily finished cotton it wrapped around her before tying neatly at one hip. Other than some embroidery against a finished collar, there were no other adornments.

Jack had been equally thorough with undergarments, and Reinette suspected he deliberately at least gave her some things she would find familiar. There were stockings again, the same style of belt from before. She chose those briskly as well as leather shoes with a small heel.

There might be hair pins somewhere in the bags still unexplored, but Reinette chose to keep her hair down in favor of time as she rejoined Jack in the other room.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack stalled in the doorway, just before leaving, and again, in that moment, entirely without realising it, he was Jack Harkness.

"Want you to be?" he asked, one eyebrow raise. "Reinette, you would be." He shot her a wink, all too knowing, and moved from the room.

He went then to the sofa, sat himself down while he waited. He clasped his hands together and then parted them again before again clasping them; fidgeting away.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see his coat. It was sitting there, abandoned and discarded at the other end of the sofa. He couldn't seem to stop looking at it.

He looked off in other directions, around the room and at spaces on the wall. But it just seemed to demand his attention, and he found himself looking back to it.

Looking back in fact until the urge became so strong that he stood and walked over to pick it up. He held it in his hands as if he were remembering the fabric, just as he was remembering himself.

He lifted it up a little, opened it slightly, but then the door opened, and like a little boy that might be caught doing something he ought not, he dropped it down and put his hands to his hips.

And he cleared his throat.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Reinette's mouth compressed slightly as she opened the door only be be greeted by the sight of Jack, his coat gathered in his arms. There was a rustle of sir meeting fabric and by it she knew it had dropped back to the sofa, but her gaze remained on the man before her.

Not his empty hands now filled -- or distracted -- with his own hips. Not his stance and the expression in his eyes.

Just Jack.

The whole of him.

Louis probably thought he was punishing him somehow, removing the man from something was was so much a part of him. But Reinette was glad of it now. Glad that it had not been with him. Damaged and most certainly by now destroyed.

It simply would not do.

Reinette chose not to comment on the matter at all, a very deliberate decision.

"Shall we?"