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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[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Good," Jack said decisively. "Because the minute you start guessing me? We've got a problem here."

Bravado again, of course, because Jack was fully aware of all people, Reinette was certainly rather adept at scratching beneath that surface and seeing what was underneath. She could see what was underneath, and Jack would hate that with most people, but for some reason... not with her. With her, he was glad of it.

He slid to the side on the bed, lying next to her instead, with one hand reached out and placed gently against her stomach.

"Because if you knew what was coming," he said, continuing his sentiment. "I'd stop being interesting."

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Reinette shifted slightly, to allow Jack more room within the bed. As she did so her expression reflected something like approval at the decisive nature of his tone.

"Guessing, Jack," she mused, noting the way his hand rested on her stomach. "I will remember that." It was strange, the slight feeling of his weight there. She might not even feel it if her corsets had been properly in place. Truthfully she might not be able to lie like this at all.

"You want me to agree, I think. I say that you are interesting. To perhaps even admit that always were."

Reinette fell silent but there was something there, still sitting warm on her tongue. More words, she expected. She shared them, her eyes making a study of Jack's ceiling.

"Very well Jack," she admitted. "You were always interesting. There was not a single moment you were not."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack looked more than a little like the cat that got the cream.

"Oh was I now?" he said with a full of himself smirk and a sparkle in his eyes. "I'll remember that one, you know. Not letting you forget that. Maybe I'll even get a tshirt printed 'Jack Harkness is interesting' what do you think? Think I'd look good?"

He watched her then, a wide smile on his face, and his hand lifted to her jaw, holding her chin between his thumb and forefinger.

"Yeah, well you're not too bad yourself, kid," he said softly.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

She could quite literally feel the smugness in his expression. It was coming off Jack in waves. Reinette did not have to look at him to see it, and so her gaze remained trained overhead.

This was not quite admitting she was wrong. But it was very close.

"Will it be blue, you think? Your shirt? I will have to think on that."

It was only after a moment of resistance, in allowing herself to fully comprehend the card that had just been played -- even if it had always been unspoken -- that Reinette allowed Jack's hand to guide her chin.

Her eyebrow arched.

"Kid?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Like there's any other colour!" Jack said with all the seriousness he could muster. He shot her a small wink and smiled.

He felt relaxed, and really, that was saying quite a lot. He hadn't truly felt so in a very long time.

"What?" he asked, smirking slightly. "I'm old, you're a kid compared to me, you know."

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Reinette knew it bordered on ridiculus, objecting to the precise thing that Jack was so talented in making her feel.

Young.

It was one thing to be old, as Jack asserted. It was another to feel it.

"If I am a child," she pointed out, acknowledging their closeness in the bed. "This particular arrangement is perhaps not all that is proper."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack let out a small laugh. In truth, she had quite the point, but then being someone like Jack, age really didn't matter.

"Oh I know," he said, somewhat salaciously.

He leaned in towards her ear and whispered quietly, "Who'd want proper?"

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

His breath was warm against her ear. It was something that Reinette was constantly aware of. Jack's warmth. Though she had come to discover they shared a great deal, in that they could not be more different.

When he spoke Jack disturbed lose hairs around her face, and she smiled at the odd, gentle sensation.

She tilted her face towards his, somehow surprised by how close that brought them. Reinette was only able to view Jack's features in parts now, broken from the whole but not at all unappealing.

There was more warmth.

"I will have you know I can be extremely proper."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack's smile widened. He didn't move, but his eyes shifted, moving over her features, close as they were.

"Oh I've no doubt of that," he said quietly, his voice laced with a twinge of something that hadn't been there for a year.

"You're a lady, after all. A very proper lady. Should I expect anything less?" he whispered quieter, "I never would."

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

"That I am."

There was something odd in her voice. Perhaps merely the way Reinette enjoyed how the vowels sat in her mouth. Or perhaps something else. Older and deeper and reflecting on a focused childhood and years of surviving at court. Or perhaps? She was teasing him.

"But you, sir, are no gentleman." Her smile tilted. She could feel the aftereffects of the change in how her breath not sat altered between them. "You have been neglectful."

What happened next took a great deal of skill on Reinette's part. Very nearly all of it, truthfully. Because there was the bed, which she reclined on. Then the room on the other side.

And Jack, of course, between.

But she slipped between and around him navigating the space until she could one again stand. If on occasion they were wont to touch? Well, it really was unavoidable. Reinette turned to survey the scenery.

"You promised to show me your room."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Oh Reinette really was very clever, wasn't she? And more than that, Jack was aware of it. He was so aware of how she moved and how she shifted and how her hand touched here and there and discreet in such a way that it could never truly have been accidental. He understood how it all worked, and he could appreciate the process, as well as indulge in it.

Because more than anything, that was most certainly what he was doing; indulging.

He turned on the bed, moving so he was facing the other way, looking at her again as she stood. One arm shifted out, a little in her direction, almost like reaching, and intentional or not? He made nothing of it. If he even noticed it himself.

"My room," he said, with a light gesture of that hand that had so recently reached. "There," a smile, "you've seen it."

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Reinette arched an eyebrow at the well played use of Jack's arm. To the outside eye it was merely -- if poorly -- used now to give a perfunctory tour of his room. But there was something else there, of course. That unspoken way in which his hand reached that was meant to make a person question. If he was actually reaching for them. What the outcome might be if one reached that particular destination.

Well done, Jack.

Not that she would say as much aloud.

"Have I really?"

She turned and began to walk the perimeter of the room. Even as she took in the near perfect view from his window her fingers were tracing over the lines of the neatly organized dressed just as they might travel over skin.

"There is nothing you have missed?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack observed her. He observed her as she walked and as she moved. He felt almost like he could see her in one of her gowns, and he wondered then if she missed it; the way she walked seemingly built for it. Such elegance and grace.

His eyes drifted, and from her form to her arm and her fingertips and the delicacy with which they moved. It switched things in his mind, and he wondered if that was intentional on her part. Wondered, and then silently chided himself for doing so. Of course it was. There was nothing in this that was ever unintentional.

It caused him need to shift a little on the bed.

"Nothing that matters," he said simply, eyes on hers again. Unfaltering, unwavering.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Reinette continued her walk as formally as one might walk the perimeter of a ball room. Her fingers continued to graze the dresser and across a stuffed but serviceable chair until she reached the window itself.

She pressed one palm full against the pane of glass, unable to help but note how it was clear and beautifully made. The warmth of the day cut through the glass and into her skin. She did this often in the water, allowing the sun to heat her. She did not need it now, but enjoyed the result all the same.

Reinette turned to face Jack again, fully taking in where he still rested on the bed. She found she could not help but smile. Her fingers gripped the window sill behind her slightly, the only thing not perfect in her posture.

"Are you certain?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

As he watched her in the afternoon light that filtered through the window, Jack was struck by just how beautiful she was. That, and how, despite everything, just how lucky he was to be able to count himself as someone that has known her.

"You look beautiful," he said, voicing his thought in a gentle whisper. He thought then, that he wished he could paint her, he wished it was a skill he had, to capture that moment; and capture her in that moment. A camera just wouldn't do.

"Certain enough," he said as a delayed reaction to her question. "See for yourself if you don't believe me."

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

At his words Reinette faltered, her expression of confidence at the game they had quietly slipped into playing fading slightly. It had felt like silk against her skin. This was something else. More of Jack's modern clothes and strange fabrics.

They were genuine, his words. And she did not know quite what to do with them.

Reinette struggled to right herself, bringing her hands away from the window to hold between them.

"It is because I washed the ice cream away."

Jack had said she looked beautiful. What was unsaid was that he made her feel beautiful is a way Reinette once thought lost. She did not know if she had ever properly expressed that to him. She did not know if she was capable of it.

"I see," was what she managed in that sentiment's place, her gaze pointedly on Jack and not on the room. "And I am certain."

That said, Reinette moved from the window to open the closet door that rested against the next wall.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Oh yeah," Jack said with a nod, "that must be it."

It wasn't, of course, he (and he was sure she too) were under no real illusion of that. Ice cream or not, binbag or not. He thought the same.

If he noticed the shift in her, he didn't remark on it, nor would he. He understood more than many feeling shaken from your foundations. He had been exactly that for so long, it was only now he was finally growing new roots.

He didn't, however, prepare for her to follow through on his offer to take a look herself, and so when she opened the wardrobe door, he was a moment or two behind.

"Nothing interesting in there," he said, but the door was already open.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

As the door opened Reinette was still privately chiding herself for her rather heavy handed reaction to Jack's compliment. It had not been even remotely skillfully done. The swinging of the door his her sigh.

What followed was silence.

Through the quiet Reinette was nearly still, taking in the sight before her. Bluer than the outside sky, fading from light to dark. And then? The coats. All of them smelling of the man, of course, she could not help but note. Did he even launder them? Or was indelibly a part of the fabric.

Just as quietly Reinette shut the door, her movements measured and precise.

She did not turn around.

"Well, if one knows what works for oneself," she finally mused. "It would be foolish to do otherwise."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack's expression quickly changed. It turned to a smile, and the smile to a laugh.

"What can I say?" he said, "In my usual line of work they tend to need replacing pretty often."

He shifted on the bed, leaning up on one arm.

"And to think the first day I met you I let you dress me up in something else," he said, raising an eyebrow.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Her face still towards the closet Reinette heard Jack's laugh and smiled.

"Well, I suppose it is best to be prepared. I can hardly argue that."

Finally she turned, her attention once again on Jack. Except that was not precisely true. Her attention had been his through her entire exploration. Now it was just openly so.

"And yes," Reinette agreed briskly. "Of course I did. You were dirty."

Still her gaze traveled backwards to the memory before finding Jack again.

"And now you have dressed me. Surely we are even." And now it was her turn to laugh, something much less calculated than before. "No, not dress I suppose. That is not your particular skill. You at least kindly provided the clothing?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Dirty?" Jack said, incredulous. "Hey I was not dirty."

He smirked at her and again moved on the bed, a shift, and a lean up against his elbow.

"And hey, I could dress, I just prefer doing the opposite. Come on, can you blame me?" He smirked "Madame."

Watching her for just a moment, he tapped his hand against the edge of the bed.

"C'mere." Not part of the game. Not precise or planned. Just a simple request.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

"There was nearly have a tree in your hair Jack. You were dirty."

There was no room for argument in her tone.

Reinette did not so much watch Jack on the bed as watch how the sheets rippled and shifted with him. The aftermath of his impact.

"Titles now, Jack?" She could not help but laugh again softly at his teasing return. "So formal of you."

Her eyebrow again arched at Jack's request, because for all its brevity it still did feel like one. Which was perhaps why she chose to answer it. From the side of the bed she looked down at him.

"I am not entirely certain what you just said, Jack. I do hope that I translated correctly."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Well I can't help if twigs getting in the way of me watching pretty French girls, can I?" he said, teasing all too obviously.

He laughed again. "Hey less of the Jack. It's Captain to you."

More teasing of course. No question of that.

"Mm so do I," he said, and he slid over to her a little, moving in her direction and at the same time slipping up onto his knees so that when closer, he could be face to face.

"How about we test your comprehension skills?"

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Reinette made a fine show of being indigent.

Girl, Jack? Really?" She found his gaze as Jack shifted his place on the bed, his face again close enough that she could only read his features in parts.

"No, I do not believe I shall call you Captain at all."

Without her familiar skirts to rest on Reinette's hands fond themselves lightly clasped together in front of her. She felt herself smile at the challenge.

"If you must, Jack. I think you will find I am extremely educated."