Never Close Our Eyes
Word Count: 3,432
Summary: Lacie couldn't hear anything in the halls; it must be later than she had thought. The whole castle was asleep. Except her. And maybe him.
Notes: Spoiler if you don't know who Lacie is. Other than that, was inspired by a little scene in Chapter 72, otherwise no spoilers.
Thunderheads have such an angry and threatening look to them, Lacie thought, with their dark bellies swollen with rain, and their faces bloated with lightning and night.
She watched the approaching storm from her seat at the base of a tree. The lake before her rippled against the increasing wind, signaling the coming storm. The breeze whipped her dark hair around her face. Through the dark strands, she watched the lightning dance amongst the black clouds.
"Lacie?" A voice said behind her.
She made herself go still, pretending to ignore his voice. It was easy to focus her mind on the treacherous thunder.
He came and knelt down beside her. "It's dangerous out here, you know?" Jack said. His braid had been tucked underneath his cloak.
She turned so that she could look at his green eyes and dazed smile.
"I know," she finally said, after a particularly loud thunder-clap; the kind that makes the ground shake beneath you. "But they never allow me to be this close to a lively storm, normally. I'm relishing in it. It's beautiful, isn't it?"
They watched as a lightning bolt hit its target a distance away.
"Beautiful in a deadly way, but beautiful nonetheless," Jack said, his eyes glazed over as he contemplated the storm. Lacie could hear the sound of rain in the trees.
"Oswald asked me to come and find you," Jack said, giving her that lopsided smile.
"What are you still doing here, anyway?" she asked as she took his offered hand. Jack normally would have gone back to whatever home he possessed outside of this castle by nightfall.
He shrugged, still smiling at her. "Oswald and Glen said that I could stay the night, just this once, because of the storm."
Said storm was getting ready to soak them to the bone if they didn't start moving.
They moved quickly through the well-trampled path that led to the pond. Lacie might have moved a bit more slowly if it had just been herself, but she felt a sense of urgency. Not from the onslaught of the storm, but from Jack. She believed it was because he didn't want her to get wet when it could be avoided.
The wind was colder than she had originally noticed, and it made shivers dance across her exposed skin. It wasn't long until she felt Jack's cloak settle onto her shoulders.
She gripped the material in her fists and had to fight the need to tear it off and feel the wind on her skin. When she looked back at him, he just gave her that slightly embarrassed and light smile. She couldn't help the mild tweak her lips gave back.
She turned her head forward and pulled the hood up when the rain started to come in a torrential downpour.
…
Lacie sat at her vanity as she dried off her hair. Even the cloak hadn't been able to withstand the amount of rain it soaked in from the last five minute dash they did to get to the doors of the castle. She might have been wet, but Jack had been saturated with water. He had looked like a drowned man, but had somehow still managed to smile at it, even though Oswald had been frowning about the fact that they had been running in a lightning storm.
Lacie had begun to believe that you could read anything that Jack was thinking by the way he was smiling. She had never seen someone with such a vast array of smiles.
Not that it was easy to tell what he was thinking behind that smile, because he could smile when he was dripping wet or in the face of a crisis. So in the end, it might not have been possible, but it left Lacie with one more feeling that she could understand him, even if in the end she was just fooling herself.
She was in a fresh shift, and her dress for dinner lay on the bed. It was a dark burgundy with cream accents.
She didn't want to go down to dinner. She wanted to stay here and watch the raging storm from her window, with the dangerous lightning and the cascading thunder.
The brush in her hand brought her back to current matters, though, and she went to working out the tangles the rainwater and towel had caused.
Starting from the bottom strands and working her way up until she was able to go through her damp hair with one, smooth motion.
She placed the brush back onto her vanity, and pushed herself out of the chair before her mind could change again. She started to slink into her dress, trying whatever ribbons and laces without the help of a maid.
Lacie had opened the drapes to her room even though the maid had shut them against the storm. She liked seeing the tempest outside her window. Whenever lightning would flash, her whole room would light up.
She moved quietly through the halls and staircases. Her feet were bare, but no one would be able to tell from the length of her dress.
Once in the dining room, she was slightly stunned to only see Glen and Oswald at the table.
She should truly just hold in the question. She shouldn't care as to Jack's whereabouts anyway. But after she was seated, she couldn't help the question slipping out.
"Where is Jack?" she said.
"He's retired to his room," Glen said, lazily twisting his spoon around in his soup. A loud rumble of thunder rippled through the dining room's high ceiling. Oswald was reading from a little book, completely ignoring his soup. The only indication that he had even noticed her arrival was that he had glanced up at her when she had come through the doorway.
Lacie only picked at her food through the meal. She couldn't help the indignant feel that overcame her as to Jack's absence. He would come and find her even with the dangerous oncoming storm, but wouldn't join her for dinner afterwards. Somehow the two didn't quite make sense in her head.
Dinner was over as quickly as it had begun, and Lacie returned to her room without much notice.
Inside the sanctuary of her room, she stripped off the dress and was again left in her white shift. It was made of out silk and yet she still felt stuffy in it. Instead of pulling it off and crawling into bed, she opened the window. The cold wind swept over her skin and instantly took the excess heat away. The rain peppered down on her, making her now-dry hair damp again and her shift started to become translucent from the amount of water it was taking in.
She adored listening to the thunder, and the lightning was more a feast to her eyes than the attractively done-up dinner she had eaten today.
She finally moved away from the window. The rain had made the woven rug she had been standing on squishy from the water. Her wet silk shift had been melded to her body. She didn't know how long she had been admiring the storm, but it had calmed down a bit from when she had first opened the window.
Lacie went to stand in the middle of her room. Everything had started to become more stifling again. As if it was closing in on her.
She walked to her door and placed her head against the polished wood. She couldn't hear anything in the halls. It must be later than she had thought. The servants were asleep. The whole castle was asleep. Except her.
And maybe him.
…
She opened her door and closed it carefully behind her. She didn't have to worry about walking too quietly, because the thunder covered her footsteps. The cold stone felt good on her bare feet.
She treaded through the corridors, ignoring the fact that she didn't know what room that they had put Jack in. She kept on walking, anyway.
The room she stopped at was the only room that had firelight coming from underneath the doorframe. She hesitated at the door, and then leaned down to peek through the keyhole.
She could see him at his writing desk, scribbling away on whatever paper he had found. Or a journal. Lacie didn't know if he was a documenter-type of person.
He had pulled the braid from his hair, and he had it tied back in a loose ponytail. He was wearing a white shirt and dark trousers. The dying fire was merely a dim glow in its grate.
She would wait until the next crash of thunder before she would go through the door. The span of time stretched on, almost to the point where she had thought that the storm was deserting her needs.
Just then, the roll of thunder came by.
She slipped through the door undetected.
He hadn't moved from the desk, hadn't even budged. He continued to write as nature continued to beat on the castle.
"Jack," she finally whispered.
Even though her voice had been soft, and the movement of thunder had under-toned it, he jumped and spun in his chair, a knife in his hand. He dropped it immediately and it clattered to the floor.
"Lacie?" he said. A confused smile. But was he really surprised?
His shirt was partially unlaced, but overall, it looked like he was wearing the same set of clothes that had been drenched. With the exception of the removal of his boots.
"Why weren't you at dinner?" Lacie asked, pushing herself from the door, because it made her feel like she was trying to leave the way she had come.
"Oh, I –" he looked down at the loose papers and a dark-leather journal that was on the desk. "-wasn't hungry."
Lacie frowned at the answer, but she didn't know what she could say besides demanding what he was writing about. But he would probably tell her if she asked directly.
Did she really want to use that kind of power over him?
His smile. Pleading.
She let the question slide away.
Lacie knew that he was staring at her, but he always did that. She had forgotten what she had been wearing, or lack of, until she looked down at herself. The silk shift fit her hips like a second skin and her breasts seemed fuller and more prominent. Her nipples were hard little nubs pushing against the transparent fabric.
Jack swallowed and turned away.
She didn't know what to say to him anymore. She hadn't known what to say to him before. Why had she even come here? An animal-like instinct bringing itself out, but she didn't know how to act on it.
Instead, she crossed the length of the room to his window, looking out through the drapes to see a much calmer version of the storm than she had seen earlier. The lightning and thunder was less frequent, but was there nonetheless.
She heard Jack moving the papers around. Placing them in drawers and in the leather satchel she had seen sitting by his desk. She heard the journal close with a small snap.
"Lacie?" Jack said again, and she turned around to see that it was his turn to be standing in the middle of the room, unsure as what to do.
She moved closer to him, the padding of her feet one of the only sounds in the room. She reached out and touched the part of his chest where the clips had been undone. He didn't have much hair on his chest, but what he did have was soft and downy and blonde. She ran her fingertips through the hair, moving so slowly that the movement almost tickled her own fingertips.
Jack reached up and grabbed her wrist, and she looked up from watching his chest and collarbone to look up at his eyes. There was a wild look in those eyes.
He wasn't smiling.
She let him hold her hand, if that's what he wanted, but she moved her other hand up to undo the rest of the clips on his shirt.
She could feel his breathing had sped up by the time she finished the last clip, and his hold on her hand grew tighter.
The rumble of thunder continued on as Lacie moved her hand through the patch of hair that trailed from his belly button to the dip of his trousers. She ran her fingertips through the band of the trousers, moving lower until her hand was half-way in.
"Lacie," Jack said, his voice catching on her name. "What are you doing?"
She brought her hand back out of his trousers, even after the desire to put her hand in all the way. She dislodged her hand from his and grabbed the sides of his shirt, pulling him towards her until they were at the bed. She twisted them around and knocked him onto the bed, pulling herself on top of him and straddling his hips.
Jack opened his mouth to speak again but she put her fingertips to his lips. She shook her head, then leaned forward and replaced her hand with her lips.
He was nearly unresponsive beneath her touch, until his lips began to follow the movements of hers. They kissed softly, but the heat in Lacie's belly was building, and she couldn't stand for the gentleness. She pushed her tongue against his mouth and then ran it against his teeth. He opened his mouth for her and she brought her tongue fully in, touching and craving every part. His tongue wasn't quite as dominant as hers was, and it wasn't long until he tilted his head for the need of air.
It didn't stop her, though. She kissed his jawline and then the sensitive soft skin right below the ear. She felt the dark earring that she had given to him touch her nose as she kissed the spot.
Still on his hips, she straightened her back and began to push his shirt from his shoulders. He brought himself back up so that he could slide it off. She wasn't ready to go back to kissing him though, as he seemed to expect. She pushed him back down onto the bed and arched her back enough so that she could run her tongue through the enticing blonde hair, leaving a wet trail in its wake.
She licked his nipple and then ran her tongue over his ribs, feeling the slight rise and dip every time she moved over one. She swirled her tongue in the area of hair between his pants and belly button, weaving her tongue through the hair until she was back down to the band of his trousers.
Jack sat up quickly and grabbed her shoulders, making her bring her head up to look at him. She truly must have looked like some wild animal, with her tousled hair and red eyes.
But he just smiled at her. Tenderly.
He brought her mouth back to his and kissed her soothingly, his tongue already learning the phases of touch and explore.
She allowed it, but the tingle of kissing was beginning to lose its ecstasy. She needed something more. She needed him to touch her.
She broke the kiss to peel the wet silk shift off of her, the material slipping off and then landed in a pool on the floor.
Lacie grabbed his hands and guided them to her waist. He brushed his palms against her ribs and moved his fingers on her soft stomach, carefully rubbing, as if he would hurt her.
She wished his hands wouldn't be so worshipping. She wanted him to treat her like a human; she wanted to feel something rough and hard.
His one hand moved to her hip as his other cupped her breast. He leaned his head forward and his lips softly touched it, but his eyes beseeched her permission.
She refused to meet his eyes, instead she tilted her head up and sighed as his lips and tongue encircled her nipple, gently sucking.
She ran her hands through his bangs, clenching a fist full and tugging, pushing his head closer to her breast. She rocked her hips against his.
He groaned against her flesh, and she did feel the hardness that had grown between her legs. She rocked her hips in a steady motion.
Lacie removed his mouth from her breast and brought it back to her mouth, her kiss fiercer than before. The pressure had been growing in her, and the kissing and movement of her hips made the pressure continue to build pleasantly.
Her hands had moved downward and had undone the laces of his pants. She slid her hands in and wrapped her fingers around his erection, her fingers making little pressing actions and her fingernails trailing against the skin.
Jack moaned and clenched his hands in her hair. She liked the mild tugging pain. It felt good.
She moved herself off of him and helped rid him of his pants, but she kept him down on the bed. She placed a hand on his lower stomach and a hand on his thigh. She moved her head down and slowly kissed his erection, gliding her tongue over the length. Her lips moved in slow, teasing movements as her tongue would dart out to lick a section or graze her teeth against it.
Jack had gone very still, but she could feel how quick his breath was from her hand lying on his stomach.
She finally sat up and licked her lips. Jack's eyes were glassed over and he wasn't smiling currently.
She resumed her place over his hips, spreading herself and sinking down onto him fully. A moan escaped her own lips. She raised herself again only to drop herself back down with as much force as she could muster. She continued to move at such a pace while Jack tried in vain to keep up.
He released first, his whole body stiffening, which for some reason didn't surprise her much. She came soon after though, with a strangled gasp. She collapsed on top of his chest.
She mulled her fingers through his saliva-dried chest hair as she listened to him catch his breath back.
Lacie lifted herself up and pulled him out of her. She had plans of leaving just as how she entered, but Jack encircled his arms around her waist and pulled her back down into the bed.
The fire in the grate had died at some point, but she could see him from how close they were.
He moved his hands and fingers over her body, touching every dimple and curve. He kissed her neck and breathed in the scent of her hair.
She didn't mind the gestures. In fact, she liked them. It lulled her off to sleep as if to some lullaby. She fell asleep in his arms as his hands roamed her body.
…
When she woke up, the sun still hadn't risen, but the sky was beginning to turn that dusky gray of morning dawn. The storm was over, and daybreak was beginning.
Lacie rubbed her eyes and stared down at Jack lying next to her. His breathing was sound and soft. She leaned down and gave a small kiss on the corner of his lips.
She pulled herself out of bed and put her shift back on, the silk all wrinkled and stale from what it had been through.
She looked at Jack one more time before she shut the door. He wasn't smiling now. She had imagined him to be the type of person to smile even in his sleep. A façade that could never been broken, even in dreams.
She ran through the halls, and it was only by the grace of some God she didn't run into any early-risen servants. She would never know how to explain why she wasn't in her room, why she was running, and why she was only in a shift. Some questions were better not asked and answers better not given.
Once she was back in the sanctuary of her room, she realized that she had left the window open. The woven rug was quite soaked.
She pulled off her shift and threw it onto the bed, and she followed quickly after it. She had stayed up most of the night, and then what sleep she had gotten had been slightly restless in Jack's arms. She closed her eyes and got drunk on the heavy scent of morning dew and old rain.
She wondered what smile he would be wearing the next time he saw her.