Title: Hide The Rum - aka "Jane"
Rating: T+ (there are some half-pornographic imagies in there - if you are a certain person and thus inclined)
Disclaimer: I don't anything in here, probably not even the brain which cooked that story up.
Summary: The Rum is gone, that's why this happens.
A/N: I blame Joodiff, totally and fully. It was her idea (I was a lot more inclined towards a sword-wielding Grace, like in "Kill Bill") and she infected me with it, via smartphone conversations! Anyway - don't take this seriously. It's just a little , many thanks go to ShadowSamurai83 for the beta (and not running screaming for the woods)
Warning: B/G, madness, loincloth
Enjoy!
Hide The Rum
The first thing Grace notices is the heat and the humidity, because the air is like a steam room, with condensation dripping down around her. It's strange, especially mixed with fragrances she can't quite place. There is some rotten material, and probably some manure too, underneath an overwhelming flowery scent. It's strange, but it doesn't bother her.
The next thing she notices, is some sort of hot draft against her midriff, and that does get her attention, so much so that she looks down on herself and startles. Apart from the fact that her midriff is bare, something that it usually is only in the shower, the body part in her vision doesn't look at all like her own. It's tanned, it's smooth, and it's muscular. Definitely not what looks back at you when you are in your mid-sixties and neither Helen Mirren nor Jane Fonda; Grace can safely account for the fact that she's neither.
Still, she knows that this is her body, and that the strange apparel barely covering it is also meant to be there. There's a skirt that's no more than a loincloth and a bikini top that's...well...scanty. Given the heat and humidity, though, that's a blessing.
Interestingly enough, there's a knife at the belt of her skirt, but no boots and no guns. That's a little disappointing, because it destroys Grace's sudden self-image as Lara Croft. It's the moment where Spence would probably fall off his chair in the office, but for God's sake, Grace has been a geek long before Spence even knew the word. Laser swords and her go way back!
It's beside the point, though; she's got a much more serious problem on her hands than Spence and his regular obtuseness. The problem shows as a stinging pain in her shoulder joints, caused by her arms being pulled back and bound behind her against the tree in her back. It hurts in her shoulders and around her wrists where some heavy duty cord do the job of restraining her.
Her legs are similarly bound, leaving her trapped against a tree. Alone. In the jungle. All that sounds rather absurd, for the last thing Grace remembers is having settled down in her bed with a cup of tea and a book, but that doesn't make this any less real.
She's bound to a tree in the jungle looking like some cheap version of Lara bloody Croft. Or Jane...which bears the question of where the hell Tarzan is. Typical superhero behaviour, Grace decides. All muscle and good will, but when you really need him, where is he? Nowhere, that's where. Typical. So damn typical.
Unlike the elusive rescuer, the cords holding her bound are very realistic, as are the noises coming ever closer. Of course, she's no expert, but Grace could swear that she hears the growls of some large feline predator closing the distance to her horribly exposed tree. Around her the jungle quietens as if in expectancy of a show to be seen. The only one not relishing it is the person who will play the part of helpless prey and dinner fare, who is unfortunately Grace herself.
In reply to the feline growl, there are screams from another direction, none of them human, but they shake the world from its silence, everything around her beginning to chatter once more. It is as if all are closing in on her, the butcher, the carrion feeders and the spectators; and for the first time, Grace is genuinely afraid. This doesn't feel safe anymore, doesn't feel like a dream anymore. She's in the damn jungle, looking like Jane or Lara bloody Croft and it's all painful reality.
And no damn hero in sight. Nobody to rescue the damsel in distress.
Which is actually damn disappointing. Not to mention frustrating, since the last thing Grace wanted was to end up as dinner for jungle predators. Actually, in all honesty, she had something more sedate in mind, like a cottage in Cornwall, or some bungalow on the Mediterranean coast, preferably in the not-so-reluctant company of a certain male companion who wouldn't go completely wrong if he took on the superhero-role. Preferably in no more than a loincloth.
Well, that's not here or now, because Grace has a problem. Amber eyes, four legs, spots...and teeth every dentist would die for. But Grace is no dentist and doesn't relish dying from those. She thinks that this is the perfect moment to scream like she has never done before, not even in child birth. So, she does.
Scream.
Loud.
Shrilly.
Of course, when she stops, feeling hoarse and raw, it has amounted to bugger all nothing. Her future feline murderer is still there, didn't even take a step back. And now that the woman has lost the last weapon of her arsenal, the knife being safely ensconced in the belt, there's nothing between him and his feast.
How the human got to the tree and why she's bound to it is of no consequence. She's there and she can't defend herself. That's quite enough, isn't it?
Turns out, it isn't.
The female's earlier scream, high-pitched and desperate, receives an echo, much lower, much more carrying and very...aggressive.
Now, it is said that animals act on instinct and that their hearing is much more sophisticated than those of humans. Though not understanding it fully, the panther knows that the human male is on his way, fast and loud, and that he's coming to fight...and win. How, the feline doesn't wonder. He acts on instinct and runs, before the human male explodes through the foliage, hanging from a strong vine.
The panther doesn't see anymore that the man is...uhm...dishevelled. Hair too long, beard and loincloth having seen better days. Neither does Grace. Naturally, she notices the loincloth, though for very different reasons, but her eyes are stuck and glued to the bare chest where the muscles and sinews play underneath skin that gleams from the humidity.
In fact, it's only Grace's senses which notice, her brain having given up its service.
"Tarzan...," she wants to breathe, but that sounds wrong, for that scantily clad, overwhelmingly male hero has no likeness to Johnny Weissmuller or Lex Barker, because he does look like...Boyd.
"Boyd?" she therefore croaks, her voice hoarse, though she couldn't claim that this has anything to do with her earlier scream. She's sexed up like there's no tomorrow all of a sudden, wants to rip the cloth off him and off herself too, jump him right here in the jungle.
"Boyd...," she croaks again. And the man smile...
"Grace?" The voice is gentle and doesn't fit the picture before her eyes. Too gentle for such an unashamed display of masculinity. Why somebody is shaking her aching shoulder, though, while Boyd keeps gently, but increasingly louder calling her name, she doesn't understand.
"Oh for God's sake, Grace, just how much of that stuff did you drink?"
The annoyance, so familiar, is what brings her back to herself. Bleary-eyed, she stares at her surroundings. Her office, the sofa. Soft enough for a short nap, but sleeping on it all night is a bad idea. Which accounts for her aching shoulder. Damn, the jungle vision was so much more glam.
Accusingly, Boyd holds up a cocktail tumbler and a fairly empty bottle of...rum. "What kind of orgy have you celebrated in here, Grace?" he asks.
She can't remember. Shrugs and desperately grapples for a trace of memory, but all there is, is...that dream.
"Loincloth," she mutters.
"Beg your pardon?"
"You...loincloth."
Boyd is, understandably, confused. "What does this empty bottle of rum have to do with me and a loincloth?" It's a dangerous question, he knows. If Grace is that far gone...well, others would be in A&E with alcohol poisoning. She needs a coffee and some painkillers, but before that he needs to resolve the intrigue of the loincloth.
It will be dubbed that in the future, they both know it. "The loincloth-incident" - the moment when Grace was so hungover that she inadvertently blabbed some completely inappropriate and altogether absurd words of an alcohol-induced dream. And Boyd was interested. Very interested.
"You wore it. The loincloth." Grace's brain is still swimming, which is the only explanation for why she says it.
"I see," Boyd replies with a speculatively raised eyebrow. They are alone, which is good, because nobody sees that her gaze doesn't even reach as high as his belt (and that there's some instinctive reaction in him to her gaze) and his is very drawn to what the half-open tunic reveals of her bare skin (which doesn't help his reaction).
"Anything else?" Grace smiles dreamily in reply as she slowly shakes her head. It emboldens him enough to ask, "And you?"
"...Wore a loincloth too."
His body answers with a very definite twitch to the vision that ensues and suddenly Boyd finds himself sounding croaky as well. "Only...?"
She looks up at him, her eyes still glazed, but speculative at the same time. "Very little."
He steps closer, hesitantly at first, then with growing confidence. And need.
"In the jungle," she says. "And there were vines, you swung yourself down from."
He doesn't ask. Some things are better left in obscurity. They don't matter in any case. There's only one thing left to resolve and clear up.
Boyd sits down on the sofa, pulling Grace up to sit next to him; well, actually in his lap. He gives her a long penetrating look and finally they both smirk. "I Tarzan, you Jane?"
"You Tarzan, I Jane," she replies.
And it's a very good thing that they are alone in the office.
Thank you for reading. Comments would be greatly appreciated.