i told myself i wouldn't write a sequel to "come on, babe (why don't we paint the town?)" and so instead,,,
well.
i wrote two sequels.
funny how the world always manages to pull one over on a writer, lol. i hope you enjoy part 2!
xXx
Admittedly, Jack's hope of tracking down the club Claire and—shit, what was her friend's name? Margot, right—Margot had gone to were slim. He wasn't going to deny that. Even besides the fact that Jack was an older man and unfamiliar with the newer nightlife establishments across New York…
Actually, that summed up Jack's conundrum to a T.
If only he had telepathic powers.
But, Jack decided, he at least had the next best thing, and that was his intimate knowledge of Claire's preferences, from the places she loved to the places she abhorred. Process of elimination would by no means be the quickest option of search, but it did have potential to be the most efficient.
Not to mention it was the only option of search Jack had.
Difficult as it was, Jack managed to keep his mind off of Claire and her red dress and anything she was—or wasn't—wearing underneath for the remainder of his time at the office. Whenever his attention started to stray at the thought of pushing up the hem of her dress and sliding his hand over Claire's bare thighs, the simple reprimand that clocking out late would provide him with even less time to find Claire proved sufficient at getting Jack back on track.
For the most part.
God, that dress. And he hadn't even seen it in person yet.
When it finally came time for Jack to head home, he must have broken several speed limits in his rush to get there. He might've broken more if he'd been on his motorcycle, but unfortunately his Yamaha was in the shop for repairs, leaving Jack with a good old-fashioned rental car.
Still, he reasoned, a rental was better than having to hail a taxi, because at least he wouldn't have to explain to a cabbie why he'd be going in and out of clubs all night.
Once home, Jack changed into a t-shirt and jeans, an outfit at least somewhat less conspicuous than his black suit and red tie. He sat down at his messy desk, pushing aside a stack of papers to begin jotting down on a yellow notepad the possible locations where Claire might be.
With his memory and the help of a map he found shoved between a set of law books, Jack narrowed down the list from God knew how many to around ten. Some nightclubs were easier to eliminate than others—Claire rarely liked to travel more than 20 minutes from her apartment if she'd be drinking, for example, so not the club on the opposite side of town, plus Claire was probably not at a lounge specifically catering to gay men, yadda yadda—but the narrower Jack's criteria got, the more difficult he found it to strike through names.
Fine, he decided, capping his pen. Ten would have to do. Surely it wouldn't take him more than an hour or two to comb through this list, right? And, if he was lucky, maybe he'd find Claire and her red dress in one of the first three clubs, allowing him to even sooner spend the rest of his night in utter bliss.
Jack did not find Claire in any of the first three clubs. Nor did he find her in any of the second three, which meant by the time he'd gotten to the third set of three, Jack had rarely felt more desperate—and worse for the wear—in his life. Dare he say, he was borderline haggard.
Okay, so maybe he was exaggerating a smidge. But going in and out of so many clubs was draining both Jack's wallet and his mojo, if only because each entrance and the consequential search of scantily clad crowds while loud music pounded his hearing into oblivion served as a painful reminder that Jack's days of wild nights spent dancing were long, long behind him. The clubbing scene had looked a little different when he was young, but one thing remained the same: a 50-something-year-old man stuck out like a sore thumb in a crowd of lively, brightly dressed 20- and 30-year-olds.
Jack had just never expected he'd become that out-of-place old man.
Of course, Jack's age hadn't stopped a few beautiful young women—and one handsome young man—from approaching him with a wink and a casual hand trailing across his chest. One girl had curly dark hair and was even wearing a short red dress.
But none of them were Claire, and therein lay the problem.
Jack had to hand it to Claire—he wasn't sure he'd have gone chasing after any of his previous lovers through New York nightclubs as the clock neared midnight. To be fair, of course, with his first wife he might have been young enough to accompany her into a club without too many people eyeballing his entrance. Now?
Not so much.
Still, the fact that Claire had dragged this wild goose chase behavior out of Jack when no one else could've was a clear testament to a fact Jack tried very damn hard to ignore: Claire was different than those who had come before her.
Or maybe Jack was different, now.
By all rules that governed logic and reason and rationality in this universe, Jack McCoy knew he never should have gotten involved with Claire Kincaid. He was twice her age, she was his assistant, and in several areas their personalities mixed like oil and water.
Of course, the bedroom was not one.
But Jack knew, he knew a romance with Claire should've been forbidden ground, and hell, maybe that had been half of the appeal.
Still, there were only so many choices Jack could attribute to passion, attraction, attention. No amount of lust alone was powerful enough to get Jack McCoy prowling through New York's clubbing scene like a lion nosing for the kill.
But Claire Kincaid could.
Christ, the hold she had on him.
Club number nine, Jack thought to himself with a resigned sigh as he parked as close as he could to the nightclub's entrance without having to pay an additional fee. If this place struck out, he'd only have one more to go, a fact for which Jack wasn't sure whether to be relieved or disappointed.
After entering the nightclub and receiving the expected amount of wary sidelong glances, Jack went to his first strategy: conducting a simple survey of the crowd. Not the most effective, but hey, maybe he'd get a lucky hit.
Of course, the eight previous misses probably should have clued him in otherwise.
Jack's second strategy was more practical: asking the bartender if they'd seen her. He would show them a wallet-sized picture of himself and Claire from when Claire dragged him into a photo booth at a carnival a few weeks ago. It'd been a joke, really, but they'd ended up looking so relaxed and carefree outside of the office that Jack found himself compelled to keep one of the pictures. He knew Claire was storing the others in a 'personal but private location,' according to her own words. Jack was yet to see them on display in her apartment, but then again, Claire had several more visitors to her place than he did his, and they weren't exactly trying to publicize their relationship.
As Jack approached the bar, he wished he'd brought some aspirin for the headache he was starting to get from the relentless bass pounding in each club he'd visited so far. It was amazing anyone here still had their hearing.
Damn. He really was getting old.
A flash of red in Jack's peripheral vision snagged his attention, causing him to quickly turn to—
No sale.
This woman was indeed wearing a beautiful red dress, but last Jack checked, Claire did not have blue and purple hair. Not that she couldn't pull the color combo off.
Jack started to return his attention to the bar, but this time he was distracted by the presence of a woman, about Claire's age, with dirty blonde hair as she sidled up a few feet to his left and ordered a drink. She looked…
Familiar.
Hm. Where had Jack seen her before?
The woman must have felt his attention on her, because she turned to face Jack, and her eyes promptly widened.
"Holy shit!" she exclaimed. She stepped toward him and immediately stumbled. On instinct, Jack reached out to catch her, though the reek of alcohol on her breath that flooded his nose in doing so made him mourn the semi-fresh air outside the club.
Not that drunkenness was exclusive to this girl. Jack doubted there was a sober person in this building besides himself, the bouncer, and the bartender.
The woman righted herself, and once Jack was confident she wouldn't topple over, he released her arms, almost shouting to be heard over the music. "Hey, are you—"
"Holy shit," she repeated, cutting him off as she shook her head. "You're him. You're him!"
Jack paused, raising an eyebrow. "Uh… Who do you think I am?"
The woman dropped a hand to her waist, the other gesturing wildly as she spoke. "You're—You're the main man. The head honcho. Claire's boss!"
'Claire's boss'?
Jack did a double take of the woman standing—and still ranting—before him, scrounging the depths of his memory in an attempt to put his finger on her familiarity. He doubted he knew her personally, or even in-person until this point, but clearly she knew Claire, so they must have—
Wait. Claire had mentioned she was going out with a friend.
What was her name? Amanda? Maggie? No, no, neither of those. Was it—
Jack almost snapped his fingers at the recollection, only stopped by his desire not to appear any older in the eyes of his young audience than he already was.
"You're Margot Bell," he said, finally understanding why her visage seemed familiar. Claire had a photo of herself and Margot from their Harvard days hanging in her hallway. While Jack had never stopped to study it, he wasn't surprised he'd glimpsed the picture enough for it to stick in his subconscious.
And if Margot was here, that meant Claire had to be here. Somewhere.
Jack could feel the soft fabric of her red dress beneath his hands already.
"Yeah, I'm Margot," the woman said, "and you're—you're McIntyre. McElroy." Margot shook her head. "No, McBoy!"
Jack fought down an amused laugh at her drunken attempts to decipher his name. "McCoy. Call me Jack." He glanced around to see if Claire had wandered anywhere near them, but he still couldn't see her familiar bob or her elusive red dress.
"Jack," Margot echoed. She frowned, eyes narrowing as she looked him up and down. "What're you doing here, Jack? You're dressed all wrong."
Had Jack not come to terms with that fact earlier, his face might've heated at her accusation. Even then, he still had to plaster on a tight smile in response.
"Yes," he said with a stilted nod. "You're right, this isn't really my scene." He stuck his hands in his pockets, stepping closer to Margot to avoid the continued need for yelling above the music. "I'm here because I'm looking for Claire. Is she with you?"
As Jack spoke, he realized he didn't have a damn clue what would happen next in his night out. He was about to find Claire, finally, and—and what then? She'd promised to make the trip 'worth his while.' But surely she didn't plan to call it a night already just because he'd shown up.
A glance at his watch revealed it was considerably later than Jack had expected, but 'later' was still yet to become 'early,' and early was when most people cut off their all-night parties. And even if that wasn't the case, the average person's boss did not show up out of the blue to crash their party.
Jesus. What the hell had he been thinking?
He'd had no thoughts but of Claire and her red dress. That was the answer.
That was the problem, too.
"You're looking for Claire?" Margot repeated. Before Jack could respond, she charged onward, shaking her head again but this time in utter disbelief. "No, that's messed up. That is messed up! I knew the DA's office was a bitch to work for, but I didn't know they—they came out and monitored their employees'…"
Margot stumbled through the end of her words. "Their extracurricular activities."
If Jack had a drink, he would've choked on it, both from the ludicrous nature of Margot's suggestion and from listening to her try to say 'extracurricular' when she was obviously several shots down the hatch.
"Ms. Bell," Jack said, amused, "I'm looking for Claire on a personal level, not a professional one—"
"Uh huh. Sure. That's exactly what a liar would say," Margot said solemnly. She downed the rest of a too-bright drink in a glass Jack hadn't noticed she was holding. "Get out of here McIntyre, and don't you—don't you dare go and report Claire for living it up a little!"
Okay, they were back to McIntyre. Great.
"Listen," Jack said, hoping he sounded calmer than he felt. "Margot. I am not here to report—"
"Oh, fuck."
Jack turned around at the new voice, and no metaphor could describe his stunned reaction at the gorgeous woman who now stood before him.
Claire had been right, Jack thought as he traced her slender figure with her eyes and forced his hands to remain glued within his pockets. The slit on the dress did make the outfit perfect.
His favorite, though, had to be the deep V neck, a cut so low it revealed the curve of Claire's sternum and made it abundantly clear to anyone looking that she wore nothing underneath.
"Oh, fuck," Claire repeated, this time with more vigor, so much so that the sound almost got caught in her throat.
Articulate or not, the words still succeeded in snapping Jack's attention upward from her exposed chest, upward to take in the stain of Claire's burgundy lipstick and the waves in her hair that sent his blood shooting south and reminded Jack he should be grateful Claire didn't wear her natural hair all the time. Why?
Well, with a reaction like this, it'd probably kill him.
"Hey," Jack managed to say, and an amused grin twitched at Claire's lips after she gathered her wits.
"Hey yourself." She stepped closer to Jack, running a hand up his chest. The scent of alcohol on her breath revealed to Jack that Claire must've had at least as much as her friend Margot to drink tonight. "You got here quicker than I expected."
Jack fought the urge to smirk. "Ye of little faith."
Claire reached down to pull Jack's hands from his pockets, pausing to trace a line across his thigh, but their private bubble shattered when Margot appeared from the side to pull Claire away.
"Claire!" she hissed, her volume in the range of someone trying to be subtle but who was too drunk to remember what 'quiet' meant. "Claire, listen to me. He's here to spy on you."
Jack unsuccessfully withheld an amused snort. "That's a new one."
"He's what?" Claire rolled her eyes, though whether the action was directed at himself or Margot, Jack couldn't be sure.
"Let me talk to him, Margot," she continued, far too authoritatively for someone whose BAC had to be well above the legal limit. "Okay? Give me a sec."
And with a straightforward assertiveness that would've made a younger man swoon—and as it was, did make Jack's heart do a brief skip in his chest—Claire pulled Jack aside, just out of Margot's earshot in the noise of the nightclub crowd.
"You're too early," she murmured, smoothing the wrinkles of Jack's shirt across his chest.
Jack swallowed at the warmth of her touch, palpable even through the fabric. "Well," he said, catching her hands and gently moving them back to her sides, "you know I'm never one to take a challenge lightly."
Claire hummed, tilting her head. "Yeah, you're a bit of an ass like that."
How kind.
"But it's fine, I can improvise." Claire looked up at him through dark eyelashes, and Jack absentmindedly wondered if she had on mascara. She didn't need it, if she did. "Go wait at my apartment." She closed the already little space between them, pressing her chest to his and looping her arms around his neck. "I'll be there in an hour. Two, tops."
Jack raised an eyebrow at her suggestion, though hell if their immediate proximity wasn't serving as a mighty fine distraction from his logical reasoning.
"Claire," he said, gently ducking from under her arms and taking a step back, "you're drunk. As much as I would love to watch you take off that dress for me, it's not going to happen until you're sober."
Claire waved her hand dismissively. "I'll sober up before I get home."
Jack laughed. "You're gonna need two days to sober up from the night you're having." Though his words were teasing, he couldn't stop affection from inching into his tone, either. He grinned at her. "Fortunately, I am a patient man."
Proof of that had to be the fact that he'd spent the past several hours chasing his tail in his search for Claire but had nonetheless refused to abandon ship.
Or maybe that was just proof of his stubbornness.
Claire frowned, a petulant expression that bordered on a pout. "Like hell you are."
Fair enough.
"For you, I'll be any kind of man," Jack said. "Except for one who takes advantage of a beautiful woman when she is incapable of consent."
He squeezed her shoulder, pretending electricity didn't tingle through his fingers at their brief skin-to-skin contact. "You and Margot have fun, get home safe, and I'll take a rain check. Sound good?"
If Claire responded, Jack didn't hear it. He was too busy listening to the echo of his own words trailing through the back of his mind.
You and Margot get home safe…
Neither of them could drive, for obvious reasons, which meant to return to their respective apartments they would probably—
"Hey, how are you and Margot getting home?" Jack asked, seeking confirmation of his suspicions.
Claire's brow furrowed. "Mm, taxi. Probably. Why?"
Oh, lovely. Two nicely dressed young women who couldn't walk straight without a guiding hand hopping into a random Manhattan taxi cab several hours after midnight.
"No, you're not," Jack said, and that decision was final.
xXx
Jack found ways to keep himself amused while Claire and Margot enjoyed the rest of their night. Namely, he went to a nearby bar and stayed disappointingly sober as he beat a few asses at darts. Prior to his temporary departure from Claire, though, she'd tried to pull him onto the dance floor with her, keeping her body pressed to his like her life depended on it.
Turning down the opportunity to watch her move her hips in that dress was probably the most difficult decision Jack had to make all week.
But best not to tempt fate.
At the agreed upon time, otherwise known as a little after 3, Jack returned to the nightclub to take Claire and Margot back to their respective apartments. He supposed this was one reason, at least, that his motorcycle being in the shop was a blessing in disguise, because there'd have been no way to get one of them home—let alone both of them—if he'd been driving a Yamaha instead of a Toyota.
Margot's apartment was closest, or so Jack calculated after deciphering her address through her drunken, exhausted mumbles, which meant her stop was first.
Of course, even if it hadn't been, it still would've been.
Upon arrival at Margot's apartment, Jack took one look at the giggling, wasted women in his backseat and decided there was no way he'd be sending Margot upstairs on her own. After telling Claire with as much sternness as he could muster that she was not to leave the car under any circumstances—and she'd rolled her eyes, muttering something about drinking not making her that much of an idiot—Jack helped Margot out of her seat and began walking her up to her apartment.
"We need to be quiet," Margot mumbled as they neared the top of the flight of stairs. "Don't want to… Don't want to wake Inaya."
"Inaya?" Jack said, though he kept his voice low at Margot's request.
"My neighbor." Margot gestured vaguely down the hall as they walked, and Jack realized Inaya must be the person who lived next door to Margot. "She's too nice to be woken up."
Her nose wrinkled. "We can wake up Thomas, though. He's a dick."
Jack snorted. "Good to know."
They slowed to a stop outside Margot's apartment door. Jack waited with her as she got out her keys, and though sobriety still remained out of the question, her hand-eye coordination apparently wasn't totally lost, because she successfully unlocked her door on the first try. After confirming she'd be okay on her own for the night, Jack turned to leave, but he was stopped by Margot's hand on his shoulder.
"Hey," she said, and though her speech was slurred, there was an unmistakable intensity—almost a protectiveness—to her brown eyes. "You treat Claire right. Got it?"
Too stunned to respond, Jack could only watch as Margot's apartment door clicked shut in his face.
How much…
How much did she know?
Jack was snapped out of his stupor when a door to his right creaked open. A pretty woman with brown skin and rich, shiny black hair poked her head through the crack, looking him over with a wary stare.
Inaya, Jack guessed.
"Did you bring Margot home?" the woman asked quietly, her eyes flickering over to Margot's closed apartment, and Jack nodded.
"I did." He paused before adding, "Do you… Would you mind checking on her tomorrow morning?"
Claire wasn't here, but Jack had a feeling that was the kind of request she'd make if she were. And if she were sober.
Inaya nodded. "I will. Thank you for getting her back safe."
With a small smile and another brief nod of his own, Jack took his leave, grateful he'd be able to tell Claire her friend was in good hands.
"Mm," was Claire's choice of response when Jack returned to his car and did indeed tell her such. He pretended not to notice that she'd moved from the backseat to the passenger side in the front.
Then Claire sighed. "If only the same could be said for me."
Jack sent her a half-hearted glare, and Claire snickered.
The trip to Claire's apartment was a short one, made shorter by the fact that even in bustling New York City, traffic in the early hours of the morning was light. The drive was as quiet as it was short, too, uneventful except for the two times Claire reached over to let her fingers dance upward along Jack's thigh, leading Jack to remind her that he could not guarantee their safe return if she kept up that contact.
Still. All things considered, uneventful.
That changed the second Jack helped Claire into her apartment and shut the door with a soft click behind them.
Claire's keys fell from Jack's hand, clattering against the floor as she grabbed his shirt collar and pushed him against the nearest wall, tugging him downward into a searing kiss. Instinctively, Jack's hands fell to Claire's waist as she pressed her body against his, and though that friction made fireworks explode in Jack's skull, the citric taste of margarita on Claire's tongue when she opened her mouth to deepen the kiss reminded him that they should not, could not be doing this, not right now—
No matter how much they wanted to.
And God did he want to.
"Claire," Jack mumbled against her lips. He steeled himself before gently pushing her away, moving his hands from her hips to rest firmly on her shoulders. "Not tonight."
He might've had a reputation as a man who took advantage of his impressionable young assistants, but not and never like this.
"Why not?" Claire said, her tone dancing the fine line between accusation and disappointment. "I made you a promise." She grabbed one of his hands and moved it back to her waist, creeping it downward until his palm held both the hem of her red dress and the bare skin of her thigh. "I intend to keep it."
Jack knew if he left his hand any longer where Claire had placed it, he would soon be hurtling down the exact road he was steering to avoid.
"I know," he said, pulling both of his hands away. He stepped aside, a motion which served to both provide additional space between them and allowed Jack to retrieve Claire's keys from the floor. He tossed them atop her kitchen counter. "But your promise doesn't have an expiration date. It can wait until you're sober."
Because Claire was always worth waiting for.
Huh. Jack couldn't remember the last time he'd found a mere conversation with someone as stimulating as sex with them.
Or maybe he could.
Jack wasn't sure what that said about his feelings for Claire except that he was in too deep for a man his age but for her, with her, God—Jack was willing to question himself more than he'd ever dared to before.
And that, he thought, was probably for the better.
Though she still appeared unsatisfied with his resolution, Claire at last resigned herself to reality. "Fine," she said, arching a brow with surprising grace for someone shot to hell on tequila, "but don't say I never offered."
Jack snorted. "Consider it on the record, Ms. Kincaid." He tilted his head toward the hall that led down to her bedroom. "You should get some rest. You'll need it when you're in Rivera's chambers tomorrow morning."
Claire groaned, squeezing her eyes shut. "God. Don't remind me."
Jack chuckled, but his laughter was cut short when Claire turned to start walking to her room and her ankles promptly gave out on her.
"Shit!" Jack said, catching her beneath her arms before any damage could be done, and a pink-cheeked Claire gave him a rueful grin as he carefully helped her regain her balance.
"I'm starting to… starting to think these heels were too much."
Jack glanced down at her black stilettos, perhaps the sole element of her outfit that had gone unobserved by himself throughout the night.
"Not too much for the dress," he decided as he began guiding her to her bedroom, "but maybe too much with the drinks."
Claire snorted, and a smile tugged at the corners of Jack's lips.
Once in her bedroom, Jack helped Claire remove her shoes before he opened the top right drawer in her leftmost dresser—where she kept her nightclothes, he knew. He quickly pulled out a pair of burgundy pajama shorts, but in his search for the corresponding top, he found himself pausing as his fingers closed around a plain gray t-shirt. It was too large for Claire, which meant it was probably a man's, and there was a hole under the left armpit that looked disturbingly familiar.
Jack turned around to face Claire with the t-shirt in hand. "Ms. Kincaid," he said, biting back a shit-eating smirk, "did you acquire this from the floor of my room?"
Claire studied the shirt with narrowed, concentrated eyes that were simultaneously half-glazed over. "No," she said after a pause. "I think it was hanging on the edge of your bed."
Jack nearly doubled over laughing at the thoughtful tone that accompanied her succinct response. He shook his head as he folded the shirt and stuck it back in her drawer. "You could've asked, you know. I doubt I'd have refused."
When it came to Claire, there were many a situation where Jack found the word 'no' harder to come by.
"Where's"—Claire yawned—"Where's the fun in that?"
Well, he couldn't argue with her there.
Jack found an old Harvard t-shirt near the bottom of Claire's drawer. After extracting it from its pile, he pushed the drawer shut and offered the selected set of nightclothes to Claire. "Change, brush your teeth, get some rest. I'll see you tomorrow."
Claire accepted the shirt and shorts, but when Jack started to turn away, Claire stood and grabbed his wrist.
"Stay with me," she said, her voice low but not quite a whisper, and Jack gave her a small smile.
"I told you, not tonight."
"I don't mean that." Claire released his wrist only so she could free her hand to intertwine her fingers with his. "I just… I don't want to be alone."
Jack chuckled, reaching up with his available hand to tuck her messy waves behind her ear. "Trust me. When you've got a hangover from hell tomorrow morning, you're not gonna want anyone else around."
"Okay. Maybe I won't tomorrow. But I do want you here, now." Claire met his gaze with her own, and in her eyes shone a startling—breathtaking—clarity, a devotion, a warmth that glittered even in the dim light of her bedroom and made Jack's heart miss a beat. "Understand?"
Jack swallowed hard. "God, Claire," he murmured, releasing her hand so he could pull her into a hug. "What the hell are you doing to me?"
Claire's only response was a quiet hum as she let her head rest comfortably on Jack's shoulder, wrapping her arms around his midsection.
Her perfume smelled of cinnamon, Jack distantly observed as he tilted his head to place a soft kiss atop Claire's messy hair. Cinnamon was warm, fierce, sharp yet comforting—the kind of scent that echoed Claire's very nature.
"I'll stay," Jack finally said, breaking their embrace, "but I'm sleeping on your couch. Deal?"
Claire chuckled. "Deal." Before he could protest, she pressed a chaste kiss to his lips, smiling as she turned away to grab her nightclothes off the bed. "You're a piece of work, McCoy."
Jack laughed. "I'd say it takes one to know one, Ms. Kincaid."
Claire offered no response as she disappeared into her attached bathroom, and Jack was still grinning from ear to ear when took his place on her sofa a few minutes later.
xXx
i like to think this fic is canon compliant(ish) in that margot got so drunk she doesn't remember jack and jack just rolls with the introduction in "savior." like i know i expand margot and claire's friendship too much for that, but still. the thought cracks me up
part 3 coming soon ;)