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After the Sharktopus nonsense, Mac decides she's going to rest for a few days. She has a severely sprained ankle that really limits her ability to walk and sand is out of the question unless she wants to just make it worse. While it's frustrating to her, she doesn't mind being in the house for a few days and spending some time just reading books and keeping her own company, which she doesn't particularly mind.

She does, however, miss Jackson and hopes he'll be by to check on her and her stupid injury. She hears a knock at her cottage door and calls out so she doesn't have to get up.

"It's open! I'm in bed." Bed is the most comfortable place to lay around with books, after all, and Mac pushes her reading glasses up on her nose and squints at the tiny print.

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"You're hiding it very well," says Jackson, flipping through the magazine in his hands. "What are you looking for, here, Mac? What do you want me to say?"

"I'm...just that you care about my well-being outside of whether or not I'm tied up and being fucked, is all," Mac says. "I'm not trying to get serious on you or anything I just have never done this before. The whole...kinky thing."

The way she talks about it makes him smile and he shakes his head. "You're worried because of what I've been doin' to you - you think it means I don't...what? That I don't give a shit the rest of the time?"

"Yes?" Mac says, wondering if that means she's just shot herself in the foot. "I mean I like what we do I just...I like talking and kissing and other things too and I don't know if that's allowed or anything."

He doesn't say anything in response to that. Instead, he shifts position on the bed, sitting up and then leaning in, pressing a light kiss against the corner of her mouth.

"It's allowed," he says. "If you want it."

"I do want it," Mac assures him. "Provided you do, of course, which you apparently do, since you just did that?"

"Woman, you're exhausting," he says, rolling his eyes, though he's still close enough to kiss. "What do I need to do to emphatically prove it to you?"

"You could possibly kiss me again?" Mac asks, a hopeful look on her face that's just this side of stupid. She's never been very good at relationships but this seems to be going all right for right now.

He's rolling his eyes a little when he leans in, kissing her again, properly this time. Square on the mouth, deeper, wetter. One hand comes to rest against her hip.

It's a very good kiss and that pleases her, enough that she's regretting she really can't get up to anything interesting with a bum foot.

"Oh, wow, you are very good at kissing. Is there anything you can't do?"

He grins at her, tongue touching his bottom lip.

"I'm bad at mathematics," he says, settling back down close to her. "And I cannot darn socks for anythin' in this world."

"I count on my fingers and I can't sew," Mac says, giggling a little. "So I can't help you with either of those things. So sorry."

"I'm sure we'll muddle through, darlin'," he says, pretty sure, now, that there's going to be something to muddle through, after all.

"Well, if men were interested in me for my domestic skills, it's no wonder I'm perpetually single," Mac deadpans. "I'm not exactly a paragon of womanly virtue." She's definitely not the sort to make little hand-crafted things and bake homemade pies and all that shit. She's much better at doing the news.

"Some men, maybe," says Jackson with an easy shrug, "But I have a history of being around women who on't give a shit about that kind of stuff. And, somehow, I've managed to live until now There's otehr things in life."

"Mmm, there are. Besides, I'm smart and accomplished and don't actually need to know how to do any of those things," Mac decides. "So, really, I shouldn't beat myself up over it, right?"

"Damn straight," he says, nodding, one arm curled under his head. "More important thing to worry about."

"Much, such as these damned elections. Are things very political in your era?" Mac is the first to admit she knows next to nothing about 1880s London.

"Whitechapel just got a city council about a year ago," he says. "And there've been labour strikes. I was in Chicago for a while I was at Haymarket." He shrugs. "Politics is sticky business, darlin'."

"They are," Mac agrees. "But I end up muddled in it anyway. To report, though, never to run for a position myself. I would be a terrible politician."

"Why?" he asks, idly reaching out to trace his fingers against her ribs. "Why would you be terrible?2

"You have attempted to have a conversation with me, haven't you? I get so flustered. I could never speak in public," Mac says, shaking her head. "I would be so awful."

"I have, but look at the content of most of our conversations before this," he says, grinning up at her. "I ain't suprised you get a little flustered, darlin'."

Mac blushes and finds her magazine suddenly very interesting. "Yes, well, I don't think you expect much out of me then, no. But to be a politician, I would have to actually be able to string sentences together and sound intelligent."

He notices the blush and arches an eyebrow, taking his hand away from. A smile tugs a the corner of his mouth. "What makes you think you don't sound intelligent? Way I say it, that ain't the same as focus."