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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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"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."

"No, maybe it is the focus I have trouble with," Mac decides. "I just get so flustered if I don't have anything prepared and I'm terrible at thinking on my feet. At least when it involves speaking in public. Not so much in other areas."

"That much I'd noticed," he says, nodding as he watches her, eyes sliding over her profile. "You're fascinating, you know that? Even with your clothes on."

His tone, he hopes, makes it abundantly clear that he's joking.

"Oh, and here I thought you were only here to see my nipples. I'm slightly disappointed," Mac teases back, grinning at him. "But thank you. I know there's more interesting women. I'm not a superhero or anything, just a regular woman from a regular place. I have much worse competition than back home."

"I have told you that I lived in a cat house, right? I have a slightly skewed perspective." He grins, shifting, leaning over her to press a kiss against her belly. "I mean, it's your ankle that's done in. You could throw a guy a bone."

"Well, what do you want me to do? I can't put any weight on it so whatever you want has to involve me laying here," Mac says, grinning at him. "Laying here like a princess. That's about all I've got."

"I could cope with you just lying there," he says, looking up at her. "There's plenty I could work with there."

"Oh? Well. Here I am, have your way with me," Mac says, laughing a little. She holds her hand up to her face to try and disguise that but she imagines that she's failing miserably at it.

"I mean, if you want."

"There anythin' about my demenour that suggests I might not want?" he asks her, leaning down and pushing her shirt up a little to press a kiss against her belly.

"Noooo, not exactly," Mac says, sighing a little at the feel of his lips. "And you can keep doing that, it feels nice."

His lips move over her skin and he pauses, for a moment, to tease her navel with the tip of his tongue. "Take your shirt off for me," he says, and his tone is soft but there's an edge of an order there, too.

Mac shifts a little to take off her shirt, tossing it over on the floor beside the bed. "Doctor's orders, right? Always have to follow those."

"Yes, ma'am," he says, kissing up between her bare breasts, shifting so he's got a better angle.

"Mmm, what did you have in mind, exactly?" Mac has a decent idea but, being the journalist she is, she sort of wants to hear him put it to words and tell her exactly.