Exercise in Futility - OTA - Backdated to April 24 Dawn

[st_arknaked]

He was deep in the jungle when the warm humidity became cool and crisp and the dark earthy smell suddenly held a hint of salt and sea. Midnight became brighter, the sharp sliver of new moon suddenly large and ripe and more than half way to full.

It disoriented him, the wolf immersed in the hunt and the night and the man deep within who registered the shock and then the anger as he shifted back to human form and recognized where he was. The far outskirts of the world of the inn was dry and spare and seemed neverending until you found yourself dumped back where you began and he knew with the awareness of an animal that where he had been was a long way off.

And so were his pants.

He swore viciously, not sure what made him angrier the loss of a pair of pants or that the other world hadn't afforded him a way home. That it had in fact been a sop, from whoever was holding them here, to make them feel less like prisoners. And that for a short while it had worked.

He wandered the emptiness, then the woods as he worked his way back to the inn, the wolf hunting for... what he didn't know. Restless and pacing like a caged animal more than really searching for anything specific.

Then as dawn broke he found his feet on the well manicured lawn of the inn, shifting back to human form as he made his was wearily to his room.

[ooc: When the other world went away at midnight he got dumped back in the little world of the inn and he's annoyed. He also has no pants. He isn't really concerned by his nudity but please feel free to notice.]

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[st_oh_honestly]

It was early, but not so early that Dot wasn't up and about. She had to be to make fresh bread and muffins for breakfast. Not that she minded, the good lord knew she worked in far better conditions now than she ever had before Miss Phryne. Early morning baking was easier than early mass, not that Dot would ever admit that to her mother.

Walking toward the main building she found herself face to.. uh face with one very naked man.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, hand going to her averted eyes, though not so quickly that she hadn't gotten a good look. The man growled at her, GROWLED, and stalked past and an extremely scandalized Miss William's took to her feet to go find Phryne.

[st_illunsmeared]

Despite it being very early, Phryne was decidedly awake, if not precisely alert. Jack had spent the night (a new thing and one she quite enjoyed), and she'd woken to the delightful awareness of his presence from the way he pressed, rather insistently, against her derriere. Not that she'd remained in that position long (that would be a new thing many months from now and she would doubtless enjoy it, as well); instead she'd rolled to face him and begun the equally delightful process of waking him.

"Good morning, Jack," she purred when he finally relented and opened his eyes.

[st_illunsung]

"So far, it is." His voice wasn't exactly a purr in return, but only because there was a groan buried somewhere in it. Of all the ways to wake up, being coaxed by a nude Phryne Fisher was doubtless among the best. (The more so, of course, by the smug little idea that this was part of the intimacy granted to him and no other.)

[st_oh_honestly]

She knew it was too early to wake Miss Phryne, but the sight of a naked man on the lawn had sort of pushed that knowledge right out of her normally sensible head.

"Miss," Dot called as she came into Phryne's room. Her voice was high and urgent, shocked really, as she made her way to the bedroom. "Miss..."

When she popped through the door and a quick count of heads in the bed had her registering that Phryne wasn't alone - then who it was. "Oh, oh I am sorry." And then she hurried back out. A man in her employers bed was one thing. The Inspector in her bed was, well. Dot blushed and then started to make coffee.

[st_illunsmeared]

Phryne stifled a laugh against Jack's chest. "Mmm, it seems you'll have to hold that thought, darling." Because if she laughed in Jack's arms, she still knew the sound of Dot in distress well enough to immediately deliver a kiss and then rise.

She grabbed the silk dressing gown that lay over the end of the bed and quickly slipped into it. She was still wrapping it around her waist when she murmured, "Fortune willing, I'll be back before you can miss me," in Jack's direction as she slipped out through the door.

[st_illunsung]

"Take care of Miss Williams," was Jack's response. He, too, had heard the distress in the young woman's voice, and that meant that even if fortune didn't will a swift return to bed for Phryne, he wasn't inclined to fuss.

[st_oh_honestly]

"I'm sorry Miss," Dot said as soon as Phryne came into the room, without looking up from the coffee until it had brewed and she could offer it to Phryne. "Too early by half to come busting in."

[st_illunsmeared]

Phryne smoothed the mess out of her hair with a quick shake and hand-combing and finished tying her robe, then parked herself on the couch. "Don't give it another thought, Dot. Come and sit." She patted the couch. This level of bustling almost always meant Dot had seen or done something she didn't approve of. "Tell me what's happened."

[st_oh_honestly]

She had her own cup when she sat, "It was nothing really I shouldn't have come, just.."

She sipped at the hot dark brew and burned her tongue.

"There is a man walking around out there naked as the day he was born. A full grown man Miss." Her voice rose slightly at the last bit. Heaven help them both being brought to this place where people just walked around naked.

[st_illunsmeared]

Her coffee cup met her lips barely in time to stifle a laugh, but it could do nothing to hide the merriment in her bright eyes. "If you were suggesting I should go after him, I have a full grown man in my bed at present." And one she had no interest in leaving in favor of the specter in the yard, no matter how fully grown and how naked.

[st_oh_honestly]

"That's not what I meant Miss!" Not exclaimed quickly, shaking her head. Phryne might have a different set of scruples and morals than Dot herself, but there was no harm in her. And she wasn't indiscriminate. Not really.

"I would have thought well... now that the Inspector is..." Well Dot didn't figure him for a man who shared.

[st_illunsmeared]

"Jack would never ask me to be someone I wasn't, Dot," Phryne chided gently but a smile curled about her lips for how protective she sounded. "But you're correct that I'm disinclined to exercise my freedom. The man in my bed is the one I want, and others pale terribly by comparison."

She did rather hope Jack was listening. As affectionate as she was, she didn't always possess the emotional wherewithal to tell him the things that came so easily in speaking to Dot.

"I assume we're not talking about a repeat of the Valentine's Day experience? He didn't try anything, or fondle himself in your presence?"

[st_oh_honestly]

Not asking would be why Miss Phryne did it, but neither could he be what he wasn't. And Dot didn't think he was the sort to be inclined to share. But she didn't say any of this.

"No, no! He was just..." she blushed red. He'd been naked, and certainly she knew what males looked like, she had brothers and nephews. But this man had been.. well not her brothers or her nephews.

[st_illunsmeared]

"Large? Aroused? Appealing?" Phryne suggested, less mischievously than attempting to ascertain what had horrified Dot so. She suspected, as she often did, that Dot's utterly normal reaction to the sight of a virile male horrified her more than the sight. The poor girl had taken all of Catholicism's many shames to heart and bore the guilt for every sin she'd never intentionally commit.

[st_oh_honestly]

She sighed, yes, he had been all of those things. Well, possibly not aroused, she had no idea what that might look like.

"Yes," she was forced to admit, because she was honest. "I don't understand Miss, why would he go out like that?"

[st_illunsmeared]

Well, now that was a sensible question. Although Phryne could readily think of a number of reasons. "Perhaps he was forced to flee a lover's room without his clothes. Or perhaps he lost his clothes in a card game. Perhaps he'd been for a swim in the hilltop pool or was robbed or had too much to drink or had been drugged." Phryne smiled patiently. "After everything we've seen, Dot, we can hardly judge a man for nakedness without knowing the cause."

[st_oh_honestly]

"I wasn't judging him miss," well, not much. She was quiet for a long moment looking down at her cup of coffee.

"You didn't see him but, are all men like... that?" You now, because Phryne can divine what the man looked like.

[st_illunsmeared]

"God willing, anyhow." Phryne sipped her coffee again and gave Dot a moment to take that in.

"I'm assuming you mean his genitals," she said plainly after the pause. "The adult male of the human species will have a more or less pendulous sac of delicate flesh that protects the testes, as well as a penile shaft that expands in length and girth to better facilitate transfer of sperm to fertilize the ova of the female." Even more plainly, she opined, "While in theory there is an upper limit to the size a woman can pleasurably accommodate, in my experience, as long as a man knows his way around a woman's body, and is willing to take his time, large can be exceptionally pleasant."

[st_oh_honestly]

"Miss..." she blushed a deep read and glanced at the bedroom door to make sure the Inspector hadn't decided to join them. "I know the mechanics Miss, it was just a bit... startling to be presented with the idea in the flesh. So to speak."

And she had mostly not contemplated the idea too much.

"I was going to marry Hugh, and I allowed him some... liberties. And it was pleasant, kissing him." Though neither of them had been what anyone would call, worldly. "But I never really considered what came next."

[st_illunsmeared]

Phryne followed the direction of Dot's gaze and let her thoughts linger on Jack for a moment. Her body suffused with warmth at the memory of his kisses and the feel of him nudge against her when she woke. What would it be like not to recognize those feelings? Confusing, among other things.

"When you were kissing the young man on Valentine's Day, tell me, did you feel warm and flushed, like a mild fever but pleasant? Perhaps you felt an ache of awareness or moisture in your feminine parts? It's quite common to feel such things, or to feel as though the skin over your breasts is too tight, in such cases. If so, it was your body preparing for what comes next."

[st_oh_honestly]

She thought about valentine's day and flushed again, because yes she had felt a bit like Phryne was describing.

"I didn't even know his name then," she did now of course, he'd introduced himself. "Doesn't it seem a bit... I mean, I suppose I thought I'd only feel like that about my husband."

She couldn't quite bring herself to say the word aroused.

[st_illunsmeared]

"Love can increase desire or enhance pleasure in the act," Phryne explained, her own thoughts inevitably trending toward the strength of her desire for her dear inspector and how much pleasure she found in him because his ardour burned from his heart.

"It's hardly a prerequisite, though. Desire and attraction are physical, darling. Pleasure as well. You're a healthy young woman. Your body has needs. It's unsurprising it's begun making them known."

[st_oh_honestly]

"Well it surprised me," Dot answered tartly, before blushing again.

[st_illunsmeared]

"Yes," Phryne replied with a hint of a laugh, quickly stifled. She didn't want Dot to think she was laughing at her. "I recall being startled and uncomfortable the first few times myself. It is natural, though, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it."

[st_oh_honestly]

"I know you believe that Miss, but that isn't what I was taught." And it was hard to reconcile the burgeoning awareness of her own desires even as chaste as they were comparatively speaking with the lessons of a lifetime.