heartless ; 𝐭. 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐤 , 𝟏

14 - shattering

august 2016

JACQUELINE KINGSTON FELT her shoulders lift as she walked away from Tony, having given the excuse of needing a bathroom break before darting to a place where she wouldn't be bothered.

Unironically, that place happened to actually be a bathroom in the corner of the fancy bar they'd been at for the last few hours. She shoved her body into the door, full force, and grunted when the door took a moment to budge open. A surprised, "Shit!" sounded from the other side, and Jacqueline furrowed her eyebrows, pushing harder until she toppled over herself and stumbled into the bathroom.

It was surprisingly clean for a public bathroom, but she assumed that since Tony Stark was the owner of the club, he'd want all its different pieces to be as clean and organized as his life obviously wasn't.

To her left stood a rather disheveled woman that looked to be in her early thirties, her curled hair cascading over her shoulders, falling out of her carefully-executed up-do. Her eyes were wide as she stared at Jacqueline, as if she was surprised that someone else had found the bathroom.

Behind the woman, the same unkempt look about him, stood a man, seemingly several years younger than her. His dark hair looked freshly raked through, the locks standing on end and flopping messily around his head. His cheeks burned bright red as he noticed Jack standing there, staring right back at them. "I thought you said you locked the door," he hissed to his partner in crime.

The woman shook her head and scowled. "No, that was your job."

It was then that Jack looked down and understood why the scene was so mortifying—for the two strangers, at least. The woman's dress was rolled up to her hips, her slender and golden tan thighs showing in the bathroom light. Her underwear hung around her ankles. Oh.

Jack wasn't the one that made the connection. It was the ghost inside of her that did; it had much more experience with this sort of thing than she did. Sexual intimacies were things that, if need be, were used on missions to gather information. But it was nothing that Jacqueline Kingston knew about.

An image flashed in her mind as she looked at the distraught couple. She saw herself on the bathroom counter top, her eyes fluttering closed in absolute bliss, with her legs wrapped tightly around the waist of a lightly bearded man who pressed his lips to her neck and let his hands wander down her arms to rest at her waist, where her own dress was bunched up, revealing her entire lower body—

Jacqueline inhaled sharply. "Je regrette," she hissed an apology, the French syllables rolling off her tongue smoother than water. Turning back to the bathroom door, she pushed her way back into the hallway and found her way back to the bar, where Tony was waiting for her.

He obviously had no clue the nature of her thoughts only a few seconds ago, but she could only stare at his lips that had been so close to hers a few minutes ago, that were latched onto her neck in her head, that were so full and pink and—

"I'm tired," he announced sharply, interrupting her thoughts, "let's go." Without one sparing glance at her, Tony downed the last of his drink and turned on his heel, stalking toward the front door of the club. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and stepped out into the cooling night air, his head swiveling on an axis as he waited for Happy to roll up with the car.

Following closely behind him, Jack tried to keep all thoughts of his lips against hers out of her head, but it seemed the harder she tried, the clearer the images became. It suffocated her the whole way home, making her unable to look at Tony in the eyes without the distinct feeling that he could see into her mind, see what her head was making her see.