itinere | The world as they know it

The world as they know it - OPEN

When the power comes back on, d'Artagnan imagines that he can hear the collective sounds of glee of those around him who are used to such things. When the power had gone out, he had been amused to say the least, at the various reactions he'd witnessed. Some had even expressed the sentiment that they couldn't live without it.

Hopefully, they survived.

d'Artagnan has been fine, for what it's worth, though he has found it finally necessary to get different clothes. His heavy leather garb has proved unwieldy in the hot summer weather. This is how he finds himself at something called a "store," looking at modern clothing with a mix of amusement and complete befuddlement. Everything seems so ... tight.

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So much beautiful skin. It's enough to make a young Musketeer dizzy, really.

d'Artagnan swallows hard, his body responding to how much of her body he can see. "You look," he tells her quietly, voice ragged, "beautiful."

All things holy, she is the most beautiful woman.

She isn't quite sure what sort of reaction she was expecting, but the one d'Artagnan gives her is enough to make her insides come alive and cause her heart to skip a beat. She feels as if she is wearing nothing. And his reaction is that of a man who is looking at a woman who is wearing nothing... well, the reaction that most men would have.

She steps forward, her hand reaching for his, a gentle hold once she finds it. Bringing his hand up, she rests her palm against the back of that hand, fingers just barely laced between his, and she guides his fingertips along the low neckline of the dress.

"Do you like the way it dips here, just so?" She asks him teasingly. For as much as Italian fashion of her time displays and pushes up the swell of a woman's breasts, this dress leaves them naturally so, clutching them just right while still baring their tops, even more enticingly so.

Really, Lucrezia isn't being fair at all. His calloused finger runs along the soft skin. d'Artagnan clears his throat and he nods, his expression somewhere between "really? I see what you're doing here" and "please don't stop."

"I ... I think," he says, gathering his wits, "that you should have this dress."

She knows exactly what she's doing. The Lady Gulia Farnese had taught her well how to use the weapons she has as a woman in a world ruled and run by men. Beauty and cunning are two things Lucrezia excels at. It's an art form. But then again, she thinks love might be a form of art as well. The Pope's daughter, indeed.

Right now she's just happy to be using those tools with someone she genuinely likes, with d'Artagnan. And perhaps she more than just likes him. She loves him too, considering the way her heartbeat seems to flutter when he looks at her the way he does right now.

"Even though I'm indecently naked?" She asks.

"There are those here who wear less," he reminds her, forcing his gaze up to her face, and such a beautiful face it is.

"Perhaps you can have a shawl to cover some." And so that d'Artagnan won't have to beat many other men senseless for staring at his beloved. "But you look beautiful, Lucrezia."

He is right, after all. People here do wear much less. Her hand slips to the leather of his doublet and her palm smooths up the breast of it to his shoulder.

"Perhaps we might find you something as well." She says. "Something more attuned to this place so that I am not alone in this."

"All right," he tells her, taking her hand so that he can kiss her palm.

God, he's distracted now by all of her skin. By how good she looks like this, how nearly scandalous still by his standards. "Beautiful," he whispers again against her palm.

She feels that kiss to her palm all the way up her arm, so sensitive to d'Artagnan's touch as she is. It elicits a small gasp from her, delicate and barely noticeable, but there nonetheless. And like a moth to a flame, she can only be drawn closer when he speaks to her and looks at her in such a way.

Lucrezia steps closer and leans in, her lips a hairs breath away from his. "I want to kiss you, d'Artagnan. Do you think the merchants to be scandalized by such a thing?"

"I think the better question is if we care," he replies, because he's already getting an arm around her and tilting her chin up to kiss her. Really, if he could, back in the day, kiss Constance, a married woman, in the middle of the street, he can kiss Lucrezia in the midst of this merchant's wares. Of course, that will only make him want her more, but he shall deal with that as it arises.

So to speak.

Her face is easily brought up to his, to meet that kiss and pleased to do so. Kissed in public, this thrills her insides in ways that she loves. It makes her feel alive, a ripple effect of good things.

"I do think I need this dress." She whispers against his lips. Because if it can make d'Artagnan look at her like that and get that kind of reaction from him, then she would kill to have it.

"I think you do, too," he says, finally stepping back, his eyes and smile warm for her. "I shall wait for you here." That is, after he nudges the zipper down just enough so that she can get it off easily enough.

Such skin, though. Beautiful.

That brush of his fingertips against her skin as he lowers the zipper makes her want to pull him into the dressing room to do all manner of indecent things to him. But she merely looks back at him and closes the door to start the extensive progress of returning to the elaborate dress that she's more accustomed to.

It takes some time, but when she exits the dressing room she is put back together and the dress is back on the hanger. She's excited to find d'Artagnan something to wear, something equally scandalous, perhaps.

"I believe it's your turn, my love." She says, linking her free hand in the crook of his elbow. "Tell me, what did you wear when you were not in uniform in Paris?"

"Something much like this," he says, looking down at his Musketeer garb. "But just not with the pauldron. All this?" he says, looking around, feeling thin material of another tunic. "It's like my braies."

Which is to say that it's very thin.

But if Lucrezia can do it, surely he can too. He holds up a tunic in front of himself, his grin crooked. Well?

So as not to scandalize anyone else in the store, Lucrezia steps in close to d'Artagnan. Her palm rests against his chest and she leans up on the tips of her toes to whisper into his ear. "Have I not told you how much I enjoy you in your braies? In just your braies?"

She leans back to look into his eyes her own eyes pure seduction before she's off to what appears to be the men's side of the store, expecting him to follow.

The tunic he picks up is nice. She urges him to try it on. "Such as that, with barely anything between you and me."

Following a few steps behind, d'Artagnan is smiling, aroused and smitten. Enough that he will try this on for her. "Do I need trousers as well, then?" he asks, his smile crooked. "As to make sure that all the clothing seems to go together?"

"Well you certainly cannot be naked from the waist down, not in public anyway." She teases him with a coy glance in his direction.

She picks up a pair of the pants that she's seen so many other men wear here. Jeans, they're called. But she doesn't know that. She hands them to d'Artagnan and then plucks another pair, canvas cargo pants. The pockets might come in useful. She hands them to d'Artagnan as well.

"Try those. See if they're to your liking." She says.

They weigh hardly anything and d'Artagnan eyes them with distrust, even as he is walking toward the room to try things on.

Of course, he has a good deal of clothing to get out of, but he can do it on his own, stripping down to his braies and fastening the tunic and then the trousers (hardly trousers, more like some kind of strange legging made of stiff muslin).

He gazes at himself in the mirror and shakes his head before going out to show Lucrezia. He holds his arms out to his sides, his smile crooked as well. What does she think?

Lucrezia patiently waits outside, looking over some shoes to go with her new dress, something of which the salesperson is all too happy to help with. She's already picked some out and the saleslady has taken them and her dress to the front to bag them up when the dressing room door opens.

She smiles and walks toward d'Artagnan, taking the sight of him in from afar and then closer and closer and closer. Until she can slip up on her toes and kiss that adorably crooked smile.

"I think you look quite different, and not in an unpleasant way." She says. "You're very handsome, my love. How do you feel?"

"Strange," he admits. Under-dressed certainly. He tugs st the tunic, so much tighter and less voluminous than what he's used to. He shifts his legs a bit, feeling the material seem to hug tightly. He does think he looks like those in this place, though. "Handsome, eh?" Is Lucrezia sure?

Strange is the definition for so many thing here in Itinere from the most common of things to the most impossible of them. From the clothes to the way the city itself seems to understand what they want and need and gift it to them so freely. She wonders if clothes such as these will begin to appear in their closets rather than the clothes they are more accustomed to.

"Very handsome." She shifts forward, leaning up once again to kiss at his lips. "But, my love, I believe you could sack cloth and ashes and still be the most handsome of men, turning the eye of every lady you pass by."

"You are flattering me," he accuses fondly, "and you need not, when I would give you everything you wish for simply because you want it." d'Artagnan is not that good looking, not really. He is, of course, not ugly. With his hands resting on Lucrezia's hips, he asks, "shall I take these new garments, then?" He too needs shoes it seems.

"Truth is not flattery, d'Artagnan." She says, fingers tracing down the buttons at the front of his shirt, her pinky slipping in between two of the buttons somewhere around his navel. Nothing about d'Artagnan is less than beautiful, it's true. Anyone who cannot see that has neither eyes nor a heart and soul.

"And our Lord has truly blessed me in sending me here, along with you, so that we can be together." She says, a rare moment of sadness sweeps through her and she lowers her gaze and dips her head. "It is more than I deserve."

She nods, pulling back and looking back up to him with her eyes glistening. "I truly like their fit on you. You should take them."

"Lucrezia ... " d'Artagnan dips his head, brows drawing together in a frown at her words and countenance. More than she deserves? Hardly. His eyes search hers and he touches under her chin to lean in for a kiss.

Whoever made her feel less than will meet the end of his sword some day. He insists upon it.

He shall take the clothes, though, if only because she likes them so.

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The world as they know it - OPEN

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