Title: Filling in the Blanks
Author: amazonqueenkate
Claim: Jacqui Franco
Fandom: CSI: Vegas
Theme: (Set 2; #23, need you tonight)
Rating: R
Summary: You can't always get what you want, so you make do instead.
Author's Notes: Vague sexual references, but otherwise, not so bad.


He runs his hands down Jacqui's sides, skin against bare skin, and even though she knows she shouldn't, she's making comparisons before they reach her hips. His hands are small, long fingers and jagged nails, slightly callused in one or two places but otherwise as smooth as her stomach and just as soft. She's disappointed by it, in a strange way; she craves large hands with blunt fingers and calluses from years of building cockroach race tracks and tarantula cages.

It's a replacement thing, and she knows it. She knows it as his lips leave a hot, wet trail down her neck and across her collarbone. She's desperate and she's lonely, and she plugs whatever she can into the blank, even if it's not the right answer. She compares it, mentally, to taking the ACT her junior year of high school, when the frumpy proctor warned them that it was better to guess than leave an answer blank: you can't lose points if you're wrong, and you're not penalized for guessing.

This isn't a standardized test, of course, but the rules apply. She's not losing anything, and even if she's wrong, she's yet to be penalized.

He hisses and she groans, and the slow burn traveling up her body is enough to make her close her eyes, make her realize exactly what she's done, will do, is doing. She cares about him, she guesses, in some small way, but not in the way that matters now. She's darkening in the bubble, choosing letter D because A's not an option.

She gives it all she's got, though, and their fingers interlace above her head. And she figures there's no harm in guessing, especially since he's only here to fill in blanks, himself.