[fic] Knowledge of the Hand (Tina Drake, PG: Daddy Sharp-Ears, for MMoM)
Title: Knowledge of the Hand
Media: Daddy Sharp-Ears (Uber/fusion of DC Comics [Gotham] and Jean Webster's Daddy Long-Legs)
Characters: Tina Drake and Jane Todd
Rating: PG, if that.
Length: 1700 words
Disclaimer: I am neither DC nor Miss Webster.
Notes: For jubilancy, without whom Dickie would be impossible, with much love. thete1 a while ago suggested Jane's freckles and large hands, images which I cannot shake. My procrastination prevented this from being equestri-beta'd by inlovewithnight; I am duly ashamed. Title from a chapter heading in Mr. Carter's Instructions for Ladies in Riding (1783); cut-text from E. Kerr's Riding for Ladies (1895).
Warning: Any and all revolting classist implications within this tale are wholly intentional. ;)
When Tina arrived at the stables, she was dismayed, although not at all surprised, to see that the girl was nowhere to be found. Jane had a most regrettable habit of lagging and goldbricking.
No one, not even Tina, could begin to explain how she managed to remain employed by the college.
Tina had never been the most patient of souls, but today, of all days, she was incensed.
Earlier, when, unable to bear the stifling stillness and ill temper a moment longer, Tina had departed the tower room, Dickie was curled up on the window seat, scratching furiously at her tablet, while Regina lay sprawled on the floor beside her, cheek resting on Dickie's hip, such that every so often, when Dickie paused to chew the top of her pen, she would also stroke Regina's aberrant, flame-red hair.
Tina had tugged on her gloves and ignored the knowing, sarcastic gleam in Regina's eyes.
Already today, she had been made to feel the buffoon in French Literature, her roommates were nearly lunatic with their love of teasing her, her English composition had been deemed 'awkwardly phrased, the logic of its argument perilously ornate', and now now, the idiot stablehand could not be bothered to attend to her duties. The simplest of duties.
Tina stalked around the stables, neatly avoiding the puddles and muck, only to stumble on a rock as she rounded the far corner. She caught herself, then, taking in the sight before her, shook her head.
Jane Todd stood at the far end of the yard with her back turned and her hip cocked, one foot up on a bale of hay, biting into an apple. She seemed as carefree as...as Dickie.
Tina refused to think of Miss Grayson, lest her temper get the best of her. Jane, however, would not be so lucky.
Tina coughed significantly.
A breeze passed over Jane's mussed hair, flying free of its sloppy knot, and as it lifted, the sun caught one coarse lock and turned it the color of fine amber. Tina stilled the querulous tremor in her chest and frowned. For a moment, she had imagined that Jane's hair was an entirely different color, a secret one, a secret that had just been vouched to her.
She coughed again.
Swivelling at the waist, Jane glanced over her shoulder. Her cheek distended with an overlarge bite of fruit, she smirked. "Oh, it's just you."
"I am already running late," Tina told her. "I would appreciate your assistance."
Jane tossed the apple core into the paddock, then wiped her hands on her rough-hewn wool trousers. She jerked her head to the tree-lined lane bordering the courtyard. "Redbird's waiting for you."
"Oh," Tina said and squared her shoulders. Jane grinned at her, rather 'wolfishly'.
The adverb was something that Dickie might say, but Dickie played with words as she played with gravity when she danced along the top of the college wall and Tina was not...playful. Tina was rigorous, regimented, cautious and careful.
No amount of teasing from her (unfortunate) roommates would affect that fact.
"Well then," Tina said, stepping to Jane's side and then walking faster, grateful for her boots against the sucking mud, to keep up with Jane's long, loping stride. When they reached the post where Redbird, Tina's dainty and high-spirited chestnut Arabian mare stood waiting, she removed her gloves and extended her hand. "The reins?"
Jane was a large girl, her bosom and wide hips unconstrained by stays, who walked with a promenader's swagger, even through the stables' muck. Her face and neck were heavily freckled by the sun, as were her hands. They were coarse and quite *warm* against Tina's own when the reins were passed.
The overall effect of Jane's uncouth coarseness, her dark blue eyes glittering in her sun-darkened face, was, always, to disturb Tina at a depth with which she was frankly uncomfortable.
As a general principle, a principle which she fancied was as clean and intellectually luminous as any of old Plato's, Tina kept her emotions in check.
She was a small girl, especially compared to Dickie's long-limbed grace, or even Regina's rangy frame, neat and trim. A good two years younger than her classmates, Tina felt the threat of not being taken seriously to hover, just out of reach, like the cloud of gnats over the paddock. It behooved her to remain as unperturbed as possible, lest she make a fool of herself.
Jane caught her wrist and held Tina at arm's length. "New dress, huh?"
Tina turned her hand to free herself and smoothed down her split skirt. The woolen broadcloth was several degrees finer than Jane's, a somber charcoal gray that the tailor claimed, rightly, complemented Tina's eyes. Although Tina took great pride in her dress-sense she was a bluestocking, to be sure, but that stocking was of the finest material, lovingly designed she was uncertain why, or how, Jane would be able to take notice. "Yes, thank you."
"New one every day, I 'spect," Jane said and tapped the pommel on Redbird's saddle. "The scarf's silk, yeah?"
Tina's fingers fluttered against her throat; the scarf, a gift from her cousin Wayne, was, perhaps, flamboyant in color, a strong brick red that Tina imagined echoed the licks of firelight on Dickie's skin at night. "Yes...?"
"Huh," Jane said and extended her hand. "Well, up you go."
Tina was entirely capable of lifting herself into the saddle, so she did so. Redbird shifted beneath her, huffing slightly. She settled when Tina slid her palm over the hot, sleek length of her neck; bending at the waist, leaving her weight on her right leg, Tina whispered to the horse. This was their ritual; she could merely hope against hope that Jane could not hear.
"Let's you and I have some fun, eh?"
"As if you'd know fun if it bit your face," Jane crowed and slapped Redbird's rump.
Tina gritted her teeth as she checked her posture and loosened the rein, urging Redbird to canter down the lane.
Before she set out for the stables, her day, her mood, were only growing gloomier and darker. Tina should have known better to expect anything else. Her chest felt tight, as if her stays had been cinched beyond bearing, and a roiling heat billowed beneath her skin. Her temper as well as the innate cynicism that, on better days, she was able to hold in check, were enlarging themselves, running free of her control.
If she happened to meet anyone just at this moment, she could not be responsible for her tongue.
Just now, however, she was galloping across the southern border of campus, up into the woods, and from there, down the drummonds and hillocks that led to the riverbank. Just now, she was as free as she might ever be, the sun slanting behind high clouds, the sky bright as an electric bulb all around her, the horizon tilting down to the Hudson River.
Just now, as she pressed her weight down against the saddle's curve and let out the reins, clicking her tongue against her teeth 'like', her mother was fond of observing, 'a common fishwife', with Redbird's mane streaming over her hands and the rhythmic beat of her hooves drumming a joyful chorus, Tina was...nearly happy.
Behind her, diminishing with each moment, lay the campus with her cruel roommates and idiot professors, uncouth stablehands and essays to be written. Before her lay only the sky and the water, twinned and silvered expanses of possibilities.
She would have liked to take Dickie riding; Tina was certain that the girl would enjoy it, but Dickie always excused herself. There was something, however, about the motion of this, the wind on her face, the horse exerting itself stupendously beneath her, that transported Tina. Were she not quite so angry and disappointed, were she honest, she would have liked to share this with Dickie.
She was alone, however, erect in the saddle, rising and falling with Redbird's speed as if bobbing on lazy waves. The heat of her temper was decreasing, replaced by something much finer, much more private. She had never successfully named this particular warmth, which she associated only with solitude, with riding and, occasionally, swimming. This athletic heat burned deep within her, inflamed her from within, pushing out to the tips of her fingers and up her throat until she was certain she must shout, must fly, to be free of it.
Even as she was free of it, even as she gasped with the alien power, the heat returned, in her chest and her limbs, and she adjusted her seat in the saddle, tightening her limbs together, only to feel Redbird veer right and her mouth open, shout again.
Her body flew, as if she and Redbird were of a single muscle, a united torrent of motion, a union far beyond human ken. Tina welcomed the liberty, let the heat consume her again, and a third time.
When she returned to the stable yard, dusk was gathering like cotton-wool in the spaces between trees and within the depths of the shadows. Tina felt that she could sag in the saddle, though of course she did not, as if she had just wakened from a most curious and transporting dream. Her mind was clear, her emotions calmed, and even the strange wink with which Jane greeted her did not irritate her.
After bidding Redbird goodnight, Tina tossed the reins at Jane, then turned neatly on her heel. She crossed the quadrangle at a leisurely pace, looking forward to dinner and study hours. In the twilight, moving slowly and lightly, she felt much like a devotee of the Buddha, serene and utterly at peace. While her vest and drawers were strangely damp, she attributed this to the horse's exertions. She changed out of them rapidly once returned to her room and dressed for dinner. (This was another new dress, autumn-gold gabardine, and Tina quelled easily the memory of Jane's braying accusations.)
It was only much later that night, well after last bell, when she reached beneath the covers to adjust her hot-water bottle, that Tina's hand grazed her thighs, then rested, cupping, between them.
The dampness had resumed, or perhaps never departed, and her serenity seemed to expand, to billow, to fill with images of Dickie dancing on the wall and an apple's juice smearing bright and sticky over Jane Todd's mouth. Tina rocked slightly, attempting to get comfortable; in place of her palm, curved around herself as if she were the reins, she felt Dickie's smile, Jane's sharp tongue, just, precisely, there.
[end]
Media: Daddy Sharp-Ears (Uber/fusion of DC Comics [Gotham] and Jean Webster's Daddy Long-Legs)
Characters: Tina Drake and Jane Todd
Rating: PG, if that.
Length: 1700 words
Disclaimer: I am neither DC nor Miss Webster.
Notes: For jubilancy, without whom Dickie would be impossible, with much love. thete1 a while ago suggested Jane's freckles and large hands, images which I cannot shake. My procrastination prevented this from being equestri-beta'd by inlovewithnight; I am duly ashamed. Title from a chapter heading in Mr. Carter's Instructions for Ladies in Riding (1783); cut-text from E. Kerr's Riding for Ladies (1895).
Warning: Any and all revolting classist implications within this tale are wholly intentional. ;)
When Tina arrived at the stables, she was dismayed, although not at all surprised, to see that the girl was nowhere to be found. Jane had a most regrettable habit of lagging and goldbricking.
No one, not even Tina, could begin to explain how she managed to remain employed by the college.
Tina had never been the most patient of souls, but today, of all days, she was incensed.
Earlier, when, unable to bear the stifling stillness and ill temper a moment longer, Tina had departed the tower room, Dickie was curled up on the window seat, scratching furiously at her tablet, while Regina lay sprawled on the floor beside her, cheek resting on Dickie's hip, such that every so often, when Dickie paused to chew the top of her pen, she would also stroke Regina's aberrant, flame-red hair.
Tina had tugged on her gloves and ignored the knowing, sarcastic gleam in Regina's eyes.
Already today, she had been made to feel the buffoon in French Literature, her roommates were nearly lunatic with their love of teasing her, her English composition had been deemed 'awkwardly phrased, the logic of its argument perilously ornate', and now now, the idiot stablehand could not be bothered to attend to her duties. The simplest of duties.
Tina stalked around the stables, neatly avoiding the puddles and muck, only to stumble on a rock as she rounded the far corner. She caught herself, then, taking in the sight before her, shook her head.
Jane Todd stood at the far end of the yard with her back turned and her hip cocked, one foot up on a bale of hay, biting into an apple. She seemed as carefree as...as Dickie.
Tina refused to think of Miss Grayson, lest her temper get the best of her. Jane, however, would not be so lucky.
Tina coughed significantly.
A breeze passed over Jane's mussed hair, flying free of its sloppy knot, and as it lifted, the sun caught one coarse lock and turned it the color of fine amber. Tina stilled the querulous tremor in her chest and frowned. For a moment, she had imagined that Jane's hair was an entirely different color, a secret one, a secret that had just been vouched to her.
She coughed again.
Swivelling at the waist, Jane glanced over her shoulder. Her cheek distended with an overlarge bite of fruit, she smirked. "Oh, it's just you."
"I am already running late," Tina told her. "I would appreciate your assistance."
Jane tossed the apple core into the paddock, then wiped her hands on her rough-hewn wool trousers. She jerked her head to the tree-lined lane bordering the courtyard. "Redbird's waiting for you."
"Oh," Tina said and squared her shoulders. Jane grinned at her, rather 'wolfishly'.
The adverb was something that Dickie might say, but Dickie played with words as she played with gravity when she danced along the top of the college wall and Tina was not...playful. Tina was rigorous, regimented, cautious and careful.
No amount of teasing from her (unfortunate) roommates would affect that fact.
"Well then," Tina said, stepping to Jane's side and then walking faster, grateful for her boots against the sucking mud, to keep up with Jane's long, loping stride. When they reached the post where Redbird, Tina's dainty and high-spirited chestnut Arabian mare stood waiting, she removed her gloves and extended her hand. "The reins?"
Jane was a large girl, her bosom and wide hips unconstrained by stays, who walked with a promenader's swagger, even through the stables' muck. Her face and neck were heavily freckled by the sun, as were her hands. They were coarse and quite *warm* against Tina's own when the reins were passed.
The overall effect of Jane's uncouth coarseness, her dark blue eyes glittering in her sun-darkened face, was, always, to disturb Tina at a depth with which she was frankly uncomfortable.
As a general principle, a principle which she fancied was as clean and intellectually luminous as any of old Plato's, Tina kept her emotions in check.
She was a small girl, especially compared to Dickie's long-limbed grace, or even Regina's rangy frame, neat and trim. A good two years younger than her classmates, Tina felt the threat of not being taken seriously to hover, just out of reach, like the cloud of gnats over the paddock. It behooved her to remain as unperturbed as possible, lest she make a fool of herself.
Jane caught her wrist and held Tina at arm's length. "New dress, huh?"
Tina turned her hand to free herself and smoothed down her split skirt. The woolen broadcloth was several degrees finer than Jane's, a somber charcoal gray that the tailor claimed, rightly, complemented Tina's eyes. Although Tina took great pride in her dress-sense she was a bluestocking, to be sure, but that stocking was of the finest material, lovingly designed she was uncertain why, or how, Jane would be able to take notice. "Yes, thank you."
"New one every day, I 'spect," Jane said and tapped the pommel on Redbird's saddle. "The scarf's silk, yeah?"
Tina's fingers fluttered against her throat; the scarf, a gift from her cousin Wayne, was, perhaps, flamboyant in color, a strong brick red that Tina imagined echoed the licks of firelight on Dickie's skin at night. "Yes...?"
"Huh," Jane said and extended her hand. "Well, up you go."
Tina was entirely capable of lifting herself into the saddle, so she did so. Redbird shifted beneath her, huffing slightly. She settled when Tina slid her palm over the hot, sleek length of her neck; bending at the waist, leaving her weight on her right leg, Tina whispered to the horse. This was their ritual; she could merely hope against hope that Jane could not hear.
"Let's you and I have some fun, eh?"
"As if you'd know fun if it bit your face," Jane crowed and slapped Redbird's rump.
Tina gritted her teeth as she checked her posture and loosened the rein, urging Redbird to canter down the lane.
Before she set out for the stables, her day, her mood, were only growing gloomier and darker. Tina should have known better to expect anything else. Her chest felt tight, as if her stays had been cinched beyond bearing, and a roiling heat billowed beneath her skin. Her temper as well as the innate cynicism that, on better days, she was able to hold in check, were enlarging themselves, running free of her control.
If she happened to meet anyone just at this moment, she could not be responsible for her tongue.
Just now, however, she was galloping across the southern border of campus, up into the woods, and from there, down the drummonds and hillocks that led to the riverbank. Just now, she was as free as she might ever be, the sun slanting behind high clouds, the sky bright as an electric bulb all around her, the horizon tilting down to the Hudson River.
Just now, as she pressed her weight down against the saddle's curve and let out the reins, clicking her tongue against her teeth 'like', her mother was fond of observing, 'a common fishwife', with Redbird's mane streaming over her hands and the rhythmic beat of her hooves drumming a joyful chorus, Tina was...nearly happy.
Behind her, diminishing with each moment, lay the campus with her cruel roommates and idiot professors, uncouth stablehands and essays to be written. Before her lay only the sky and the water, twinned and silvered expanses of possibilities.
She would have liked to take Dickie riding; Tina was certain that the girl would enjoy it, but Dickie always excused herself. There was something, however, about the motion of this, the wind on her face, the horse exerting itself stupendously beneath her, that transported Tina. Were she not quite so angry and disappointed, were she honest, she would have liked to share this with Dickie.
She was alone, however, erect in the saddle, rising and falling with Redbird's speed as if bobbing on lazy waves. The heat of her temper was decreasing, replaced by something much finer, much more private. She had never successfully named this particular warmth, which she associated only with solitude, with riding and, occasionally, swimming. This athletic heat burned deep within her, inflamed her from within, pushing out to the tips of her fingers and up her throat until she was certain she must shout, must fly, to be free of it.
Even as she was free of it, even as she gasped with the alien power, the heat returned, in her chest and her limbs, and she adjusted her seat in the saddle, tightening her limbs together, only to feel Redbird veer right and her mouth open, shout again.
Her body flew, as if she and Redbird were of a single muscle, a united torrent of motion, a union far beyond human ken. Tina welcomed the liberty, let the heat consume her again, and a third time.
When she returned to the stable yard, dusk was gathering like cotton-wool in the spaces between trees and within the depths of the shadows. Tina felt that she could sag in the saddle, though of course she did not, as if she had just wakened from a most curious and transporting dream. Her mind was clear, her emotions calmed, and even the strange wink with which Jane greeted her did not irritate her.
After bidding Redbird goodnight, Tina tossed the reins at Jane, then turned neatly on her heel. She crossed the quadrangle at a leisurely pace, looking forward to dinner and study hours. In the twilight, moving slowly and lightly, she felt much like a devotee of the Buddha, serene and utterly at peace. While her vest and drawers were strangely damp, she attributed this to the horse's exertions. She changed out of them rapidly once returned to her room and dressed for dinner. (This was another new dress, autumn-gold gabardine, and Tina quelled easily the memory of Jane's braying accusations.)
It was only much later that night, well after last bell, when she reached beneath the covers to adjust her hot-water bottle, that Tina's hand grazed her thighs, then rested, cupping, between them.
The dampness had resumed, or perhaps never departed, and her serenity seemed to expand, to billow, to fill with images of Dickie dancing on the wall and an apple's juice smearing bright and sticky over Jane Todd's mouth. Tina rocked slightly, attempting to get comfortable; in place of her palm, curved around herself as if she were the reins, she felt Dickie's smile, Jane's sharp tongue, just, precisely, there.
[end]