"In Clover I Lie," The Playboy Club fic
Rating: PG, barely
Pairings: Alice/original female character, Alice/Frances, and references to Sean/Joshua
Warnings: Nothing comes to mind, unless you can't abide original characters in fanfiction.
Other Notes: This story, which opens four years pre-canon in 1957, was my yuletide 2011 contribution for zoicite. Anyone interested can see a drawing (not mine) of the Senior uniform Alice wore, with the Curved Bar pin, in the opening scene. Camp Rainbow and Camp Dean really did exist -- and do still, although since that era Camp Rainbow has moved a few miles and revised the "Camp" part of its name (note tongue firmly in-cheek). The story's title is from the lyrics to "Taking a Chance on Love." Credit for betaing goes to mammothluv; blame for mistakes goes to me alone; Gina is all mine, too.
In Clover I Lie
The lines of her seven-gore Mainbocher dress were askew from her cramped hour on the bus. Alice Mayhew, just shy of eighteen years old, tugged at her cowhide belt and smoothed her hands down her uniform, slender white fingers gliding over flared green cotton covert. She reached to make sure her overseas hat rested at just the right angle atop her upswept hair.
Everything in its proper place then, she stepped forward into the stream of girls entering the lodge at Camp Rainbow, where Boy Scouts awaited the visiting Camp Dean Girl Scouts for an end-of-summer dance. Her tentmate for the past three months, Gina Maggiano, appeared suddenly and tucked her elbow around Alice's.
"C'mon, slowpoke!" Gina pulled at her arm. "There's dancing to be done!"
Alice felt like nothing so much as a hooked fish, gaping at how caught she was. She flushed with warmth along their bare arms and, really, everywhere Gina's soft curves pressed against her, even through the textured fabric of their matching uniforms. The lush fall of Gina's curly black hair brushed Alice's shoulder like a whispered secret just above her Curved Bar pin. Alice briefly dared to align her palm with Gina's but didn't go so far as to intertwine their fingers.
Her voice came out even more breathily than usual when she said, "Okay, okay, I'm coming."
"It's okay to let yourself have fun, you know." Gina tossed her a grin, wide-lipped and shiny. Then Gina's hand was slipping free, and she called out, "Everybody single, time to mingle!"
A couple of Scout leader chaperones glared in their direction. Alice bit her lip. Gina just blew kisses broadly encompassing the chaperones and Alice (who hoped against hope that her blush weren't obvious), and skipped across the room toward the assembled boys, most of the other girls joining her.
Sighing quietly, Alice looked longingly at the row of chairs on the nearer side of the room, before she followed Gina.
She talked and joked with some of the boys, and danced respectably with a few of them when they asked. As they spun her, her gaze strayed past them. Every twirl and dip meant another photographic glimpse for Alice's memory: flashes of Gina's bright smile, her glossy curls, the rich olive tone of her bent wrists and strong, stockinged calves. After a summer sharing a tent, she knew these aspects anyway, as well as she knew Gina's voice from talking and telling each other ghost stories long into the dark hours. The stories weren't what made Alice shiver in her bedroll and her muscles draw tight.
By contrast, Alice could have described only one boy later. And she would do so with her parents, in glowing terms, once she got home from camp.
When she finished another dance and headed toward the chairs at last, she felt a tap on her shoulder.
"Excuse me," asked a handsome boy, matching her heeled height, as she turned to face him, "could I get you some punch?"
Alice met his eyes -- a pleasant shade of blue, under a wave of slick hair almost the same shade as Gina's -- and nodded. "That would be very nice, thank you."
"It would be my pleasure. After you," he said, gesturing at the refreshment table.
Once there, she waited for him to serve each of them before taking her first sip. As she did, she glanced over the rim of her etched crystal mug, this time catching Gina's eyes with her own for the barest moment.
"Do you even know you're doing it?"
Startled, she spilled a drop of punch over the back of her hand. She took a napkin from the table to wipe away the mark and replied, "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Ah." The boy swallowed deeply from his mug. "So, you are aware, and just can't help yourself."
Alice clenched her fists, the crystal sharp against her palms. She spoke in a careful, clipped tone. "What do you suppose would happen if I slapped you? I doubt the chaperones would reprimand a girl at all."
To her astonishment and annoyance, he let out a punchy laugh, which he quickly covered with his palm. His eyes sparkled as he drew away his hand. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to offend, and I appreciate the spirited repartee. Honestly, though, I don't believe you'd like to draw more attention to yourself by slapping me."
"You think you're very clever, don't you?" Alice asked, setting her mug on the table before crossing her arms.
"I'm going to work in politics," he said, as if that were a direct answer.
She feigned a yawn and tried not to be too obvious in her search for escape routes. "How terribly exciting."
He shook his head, his gaze following hers and mistaking -- possibly deliberately -- her intention, as he suggested, "Would you like to get some fresh air with me?"
"I don't know you!" she retorted, the kinder alternative to more direct expressions of her irritation.
"Sean Beasley," he said, offering his hand and an apparently sincere expression of contrition. "Please, forgive any excessive cleverness and let me make it up to you on a walk. We can go along Waupecan Creek."
"Alice Mayhew." She didn't take Sean's hand but, sighing, did pace to the door ahead of him. "I guess you feel like taking a chance on my pushing you into that creek."
"My odds are that bad, huh?" He laughed again, and this time she found herself joining him, even in view of a scowling chaperone. He borrowed a flashlight from an emergency kit attached to the wall beside the door and aimed its beam outside. "I'll risk it."
Along their way through a small grove, they talked easily, mostly about his political aspirations and her wish to get out of her somewhat ironically-named tiny hometown of Piper City: "How this Piper would ever lure in anyone, I can't imagine!"
Moonlight reached down between the leaves and branches with silver fingers, and the soft ground lent a bounce to Alice's step. They were already at the banks of the creek, its susurrant waters dappled with reflected light, before Alice unthinkingly observed aloud that she hadn't told anyone, including Gina, where she was going with this stranger.
"I'm still just a stranger?" Sean clucked his tongue, then said more soberly, "So, that's her name? Gina?"
"Yes. Wait, no. What?" Alice stumbled, her heels sticking a bit in the loam. She flung out her arms for balance and accidentally smacked the back of her hand into Sean's stomach.
"Oof!" He doubled over. "You don't have to fight me! Believe me, I know this is a sensitive subject --"
"I don't know what --" she interrupted.
But he spoke over her, too, his voice steady while his face was nearly invisible with their flashlight trained on the ground. "Please, don't start that again. Listen, if it'll help, when we get back, I'll point out to you the Scout from my troop who draws my eye a little too often."
"You mean, you're . . . you look at a boy?" she whispered, even though no one else was near them. Her footing still felt so shaky.
"Yes, I am. I do." Sean lifted the flashlight above his head with one hand so that he could point it down past his face while he nodded firmly. He held out his hand to her once more. "Alice, I can help you. We can help each other."
She looked from his hand to his face, as open and reassuring as someone could look when lit only by flashlight. Swallowing, she took his hand. She joked weakly, "Do you make a habit of offering to help people who've threatened you?"
"I consider myself a pretty good judge of character," Sean said, another sideways answer, but genial rather than cocky this time and contagiously undaunted.
He said he had a proposition for her, which turned out to be a proposal.
She didn't tell Gina about that during the bus ride back to Camp Dean, only about Sean being smart and debonair and gentlemanly. Not that she planned to admit any such things to him.
Gina "oohed" with interest and leaned her head on Alice's shoulder. "He did look dreamy."
Fighting so very hard to keep the trembling inside her from finding its way through her skin to Gina's cheek, Alice murmured, "Oh, did you see us?"
(Were you watching me, too?)
"Of course, I saw, silly-billy!" Gina said affectionately. She pinched Alice's thigh, and Alice nearly choked swallowing back her gasp. "You get his address so you can write and set up dates later?"
In truth they had already set the date. They planned to court for just over two years, beginning through letters -- which, of course, her mother would read religiously, and which, for that reason, Alice and Sean would write in a rudimentary code they'd established -- before progressing to in-person outings, then the more public version of Sean's proposal.
Lost in thought, Alice couldn't hide the noise when Gina pinched her again. "Gina!"
"Sorry," Gina said, her tone unrepentant, and tweaked Alice's nose instead. "You're too much fun to wind up, y'know?"
"Gee, thank you." She gave Gina an exasperated look. Part of her knew her reprimands would only encourage more touches and winding. It was ridiculously dangerous, but the secret thrill was irresistible.
The next morning was their last day at Camp Dean for the summer. Gina and Alice had packed up their bedrolls and other supplies, but it was still very early, the sun just beginning to warm and filter in, coloring their space undersea green through the fabric of their tent. They couldn't see the shadows or hear the sounds of any other girls, and the tent felt like a private sanctuary. When Gina begged in a whisper that they not leave it just yet, Alice was quick to agree.
Fat tears rolled down Gina's cheeks while she sucked in ragged breaths.
Although Alice's eyes brimmed, she clutched Gina's hands, in reassurance and out of fear that letting go would cause her own body to fly apart. A hummingbird was flitting through her, beating its wings at her composure and reason.
"I'll miss you like crazy." Gina lifted her right hand, with Alice's left, to knuckle the backs under her eyes.
Unlike the punch the night before, Alice wished this would stain her skin forever. "I will, too. You know I will."
Gina's voice wavered. "Really?"
"Of course!" Alice said. "I hold you so dear, Gina."
The tears fell faster, and the hummingbird's frantic wings shattered Alice so that she was tipping forward without another thought to pepper kisses over Gina's fever-hot, tearstained cheeks and finally -- oh, finally -- deliriously one across her lips.
Gina let out a quiet moan, and they fell abruptly apart, away. Alice's hand flew to her own tingling mouth, while Gina closed her hands into fists around her bedroll.
"Um," Gina said, nasally high. "Alice, that's not . . . I don't . . . I think you folks in Piper City must like a different kind of swing. You better not --"
"No." Alice struggled to her feet, her limbs suddenly heavy and off-balance, her head too full. Yes, she did like that, could still feel Gina's skin against her lips, but to lose herself like that, "No, no, nonono."
Grabbing her gear, she fled, hiding until the bus came to take her away from Camp Dean and especially away from Gina, whose address she forced herself to lose even as she spilled out her coded heart in letters to Sean. Letters from Gina never came.
~*~*~
Despite her gradually fading concerns over the Camp Dean disaster, the planned next steps went without a hitch. She had expected as much, though. Her parents couldn't object to Sean's unending charm and verbal fencing. They offered only a token protest to Sean's idea of moving with his new wife to Chicago. It naturally helped that they hadn't a clue about the relationship Sean had started with a sweet young man named Joshua. Whereas for Alice knowing about Joshua helped; he became a ready second confidant in the city.
Her new job once they arrived there was just another secret to keep from everyone else. But, oh, that secret sparked hotter and hotter inside Alice. Every day was a heaven/hell of temptation in heels. She could look her fill, because the Bunnies surrounding her made it literally impossible not to look.
Some days, even though the tips in coat check weren't quite as good, she requested assignment there for the physical confinement and the limitation of her sightlines. The lie to herself that this curtailed her thoughts, too, was on those days -- combined with the security of Sean -- her only raft in a whitewater rush of wanting. Its tether would have been easy to slip loose, free.
Photographing Maureen for the cover contest rocked Alice's moorings a bit.
And then.
After their second Mattachine meeting, Sean pointed at Alice, and when she stepped over to him she was face-to-face with a tall, gorgeous woman who looked nothing quite like Gina, Sean, or any Bunny.
"Hi," Alice said warmly, and the woman reciprocated.
"Alice, this is Frances Dunhill." Sean gestured unnecessarily.
"I've seen you at the Club."
"You're the prettiest Bunny there," Frances replied, and Alice's gaze dipped automatically to catch the last drop of sweet words falling in that rich tone from her mouth.
Alice laughed a little, both flustered and delighted with understanding. She turned her smile and a knowing look on Sean, who was leaning slightly toward Grant. In a polite voice she asked, "Where's Joshua tonight?"
"Bronchitis," Sean said, ducking his head and smiling in acknowledgement of her barb. "Don't worry. He'll be fine. And, if he gets me sick before then, I promise not to kiss and infect you, too."
"Yuck, man-germs!" Alice mock-shivered, feeling her mossy blouse tease softly along her skin.
Sean and Grant chuckled.
Frances smiled as well, but heat underlay the amusement in her voice as she leaned close to Alice. "We don't all have to vow that, do we? Not to kiss you?"
Shivering genuinely, Alice shook her head without at first realizing she was doing it, and Frances was near enough that her lips brushed, breeze-light, across the shell of Alice's ear. Alice drew a sharp breath and made herself speak. "You don't. You don't have to."
"I don't have to vow, or I don't have to kiss you?" Frances asked, one eyebrow peaked.
"Neither, of course," Alice asserted, but the open interest Frances was showing felt magnetic, as though Alice could sway just a little in the right direction and crash into everything Frances offered.
Sean cleared his throat, and met Alice's eyes with his usual fondness. "I'm going to deliver some soup for Joshua and then go home. Would you like to come with me, or did you reserve enough from your tips tonight for cab fare?"
"You mean, you two don't put every dollar into the Society?" Grant joked. "As the new Treasurer, I have to say, I'm disappointed."
Alice smiled at him and nodded at Sean. "I'll take a cab."
"I can make sure you get home all right," Frances said, resting her hand very lightly on Alice's shoulder, "if that's amenable to you."
"It is." Taking a long, slow breath, Alice lifted her own hand to press for just a moment over Frances', its offer considered with appreciation, if not yet accepted.
"It wouldn't be weakness, you know." Frances' voice startled Alice out of her reverie.
As they had entered the cab in companionable silence, she'd looked toward the window, intending to focus her gaze through it, on Chicago's sights. Instead she had become caught up in studying what she could of Frances' reflection on the surface, the liquid shimmer of her jewelry and of her smooth hair and skin, especially in the low V of her blouse. Although nowhere nearly as revealing as a Bunny uniform, it seemed fraught with a whole new, vast set of possibilities. The space between Frances and Alice on the seat is comparatively tiny.
Alice jerked her head from the window and trained her eyes above Frances' neck. "I'm sorry, what do you mean?"
Cupping one hand around Alice's cheek, Frances repeated quietly, "It wouldn't be weakness. To want a woman. To kiss or make love to a woman, even. You can find amazing power in surrender."
There was a stirring inside Alice, the hummingbird fluttering. She wrapped her fingers around Frances' wrist but didn't pull herself free. "I know. I just need to be strong enough to balance what I want with what I can do."
"What you do, working at that Club every day and supporting Mattachine, that requires boundless strength. I have no doubt you're stronger than I will ever be, Alice."
"Well," Alice said, luxurious warmth soaking from her palm through her body, "I don't know you yet and can't speak to your strength. But I've found that some strangers can make the best companions in life."
Frances smiled just as the cab passed beneath a streetlamp, its beam enclosing them in one warm, brightening circle for a moment. Alice smiled, too. She turned her head and sealed her lips in a kiss against Frances' soft palm.
She didn't turn again until the cab had stopped in front of her home. When she and Frances released each other, Alice paid her own fare, then disembarked, planting her feet solidly on the sidewalk. She felt an updraft, a gentle lift and spread of the hummingbird's wings buoying her.
Pursing her lips, Alice tipped herself steadily back down to look into the backseat at Frances and asked, "Would you like --?"
And the answer, immediately, was "Very much, yes, Alice."
- end -
Pairings: Alice/original female character, Alice/Frances, and references to Sean/Joshua
Warnings: Nothing comes to mind, unless you can't abide original characters in fanfiction.
Other Notes: This story, which opens four years pre-canon in 1957, was my yuletide 2011 contribution for zoicite. Anyone interested can see a drawing (not mine) of the Senior uniform Alice wore, with the Curved Bar pin, in the opening scene. Camp Rainbow and Camp Dean really did exist -- and do still, although since that era Camp Rainbow has moved a few miles and revised the "Camp" part of its name (note tongue firmly in-cheek). The story's title is from the lyrics to "Taking a Chance on Love." Credit for betaing goes to mammothluv; blame for mistakes goes to me alone; Gina is all mine, too.
In Clover I Lie
The lines of her seven-gore Mainbocher dress were askew from her cramped hour on the bus. Alice Mayhew, just shy of eighteen years old, tugged at her cowhide belt and smoothed her hands down her uniform, slender white fingers gliding over flared green cotton covert. She reached to make sure her overseas hat rested at just the right angle atop her upswept hair.
Everything in its proper place then, she stepped forward into the stream of girls entering the lodge at Camp Rainbow, where Boy Scouts awaited the visiting Camp Dean Girl Scouts for an end-of-summer dance. Her tentmate for the past three months, Gina Maggiano, appeared suddenly and tucked her elbow around Alice's.
"C'mon, slowpoke!" Gina pulled at her arm. "There's dancing to be done!"
Alice felt like nothing so much as a hooked fish, gaping at how caught she was. She flushed with warmth along their bare arms and, really, everywhere Gina's soft curves pressed against her, even through the textured fabric of their matching uniforms. The lush fall of Gina's curly black hair brushed Alice's shoulder like a whispered secret just above her Curved Bar pin. Alice briefly dared to align her palm with Gina's but didn't go so far as to intertwine their fingers.
Her voice came out even more breathily than usual when she said, "Okay, okay, I'm coming."
"It's okay to let yourself have fun, you know." Gina tossed her a grin, wide-lipped and shiny. Then Gina's hand was slipping free, and she called out, "Everybody single, time to mingle!"
A couple of Scout leader chaperones glared in their direction. Alice bit her lip. Gina just blew kisses broadly encompassing the chaperones and Alice (who hoped against hope that her blush weren't obvious), and skipped across the room toward the assembled boys, most of the other girls joining her.
Sighing quietly, Alice looked longingly at the row of chairs on the nearer side of the room, before she followed Gina.
She talked and joked with some of the boys, and danced respectably with a few of them when they asked. As they spun her, her gaze strayed past them. Every twirl and dip meant another photographic glimpse for Alice's memory: flashes of Gina's bright smile, her glossy curls, the rich olive tone of her bent wrists and strong, stockinged calves. After a summer sharing a tent, she knew these aspects anyway, as well as she knew Gina's voice from talking and telling each other ghost stories long into the dark hours. The stories weren't what made Alice shiver in her bedroll and her muscles draw tight.
By contrast, Alice could have described only one boy later. And she would do so with her parents, in glowing terms, once she got home from camp.
When she finished another dance and headed toward the chairs at last, she felt a tap on her shoulder.
"Excuse me," asked a handsome boy, matching her heeled height, as she turned to face him, "could I get you some punch?"
Alice met his eyes -- a pleasant shade of blue, under a wave of slick hair almost the same shade as Gina's -- and nodded. "That would be very nice, thank you."
"It would be my pleasure. After you," he said, gesturing at the refreshment table.
Once there, she waited for him to serve each of them before taking her first sip. As she did, she glanced over the rim of her etched crystal mug, this time catching Gina's eyes with her own for the barest moment.
"Do you even know you're doing it?"
Startled, she spilled a drop of punch over the back of her hand. She took a napkin from the table to wipe away the mark and replied, "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Ah." The boy swallowed deeply from his mug. "So, you are aware, and just can't help yourself."
Alice clenched her fists, the crystal sharp against her palms. She spoke in a careful, clipped tone. "What do you suppose would happen if I slapped you? I doubt the chaperones would reprimand a girl at all."
To her astonishment and annoyance, he let out a punchy laugh, which he quickly covered with his palm. His eyes sparkled as he drew away his hand. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to offend, and I appreciate the spirited repartee. Honestly, though, I don't believe you'd like to draw more attention to yourself by slapping me."
"You think you're very clever, don't you?" Alice asked, setting her mug on the table before crossing her arms.
"I'm going to work in politics," he said, as if that were a direct answer.
She feigned a yawn and tried not to be too obvious in her search for escape routes. "How terribly exciting."
He shook his head, his gaze following hers and mistaking -- possibly deliberately -- her intention, as he suggested, "Would you like to get some fresh air with me?"
"I don't know you!" she retorted, the kinder alternative to more direct expressions of her irritation.
"Sean Beasley," he said, offering his hand and an apparently sincere expression of contrition. "Please, forgive any excessive cleverness and let me make it up to you on a walk. We can go along Waupecan Creek."
"Alice Mayhew." She didn't take Sean's hand but, sighing, did pace to the door ahead of him. "I guess you feel like taking a chance on my pushing you into that creek."
"My odds are that bad, huh?" He laughed again, and this time she found herself joining him, even in view of a scowling chaperone. He borrowed a flashlight from an emergency kit attached to the wall beside the door and aimed its beam outside. "I'll risk it."
Along their way through a small grove, they talked easily, mostly about his political aspirations and her wish to get out of her somewhat ironically-named tiny hometown of Piper City: "How this Piper would ever lure in anyone, I can't imagine!"
Moonlight reached down between the leaves and branches with silver fingers, and the soft ground lent a bounce to Alice's step. They were already at the banks of the creek, its susurrant waters dappled with reflected light, before Alice unthinkingly observed aloud that she hadn't told anyone, including Gina, where she was going with this stranger.
"I'm still just a stranger?" Sean clucked his tongue, then said more soberly, "So, that's her name? Gina?"
"Yes. Wait, no. What?" Alice stumbled, her heels sticking a bit in the loam. She flung out her arms for balance and accidentally smacked the back of her hand into Sean's stomach.
"Oof!" He doubled over. "You don't have to fight me! Believe me, I know this is a sensitive subject --"
"I don't know what --" she interrupted.
But he spoke over her, too, his voice steady while his face was nearly invisible with their flashlight trained on the ground. "Please, don't start that again. Listen, if it'll help, when we get back, I'll point out to you the Scout from my troop who draws my eye a little too often."
"You mean, you're . . . you look at a boy?" she whispered, even though no one else was near them. Her footing still felt so shaky.
"Yes, I am. I do." Sean lifted the flashlight above his head with one hand so that he could point it down past his face while he nodded firmly. He held out his hand to her once more. "Alice, I can help you. We can help each other."
She looked from his hand to his face, as open and reassuring as someone could look when lit only by flashlight. Swallowing, she took his hand. She joked weakly, "Do you make a habit of offering to help people who've threatened you?"
"I consider myself a pretty good judge of character," Sean said, another sideways answer, but genial rather than cocky this time and contagiously undaunted.
He said he had a proposition for her, which turned out to be a proposal.
She didn't tell Gina about that during the bus ride back to Camp Dean, only about Sean being smart and debonair and gentlemanly. Not that she planned to admit any such things to him.
Gina "oohed" with interest and leaned her head on Alice's shoulder. "He did look dreamy."
Fighting so very hard to keep the trembling inside her from finding its way through her skin to Gina's cheek, Alice murmured, "Oh, did you see us?"
(Were you watching me, too?)
"Of course, I saw, silly-billy!" Gina said affectionately. She pinched Alice's thigh, and Alice nearly choked swallowing back her gasp. "You get his address so you can write and set up dates later?"
In truth they had already set the date. They planned to court for just over two years, beginning through letters -- which, of course, her mother would read religiously, and which, for that reason, Alice and Sean would write in a rudimentary code they'd established -- before progressing to in-person outings, then the more public version of Sean's proposal.
Lost in thought, Alice couldn't hide the noise when Gina pinched her again. "Gina!"
"Sorry," Gina said, her tone unrepentant, and tweaked Alice's nose instead. "You're too much fun to wind up, y'know?"
"Gee, thank you." She gave Gina an exasperated look. Part of her knew her reprimands would only encourage more touches and winding. It was ridiculously dangerous, but the secret thrill was irresistible.
The next morning was their last day at Camp Dean for the summer. Gina and Alice had packed up their bedrolls and other supplies, but it was still very early, the sun just beginning to warm and filter in, coloring their space undersea green through the fabric of their tent. They couldn't see the shadows or hear the sounds of any other girls, and the tent felt like a private sanctuary. When Gina begged in a whisper that they not leave it just yet, Alice was quick to agree.
Fat tears rolled down Gina's cheeks while she sucked in ragged breaths.
Although Alice's eyes brimmed, she clutched Gina's hands, in reassurance and out of fear that letting go would cause her own body to fly apart. A hummingbird was flitting through her, beating its wings at her composure and reason.
"I'll miss you like crazy." Gina lifted her right hand, with Alice's left, to knuckle the backs under her eyes.
Unlike the punch the night before, Alice wished this would stain her skin forever. "I will, too. You know I will."
Gina's voice wavered. "Really?"
"Of course!" Alice said. "I hold you so dear, Gina."
The tears fell faster, and the hummingbird's frantic wings shattered Alice so that she was tipping forward without another thought to pepper kisses over Gina's fever-hot, tearstained cheeks and finally -- oh, finally -- deliriously one across her lips.
Gina let out a quiet moan, and they fell abruptly apart, away. Alice's hand flew to her own tingling mouth, while Gina closed her hands into fists around her bedroll.
"Um," Gina said, nasally high. "Alice, that's not . . . I don't . . . I think you folks in Piper City must like a different kind of swing. You better not --"
"No." Alice struggled to her feet, her limbs suddenly heavy and off-balance, her head too full. Yes, she did like that, could still feel Gina's skin against her lips, but to lose herself like that, "No, no, nonono."
Grabbing her gear, she fled, hiding until the bus came to take her away from Camp Dean and especially away from Gina, whose address she forced herself to lose even as she spilled out her coded heart in letters to Sean. Letters from Gina never came.
~*~*~
Despite her gradually fading concerns over the Camp Dean disaster, the planned next steps went without a hitch. She had expected as much, though. Her parents couldn't object to Sean's unending charm and verbal fencing. They offered only a token protest to Sean's idea of moving with his new wife to Chicago. It naturally helped that they hadn't a clue about the relationship Sean had started with a sweet young man named Joshua. Whereas for Alice knowing about Joshua helped; he became a ready second confidant in the city.
Her new job once they arrived there was just another secret to keep from everyone else. But, oh, that secret sparked hotter and hotter inside Alice. Every day was a heaven/hell of temptation in heels. She could look her fill, because the Bunnies surrounding her made it literally impossible not to look.
Some days, even though the tips in coat check weren't quite as good, she requested assignment there for the physical confinement and the limitation of her sightlines. The lie to herself that this curtailed her thoughts, too, was on those days -- combined with the security of Sean -- her only raft in a whitewater rush of wanting. Its tether would have been easy to slip loose, free.
Photographing Maureen for the cover contest rocked Alice's moorings a bit.
And then.
After their second Mattachine meeting, Sean pointed at Alice, and when she stepped over to him she was face-to-face with a tall, gorgeous woman who looked nothing quite like Gina, Sean, or any Bunny.
"Hi," Alice said warmly, and the woman reciprocated.
"Alice, this is Frances Dunhill." Sean gestured unnecessarily.
"I've seen you at the Club."
"You're the prettiest Bunny there," Frances replied, and Alice's gaze dipped automatically to catch the last drop of sweet words falling in that rich tone from her mouth.
Alice laughed a little, both flustered and delighted with understanding. She turned her smile and a knowing look on Sean, who was leaning slightly toward Grant. In a polite voice she asked, "Where's Joshua tonight?"
"Bronchitis," Sean said, ducking his head and smiling in acknowledgement of her barb. "Don't worry. He'll be fine. And, if he gets me sick before then, I promise not to kiss and infect you, too."
"Yuck, man-germs!" Alice mock-shivered, feeling her mossy blouse tease softly along her skin.
Sean and Grant chuckled.
Frances smiled as well, but heat underlay the amusement in her voice as she leaned close to Alice. "We don't all have to vow that, do we? Not to kiss you?"
Shivering genuinely, Alice shook her head without at first realizing she was doing it, and Frances was near enough that her lips brushed, breeze-light, across the shell of Alice's ear. Alice drew a sharp breath and made herself speak. "You don't. You don't have to."
"I don't have to vow, or I don't have to kiss you?" Frances asked, one eyebrow peaked.
"Neither, of course," Alice asserted, but the open interest Frances was showing felt magnetic, as though Alice could sway just a little in the right direction and crash into everything Frances offered.
Sean cleared his throat, and met Alice's eyes with his usual fondness. "I'm going to deliver some soup for Joshua and then go home. Would you like to come with me, or did you reserve enough from your tips tonight for cab fare?"
"You mean, you two don't put every dollar into the Society?" Grant joked. "As the new Treasurer, I have to say, I'm disappointed."
Alice smiled at him and nodded at Sean. "I'll take a cab."
"I can make sure you get home all right," Frances said, resting her hand very lightly on Alice's shoulder, "if that's amenable to you."
"It is." Taking a long, slow breath, Alice lifted her own hand to press for just a moment over Frances', its offer considered with appreciation, if not yet accepted.
"It wouldn't be weakness, you know." Frances' voice startled Alice out of her reverie.
As they had entered the cab in companionable silence, she'd looked toward the window, intending to focus her gaze through it, on Chicago's sights. Instead she had become caught up in studying what she could of Frances' reflection on the surface, the liquid shimmer of her jewelry and of her smooth hair and skin, especially in the low V of her blouse. Although nowhere nearly as revealing as a Bunny uniform, it seemed fraught with a whole new, vast set of possibilities. The space between Frances and Alice on the seat is comparatively tiny.
Alice jerked her head from the window and trained her eyes above Frances' neck. "I'm sorry, what do you mean?"
Cupping one hand around Alice's cheek, Frances repeated quietly, "It wouldn't be weakness. To want a woman. To kiss or make love to a woman, even. You can find amazing power in surrender."
There was a stirring inside Alice, the hummingbird fluttering. She wrapped her fingers around Frances' wrist but didn't pull herself free. "I know. I just need to be strong enough to balance what I want with what I can do."
"What you do, working at that Club every day and supporting Mattachine, that requires boundless strength. I have no doubt you're stronger than I will ever be, Alice."
"Well," Alice said, luxurious warmth soaking from her palm through her body, "I don't know you yet and can't speak to your strength. But I've found that some strangers can make the best companions in life."
Frances smiled just as the cab passed beneath a streetlamp, its beam enclosing them in one warm, brightening circle for a moment. Alice smiled, too. She turned her head and sealed her lips in a kiss against Frances' soft palm.
She didn't turn again until the cab had stopped in front of her home. When she and Frances released each other, Alice paid her own fare, then disembarked, planting her feet solidly on the sidewalk. She felt an updraft, a gentle lift and spread of the hummingbird's wings buoying her.
Pursing her lips, Alice tipped herself steadily back down to look into the backseat at Frances and asked, "Would you like --?"
And the answer, immediately, was "Very much, yes, Alice."
- end -