A/N: Ok, I'm pretty sure this one won't get any reviews or faves, or any views at all, but I wanted to write this, so I'm thinking of it more of any exercise. This is inspired from the 1960 film Butterfield 8, which I recommend solely because of Elizabeth Taylor's performance, along with her costar and then husband Eddie Fisher. Their characters weren't together in the film, but I felt they should've been and they deserved a better ending. So here you go.
He definitely wasn't the best looking man she had ever known, but then she was beautiful enough for the both of them, so he figured that was alright. He had never known a more beautiful woman, but God had made sure that she paid for such a generous gift. He now knew that. But no, he wasn't the tallest, the funniest, the most handsome, and he sure as hell wasn't the richest. For some reason, she always came back to him, albeit spoiled and boozed up. But he'd take her into his home anyway, he couldn't say no to Gloria.
No one knows this…except a certain man somewhere…who I'd like to think of as standing in the middle of a lake filled with burning gasoline.
At her first sentence, he knew the story.
Please, listen.
He hung his head and obliged her.
I was 13. My father was dead. All older men seemed like fathers to me. But I wanted one of my own. To sit in his lap, to hug him and have him say I was beautiful. Do you remember Major Hartley?
He did.
Major Hartley. My mother's friend. He came down to Grand Central Station one day to pick me up from summer camp. Mother was away visiting. He took me home, he let me sit in his lap, he let me hug him…he told me I was beautiful. He stayed in that house for one week…and taught me more about evil than any 13 year old girl in the world knew.
He urged her to stop, for her sake or his though, he wasn't sure of.
You haven't heard the worst of it yet! I loved it! Every awful moment of it, I loved! That's your Gloria, Steve! That's your darling, Gloria!
She continued to speak, and although he heard what she was saying, he couldn't stop her last confession from running over and over inside his mind. She knew that he would do anything for her, but he never gave into her advances, and now he knew why she made a point of trying to tempt him. It was a test, and had he given like he had wanted so many times, then it was very possible that she would disappear from his life just as quickly as she had entered it. Something she had said a little over a week ago suddenly returned with entirely new meaning.
Don't think of me as a woman, after all, we're just like brother and sister, remember?
He had even told Norma, the girl he was supposed to love, that he had become Gloria's family after her father died. But it didn't change the fact that they weren't family, not the kind she had expected to find with him anyway, that was something he would ever to do her. To prove that he just like every man she had known since the Major. But they were most definitely not brother and sister.
The soft cracked quality of her voice brought him back to the earth as she tried to contain her tears.
"I made a way of life out of it. The deep shame of it didn't hit me until it was too late. I couldn't go back to 13 again. I had on chance to stop it…One last chance. And I…I threw it all away for 32 animals sewn together into a coat."
Steve wanted so much to burn that damn mink and the man that bought it, they had been to cause of all this and the coat had been more trouble than it's worth. It was over seven thousand dollars, so that gave some indication of its reckless deviance.
He took hold of her arms.
"It's not all over. Give it another chance."
She pulled away.
"Where are you going?"
"It doesn't matter." She whispered, collecting her belongings and heading to the door, he cut her off there and caught her by the arm once more. He knew if she walked out now, he'd never see her again.
"Wait! It matters a great deal, what you do. You got to decide what you're gonna do next. I do too. Stay here tonight."
After carefully considering his expression, searching for any sign of the sort of intentions she had come to expect from men, she was relieved to not find anything but compassion in that pleasant face of his. Leaning in, she brushed her lips against his cheek. Resisting the temptation to place them on his mouth in thanks.
"Thank you, Steve."
Her heart ached at the tenderness he had shown towards her, as she crossed to sit on his sofa. He came to sit at her feet, stock still and head bow down once again, finding himself regretting the loss such a wild beautiful spirit and hating every man that had diminished it to what now sat before him.
When he looked at her again, her eyes had closed and her breathing was regular and even. He wasn't sure how long he watched her like this and it saddened him more to see that even when dreaming, she looked troubled.
Finally standing up, he leaned over to place his hands on her shoulders and gently guided her body down to lay across the sofa. He would have moved to remove her shoes, had it not been for the hand that reached up to clasp his before he had a chance to move away. Looking down with a questioning look, he saw that her eyes hadn't even opened and has he stilled, she tightened her grip slightly, silently begging him to remain at her side.
So he did.
He never knew that Norma arrived early the next morning to see that her fiancé and the woman she hated were holding hands as one laid on the sofa and the other was splayed on the floor looking rather uncomfortable. The blonde knew she had been beaten and though she was heartbroken, she was not surprised and had prepared herself for the inevitable.
Steve also never knew that before slipping out of the apartment and Steve's life, Norma quickly glanced at the mink that now laid forgotten on the piano bench. With little deliberation, she scooped it up in her arm and closed the door behind her, somewhat thankful that she had not walked away nothing.
The coat was not missed.
All the dialogue is from the movie, I provided subtext and I changed the ending of the scene, that it all. Watch the movie!