Saturday, April 13, 1912
Alex takes her sketch pad, her cigarettes, and an apple from the third class dining saloon and goes to her and Piper's bench in the morning, still carrying her good mood from last night.
She's drawing Piper again, wanting to tease her with a portrait she'll like better than the sad one. Alex wants to draw the way she'd looked last night, disheveled and shining; it's an image stuck in her head, she can draw more if she needs, but this one she'll give to Piper. Even if Alex never sees her after the ship docks, she wants Piper to have tangible proof of her own happiness.
And, maybe, proof of Alex, too.
That's something she keeps thinking about: when the ship docks, and what might happen after. If she'll ever see Piper again.
For the past five years, Alex has been unable to see anything further than the next few hours. She lives with no guarantees, no predictions, even, and she's always liked it that way. Every day is a fresh hand of cards, no rhyme or reason to the dealing. Alex is a good player, she's so good; whatever she gets, she makes it work for her. But now -
Well. Now she's wishing for just a little hint.
Morning rolls lazily away with no sign of Piper, but Alex doesn't allow herself to worry about it. She can only imagine a fuzzy impression of Piper's family dynamics, or what sort of endless discussions might follow the revelation Piper planned to make to her father this morning.
So, patiently, Alex waits.
She stretches across the bench and falls asleep in the sun for a few hours after lunchtime. She doesn't know what time it is when she wakes up, has to ask three passing people before one has a pocket watch. Nearly dinner time.
Nearly time to worry.
Piper spends the day fitting herself back inside the cage of her life, and remembering all the reasons she is ill equipped to live outside it. Alex makes it sound appealing - Alex makes everything sound beautiful - but it is easy to disguise reality when they're both confined to this ship.
Alex sleeps outside and steals food and chops off her hair to get work on a boat. Alex has survived five years of that life, but Piper would crumble in a single day. Her father is right; everything has been handed to her. She has never had to do anything for herself, or at all; she's no better than the accusation she threw at Larry, just someone born with a good name everything that came along with it. She has no idea how to live without it, but she would have to, that much is certain: her only choices are the extremes. There is no walking away from her wedding to Larry without walking away from everything: home, family, life.
Her father doesn't allow her to be alone all day, making sure if he's not with her, Larry is. For his part, Larry is overly solicitous and cheerful, obviously hoping to move beyond yesterday's unpleasantness. If he's been filled in on her trip below deck last night, he doesn't let on.
Only for a few hours in the morning is Piper tightroping along the edge of tears; that's how long it takes her to convince herself she's being foolish. Three days ago she was perfectly fine. Not ecstatic, sure, but not miserable either. She'd known her future, and not once had considered refusing it.
And Alex is just a stranger spinning stories; Piper got caught up in a fantasy the same way she loses herself in books and paintings. But it's not real life; not for her.
Still -
She keeps telling herself that within a week or two, she will likely have trouble picturing Alex's face, recalling what they'd talked about for so many hours. But right now, Piper feels vaguely ill every time she thinks of Alex waiting futilely at the bench for her, all day long.
Her only chance comes when they dress for dinner. Her mother accompanies Piper to her bedroom, stands behind her, tying her into her corset in front of the vanity mirror. Carol hasn't said a direct word to her daughter all day, but after five minutes of knotting and looping strings, she says quietly, "It will be a beautiful wedding."
Piper averts her eyes from her own reflection as she murmurs, "I know, Mother."
"And he will treat you well." The corset squeezes her ribcage tighter. "It is a good life you're getting, Piper."
Her voice is not a gentle reassurance, but a reproach and reminder that Piper should not complain.
"Yes, ma'am."
Her mother leaves her, then, to dress in her own room, and it occurs to Piper all at once that if she's going to go, she has to go now.
She half expects to find her father in the sitting room, guarding her door, but it's empty even of servants and so Piper slips easily out of the suite, holding the skirt of her dress in bunched fists and going as fast as her heels allow. She tells herself she is only going to be polite, but halfway to the steerage deck she thinks of a better reason: she's making sure Alex knows not to come looking for her.
There is every chance Alex has given up on her by now, is inside eating dinner or drawing in artificial light or playing poker with the Irishmen; if she's not at the bench, Piper can at least assure herself that she tried.
But Alex is there, the only one still out on the deck. Her hair is a windswept mess, eyes restless, an unlit cigarette in her mouth. She sits up when she sees Piper, but her smile is small, worry eclipsing the instinctive flash of relief in her eyes.
As though that quickly, somehow, she can see through Piper.
"Hey."
"Hello." Piper stays standing, her hands folded behind her back, distant and formal. Slowly, Alex stands, too, so she can comfortably meet Piper's eyes. "I'm sorry I didn't come sooner. I...I only have a moment, I have to get to dinner soon."
"Oh." Alex squints at her, uncertain. She's taken the cigarette from between her teeth and is rolling it nervously between her fingers. "Is everything okay?"
"Everything is fine," Piper says firmly. "I just came to tell you that I've enjoyed talking to you the last few days. But it's not a good idea for me to keep spending time here."
"What happened?" Alex demands, without even a breath of pause after Piper's declaration. "Piper, what did they say to you?"
"Nothing untrue. I was being foolish, and I let myself get caught up in your stories, indulge in fantasies - "
"Horse shit," Alex spits out, her jaw tight, and Piper takes an unconscious step back, uneasy. It's the first time she's head Alex angry. "Piper, you told me you didn't want to marry your fiance. You said you didn't think you were capable of feeling before now. That's not a goddamn fantasy, and it's not something you should just ignore - "
Defenses prickling, Piper retorts, "Only because you started me talking that nonsense! Asking incessant questions about my life...before I met you, I was perfectly content, and planning a wedding - "
"No, before you met me you were collapsing on a ship deck because you couldn't breathe," Alex says bluntly. "Piper, it's me, at least tell me the truth here. What did your father - "
"It's not just him," Piper insists; to tell the truth would be admitting the full extent of her own cowardice. "I changed my mind, I want this - "
"Fine, if it's your choice, then why cut me off?" Alex challenges, taking a few steps closer so she's standing right in front of Piper, eyes wide and blazing. "What difference does it make?"
Piper's throat feels tight, and it takes her a moment to find an answer. "You confuse me," she finally forces out, soft. It's maybe the first honest thing she's said.
"Why? Because I don't talk to you like you're an incapable idiot, yes, I'm sure that is a completely new experience - "
"Stop," Piper exhales, more plea than command.
The fire cools in Alex's eyes, and for a moment they search Piper's face in the way that's quickly become familiar. "Piper," her voice softens into a hush. "Tell me."
"I'm not like you, Alex," she finally manages, voice thick. "I can't do it. My father will force me to marry him unless I cut all ties and run away and I'd...I'd have nothing. I'd be alone. "
"You wouldn't have to be," Alex says in a sudden rush, a sort of wild light flaring in her eyes. "Piper, I could help you. It could be just like we said, you know, I could show you California, you could write and I'd draw - "
Piper's eyes flit away, shielding from the intensity of Alex's gaze, how much she means this.
Alex's voice slows to a stop, and she reaches out to touch Piper's cheek, her fingers cool, making Piper look at her. She's so close. When she starts to speak, Piper can feel the breath of the words. "If you wanted...you wouldn't be alone."
Piper closes her eyes, seduced by the hope pulsing in the words. Without meaning to, she tips forward, her forehead falling against Alex's, hands grabbing for something to steady her and ending up with fistfuls of her shirt.
A sound rips free of Piper's throat, the sound of something cracking open, and it lets in a riptide of fear and wanting strong enough to drown her.
Alex is holding her face with both hands, so gentle, so close, and Piper's heart starts racing. She thinks of the naked women in Alex's sketchpad, of Alex saying she'll never get married, of the moment between them on the deck last night.
Piper wrenches away from Alex, letting out a frightened yelp of, "No." She feels sick. "This wasn't supposed to be..." She swallows. "There's something wrong with you."
She means to say me, or maybe us, but it comes out you. It comes out ugly.
Alex's face ignites, flickering flames of hurt and anger. "Fine," she says after a horrible silence, the word like a tiny, sharp stone. More follow. "Go. Marry him. And you try to tell yourself I'm the one who's messed up."
Her gaze is unyielding, so Piper has to be the one to look away. She has to get back, they can't realize she was gone, so she takes heavy steps across the deck, back to the first class entrance, feeling as though Alex's glare is a physical weight on her back.
It's become her routine to return to her bunk late, usually finding the other men in a heavy sleep (Alex usually spots them in a corner of the general room after dinner, chugging lager with a fervor that explains their consistency), so Alex chain smokes on the deck - her poker games have kept her fully supplied in cigarettes - until she's tired enough to contemplate falling asleep on the bench instead.
Her eyes are wet when she closes them, and Alex is so, so angry at herself for that.
Piper goes to Larry's suite instead of her own, just in case her parents are in the sitting room by now.
When he smiles and says she looks great, trying hard like he always does, Piper smiles back. And she pretends not to notice when her father storms in and looks relieved to find she's just with her fiance. She smiles through dinner and she smiles afterwards, when her mother prompts her into describing the wedding's flowers and the nightmare that was the bridesmaids' dresses. She smiles when Larry and her father return from the Smoking Room, and she smiles when Larry asks her to have champagne on the promenade. She smiles when he says that maybe they could revisit university after the wedding, even though she knows it's an olive branch that will never come to fruition. She smiles after she kisses him goodnight, so long and deep that Larry's daze eyed when it's over.
She smiles and smiles and smiles and then she shuts the door to her bedroom and lets muffled sobs scrape her throat to shreds.
Sunday, April 14, 1912
Alex wakes just after sunrise, her back sore and her mouth tasting like stale smoke.
She walks stiffly to G-Deck, taking advantage of the early hour to take a shower with no wait in the common bathrooms. She tilts her head back under the spray, it's the first truly hot shower she's had in ages, but she still feels half asleep.
Still mad, too, as though she'd drifted to sleep curled around anger, but it takes Alex some time to wake up enough to properly access it. She has always gotten by because she doesn't want more than she has: her own health, a few blank sheets of paper, and utter freedom. For the first time in years, she's made the mistake of wanting something else.
But the worst part isn't that it hurts; it's that last night, she hadn't been able to see through her own hurt to help Piper. She'd scared her away instead, made it all about her selfish wants.
She decides she has to fix it. It's Sunday, and that means Alex knows where the entirety of first class will be in a few hours.
There are always stewards just inside the first class entrance, but Alex easily hops the gate separating third from second class, apparently not as closely guarded. Divine services are being held throughout the ship, usually set up in the classes dining saloons, which is a blessing for what would have been a much more noticeable gambit: Alex drags a steamer chair to the wall below the A-Deck promenade, grabs hold of the lowest bars of the railing, and nimbly swings herself up and over.
There's a father playing with his son, spinning a top with a string, and Alex's eyes flick to a deck chair nearby, draped with an overcoat and hat. Without breaking stride, she walks by the chair and calmly grabs the clothing items. Still walking, she slips into the coat, then twists her hair into a knot, angling the hat so it holds the lump.
The first class dining saloon has been converted into a makeshift chapel, and Alex can hear a chorus of wealthy people singing hymns as she approaches. She's sure Piper is with her parents and fiance inside; she only intends to hover outside the entrance, out of sight but within distance to follow Piper when she leaves. From there, she'll figure out some manner of getting her alone.
There are several stewards stationed outside the entry doors, as well as a few gentlemen who seem to be servants of some sort. One is eyeing her suspiciously, so Alex turns her back, scanning the vicinity for a forgotten newspaper or something else to camouflage her intent.
A minute or so pass before a hand lands on her shoulder. Alex stiffens and turns, expecting to see the suspicious butler, but instead it's a man who must be his boss - the servant hovers behind him, seemingly for the sole purpose of menace.
"Do you know who I am?" The other man, the one standing directly in front of her, says, and Alex lifts her chin and says nothing even though she's beginning to guess. Eventually, he continues, "I understand you've become quite the object of fascination for my daughter."
She still doesn't answer, doesn't break eye contact. It's the only real power she has, to force him to get right to the point, not allow him to bait her.
"She's very...easily influenced, our Piper." Alex exhales sharply through her nose, chest turning hot with anger, her worst assumptions about the way Piper is regarded by her family confirmed. She swallows down a rising fight, certain she'd only get escorted straight out of the vicinity. "And you aren't an influence she needs."
Piper's father reaches into his pocket and extends a wad of bills toward her. "A little motivation," he says calmly. "So you're not tempted to seek her out again."
Alex clears her throat, dragging her eyes from the cash and back to him. "I don't want your goddamn money - "
He grabs her arm, rough and firm, pulling her forward in one brisk tug.
"Get your hands off me!" She's loud, raising her free arm to strike him, but the butler man steps forward, opening his coat to reveal the shiny butt of a revolver, at the same moment several stewards turns toward them. Alex knows they won't be swooping over to help her.
"Take it," Piper's father says calmly, as though she hadn't spoken, as though he isn't holding onto her, using his free hand to stuff the money into the pocket of her stolen coat. "Think of it as an undeserved thank you for simply remembering that you hold a third class ticket, and have no business with her. If you forget that again...well, the response will not be so generous."
He lets go of her and in the same motion turns to head back to the chapel, not giving her the chance to hurl the cash back in his despicable fucking face.
After church, Piper and her mother and a few of the other ladies are invited on the ship tour Larry and her father apparently took the second day on the ship. Thomas Andrews leads it, and Piper likes him; he's typically the least bombastic, and likely most intelligent, man at their dinner table.
Larry had told her about his own tour, so as they walk along the boat deck after seeing the chartroom, Piper falls into step beside Andrews and asks for confirmation about the lifeboats onboard only being enough for half the ship's passenger capacity, and Andrews nods, indicating where he put in a new type davits for an extra row of boats but was overruled on grounds of making the deck less cluttered, and Piper is further impressed: he's clearly a practical, intelligent man, not all about appearance like most people she knows.
As they pass the boats and Andrews is drawn into conversation with someone else, they walk past a gentleman standing against the rail, his back to them. Piper's passed by only a few feet before someone taps her on the arm. She turns to see the "gentleman" was Alex, her hair tucked into a hat and wearing a coat that can't possibly be hers.
Piper freezes, barely able to process her being there before Alex is moving away from the group, nodding her head for Piper to follow her. It's so unexpected that Piper can't do anything but obey.
They duck into the gymnasium, completely empty right now, but even so Piper speaks a fierce hiss, "Alex, I told you. I can't see you, and you can't be here."
Even as she says it, Piper can't help searching Alex's face, embarrassingly relieved when she finds no leftover traces of fury there. But Alex is serious and determined, taking off her hat so her hair falls to a clump against her shoulder.
"I know. I know you told me, but I just need to say this. And then if you want, I'll leave you alone." She draws a breath, shaky, desperate, eyes roving Piper's like she's waiting for an argument. When Piper doesn't stop her, Alex says, "Do you know where I was before this ship? I was sleeping under a bridge, snagging food that was about to be thrown away."
Just like that, Piper is blanketed by shame, understanding exactly how Alex must see her: the dissatisfied society girl, crying over silver platters that have handed her everything she's ever needed.
But then Alex finishes, "And I still wouldn't want to trade places with you. Your life...it seems hard. You are strong, Piper. You're stronger than I am, even, because I couldn't have survived for this long."
Not once, in her whole life, has Piper thought of herself as strong. Her throat narrows and her eyes fill up and when she says Alex's name it breaks in half.
"That is what I should have said last night. I...I care about you, Piper," Alex looks up, then back again. "A lot. But that doesn't matter. This is about you, and your family. I don't matter, leave me completely out of it..." Piper's eyes are squeezed shut, trying to keep back tears, but then Alex says gently, "Look at me."
She does. Alex lifts her hand, halfway to Piper, but seems to check the instinct and freezes there.
"You are smart. And you're strong, but they are making you forget that. They make you think you're cold, and incapable, and unfeeling, but none of it's true. And you know that now." Her voice is rough. "I didn't do anything, I'm just the person you told it to. You deserve to be happy, and you can be happy. It doesn't have anything to do with me."
Piper looks at her, seeing how much she means it. Alex's hand is still hovering between them; God, Piper wants her to touch her.
Alex drops her hand, fiddling with the hat. Finally, she gives a crisp nod. "That's all I wanted to say. Just...please remember that."
She's halfway to the door when Piper manages to make her voice work, "I think...perhaps it does, though."
Alex turns back, confused. "What?"
"I think it does have to do with you. Me being happy." The declaration is a delicate, tremulous thing. Alex's eyes are wide, searching. Still needing more.
Piper goes to her, her fingers latching onto the lapels of Alex's ridiculous coat, tugging her close, but she loses her nerve before the final few inches.
So Alex is brave instead, leaning forward, pulling Piper's lips into hers.
It is lovely and frantic, full of longing, as though even while they kiss Piper's pulse is beating out cries for more more more. Her hands come up to touch Alex's face, tangling in the wind blown mess of her hair.
Piper's heart, so quiet all her life, is roaring.
A/N: I think this is going to be a seven parter, not a four...not because I'm writing so much more than planned, but just going for shorter chapters and quicker updates. Should try to finish within the next week. Definitely let me know what you think!