I don't really like this chapter and I don't really like this lemon, but I feel like it needed to be written somewhere along this line. So maybe I'll come back in and edit it, I don't know, but if I do, I'll let you guys know.
She still wasn't back. Three days in total had passed since the sickness hit the Home, with the culmination of Elizabeth's funeral on the third day, and Alice still wasn't back from wherever she had disappeared off to. Quinn didn't know where she was and by that point, he was pretty sure he didn't give a damn anymore.
"May we pray to God, that he accepts little Elizabeth into his light – that he allows her to walk forever beside him in the Kingdom of Heaven . . ."
Father Callahan trailed off, and Quinn heard his deep, sad words – he knew he was standing there, before the dark, open hole in the ground that contained Elizabeth's small little coffin, giving the final sermon before they said goodbye to her forever. However . . . he simply couldn't comprehend what he was saying. They all stood grouped around the opened grave in four inches of ivory white snow - him, Johanna, the children and the staff of the Houndsditch Home for Wayward Youth. They were all dressed in the new winter clothing he had bought for them, and all were either sobbing quietly like Johanna, or like him, was standing there quiet and somber – silently allowing their hearts to break.
It had begun to lightly snow by the time the Priest was done and they began to shovel dark piles of earth onto the casket. They landed with sick, solid "whumps" that made Johanna's sobs come harder with each sound and the other people there to flinch. Quinn simply stood there, unresponsive to the sounds – still as completely numb as the moment he awoke that morning knowing he had a funeral to attend. The sounds made things final – made them totally and utterly ignorable any longer.
They had buried her in the new winter clothing that Quinn had specially ordered for her – the blue winter clothing that matched her eyes. And when the thought first appeared in his head, he couldn't help but allow a tear to stream down his cheek. For however a short time he had known them, he had grown to love Elizabeth in a way that he thought he could only love Lucy, a feeling he knew Johanna shared.
And really, that surprised them both. When Quinn first bought the Home and assumed the leadership and psychiatric roles that Bumby left behind after his death, not one of them thought the children would ever grow to mean so much to them. In fact, they didn't know what they'd do if something happened that would cause them to lose another one of the children. They didn't think they could handle it if it happened again.
Quinn felt Johanna slide her hand into his elbow and allowed her to with nary a word of opposition. She was starting to slump against him and Quinn knew he would have to help her back to the Home when the casket was fully buried. He also knew he would do it numbly and without realizing that he had somehow made his way back to the Home from the graveyard. But that was how he was functioning at that moment without Alice – numbly and on autopilot.
When he first saw her quietly enter his office later that night, it took him a moment to comprehend that it was actually her and not just a figment of his imagination like it had been last time.
She entered quickly and quietly and crossed the room towards him, an apologetic gleam to her big sad eyes. Quinn turned his eyes up to her standing beside him in front of the fire and he grinned and let out a laugh as he wearily rubbed his face with his hands. "Figures that you'd finally come back today of all days . . ." He mumbled and Alice shook her head, the same apologetic look in her eyes as she kneeled down before him. The red dress she wore, was the one that he had bought for her and seemed to come alight in the fire – casting her in life and light and flame. It would have taken his breath away if he wasn't so damn angry with her!
"Quinn, I'm so sorry! I would have been here, but I . . . I simply couldn't!" She told him and he continued to grin, and let out another laugh as he shook his head.
"You have no idea how badly I've needed you these past three days, Alice!"
"I wish I could explain to you where I was, Quinn, I really do, but -!"
"Bess died while you were gone, Alice." He interrupted her in a voice far too heavy with emotion to be just anger, and Alice immediately recoiled from him at his words, her face falling slack with shock as her eyes widened in the same emotion.
"Are you . . . what?" She asked, and Quinn nodded.
"It was tuberculosis. We had to quarantine the entire house, but thankfully, Bess was the only one who had contracted it and miraculously, had not spread it to anyone else." He shook his head. "Why were you not here, Alice? Why were you not sitting beside her when she was suffering? Why were you not standing beside me when we buried her this afternoon?" He demanded, and Alice wordlessly shook her head. Her eyes had turned pleading again.
"Quinn, please -!"
"She was ours, Alice!" He interrupted her again, much louder than he had previously. He had turned his eyes up to hers and his voice almost broke with the sheer level of emotion that wanted to burst forth, and her heart did break by the level of pain she saw echoing in his eyes. He shook his head. "We were the only two who she allowed close, Alice – the only two she allowed to call her 'Bess' instead of 'Elizabeth'. I was the only one she allowed watch her die, Alice! She had wanted you there, but I was all she got because I couldn't find you!"
Bewildered, Alice opened her mouth to speak, but Quinn interrupted her for a third time by miserably shaking his head. He placed his head in his hands and leaned over in front of the fire as he shook his head again. "Where were you, Alice? I needed you . . . so badly . . .!"
Alice swallowed hard as she reached forward and took him into her arms. He allowed himself to fall from his chair to his knees before her and allow her to continue to embrace him. She felt tears on her shoulder as eventually, his arms moved to wrap around her as well. He held her close – closer than she knew he would have dared if both their lives had not taken such a miserable turn – and she allowed him to. In fact, she had longed to hold him in such a way for a very long time.
Her fingers threaded through his hair as she held him, and her breathing deepened slightly as she turned her face towards his slightly to place her lips at his ears. "If I said I wanted you right now, Quinn, what would you do?"
The question took him by surprise, and he swallowed heavily before shaking his head. "Well first, I'd ask if you were a dream." He replied to her words, referring to the last time something like this had happened between them. Alice was completely silent as she gently pushed him away from her so that she could hold his gaze. She framed his face with her hands and gently, her thumb ran over his bottom lip.
"Do I look like I dream to you?"
"You didn't last time. And yet you were." He answered and she shook her head, her eyes still apologetic.
"I promise I will never leave you again, Quinn. You've suffered so much since I left and I . . . I don't know how you've lasted this long."
It was Quinn's turn to frame her face with his hands and when he touched her, he felt the flesh of her face underneath his fingers. He felt the smoothness and the warmth and saw the love and need in her eyes and realized that this wasn't a dream. He realized that this was very much reality, and his heart sang for joy. "I lasted this long because I couldn't bear to not see you again." He told her and she gave him a smile before he pulled her into him. Their lips met briefly at first – just the outermost molecules of their lips meeting, before she pulled him into her and they met more firmly. Their mouths opened to each other and their tongues met and Alice felt his fingers twist in her hair as he brought her closer to him still, as one arm moved to wrap around her waist to bring her body as close to his as he possibly could.
When they broke apart, their breathing came hard and fast through their lungs, and Quinn shook his head. "I know this isn't a dream. I know that now. So I'd have to tell you that I want you, just as much as you want me."
She pulled him into another kiss then and as she distracted him with her tongue in his mouth, twisting with his, she fell backwards onto the rugged floor underneath them, maneuvering them so that he was lying atop of her. She was absolutely silent, her chest rising and falling underneath that beautiful red dress. Her hands moved to his neck as their mouths continued to move against each other, and when he reached a hand up to cup her face, felt something wet and hot against his hand. He broke away, a look of confusion appearing on his face.
"Why are you crying, Alice?" He asked her quietly, slight wonderment and shock echoing in his voice, and Alice said nothing in return, just shook her head.
"I've just wanted this for so long, Quinn – wanted you for so long!" She told him, and Quinn nodded in agreement as he pulled her towards him, wiping ineffectually at her face with his thumbs. He then leaned into her sobbing face and, tentatively, uncertain of whether or not he was doing the correct thing given the circumstances, he kissed her again, full upon her burning lips.
There was a moment of slight hesitation and then her mouth opened against his and her tongue slid into his mouth and he was, under the wooden and plaster ceiling of his office, utterly, irrevocably in Heaven for the first time in years. Quinn had kissed before with other women and girls when he was younger and even made love to a select few before he married Johanna. And then when he had married Johanna, he had done so because he loved her and at first, the love had been there. After Lucy, though, the love between them seemed to dissipate into affection and he had never done anything with her with so much love in his heart as he was with Alice at that moment.
His hands felt her breasts through the silk of the dress - touched the hard nubs of her nipples. She clung to him, hard, as if she were drowning - fumbling with his shirt, with his pants and him, with her dress.
Alice was so small, Quinn was scared that he would hurt her and break her. He did not though, much to his relief. She wriggled and writhed beneath him, gasping and moaning and guiding him with her hands.
She placed a hundred burning kisses on his face and chest and then she was above him, straddling him, gasping and laughing, sweating and slippery as a minnow and he was arching and pushing and exalting, his head full of her and only her, his sweet Alice.
At the end, he would have pulled out, but she held him inside her, wrapped her legs around him, pushed against him so hard that he felt that the two of them occupied the same place in the universe. As if, for one powerful, engulfing moment, they were the same person, giving and receiving, as the moon grew brighter, shining down onto the floor of the office.
She didn't protest when he flipped her over mere moments later and after pressing her into the carpet, entered her again. He gently moved inside her and she rocked her hips against his, their moans filling the air again. Her gasps were sharp and pleasure-filled and her fingernails bit down into his bare shoulders - into the skin of his back. Quinn's hands fisted into the sheets, his eyes closed and his mind was filled with only Alice. They climaxed together again not soon after that and he pulled out and collapsed on the floor beside her, where he immediately took her into his arms.
They lay like that for what seemed like ages, before Quinn finally spoke. He traced the inside of her wrist with his finger as her arm lay across his chest, and remarked that she did indeed have no scars. She smiled a small smile then.
"Wonderland makes me have no scars, Quinn. Not of the physical kind, anyway." She told him, and he chuckled as he pressed a loving kiss to her hair.
"Surely you don't still believe in such a thing Alice?" She asked her, and she nodded – confidently.
"Of course I do. Wonderland is a part of me. Maybe one day I will show it to you." She told him and he gave her a small, loving smile then.
"You just did, Alice. And it was as amazing as it sounds."
