Warnings: Trigger warning for abuse, especially in the first chapter.
Notes: This chapter features a reference to a line in chapter 5 of my other fic, The Feeling, Itself.
Disclaimer: All characters and environments belong to Michael Maclennan and Adrienne Mitchell/Shaw Media.
When Betty wakes, Kate's arm is still draped loosely over her. She thinks for a second that she must be dreaming. Kate's been occupying a starring role in Betty's dreams for months now. Back when they were just getting to know each other, Betty used to have terrible, stupid dreams about Kate walking around arm in arm with Gladys, and both of them laughing at her. She would wake from those dreams with a splitting headache from clenching her jaw in her sleep, exasperated with herself for having dreams better suited to a dopey teenager than a grown woman.
As Betty and Kate grew closer, those dreams were replaced by ones which were a lot more pleasant to have, but harder to wake up from. Most mornings, Betty wakes feeling some combination of bittersweet and lonely, horribly embarrassed, or hot and dissolving all over, depending on how Kate has been in her dreams that night.
For so long now, the best feeling Betty has been able to hope for was good but guilty, and that counts double around Kate. When Kate sings, when she laughs, when she shows these signs of coming out of her shell and revelling in all the joy life can offer her, Betty always feels her heart swell, and then immediately has to feel bad about it. She doesn't feel bad now. Betty just feels purely good, lying here with Kate curled around her.
It's when the mere concept of feeling bad occurs to Betty that the memories of last night roll in like summer thunderheads over the prairie. Betty turns cold inside just thinking about Kate's father, his grim smile when he told Betty it was a pleasure to meet her when she'd overheard him screaming at his daughter mere seconds before. As if he thought it was of no consequence, like Kate wasn't even a person.
He oughta be in prison, she thinks. Or an asylum. How in the hell could you look at someone like Kate and think she deserves to be hurt? She has never felt less sick than she does right now. People might say it's wrong, but if it's between being in love with Kate and wanting to hurt her, she would pick the former, every time, forever.
"Is it time to wake up yet?" Kate asks. Her voice sounds relaxed, but not remotely sleep-addled. Betty's heart leaps at the idea, the wonderful impossible notion, that Kate might have been lying there awake, enjoying their closeness the way Betty is.
"Few more minutes," says Betty, trying to sound absolutely normal, as though waking up in someone else's embrace is something that happens to her all the time, as though she isn't seriously considering just not turning up to work today. Hang the consequences, she thinks, exhilarated. They can fire me. I wouldn't get out of bed and go to work if all the floor boys had organised to dress in drag and perform the Ziegfeld Follies, today and today only. I'd rather stay here, all day. With Kate.
Utterly unaware of Betty's train of thought, Kate actually snuggles closer. "You're warm," she murmurs.
Betty takes a huge chance. "So're you," she replies, and feels it all the way through her when Kate laughs into her shoulder.
They lie in silence, listening to the wind outside, the faint patter of rain on the roof, the sounds of the other rooming house women rising, washing, dressing, calling to each other.
"... all right, we really do have to get up now," Betty says, a little awkwardly. She successfully extricates herself from underneath Kate's arm, slides out from under the blankets – and then turns around to look down at Kate.
Kate beams up at her. "Hi."
"Hey," Betty replies.
"How'd you sleep?"
"Good." Betty rubs the back of her neck. "You?"
"Better than I expected. Thanks for staying with me. I'd never have been able to get to sleep without you."
"Pleasure." Betty feels infinitely grateful that the conversation thus far has only required one-word answers, because waking up in Kate's bed with Kate gazing at her like she's a miracle, a godsend, a knight in shining armour is not doing much for Betty's conversational abilities.
Kate sits up. She winces as her bare feet hit the floor. "Don't you wish we could have a nice long lie-in?"
"The thought had crossed my mind."
"Want some breakfast? It's so cold, I thought I'd make oatmeal. There'll be plenty for you, if you're interested." Kate sounds so practical. It's hard to imagine her the way she was last night, weeping in the dark about being bad.
No sooner has Betty replied, "Sure, I'd like that," than Kate has gone, promising to bring breakfast up for them. Being left alone so abruptly brings up weird feelings inside Betty, memories of being hustled down back steps or shoved into a bathroom what seemed like seconds after she had been in a clinch with someone.
"Don't be stupid," she says aloud. If Kate can be practical after the night they had, so can Betty. She uses the fifteen minutes Kate takes to fetch breakfast to nip over to her bedroom, to get washed and dressed and have a cigarette.
She hears Kate call for her in the hallway before she peers into Betty's room. "There you are! Sorry that took so long. There was a bit of a line for the stove," says Kate. "Lots of cooked breakfasts this morning."
"Hey, it's nice having someone else make it for me. I'm not a half-bad cook, but oatmeal's the one thing I've never been able to crack. Mine always turns out like cement."
Kate goes to stand by the window, blowing on her bowl to cool it. The weak winter sunshine turns dazzling as soon as it hits Kate's hair, and Betty can't help but laugh, at the very idea that she's babbling to someone so beautiful about oatmeal, of all things.
A minute or two passes. Kate has stopped trying to cool her oatmeal, but she still hasn't eaten any. Kate asks tentatively, "Betty?"
"Yeah?"
"What if Gladys isn't there today? Her father was so furious when he found her working the line yesterday."
"You really think Gladys is gonna let anyone tell her what she can and can't do? Least of all her parents?" It is the thing Betty finds most annoying about Gladys, but also the thing that makes Betty feel a grudging respect for her.
Kate smiles a little. "You're right." She eats about half of her oatmeal before setting the bowl down on the bureau.
"You're not slimming, are you?" Betty's own bowl is scraped clean.
"My stomach's a bit jumpy," Kate replies.
"I'll wash these, you've gotta get dressed." Betty heads downstairs, streams into the kitchen, dumps the bowls into the sink and begins rolling up her sleeves. She actually starts whistling an off-key approximation of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.
"Goddamned morning people," groans Moira, who is sitting at the table and clutching a cup of coffee. "Knock it off, Betty. I've got a brass band in my skull right now, I don't need you too."
"And a good morning to you, too, Moira dear," Betty teases her, setting to work on the bowls. "Enjoy yourself last night?"
Moira looks her up and down. "Evidently not as much as you did. You have a hot date or something?"
"Nope, I'm just full of the joys of spring. Or December, if you wanna get technical about it."
She ought to be more concerned about the insinuation there – what if someone who saw her walk out of Kate's room this morning hears the phrase "hot date" and puts two and two together? – but she really is terribly happy right now. There is something indefinably lovely about Kate making breakfast and Betty doing the dishes.
It shouldn't feel as nice as it does. Betty's good at housework, but she hates it. She spent her childhood and adolescent years picking up after her brothers, doing the dishes and the mending because it was beneath them, as men, to scrub a saucepan or sew a button themselves. Betty remembers being eight, twelve, seventeen, twenty-two, standing at the sink for what felt like hours, cursing under her breath at the sound of her brothers playing cards in the next room. She's never been able to work out why everyone was so astonished that she was short with people. Anybody would be in a permanently filthy mood if that was how they spent their evenings.
Once she's stacked the bowls in the cupboard and heaved the saucepan back onto its shelf, Betty just about flies upstairs, to fetch Kate so they can leave for work. There is a sense of urgency to it entirely separate from the way she feels about Kate. It's ten to eight, and their street car leaves at eight sharp.
When Betty pokes her head around Kate's door, Kate is brushing her hair out, humming idly to herself. Betty never thought she'd see the day when she'd be remotely interested in watching someone do their hair, but she finds herself just staring, for a moment.
Kate agreed to be her housemate someday. This could happen every morning, only without rooming house women racketing down the hallway or hogging the stovetop. The evenings wouldn't be so different either; eating dinner together, listening to the radio, playing cards and laughing about everything and nothing. The only thing that would be different would be what would happen once they went into their bedroom...
Betty wonders what it would be like, to make love to Kate with lights on and doors open, without having to worry about being overheard, the way she's never been able to with anyone before. A rather vivid mental image blooms in Betty's mind, of the way Kate might look at the moment of climax.
Her face grows hot and she has to turn away, to try and squash the thought, but it's too late, it exists now. It ought to feel like the most depraved idea anyone has ever entertained, the very thought of someone sweet, sincere, godly and pure like Kate Andrews kissing and touching another woman. Betty's had thoughts like that before, and they made her feel like the pervert everyone would think she was if she were more obvious about being queer.
But it doesn't feel quite as awful as it used to, in light of everything that's happened. Kate wearing the hairpin Betty got her like a lucky charm, Kate calling her a hero, Kate pointing right at her and singing I wished on the moon for you with every syllable heavy with feeling, with meaning. Is it so unlikely that Kate might feel the same? If Kate did those things with a man, all the rooming house girls would be joshing her about her sweetheart and asking when the wedding was.
Four out of Betty's six brothers are married with kids. She likes some of her nieces and nephews better than others, but on the whole, she's not remotely torn up about the prospect of never being someone's mother. Betty's not much for children. She always thought she wasn't much for marriage either. Until Kate.
Some of the couples Betty runs into at Tangiers are as married as you can get without actually being legally wed. They wear rings on their little fingers, so everyone knows they're together for life. She and Kate could do that someday.
... For God's sakes, they've never even kissed, and she's imagining wedded bliss? What is the matter with her? She's known what she is all her life, but she's never been this gone on anyone, not ever. It's not safe. She can't be sure that Kate feels the same.
Stop treating it like it's safe, when it's not, Betty reprimands herself. Stop staring at her. Nobody wants someone like you staring at them. Of course, the second Betty tells herself not to look at Kate any more, she looks, to see whether Kate is aware that she's looking.
From what Betty can see, Kate is fully made up and ready to go, yet she isn't moving away from the mirror. She stares into the glass with a tense, troubled expression on her face.
"Kate?" calls Betty. "Somethin' wrong?"
Kate gives a start. "Oh! Betty, you made me jump."
"I've been standing here for a minute now," says Betty. She realises how that sounds and wants to kick herself. "You ready to go?" Betty asks, more gruffly than is strictly necessary.
"Just about." Kate knots her scarf, smooths imaginary wrinkles out of her winter coat, then gestures to her mouth. "Too much?" she asks. Kate loves wearing lipstick – Betty gets the feeling it's something she's wanted to do for years – but she took Lorna's comment about wearing enough of it to paint a battleship to heart.
Betty shakes her head. "Nah, looks good. C'mon, we'd better hightail it."
In the front hallway, Kate stops to peek in the mail box labelled K. Andrews. "Nothing," she says, sounding disappointed. "I thought maybe he might..."
"You expecting a letter from one of your boys?" Kate writes to two young soldiers once a week. Even Betty isn't paranoid enough to regard them as real contenders for Kate's affections, considering they're both about nineteen, and Kate has always been very clear about having a very specific type in mind for marriage. All of a sudden, Betty is reminded of her and Kate, coming home from work a few weeks ago, and Kate saying – actually saying – "I always thought I'd marry someone a little older than me. How old are you, again?"
"Brian still writes me. He's a real peach. Trevor seems to have cooled off. I guess there are prettier girls in France."
"Unlikely," Betty says, emboldened by her memory, before adding, "It's his loss."
Kate smiles. "You're sweet." She glances at the hall clock. "And golly, are we ever late! Come on!"
They have to run for their street car, but make it just in time. As Betty collapses into an aisle seat, she exclaims, "Safe!" She's laughing. She can't remember ever being able to laugh this freely, before Kate. It's funny how being in love can make vaguely annoying things like running for the street car seem hilarious.
From across the centre aisle, two seats down, the closest vacant seat, Kate tosses her hair back over her shoulder. "I'm getting better at running in heels, are you proud?"
"Definitely. You'll be outstripping Jesse Owens, before long."
"I think Carol Demers is the one to beat, actually," says Kate, with a smirk.
"Oh, lord." Betty widens her eyes, bounces twice in her seat and squeaks, "Scram! Vamoose!" They dissolve into laughter. It's extremely undignified, grown women having a giggling fit on the street car, but Betty doesn't mind being undignified if it's with Kate.
The street car trundles toward Vic Mu, filled with chattering women on their way to work. People jump on and off. As soon as the seat beside Betty is vacated, Kate slides into it, as though she had been waiting. She says, all straight out, "I've got a singing lesson with Leon, at Tangiers this afternoon. If you came along, we could have a drink afterwards."
"You and me and Leon?" asks Betty carefully.
Kate blinks as though that hadn't occurred to her. "Well, I could ask him, but I'm pretty sure he's got places to be. Someone to get home to." At Betty's expression, Kate laughs. "Oh, didn't you know he's married?"
Betty watches the colour rise in Kate's cheeks. "I did not know that." Betty grins. "You homewrecker."
"Oh, don't! He didn't say anything about his wife. He still hasn't. Maybe he didn't want to make me feel silly. Fat chance of that! I felt so embarrassed when Gladys pointed out his wedding ring. I guess she's better at picking these things than I am."
"And how does this impact on the torch you're carryin' for the guy?"
"I wasn't devastated, or anything. You can have a crush without being in love with somebody. Gladys has a crush on Tyrone Power, but she still loves James."
Betty makes a face. "I'm not sure that's the best example to use, considering they've both stepped out on each other."
Kate always used to get this look on her face like a door slamming shut, whenever someone bossier than she was disagreed with her. Now, she doesn't so much as flinch. She's come so far, in just a few months. "I think it is. They're getting on so much better recently. Haven't you seen how happy Gladys has been? Singing in the shower after work, pinning that photo of the two of them inside her locker-"
"Necking frantically outside the factory gates," says Betty, with an exaggerated shudder.
Kate laughs. "I think it's sweet. I wish someone would do that with me." She seems to shrink into herself as soon as she says it. Betty has always gotten the impression that it's hard for Kate to talk about wanting to be kissed.
Yet she can't help but hear the word "someone," ringing out like a bell. It's nonspecific in a way Betty is all too familiar with. She's danced this dance before, with other women. Sometimes it came to something, sometimes it didn't. Oh, God, how she wants that ambiguity to mean something now. "Someone like Leon?"
"Not Leon. Just someone." Their street car pulls up to the Vic Mu stop, and the women begin to rise from their seats, gathering purses and calling to friends outside on the platform. Kate stands and adjusts her beret. "So, what do you say to that drink tonight?"
"You and me?" asks Betty.
"You and me."