This originally started as a stand-alone fic called "Rationed Sugar," but it was too similar to what I'd started with "Fences" so I switched it up a little to fit. I'm not sure how I feel about it... Suggestions are welcomed!

For the first while following the whiskied conversation they'd had in Betty's tiny bed, opportunity for contact only arose from the bottom of a bottle. But even then, they hadn't moved far beyond their typical closeness. They mostly just lay in Betty's bed, or once or twice, the bed Gladys had shared with James in his apartment (which had been left for Gladys to inhabit while he was off to war) and occasionally, Gladys's lips fell upon the soft skin of Betty's breast where she lay her head. They hadn't taken to kissing on the lips just yet, then.

Sleeplessly curled up beside Betty while James snored next-door in the new bed they now shared (when she could be bothered to stay home), Gladys couldn't exactly recall the transition from drunkenly sleeping nude with Betty to having a full-on affair of sorts. She can recall the first time they had… relations. But she reflects that evening instead upon a different night that stands out more in her memory, and she can't pinpoint why. Maybe it was the first time they'd been sober.

"You're engaged," Betty murmured against soft lips.

"I won't tell if you don't," Came the sultry reply, followed in rapid succession by a poorly stifled groan of satisfaction. She was extraordinarily satisfied just as much with her self as she was with the ministrations of her buxom cohort.

The blonde's lips danced in a wild unmatched rhythm to her slowly pumping fingers deep in her cohort's warmth. "We really shouldn't do this anymore, Princess," she barely choked. There was only so much articulation a girl could muster when someone's terrifically long and tailored fingernails were tickling the softest parts of her skin.

"You. Say. That," Gladys mustered between pants and thrusts of Betty's nimble digits, "UNGH." Her eyelids fluttered closed and she rocked her hips in earnest. "But here you are," moan. "Putting those very skilled hands to use."

Betty's response was to hiss as Gladys pinched the rosied, raised skin of her breast. "Not that I'm complaining," Gladys hastily added.

"I demand to be present when you explain this all to Clappy."

"I told you to stop calling him that," Gladys panted. She was so terribly close to that delicate edge and she hoped desperately that she wouldn't lose the moment.

Betty swiftly quelled her fears with a sweeping motion of her thumb.

"If you have even given me V-"

But she was interrupted by the inevitable and uncontrollable shiver along her spine called into action by Gladys's whimpering moans of ecstasy and the grip of her internal muscles around Betty's fingers.

Gladys settled unceremoniously into the pillows and pulled the blonde gently to her chest. Having forgotten the swift remark she'd intended to deliver into their most untimely conversation, she kissed the top of Betty's hair to stall while she collected her scattered thoughts. A sudden pang shot through her skin and seemingly directly into her heart as she realized that she couldn't imagine sharing this moment (or a moment like it) with anyone but Betty. The thought of the skin of someone else's face resting upon her bare breast suddenly turned her stomach, and yet so did the idea that she had become so attached to a woman.

"I don't understand why you can't just take things for what they are. Be right here and now with me. I'm not bothering with the future anymore, Betts. What comes, comes. Let's have happiness while we have it."

There was silence for a few long moments.

"Have you suddenly fallen in love with me?" Gladys meant it to have an edge of humor, but she found herself unwittingly holding her breath in her throat awaiting the reply.

"Not that kind of love, Princess," Betty grumbled. "I'm just not looking forward to the day I lose you, too."

Gladys could see her point. "I don't intend to ever leave. The sex may be temporary but I'm not," she said sternly. She brushed the backs of her fingers along Betty's cheek. "If I love you enough to share my… my body with you, I love you enough to always love you."

All this talk of love was making her ill, and her mind flashed to James in a foxhole somewhere, whispering to someone about his girl "back home."

"I'm pretty fond of you, too."

Gladys combed her fingers through Betty's hair and trailed them in a continuous motion along Betty's side and stopped at her hip, placing her hand there. "Someday, James will come back, and you'll find a beautiful gal who loves you more than you knew love could be, and we'll still be the dearest of friends with a very interesting secret." A sly smirk spread across her lips.

Continuing, she murmured, "I'd never deny all that you've given me."

Betty wanted so badly to make a joke about denying it should Gladys give her venereal disease, but in a rare feat, she held her tongue. Instead, she said softly, "Gives a new meaning to that 'filler 'til the boys come home' saying." She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. After a moment, she added, "I never thought I'd see this day."

"What day?"

"I'm not sure what's stranger, the two of us in the sheets, or you in the sheets with a lady altogether."

Gladys chuckled. "I never planned on it, I suppose. It's like sugar rations. Everyone gets what they're allotted in this 'great time of need'." She traced her fingertips in swirling, sweeping patterns across the blonde's skin.

"Why did you choose me?"

Gladys kissed the top of her head. "Why not? I think sex, love, and romance are separate entities. One alone is never enough, and all at once is the formula for marriage. Sometimes, when you pair the correct two together, the result is just right."

"I used to think love and romance were one-and-the-same."

"I love my cat," Gladys said flatly.

"Love between people," Betty said softly.

"Do you love me?"

Betty stammered. "I, uh, I mean…"

"In any capacity."

Betty flushed. "Well, I said I was fond of you."

"Do you have any plans to get dressed up and take me to a fancy candlelight dinner?"

The blonde snorted. "I'll make sandwiches and fill a flask and sit with you on a blanket in the park."

"Do you intend to sweep me off my feet?"

"From time to time I want to knock you onto your ass."

Gladys grinned. "That's the difference between romanticism and love."

Betty nodded slowly. "I see that, now."

All of that still rang true for Gladys, but she'd begun to wonder how many of the lines between the three they had blurred somewhere along the way. However many it had been, she decided, was the correct amount.

She slid into place behind the blonde and wrapped and arm around her waist, pulling them flush together. Thinking about their precarious position on the edge of friendship, she considered her placement. She didn't have any urge to whisper sweet nothings into Betty's ear. She just wanted the closeness. It was normal enough, she supposed.

They had some friends, interesting, hep friends, some of whom Betty had known for years before Gladys met them. They were all lesbians, and a few happened to be married. She could never really forget the evening about a year prior in which one of them charged into the bar dressed very much for daytime housekeeping, cursing her husband. She'd called him a chore and a bother, amongst other things. Gladys had been tremendously taken aback. She'd never fancied herself a lesbian at all, but given her circumstances, she'd wondered briefly if that woman's anger applied to her situation as well. She certainly didn't hate James, and didn't consider him a "chore." He was her husband, after all.

She found comfort in the fact that her relationship to Betty was so unlesbian that not even their hep friends knew what they did. Neither of them ever felt the need to mention it, she supposed. She smiled to herself as she pushed her nose into Betty's haywire hair. Betty was right, she thought. They simply were friends who… well.

Betty turned over in her arms and with her eyes closed, wrapped herself around Gladys instead in an effort to keep her still. "Shhhh," she whispered loudly. "To sleep."

It would be too much work to evade her captor. Thoughtlessly, she kissed Betty's lips softly and settled into place. She surrendered to sleep in minutes.