Disclaimer: Do we really have to keep going through this? Syfy owns Alice. I only possess deranged plot Jabberwockies.

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Dinner at Alice's

Alice had to admit. She liked having a smart boyfriend. Hatter knew that if he and Alice were to just go to dinner with her mother, the situation would be tense. Having her call her mother and ask if she could bring over another friend, made it so that they might be able to get through the meal in peace.

Admittedly, telling her mother that Duchess was her friend was almost too much for Alice. No matter how much Alice taught her or how much time they spent together, Duchess still treated Alice poorly. Not that Alice had been trying very hard to make everything better between them. She thought that Duchess probably had a right to dislike her after everything that had happened with Jack.

Alice and Carol were seated on the couch when Hatter rang the door bell. This time, Alice didn't kiss him as he walked in. She just took his coat and hat and hung them up by the door.

"Thank you for inviting me over, Mrs. Hamilton." Hatter said courteously. The woman nodded to him.

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"Please, take a seat, David." Carol motioned that he should sit on one of the chairs. "Dinner should be ready in just a few minutes." She turned towards her daughter. "Alice, when is this friend of yours coming?"

Hatter nearly sighed with relief. Carol seemed more irritated with the idea of a last minute guest than having her daughter's new boyfriend over. It was at start at least. If he could get her to just talk to him for awhile, he thought he could win over Carol. But he was going to have his work cut out for him.

"Who'd you invite, Alice?" he asked, as if he had no idea that Duchess was currently standing outside in the hallway, waiting to ring the doorbell until after Hatter was settled. Alice's smile let him know that she appreciated the trick, even if it was essentially self-serving.

"Duchess. I think I introduced you the other night." She commented, just as the doorbell rang.

"I'll get it." Said Carol, who had gotten up to check the food. "You just sit down." Hatter thought he could smell some kind of roast in the kitchen. At least that was a fairly common dish in both worlds. The meat it was made out of might be different, but he couldn't imagine that it would change the flavor too much.

When Carol opened the door, Hatter could see Duchess. The woman had put on one of her new dresses, and was actually wearing a pair of sandals that Alice called "flip-flops."

"Oh, hello, this is Alice's apartment, right?" He had to hand it to her. Duchess was a good actress when she wanted to be.

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Alice watched her mother closely. The woman recovered quickly from her shock at seeing Duchess. Alice wondered if shock was the first reaction anyone had to seeing the blonde beauty.

"Yes, this is. I'm Carol." Well, thought Alice, if Duchess was going to get to call her mom Carol, Hatter should be able to as well.

"Duchess, you made it! I was worried that I had written down the directions wrong." Alice jumped up from the couch and walked over to the door. "You remember Hatter, right?"

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Hatter wondered when one of them was going to slip up. With one person, a lie was easy to maintain. But with the more people added to it, the more chance there was that one of them was going to get something wrong. It was the rule of secrets; each person involved added an exponential increase to the likelihood of someone catching on.

Considering that Duchess was regaling the table with stories of old boyfriends he was pretty certain she hadn't had, he figured that she knew well enough how to lie. Everyone in Wonderland knew that Duchess was Jack's girlfriend and no man had been brave enough to try the will of the Queen of Hearts by asking her out. Personally Hatter thought that some of the stories Duchess was telling came from those horrible programs she tended to watch on television during the day.

"What about you, David?" Carol asked. He noticed a gleam in her eye that made him realize that Carol might be a bit more intuitive about things than he had suspected at first.

"Excuse me?" He wasn't exactly sure what the question was. Carol smiled, while both Alice and Duchess looked a little worried.

"Tell us about your girlfriends." Was this typical behavior of mothers in this world? Or was Alice's mother crazy? Maybe she was just trying to poke holes in his relationship with Alice. That had to be it. She wasn't thrilled with the idea of him hanging around so much with her daughter. Alice had told him as much. Was it possible to convince her that he was a good guy? Was he a good guy?

The questions spun around in his head, while his mouth opened to answer.

"It's all pretty standard I guess. They couldn't take me anymore, or they disliked my job. One or two stated my hat as a main reason for the relationship failing. Something about the fact that I cared more about my hats than about them." In some cases that had even been true, much to his chagrin. He hoped that Alice wouldn't think that was true in their case.

"Most of them thought I could do better with my life. Construction work is all well and good, but it's not exactly the most respectable job." The edited, Alice's world version of his life was a lot easier to tell than to explain what exactly he had done with his life up until meeting Alice.

"Well, I certainly hope that Alice means more to you than your hat." Joked Duchess, and suddenly the tension eased.

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"She certainly does." Alice barely heard the whispered remark over the clank of the dishes as her mother passed around the potatoes again. She ducked her head, hoping that no one would notice the fact that her cheeks were slightly pink.

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AN:

Duchess watches way too many soap operas. It seemed to fit her personality. I can see her being utterly enthralled with them, even if she knew they were sometimes silly.

And we hear mention of some of Hatter's ex-girlfriends. I think that a lot of them would have either dated him for the fact that he seemed relatively prosperous, or the fact that they felt that they would be able to make him "honest." Which is why I think he likes Alice so much, she hasn't tried to change him.

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