(no subject)

[witticaster]

The windows of Alice's apartment glowed when she came in sight of the building, two little rectangles of golden light muted by curtains and surrounded by darkened rooms above and below. The streetlights kept the road clearly lit, but the darkness settled itself on the houses and apartment buildings, set just far enough back to leave shadows plenty of canvas on which to flicker.

Keys tightly in hand, she stepped out of the car and hissed as her heels hit the pavement. The ground sunk beneath her feet, her muscles searching for the stilettos that had bound her into a perpetual tiptoe for the last nine hours. She had a pair of broken feet standing at the end of the earth, her heels slipping just over the edge.

Alice corrected herself. The sum total of her souvenirs from her first day of work was a pair of broken feet and the ability to pull terrible metaphors from the cold air.

She took two steps forward before glancing hurriedly back to the car's locks--secured--then gave her best imitation of a run up to the side door into the building. Each step was a new agony, her feet throbbing under her as she minced up the walk, inside, and up the stairs to their door. Thank God for second-floor apartments, or her feet would have been complete hamburger by the time she reached home.

The key was silent when she turned it in the lock, moving without shifting the deadbolt over: the apartment was unlocked. Her stomach turned--she might've felt sick if she'd eaten more than a sandwich five hours back--and very slowly, she pulled her key back out and reached for the doorknob.

When the door was open just wide enough that she could pass through, she slipped inside and carefully pressed the door closed again. She couldn't see anything out of place: the lamps were upright, the books, in their shelves, and the blanket on the back of the couch was untouched. If they'd been ransacked while she was out, it wasn't the kind of job you saw in the movies.

Alice bent over to pull off her shoes--even her kitten heels were murder at this point, and she didn't want them clattering on the tile if someone was in the house--and bit back a groan. Even if a thief didn't hear her walking around in stocking feet, he'd probably hear the way her spine just cracked.

Three steps into the living room, first glancing around the corner of the wall, she heard a door open--the bathroom door, she saw, and shrieked at the dim outline of someone very tall walking toward her.

The man jumped back a step, yelping in return, and as her heart began to beat once more, she realized that if the house had been broken into, the thief was her husband.

Sean hurried out into the lamplight, his mouth half-open as he raked his gaze over her. "Are you all right? What's wrong?"

With a sigh, she sagged against the wall. Her limbs suddenly felt distractingly light, skin tingling unpleasantly in time with the jittering beat of her heart. "You scared me. Why'd you leave the door unlocked?"

"I wanted to wait up for you," he answered, stopping an arm's length from her. His eyes never stopped roving over her, clear proof that he didn't believe she was fine. "I thought I'd welcome you home."

A smile wasn't too much to manage, though she leaned more heavily against the wall as she unbuttoned her coat. "Well, that's sweet of you. Thanks."

He straightened his shoulders and grinned at her. "So how was the first day?"

"Exhausting." Trying to hide her wince, she limped a few steps back to the closet to hang up her coat. "They gave me my uniforms today--the heels are three inches."

"Ah. That's--"

"Really tall," Alice finished for him, muttering little ow--ow--ows as she made her way over to the couch. "Especially for eight hours at a time. I might make you carry me to bed."

Sean was right behind her, his hands up in front of his chest, when she sank down onto the blue cushions. It was hard not to suspect him of waiting to catch her in case she collapsed entirely, especially when he immediately answered, "I think that sounds safer than letting you walk there. Are you sure you're okay?"

Now that she could stretch her legs out before her with nothing pressing down on them but air, it took no effort to smile up at him. She tipped her head back, lolling it back and forth until her neck cracked. "Just peachy. You don't have to worry about mother-henning me, Sean."

"All right. In that case..." After he seated himself, she scooted over until she could press her cheek to his shoulder. "Tell me all about it, and then I'll carry you anywhere you like."

"My hero." She set her feet on the coffee table with a little thud. They still throbbed, almost worse now that the pressure of her body was off of them, but at least they were off the ground. "It was--it was interesting, I guess. I have two costumes--one's orange and one's green."

"Well, that's good--you always look nice in green." He slumped a little where he sat so that he could put his feet up next to hers.

"And I'm as tall as you are in those heels." She didn't even try to keep back a little laugh as she said it, especially at the theatrical sigh she got in response. "It was--I guess it was all right."

"Just tiring?"

Alice shrugged. The night was beginning to blur in her mind, a colourful whirlwind of trying to smile and keep her balance at the same time. "The other girls seemed nice--they all live together, did I tell you that? In one big house. It's like a slumber party, except all the time."

"That sounds fun." From the sound of his voice, he had to be rolling his eyes.

"Luckily, I'm a nice married woman--" She broke off in a laugh when he poked her in the side. "Stop that, I'd be stuck sleeping in bunk beds if not for you."

Sean laughed, his chest vibrating against her side. "I really am a hero tonight. Single-handedly protecting you from pillow fights with pretty girls."

"Pretty girls I can't do more than look at anyway. That'd just be torture." She sighed, closing her eyes. "Anyway, I was too busy even to look at most of them--I sold cigarettes nearly all night."

"How were the customers?"

"They were--well, they were--" After two attempts at keeping her voice from wobbling, she shut her mouth and squeezed her eyes more tightly closed against the pressure building at the corners of her eyes. Nothing had been so bad that she needed to cry all over Sean's shoulder about it. Nothing had been that bad.

"Alice..." All the mirth had left his voice.

"Getting my ass grabbed once an hour was about as fun as you'd think," she told his chest, dipping her head low enough that he couldn't see her face, nor the tears that had pushed past her eyelids and ran hot down her cheeks.

The muscles beneath her cheek tensed. "They did what?"

"I told them--I was new--" Her voice was only growing higher with each word, her chest tighter, her cheeks more taut, with the effort to keep from sobbing. A deep breath, and she started again, rushing the words out before they could be cut off by her own breath. "because Carol Lynne--she's one of the other girls--she said you got better tips on your first day if they knew it was your first day. So I did, and they--I watched, after the first time, and hardly anyone else, just--they thought they could get away with it--"

His arms settled solidly around her, hugging her close, and she couldn't keep everything pounding at her throat back any longer. She turned her face in toward his shirt and sobbed, clutching at him. "I don't want to go back, Sean, I don't want to go back."

"You don't have to," he promised, running a gentle hand down her hair, over and over, until she quieted.

They sat in silence, sprawled over the couch and coffee table, until the wet patch of fabric beneath her cheek was cold and she no longer trembled with each breath she drew in. Sniffling back the last tears in her arsenal, she said, "I really don't want to go back."

"And you don't have to," he said immediately, nudging her into looking up at him. His brow was creased in a frown as he looked back down at her. "You can go get some sleep and call them up tomorrow--"

Alice shook her head. "I can't quit."

"What? Of course you can."

"Well, I could, but--" She shrugged, fidgeting with one of the buttons on his shirt. "Sean, I made a hundred dollars in tips."

He'd been all set to argue with her, she could tell, but the words caught in his throat when she said that, able only to reply with an open mouth and bugged eyes for several moments. "A--a hundred dollars?"

"And even if I never make that kind of money again, since, you know, it's never going to be my first night again--" and making no effort to hide the acid in her voice, she added, "not that I'd tell anyone if it was, it'd be stupid of me to quit."

"Not if you're going to come home blistered and crying," he began, the frown coming back to his face.

"We'll buy band-aids," she answered.

"And the crying?"

Alice paused for a moment--only a moment--before shaking her head. "The more money we can put away, the sooner we can do something useful with it. I want the Mattachine Society just as much as you do--it's only fair that I contribute, too."

"There are other jobs. We can make the Society work whether you're a bunny or a secretary."

"But we can make it work a lot faster if I'm a bunny."

Sean sighed. "I'm not about to stop you. I just want it clear that you can quit any time you want to, no matter what kind of cash you're pulling in."

"I know," she told him, putting on what Carol Lynne had called her 'bunny smile' that night. Bright and friendly and--at the moment--a little bit waterlogged. It was a little more insistently cheerful than she'd ever really felt, but considering her tear-stained face, she thought she might need to push it a little over the top. "You're a better man than that."

He smiled back, a little tiredly, and it occurred to her that he couldn't have had an easy day himself--he'd been at work at nine that morning, and it was half past three now. "So when's your next shift at the club?"

"Sunday."

"Well, that's handy. I'm not working tomorrow, either. What do you say we sleep in 'til noon and then go see a movie?"

"Sleep in 'til noon, the Art Institute, and then go see a movie."

Sean laughed. "Sleep in 'til noon, the Art Institute, dinner, and then go see a movie."

"You've got a deal," she answered, giggling. "Thank you for letting me cry all over y--oh, you've got mascara all over your shirt."

"I know." He was still grinning at her, now a little wickedly. "You've got mascara all over your cheeks."

"Oh--! Well, now we're even."

"For what?"

"When you spilled cranberry sauce all over my skirt at Thanksgiving last year."

"That was an accident!"

"Well, so was this."

By that point they were both breathless with false indignation and smothered laughter. Sliding out from beneath her, Sean turned to scoop her up into his arms. "If we stay up any later, we're both going to go insane."

"I think we're halfway there already," Alice said, looping an arm loosely around his neck as he walked them over to her bedroom.