Chapter Text
Greta had taken to carrying a backup lipstick everywhere she went.
There were the usual places, of course. In her bag to practice and games - to refresh after a little sweat and a costume change. In her handbag out to drinks - to fill in gaps where her lips left ruby prints on the crisp rim of her martini glass. In her toiletry bag for early morning applications – to be be gently dabbed on in the bathroom so as to not disturb Jess (ever the night owl).
And, more recently, whenever she didn’t have pockets (which was most often), she’d tucked a tube gently into the top of her bra, just where the front of the shoulder strap met the cup. She’d learned to carry a spare the hard way one evening a few weeks before.
“What happened to your face?” Jo asked with a sneer, reclined on the side porch of the Peaches’ looming Victorian home. She held a casual cigarette between her index and middle finger, the cherry burning bright as she inhaled in the dark of the early night. Her socked feet were propped on the banister in front of her, the tiniest edge of her toe poking out through an early hole.
Greta, a newcomer to their gathering, climbed the steps to the side porch and glanced quickly at Maybelle and Esti. The giggling pair sat nearby with a deck of cards splayed across an old board. Greta, annoyed, eyed Joey with a stab of caution. “What do you mean, Jo?” With professional ease, her face smoothed into a perfectly clean, calm slate.
“Your lipstick, little lady!” Maybelle answered, looking up from her hand full of cards. She gestured with her free fingers - “you look like you’ve been through a bush.”
Greta felt her cheeks burn, thankful for the darkness to shield the blood rushing to her face. “Oh really?” she replied, carefully bringing her own manicured hand to her lips, “I must have mussed them after a sneeze. I’ve had some late summer allergies come on – Rockford can’t seriously call itself a city with this many trees.” She winked at Maybelle and Esti, turning back to stare more daggers at her best friend. “Jo, is there another beer in the ice box?”
Jo, without missing a beat, tucked the corner of her mouth into her cheek in a big grin, gesturing a cheers with her own bottle in hand. “Sure thing, Bird. Mine are on the top shelf. Help yourself.”
“I’ll be back in a jif, ladies,” she chirped, her racing heart belying her affected calm. With as much restraint as she could muster, Greta eased through the stained glass door, marched through the foyer without a chancing a glance to see who might be in the parlor (or who might see her), and through to the powder room on the main floor. In a whip, she closed and locked the door behind her.
Reflected in the ornate round mirror of the small, intricately wallpapered room was a painting of evidence. Her lipstick, characteristically immaculate and densely red, now bled around the edges of her lips. The highest points of her Cupid’s bow and the fullest bust of her bottom lip were surprisingly pale. It didn’t take much of a guess for her to imagine where her red might have gone and she knew, in that moment, she’d have to be more careful. A flash of Carson’s breathless kiss flipped her stomach.
And so, a new rule cemented itself into the litany of precautions: carry an extra lipstick at all times. When it wasn’t possible to pass off the spare in a casual place, she could take no chances - she’d have to carry it on her body. There was no fair reason, she knew, to carry lipstick on her professed trips to the library, or to the kitchen, on her nighttime strolls on the quiet street of their suburb. Of course, she was never actually headed to those places when she professed she was. Hell, Greta didn’t even have a library card for the Rockford Public Library. She did, however, maintain a mental laundry list of sequestered places where she might meet up with Shaw.
And so, glaring at the garnet smear of her own stupidity in the powder room’s mirror, she furiously tidied the edges of her mouth with a tissue, cursing herself all the while for not having a way to freshen up the palest, most kissed, patches and ridges of her lips.
A knock sounded at the door. 4 short raps before stark silence. Startled, Greta jumped and stifled a gasp. “Just a minute,” she called. What she wouldn’t do for a fresh lip liner in that moment.
“Delivery for the lady,” a voice replied coyly through the door. Greta, in a fervor, practically snatched the faceted glass doorknob as she snapped it open. “Thought you might need this,” Joey smirked. In her hand, tucked discretely in a paisley silk handkerchief, Joey held Greta’s favorite shade of rouge. “For your allergies.”
Greta sneered at her friend through the barely opened door and grabbed the gift from her extended hand. “Thanks, Jo,” she replied drily. “Always looking out.”
“So, was it a run-in with a bush?” Joey smiled, keen as a cat with cream. With a swear, Greta jammed the door shut in Joey’s face. “Better keep an eye out for Mrs. Johnson’s hydrangeas, Bird! They’re awful fruity this time of year,” Jo called with a laugh bubbling all the while.
“Ass,” Greta murmured to herself. In the mirror, she gazed at the soft blush of her cheeks and the brush of her auburn hair framing her jawline. Then, she got to work.
-
Greta’d gotten quite skilled at her concealed carry over the last few days. In fact, she’d taken to carrying a hidden lipstick even when she had an excuse for a handbag - for both practice and precaution. Aside from an awkward fumble in the ladies' room (that tube had rolled all the way into the next stall) and a flying tube during a particularly aerial dance at the bar (“sorry, lovely,” the soldier had murmured after lowing Greta from a dancing lift), she’d learned this new skill with relative ease.
It had taken all of 16 hours after Joey’s teasing for Carson to discover Greta’s new habit. “What is that?” she’d mumbled, one hand on Greta’s glorious hip, the other newly landed on the flat of her chest.
“Don’t worry about it, love,” Greta answered, eager for Carson’s attention (and gentle lips) to return to the sensitive shell of her ear.
Ever the anxious spoilsport, Carson had (infuriatingly) taken her hand from her hold on Greta’s hip to reach into the dip of Greta’s neckline. “Is this…lipstick?” she asked, pulling the top off with a soft pop. “What - why do you have this in your bra of all places?”
“Because of you,” Greta sighed, trying to force cheer into her eyes. “Maybelle noticed my lipstick was a mess the other night.” Carson gazed at her blankly. “After the garage,” Greta added, a sharp point in her inflection.
“Oh,” Carson mumbled, nervously twisting the cap on the tube. “I see.”
Greta, with a touch of frustration, placed her hand atop Carson’s. “Please don’t do that,” she sighed, “I don’t want to dull the point.”
Holding the tube flat in her palm, Carson offered it to her lover. “But why in your bra?” she asked, an open curiosity coloring her soft voice.
Greta took the lipstick gently from Carson’s hand, regretful of her sharpness. Still, a spring of heat coiled ever tighter in her chest. “I can’t always make up a reason to have my bag on me,” she answered. “Especially in the places where I’m telling people I’m going when really I’m sneaking around to meet you.”
“Like your evening walks,” Carson murmured. She’d turned her attention to Greta’s lips now, investigating them. Gingerly, her thumb grazed the soft dip below Greta’s lower lip. Sure enough, a touch of red brushed the tip of her thumb.
Greta, with a deep breath, closed her eyes. “Yes, like my evening walks. Or my visits to the library where, curiously, they never have a book I want to read. Even after my tenth visit this month.”
“And we can’t wear pants in public,” Carson said. A gentle smile began to bend the edges of her mouth.
Greta, her head leaned back against the unfinished pine of the old garage, opened her eyes. The rafters overhead cast wicked shadows onto the gabled ceiling above. “I don’t want to be scared anymore, Carson.” She lowered her chin, gazing into the brunette’s gentle eyes. “I’m so tired.”
Gently, Carson reached to graze Greta’s temple, smoothing her auburn hair and tucking it behind an ear. “You don’t have to be scared with me,” she noted, sealing a promise with a soft kiss.
-
The night after another winning game against the Racine Belles, Greta was two beers in when a familiar spark lit in her belly. Around the lush yard, crickets chirped fervently in the surrounding greenery, and an occasional late-Summer lightning bug sparked a lonely light in search of mates. As usual, a gaggle of ball players gathered on the house-wrapping porch, either perched over another hand of rummy or endlessly replaying significant moments of the match.
Shaw sat on a nearby wicker chair, her hands busy with another kind of card. “Do you ever try to be normal, Shaw?” Lupe teased, taking a sip of her bourbon (neat).
Without looking up, Carson joked in smug reply: “Only when I’m not busy coaching the first professional woman’s baseball team in Illinois.”
Across the porch, leaning comfortably in a deep-set chair, Greta coiled a strand of hair around her finger. “I think I’m going to turn in for the night,” she proclaimed to no one in particular.
“We were just getting ready to start a new game!” Maybelle whined.
Delicately, Greta gently dabbed her nose with her recently gifted handkerchief. “I think my allergies are acting up again, I don’t want to come down with a cold before the next series against the Blue Sox.”
With a snap, Shirley spat out, “No, no, definitely not. Not worth the risk, I have a second humidifier if you want to borrow it? It can really help with clearing out the-“
Greta placed a gentle hand on Shirley’s thin shoulder and gave her a characteristic grin. “I think I’m okay for now, Shirl, but I’ll keep it in mind.” She turned in a small circle to acknowledge the girls on the porch. “Good night, everyone” she sang. In the chorus of replies, the other ball players didn’t notice the fleeting and pointed glance Greta shot at Shaw, nor her perfectly timed wink.
“Night,” Shaw murmured, curling her toes in her shoes.
Just inside, Greta loitered in the foyer, passing time by pretending to read through the messages in the log by the phone. Absently, she fiddled with the sash on her emerald wrap dress. A beat later, Carson eased in the front door, walking with as much casual as she could muster toward the powder room. The effect was hilarious – despite creeping by on her tiptoes, each ancient plank groaned with her weight, and she quickly hopped to the next only for the pattern to repeat.
Stifling a laugh, Greta glanced out the window to check for stragglers before she quickly and silently followed.
The powder room door, though closed, was unlocked as she twisted the knob and eased inside. Carson, already flushed, leaned against the sink, her pinned hair reflected in the mirror. “Hey,” she breathed.
“Hi there,” Greta smiled, cheekbones drawing up toward her ears. Locking the door behind her, she stepped into Carson’s space, hand immediately easing into the hair at the nape of the shorter woman’s neck.
Pressed now against the pedestal sink, Carson replied with a soft, eager kiss. Greta’s heart sprinted into double time, and she reminded herself to breathe. For all she teased Shaw, Greta was in territory she thought she might never feel again after Dana: a land of breathless, electric touches and an endless rush of warmth.
With her palms flat against her lover’s body, Carson traced her way up Greta’s sides, caressing the edge of her breasts and up to rest on her shoulders. “Mmm,” Greta responded, a line of fever tracing Carsons’s path. Smiling into their kiss, Shaw spoke against Greta’s lips - “You have your backup friend with you tonight,” she said, placing a kiss on Greta’s flushed cheek. “Were you expecting to see me?”
Greta answered her with a finger under her chin, tilting her face back up for another, deeper kiss. “Wait a second,” Carson said, distracted. “I got you something.” Delicately, she undid the top button at the front of her dress and reached under the fabric toward her shoulder. Between two fingers, she pulled out a small, flat, brown card. “This is for you,” Carson said with a dimpled grin.
Curious, Greta took half a step back, plucking the card from Carson’s hand. “What is this?” she asked, turning it over. The paper was slightly waxed and sharply creased in a fold at one end, the other three sides open.
“Open it.”
Gently, Greta took the sides of the card in each hand and pulled the card open. Inside, a precise grid of 12 small, red dots lined the length of the card. “What is this?” she wondered, holding it closer to her face.
“Lipstick,” Carson grinned, pleased with herself. “I know how nervous you’ve been recently about, well, everything. For your lipstick worries, at least, I wanted you to have an easier way to touch up without worrying about that tube falling out of your bra all the time.”
A flutter hung in Greta’s chest, a lightness just over her heart. Gingerly, she reached a finger to one of the dots, noticing for the first time they matched her signature color. “Where, I mean - how did you even get this?”
“Well, I asked the butcher for some of his wax paper, and then I asked Maybelle to go with me to the makeup counter. Jess borrowed the lipstick from your dresser for a few hours so I could get the shade right. I had to paste the wax paper around one of my index cards to get it firm enough to hold up, though.”
“Shaw, you can’t just go around recruiting everyone, they’re all gonna find-“
“I know, Greta, I know - but Jess is Jess, and Maybelle, well, I think we can trust her. Once she loves someone, she doesn’t look back.”
Laughter ripples through the foyer outside, and Greta’s eyes seared into the lock, double checking it was secure. Familiar soft creaks of the stairs and the quieting of the team’s voices announced their march upstairs to bed. “It’s okay, love. You’re safe with me,” Carson assured her, placing her hands back on Greta’s waist.
“You’re amazing,” Greta noted. Who was this woman, she thought, who’d walked into her life and turned what she knew upside down? Who was the catalyst for new rules but also the way to answer them?
“Should we see how it works?” Carson asked. With Greta’s nod of affirmation, Carson kissed her own index finger before lightly circling the first dot on the card’s grid. With a little friction, the solid point of red began to melt into the whorls of her fingerprint. Carson, her brow furrowed with focus, lightly dabbed at Greta’s lower lip, transferring the waxy red to the fullest point of her pout. Breathe, Greta reminded herself, entranced with the scene in front of her. A blush of heat poured from her mouth straight to the pool of her hips. Rubbing the dot again for more lipstick, Carson’s small soft smile reappeared as she set to work on coloring Greta’s top lip. “Not too bad, if I don’t say so myself,” she smirked.
Greta gazed at herself in the mirror. Her lips were as red as ever, and her mouth hung ever so slightly open. She couldn’t focus, she found, as her stare traveled away from her own face and down the head, lovely soft neck, and strong shoulders of her lover’s reflection. “Not too bad at all,” Greta answered, looking Carson in the eye. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Carson replied, reaching her free hand back into her the fabric of her dress. She pulled out a matching brown card. “I’ve got an extra for myself, too, just in case you don’t have yours when you need it.”
“And when exactly do you think I’m going to be unprepared?” Greta teased, running her hands through Carson’s curls.
“I’m full of surprises, don’t count me out just yet,” Carson whispered as she dipped her red-tinged finger between her own lips, sucking gently on the tip. With a stuttered oh, Greta watched as Carson withdrew her own finger before dragging it up Greta’s long, silk-covered thigh. “Do you like surprises?” she asked, staring directly into Greta’s waiting eyes. Before she could respond, Carson unclipped her garter belt with a flick of her fingers, slackening the taut edge of Greta’s garter belt.
“I think so,” she sighed, her eyes closing as Carson fingered the hem of her underwear, snaking her hand inside of the lacy garment.
“What kinds of surprises do you like?” Carson asked again, her voice low. With reverence, she gently traced the curls of Greta’s coarse hair, teasing the way toward the cleft of her lips. She rested there, cupping the impossibly warm skin of Greta’s mons.
“I’m enjoying this one, so far,” Greta replied, leaning forward to kiss Carson hungrily as her hips tilted into Shaw’s embrace.
“Mmm-hmm,” Carson hummed. She pressed her hand more firmly into Greta, plying a finger in the wetness escaping her lips, before gently pulling away. Greta, not given a second to complain, watched as Carson returned her finger to her mouth, sucking at the taste of Greta. “I think you may need to re-apply again,” she joked, pressing a thumb to Greta’s lower lip once more.
“What are you-“ Greta started as Carson quickly buttoned her dress. With a wink of her own, Carson unlatched the lock, opened the door, and stepped outside, holding the brown waxed card between her fingers once again. “Guess you’ll have to follow me,” she said coyly, already pulling the door shut behind her. “I’ll see you in the garage.”
With a small shake of her head, Greta grinned. This woman was going to be the end of her, but at least her smile would be painted immaculately red when the time came.