Title: The Shape of Things (1/1)
Pairing: Alice/Hatter
Rating: PG
Spoilers: takes place post-series, but no real references to the happenings of the show.
Disclaimer: Not mine, sadly. Think what havoc I could wreak.
Summary: I know you're going to, is what the grin says, and you know I know, and I know that you know I know. We're a knowledgeable couple. Alice and Hatter, at home.

The Shape of Things

Alice could get used to this.

Hatter has extraordinarily dextrous fingers, and an unsuspected talent for foot massage that signals that perhaps he missed his true calling. The way he grins when a moan escapes her makes her think he must enjoy it just as much as she does; till he says, "Right, not so loud. Neighbors are gonna think I'm murdering you in here."

Five flat fingertips, careful and tender, rounding around her ankle; and then his palm pressed to the flat of her foot, echoing the arch. Alice smiles; she feels wonderfully loose, feels as though all possible tension she could ever possibly feel had drained out through the contact, skin on skin, his and hers and his and hers.

"I don't think that's what they'll think, actually."

He looks momentarily disconcerted at this, though she had half expected a devious sort of leer.

"Think I should leave?" he offers. "I mean, wouldn't want to interfere with your stellar reputation."

"I'm too new to have a reputation. The ink probably isn't even dry on the lease."

"It is if they used a blotter," he says pedantically— and somewhat whimsically, because who uses blotters these days? Not in this world, anyway; maybe in his. "Important things, leases." He wriggles his shoulders and cracks his neck and gives her a look as he drops his hands away from her foot. She grimaces and shifts on the couch; he scooches off his knees, sits flat on the floor, puts his back against the couch between her legs and flashes a slightly smarmy grin at her over his shoulder, eyes squeezed shut. I know you're going to, is what the grin says, and you know I know, and I know that you know I know. We're a knowledgeable couple.

Couple, thinks Alice.

On the thought, she digs her hands into his shoulders, thumbs biting deep; he's so slight, so skinny, his bones are all there ready for her, waiting, covered and hidden by such a thin layer of muscle, of skin, of cloth. He's abandoned his coat by the door, abandoned his untied tie about five steps in, and shucked off his shoes just by the couch. How much further he plans on going remains to be seen.

He drops his head forward, the hat in a precarious position. She grins at the exposed nape of his neck— so young! So thin! So boyish!

"You have a neck like a chicken," she says.

"On that note," he says breezily— because apparently being compared to a chicken isn't such an insult in Wonderland— or maybe he's just used to hearing it?— "how's your landlord stand on pets?"

She makes a fist and turns it in half-circles, clockwise, on top of his narrow shoulders. The slight grunt he gives is immensely satisfactory.

"Why? Are you going to give me a puppy?"

"Just curious, really. Wondering— uh!— wondering how lenient this lease really is? Is it a loose lease? Is it a looser lease? Is it a lease for losers? Ow."

Karate chops. Mild ones, but karate chops nonetheless, on his shoulder blades. Very therapeutic, if you ignore the pain. Alice's grin appears to be permanent.

"What are you trying to say?"

"I appear," says Hatter, suddenly childlike and petulant, "to be homeless."

She drops her hands from his shoulders. "What? I thought you were staying with— I mean, what happened to—"

He's turned around quite suddenly, on his knees, tucked between her own, nose to nose, eyes quite serious but the dimple belying them.

"That," he says, "is why I said appear. Very tricky things, appearances. Depends on your viewpoint, really. And if you've got the view, Alice, I promise to find a point eventually."

"Speak English," she says, groaning theatrically, and tugging at his hands, which have sudden curved themselves spiderlike around her waist. He's very close to her, that same disregard for personal space that he's shown since the moment they met— stalking around her in circles, leaning in as though he was going to communicate in an entirely more physical way than most strangers— and his dark eyes are fixed on hers without wavering.

"More to the point," he says, "how about just a bed for the night?"
She stops tugging at his hands. "Whose?" she asks pointedly.

"Alright," says Hatter gamely, "how about a sofa?"

She stares him down till he quirks his eyebrows upwards a little and gives her his sheepish-little-boy face. He had kissed her the once— and the twice, and that third time if that counted, his lips brushing the area just under her ear— but had never appeared inclined to go much beyond that. Certainly he had seemed glad to see her, and still did as a matter of fact. But— she didn't understand it. Maybe they just did things differently in Wonderland; though that smacked of an excuse, to her.

"What exactly are you asking for?" she says slowly. He shrugs a little; it's barely noticeable. He seems suddenly sad.

"I'm really quite tired, Alice," he says. "It's getting late."

There was absolutely no reason for him to be asking this. She blinks at him for a moment. He shifts on his knees, leaning ever more forward, and appears to grow impatient.

"Right. I'll just head back then, shall I?"

Alice grabs at his sleeve as he moves to stand, and stills him.

"I don't understand you," she says.

Again the shrug, more obvious this time.

"Can't really blame you for that," he says. "Doubt anyone ever does, really. Most of the time I don't understand myself, so you can imagine how confusing that gets."

"But okay," she goes on, because she hadn't finished yet. "Okay. You can sleep on the couch. I'll get you a blanket."

She's standing up now, and he stands with her, the grin reappearing as if by magic. "Oh, don't bother about me. I'll be fine." He takes her place on the couch, arching his back a little to pop it, balancing his hat on the back of the couch and folding his arms cheerfully. "See? Snug as a rug in a bug."

"Bug in a rug," she corrects him, laughing.

"Maybe in your world," he says, widening his eyes. His gaze never leaves hers, and the triangle of skin where his shirt is unbuttoned, just beneath his chin, has suddenly become seductive. All he says, though, is, "Good night, Alice."

She backs away slowly.
"Good night, Hatter."

He's right, after all. It is late.

Hatter will never get used to this.

He lies awake in Alice's brand-new apartment— new to her, anyway, though in actuality quite old— and takes it all in: the velvet darkness, the sounds from the street. The way things here don't smell quite the same as they do back home, in Wonderland. He was used to smells having a presence, a wildness that seemed to be part and parcel of the physical nature of things. Not always good smells, granted, but indisputable.

Everything was muted, here, the smells blending together and blocking each other out. It puzzles him; he can't quite get a handle on it. It's almost as though he can't quite see the correct outlines of things; except for Alice, of course. Alice smells of very, very clean vanilla, and when he closes his eyes and thinks about her, she appears scrubbed and clean and wrapped in white towels. That was her proper outline, maybe; that was the true shape of things.

Usually she was smiling at him in his head, too, which was nice.

Hatter rolls over and tucks his hands up underneath his cheek, and thinks about kissing her. He has kissed her once, twice, and three times if you counted the time he had missed and got her under the ear; but she doesn't appear to want to go beyond that, much. How many chances was he required to give her before he should assume that a quiet platonic friendship was the most he could hope for? Before he should make a sound like a hoop and roll away?

Maybe they just do things differently here, in her world. But that, he thought, punching the throw pillow with a sudden savagery, sounds like an excuse.

He's never going to get to sleep, he thinks irritably, if she keeps popping up in front of him every time he closed his eyes, all smiley and wrapped in white towels. He should focus on something else. The German language, perhaps. Now, how weird was that? Or Welsh, Welsh was interesting. He'd never considered the possibility that, out there somewhere, was a language consisting entirely of spit and gargle.

There she was again.

"Alice," he says to the night, "did I or did I not specifically order you to stay out of my head?"
She appears confused.

"Did you?" she asks, all sweet and innocent and not a white towel to be seen. Hatter blinks at the apparition; it does not waver, it remains firm. It's probably actually her.

He shifts to sit up. "Sorry. No. Never mind." He pinches at one eyebrow with his fingers, feeling a headache in the offing. Probably from not enough sleep. "Sorry, did I wake you or something?"

Alice shakes her head. "Couldn't sleep. I was wondering something."

"Well." He brings his hand down and grins at his fingers self-consciously. He's caught an eyebrow hair in his fingernail. How embarrassing. "No time like the present for wondering. I mean, I always found the dead of night to be quite conducive to abstract thought."

She hovers, seeming unsure of what to do or how to do it. Well, no use being all mimsy about it; he's not about to offer her a seat in her own apartment. Is he? Is he?

"Seat?" he offers, patting the side of the couch.

She wavers a second longer, then goes to her knees instead, planting her laced-together fingers and pensive hands on the couch in front of her, as though they're going to have a prayer meeting right there in the living room. Her hands are stationed just above his belt buckle. She could very easily reach out and touch him.

"This is it, what I'm wondering," she says. "I can't really wrap my head around why you would want to stay the night here and just, kind of, take over the couch. None of this makes any sense to me. You don't make any sense to me. Not that you ever did, so it's not like this is much of a break from tradition, but still. All I'm saying is. Still. You know."

He lifts his eyebrows aloft, blinks at her a few times.

"You don't want to talk about this in the morning, do you?"

"Nope," she says, shaking her head steadily. "Nope, I don't. I want to talk about it right here, right now."

Right here, right now, is a good phrase, a phrase he likes to hear from her, though maybe not, ideally, in this context.

So he says, "I wanted to watch you while you were asleep," startled into slightly-creepy honesty. By the look on her face he can tell that she has picked up more on the slightly-creepy part, less on the honesty. He hastens to explain, being fairly certain all the while that he's A., not making much sense, and B., probably making things worse, actually. "I was about to come in there, actually, come in your room, but I thought I'd give you a moment longer to make sure you were actually in the REM cycle, you know, really deep sleep, maybe dreaming about something nice. Something funny, maybe, like monkeys. Or, if you don't like monkeys, maybe dogs on tricycles." He pauses to shake his head— at himself, a sort of gesture to rattle his brains into order, to scream What? at his tongue. What? What, you lunatic? What are you blathering on about?— It does not really work. "I wanted to see you when you were sleeping and peaceful, and when things were all okay and sorted. And then I would go back, and I would go to sleep. And in the morning I'd wake up before you and maybe make you some breakfast. I fry a mean egg." He stops, and swallows. Grins weakly. "So they tell me."

Alice is staring at him with an expression that is difficult to read but probably approximates what his brain has just been yelling at his tongue.

"Why?" she says. "I mean, you come here, you give me a foot massage, you sleep on my couch and you want to watch me sleep and fix me breakfast? Why?"

"Good question," Hatter admits, and takes a moment to think about it. "So it will seem real."

"What?"

Another good question. "This." He sketches an outline of nothing in particular in the air with both hands; his wandering elbow knocks the hat off the back of the couch and it falls to the floor behind with a slight, muffled thud. "This, you and me, this. I can't, I can't seem to get a handle on things in your world, Alice. Everything's all fuzzy, none of it seems real."

She understands this, surely; it must be how she felt in Wonderland. He sees that now. He carries on sketching random shapes and figures and castles in the air till she catches his hands, gently, and brings them down to rest on the sofa between them. Her fingers separate his, slowly, until they're all interlaced and lovely and he can feel her heartbeat in her veins.

He swallows.

"I want this to be real," he says.

And she's staring at him again, eyes frosty and pale in the moonlight coming through the slightly-open window. On the street, there is an amalgamation of noises that mean the four o'clock shift has begun: drug dealers, ladies and gentlemen of the night. Corrupt cops and good time Joes. Not so different from Wonderland after all, really. Some people were sleeping, some were awake, and he is here trying to explain to this Alice, this Alice, that he really wants nothing more than to wake up beside her and bring her breakfast in bed.

"Is that so hard to understand?" he asks.

She chews on her lower lip; it shines damply in the light.

"You could have just told me, you know," she says. "It's not like I'm incapable of understanding."
Hatter lets all his breath out in a laugh.

"I know it!" he cries, almost gleefully. "I even know it, too! Isn't it funny, what an idiot I am? Tracing my way around trying to see the shapes of things like I need a pair of binoculars or a microscope! Look at me!" He shakes his head, his hatless head, his bare and needy head. "Had as a matter."

"Mad as a hatter," she corrects him, gently.

His grin is sharp in the moonlight; he is full of glee.

"Maybe in your world," he says.

"We're in my world," she reminds him.

His face suddenly turns puzzled. "Oh," he says. "Right."

She takes the initiative; she steps over the line. She kisses that slightly baffled expression till it turns into something else. His hands first, ready and willing, she guides them around her waist, and when they stand together in the middle of the room she puts her hands on his chest, traces the open top of his shirt, and smiles with her eyes shut.

"I'll never get used to this," says Hatter, and it sounds like a promise.

"Your luck is about to change," says Alice, and it sounds like a truth.