Story: Through the Looking Glass
Rating: R
Genre(s): Romance, Smut (Is smut a genre? Hmm…)
Summary: Alice steps through the Looking Glass and into Tarrant Hightopp's workroom. Not so carefully spewed Outlandish curses insure the Looking Glass is offended to the point it refuses to take Alice home.
Notes: Oh, cliché, how I love you. First attempt at AiW fanfic, so please, don't be too brutal. Second half coming soon! (Second half meaning Smut Coming Soon!) Also, lamest title ever…well, I've never been good with titles, so you will have to forgive it, I suppose.

The moon is high in the sky, looking rather benevolent and shimmering among glittering starry tea trays and whisping clouds, when Alice of Aboveground – Champion of the White Queen herself! – tumbles out of the rather large looking glass of Tarrant Hightopp's workroom. She gives a great noise of indignation when her foot catches on the rather smaller edge of her own looking glass, sending her tumbling bottom over tea kettle, straight to the floor in a flurry of petticoats, chaste white bloomers, and a good deal of lace. Tarrant pauses absolutely in his late night work, mouth agape, neon green eyes wide in shock as he takes the sight in. It isn't so much that Alice had come through the looking glass, as that was nothing new or odd or strange; she came by quite often, really, several times a week for tea and chats and long visits to catch upon Underworld gossip…

She always came at proper sorts of times, though. Mornings and afternoons and early evenings (at least, Tarrant assumes it was proper times; Time has been snubbing him quite harshly for several years, and he is often out of sorts when it came to that subject), but never at night. And it is clearly night, night night, with a large moon and stars and evening birds calling out. Sweet Earl Gray, Alice was in his rooms, limbs flailing, cursing vividly in words he hadn't imagined she knew, and he could see her pretty bloomers. He desperately wants to stammer, but was unable even to do that.

He simply gapes – gawks – goggles –

She bounds to her feet after a moment, positively flouncing as she glares darkly at his mirror, and spat several Outlandish curses. Tarrant, just for good measure, stares a bit more, worried that what little bit of reality was still clinging to Underworld by the skin of it's teeth finally gave up and ran away. And then he giggles, loudly, a bit hysterically – because it seems the thing to do really.

"Alice," he gestures with both a thimbled finger and pair of scissors, "I wasn't aware you – really, you shouldn't – that's quite the vocabulary you've picked up. I like words, you know, all sorts, but I wasn't aware that you were aware of quite so many! You're going to hurt the looking glass's feelings, going on like that, and then you'll have to stay here as it won't let you through." The thought cheers him, very quickly, and he grins at her. Possibly a bit madly, but that's to be expected. What is also expected is Alice to laugh, to twirl around and give him a right proper Alice look. Amused, a bit flustered, and full of teasing muchness.

She was, apparently, not going about with what was expected of her, though. Which really, Tarrant has to muse, was expected of her. Not doing what was expected of her, that is.

"Fine!" She nearly shouts, waving her hands through the air as she flounces a circle and turns viciously angry eyes on him. "I don't want to go back! I hope it doesn't let me back through!"

Tarrant forces himself, by sheer will and a carefully applied stab of the point of his scissors to his forearm, not to cheer.

"Well then!" He beams happily at her, dropping the scissors and a stretch of fine silk he'd been holding, clapping his hands together as he moved around his workbench. "Not wanting to go back? I can't say as I blame you, Alice, Underland is much nicer then Aboveland. MicTwisp tells the most awful stories about animals walking about without a stitch to them, doing their shukrm right in front of everyone. I may be mad, you know, but I can't imagine staying in place like that."

"Who cares about the animals?" Alice demands, propping her hands on her slender hips (slender hips that Tarrant wishes he hadn't noticed, because they reminded him of the fact she wasn't wearing shoes – what pretty little toes, his Alice had – or stockings, just stretches of bare skin with only thin bloomers to cover her modesty – and oh, oh my -), jutting her stubborn chin out. "It's the people, Hatter! The people are – they are just – ugh!"

"Ugh?" He repeated a bit faintly, "In what manner?"

Alice gives a large, gusting sigh, shaking her head and spreading her hands. The smile that pulls at her lips was obviously forced; the coloring of her cheeks obviously a by-product of embarrassment.

"Forget I said a thing," she moves forward, laughing – not entirely forced, that one – "And please forgive the way I acted! I had an awful time of it, Hatter, and I…I just thought you might want some company. For tea. It's very late, though, isn't it? I'm sorry. You're working, and I'm bothering you."

"Tea," he says firmly, "Is never a bother. Honestly, Alice, where you get your mad ideas, I'll never know." He gives her a stern sort of look – they collapse into a fit of giggles, before he's gesturing her towards his little table, where there is always hot tea waiting on hand. He pours for them both, adds three sugars and a dollop of milk to Alice's cup before hand it over. He mentally recounts every hat he's ever made – starting from the time before he could actually walk on his own – to keep himself from falling apart at the knowledge that Alice in his workroom past mooneve. In his workroom past mooneve, alone with him, after having sought him out – him alone! – for company and tea. Without shoes or stockings, and – bloomers –

Blast! Now he's stuck on B words, and most of them involving bodies. Which is also a B word, and –

"I think," Alice says suddenly, a sullen, brooding look on her face, "That I despise men."

Tarrant chokes on his tea so violently it stings his nose. He's a man, and she despises men – and he doesn't think he can stop being a man, given all the dangling bits that go along with being male, and he's fond enough of them he doesn't want to be rid of them, not even for Alice. If he must he must, though; admittedly, it would completely end all the things he thinks about Alice, doing to Alice, Alice doing to him. Well, not the thinking. But the hope of actual action would be gone, and how would he –

"What?"

"Most men," she amended to his relief, sending him a great, fluttering sort of smile and another flush. Tarrant can't help but flop, boneless, in his chair, though it was only an extreme act of willpower that he had previously been unaware of possessing that keeps him from patting his male bits just to assure them that now everything is okay, and nothing is going anywhere and – and thank Green Tea, he'd been very worried for a moment.

"Aboveland men, at least," Alice continues, lips turning down again, sitting her tea on it's saucer on the table, and Tarrant's mind went off on the path she was only starting to wander down. In his workroom after mooneve, alone with him, without stockings or shoes; angry enough to make good use of the Outlandish curses she'd picked up from being around – well, himself – when he had a fit, like That One Time when Chess thought it would be perfectly hysterical to play Take the Hat for several hours straight. Yes, Alice had probably learned all her best Outlandish swears from that day, he had to admit, probably about the time Tarrant had gotten stuck in the tree and an invisible Chess and his floating hat were just out of reach. He'd been fairly certain that Chess had been Futterwackening, despite lack of visibility; no where nearly as well as Tarrant could manage it, but Futterwacken he did, all the same, in sheer glee of tormenting poor Tarrant within a fingernail of his misty mind.

Frumious cat…

Alice in his workroom, after mooneve, alone with him, without stocking or shoes; angry enough to make good use of the Outlandish curses she'd picked up from himself – likely from That One Day – and, informing him she despised most men. Most men meaning Aboveland men, and his bits and bobbins were safe (thank you, thimbles!), and it all led up to a conclusion that Tarrant wasn't too fond to think of.

He refuses – refuses! – to say a single word, and tips his head down. The brim of his hat and the spill of his bright hair hide his eyes, which he's fairly sure are not green or blue or neon of some sort, but piercing and yellow and orange and hateful.

"They think," Alice broke through the rapid pace of his thoughts, drawing his eyes towards her from under the shadows of his hat brim while his fingers curl so tightly on his teacup he is surprised it wasn't shouting in pain and close to cracking, "That if there is an unmarried young woman within twenty feet of them, that they have automatic rights. Well, they don't! I wish I could warn them, really. 'I slayed a Jabberwocky, son,' I'd tell them, 'And mind yourself, or it'll be off with your head, next!' Vorpal sword or no!"

Tarrant takes three very deep breathes, each of them longer then the last. The next thing he knows there is china on the floor, tea on the ceiling and wall and floor, and he is kneeling before Alice with his hands on her skirt and petticoat and bloomer (dear thimbles, bloomers…) clad knees. Her eyes are great and glimmering and impossibly blue, her mouth rather agape and the flush on her cheeks nearly as bright as his hair.

"Names," he heard himself demanding, "Ye give me names, an'I proomis, I proomis, ye'll ne'r have to see 'em again!"

The ideas his mad, mad mind have brought forth are nearly too much for him to bear. His Alice, his free, pretty Alice; always without stockings or corset, with illy lace shoes and most often bare toes and ankles. If they – if they touched her, hurt her, so much as breathed on her, he will rip them all –

"Now, Hatter," Alice gives him the very careful smile of an Alice who has only just realized she has pushed the Mad Hatter into a fierce rage, reaching out to pat his cheek with light fingertips. "Calm down. I'm not hurt, I promise! You think a few stupid men with stupid little ideas could hurt the Champion of the White Queen?"

Tarrant wants, badly, to tell her that men can hurt women in all sorts of ways. And if they dare to hurt his Alice in any way, but most certainly the ways he would like make her think kindly of (with him, not them, naturally), he really will kill them. Without pause. Instead he grunts, and narrows a glare on her. She crinkles her nose, and sighs once, before going about patting his cheeks a bit more.

"I have to tell you what's happened, now, don't I? You're expecting the worst. It wasn't the worst! He just…he's an idiot, Lowell, an absolute idiot! Well, if he weren't married to my sister, I promise, I would show him what the White Queen's Champion is all about. As it is, I showed him enough. Thank you's are in order for all your training. I doubt he'll be walking well for several days."

The sane part of Tarrant – which is Tarrant before the mercury and Jabberwocky and rebellion – is, for once, joining in the clamor of bloodlust. He is, as a matter of fact, waving a hatpin in a most deadly fashion and thinking about the use of crumpets as torture. It is, Tarrant-as-a-whole decides, a most clever sort of torture, and Thackery has just the right recipe to make it all possible. He'll speak to Thackery as soon as he's done here about getting said crumpets. Dead useful, March Hares are. Literally, in some cases.

"Wot," he says as clearly as he possibly can, in his current state, "Happened?"

"Dear," Alice mutters at him, "Oh, dear. Now, Hatter – Tarrant – I really think you ought to calm down a bit."

That sane part of him lets go of the hatpin, develops a nosebleed, and faints dead away. Tarrant, she called him, not Hatter or Mad or Mad Hatter or Royal Hatter. Just Tarrant. He thinks he giggled. A bit. Possibly. Not conducive to slaying, giggling, but oh well.

"See, now? There's a laugh. I'm fine, I promise."

"Alice," he glares again, stifling the giggles, "Wot happened?"

"Well, you know Lowell. Not really, but I have spoken of him. He was being Lowell, and I took care of it. So really, there's no need for poking him with hatpins, and certainly no need for you broadsword." Tarrant has to wonder at how well she knows him, at least for a moment. Until he was back on the path of Bad Things and Alice's bloomers (which, for the first time ever, is not as wonderful a thought as they have previously been), and that slurvish Lowell.

"Alice!" Something in his tone, his eyes, the twist of his lips and glimmer of his teeth must have finally convinced her to be out with the tale, and end the torture of skirting the subject.

"We had a ball this evening." She sniffs once, suddenly prim, eyes darting to the side. It explains the excess of lace and the fine stitching of her bloomers.

Blasted bloomers!

It explains the excess of lace and fine seaming on all her clothing, even the ones he shouldn't have seen. Much safer, that. Things he shouldn't have seen. Bloomers, that bleeding Tarrant in his head gurgles, before fainting again.

"We had a ball," she elaborates at his growl, "And Lowell got a bit into his cups. Poor Margaret's quite far along into her pregnancy, very uncomfortable, so she says. Well, I suppose it has – at least, according to Lowell – he's a beast, really…" She pauses, and takes a deep breath before plunging onwards. "I suppose it has made things of a marital nature a bit difficult. Meaning Margaret's pregnant and doesn't care a bit for it, now."

Tarrant tastes blood far before he realizes he's bit his cheek.

"It was bloody boring affair," Alice is rambling, he notes, he supposes from nerves, "To celebrate my homecoming, such as it is. And Lowell got into his cups, too much wine, and caught me in the garden having a conversation with the peonies. He said some very uncalled for things, and did some very uncalled for things, and I kicked him so hard that I really don't think they'll be any other children after Margaret has this baby."

"Wot?" Tarrant didn't realize he was shouting until Alice flinched backwards, patting his cheeks a bit more strongly, now. His chest is so tight he can hardly breathe, and he wants – more then anything – to find this Lowell and set the bloody – "Wot happened, Alice?"

"He kissed me," Alice blurted, looking a bit shamed and very angry and entirely stubborn. "Married to my sister, and he kissed me! Told me I was going to become an old maid, and it was his duty as a loving brother-in-law to make sure I didn't miss out on everything, and if I was going to go around without my stockings then it meant I really wanted him to. I don't! They're like codfish, stockings, and I just don't like them. So I – so I kicked him, and left, and it's over, now. The tea is getting cold, Tarrant, shouldn't we finish it? Or maybe I should go home. I've kept you away from your work long enough, haven't I?"

"Nae!" Tarrant knows he's shouting this time, and he really – really – doesn't care. "Nae, ye willna go back there, wi' tha' – tha' –"

His mind, he fears, is permanently broken at this juncture.

"How di' he know ye weren't wearin' stockin's?" Alice gives him very large, very guilty eyes.

"Bugger," she mutters, in a very un-Alice fashion. "Now," she says in that careful sort of voice, "Tarrant, I think you should calm down. Just a bit."

He twitches violently. And then – then he lunged.

Tarrant stares at Alice for what feels like an eternity. He can still taste her on his lips, her tongue against his (his tongue that had traced her lips, dipped inside, tasted the sweetness of her mouth), his heart pounding like a drum in his chest. He almost presses his hand over it, to make sure it doesn't slip between his rips, rip through flesh, and flop helpless at her feet, much as he already is, kneeling before her like a startled supplicant. Her hand is hovering over her mouth, her eyes wide, her cheeks flushed. Not just her cheeks, no; her cheeks, her throat, that long, lovely line descending to her bodice and the small swell of her chest which is modestly covered but still taunting him horrible.

He has just – yes, he is sure that he has just kissed his Alice. Stolen her kiss like that slurvish Lowell stole her kiss, and now she really is going to despise him.

"I -" He gasps on the word, blinking large eyes at her, "I'm sorry! I didn't – I did – but I didn't mean -"

"Different," Alice says softly, maybe a bit wonderingly, pressing her fingertips to her lips before dropping her hand. He nearly dies when her tongue darts out, sweeps the lingering remains of his kiss and madness and passion from her mouth, draws it inside her body and tastes it again. "Much different from before."

"Different?" He gasps the word, hands trembling violently; palms on her knees, fingers on her thighs, thumbs nearly crying because they are so near her hem and it would take little to slip down, lift it up, find skin –

"Different," she said strongly, and visibly rallying her muchness all around her, "Better. Much better."

"Better?"

"Better," her tone is firm, and she nods, as though now nothing will change this new opinion. "Much better."

Tarrant finds himself unable to speak past the swelling of love and hope and lust and so many other things that he, a collector of words, cannot hope to name. And he doesn't have to, he finds, because Alice is leaning towards him, her breath fluttering – warm and moist – on the skin of his cheeks, his nose, his neck. Her hair is falling forward, touching him gently, like a lover, and then her mouth is at his, and she is kissing him. Not timidly, no, not his Alice; softly, though, because it's obvious she's had few kisses before this, maybe only the two – one wrongly stolen and one she didn't mind having taken, it seems.

She kisses him so sweetly that it is almost painful. He lets out a noise – deep and rough, from the depths of his stomach that rolls out of his chest like the snarling of the Bandersnatch – and his hands leave her legs. He flicks his thimble from his finger, and that hand he curls and tangles in her fair hair. The other cups her neck, thumb stroking up and down before it presses against the tender skin under her chin, pressing upwards as he rocks forward, into an awkward stance hovering on his toes so he is just so above her.

She moans, and he deepens the kiss, and finds himself in the sweetest madness he has ever, ever known.

He lurches upright, bends to keep his mouth on Alice's. He can't stand the thought that anyone, anyone, touched her before; he is dying because she is touching him, allowing him to touch her, and it is blessed. Tarrant finds himself with his knee on the edge of the chair, the leg he stood on bent. He was pressing her against the back of the chair, hand around her neck and another in her hair; and her hands were in his hair, his neck, trailing fingertips over his shoulders before one darted out and brushed against his ear.

He thinks he will die, and he can't say that he'd mind.

"Alice," he groans her name against soft lips and wet tongue, before moving his mouth to her jaw, where tastes the flesh there. Alice shivers, shudders, and curls her fingers into the shoulders of his jacket and refuses to release him. "Alice," he groans when his teeth scrape her neck, and she gives a trembling noise that sounds very, very much like My Hatter…

It takes an effort of will and sanity that Tarrant did not know he still possessed to find himself halfway across his workroom, struggling for air. He knots his hands together behind his back, rocking back and forth, torn between the desire to fling himself back onto his sweet Alice and to do the Right Thing. The Right Thing being keep away and keep her chaste, at least a while, because he has no doubts that if later on – later on, if there have been further kisses, and she asks for more then that – then he will give into her. But one stolen kiss from her, and another happily taken kiss from himself…it doesn't mean that the time is right to rip her fine seams and sink into her body.

Alice trembles with every breath she takes. Her eyes are hazy with desire, with lust, and she looks right at him with that glorious gaze. Tarrant fears he'll hurt her, in his desire, for it is stronger even then his madness. And truly, he hadn't know that anything was stronger then that.

"Perhaps," he finds himself saying, "Ye shoul' leave, my Alice."

She gives him a wounded, heartbroken look, and captures her lower lip between her white teeth. Tarrant's knees knock together so viciously that he'll be surprised if she never admits to hearing it.

"I dinna wan' ye to," he insists rather desperately, "As I wan' ye, Alice, verra badly. But ye – we – I dinna wan' to hurt ye, force ye -"

"Tarrant," Alice says with the strangest, warmest smile he's ever been graced with, "You are the most wonderful man I've ever known."

His resolve begins to shake. But he keeps himself back as she stands, toys with her hair, smoothes her skirts for a moment. Alice shoots him a look that is hot and startled and very curious; he wants, more then anything, to drag her to the bed in the room next door, and answer her questions as to what could happen between them with his hands and lips and tongue and –

"I should leave," she admits on a sigh, flushing again, "You're right. But I – can I come back? Tomorrow?"

"Aye!" He is as startled by his shout as Alice is. She grins at him, though, and he wavers a few steps forward. "Och – aye, my Alice, anyt'me ye wan'!"

"And then we…" Alice flamed brightly, struggling for words, before she visibly rallied her muchness about her. She gave him a twinkling sort of look, something sly and teasing and very hopeful. "Will there be more kisses, Tarrant?"

He is this close – this close, he swears – to fainting. Or ravishing her. Or ravishing her, and then fainting. If he could do both at once, he would. Unfortunately, it isn't an option.

"As long as ye wan' 'em," he assures her roughly, "Aye."

She grins, before turning and moving in a very gay, pleased fashion towards the looking glass. She pauses, one hand on the frame, chin nearly touching her shoulder.

"Goodnight, Hatter."

"Fairfarren," he manages to grit out, "My Alice."

So used to moving easily, freely through the looking glasses, Alice held not a hint of hesitation when she moved towards the smooth surface. And that was why her head smacked into the smooth glass quite hard, and she gave a shout before toppling backwards. She landed on her body, hands pressed to her head, giving the looking glass the sort of look that suggested she couldn't believe what had just happened.

"And then you'll have to stay here," Tarrant recalled telling her, "As it won't let you through."

Tarrant blinked at her sprawled form, before twitching. Violently.

"You were right," Alice tells him after a long time sitting on the floor, looking torn between worry and delight, "I shouldn't have said cruel things to the looking glass. I can't go back through. It does look as though we'll be spending the rest of the evening together. I know Mirana likes to be sunshine and rainbows during the day, but I'd rather go three rounds with a Jabberwocky then wake her up in the middle of the night. She's not very nice when that happens."

"Nae," Tarrant says very softly, "She is'na."

After Alice finds her feet, they stare at each for a very long time. And then, finally, Tarrant extends one trembling hand towards the seat she had sat in before. (Sat in, been kissed in; the seat he had caged her in with his knee between her thighs, his mouth on hers oh sweet silver serving set…)

"More tea, Alice?" She grins, and Tarrant feels rather doomed. He doesn't know if it's a good thing, or not.