Fic: won't you ease my worried mind?
Feb. 14th, 2026 03:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aquila1nzChapters: 1/1
Fandom: Riot Women
Rating: General
Warnings: no warning given
Relationship: Kitty Eckersley/Beth Thornton
Characters: Beth Thornton, Kitty Eckersley
Additional Tags: preslash, in an we all know where this is going kind of way, bed sharing, filling the gaps, S01E06
Summary:
Direct sequel to ‘you are in my blood you are my holy wine’. They need to talk.
Beth gets gnomic little messages from Kitty throughout the day.
9:30 am
Jess in 🍗
11:00 am
Holly 🎸
1:15 pm
Showing my bruises off to some well fit chicks 🐥
3:15 pm
Yvonne 🚪in me face
She finds herself thinking about it all at random moments during the day, any time that classes and staff concerns aren’t demanding all her attention. Just having Kitty there had been a profound relief. Those two days where Beth hadn’t known where she was or if she was safe had been terrible. When she spilled in the door at the rehearsal Beth had felt herself release a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, but she’d quickly realised Kitty was intent on avoiding her; forgiveness would not come easily. She should have apologised immediately when she spoke to Kitty afterwards, instead of trying to use song writing as a foot in the door to them spending time together. She definitely shouldn’t have let Kitty’s subsequent rejection get to her so much, so that when Kitty knocked on the door so late she’d ignored Kitty’s heartfelt apologies and rejected her in turn. It was pretty much a miracle she’d come down off her high horse enough to let Kitty in the door.
That she had been able to hold Kitty in her arms all night, that was the true miracle. At some point she was going to have to reckon with just how much she had liked it. As a comfort it was not surprising, she’d been alone for over a year and lonely for a lot longer. But she was pretty sure she was feeling a lot more than comfort. Maybe it was Kitty’s incessant flirting, which she’d learned not to put too much stock in, Kitty flirted like she breathed, with anyone. Well, no, not with anyone; she’d watched Kitty working, where she was pleasant but kept boundaries. But with anyone she trusted, like Holly or…
Maybe it was from taking the hormones. She was a lot more aware of her body than she had been, feeling all sorts of things that she’d been keeping repressed for years. But if she is honest with herself, that frisson she felt with Kitty had been there from the start, from when she’d first pushed her way through the doors at the White Swan and watched Kitty sing; from when Kitty had made her laugh, had sung random lines at her, had looked right at her and listened to her and riffed a song with her. She can’t blame it all on the HRT.
Beth has two meetings after classes end, and then she forces herself to get some paperwork done, but she’s restless and eventually gives it up as a bad job and heads home. She pulls out the makings of Kitty’s favourite meal and soon has it baking in the AGA. She’s at the piano when she gets another message: ‘On my way home.’ Nothing cryptic about that and Beth’s heart swells at Kitty saying it just like that.
She sees Kitty come walking past the living room window, clutching her black garbage bags. So she’d reclaimed her belongings. It worried Beth to think of her going back to the flat alone, given the bruises she had. Maybe Holly had gone with her. She can’t hear Kitty enter the house over what she is playing but within a minute she is there, looking relaxed and happy, grinning as Beth moves over slightly to make room for her at the piano. Beth sneaks a glance at her, then transitions into the opening bars of ‘Waterloo’, Kitty cracks up and almost misses her entry, but they both launch into it, Kitty hamming it up with a pitch imperfect imitation of Kam.
“…knowing my fate is to be with you.” Kitty flourishes her hands towards Beth on the final line and they sit laughing, facing each other.
“So am I correct that Jess and Holly are in but we don’t have Yvonne?”
“Pretty much, Holly said she’ll work on Yvonne but not to count on her. She says if she does turn up she’ll have been practicing, she hates not being perfect.”
Beth plays random high chords on the piano with her left hand. “I was doing some calculations today and I can cover half the cost, if the other two do the rest. At least we have Jess for drums. Do you think you could cover Yvonne’s guitar part, just for the recording?”
“Dunno, Yvonne’s been working hard on the technical parts, I mostly just strum.”
“I think your fingering is a bit better than that.”
“Oh, my fingering is world class, baby!” She pauses to flex her good hand and raise her eyebrows rakishly at Beth. “Yeah, eight days, I can give it a proper good go between now and then.”
“Nisha's been pretty keen to play with Holly's instrument, maybe we could convince her to learn guitar once she's feeling better?”
Kitty howls with laughter and Beth elbows her. “I did not mean it like that!” she declares indignantly but she can’t help grinning at seeing Kitty doubled over laughing.
Kitty sobers. “Holly said she looked awful beat up when she saw her on Sunday. It’ll be a while before she’s up for anything, but yeah, maybe she’d be game down the road. Oh, and Jess said no rehearsal tomorrow night, there’s an event on at The Duke, but we can do a run through next Tuesday, get note perfect.”
“OK, that’s good.” Beth grimaced. “Not Nisha, that’s all terrible; but yes to a rehearsal to get ‘Seeing Red’ as smooth as possible, everyone knowing their bits.” She thinks for a moment. "What was that about showing off your injuries? Did you see a doctor?”
“Police forensics, they took photos of me bruises, said they can actually charge Gavin this time.”
“I’m glad about that.” Beth hesitates a beat. “Holly said, last night, something about you being up on charges?”
“Yeah, turns out there are repercussions if you take a really big sledgehammer to your ex’s jag in front of his wife.”
“You didn’t!”
“I might’ve spray painted ‘twatmobile’ on it as well.”
Beth’s lip twitches. She manages her best teacher voice. “I have to say I’m very disappointed to hear that, Kitty.”
Kitty looks up, startled, and catches the twinkle in Beth’s eye.
“It felt worth it at the time, but it’s going to get me in a lot of shit now.”
“That’s still to be determined. Do you have a lawyer? I think we need to make sure you have representation who can point out the times he physically hurt you. You matter more than some fancy car.”
“It was the duty solicitor’s counter whatsit that set Gavin off last night, that’s why he hit me. I thought I’d talked him down but he waited ‘til I believed it and then went for me.”
“Oh, Kitty.” Beth reaches up, ghosts a hand over the bruise on Kitty’s forehead. “Was it very terrible, being back with Gavin? No, I shouldn’t have asked you that, you already told me how hard it was, you don’t have to answer.”
But Kitty looks contemplative, takes a breath. “It weren’t good. Him there all the time because his wife’s chucked him out. I had nightmares both nights, worsen it’s been in ages, woke up and was relieved I hadn’t woken him. Coulda used your chamomile tea.”
Kitty had had nightmares after they told Tom. Beth, awake with her own thoughts had heard the creak on the stairs and gone down after her, made her chamomile tea, not asked what she’d dreamed, just sat with her until she was tired enough to try sleeping again. There had been other nights since, when they’d sat with a cuppa, or if morning was close enough, given up on sleep and taken to the piano and keyboard, but she’d felt they had been getting fewer and further between. And here she’d put Kitty back into that headspace.
Beth screws up her courage and launches in. “So the things I said that day. The things I didn’t say. I am so sorry, Kitty. You apologised to me last night, but I was the one who should be saying sorry. I knew that what you told Holly would be the truth and yet I let coddling Tom’s ego trump it and that was wrong. I think it’s become a bad habit, I’m so scared I’ll chase him away that I don’t stand up against his behaviour.”
“You do sometimes.”
Beth nods. “I do sometimes, but I didn’t when it mattered.”
“You don’t do that with me. You’re so careful about my feelings, about checking, but you don’t try to…” she swirls her hand around.
“Try to manage them? Yes, I guess that’s the lack of history, and you’re an adult and I treat you like that, and all right, point taken, Tom is an adult and I should treat him like that. And…” Beth pauses, then forges on. “I’m sorry, too, for listening to that stupid podcast. Those things were for you to tell me should you choose to and they don’t change how I see you, but they were yet another thing you got blindsided with that morning. I shouldn’t have.”
Kitty takes Beth’s hand awkwardly with her splinted hand, nods as if accepting the apology. “I would have told ya, if you’d asked. I know there was a lot I didn’t tell. Not just my da and all that went on in that house, but the times I got locked up, and Nisha and Holly givin’ me this cut.” She touches the side of her mouth. “I tried to warn you I could be trouble.”
“You also told me that you weren’t a bad person and I knew that was true, I know that is true, Kitty.”
The kitchen timer goes off. Kitty moves to stand and Beth doesn’t let go of her hand so that she turns back. “Are we good?”
Kitty’s smile is sure. “We’re good.”
Over dinner they start plotting out what to play at the festival.
“She said we’ll have 30 minutes to fill, so I think that’ll be at least six songs? We definitely want more originals than covers.”
“We have ‘Seeing Red’, ‘Just Like Your Mother’, they liked ‘Riot Women’ and I reckon we can get ‘Shitting Pineapples’ playable." Kitty ticks them off on her fingers. "There’s always 'Waterloo', we know we can pretty much make it through 'Layla'. So we probably need to write one or two more in the hope that one is usable.”
“I had a thought about the cover songs. We send everyone a document to fill in for cover ideas, and then vote. That way we can preseed it with some good ones and hopefully any of their suggestions that float to the top are worth it.”
“Oh, you are well sneaky.”
“I’ve spent years convincing teenagers that they’ve chosen what I want them to do.”
Once the dishes were rinsed and the leftovers stowed they returned to the living room and got to work on Shitting Pineapples.
They’d spent evenings like this before but it felt even more precious now. Beth would have loved to stay up all night, there at the piano, laughing and singing as they worked on the song, but she’s yawning and she can see Kitty starting to too. They still have a lot of sleep to catch up on, so she reluctantly wraps up their session, clipping the new music notes together for Kitty to write up the next day. She moves to check the doors are locked, Kitty turns out the lights. And they climb the stairs together. Beth wants to stop at the top, maybe suggest… But she can hardly say Kitty wasn’t safe to sleep alone tonight. She turns towards her bedroom and her usual night time routine. She’s just climbed into bed when there is the smallest sound at her door and Kitty is there, looking remarkably diffident.
“Can I…?” she gestures towards the bed. “I don’t think I want to be alone tonight.”
Beth smiles, nods. She feels relieved, apparently this is something that Kitty also needs. Once Kitty is ensconced under the covers, Beth holds out her arm and Kitty snuggles into her side. Beth turns out the lamp and they lie there in the dark.
Beth says “I’m really glad you didn’t leave for London, or anywhere else.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. Selfishly, that I’m not alone. Practically, that you’ll get these charges dealt with. But really I’m just happy we both get another chance to get this right.”
“’m glad to be snuggled up in your bed an all, Beth.”
