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[macdicilla]

Relationship: Sandra Battye/Rosemary Palm
Words: 1685

Rain dripped slow down the windows, and Rosie lay on her side in her bed, staring forward. There was a leak at the front door, and she could hear the drip-drip of fat, fat blobs of rainwater dropping down onto the slab that served as their doorstep. She’d have to fix it today. She’d have to get out of bed, put on some clothes, she’d have to…

She was a handy girl. Always had been, always had been handy before she was handsy – she could fix basic carpentry stuff, had learned enough off her dad, and all this’d take would be a new bit of lining and a new tile on the stoop, would only take five minutes once she actually pulled herself up onto the stoop’s roof.

She heard the door open. In the same moment, she heard it drag through a puddle of water, making a slight splashing sound, and she pressed her lips together.

“If you don’t fix that leak today,” snapped Sandra, and Rosie smiled slightly as she heard the angry stomp of Sandra’s boots through the water. The floor down here was stone – if it was wood flooring, like upstairs, Rosie’d probably have rushed to it from the beginning, but the water wouldn’t do the concrete no harm, except add to the sweeping to do, and let in some of the chill. “I will fix it myself!”

“And what will you do, Sand?” Rosie called back, not moving, keeping her arms crossed over her tits, her blanket thrown over her. “Sew it shut?”

“Nope!” Sandra said, appearing in the doorway, windswept under the scarf she wore to keep her hair dry, although it had failed, and her hair was so sodden it stuck down to her neck, probably dripping down her back. “I’ll try and hammer it fixed myself, and probably fall off and break my neck.”

She threw a pear at Rosie, which Rosie caught, laughing. 

“Wouldn’t like that, would you?” she demanded, hands on her hips, and Rosie stood from the bed, leaving the blankets behind her. Sandra groaned out a wordless noise of protest. “Put those away!”

“Put these away, put that away, put this away!” Rosie said, waving her free hand, her pair, and her pear about. “You won’t be satisfied until everything’s on a shelf with a neat little label!”

“Like we’ve got shelves big enough for them,” Sandra said, nodding to Rosemary’s chest without peeking through the fingers over her eyes, and Rosie laughed, reaching for the strap of Sandra’s shopping bag and pulling her closer.

“Sandra,” Rosie said lowly.

“I’m not looking,” Sandra said. “You’ll poke my eye out with one of them.”

“I’ll fix the roof,” Rosie said.

“Thank you. Put some clothes on.”

“What if I did it naked?”

“You’d catch a cold.”

“Drum up business, though.”

“And how keen are gentlemen on women with stuffy noses and hacking coughs?”

“I’m not really all that keen on gentlemen anyway, Sandra.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that.”

She peeked between her fingers, up at Rosie’s eyes, and then she began to laugh. It was a soft chuckle, at first, but then it began to bubble up into a real, belly-deep laugh, and Rosie laughed too, delighted by the brightness of it, the sheer joy that could ripple out of Sandra Battye, if you poked at her for long enough with something that wasn’t a needle.

The dark cloud that had hung over Rosie’s mood dissipated somewhat, and she patted Sandra’s shoulder before reaching for her dress.

--

She wore trousers and a blouse, put on her best boots, but even they weren’t all that great for keeping the rain out, cheap as they were, and she knew she’d have cold feet later tonight. She worked with her coat thrown over her head, the lantern awkwardly balanced on the top of her knee, but she managed to work by it.

“Oi, Rosie?” 

She leaned over the stoop to see young Annie Renata from six doors up, huddling under her shawl. She looked freezing for the rain. She was only fourteen, holed up in that shitty little flat with her two little brothers – her sister was a seamstress, but she was out of town the weekend with some Quirmian fella. 

“Yeah?”

“Our— Rosie, we’ve a leak in the roof, I don’t suppose you could have a look?” She must have seen Rosie’s face, because she added, “Please, we’ve asked three tradesmen and every one of ‘em said he wouldn’t take money, only—” 

“Yeah,” Rosie murmured, but then she made her face sterner, and she brandished her hammer as she looked down at Annie. She didn’t let the sickly nausea, the urge to bite out the throat of any man who so much as looked funny at little Annie, show. “Yeah, I’ll come over. Ten quid, mind you, and that’s not including nails and wood!”

“Of course,” Annie said, nodding her head. “Thanks, Rosie, thank you—”

“I’ll just tell Sand,” Rosie said, and she drew herself down.

Sandra didn’t even look surprised, but she put one of the pies from the oven into a basket for the Renata kids. “We can share one,” Sandra said softly. “Right?”

“Yeah,” Rosie said. “If I ever get home. Soon as one of those bitches sees me fixing this roof—”

“It’s money, isn’t it?”

“There’s a reason I didn’t want to be a carpenter, Sandra Battye.”

“I know, I know,” Sandra said, not looking sympathetic at all as she pouted her lips. “You hate handling wood.” She hadn’t gotten that joke, the first time Rosemary had made it. She’d puzzled over it for ages – that had been one of the first dirty jokes Rosie had ever told her, but she got it now.

Rosie sniggered, caught Sandra’s chin, and pressed their lips together. It was meant to be a little peck, but Sandra was warm, and Rosie had her against the wall in a moment, shoving her freezing wet hands up under Sandra’s shirt as Sandra screeched and laughed and kicked at her, slamming her hands hard against Rosemary’s arms.

“All that meat on you, and you’re freezing!” Sandra hissed, and Rosie laughed, but for some reason, she didn’t really feel it. 

“All that revolution shite,” Rosie muttered, “and what was it for? We’ve all got broken roofs, all freezing to death in the damp, and what will our new Patrician do about it? Snapcase couldn’t give a fuck what happens to any of us.”

Sandra’s laugh faded from her lips, and she reached up, touching her fingers gently to Rosemary’s neck. 

“We’ll just have to take care of each other,” Sandra said softly. “You girls should have a guild, you’re always saying that. Couldn’t you form one? On the sly, like?”

A quiet moment passed between them, Rosie’s hands on Sandra’s hips, Sandra’s hand gently pressing to the pulsepoint of Rosie’s throat. Rosie sighed. 

“I’ll take the pie to them,” Rosie murmured. “Fix their roof. I’ll send a girl with a message if I end up doing more than two or three houses.”

“Rosie?”

“Sand?”

“You’re a daft bitch,” Sandra said, her expression deadpan, her gaze cutting. “I love you.”

“One daft bitch to another,” Rosie replied, feeling her lips twist into a grin despite herself, “I love you too.”

“Now get your freezing fingers out of my brassiere,” Sandra said, smacking her thigh, and Rosie went laughing, holding the basket under her arm to meet Annie and her brothers. She had been right – it was another ceiling after the Renatas’ , and then Judy Smith’s door had been knocked off the hinges by some fella who’d stormed out the last day, and then Rita Nonne had begged in the little Morporkian she had for Rosie to set her bed back on its four legs, because some bastard had knocked down one. 

They did need a guild. If they had a guild, they could set specific rates, they could standardise, they could have real brothels all in line, and girls wouldn’t have to worry about getting kicked out on their ear from the brothels if they did one thing wrong, and…

“How much did you make?” Sandra asked when Rosie came home at four in the morning, the sign left flipped down, the door locked, and crawled into Sandra’s bed instead of her own, pressing as much of her naked body to Sandra’s as she could, and finding there were flannel pyjamas in the way, much to her upset. 

“About my usual month’s pay,” Rosie murmured, “plus a sack of potatoes, a chicken, six eggs, and a promise of a new basket of yarn for you.”

“Bet you had to work hard for that last one.”

“Rehung Adie Wagon’s shutters.”

“Didn’t she have them rehung yesterday?”

“Didn’t trust the fella that did them, apparently,” Rosie murmured. “Old bat’s crazy, alone in that house of hers with all them cats.”

“That could be me one day,” Sandra said wistfully. 

“As if I’d let you live alone.”

“And the cats?”

“Sand, I will get you as much pussy as you like, for the rest of our years together.”

Sandra giggled. Her face wasn’t really made for giggling – her face was too plain and too severe, and it didn’t seem like it was apt for that sort of girlish stuff, but Rosie loved the noise of it, loved the way her lips twisted when she did. 

“I want some ginger ones,” Sandra said.

“I’ll try my best.”

“And one of them bald ones, too.”

“Those are two a penny.”

“And a tortoiseshell?”

“Will a dye-job do?”

Sandra laughed, more softly this time, and she turned, pressing her face against Rosemary’s breast, pulling her half on top of her, as though Rosie was a blanket. Sandra’s hands were scarred and marked over with needle marks, her fingers strong, and Rosie felt herself smile as she put her hand over Sandra’s, squeezed. 

It rained through the night, and the first knock on the door the next morning was another roof leak.

It was just going to be that sort of week.