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There’s a little spot behind the semi-abandoned greenhouse where Larry discards his seeds. Or maybe that’s not the right way of putting it. He doesn’t plant them, but they aren’t unwanted. He scatters them behind the greenhouse and he lets them grow however they want. Some of them don’t survive. Tropicals aren’t meant for Ohio weather, and it’s a bit too sunny for the ones that like shade and a bit too shady for the ones who love the sun.
But Rita loves it back there.
Larry is the only other person who ever goes there, and only when he goes to toss more seeds, never to water or prune or weed or anything. Niles doesn’t come back here that Rita knows of, outside of the one time when she accidentally stayed out too late and he came out to remind her to come inside before it got too dark out. Cliff used to barely go outside his room in general, much less outside the manor itself. Victor probably explored every inch of the grounds, because that seems like something that he would do, but Rita hasn’t seen him over here. And Jane just doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would like this kind of place.
So it’s a surprise when she hears the sound of someone pushing through the tall grass behind her, humming a little under their breath.
When Rita turns around, it’s not Jane that she sees. She’s in soft clothes, purple and blue, carrying a big basket in her arms. Her humming dies as soon as she accidentally makes eye contact with Rita. Well, not really eye contact. Rita’s looking at the bridge of her nose. It’s a good trick. It makes people think that she’s looking them in the eyes when she actually isn’t. Ever the actress, you know.
“Oh,” she says, and takes a step back. Rita recognizes her as that nervous one, Penny Farthing or something like that, immediately. The accent is a dead giveaway. “I didn’t-I didn’t realize th-that you were here t-too, I’ll just-I’ll just go now-”
“It’s okay,” Rita interrupts. She stands up and brushes dirt and leaves off the back of her dress. She shouldn’t have sat down back here anyway. This should be a lesson in… something. In making sure that people who aren’t Larry don’t see her looking anything less than completely composed. It’s her own fault she was spotted. “You can stay back here.”
“You were here f-first,” Penny insists. She hugs her basket closer and takes another step back. The branches of one of the taller bushes, one that’s basically a tree at this point, get their leaves and twigs just a little tangled in her hair, and her hand automatically flies up. Rita rushes forward to help her. She’s not entirely sure why. It’s hardly an emergency. A few leaves never killed anybody. But one should always look their best, and it’s hard to look your best with leaves in your hair. “I really am sorry for-for bothering you.”
“No, I said you can stay,” Rita says firmly. She brushes a leaf out of Penny’s hair. Before she can regret it, she says, “I spend enough time out here already.” It’s not a secret, though maybe it should be. Of course Larry knows, and Niles knows. Or knew. She has no doubt that he hasn’t forgotten, he doesn’t seem to forget anything, but it’s more comfortable to think of him as knowing nothing about her as opposed to everything. Cliff definitely doesn’t know. Victor doesn’t know, of course. Too new. But now Penny knows, and that’s just a step too close to the rest of Jane’s… people, members, parts, Rita isn’t quite sure of the right word… knowing.
“I was just-just going through to my f-favorite spot. It’s back there…” Penny says, ducking her head. Rita wonders if she’s making her uncomfortable. If she’s too close. Jane doesn’t like it when she gets too close, and of course Hammerhead doesn’t either. But Penny doesn’t move away. Rita pulls the last little twig out of her hair and doesn’t move back even when Penny looks up at her.
Driver 8 once said to her that it was okay if she got close to them. She could get closer than any man could by virtue of not being one. But that didn’t mean she could touch. No one could touch without permission. That wasn’t the way things worked. Touching without permission meant that Hammerhead would be there just like she would if it were a man approaching them. And sometimes even with permission. Rita understood that. She didn’t like it when men got too close to her, either, unless they were Larry. (Or in some cases Victor. Or maybe Cliff.)
On the other hand, Karen was-is-so very, very touchy. She likes to put her hands on Rita’s arms and hug her and squeeze her and it’s weird. The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter hugged her once and it was incredibly awkward and lasted only a few seconds. Hammerhead has shoved her, but that’s different. Jane has touched her, of course, but not like that. Poking and pulling. Not in a bad way, really. She didn’t particularly mind it.
Rita just isn’t particularly physical. Being touched by people is… uncomfortable. She’s fine touching people on her own terms, and she knows that being touched by strangers is sometimes- often- necessary, but it’s almost always uncomfortable and awkward and something to be avoided.
She doesn’t want to avoid it now.
“Take me to it,” she says before she can change her mind about it. Penny blinks. “Take me to it,” Rita repeats. “Your favorite spot. I want to see it.” She pauses. “If you want to show me, that is.”
She’s sure Penny will refuse. Why wouldn’t she refuse? She seems like she might be constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and her and Rita aren’t friends. They’re practically strangers. Even Jane, who she knows the best out of anyone in there, isn’t really her friend. More like an acquaintance. One that Rita’s fairly certain she would die for, but still.
“Are you sure you want t-to see it?” Penny keeps hugging her basket. Rita can’t see what’s inside it, but she hopes it’s food that Penny might be willing to share. “It’s not really anything all that sp-special.”
“Of course I do. I don’t say anything by accident.” Rita straightens her shoulders and finally moves back, accidentally trampling a huge patch of dandelions and sending feathery white seeds flying everywhere. She hopes Penny doesn’t look down. She doesn’t want her to see that she’s not wearing heels, just simple black slip-ons with no socks. Rita’s supposed to wear heels. They were a piece of normalcy that Niles always wanted her to have. He always encouraged her to take back whatever small parts of her life she could.
Penny eyes her nervously and then slips past her, heading down the small trampled path that heads into the woods on the other side of the wild patch of what grew from Larry’s scattered seeds. “It’s-it’s this way,” she calls over her shoulder. “It’s not far, I-I promise. And it won’t be slippery. You just have to-to be careful of some of the th-thorns.”
Rita follows her despite her reservations. She doesn’t usually go that far into the small grove of trees ringing the hill the manor sits on, but she knows there’s a little artificial creek that runs back there. Why Niles had it installed she’ll never really know, but it’s theirs now. Penny carefully leads her between two spiky trees and steps sideways, holding out her arm for Rita to stop.
The little creek runs by right in front of them, with a small slope leading down to the water. The sun filters wonderfully through the trees, warming Rita’s shoulders and the top of her head without being too hot. The ground is fairly flat and free of rocks, sand and dust glimmering in the light. But all Rita can focus on are the flowers.
They must have come from Larry’s scattered seeds, brought here by the wind or somehow rolling through the undergrowth. Pealike vines with gorgeous purple flowers tangle up through the native growth, seeking the sunshine. Native ferns fight for space with pink and yellow aster flowers. Roses that look like they might have actually been wild from the start choke the branches of a tree. Blackberries are starting to ripen along the opposite bank, just near enough that Rita might be able to reach out and grab one without getting her feet too wet. One singular sunflower pokes through the lower canopy of some of the smaller trees.
“This is my-this is my favorite spot,” Penny says shyly. She shuffles her feet a little and sets her basket down. “A lot of the others like it t-too. We’ve been coming here for-forever. Flaming Katy cleared away some of the rocks and bushes and th-things so we could spend more t-time here.”
“It’s lovely,” Rita says softly. She moves a little closer to the creek and turns slightly on her heel. It probably isn’t good for the environment for all these plants to be here, but that kind of thing hasn’t bothered her for at least three and a half decades and it’s not going to start bothering her now. “How did you find it?”
Penny shrugs as she opens up her basket and pulls out the picnic blanket she brought behind Rita’s back. “I-I like to go on walks. It-it helps with my anxiety. And some-sometimes Larry would let The-The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter paint his plants, so she t-told me that he had a sp-spot back here where he th-threw seeds. So-so I checked it out and it-it was nice back here, even when it-it was overgrown.”
Rita turns around to see the sandwiches she’s pulling out. She really hopes Penny plans on sharing, and happily complies when Penny absently pats the blanket next to her with one hand while pulling out a large orange bottle of water with the other. Rita would’ve gone for something alcoholic or at least sweeter herself, but oh well. Beggars can’t be choosers, and all that.
“Well, I think you all have excellent taste,” Rita says politely. It’s always awkward to talk about Jane and her… people. Talking to one of them at a time? That, she can manage. It’s just like talking to anybody else. As long as it isn’t Hammerhead who she’s talking to-or that nervous one, Jenny, come to think of it. Rita’s pretty hopeless with other people while they’re having panic attacks-everything will be fine. But talking about them is different. She doesn’t want to disrespect them, and not just because she knows Hammerhead will be angry if she does. But she’s also far too proud to simply ask how to talk about them without being offensive, and there aren’t exactly a lot of books on the subject in the part of Niles’ library he doesn’t-didn’t-keep under lock and key.
“Th-thanks,” Penny says softly. She sits down on the blanket next to Rita and holds out of one of the sandwiches. It’s wrapped in clear plastic wrap, which is interesting considering Rita used up the last of that half a week ago. But Flit can probably go out and get them whatever they need, can’t she? “Do you want some? Most of th-them are just peanut butter and jelly, in case Baby Doll wants to-to come out and have some, but I have t-two with chicken instead if you want one of-one of th-those.”
“Peanut butter and jelly is fine.” Rita takes the offered sandwich. “Thank you.” She looks around. Niles would hate this place. All chaos and disorder. The thorns and curls and flowers that didn’t conform to anything. He’d always compliment Larry on how he kept all his plants in order. This place is the opposite of that, even more so than the seed dumping ground just up the hill. Before she has the chance to think it over and regret saying anything, Rita asks, “Did Niles ever come down here?”
There’s a long pause before Penny says, “Not really. I think that’s-I think that’s part of why we like it so much. Because we were away from him when we came here.”
What Rita means to say is “You barely stuttered when you said that.” Honestly, truly, that’s what she meant to say. Change the subject to something different so neither of them would have to think about Niles any longer. What she says instead is, “You know, I’m worried that he’s going to come back one of these days.”
Penny looks at her, so silent that Rita is afraid she’s gone and that someone else is here now, someone who will grab the sandwich out of her hand and pack up everything and leave. Somewhere above them, a loud bird rattles off an alarm call like it has just now noticed them. “You know,” she says, so quietly that Rita has to strain to hear her over the sound of the little creek, “I th-think I am too.” Penny looks down at her hands. “It’s my job to-to run, you know. Th-that’s what I do. I run and I protect everyone-everyone else when I run. But I-I didn’t run from-from him.”
“Well, you couldn’t have known,” Rita says after a brief pause. She picks at the edge of the sandwich in her hands. Crust cut off. Baby Doll likes it that way. “He lied to all of us. You can’t blame yourself for not being able to protect… all of you. It isn’t your job.”
“Yes it is!” Penny throws her hands up. She lowers them again almost immediately, kneading her thumb against her palm and looking away, shoulders hunched inward. “I’m not-I’m not like Hammerhead or Black Annis or Katy. I don’t f-fight to keep us safe. I run. Th-that’s what I do. I run and when I run I keep-I keep us safe. And I wanted-I wanted to run, when he took-took us away from that place. But I didn’t. And th-then he hurt us. He hurt Jane.”
Without thinking, Rita sets the sandwich down in her lap and reaches over to put her hand on Penny’s. She fishes around for anything she remembers from Larry’s self-hatred episodes, since thinking about her own certainly doesn’t do any good. Distractions. Larry liked distractions. She’d talk to him about her movies or get him to tell her about his flowers or rant about old coworkers whom she had hated. But she didn’t want Penny to think that she was making this all about her, she was trying to be better than that, and as far as she knew Penny didn’t have anything like Larry’s flowers, a nice safe topic of conversation without too many triggers.
Maybe they could just eat the sandwiches? But silence might make things worse. Being alone with her thoughts makes Rita worse. That’s something she’s always known about herself. It used to be that all she had to do was fill the silence with script rehearsals and line practice and the imaginary sounds of camera shutters and flashbulbs going off and then everything would be fine and dandy even when she pretended after the “accident,” but obviously things are a bit different now. They’ve been different for a long, long time.
“What do you do for fun?” She blurts out. “Jane and The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter paint, don’t they? And Hammerhead knits, and Pentecost does crosswords?” Rita restrains herself from adding “And Baby Doll bothers Cliff?” but only barely. “Don’t you have something you do?”
“I do-I do this,” Penny says glumly, tapping the top of her picnic basket with one hand. “I sit here and I-I watch the creek and I th-think about other th-things and that’s what I do.” The corner of her mouth twists. “Th-they don’t blame me. Just so you know. Nobody else in the-in the-” She twitches a little. “Nobody else in the Underground blames me. But th-they should.”
“Well, if this isn’t working, then let’s try something else,” Rita suggests. She stuffs the entire sandwich into her mouth before she can change her mind, realizing that her hand is still on Penny’s only when she stands up and Penny comes with her. She rubs peanut butter and crumbs away from her mouth with the back of her other hand and looks around. Admittedly, she isn’t completely sure why she stood up, but it’s okay. If there’s one thing Rita Farr can be good at, it’s improvising.
The bird rings out its alarm again. Rita wishes she knew what it was. That would be a nice topic of conversation. Birds were typically a safe bet with Larry, just like plants were. The creek is a nice bet too, but Rita was never allowed to play in them when she was a kid, and she wouldn’t even know to begin when it came to talking about them. Did artificial creeks even have the same bugs and lizards and whatever other things liked to be slimy and wet?
“Here,” Rita says, once again feeling like her mouth is moving without the input from and the permission of her brain, “let me show you how to dance.”
Where in the world had that come from? No, that was a terrible idea. Surely Penny would see that? Of course Rita knew how to dance, but she’d never taught anyone before. She barely knew Penny. Besides, they would probably both end up slipping in the mud on the bank, since Penny was wearing shoes similar to Rita’s and not Jane and Hammerhead’s favorite combat boots, and there was no music, and they would have to be extremely careful in order to avoid the picnic blanket and basket the whole time, and-
“Okay,” Penny replies, cutting Rita’s frantic train of thought off short and leaving it floundering. “I’m-I’m really sorry if I end up st-stepping on your feet, though.”
Rita blinks at her and tries to get her head on straight. Penny is still holding her hand. Evidently, Hammerhead is going to let her do so for the time being. Okay. She can work with that. She can definitely work with that. It can’t be that hard, can it?
“...Alright. Well. Well then. Put one hand high up on my ribs here, see?” Rita guides Penny’s hand up to where it’s meant to go. She tries to think about the men who taught her how to waltz, for that one picture where there was a long, beautiful ballroom scene that took way too long to film, but that just makes her feel vaguely sick and uncomfortable. She’ll just have to make do without dwelling on those memories for too long. “And then I put my hand on your shoulder. Then you take your other hand and you hold it out like this while holding my hand, and then… and then you… you… you…”
“And th-then you what?” Penny tilts her head. Her eyes-their eyes-are beautiful. Rita doesn’t know how she never noticed before. It couldn’t have been because Hammerhead never let her get close. Maybe she just hadn’t had time to linger on it before. “Uh, Rita? What-what do you do now?”
“Then, um, you step forward! And I step backward. And we move in a little box-” For some reason, Rita’s legs aren’t responding to her commands. She’s not moving backward. Penny’s already stepping forward, though, moving with both legs instead of just one, and then she’s tripping over Rita’s feet and Rita’s moving to catch her and suddenly she’s pressed up against Rita’s body, closer than they’ve ever been before. Not that there were very many befores with Penny.
“Oh!” Penny gasps, but she makes absolutely no moves to pull back. Rita’s heart is in her ears and her mouth is dry and she’s pretty sure she stopped breathing fifteen seconds ago. But she’s only looking down into Penny’s face for a few seconds before her right leg gives out, left one following only a moment later.
Rita yelps out a very unladylike curse and tries not to pull Penny down with her to no avail. She hates losing control on her own, but she hates breaking down in front of other people even more. Even Larry, who had seen her dissolve more times than she could count, knew that he wasn’t welcome in the room when she started collapsing. He wasn’t disgusted with her, but the very idea that he might have been was always too much to bear.
Penny ends up with the fingers of one hand tangled in Rita’s dress and her other arm around Rita’s neck, knees in the dirt beside the picnic blanket and caught on the red skirt of her dress. Rita’s sunk down enough that this time Penny is looking down at her. There’s still a little bit of leaf caught in her hair that Rita hadn’t noticed hadn’t been brushed out. She’s relieved that Penny isn’t laughing. At least not yet.
Rita can’t remember her heartbeat ever being this loud before, at least not in a way that she liked. But this was good. Not like… no. Thoughts of people like Steve and Gene didn’t belong anywhere near people like Penny, or Jane, or The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, or Flit, or any of them, even Hammerhead. (Just looking out for the rest of them, wasn’t that it?) Thoughts of people like that didn’t belong with them and with good things-and good people-like them.
And then Penny shifts in toward her just a little bit more and pulls back the hand that’s pulling at the front of Rita’s dress so she can put that arm around Rita’s neck too, and it’s hopelessly easy to lean forward to meet her. It’s even easier to cup her face and trace her hand up her jaw and pull her in even more so she has to rise up on her knees so she doesn’t fall. It’s so, so easy.
To put it bluntly, Rita has kissed a lot of people. Most of it was for a camera, but not all. The ones for pictures didn’t count. Not really. Everything was staged, and the men were usually just as resigned to it by that point as she was. Her private life was a different story. Most of the time. A lot of things were still staged. A lot of the time she was still resigned. But the rest of the times she’d kissed people, it had just been… well, underwhelming was probably the best way to describe it.
One time her mother had gotten drunk and waxed poetic about the first time she kissed Rita’s father. She’d mentioned things like fireworks and butterflies and dizziness. But none of those things had ever happened to Rita no matter how many times she genuinely tried. She’d chalked it up to not having found the right person or not having enough experience in real, emotional relationships, or a half a dozen other things that distracted her from the fact that the simple truth of the matter was that she just didn’t enjoy kissing men. She didn’t even particularly want to kiss men. But it’s not like there had been any other options.
Kissing Penny isn’t anything like that. The angle makes it a little awkward and uncomfortable, and Rita is extremely aware of how dirty her dress must be and how awful she must look with her legs practically completely melted, but it isn’t anything like the rush of resignation and then the inevitable disappointment that comes with kissing men. Being with a man in this situation would be unbearable. But the very fact that it’s Penny makes it all worth it.
Penny, on the other hand, hasn’t kissed very many people. Or anyone, really. Her anxiety coupled with the fact that she rarely fronted anyway meant that she kept to herself most of the time, even in the Underground where she was most comfortable and at home. Kissing Rita now only comes from a sudden rush of bravery and the encouragement from Driver 8 and Hammerhead, who has been up front with her just in case since Rita started pulling things out of Penny’s hair-not a co-front, but there in the background like she usually is just in case whoever is in the driver’s seat needs help.
It’s… nice. It’s really nice. She’s always been pretty comfortable in being attracted to women exclusively. For all their problems, both individually and as a collective, they’ve never really had much issue with accepting their own genders and sexualities. But for all of Penny’s daydreaming about women, whether those women were faceless or looked mysteriously just a little too much like one Rita Farr, she’d never really thought she’d actually get to do it. Penny had thought she would back out at the last second. But no. Here she was, with dirty knees and a leaf still stuck in her hair, kissing Rita of all the wonderful people in the world.
Disappointingly, the kiss only lasts for a few seconds before Rita pulls back, the hand that isn’t still touching Penny’s face resting on Penny’s knee instead. “Is this okay?” She asks quietly. She remembers the Karen incident. How Hammerhead had refused to let Karen marry that walking piece of drywall Doug. “You’re-or, they’re all okay with this? With me… with me kissing you? And you’re okay with it too?”
Penny nods quickly and relays Hammerhead’s message. “As-um-as long as you didn’t just do this to ch-cheer me up, Hammerhead says it’s okay. And I think-I think it’s okay. More than okay.” She suddenly grins. It makes her whole face light up. Jane doesn’t smile all that often, Rita’s noticed. It’s nice that Penny does. Maybe Jane will start smiling more now that Niles is gone. “And th-that Jane is going to be jealous.” Penny tilts her head. “Are you okay with-with this?”
“Yes,” Rita says almost before Penny finishes asking her question. She’s a bit surprised at herself for saying it so fast. Then she stops and makes herself think. As much as she doesn’t want to think about Steve, she has to be smart about this. She moved fast with him, too. But that was different. That started out as her repaying him for his favor, and him being very pleased with that payment. Right now, Rita isn’t paying Penny back for anything. She just… wanted to do this. Spurt of the moment, or something like that. “I am.”
Penny’s smile gets even wider. Her eyes are practically shining. Rita thinks she could look at her forever. There’s a shifting beneath her, like her legs are trying to decide if they want to go back to being her legs or not. “Then do you think I could-do you think we could do it again? You and me?”
Rita doesn’t know where her sudden bravery is coming from. Last time she was brave she got eaten by a cockroach. She came back here to be by herself and not have to think about anything, not to examine her life and wonder if she hadn’t enjoyed kissing men in the past because they were men. But maybe it was good that Penny had practically stumbled over her. Maybe it was nice to not be alone. To talk to someone other than Larry and to actually feel like she was helping them. To kiss them and not feel like it was a choice made for invisible cameras.
So Rita smiles, and squeezes Penny’s hand, and closes the distance between them again. She hopes she doesn’t taste like peanut butter, and wonders if it’s Penny’s watermelon lip gloss she’s tasting.
“Yes,” she says quietly when they pull apart again, and she can’t keep the laughter out of her voice. “I think we could.”
Rita can think about how she may feel toward the other people she may or may not want to kiss later, when Hammerhead’s not too busy gleefully promising that she’s going to tell everyone about this. Penny can think about her tiny private heart attacks over the fact that she just kissed Rita Farr later. They can worry about what Niles is going to do now that they’ve kicked him out and seized theoretical custody of Dorothy from him later.
For the time being, there’s nothing Rita would rather do than sit under the flowering thorny vines and hold Penny’s hand.