PART: 2 of ??

RATING: PG-13; eventual NC-17 (Explicit Heterosexual Sexual Activity, Adult thematic material, language, adult content, character death, trauma)

PAIRING(s): L/L; S/C

DISTRIBUTION: To Myself  so far; any other archives are welcome to ask, but disclaimers must be included, my email left intact. send a URL, and provide full disclaimers as well as credit me fully. Please inform me if you are going to submit my work to any sort of search engine.  Please do not submit my work to a search engine that picks out random sets of words and uses them as key words, such as "Google"

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CATEGORY: Drama

FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!

SEQUEL TO : Shotzette's "True Colors"; a true and proper one more so than "With Words" could be.

SETTING IN TIMELINE: Early Show AU; Canon for Happy Days up to the girls' first appearence.

SPOILLER/SUMMARY: Dare to dream.  (Lavenny, Shirlmine)

NOTES: An alternate version of the "True Colors" side of things - much more romantic in nature.

***

Laverne flopped down onto a plastic chair before a break table in the Shotz Brewery.  The third shift had been an exhausting hell, and Shirley had been no help in her dithering.   She had stupidly broken a couple of bottles and now they had to make it up with another hour of forced labor on the line.

She stared at her sandwich blankly, taking small bites then groaning as she remembered.  Damnit, she was going to have to cancel on Lenny! 

Why did she care so much?  They'd just get together on another Friday night.  Maybe because Lenny was constant - his cock wasn't the only thing that represented a rock to her.

Did she even want to admit that he was the one thing she looked forward to all week, besides the increasingly-rare opportunity to nail some Shotz or Pfister bigwig in the Pfister Hotel Bar on a Friday night?

She shuffled over to the payphone, and got an answer on the third ring.  "Hello?"

"Lenny?  It's Laverne - I can’t come to Inspiration Point."

"Aww, why?  I had something I wanted to ask you..."

"I gotta work overtime at Shotz - Shirley fucked something up and if we don't fix it it'd be our jobs," Laverne winced, not wanted to admit that for once sucking the boss' dick hadn't gotten her anything but a nasty-but-fading rash on her tongue.

"Too bad.  Uh, are you alone?  Can I ask you something?"

Confusion brought irritation to the surface.  "I got a five-minute break before I gotta get back."

"It's really important."

"Just say it," Laverne ordered.

"The Pfister Court Ball's this Friday.  Do you wanna come with me?"

Laverne almost dropped the phone.  The Pfister Court Ball was Milwaukee's social event of the season - only the lily-white or the cleverest of mistresses got to go, with the cream of Wisconsin society.  Lenny had gone stag for years, much to Andrew's loudly voiced disappointment.  Now he was asking to take her.

She couldn't do this to him.

What would they say when they saw them together?  There's Lenny and his whore.  It's a blessing that he's so dumb that he doesn’t know she's been with half of the guys in this room... She snapped herself out of her reverie - no, she didn't care, not anymore...."I can't."

"Why not?" he whined.

"I can't, all right?"

"But I wanna go with you!"

No you don't!  "I'll see you next Friday, Len.  Night."

Laverne slammed down the phone, her mind swirling.  The Pfister Court Ball?   Was he crazy?  Was she crazy?

"DEFAZIO!" Bellowed Gloria, her supervisor.  "BACK ON THE LINE!"

She forced back all of her fears and did as she was told.

***

Shirley stared blankly at the bottles as they whirled by her, hands moving automatically.  She avoided Laverne's iron gaze as she entered the room, staring instead at the bottles.

Damnit, what the hell was wrong with her?  Ever since she'd bumped into Ragusa - Carmine - yesterday she'd been mentally atwitter, her soul everywhere at once. 

They had sat all night at O'Herlihey's, laughing and trading stories.  And at the end of the night...

He had handed her to Laverne and said goodnight.

Her mind had been clouded for hours.  Why had he treated her nicely?  No one had ever treated her nicely, except....

***

1949

Shirley smiled up at her mother as the two of them rushed up Knapp Street.  She was late for her first CCD class, and that wouldn't do.

"Let me look at you," her mother instructed before shepparding her through the door.  "Oh, you look just scrumptious!  Now be a good girl and listen to the teacher."

Shirley nodded.  "Okay, mama.  I  love - "

Her mother was gone.

Quietly, Shirley entered the tiny room where the CCD class was already in full swing.  She set eyes on a rough-looking red haired girl, her head bowed to the tiny picture book emblazoned with Jesus' face.

Shyly, Shirley sat beside her and took a prayer primer from the stack before them. She pretended to listen as the teacher as she droned on.

"Hi," the girl beside her mumbled.

"Hi," Shirley mumbled back.  She eyed the girl, with her shiner and her neat blue cardigan.  "What happened to you?"

"I got into a fist fight with Johnny Petorelli," the girl shrugged.  "I kicked his a-," she looked up at the cross in alarm, "butt."

"You beat up a boy?" Shirley gaped.  The idea was unfathomable to a girl whose mother had primly instructed Shirley's brothers never to hit a girl, even if their lives depended on it.

"He was asking for it," she shrugged.  "What's your name?"

"Shirley Feeney," she whispered.

"Laverne DeFazio," the girl whispered back, a grin showing Shirley where her front teeth had been knocked out. 

***

"What the hell're you looking at?" Laverne asked.

Shirley pivoted away, her cheeks warm.  "I was just remembering something."

Laverne grumbled and said nothing, her voice inaudible beneath the clinking of bottles in their holders.  "What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing."

"I know..."

"Nothing, Laverne..." She looked beyond the conveyor belt, "but something's about to be very wrong with you..."

***

"LAVERNE!"

The sound of Lenny's voice made the object of his affection wheel around, causing Shirley to shriek and curse in dismay.  Lenny marched toward her, a determined look on his face - even her supervisor stayed back, recognizing Lenny Kosnowski-Pfister, stepson of Maureen Pfister, at a spitting distance. 

"What're you doing here?" she snapped.

"I came to convince you to go with me to the ball."

"Lenny," she snapped, teeth gritted.

"I don't wanna go with no one else," he said passionately.  "You're one-in-a-million, Laverne."

Damn him!  He had warped her defenses; she looked bashfully down at the ground.  "Lenny..."

"Please, Laverne?"

She looked into his blue eyes, which were nearly innocent in their beauty.  "I...yes?" she murmured, hypnotized.

"I'll pick you up at eight!"  He ran off, his grin huge.

"The Pfister Ball?" Shirley squawked.  "He's taking you to the Pfister Ball?!"

"Yeah," Laverne said, her tone flinty. 

Even Shirley knew starting a fistfight with Laverne at work was a dumb idea.

****

"Remember," the word was hissed in his ear as he hit the gutter, "you throw the fight or you get it."

Anxiously, someone added, "Jerry...we gotta get out of here...."

One more kick landed against his ribs.  "Throw.  the.  Fight," he hissed.  Then the sound of two men running up the alleyway.

Carmine didn't hear anything more as he fell away into the blue-black of unconsciousness, his head throbbing and spilling blood into the open sewer grate.