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        Raine blinks. Heat rolls down her in a wave that has nothing to do with the gin, makes her aware of all the places they’re close, their hands near each other on the bar, their knees and legs. The woman’s beautiful face, her tilted eyes, the riddle-me-this caress of her sphinxlike voice. Her teeth fix in her lower lip. Her gaze roams over the other woman’s face, wondering, transfixed.

         “Nerve of you,” she says, low, not for the girls to hear. She grins a little. Tilts her head in, bringing their faces nice and close. She can see the delicate creases at the corners of her eyes and the ice-paleness of her blue, blue eyes. And her mouth, her red mouth, not a smudge on that lip, which Raine would like to change. “Making promises you can’t keep.” She thinks she can keep them. She thinks there’s nothing more she wants just now than those little kitten-teeth nipping at her. She’d buy all the gin in the place for the privilege, and let the girls think what they will. “Who’s provoking who, now?”

Now that’s a much better suited reaction. “Nerve of me…” Susan trails off, that wicked smile still dripping from her lips. “You sound surprised.” No, not surprised. Stricken. Slapped. Air-out-of-her-lungs punched. And… yes, completely, utterly mesmerised by the sight of her. Good. For a little while there, she doesn’t reply, doesn’t even speak, content as she is to let it all simmer between them; and she’d wager that Raine needs that too. Wouldn’t want to lose her entire composure in front of her girls now, would she? So Susan sips and watches her, weighs in her mind what’s worth taking, what’s worth dangling, how much to taunt with and how much to let her take.

“Can’t keep?” Her lips roll together. Her head bobs up down, up down, up down, as though she’s mulling over some great wisdom. “What would you like best, Raine?” The glass is set down, its rim subjected to the nonchalantly slow, languorous caress of a lone fingertip. Oh yes, she is still looking at her. Straight at her. At those eyes, into those eyes. Wide and blue and so, so expectant. “That I keep them?” she asks - she baits - edging closer yet. Unctuous, her smile, soft her voice, silk-like her touch because yes, she is touching her now. There, on her wrist, her thumb rubs the tender skin underneath her cuff. And there, over her lips, her gaze lingers. “Or that I don’t?”

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        Heat blazes up Raine’s face and sets the familiar fire in her brain. Now, this–this is the Susan she wants, spitting poison like some wicked little snake, and that poison is sweeter to Raine than all the tea and cakes in England; she would have it any day above bitterness and humiliation. She would rather hours of shouting than to be petted and cozened for a time, then turned out into the cold, as though she were an orphan in the house of a rich lady, a charity visit to be gawped at, cooed over, and thrown out–never loved, never kept, never anything more than a thing to be pitied.

        “How dare I? If you was my friend you’d not stoop to me as you are–” she drops her saucer with its half-eaten pastry onto the table with a clatter–“great lady you think yourself–how dare I?“ She stands. “’Cos you’ve got money, have you, from stealing the very beds from under the poor? And now you’ll sit there and play my benefactress? Have me give you a thank you, ma’am, thank you very kindly? As though we was no one and nothing to each other?”

        She starts to move forward. Her shadow falls across Susan’s face, over one of her upturned blue eyes; closer still, fists clenched at her sides, gaze scouring her as her teeth grind, and she could just–what? Just what? She blinks. Her scowl falters. She takes a breath, falling back a step, bumping into her chair. Was she ready to raise a hand to Susan? Strike her, shake her, throttle her? Her hand lifts, but not to lash out–a defensive palm out toward Susan, over Raine’s face, as she turns away with a bitter scoff.

        She yearns to warm herself by this. Her anger, how she’s missed it, had nothing to exert it on but herself, these past years. But she’s routed herself, hasn’t she, for what she did to Susan, how it came to battering and fists, when what she’d craved was a tenderness with her? Her scowl renews, deeper now. As the fury ebbs, even a little, she feels all over again how tired, bone-tired, she is, has been, all the years they’ve spent apart; suddenly she feels like to weep. She lets out her breath in a long exhale.

        “It was a mistake, coming here, then,” she mutters, almost to herself. “You were the person I most wished for, and here we are, like a pair of cats at each other.”

Words are being flung, a great volley of them slashing through what remains of distance between them - and though it diminishes, reduced, compressed under the towering might of Raine’s encroaching proximity, it does nothing to close that chasm between them. Words are no bridge. No. Words are daggers and picks and a great many other tools one might use to dig and dig and dig. To divide. “Stealing?” Oh that stings. Her face, flushed until now, blanches. She doesn’t know. She cannot know. She’s only pointing fingers, bandying rumours perhaps, anything she’s wont to have picked up from the street before coming here with that little tale of hers and those eyes… Those eyes that look at her, through her, down to the very depths of what’s left of her blackened soul.

Susan flinches. It surprises even her, so swift, so instinctive was her reaction to the gesture. A hand. A hand rising. Raine’s hand. But no blow follows, no strike, no slap, not even a touch. And then she turns away as though the mere sight of her is revolting - as though she is some dirt carried underfoot from the soiled back alleys of Whitechapel, something to be scrapped off and tossed aside. Ashamed, angry, spurned, Susan wets her dry lips, presses the back of her wrist on her forehead. “Friends…” A snort of a word. A derision, an insult in Raine’s mouth, a regret in Susan’s.

“Friends don’t leave. They visit or if they cannot, they take the time and the care to write letters. Friends do not…” Her jaws set in. Retreating over to the other side of the room where a small cabinet stand, Susan shakes her head. “Have you one inkling of what the word means, Raine?” A carafe is produced, its amber-coloured contents sloshing about when she pours them into a glass. “Benefactress…” A wry half smile dents into her right cheek. She downs the whiskey in one go, slams the tumbler down, fills it up again. “I was offering you a job. Work. Honest work. Wages.”

With a swift spin on her heels, she faces Raine again. The glass dangles from her hand, the other hand a fist in the heavy folds of her gown. “If you hit me,” she warns, her voice barely above a whisper. “If you hit me, I shall have you thrown out. No one, Raine, no one touches me without my consent ever again.”

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on that note….. look at this neve pic

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        It’s over 100°F. Raine doesn’t want to look at the world outside the windows, the city with the miserable brilliance of the desert sun sharpening every line into a blade. If she pokes her nose out to the pool deck she can almost feel her sweat boil off and the sunburn start. She’s going to stay inside in the air-conditioning and eat all the wine gummies Susan Hart, her boss, hides in her bedside table, and not do anything else–not even rifle for incriminating material in drawers or the locked Macbook. She doesn’t care. On days like this, there’s nothing to be done; that’s why desert cities come alive only at night.

         Precious has other ideas. Precious always has other ideas. Precious barks for half an hour at the door when she’s already had her walk, then, when her request is not granted, pisses on the floor for Raine to clean. She trots gaily off from one scene of chaos to the next: finds one of Susan’s silk robes, drags it from the enormous bathroom to the lounge and shreds it, between her paws and her cunning little teeth, into tiny pieces, where the evidence will be impossible to hide. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, she gets her evil snout on one of the glossy coffee table books and begins chewing away; Raine finds her on the doggy bed gnawing meditatively on the corner of the Degas catalogue.

         “You’re evil,” she says wonderingly. “Just like your mum, aren’t you? Evil little thing. Come here, you.” She pulls the book away. Precious shows her teeth, growls, ears flipping back. It’s a ridiculous sight on a dog groomed to look like a teddy bear. Raine picks her up. “You’re all show. Look at that. Go on, bite me. You won’t, will you? ‘Cos what you want is the attention, like.” She puts Precious under her arm in the way she’s been told a thousand times not to do. “Look at this mess… Christ, your mum’ll have a fit. Maybe have me over her knee. And that won’t be so bad, ah–ha.”

         Because, of course, as Raine turns around to assess the bits of chewed paper and the tattered robe on the carpet, there’s Susan, so untouched by the heat of the day, it’s like she’s swanned out of a fashion advertisement–bag on her arm, sunglasses pushed up, her blonde hair, her red nails. Raine swallows. Precious starts thrashing at once.

         “Alright, alright,” Raine says, playing it very cool, “you’ll scratch me to death. Here. There’s your mum. Go on.” She puts Precious back down. The dog leaps merrily past the wreckage it’s made to greet its mother.

“My baby!” It’s a squeal, a ridiculous high-pitched sound strangling the last syllable into an obnoxious stretch. Her baby, all fur and tongue, leaps into her arms as soon as Susan crouches, bags dropped on either side of her, and proceeds to furiously lavish mouth, cheeks and nose with an abundance of licking. Susan exclaims (her name), she coos, she giggles. “What did the big mean Raine do to my baby giiiirl? You tell mama all about it, hmm?”  When she rises again, a compact 5 feet and 2 inches tower perched atop heels no one in their right mind would wear unless they were being paid to, her hand slides under the tiny dog’s belly to hold her snug against her chest.

Another day, another catastrophe - series of catastrophes. “That was a Balenciaga,” she points at the tattered remnants of her dress. Her mouth is now a puckered thing, lips pressed into a pout superfluously enlivened by the arching of her brows, thin and perfectly threaded (she’s had them done today, thank you very much). “And that…” Dropping her gaze to the partly gnawed book on the coffee table, she pauses, frowns, sneers. Has it always been there? But who put it there? And why? Anyway. “That was expensive, too.”

In her arms, Precious wriggles and barks, her small body at a desperate angle - one making for Raine. With a roll of her eyes, Susan puts her down. “You know, Raine, I am a very patient, very understanding and flexible woman.” the bags are collected, carried over to the dining room table. “And you are incredibly lucky to be my employee because this...” And here her arm stretches out, her fingers wave and flutter in the general direction of the mess. “Is unacceptable. You have no control. None! I took you in, mhmm?” Oh well, her fault, isn’t it? Raine… Raine stood out. She still does, actually. Like some sort of... of... of tree. Of tree where there shouldn’t be a tree. There’s no trees in Vegas, is there? And she is just too dark, too tangible, too real for such a scene. No matter what she’s wearing, it only takes one quick look, a furtive glance in passing to notice her. Yes, Raine stands out and Susan did notice her, does notice her. It can be helped now, can it? Not her fault. No, that is not her fault. And she isn’t staring. Not anymore. Now she is rummaging through her bag.

With a “There!” of triumph, she brandishes a thin, rectangular black box. “Come here, Precious.” She sits on the sofa and leans forward to show the dog as she opens the box (her mouth and eyes mimicking the action) and gasps: “A Cartier collar!” Around it, diamonds are catching the sunlight, refracting it on the ceiling. “Aren’t you going to look gorgeous?!” But Precious, unimpressed and much more interested in the box itself, turns away. “Want to know something crazy?” she asks Raine as she knees on the plush rug to drag Precious on her lap and fasten the collar around her neck. “Some people put tiny cameras in these.”

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Long Susan in every episode: 1x04 - “The Good of This City” [2/2 - chartreuse dress edition because Reasons]

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        They’d had a good week, lifted a toast to it all together and laughed, Raine and her girls, and she hadn’t noticed anyone or anything about the place around them–a rare moment with her shoulders down, her eyes not digging at the exits or the faces of the people outside her circle. She should have known better; leaves you open to anything, doesn’t it? Like the reappearance of the Tesco woman. Even blonder than she remembers. Even littler. Even prettier. Slipping back into Raine’s field of view and cutting through her girls like the cunning little blade she is, that self-satisfied cat’s smile right back on her lips. Raine’s mouth opens wordlessly. That’s rare, too.

        “Owe you?” she says, finally. Her voice has a twinge of indignation, but what she really feels is delight. Her eyes rove up and down.  “You punched me in the tit. Those’re damages you owe me, innit?” She finishes the last of what’s in her glass, and nods to the bartender to pour gin for them both. “Cheers.” There’s a heat in her head and chest that has nothing to do with the liquor. Has her heart sped up a little? “Don’t hit me again, now,” she says, “my girls won’t like that.”

“I did.” See how her smile sharpens at the memory? “You provoked me.” and then, from under thinly defined arched eyebrows, her gaze sweeps down to the aforementioned tit. “No damages sustained it seems.” When Susan looks up again, her mouth is still wearing the remnants of an amusement that keeps on coming, every word slipping from the woman’s mouth feeding into it, nourishing her. It’s almost too easy.

She leans in, retrieves the glass, winks at the bartender. “Your girls?” The gin is sampled, savoured with a hum finding an echo in the peal of laughter which sounds as though to greet the group of women gathered around them. Oh. That. Again, she smiles. Again, she stumbles upon some great entertainment delivered, free of charge. One by one they are scrutinised, detailed from head to toe, measured and gauged. “Big girl like you,” Susan eventually retorts as she tears herself from the sight. “I wouldn’t have thought you needed bodyguards.” another sip, another smile. “What if I bite you?” with a shift of her feet, a sway of her hips, she edges closer. “They won’t like that either,” she half-whispers. “But you might.”

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It’s the accent seeping, thick and heavy, into her voice - or what she catches of it - that does it. Shrouded in the dimness rhythmically sliced by flashes of garish neons, Susan slowly turns her head to peer over her shoulder and take as close a look as it gets in such conditions. Well, well, well, if it isn’t her liquor stealer extraordinaire. Not alone, this time. A handful of women gravitate about her, just as tacky and rough in their accouterments. A smile cuts across her face when she rises to a stand and carves herself a path straight to the bar upon which the other woman is holding some sort of court. A perch is found atop the stool beside hers. “You owe me.” That’ll do for a re-introduction. The bartender is waved at. “I’ll have what she has.” The smile furthers, sharpens. “Her round.”

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        Raine’s breath catches. Her smile surfaces as Susan’s lips come to her own, her eyes shutting, and there’s nothing for her but their kiss, the sound of Susan’s quiet moan against her, the damp, hot slide of their lips–no, one more thing: the gentle pressure of Susan’s grip, keeping her hands behind her back. There’s a hot thrill that travels through her, between the sensitive brush of Susan’s tongue against her own and the place where she’s so lightly, affectionately pinioned, yielding where she could so easily break her bonds, and a flutter low in her belly, as when Susan sometimes reaches up and grabs her hair. “Thought you liked it,” she murmurs. “What I do with these hands.” She kisses at Susan’s chin, under her jaw. She smiles against her, then nips that delicate skin, murmuring into the warmth of her neck, “‘Less you prefer what I do with my lips, then?”

The smile Susan offers, one Raine cannot see but must certainly hear in the low and slow hum of satisfaction sounding from her throat, is unabashedly conceited. in silent entreating, her neck cranes to demand more. When doesn’t she? By now Raine knows that she cannot possibly flatter and taunt, cajole and tease without being met with Susan’s cravings for more than fleeting touches and trifling tokens of her own appetite. “Must I chose?” trepidation teems in her belly and swell beneath her ribs. Raine’s breath sweeps across patches of skin still wet from her kisses and, combined with those words, it sends something rippling over her body - as though devoid of hands, Raine still stands capable of seizing her. “Will you have me seek satisfaction myself?” She guides raine’s hands, place them on her throat, on her chest, around her waist. The arch of her brow is half defiance, half admonishment. When she bends at the knee to slip them under her skirts, she closes her eyes and that smile, that snooty, cat-like nothing of a smirk adorns her lips once more.

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Jackson:  We're going to take what we've made here, we're going to cash in... Susan:  And what has been made here, save the names Long Susan and Captain Jackson? Jackson:  C'mon, I see the bills you count. I see the numbers you scratched in, in that ledger. Susan:  Yes, but once counted, you do not see where those bills leave to. Nothing here is yours. Nothing here is mine. Jackson: Then whose? Susan:  Three years - you never asked. Never cared.

Am I Not Monstrous? / season 2, episode 2

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I shouldn’t think of the difference in treatment Susan would have received had she been a man. Ripper Street relies heavily on mAnPaiN (ironic, isn’t it? when the actual title of the show refers to a murderer of women) (ANYWAY) and though women do suffer and do endure (and constantly at that) their pain is not only to be expected but rationalised and villified. What makes Susan a Villain is what glorifies men like Reid (high on his own self-righteousness) or Drake (ugly misunderstood heartbroken man laying claim to a prostitute’s heart because, well, it’s his Patriarchy given right and who else is going to want her, hm?)

Susan is angry and she expresses it in a very unwomanly way because she is physically and violently angry. Yes, yes, Woman Throwing A Vase is very cliche of her (the bitter wife taking it out on the crockery) but Susan does it in a near bestial way. She hisses and yells, she lashes out with claw-like nails, she bites and she kicks. In a nutshell: she uses her body to bring about her anger. But because she is a woman, it can’t possibly be rooted in reason, it has to find its origins in emotions thus dampening her outbursts and reducing her to a passionate woman instead of one with valid feelings and concerns and fears (all translated into anger, the one emotion women weren’t / aren’t allowed to experience let alone express)

Susan exploits women. No, I am not about to excuse it but I am going to make the very important point that not only is she exploited herself (by men, including those visiting her establishment) but she is being trapped into it. Though no one forced her to run the brothel on Tenter Street, she lost the means to leave the day she started the business, a business run to cater to men’s needs and to fulfill men’s expectations of ‘women like her’ (she might not have been born working class, her new identity is the victorian equivalent of ‘white trash’) Moreover, Susan, like the greater majority of women then (and still women now) suffers from internalised misogyny - something men relied / rely on to keep women in check.

Susan is morally grey. She is never overtly the bad guy but she is never a good person either. There’s always self-serving motives behind her schemes whereas the ‘good’ men of the show are presented as selfless, heroic and benevolent even when they are also serving themselves and contributing to ensure that the gap and inequalities in place remain. It’s of course all done under cover of Christian charity and fake altruistic sentiments but because they ‘suffer’ (all of them are in pain by, because and for women) then it’s okay. On the other hand, Susan lies and deceives in order to survive but gets painted with the same brush as the one painting the bad guys Reid and his minions are trying to catch. There is no room for nuance of any kind even though ambivalence is quite deliberately expressed in actions and portrayals. 

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Raine's finger traces the curve of Susan's cheek, down to take her proud chin. "C'mere, then," she murmurs, and brings her in, pressing a kiss to the fine line of amusement at the corner of her mouth, and next, her lips proper, with a sigh of pleasure and then a quiet moan. Her hand cards through Susan's yellow hair, then presses her in, so Raine can feel the length of her, warm against her body. "You're a picture, you are," she says in a soft breath. "Pretty as anything."

Does Raine know, does she suspect at all, what this uncoils in her chest? how the barest of her touches sends tremors of wanting, deep and raw, skittering down her spine? How the warmth of her mouth as it hovers there, in the space shared by their breaths, finds an echo in the anticipation humming and quivering in her belly? “A picture?” Neck craned, head tipped back, she bores holes in Raine’s eyes with her own; but on her lips, a soft smile dances until, that too, is swallowed by Raine’s all-consuming embrace. Her body entire’s. And it is, as every single morsel of her is, given freely. And it never sullies her. Especially not now when her lips worship her skin in teasing beckon and when her fingers anchor their bodies to one another, pressing them flush together as though she means to pour into her what words or looks or even touches cannot. “Pictures are meant to be looked at,” Susan whispers. The tip of her nose is a slow drag along the ridge of her jaw, and her teeth a light scrape against the soft patch of skin right below her ear. “With your hands behind your back.” She finds raine’s and pulls on them in a gentle guidance until both are clasped on the small of her back. Trailing hot, open kisses down her neck, she smiles and hums, breathing her in and coating her tongue, her lips, her mouth with the scent of her. Exercising no hurry in her touch, she finds her mouth and urges it to open with a stifled moan of her own.

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(ง'̀-‘́)ง

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Raine scoffs, turning her face from Susan's. Work, lodgings? With Susan, for Susan? What is it she has need of--a lady's maid? She has nursed images, in her heart, of taking Susan Hart out of her stays, and helping her back in, but not as a servant. This offer rings with cold coin, where Raine's dreams are tender and warm.

Her jaw clenches, back teeth grinding, lips pressing tight together; she wants to raise her voice, she wants to demand what it is she thinks of her, that she finds Raine so lowly, so pitiable, as to have need of her kindly giving, but her throat works, and she swallows it down. A few moments pass of breath puffing in and out through her flared nostrils, her temper receding just enough to crest her head above its tide.

"I'll have none of your charity," she says. Heat has come stinging into her cheeks, pinking her with humiliation. Her brow knits, her head dips, and she feels... Her teeth drag together, a knot of pain starting, tying itself all together there at the front of her mind, strings of her loneliness and her lowliness and how terribly she'd longed to see Susan's face. But Susan's hardly there, is she? Gone behind her mask made of china, brittle and opaque as the teacup in her hand.

Her eyes turn to Susan's. "I'm not a dog what's come home to eat from your hand," she says, too loud, she knows it, hears it; Susan's steely gentility has outdone her. "Aren't we meant to be equals?" She searches her face for some hint of her passion, some crack in the porcelain. "Ain't you my friend?"

The might of Raine’s voice cracks and snaps like a whip wielded by a most dexterous hand. Around the handle of her cup, Susan’s index finger slips and curls, notching tighter to stifle a physical startle, her face paling, her expression hardening, her lips pressing together to deceive nothing of what has now seized her. Can it truly be? Can it still truly be? That, even now, she could recoil and cower in fear like a dog anticipating a beating for having soiled the rug? She has made and remade herself, murdered a man with her bare hands, expedited far too many souls to whatever heaven or hell awaits them. She has carved herself from marble and she bends to no one.

And yet…

“Charity? Friend?” The words find a cold, hollow, scornful echo in her mouth. Which one, she wonders, stands as the most preposterous? Which one the most hurtful? Her finger, strained under the relentless strain of her anger rising in her belly and swelling between her ribs, starts to cramp. She retracts her hand.

“Why have you come here, Raine?” Accusatory the question. A hiss. “Is it charity to want to give you work, proper work, among other women?” Slowly, resolutely, she rises to a stand. And her voice…. Her voice is ringing louder, clearer, truer. “Is it charity to offer you the opportunity to live instead of surviving?” Disappointment, disgust, distaste for the only woman she ever considered a friend (a friend! Perish the thought!) commingles in her face in a rather eloquent grimace. ” The pastries are swept off, the back of her hand sending them pell-mell across the table and down to the flour in a great flurry of crumbs. “I ought to have had a maid press a few coins in your hand! How about that for charity?!” She is shouting now, sounding strangled words that mean to cut and cut and cut again. “Is this how you treat your friends? How dare you, Raine? Have you indeed lost yourself in the dirt and the grime? How dare you?!”