After the pot-luck, open to all (PLOT ALERT!) Note - please please make sure you've read all threads and checked on character locations and what you can find out from the 'crowd' before posting a thread or tag, so we can keep everyone in one place at one time without cloning! Thank you! Ryan and Beth have now gone from the scene but please feel free to keep on playing threads set before then or reactions after.
It had been a bad idea. Beth had known it was a bad idea, felt it, but the preacher had been so insistent and Gemma had just shrugged and said it wasn't her business what the girls did with their time off and Ryan had said he'd go with her, so Beth had gone to the church pot luck. And it had been a bad idea.
And now Ryan was in a bad mood and wouldn't say why and Beth wasn't exactly little Miss Sunshine and wasn't feeling patient enough to try to coax the reason from Ryan and...this hadn't been where she'd meant to turn. And it looked like Ryan had realized that, too. Dead end alley between a couple of buildings, light faded by the high walls and the three men who'd followed them in.
Beth swallowed hard, and reached for Ryan's hand. No way out and those expressions really didn't look friendly. The odds of being able to get out past them looked pretty slim, and oh, God, why hadn't she been paying more attention? One man at the front, two fallen back behind him. She knew those faces but they hadn't been customers of hers, didn't know their names.
"Well, now, if it ain't Madam Gemma's little girls," the lead one sneered, and spat a string of dark tobacco at Beth's feet. She moved back instinctively, skirts pulled out of the way.
"They ain't both girls," one of the backers objected. "One of 'em ain't in skirts."
"Madam Gemma's little faggot, then," Spitter corrected, not looking happy at the contradiction. "Don't need no skirts to be a girl, do you, little faggot?"
"Little faggots got no place with proper folks," backer #2 added, hands dropping to his belt. His gun belt, Beth noticed. Also equipped with a knife. Oh, God.
Ryan's hand tightened around hers, and she swallowed. "Please, sirs, we're just headin' home. Ain't lookin' for no trouble."
Spitter's sneer darkened. "You're walkin' with trouble, girlie."
Ryan's fingers were digging into her hand hard enough to hurt, now. Enough that she flashed a quick, wide-eyed look at Ryan. Enough to catch the shape his lips were making, one silent word. 'Run'.
She squeezed his hand back to show she'd understood. Didn't like it, but she understood, and he could run faster than her, anyway, and she had a knife in her boot and...lord, now. Breaking away from Ryan's hand so they could both move faster, kicking out when a hand grabbed for her arm, her face, her waist, twist and scramble and bite, foul taste of tar soap filling her mouth and another flash of pain when someone, something clouted her head enough to make her dizzy. Make her stumble, his grip letting up as she wavered and that was her chance, twisting free with another kick, skirts ripping as his hands slid to fabric, her hair half-fallen down as she ran. Ran until her heart was pounding harder and chest was aching with each breath she dragged in, until she cannoned into someone and then, only then realized that she wasn't being pursued, and Ryan wasn't with her either.