Title: Weave A Spell
Fandom: Calamity Jane
Pairing: Calamity Jane/Katie Brown
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 432
Content notes: no warnings apply
Author notes: Title from the song "A Woman's Touch"; this is how I think the film should have turned out after that scene.

Summary: It takes Katie a while to see through the drag.



It takes Katie a while to see through the drag. Not just the breeches and boots that made her take Calam for a man at first, but the mannerisms Calam's copied from the men around her, the gruff defences that go with the clothes. Katie's never met a woman like her: rough and tender, full of bluster and unexpected kindness, with that combination of swagger and vulnerability Katie never could resist in a man. Meeting it in a woman turns out to be equally disastrous.

Calam's a project, a living doll to be transformed - like her awful cabin - by the magic of a woman's touch. But that transformation goes both ways, Katie discovers, when Calam waltzes her around their newly shining living quarters and kisses her full on the mouth. The kiss is as innocent and unthinking as a child's. Katie feels the trace of it on her lips for hours afterwards as she stitches at the new curtains, her cheeks burning under Calam's admiring gaze.

The kiss is still there at night as she lies awake with Calam by her side and tries to tell herself she doesn't want to touch her. It's there in the morning as she watches Calam pull on her breeches and drape a black silk ribbon around her shirt collar. If only she were the man Katie had thought she was, the two of them could live happily ever after in the cabin with their names painted on the door.

If this was a different sort of story, maybe they still could. A girl can dream, can't she?

"Here, let me fix that for you," she says, taking the two ends of the ribbon in her hands, and feels Calam shiver at the brush of Katie's fingers on her neck.

No-one has touched her like this, Katie thinks. They wouldn't know how, even if she'd let them.

"There," she says, knotting the tie with shaking fingers. "You're perfect."

She strokes the black silk bow, as if to make it lie flat, and Calam's hands come up to grip her fingers and hold them there. They stare at each other, flushed and heavy-eyed. Katie can't breathe.

"Perfect," Calam says. It's not quite a statement, not quite a question.

Katie stretches up and kisses her lightly on the lips, the sort of kiss she could probably claim was a joke if Calam doesn't feel the same way about her. "Yes," she says. "Just perfect."

The kiss she gets in return makes her head swim, and nothing that happens after that gives her any cause to change her verdict.