Something We Forgot To Say, a bridget jones' diary fanfic

Title: Something We Forgot to Say

Fandom: Bridget Jones's Diary
Pairing/characters: Bridget, Sharon, Jude
Rating: M / R
Disclaimer: These characters belong to Helen Fielding. Not me. I don't pretend otherwise.
Prompt: Bridget, Sharon and Jude, the three best friends, get very smashed and fool around a little (a lot). For two of them it's just a bit of a lark, but for one of them, it's a revelation about herself.
Summary: In a St.-Paul-on-road-to-Damascus type blinding flash… (see prompt). 2,239 words. Written for LGBTfest on LiveJournal.
Warnings: Not sure if these are necessary to point out, but 1.) ranting about men and their fuckwittage, but if you've read the books, this should really come as no surprise; and 2.) I stay quite faithful to the prompt, so yes, there's fooling around, maybe more, between members of the same sex. If this bothers you, then don't bloody read it.
Author's Notes: Takes place in the book universe, post-Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. (The 2005-2006 series of columns in The Independent may or may not be in this story's future. (Three universes can get very hard to manage.)) Title taken from the song referenced in the story. (Read on.) Language is meant to be British English. Many thanks to beta reader persephone_20 (on LiveJournal) for catching errors and making fantastic suggestions. Also thanks for the cheerleading from my dear friend just_dreamsome (on LiveJournal). Any remaining errors are solely my responsibility.

Life without men didn't bother me a bit.

Ever since Simon and I broke it off, ever since Richard went Vile again and abandoned Jude after three months of marriage, ever since Bridget decided that returning to Thailand was not the best idea (and Mark taking the job anyway), ever since Tom went to live with his boyfriend in San Francisco, it's been nothing but we girls in the evenings. Most of the time we end up at a nightclub, drinking our volume in vodka and dancing like we're about to start speaking in tongues, but some nights… some nights we just end up at Bridget's flat.

Like last night.

We can't go to Jude's, because Jude's house has Richard's things sprinkled about it like unexploded landmines. Inevitably she finds a sock or a key fob from a holiday they took together and all of a sudden she's bursting into tears and metaphorically rending her garments. My flat is too bloody small and always looks like a rummage sale gone horribly wrong. So… we go to Bridget's place. It has its faults, like the fact there are fifty thousand stairs up to it (or so it feels), but at least the framed photo she keeps of Mark on her madly skewed bookshelves doesn't reduce her to a quivering mess of jelly just by being there.

Also on the plus side, dominating her living room is this lovely three-cushion sofa, the sort that has high, sloped arms. Somehow I always end up in the centre; maybe because I get up a lot and wildly gesticulate while shouting at the telly, maybe because I don't care if I don't get an arm to lean on. If I get pissed enough, I just lean on one of the girls.

We're watching some movie on DVD, a period piece that's turned out to be as boring as arse. We'd dropped the pretence of wine glasses and each were glugging out of our own bottles. Out of the blue Bridget says, "Wonder what time it is there."

"Huh?" I ask. I can barely feel my fingertips, and I'm rested back so that my head's on Jude's lap, my right knee bent, my left leg across Bridge's. Jude by all accounts can't feel her fingers either with the way she's clumsily petting my hair. Thank Christ she doesn't have her wedding rings on or she'd be pulling clumps out at a time.

Bridget picks up her wine bottle, takes a long draw off of it to empty it before dropping it down to the carpet. "In Thailand," she elaborates.

"Fucking Thailand," I mutter. "He made his bloody choice, didn't he?" Of course, it sounds more like "'E made 'is blurry choice, din't 'e?", but she understands me.

"I know," she says, sighing heavily. I understand her, too. "I'm just so fucking lonely."

"We all are," slurs Jude. "That's why I've got Shazzie's head between my legs and not Richard's."

That gets Jude and me laughing. Bridget's trying to smile, but her lower lip is trembling.

"Aww, Bridge, c'mere," I say, sitting up and holding my arms out. "We've got each other. We don't need them, and we don't need their fuckwittage."

I take her in my arms and give her a big hug.

"I know," she says again.

"We don't!" pipes up Jude, leaning forward to put her arms about me.

There I am sandwiched between my two best friends, and it's wonderful. Something about the wine and the closeness and… suddenly that old Eurthymics song pops into my head, sort of unbidden. "You know," I say, lurching back and nearly knocking my head into Jude's, "we really don't need those bloody emotional blackmailers. Sisters are doing it for themselves, yeah?"

Recovered from the brief foray into maudlin intoxication, Bridget chuckles. She's swaying from side to side, her head lolling about a little, her hair hanging down around her eyes. She pushes her fringe back with two wavering hands. "Takin' care of each other, you mean? Like this?"

To my surprise she puts her hands on my tits then presses her palms hard up into me. I gasp and laugh, but the contact has immediately set my nipples to rock-hardness. She laughs too.

"Or this." Jude's breath is hot next to my ear then she pulls my earlobe between her teeth, trailing her tongue on it too.

"Fuck." I can't stop myself. I figure the zing I feel is just because I haven't had a shag in… well, Simon buggered off in February.

Bridget notices my tits now have points that could cut glass. She and Jude make eye contact, or so I presume; Bridget's mouth at least is forming an O. "I think Shazza liked that!" She flicks those points with her fingertips. The sensation bolts through me.

"I think—" Jude begins, but I interrupt with,

"Shut up." It doesn't have much conviction behind it, because I can't say in all honesty that I didn't like it.

Bridget leans forward once more. She's always been really cute in an effortless way, despite her griping about needing to lose weight or about being grossly misshapen by fat deposits; in this moment, though, I see her as curvy and gorgeous and… Jesus. Hot.

"You did," she says in an attempt at a really sultry tone, but she's trying not to laugh, so it's an obvious put-on. She leans into me again so that her chest is up against mine. I can't escape because Jude's got me trapped against her.

I feel Jude's hands on my stomach. I feel Bridget's on my shoulders.

"Should I?" asks Bridget, looking somewhere behind me, at Jude, I presume.

"Do it. Do it!" says Jude, helpless with giggles.

Then Bridget does it. She leans forward and kisses me. I'm not talking a mummy-kiss-goodnight. I'm talking mouth-on-mouth tongue intrusion, like she's trying to teach me how to French kiss. I can taste the wine on her lips. She's sweet and soft and too fucking skilled for her blood alcohol level.

Through the thunderous pounding of my pulse in my ears I hear Jude tittering like mad, feel Jude's hands rising up to take my breasts in her hands and squeezes them, caresses them, before letting go. I expect any second that Bridget's going to pull herself up and start laughing too in her usual bubbly way, but she doesn't; still kissing me, she leans further forward, pushing me back. I hear a thud. I break away to glance to the side and see Jude's landed on the floor. She laughs then passes out cold.

"Whoopsie," Bridget says, and there's that laugh at last. I turn back to her, lying there on top of me, cheeks all pink and lips plump and moist and… all I can guiltily think is that I want her to kiss me again.

She doesn't have to, because I launch myself up and kiss her instead. Fuck guilt.

I push her back until I have her up against the arm of the sofa. Something like instinct just… I don't know, kicks in; my hands come up and tangle in her hair, then drift down over her throat to her shoulders to rest on her breasts. Then I do to her what she'd done to me, hands on her chest, and she makes this sexy, husky sound into my mouth. Her eyes are closed. Her nipples are like hard beads through her blouse on my palms as I press into them. Her breath is erratic. Mine is too.

I'm straddling her thigh and she, mine, like we're some odd combination of jigsaw pieces being made to fit together. I remember as my hands to go her hips that she's wearing a mini-skirt as she likes to do. What the hell, I think. My hand drifts down even further still, along her thigh, under the hem of her skirt. My fingers slide over her pants; cotton, probably the giant mummy pants, the ones she hates but wears when it's laundry crisis time.

She responds to my touch; she sighs, she makes soft sounds. I press harder. She moans. Her eyes are still closed as she says a name that isn't mine. I'm not shocked and I'm not hurt. Clearly she's getting something different from this than I am, and she loves him, really, even if he seems like an emotional withholder. We're just drunk and fumbling and having a bit of fun.

As we kiss, as I pull that full lower lip of hers through my teeth then slide my tongue over hers, her fingers press hard into my shoulders. I push myself into her, I mean, really grinding on her thigh, like I'm trying to get that puzzle piece into place, whimpering the whole time. She is too. Between the sounds she's making, the way she's responding, the ferocity of our kiss—

It gets me off. Even if I'd wanted to deny it, the loud groan, the guttural Fuck I utter is testimony enough. And I'm pretty sure it gets her off too with the way her thighs tense against mine, but she sort of collapses back in a fit of giggles, then lurches forward to take me into her arms. It's not, however, a lovers' embrace, but one between two giddy friends who might have just seen their favourite celebrity's naked bottom on the telly and it was all they had ever imagined it to be.

"Doin' it for ourselves," she sighs as her laughter wanes, echoing Annie and Aretha again. "I love ya, Shazzer."

I love her too. Always have. She's Bridget and she's one of my best girlfriends. I peck her on the forehead, and as she rests there on me with a lazy smile on her lips, she falls to sleep or passes out or something.

I, however, am not so quick to join her in Bedfordshire; try as I might I can't wrap my mind around what's happened. Residual drunkenness notwithstanding, my thoughts are confused and scattered. Not about what I did, not feeling shamed or sinful… but that I liked it as much as I did. How natural it felt. How easily it had come to me. How aroused I'd been. How no man has ever done for me in so short a time what this has done; feeling has returned to my fingertips and then some.

That's the thing. I'd never really even consciously considered kissing a woman before last night. I say consciously, because now, after the fact, I can't help but reflect back and think I must have missed some signs. Idolising Lynda Carter in 'Wonder Woman' and Princess Leia maybe a little too much. Thinking Bowie looked better in makeup than not. Adoring Nick Rhodes's and Boy George's androgynous looks. Maybe that's the true root of what Bridget refers to as my 'strident feminism'. I don't easily tolerate emotional fuckwittage from men because maybe subconsciously I know I don't really have a need to. This thought is strangely calming.

Anyway. I don't remember finally drifting off, but I must have, because I wake to Bridget poking me in the shoulder.

"Sharon. Sharon!"

I open my eyes to see her staring down at me. She looks somewhat apprehensive.

"Not so fucking loud. My head's pounding." It is. The sun's just barely up. She looks wrecked. I imagine I look no better.

I turn my head and look to where Jude's still flat on the floor, snoring away.

"Sharon!" she whispers emphatically. "Did we…" Her eyes shift back and forth. "Did we… shag?"

"What?" I hear perfectly well what she said. I'm just buying time.

"Well… I thought I remembered…" She looks down. "That we shagged."

I feel pretty okay about lying. Not that I want to pretend it didn't happen, not that she has anything against the idea of girl-on-girl action, but I know she wants everything to work out with Mark. I certainly don't want to complicate things when he comes back. "No, Bridget, we did not fucking shag. Jesus. I'm not giving you a wine bottle of your own ever again."

She laughs nervously then sits up. "Sorry."

"You must have just dreamt it."

Slowly she nods. "Yeah, that must be it," she said. "Since I remember…." She furrows her brow. "Well. That Mark was there, but that's not possible."

I don't know how much she really believes me, but I can live with letting her think it's the truth. However, I can't resist a bit of fun, particularly since I have no idea yet what Jude will remember and blurt out later.

"We had a snog though," I say casually.

"What?"

"Yup," I confirm, striving for playfully smug. "Obviously inspired your dreams."

Bridget starts to laugh. "Was I… good?"

"Magnificent, darling," I say in an exaggerated fashion. "And you felt me up. You both did."

"Really?" She's grinning. All uneasiness is gone.

Jude wakes at Bridget's exclamation, groggily confirms the snog and the feeling-up with her eyes still half closed, a clear sign of a world-class hangover. As we all have coffee, breakfast and Paracetamol, groaning with our heads in our hands, we have a good chuckle about the night before. That's where I am now, nursing the strongest brew I can stand without wanting to vomit. And yet… all I can do is try to work out time zones in my head. Is it seven or eight hours earlier in San Francisco?

I have never wanted to talk to Tom more.

The end.