Claire sways in her heels, and the world sways around her.
She doesn't know what she's doing anymore.
It feels as if a chasm has opened up inside her, and surely there must be a gaping hole in the place where her heart used to be, it hurts so fucking much. Her hands itch with the memory of the breaths she stole.
She leans against the edge of William's desk, passes him the half-empty bottle of whiskey. The dim light of the fireplace draws sharp lines on his face. He smiles tightly at her, his posture rigid as if he, too, is in pain. She watches the muscles in his neck flex as he tips his head back to take a swing from the bottle.
It's unusual, the silence between them. They've been friends for so long, yet still they haven't learned how to be quiet together.
She drinks, praying for lightheadedness to finally stop the pain.
"Claire," he says, and it's weak and soft and strange, and she has to remind herself that he can't possibly know about (her mother) that yet. He can't pity her yet, can't offer her condolences she loathes to receive.
(And yet there he is, looking at her as if the same grief and revulsion runs through his veins.)
She thinks of Alex – about his face when he saw her leave her mother's body, when she closed the door with shaking hands and leaned back against it to steady herself. She thinks of the way the lines in his forehead deepened, his lips curled downward, of the way his crinkled eyes filled with so much sympathy and understanding as if any of this was enough to erase the monstrous thing he'd done to her.
Claire grits her teeth and pushes herself up from the desk, takes two unsteady steps in his direction. William looks down at her with those unnerving blue eyes, and his mouth falls open with a sharp intake of breath. Her hand travels up his arm and around to the nape of his neck, brushing the ends of his dark hair. She leans forward – before her brain kicks in, before the wrongness of it dawns on her – and kisses him.
It catches him off-guard and their teeth click painfully, but Claire doesn't let go. She wraps her arms around his neck, pulls herself closer until he kisses her back, grabbing her to him, his warm hands heavy on her waist. She traces the inside of his mouth with her tongue, tastes the whiskey they'd drank.
He kisses her hungrily, deeply, his hot tongue pushing against her own. One of his hands creeps up her back to tangle in her hair. Claire draws in a shuddering breath, her skin feverish against his own; the wrongness takes shape in her mind, and at last she understands.
William smells like blood.
He smells like blood and sweat and liquor, and if she presses her nose to his collar she can smell the faint remnants of his cologne, and in the back of Claire's mind there's a voice screamingit's wrongwrongwrong, but she just doesn't care (doesn't care about anything anymore except for the hands and lips setting her nerves on fire). She scrapes her teeth along his throat and closes her eyes.
He pushes her back until her ass hits the edge of his desk. There will be bruises – yellow and purple and painful – to remind of her drunken misjudgments.
She leans harder.
It's clumsy – she doesn't know how to unfasten something that isn't a soldier's uniform and William's blindly trying to undo the buttons on the back of her dress – but somehow they make do. Claire pushes the skirt up and leaves it rucked up around her waist. With some struggle she shoves her panties down her legs then lifts herself onto the desk. The bottle of whiskey falls to the floor with a soft thud.
William steps between her thighs.
She forgets to breathe. Wraps her legs around his hips and pulls him even closer.
His first thrusts are slow, careful, and he kisses her again; kisses her jaw, her neck, whispers her name reverently into her skin. It's maddening and she can't have it, doesn't deserve it, least of all tonight. She says something, something between a plea and a moan, and slips her hands under his shirt, digging her nails into his back. William groans and increases the speed of his thrusts; pushes deeper as she raises her hips.
It feels as if her skin is too tight for her body and she feels her orgasm slowly building up in the pit of her stomach. She finds his lips again and kisses him hard – all teeth and frantic need. He gives as good as he gets and she finds that she likes his bruising grip on her hips, likes the way he bites at her lips.
His teeth break the skin of her lower lip and the smell of blood around him intensifies. Claire feels the metallic taste on her tongue, on his tongue, filling her mouth. His thrusts grow erratic, an unyielding force, making her shake and gasp and fall apart.
When it's over, and she can breathe properly again, she looks up. William's lips are smeared red.
.
.
(Later, when it feels as if her head is going to split open and they find out David is missing, when Alex is standing by Michael's side and they say of course he had many enemies, but there's only one person who would immediately benefit from his death, when her father is gripping William's shoulders and grunting where have you been last night, boy?, and he replies in my room, Claire licks her lips and still tastes blood.
"He was there," she says firmly, cutting off further inquiry. Everyone's eyes turn to her. "I know, because I was with him".
Michael opens his mouth, and Claire forces a pleased smile onto her lips. "All night."
She decides then that the shame, revulsion and the incessant feeling of nausea – they are worth seeing the crushed look on Alex's face.)