i'm pretty sure the actress who plays margot has blue eyes, but i believe in brown-eyed supremacy, so margot has brown eyes here :) i hope you enjoy this lil ficlet of gals being pals
xXx
"No, Claire, it was shit." Margot's words are slurred, the corners of her rosy lips tilting downward into a pout that catches Claire's attention for a second too long. "I mean, it's all shit, because dates are hyped to no fucking end, but—"
Margot cuts herself off as she stumbles and collapses next to Claire on their lumpy green couch, the first and best and ugliest piece of furniture they ever bought for their cheap little apartment because going to Harvard Law, even on scholarship, means their budgets are stretched so thin their cash might as well be transparent.
"But it's still shit?" Claire guesses, tilting her head with a sympathetic grin. A hiccup concludes her question—she's none too sober herself, having drunk more than many glasses of wine as a toast to the end of the fall semester.
Maybe not the greatest idea, in retrospect, but the warmth in Claire's chest still blossoms like a rose when Margot drops her head onto Claire's shoulder. Claire figures they're better off drunk together than apart, anyway.
Margot nods glumly. "It's so shit."
Claire offers Margot her glass, still half-full of merlot. "Cheers to that."
Margot takes the cup and downs nearly all of its dark contents in two gulps. As she drinks, Claire notices her friend's dark green nail polish is chipped. She doesn't know if that happened on Margot's date or not, though, because she hadn't bothered to glance at Margot's hands on her way out. At that point, Claire had been halfway into her first bottle with eyes only for the rosé.
When Margot hands the wine glass back to Claire, the rim is smudged with pink. Claire wonders, absentmindedly, if the lip gloss Margot is wearing is flavored strawberry or pomegranate.
She could finish off the droplets in the glass. That would get her answer.
Claire places the glass aside.
"Why did I go out with him?" Margot says mournfully, turning her head to press her face into Claire's shoulder, bare except for the thin strap of her black tank top.
Margot's next words are muffled, compounding their current drunken lack of clarity, but Claire has always been able to understand Margot better than anyone else. "God. John wasn't even cute, Claire! Why did I let him kiss me? I should've known it'd be shit!"
"Because men are shit," Claire agrees, almost sagely. She reaches over to gently pull Margot's hair out of its pretty, professional updo, running her fingers through her friend's soft locks. She smiles as Margot relaxes into her touch, because they don't need to put on any kinds of high-and-mighty airs around each other.
They never have.
Margot chuckles against Claire's shoulder before lifting her head to give Claire an amused, lopsided smile. Her brown eyes glitter like topaz in the weak golden light of their living room lamp. "Let's not tell Andy you said that."
Claire giggles, extracting her hand from Margot's dirty blonde waves to tap her friend's nose with her pinkie. She almost misses and nearly pokes Margot in the eye, but they're both too wasted to care. "Ooh, didn't I tell you?"
Margot frowns, eyes crossing and uncrossing as she watches Claire's finger drop atop her nose and retreat. She shakes her head. "Tell me what?"
"Just that I dumped that strict constructionist son of a bitch."
Which would be the real reason Claire had perused their various bottles of alcohol tonight. She was probably lucky they'd run out of tequila, or else she might need the ER instead of a plain hangover cure tomorrow morning.
Margot wrinkles her nose in disgust. "Ugh, strict constructionist? Gross."
"Tell me about it. Can't believe I didn't"—Claire hiccups, shaking her head—"see the red flags sooner."
"Bet he was a shitty kisser."
Claire nods. "Sure fucking was. On both lips."
"There we go! It's all shit! I could've—I should've written my thesis on this. On the shittiness of men." Margot leans forward from the couch, turning her back to Claire. "Unbutton me?"
In her drunken state, Claire knows her fingers will fumble and stumble with every attempt to free her friend from her lovely dress, but she also knows Margot is in even less of a competent state to complete this task herself.
"Don't tickle," Margot warns as Claire's fingers find the first button, and Claire snickers.
"Don't tempt me."
Their conversation lulls into a comfortable silence as Claire moves from button to button, but it's a silence that doesn't last long as Margot's hands suddenly clunch, balling up the fabric of her pastel pink dress and inching it up and up across her bare thighs.
Claire tries not to look too close.
"It was stupid of me," Margot finally says, bitter, and Claire exhales an inquisitive hum.
"What was?"
"Thinking he'd be different." Margot sounds on the verge of tears, and Claire's hands slow in their unbuttoning, a frown pulling at her lips.
"Margot, you can't—"
"I didn't even like him, you know?" Margot continues, releasing one fistful of fabric so she can wipe her eyes. "But I told myself—if I could did it like everyone else—if I could just be with him—"
Claire wraps her arms around Margot from behind, squeezing her tightly. "Shh. Don't talk like that. You deserve better than some lowlife like John Pierce."
Margot snorts, and Claire is relieved to note her friend no longer seems ready to spill into sobs. She hates to see Margot cry, hates to see Margot vulnerable not because she doesn't care but because she fears a moment will one day come when there is nothing she can do to ease her friend's pain.
"The same can be said about you and Andy," Margot says after a pause, and a grin twitches at Claire's lips.
She wonders if Margot can feel the motion of her mouth against her skin, her upper back made bare by Claire's gradual unbuttoning.
"Good riddance to men, I say." Claire gives Margot's midsection another quick, comforting squeeze before letting go. She returns her attention to the back of Margot's dress, still only halfway undone.
Margot's bra is white, Claire notices as she moves down another button. Lace. High quality.
Claire wonders if Margot bought it for herself.
She wonders if maybe someone bought it for her.
At least, Claire thinks with a hint of satisfaction, that whiny bitch Pierce isn't the one getting to see it right now.
"Yes. Good riddance to men and their pathetic, thin lips," Margot grumbles. "The day I get a good kiss from a man is the day I wake up and realize it was just a dream."
Claire hums in agreement, undoing another two of Margot's buttons. "Even I could kiss you better than—better than what's-his-face, I bet."
Claire stumbles through her sentence, speaking without thinking as drinking so often encourages her to do, and it isn't until Margot's back stiffens beneath her touch that Claire realizes what sequence of words has left her mouth.
Claire could take them back. Every word.
She doesn't want to.
Margot slowly turns so she's facing Claire, and the alcohol's redness of her cheeks has been newly exacerbated by embarrassment. One strap of her pink dress has fallen from her shoulder, putting her freckled skin on full display.
Claire's mouth is dry. She licks her lips.
"I bet you could," Margot agrees, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Kiss better than him, I mean."
Claire leans toward Margot, closing the space between them by a fraction of an inch. She doesn't dare push further.
"I would do it, too," she says, and now it's Claire's turn to whisper because she doesn't give a damn if the alcohol has gone to her head when all she can see is the glistening rose of Margot's lips, the messy waves of Margot's hair, the soft skin of Margot's thigh still exposed where her pink dress has ridden up—
"You might regret it," Margot whispers, but she leans in, too.
"Not with you." Claire reaches out, pushing the fallen wisps of Margot's dirty blonde hair behind her ear. "Never with you."
Not strawberry, Claire realizes after the distance closes between her and Margot, after she shifts herself forward to sit in Margot's lap so she can cup her friend's face with both hands. Not pomegranate, either.
Bubblegum. Margot's lip gloss is flavored like bubblegum, sweeter and more intoxicating than any of the wines Claire has had to drink all night.
Claire only wishes she'd been the first one to get a taste.
At least she'll be the last, Claire tells herself while she moves her thighs to straddle Margot's hips, pressing Margot down into the back of the couch as she opens her mouth to deepen the kiss.
Yeah. At least she'll be the last.
xXx
im on tumblr at thinkingisadangerouspastime if you'd like to gush with me about bellcaid, they deserve more love