Claire had two goals for the night. One— get drunk off her ass, which she was well on her way to being. Two— deny, deny, deny.
Oh! And get home safe, preferably in one piece.
As long as she got those down, she could live with herself after whatever mess she got into tonight.
As a doctor, Claire didn't encourage excessive drinking. It was something she told her patients all the time. She'd seen the devastating effects that alcohol could have on families. She would never put her patients' lives at risk, so she wouldn't have more than a glass of wine on work nights. At the same time, she was no stranger to alcohol.
She'd gone to a lot of parties in college. Medical school was stressful, and she needed a way to blow off some steam. She'd eased off the alcohol when she was getting serious with her career, but she could still hold her liquor. It took quite a bit to get her drunk. And even then, she could fake being sober if she wanted to.
Sober Claire knew that getting drunk wasn't in her best interests. Drunk Claire tended to make bad life decisions that Sober Claire would have to deal with in the morning. Not to mention, her boss slash ex-girlfriend was in that very same bar, looking extremely approachable. Sober Claire would be smart and hold off on the tequila.
But tonight, she decided to hell with it. She didn't have to come in for work the next day, which was rare, so why not enjoy herself? There were other reasons she was drinking herself into a stupor, of course. A hot-and-cold redheaded reason in particular, but Claire was trying her best not to think about that.
"Still not a dancer?" someone asked, sliding into the barstool next to Claire, distracting her from her thoughts of that redheaded someone.
Claire caught a whiff of flowery perfume, recognizing it as the one she'd spent nearly an hour in Sephora choosing. She knew who it was at once, knew before she even turned her head, before the smoothness of their voice registered in her brain. There was a part of Claire that was still tuned-in to the sheer presence of Serena, that longed to reach out and feel the silky strands of her hair.
That part of her was normally stifled by the unceasing reminder that Serena was bad for her. Now, intoxicated as she was, Claire's mind was fuzzy and her thoughts flitted and floated about like leaves in a breeze, escaping her before she could seriously ponder the consequences of her actions.
The intensity of Serena's dark eyes on her reminded Claire that she'd yet to formulate a response.
"Never was," she said, forcing herself to keep her response short and uninviting.
Serena didn't look hurt. Instead, a flicker of amusement danced in her eyes. Claire felt the irresistible need to look away. She forced her gaze onto a safer target— ah! The dirty shot glasses on the counter. How interesting.
"Where are all your friends?"
"They ditched me," Claire said, unsure of why she was still encouraging this conversation. "Now I'm drinking at the bar alone."
"Not so alone."
Claire knew this was a bad idea. She'd already had too much to drink, and she didn't trust Drunk Claire near Serena, especially when she looked like that. You're over her. You're over her. The mantra repeated in her brain, but it seemed to be dimming in volume the longer she spent humoring this interaction. A polite excuse was forming on the tip of her tongue, but Serena signaled to the bartender before she could get it out.
"A shot of tequila, please." She looked at Claire again, who felt the heat of her gaze even as she continued her fierce staring contest with the shot glasses. "Make it two?"
"Why not?"
It just slipped out. Claire didn't know how to take it back. She wasn't sure she wanted to.
It was all too easy to let herself be drawn into Serena's orbit, but she couldn't deny that the strange warmth she felt in seeing Serena's smile was better than being left alone to her thoughts. So she decided to ignore the tug in her stomach that told her this was dangerous territory, the reminder that if she humored Serena for too long, she'd find herself in her bed the next morning.
And what would be so bad about that? a sly part of her mind whispered.
No, Claire told herself firmly. You broke up with her for a reason.
At the moment, feeling loose and forgetful, no doubt due to the many shots of liquor coursing through her veins, she couldn't recall what that reason might be.
The bartender slid two tequilas to them. Serena lifted hers, and Claire hesitated before following the motion.
"Really, no chaser?" Claire asked, lifting one eyebrow.
Serena flashed a white grin. "Cheers." She raised it to her lips and downed it, her eyes never straying from Claire's.
"Cheers," Claire echoed, slamming the shot down. The harsh taste of tequila filled her mouth, but she didn't flinch, instead finding herself enjoying the heat of it.
Serena gasped slightly after swallowing, making a face. "God. I forgot how disgusting straight tequila is."
A laugh bubbled out of Claire's mouth. It occurred to her that this was the first time they'd spoken amiably since the breakup about something that wasn't strictly related to work. She was surprised at how natural it felt to fall back into the familiar tug and pull. After so many weeks of resenting her, she'd forgotten how good Serena made her feel. And that dress made her look amazing.
Claire found herself telling Serena this, the slurred words rolling off of her tongue before she realized what she'd just said. She regretted it immediately after catching the pleased surprise on Serena's face.
"Hmm." The surprise left Serena's face, replaced by an expression Claire was all too familiar with. Her voice had dropped to a seductive murmur. "You think so?"
Claire dragged her eyes away from her lips. "Sorry. I shouldn't… I'm drunk."
"So am I." Serena seemed to lean closer. The perfume Claire had bought her was all she could smell. "And don't be sorry. I think you look good as well."
Claire fully intended to remind Serena that they were broken up, that she was her boss, that no matter how good Serena looked in that dress, they weren't going to sleep together. What came out instead sounded an awful like, "Oh? Just good?"
Oh, shit. Was she flirting? This is bad. There was no Tessa or Jake to reel her in. She was at the bar by herself, teasing the line between drunk and wasted. Her boss slash ex-girlfriend was flirting with her… and she wasn't shutting it down.
"Amazing," Serena breathed, and she was definitely closer this time. She touched the material of Claire's blouse. "I love this color on you."
"Thanks," Claire managed, resisting the urge to clear her throat. Her voice had gotten hoarse.
Serena leaned back, easing the tension a little. "Another round of shots?"
"This," Claire gasped out, "is such a— this is a bad…" She trailed off as Serena pinned her wrists against the walls of the elevator, face buried in her neck.
"Bad idea." Serena was breathless. "I totally agree."
The elevator dinged and they broke apart, checking the dark hallway to see if anyone could see them.
"Is this the most cliché rom-com thing we've ever done?" Claire asked as they stepped out.
"We've done worse." The word escaped Serena in a ragged gasp. She grabbed onto Claire's hips and started walking her backwards down the hall, slamming her lips together. They were half leaning on each other. "You taste like tequila."
"We both taste like— ow!" A sharp metal corner had dug into Claire's shoulder as Serena pushed her against the wall. In the darkness, she wasn't sure what it was.
Serena paused. "What?"
"Nothing," Claire said, grabbing Serena's face again. "I just bumped into something." Once the words tumbled from her lips, this amused her so much that she started giggling.
Serena started laughing as well. They'd been doing an awful lot of that. "You're so drunk," she whispered.
"Is this a bad idea?" Claire asked again. She had this bad feeling in her gut that she couldn't make disappear.
In response, Serena kissed her fiercely, stealing the breath from Claire's lungs. Her lips were so soft. Claire responded enthusiastically. There was no doubt how drunk they were— the kisses were sloppy, their hands moved clumsily, and they staggered around with all the grace of a sleepy elephant.
Slowly, kissing and fumbling at each other's clothes in a frenzy, they made their way down the hall. Claire's back crashed against a door.
"This yours?" Serena asked.
Claire's head twinged from the effort of squinting at the number on the door. She made out a 9. "Probably. Lemme just get my keys."
Claire reached into her coat pocket, struggling to remember where she'd put her keys. Her fingers were slow, as was her mind. She seemed to move in a haze. She pulled out crumpled receipts and a piece of unwrapped gum, but no keys.
"Oh… shit," Claire said with a breathless laugh. She felt like she should be more panicked, but she felt so light and relaxed that the thought of losing her keys didn't bother her all that much. "I think I left them at the bar."
"Oh, shit," Serena said, a silly smile spreading over her face before the words sunk in. The smile disappeared. "Oh, shit," she repeated, sobering up a little. "What do we do?"
Claire shrugged. "Stay outside?"
"Try the door."
"It's not gonna work."
"Just try it."
Claire yanked on the handle, expecting resistance, and nearly fell into the apartment as it gave easily. She blinked. "Okay."
She was briefly confused. She'd thought for sure that she had locked up that morning. Before she could dwell on it, Serena was leading her in through the door.
Immediately, she was hit by a strange combination of smells. An expensive-smelling perfume, a metallic odor she didn't recognize, the faint scent of Indian takeout underneath it all. It wasn't unpleasant, just unfamiliar. It was also pitch-black. She could barely make out the dark shape of Serena before her.
Claire nearly walked into a table and swore. Had someone moved the furniture around? She attributed her clumsiness to feeling dizzy and off-kilter. She'd been stumbling into things the entire way back to her apartment. Her senses must be all out of whack.
Serena seemed to be experiencing the same incoordination. Claire heard a muffled thump from her right. "Did you redecorate?"
"I'll get the lights," Claire said.
"Don't." Serena grabbed her hand before it left her shoulder and yanked Claire back before she could do so. "I hate doing it with the lights on." She started unbuttoning Claire's blouse.
Claire shrugged the blouse off, throwing it over her shoulder. Her foot bumped into what she thought was a couch. She reached down to confirm what it was before grabbing Serena's shoulders and collapsing onto it, pulling Serena on top of her.
Serena straddled her waist. She bent down to kiss her, then paused before their lips touched. Claire could feel her warm breath on her face. Impatience coiled in her stomach. What was she waiting for?
"I'm sorry I cheated," Serena breathed, her words rushed and urgent, like she'd been holding them in. "I've regretted it since the day I—"
An ugly feeling curled up inside of Claire. She didn't want to have this conversation, especially not now. To stop the stream of apologies coming out of Serena, she leaned up and crashed their lips together.
Serena seemed to snap out of it, responding with enthusiasm. Then she broke the kiss abruptly. "I mean it, Claire. I—"
Claire cut her off again, pulling her back down. "No talking," she said against Serena's lips.
Serena couldn't have argued if she'd wanted to. Claire was already pushing the straps of her dress off her shoulders, fumbling with the zipper on the back—
Click.
All at once, light flooded the room, harsh and bright. The room came to life around them. Having already adjusted to the darkness, Claire winced as her eyes were suddenly assaulted, her mind a whirlwind of panic and confusion.
Blinking back the spots in her vision, Claire glanced around the room in a bewildered daze, trying to find the cause of the brightness. Serena, half undressed, still on top of her, was doing the same. As Claire took in her surroundings, she was confused by what she saw.
She blinked and looked again, trying to think clearly through the haze of alcohol. As understanding descended upon her, her confusion faded into a new emotion. Fear.
This wasn't her apartment.
As soon as the thought struck her, she came to a second conclusion. A red-haired, green-eyed conclusion standing just a few feet away, finger poised on the light switch.
Serena had come to the same one. She scrambled off of Claire, pointing an accusatory finger at Natasha. "Who's she?" Her words were slurred and her volume was too loud. "Why's she here?"
Claire didn't have an answer for her. A strangled gasp had left her, her mouth opening and closing silently. Her brain was still playing catch-up as an internal monologue of her most creative expletives ran in the background. All she could do was pray that this was all some kind of odd drunken nightmare.
But— it was horrible to admit, and she knew she was awful for even thinking it— she couldn't deny that there was a little monster inside her that relished being seen like this with Serena. She knew it was bitter and petty and completely undeserved, but it was a form of payback for seeing Natasha flirting with the tall, handsome man from the bar.
"This is my apartment," Natasha said. Too calmly.
The silence after was excruciating. Claire had the distinct impression that Natasha was enjoying it. Serena looked to Claire, expecting an explanation. Claire was sure that she should say something, but she didn't know what.
"Um," Claire started.
"I don't think we've met," Natasha continued casually, like they'd happened to see each other at brunch. She was still in the same low-cut dress Claire had seen her in at the bar. The tall man was nowhere to be seen. "I'm Claire's neighbor."
Her words were warm, but the look in her eyes was as far from warm as you could get. It made every fight-or-flight instinct go off in Claire's sympathetic nervous system. Natasha's eyes were fixed on Serena, coldly analyzing her from top to bottom in a way that would've made anyone uncomfortable.
Serena had pulled up her dress. "Claire's never mentioned a neighbor."
No, I haven't "mentioned" anything to you in two months, Claire thought.
Natasha's gaze landed on her. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking, but Claire was fixed with an irrepressible need to apologize.
"I'm sorry," she said, all at once regaining the ability to form sentences. "I… we didn't mean to— we must've gotten the wrong apartment. I lost my keys, so we tried the door, and it was open and it was dark, so I thought— I just thought…"
She trailed off when she realized that she was rambling, and also because she didn't think she had it in her to say something else that wasn't completely mortifying. Her entire body was hot with embarrassment. It felt like a tangible thing that was choking her from the inside out.
"Anyway, we should go," Claire finished weakly. She got up from the couch, then remembered that she wasn't wearing a shirt. Attempting to hang on to the shreds of her dignity, she tried to make her once-over of the room inconspicuous. It didn't work very well.
Wordlessly, Natasha held the blouse up, the flimsy material dangling from her finger. Her eyes bore into Claire's.
Claire nearly tripped over thin air as she lurched over to retrieve it. She didn't think she could blush any harder, but she was spectacularly proven wrong. "Thanks," she said, avoiding Natasha's eyes as she and Serena made their way to the door. "Sorry again."
"No problem." Natasha managed to make two harmless words sound cutting, punctuating the line with a slam of the door.
The outside was cold and dark, which Claire was immensely glad for as she dragged her blouse back on and tried to tamp down the heat in her cheeks. Her fingers struggled with the buttons for a few seconds before she just gave up.
She closed her eyes, leaning her head back on the wall. What a nightmare. Seeing Natasha had flipped some sort of switch in her. Suddenly, she didn't want anything to do with Serena.
"I think you should go back home," she said.
Tessa's voice crackled over the phone. "Seriously, Claire. I leave you alone for two hours and you go and sleep with your ex."
Claire, still nursing a massive hangover, was propping up her heavy head up with a hand on the table. A headache was pulsing at her temples, and she felt like crap. The phone was on speaker in the middle of her kitchen table.
"I know," she sighed. "I was drunk, and as you already know, Drunk Claire is very stupid."
"Could not agree more. Hang on, Jake's here." Tessa called out a greeting, and Jake's voice joined hers on the phone.
"What's up, Benson!"
Claire winced at his loud voice. "Ow. Headache."
"Sounds like someone got hammered last night," Jake said.
"She slept with Serena," Tessa told him.
"No way. That's going to be awkward tomorrow."
"What's the lesson here, Benson?" Tessa asked her.
"Don't get drunk," she groaned, "ever."
Jake managed to make a laugh sound sarcastic. "Yeah, that's not happening."
Claire was so glad she wasn't coming in today. She'd woken up at 11 am and had instantly endured an assault of light to her corneas from the sun. The previous night had been a blur of drinking and bad decisions. She wished she'd had time to appreciate the few minutes of blissful ignorance before the events had come back to her in fuzzy pieces.
She'd spent an hour kicking herself for drinking so much, then for talking to Serena, then for nearly sleeping with Serena, then for the whole Natasha fiasco. She didn't know how she'd managed to locate the key to her apartment, but she'd woken up in her bathtub, head in a very uncomfortable position.
Claire massaged the crick in her neck. "It actually gets worse."
"Do tell," Jake said.
"So we were both drunk as hell, right? We went back to my apartment, and it turns out that I lost my key. But crazy thing: the door was open. So we went in, didn't turn on any lights— and we just started, you know, going at it."
"Claire," Tessa cut in, "you know she's my boss too, right? I don't need to know the details."
"And I wasn't going to tell you! Just listen— so we're on the couch, and then someone turns on the lights."
Tessa gasped. "No!"
"Yes!" Claire groaned at having to relive that moment. "Because guess what, it wasn't my fucking apartment. It was…. drumroll please…"
"Crazy hot neighbor's!" Jake exploded.
"Ding ding ding," Claire said with zero enthusiasm.
"Jesus, Claire!" he said. "That's some rom-com shit right there."
"Absolutely, totally, it was. It was so embarrassing. I was half-naked and I wanted to die. Like, actually die."
"What did she say?" Tessa asked.
"Ugh… I can't really remember. It's all a blur. I was just focused on getting the hell out of there."
Tessa's phone buzzed. "Crap. I have surgery soon," she said. "But we will be continuing this conversation later, Claire."
"Looking forward to it."
"Hey," Jake yelled before Tessa ended the call. "I want in on this, too!"
Claire sighed when her phone beeped, signaling the end of the call. Talking to Tessa was a temporary reprieve from facing the problems she'd caused. She didn't know if she'd be able to look Natasha in the eye after last night, much apologize for it.
She opened her text chain with Natasha. She stared at the messages for a long time. What was the protocol for interacting with your neighbor slash friend after they'd seen you without a shirt on?
Hey, she tapped out. Sorry about last night. I was wasted and made a bunch of bad decisions. Not really sure how I ended up in your apartment, but you shouldn't have been subjected to that.
Claire frowned. Was that too self-deprecating?
She deleted the last sentence and wrote, Not sure how I ended up on your couch….
Too suggestive. Delete.
I hope you don't see me too differently after this.
I didn't mean to do it.
Fun fact, she's also my boss.
Delete. Delete. Delete.
Claire erased the entire message and switched off her phone, repressing the urge to smash something.
A day after the incident, Claire had finally gotten the courage to knock on apartment 9C, but she was met with silence. She tried again the next day, but again, no one opened.
She sent a single sentence text message. Did you go out of town?
No response.
Claire tried to ignore the growing worry in her stomach.
Work with Serena was exactly what Jake had predicted it to be— painfully awkward. Claire was doing an excellent job of avoiding her in the hallways.
A week, and still nothing from Natasha.
No messages, no calls, no "running into each other" in the middle of the night.
Well— there was one text. A monosyllabic response to the text Claire had sent her, the one she was hating herself for sending in the first place.
Natasha: No.
Claire didn't know what that meant. She didn't text again.
Claire found herself missing her more than she should. They hadn't known each other that long, but she'd grown so accustomed to her presence on her runs. Natasha's sly glances, her wry jokes, the careful inflection of her voice when she talked and how she did things.
Claire was confused, and hurt, and maybe a little angry for the way Natasha was handling this.
She didn't know what to do.
so now you know about Serena... also wow claire really messed things up for herself.
oh also do you guys like tessa and jake or would you rather see more of claire and nat?
if you liked this chapter, please leave a review! you can give me feedback, tell me what you want to see in future chapters (i do take requests sometimes), etc.
Thank you for everyone who reviewed: Guest (Jul 31), Guest (Jul 30), liv, Broke NY Bitch, smh204, Slither-In-Gryffindor, and Rosiekay
Guest reviews:
Broke NY Bitch: thanks for telling me your pronouns as well! claire and nat are definitely not "just friends." I'm glad you like Claire's work friends, I was debating whether or not to include them more in the chapters. Curious to know what you think of Serena, she's def staying to create drama. Sorry about the cliffhanger...
liv: don't worry, the tall guy was just a mark :) thanks for reviewing