Work Text:
Sometime around the fifth drink or so, Abby’s singing has passed by ‘merely awful’ to ‘absolutely unsalvageable’. Never before has Carol ever heard such an abysmal performance of Christmas in New Orleans, much less such an awful performance of the same song replicated perfectly ten or so times. Or a hundred. It was really beginning to feel like a hundred. To make matters worse, Abby had a chronic case of the ‘can’t pass the mic to those who may want it or even deserve it more than she does’ syndrome. She’d insisted that she could do the signature Louis Armstrong lilt, to which Carol laughed and rolled her eyes in a very ‘yeah, sure’ fashion.
“Does she do this all the time?” Therese asked with a somewhat bewildered expression. Carol laughed. Therese had been partying before, but she’d never done partying with Abby. It wasn’t so wild everyone was made uncomfortable, but wild in a charming way. Wild in an Abby way.
“Indeed, and we love her all the more for it." Carol shook her head. It didn't help that this was the kind of song that very much felt like that if you repeated it, it began to sound like one needlessly long song. "Place your bets now; do you think she’ll make it past verse three?”
“Not a chance.”
If there was another upside to Abby’s atrocious performance, it was that the other people in the room were far less focused on the couple attempting to subtly cuddle up to each other somewhere off to the side. A little more focused on the woman who sounded like her voice was being torn out by the claws of a cat (and perhaps it was unfair of Carol to say this, to be so rude to her most adoring friend, but Abby knew that she was bad as well. As she would say, “here for a good time, not for a socially comfortable time”).
“Oh, it’s not as bad as the time she attempted to sing Jo Stafford classics,” Carol said with a laugh. Their hands touched, and Carol leaned into Therese’s ear. Intimacy without really showing any off at its finest. “That was maybe, five years back? She didn’t know the lyrics to a single damn song, Therese. Never have I ever seen an entire room look so horrifically offended. You don’t butcher a Jo Stafford song like that, you just don’t.”
Therese giggled, and Carol felt her fingers lace around hers. “I can only imagine. I see that happening fairly easily, though.”
“And it had! I’ll invite you next time we do singalongs.” Her thumb stroked the top of Therese’s hand softly. They looked at each other and laughed. “You want to perform something?”
“Oh, absolutely not, no thank you!” Therese shook her head with a wicked grin. Carol knew of Therese’s performance anxiety quite well, and though she poked fun at her for it, Carol supposed she was thankful that Therese performed for her at all. “Why don’t you sing something, Carol?”
“Because I’m not a singer, and don’t you think everyone else has had enough for one night?” And that was true. For all of the laughing Carol done in terms of Abby’s voice, she was just as bad, if not worse. That wasn’t to say she didn’t like to sing, because she did and she would, but only in the privacy of their own apartment and only when Therese would play along. “Besides, I’m far more comfortable laying back here with you. Don’t you think?”
So let Abby perform a little more. Therese’s smile stretched wide. “I wholeheartedly agree.”