Chapter Text
Fallon Carrington leaned back against The Brownstone's cold brick wall, trying and failing miserably to sober herself up in the frozen air. She could not for the life of her remember how exactly her friends had roped her into going there with them. She’d profusely turned down every invitation to Martha’s twenty-fifth birthday party, but had somehow still been talked into it. Fallon didn’t even like Martha - she was Monica’s friend, whom she was forced to spend time with if she wanted any sort of social life. But, she had always had an inability to refuse Monica Colby anything - it had been that way since middle school, and perhaps before. Her best friend could talk her into anything. She had at least ten new investors she could be speaking to and she was at a cheap bar in downtown Atlanta because it was an acquaintance’s birthday.
She let out a low, frustrated groan as she thought of all the next day’s meetings she’d have to attend hungover. Her father would have her head. This was why she’d been waiting over an hour for a brief escape. Her friends would most likely have started shots by now and the very idea made her feel nauseated. She needed to get out of there before she was talked into taking one (read: seven) and end up too hungover to lift her head the next morning.
Goose pimples prickled up her bare legs, freezing December air biting at her skin. A shudder travelled up her spine as she rubbed her shivering hands over her arms in an attempt to bring some warmth through the friction. A blanket of alcohol-induced heat hadn’t settled over her yet - she wasn’t nearly as drunk as she had thought. Great . It was almost one and her sobriety was still hanging over her head in a taunting manner.
She exhaled a swirl of visible breath as another person settled themselves on the wall a few metres away from her. Fallon eyed them suspiciously before standing up straight and checking her too-tiny-to-function handbag for her lipstick and phone.
“Hey, do you have a lighter?” the stranger asked, their tone rather polite, with a cigarette between their lips. She acknowledged the Australian accent. It sounded vaguely familiar.
She shook her head. “Sorry, no.” She dusted off her dress and walked back into the bar again, wracking her brain for any plausible explanation for her to have left for so long. She didn’t think of one. No one asked her for one. No one ever did.
She sipped her mystery cocktail in disgust. Cheap bars never had good cocktails, not even when you were paying eight dollars for them. She laughed mechanically at Martha and Genevieve’s unfunny (and usually racist) jokes and cracked an unenthusiastic smile at the man who bought her yet another terrible drink. Fallon was having anything but fun. The bar was too loud, and she’d much rather have been at home watching Sunset Boulevard with Bo. But Monica refused to let her go home. She called her a buzzkill and practically screeched when Fallon accepted the title. She was her best friend, but Fallon hated her sometimes.
She spent the next hour on her phone. It was reaching three and she still wasn’t in her bed. She waited for a valid reason to go home, but (for once) no long-lost relatives appeared from thin air in distraction, and Steven - usually her perfect excuse wing-man - remained in Paraguay. Unable to stand another second, she had started to make her way to the bathroom when someone spilled their cheap lager on her.
“Sorry!” The stranger squealed out an apology, and Fallon instantly recognized the accent. It was the girl from earlier. Perhaps this was a blessing - being covered in cheap beer seemed a good enough excuse to leave and go shower.
“It’s all right,” she bit out civilly. She had never in her life been so nice to a drunk person, but the stranger was her express ticket back home. Fallon could have kissed her.
“No, it’s not! That dress looks so expensive and I probably just ruined it. I’m so sorry! Please, just let me help you clean up.”
Fallon heard her friends whisper loudly behind her about the other woman, but she ignored them and followed the stranger to the restroom. The harsh lighting was flattering for neither of them: it washed Fallon out, and made her hair look greasy. Both women’s makeup was cakey and missing around their noses, and the stranger looked sallow and sick under the yellow overheads, her red hair tangling noticeably at the ends. It was clear as mud the end of the night was approaching. They looked rough. But, the stranger was looking more and more familiar. Those brown eyes, freckled collarbones, stress-chewed lips … Fallon had seen her before.
It took an environmentally unfriendly amount of toilet paper to dry her off. The dress could and would be salvaged through an expensive dry-cleaning bill. Still, the stranger made a huge fuss about it and offered to buy her a drink to make up for it. She obliged, still not intoxicated enough for her taste. She ordered a gin and tonic, a usually safe drink which the bartender still somehow messed it up, and laughed obnoxiously at the other girl's commentary about the gradually getting-drunker people around them. Fallon's friends had left without telling her. Typical.
"I'm Kirby, by the way," the stranger said after their second sub-par drink together. They'd been too engrossed in the group of frat boys two tables away to conduct introductions. Fallon choked on her own breath and her heart jumped to her throat and pounded there painfully as the penny dropped. The supposed stranger looked and sounded so familiar because she was her ex-girlfriend. Kirby. She knew that aloof expression was familiar. Her heart hammered painfully as she tried to figure out what the hell to do. Kirby folded her arms over her chest and sat back further in her chair after the brunette didn't respond. "Are you not going to tell me your name, or are you against that?"
“Kirby,” Fallon said, her breathing beyond uneven, “it’s Fallon … Carrington.”
“Oh.”
There was a stiff, animus silence. Neither knew how to react. What was the possibility of bumping into an ex who’d moved to Australia three years ago in a somewhat local bar? It would only happen to them. Acrylic fingernails tapped against the scrubbed wooden tables, soles of stilettos against the sticky linoleum floor. It was excruciating. Fallon’s stomach churned and knotted as she stared down her ex-girlfriend. She doubted it was the alcohol. The ending of their relationship had been far from harmonious, with screaming and crying and moving halfway across the planet. But, somehow, this was the most uncomfortable either had ever been.
“The last time I saw you, you were blonde,” Kirby said in a way that sounded as though it was supposed to be conversational. Instead, it came off forced and physically painful.
“And Obama was president. Things change, Anders,” That had come off more bitter than Fallon had intended. “You were still dying your hair brown,” she added to soften her end of the dialogue. She wasn’t sure it worked.
“I can’t believe I didn’t recognise you,” the redhead sighed, shaking her head slightly. She pulled a hand through her hair as a confused expression settled on her face. She was overwhelmed too.
“It was probably the alcohol. I mean, I didn’t recognise you either.”
Another silence. They sipped their drinks, black straws twirling in brightly colored cocktails. Fingertips tapped against condensation saturated glasses. Fallon wasn’t sure why she was still sitting there. She had every opportunity to up and leave – there was nothing keeping her from spending time with her ex. But, it was as though she was glued to her seat. She crossed her right leg over her left, bouncing it unconsciously as she looked at everything but Kirby. Eye contact had died minutes ago. They’d been in each other’s presence for less than ten minutes and the brunette was already having a visceral reaction to the redhead. It was surprising how normal this felt, even if their feelings toward one another were anything but bitter. There was something about sitting there in silence that pulled Fallon right back to senior year of college - when Kirby had told her she was moving back to Australia. It was the kind of nostalgia that felt like a punch to the gut.
Kirby’s phone let out an obnoxious ping! that drew them out of their private thoughts. From her ramblings, it sounded like her roommate was sick – or something. Fallon wasn’t listening. All she cared was that she could leave – finally. She’d begged for hours for this to happen, and she’d left a half hour after her friends.
She stood from the table after Kirby had already left, teetering on heels too high for her inebriated self. Her head spun as she put one unsteady leg in front of the other. She hadn’t been this drunk in a while . The last thing she remembered was stumbling into the taxi (with some assistance) before inevitably passing out.
Fallon wasn’t in her own bed the next morning. In fact, she wasn’t in bed at all when she woke up the next morning. Her head throbbed as she tried to find her bearings, deducting she was on an old couch. She had a crick in her neck from her awkward position and her whole body ached from her hangover. It took several minutes for her eyes to adjust to the sun coming through the open blinds of the room. Against her own will, she sat up, stretching her arms above her head as she looked around, trying to find something familiar.
She didn’t.
Nothing here remotely helped her figure out where she was. If she were in a more flattering state, she would have panicked, but she wasn’t. All she cared about was getting a painkiller and getting to work.
The clock on the wall read after eleven if her blurred vision was somewhat correct, and the apartment was completely still. It would be smartest to just leave - Fallon had already missed both of her meetings and was late to catch up with her father. He was going to kill her, but, she still hadn’t a clue where she was. How was she supposed to get a Lyft if she didn’t know where she was?
It took at least ten minutes for her to realise it. The perfume hanging in the air went from vaguely familiar to completely recognisable in around seven seconds. Replica’s Lazy Sunday Morning should have been the first thing she noticed, but, it had been years. She was at Kirby’s. Everything seemed to make sense. The redhead’s godawful pink denim jacket lay over the arm of a chair on the other side of the room (Fallon could not believe she still owned the dreadful thing) and a stack of terrible horror movies (which Kirby had forced her to endure when they were together) sat proudly in front of the television set. There were dark wood floors throughout the small open plan apartment; various framed sketches lined the white walls. The room was filled with random objects and a surplus of potted plants. There was a physical mountain of pillows on the other couch, with several baskets of more cushions and blankets next to each sofa. It felt very cluttered, and chaotic, but cozy. The apartment’s atmosphere was what Fallon could only describe as how Kirby used to make her feel.
She wasn’t sure what to do. She knew shouldn’t stay, and she couldn’t figure out the reason she was there. Fallon remembered very little of the night before, but she was sure she would have remembered going home with her ex-girlfriend. She pulled her phone from between the sofa cushions, more than thankful to find it still had fifteen percent battery. It was eleven thirty-seven. There was no point going into work now. She’d come up with an excuse later, but now, she had more important tasks at hand.
Fallon opened her contacts, hoping and praying she still had Kirby’s number. And that, if she did, her number was still the same. It had been three and a half years; the redhead had most likely changed her number. She tapped on her ex’s colorfully named contact and tapped to send a text.
Fallon: Why the hell am I in your house?
She didn’t get an immediate response. That was when panic settled over her. Perhaps Kirby had changed her number, and Fallon had just sent a stranger a passive-aggressive message. She didn’t get a written reply at all. Instead, Kirby came into the main living area almost ten minutes later. One of her hands raked through her bed head as she yawned out a greeting.
“Why the hell am I in your house?” Fallon asked again, angrier now that the other woman was there.
“You were really drunk last night. I saw you nearly pass out in your taxi and took you here because you couldn’t string a sentence together and I couldn’t afford a cab to Buckhead,” Kirby explained dismissively, waving a hand and turning on the coffee machine in the kitchen area. The brunette pursed her lips as she realised her ex had done the right thing.
“Well, thanks, I guess. I have to get to work.”
“I see that your priorities haven’t changed.”
Fallon threw a scathing look towards Kirby, who sat on the kitchen counter, her head resting against one of the top cupboards. The redhead bit out a condescending laugh and rolled her eyes.
“I don’t know what you mean,” the brunette bluffed. She knew exactly what Kirby was talking about. The other woman looked at her in the same way she looked at her when they argued when they were still together: the deadpan, almost blanched expression with her left eyebrow raised.
“And you still don’t know you’re a terrible liar. You know, you haven’t changed very much at all.”
Fallon wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or an insult. She ignored the comment. “Can I use your bathroom?”
“Yeah, first door on the left.”
The dark wood floors and stark white walls continued down the hallway and into the bathroom. Like the living area, Kirby had cluttered the bathroom with mismatched trinkets in varying colors. The decor matched the redhead’s spontaneous nature: the toilet seat was midnight blue and the shower curtain a bright, opaque yellow. It almost reminded her of the redhead’s dorm room in college; so colorful it made her hungover feel worse. The familiarity almost made her feel better about being in her ex-girlfriend’s house, almost against her will.
“Do you still take your coffee black?” Kirby asked when Fallon was out of the bathroom. It was only then the brunette realized she was in a pair of pyjamas adorned with anthropomorphic avocados. Her reminders of how odd her ex was were getting more frequent by the second.
“And a sugar,” she added with a nod. “I thought you would have forgotten.”
“Nothing about you is forgettable.”
She sat back down on the couch, melting into the Sherpa blanket the other woman had covered her in the night before. She hadn’t been this exhausted since finals week of her senior year of college. She was so exhausted she barely even processed Kirby’s words. She promised herself never to mix cocktails again. She never kept her promises. Kirby could attest to that.
The redhead sat down next to her, sighing into her own cup of creamer with a dash of coffee. They sat in an almost comfortable silence. Everything was too familiar - Fallon needed to leave. She finished her coffee, changed, and left with barely an uttering of goodbye.
Fallon was grateful for what Kirby had done, even if she was horrible at showing it. But, spending that half hour or so together was suffocating; too intimate for the bitter time they’d spent apart. She’d never been so glad to leave anywhere before. The redhead’s presence reminded her too much of how awful she was at relationships and her crippling incapability to show appropriate affection towards significant others. It reminded her of how burdensome getting over Kirby was, and how she blamed her terrible productivity on her “best friend’s” sudden departure.
She slugged into the manor, earning an inquisitive look from her father’s new girlfriend (Fallon had already forgotten her name, he’d gone through so many in such a short burst) and trudged upstairs to her bedroom. Her body ached as though it had been completely drained of energy as she collapsed on her bed with a worn groan. She yearned for sleep, yet her mind refused to allow it ,so she simply laid awake to the thoughts of the redhead, for the first time in over two years.
Even the butler reminded her of Kirby.