Chapter Text
Me:
You awake?
catra alvarez:
obviously
Me:
I’m coming over in 20.
catra alvarez:
good for u
bring vodka
Me:
But you know I hate vodka.
catra alvarez:
since when have i ever given a shit about what u love or hate
bring it or else
It’s past midnight on a Thursday, a week away from finals. Adora should be shin-deep in studying the mammoth amounts of material with Bow and Glimmer, back at their prestigious research university. But instead, she’s walking alone down the streets of downtown, hands in her white hoodie’s pockets, moving fast before the rational part of her brain turns her right back around towards safety.
She knows the way to the apartment well, could probably walk there blindfolded without much effort. Which is pretty surprising considering the apartment’s owner had once blocked her on every single social media account. For three years.
Bow and Glimmer still haven’t figured out where Adora disappeared off to at nights at least once a week, maybe more. She hadn’t told them because Adora could picture easily Glimmer’s face of rage and disgust if she’d found out that Adora was ‘still wasting time with that crazy bitch’, as she’d once ranted after a particularly nasty argument Adora and Catra had had.
So she’d lied, said it was an extra side gig she’d taken on to save up a pittance of money, and they’d believed her easily. Without question. She swallowed down the hot spike of guilt that always arose whenever she was a shitty friend to them. Which was much more often than she’d like.
Adora knocks on Catra’s door, and after a few minutes her ex-best friend opens the door. She ignores Adora’s too-cheerful greeting and walks back inside without locking the door, knowing that Adora will lock it for her. She always does.
“Did you bring the alcohol?” Catra rasps. She’s curled up in a chair at her tiny rickety kitchen table. Adora takes the other, squeakier chair, and produces a bottle of Grey Goose. Catra has the shot glasses already ready. She has a matching pair: they are a translucent black and have small pointy glass ears, with painted-on whiskers. Adora wonders if it means anything, that Catra always offers her one of the pair and drinks out of the other herself. She would never risk asking.
“Cheers,” Adora says, holding up her glass. Catra rolls her eyes, but obliges and clinks her own shot against Adora’s. They down it together, Adora’s face screwing up at the taste and Catra’s face twisting into a grin at Adora’s discomfort. Once the burn has settled in their throats, Catra turns to face her window, with Adora mirroring her.
This has become their tradition in the past six months: Adora coming to Catra’s place in the night to watch the stars and artificial city lights in silence, always with alcohol in hand. Something about the ritual appeases the roiling anxiety and grief and self-hatred that churns Adora’s gut and burns her chest when she tries to sleep. It is only after she drinks and watches the night sky with Catra that she can rest for more than three hours at a time.
Adora still doesn’t know why Catra lets her come over. It’s another question that she’s too afraid to ask.
Catra lights a cigarette. Also a part of the tradition.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Adora whispers out into the still, grey shadows that have settled over Catra’s tiny apartment.
Catra says nothing in response, her heterochromatic eyes only narrowing slightly in response as she flicks the ash from her cigarette. She takes a deep, soulful drag, like the poisonous smog is more precious to her than anything else in the world.
“I’m serious, you know,” Adora presses, more loudly. “Can’t you at least vape instead? It’s better for you, sorta, and it smells a hell of a lot better.”
Catra pours herself another shot, affixing Adora with a look of complete disdain. “You’re not my doctor, so stop pretending like you care.”
“I might not be a doctor, but I’m majoring in biomedical engineering.” Adora half-grins. “Kinda counts, really. And I do care.”
“Keep talking and I’ll punt you out my apartment window.”
The threat, though meaningless- as if Catra could take on one of Bright Moon University’s varsity women’s soccer players- is enough to keep Adora quiet. Their exchange has already been more long than than any (at least, non-hostile) conversations at any point in time for over three years. Adora has broken the sacred silence that keeps alive their very uneasy truce, threatening to break it all over again.
So Adora surprises even herself when, five minutes later, she asks, “How’s work?”
Catra coughs slightly on her smoke, then glares at her. “Dude, I work a dead-end waitress job at a lame restaurant with garbage food. How do you think work is?”
“Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.”
“Okay.”
Moments later, Catra douses the rest of her cigarette in Adora’s unfinished shot, before Adora can slap her hand away. Cursing, Adora pours the rest of the shot out in the sink and throws the sodden ashy remains in the trash. When she returns, Catra has a nasty grin on her face: the one that indicates her sadistic desire to scratch at old wounds.
“How are your adorable little friends at uni? Glitter and that other loser.”
“You know their names,” Adora responds unflinchingly. She takes a sip of vodka. “They’re great, thanks for asking. Bow just won an archery award in his club, and Glimmer-”
“Surely you have to know I couldn’t care less,” Catra interrupts, lighting another cigarette. “Sounds like you’re having a blast without me in the way.” The words are like a lit match: designed, intricately and deliberately, to spark ablaze the pool of gasoline that has become their relationship.
Adora breathes out slowly, mirroring Catra’s own exhale of smoke. She will not take the bait. “If I were having a blast without you, would I come see you in the middle of the night like this?”
“Dunno.” Her old friend traces the rim of her shot glass with one long black fingernail. All of her nails are long, except for two on her left hand. Adora wonders, against her will, which girl she keeps those nails short for. “You didn’t come crawling back until senior year. You left me in the dust for almost all of your college career, so it doesn’t seem to be out of the question, does it?”
“I didn’t come crawling back ,” Adora retorts hotly. She hates how after all these years it’s still so easy for Catra to get inside her head. “You’re the one who blocked me- you know what? No. I’m not doing this. Let’s just go back to drinking.”
“You started it,” Catra shoots back, but acquiesces. The bottle of vodka Adora brought over is running low. Catra clambers up nimbly onto her kitchen counter to reach at a cabinet. She returns to the table, half-full tequila bottle in hand. Adora stifles a giggle at how, well, catlike she is. The vodka is finally starting to make her feel slightly spacey.
Before she can stop herself, she asks, “Are you seeing anyone?”
Catra laughs out loud at that. “You are so fucking gay.”
“No! I was just wondering because, uh, your nails. Why’re you assuming it’s because I’m gay? Maybe I’m straight. Maybe I have a boyfriend.”
“Oh, please , Adora. You are about as straight as my hair is in the morning.” Catra smirks, running a hand through her wavy dark hair. Adora flushes. “Why do you care if I’m hooking up with anyone? Have you finally reached your sexual awakening at the tender young age of twenty?”
“Fuck you, Catra.”
“I’m good, thanks.” Catra leans in, lips curled in a self-satisfied way, until they are nearly nose-to-nose. For a moment, Adora’s heart thumps in a strange, uncomfortable way. Then Catra blows a cloud of cigarette smoke in Adora’s face.
Had Adora not been tipsy, she may have punched Catra. Unfortunately, her movements are uncoordinated and she instead makes a flimsy swing at Catra, which is easily blocked.
“God, you dickhead!” Catra is howling with laughter, rocking back and forth on her chair’s flimsy legs. “I can’t stand you!”
Catra stiffens at that, and Adora quickly curses herself for saying it. “If you can’t stand me, then leave.”
“I didn’t mean it like that, come on...”
“Like how you didn’t mean it when you got me expelled?” The words are enough to sober Adora up immediately, and images from the worst night of her entire life suddenly flash through her mind. Images that are the reason she stays up at night, three years later.
“I saved your life that night. Why can’t you understand that?”
“What kind of fucking life is this? I’m stuck in a shitty apartment with no job mobility for the rest of my life, hating myself and everything else. I’d rather just be dead and done with it, thanks.”
“So I was supposed to just let you- let you- overdose?” The word alone sends a wracking shudder through Adora’s whole body. She feels bile rise in her throat.
“And what’s worse is, after you damned me to live like this,” Catra forges on, loudly, “you just left me to rot at the hospital, and at the college council hearings. Instead of being there for me, you were screwing around with your new buddies, like I was just a piece of trash that never meant anything to you.”
“We’ve been over this! You’re the one who told me you didn’t need me there when I tried to visit!”
“Well, I was lying, obviously! ”
This is the first time that Catra has admitted that, and Adora feels the blow as keenly as if it were a punch to the gut. It leaves her speechless. After a long, hard stare, Catra stands up abruptly, and walks over to the window, pressing her forehead against the glass. Adora is grateful for this: it allows her hot, shameful tears to slip down her face unnoticed. In silence, they watch the stars together again, the tiny pinpricks of light framed by Catra’s curls. They make the sky even more beautiful, Adora thinks.
Finally, she says, in a tiny, slightly choked-up voice, “Catra…”
“We don’t need to talk about it.” Catra’s voice is level and low. “You already knew why I hate you. Just leave it at that.”
“But I don’t want you to hate me.” Adora, even to herself, sounds plaintive.
“Tough.”
“Why aren’t you telling me to get out?”
“Get out, then.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then don’t. I don’t care.” There is little venom in her words.
Quietly, Adora gets up from her chair, and comes over to Catra at the window. Catra flinches when Adora’s shoulder bumps hers, but moves aside so they can watch the night side-by-side. Adora doesn’t dare touch her again, knowing how easily Catra can rip her open if she did.
Instead, Catra is the one to eventually rest her head on Adora’s shoulder. Adora draws in a sharp breath, but doesn’t move.
“You’re so stupid,” Catra mumbles.
“Yeah.” Adora smiles, despite everything.
“I can’t stand you either, for the record.”
“Thanks for putting up with me anyway.”
For the first time, Adora has stayed over long enough for the sun to begin to rise. The sight is sublime, grey melting into gold and orange and blue. It’s healing to look at.
“You should go, for real.” Catra’s voice breaks Adora’s reverie. With a snap of anxiety, she remembers Glimmer and Bow and finals and projects. “I know it’s finals week soon. Go get your 4.0, loser.”
“Okay.” Adora slips away from the other girl, heading for the door. “I’m sorry,” she says again, after a short moment.
“Bring more alcohol next time,” is Catra’s noncommittal response.
“I will. Promise.”
Then the door shuts behind Adora, and Catra is gone once more.