Work Text:
The bathroom somehow manages to look even dirtier than it usually does with Victoria’s vision spinning. Mirrors with greasy fingerprints, shower curtains that are molded at the bottom, the floor perpetually wet, sometimes slimy, in varying stages. It repulses her, right now, for some reason. Disgusts her like it usually doesn’t, not really.
Most likely that reason is just that she’s drunk to the point of nausea. But who’s counting drinks?
For a moment, the bright bathroom light disorients her so much she completely forgets what she came into the bathroom for. Right. Party’s over, and they’re going to the next one, to get even more hammered. She’s trying to… there’s Taylor’s annoying voice at the back of her mind, for some reason… she’s trying to touch up her eyeliner, and her mascara, because her eyes had been watering from the alcohol. Right. Right, right, right.
Right. Victoria grabs around in her purse, finally clicking the door shut behind herself with the heel of her boot, before walking—stumbling, almost—over to the sinks.
That’s exactly when one of the shower curtains opens, overshadowing the noise her heels make on the wet tile floor with a whip noise. That’s exactly when Victoria lifts her head and sees Kate Marsh peek out from behind the shower curtain over her shoulder, through the mirror.
Kate Marsh whose eyes go wide, her face draining of color. Kate Marsh with her hair down for once, clinging to her round face with how damp it is. Kate Marsh in shorts that disappear underneath her oversized shirt, Kate Marsh with the pale legs and the round thighs. Victoria almost stumbles, almost twists her ankle standing up.
For some reason, her palms go clammy. So she puts her hands on her hips, lips her chin, puts a grin on her face. Kate’s eyes drop to the floor.
“Well, who do we have here, hm?”
It’s obvious that Kate was hiding in the shower stall after she got done when she heard the door open; and then the door closed, and she thought the coast was clear, but Victoria’s brain just had been so foggy with alcohol she stood in the doorway like an idiot for like a full minute. Or more; it’s not like she’s known for accurately guessing time when she’s drunk.
And she is drunk. Drunk enough that it takes effort to pry her eyes off Kate’s thighs, for some reason. Drunk enough that her eyes are burning, that there’s a strangely restless, nervous energy brewing in her ribcage.
But, if Victoria is entirely honest, that energy is always there when she’s around Kate. Maybe that’s part of why she’s so mean to her (and she knows she is, alright, she’s not that out of touch, and she’s mean on purpose just as much, if not more, as well), because she can’t freaking stand to be around her.
Because she can’t freaking stand her.
Kate twists the shower curtain in her hands, refusing to actually come out of the shower, like it’s going to protect her, like it’s some sanctuary; her eyes glued to the floor like if she holds still long enough, Victoria’s just going to forget she exists and leave.
It reminds Victoria, oddly, of some sort of animal documentary. The bunny is about to be eaten by the fox and plays dead, or whatever. Pisses her off.
Everything about Kate pisses her off. And there’s suddenly this boiling in the pit of Victoria’s stomach, something that—if she were an honest person, which she supposes she is not, and never has been—she has to admit has been brewing there this whole evening. Maybe even longer than that. Maybe there’s just something fundamentally wrong with her.
Or there’s something wrong with Kate, and that option is a lot easier, especially when Victoria’s head is throbbing and she still hasn’t fixed her stupid makeup yet, so she walks over to the shower stall with brisk steps—almost twisting her ankle again on this stupid, slippery floor and this room that always smells just a little moldy, that smells a little soapy right now, like some sort of flowers, and that must be Kate’s shampoo and suddenly Victoria feels too hot, like she’s overheating, the back of her neck burning—and rips the shower curtain out of Kate’s hands.
Behind her, there’s her shampoo, and her body wash. Behind her, there’s a crumple of the clothes she’s been wearing before she got into the shower. Behind her—
Victoria does slip, now. There’s nothing to make her unsteady but she slips, anyway, grasps at anything to keep her balance, her hand landing on Kate’s shoulder, clawing, her heart racing. Kate’s eyes are somehow even wider when Victoria has caught herself. For a moment, she thinks Kate is panting, but then she realizes that that’s her.
But then she realizes how Kate’s biting down on her bottom lip, turning it pale when it squeezes between her teeth, dark pink when she lets go of it. There’s a little blood on it. Part of Victoria, very far away, wants to tell her she needs to quit that habit and start using some lip balm if she wants to stop looking like a weirdo.
(But the thing is—and it makes her stomach flip in something that feels vaguely, strangely like guilt—she doesn’t even think Kate looks like a weirdo. It bothers her, anyway, how she looks. She’s never been sure why.)
Suddenly, there’s vertigo gripping Victoria so harshly she almost retches, so harshly she feels like she’s going to faint; suddenly, Kate’s face is a lot closer, suddenly, there’s a coppery taste in her mouth and a soft, slightly wet feeling against her lips. Tingles, rushes through every cell of her being, before fizzing out again so quickly Victoria isn’t sure it was there in the first place.
It’s only when Kate jerks back so harshly she knocks her shoulder into the shower wall that Victoria realizes what just happened. Even then, she feels like she’s far, far away—like she’s floating somewhere, like she’s dreaming, like one of those dreams where she’s just suddenly naked for no reason and has to walk around the academy and pretend everything is normal.
She watches speechlessly, mouth dry, how Kate presses her hand over her mouth, how her eyes fill with tears, glittering in the harsh light of the bathroom LEDs.
Part of Victoria wants to scream, wants to yell at Kate what the hell she thinks she’s doing, wants to pull at Kate’s hair and shove her to the floor, but it’s slowly dawning on her that it was her who kissed Kate, and not the other way around. For some reason.
It has to be a dream. It has to be a weird freaking dream, because even as drunk as she is, with the edges of everything all fuzzy, why would she ever do anything like that? It has to be a dream, but the thing is, Victoria remembers the entire evening, remembers the day before that, and the day before that even still; not like in a dream, where you have no idea how you got into this situation, where everything seems normal, even when it’s objectively absurd.
None of this seems normal.
“Why would you do this to me?” Kate interrupts Victoria’s thoughts, and she just now remembers that Kate is in the room with her. There’s tears streaming down Kate’s face in earnest, her voice shrill, and Victoria thinks she’d usually think that’s funny, but she really doesn’t right now. “What have I—what have I ever done to you?”
Victoria’s mouth is dry. She blinks, hand now clutched into the shower curtain—how did it get there, anyway?—wants to find something, anything to say, something mean, maybe, something that would make all of this make sense, even sorry, perhaps, but her tongue is heavy like lead in her mouth, and she suddenly doesn’t feel like continuing the party elsewhere at all. She suddenly feels like burying herself. Preferably in her bed, preferably forever.
Before she could say anything at all—and she realizes all of a sudden how pathetic she has to look right now, makeup smeared and stinking of alcohol and standing here with her lips parted dumbly, swaying, and she kissed Kate, what the fuck is wrong with her?—Kate hurries past her, her arm brushing Victoria’s, another sob slipping out of her, feeling like a knife in Victoria’s side. Feeling like she’s run too many miles and now has a stitch in her side that makes her feel like she’s going to die, her lungs burning.
Before she could say anything at all, the door to the bathroom slams shut, and Kate is gone again. The light hurts so bad in Victoria’s eyes that everything is blurring, until there’s something hot in her cheeks, until she finally does throw up, right in the shower stall Kate had been showering in just moments before all this.