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Remy’s idea of a Friday night was as follows: going out, getting stoned, and bringing a girl home.
She was trying to do that. Trying being the key-word, because tonight of all nights, she let a girl drag her to another bar, then another club, then finally to some random’s packed house.
Her idea of a Friday night was simple, it was routine—it was not ending up at some middle-aged chick rocker’s house-show when all she wanted was to get laid. This Friday, somehow, had become the exception.
Maybe it was the booze. Maybe it was the other illicit substances Remy knew she shouldn’t have been taking. Maybe it was just the love of the cat and mouse game she and this girl—a blonde, with blue eyes, not that it mattered—had been playing.
The house smelled of beer and body odor and everything Remy was trying to sink into. It smelled of simplicity.
Remy lost the woman she’d came in with almost as soon as she’d entered the crowd. She debated on whether or not to leave entirely—she didn’t care for the music, and she surely was not betting on being able to find the woman whose name escaped her. She did, however, consider the possibility that there could be some other girl there that she could take home. It was a chick rocker’s house show, she’d be surprised if there was any woman there that didn’t like women.
She half-listened to the music being played. She recognized none of it, save for a subpar cover of a song she’d remembered hearing on the radio years ago. Whatever made the women playing it happy, she supposed.
Then she saw it. Saw her.
Lisa Cuddy, in the flesh. She looked different—shorter, maybe—certainly more closed off, but there was no doubt in Remy’s mind that it was her. Fitted with those thick lashes and that curved nose and her newly trimmed bangs. Not that Remy particularly took note of any of these things.
She, foolishly, found herself drawn towards her. One magnet to another.
Remy moved in closer, through the crowd of bumping shoulders, until she was practically stood right beside her. It was a dumb idea, but she had somehow convinced herself to do it. To make small talk with her boss’s boss at some dingy house show she had only come to in an effort to get laid. The situation seemed poorly planned at best, but something compelled her to pursue it.
“Dr. Hadley?”
Cuddy’s voice shouted, trying to speak over the blaring speakers. It had only taken her two songs to notice Remy standing right next to her. She must have really been invested in the music, Remy mused, or perhaps, she didn’t care enough to recognize her. She almost prayed the former was true.
“Yep,” Remy replied. Trying to keep it short; simple. She didn’t want to make a scene, especially in her state, especially knowing Cuddy’s previous reactions to her indulgences.
Cuddy didn’t pay her much mind, her eyes still focused on the band playing in front of them, “Should have figured you’d be around.”
Remy grumbled something near inaudible about assumptions and whatever that comment meant. Cuddy, once again, seemed to pay it no mind, as if Remy had been a fly on the wall.
“You… like this?” Remy blurted out. She didn’t mean to inadvertently insult Cuddy’s taste in music. She mostly just wanted to change the subject, and keep the conversation going. Why did she want to keep the conversation going? She didn’t want to think about it.
“No-” Cuddy went straight for denial, before backtracking, “well, yes, but,” she corrected herself, “the singer, I know her. From college.”
Remy nodded slowly, her eyes focused on the spot between Cuddy’s. She wasn’t sure how to respond. In frank, she’d never really thought of Cuddy having friends outside of department heads. “That’s…” a long time to keep up with someone, she thought but never spoke, “…all?” she decided on.
Cuddy turned to her, shooting her an indescribable look, “You wouldn’t support an old friend if they came to town?”
Remy considered the idea. All she could do in response was shrug.
She watched as Cuddy’s body turned from her and back towards the band. She watched as she swayed in time. She watched as her eyes glistened and her smile widened a fraction—to an extent she’d never seen. She watched.
Cuddy had turned towards Remy and back to the band almost a dozen times over the course of a few minutes. Remy didn’t dare question it, out of some mix of fear and nervousness and adrenaline that she didn’t even want to try to name.
It was the fifteenth time—Remy had counted—before she actually said anything.
“You don’t look too hot,” she finally said. The band was in the middle of a song, so she had to shout over the speakers, again. Remy thought, for only a second, about how rude this likely was.
She refused to let the conversation die, though, “…Thanks. Not the compliment I was looking for,” she was being cheeky, or trying to. It was what she knew. She was still cooling down from the past few hours of—seemingly pointless, now—flirtation with the blonde woman she had lost in the crowd. She didn’t want to entertain the idea that Cuddy was being anything more than cordial, than worrisome, as she had often been.
“I’m serious, Hadley. You need water.”
As suddenly as she first turned, Cuddy grabbed Remy’s arm. It wasn’t hard, but it wasn’t gentle either—it was a clear-as-day signal saying ‘you need me.’ Maybe, in this moment, Remy did.
The two were now in the crammed, dimmed bathroom. Remy realized only now that Cuddy’s heels were gone. Or maybe that she hadn’t worn them in the first place—either way, she definitely didn’t have them on now, because Remy was looking down at her, even if only by an inch or two.
“Look at me,” Cuddy demanded, sharply, but not forcefully, “your pupils are dilated. Did you take anything?”
Her question came in hot. Remy had no idea whether she should answer honestly or not. Cuddy was the one who was pissed over her going into work high. Her eyes darted to the floor as she unceremoniously avoided the question.
Cuddy sighed heavily, it was clear that she was not in the mood to deal with Remy’s recklessness, nor her insubordination. Remy internally cringed. “I’m not your boss right now,” Cuddy finally emphasized, “and you’re not at work,” she reminded, “so, did you or did you not take something tonight?”
“It was a few hours ago, it was barely anything,” Remy luckily stammered out, her tone far too quiet for her taste. She thought herself a deer in the headlights. “I’m fine.”
Cuddy snorted, “Yeah, right.”
Cuddy was now up in her face—far too close for comfort. Remy could feel the older woman’s breath on her cheek as she examined her like a specimen. She kept her eyes on the floor, knowing that if she looked up, she’d meet Cuddy’s gaze directly. She didn’t think that was something she could handle.
She was half-expecting for Cuddy to, despite her pretense of “not being her boss right now”, make a comment about how Remy should not be taking drugs, that she was putting herself in danger, that she was being foolish. That Cuddy, maybe, would bring up her ever-looming illness and try to make her see the light.
But Cuddy stayed silent.
Silent, observing. She backed off of Remy within a matter of seconds, as if she could read her mind, but her eyes stayed watching her. For a moment, the two women found themselves in a battle of wills; who would break the silence and kill the moment, what ever that moment was? For whatever stupid, foolish reason, Remy did not want for it to be her. She stayed silent, her gaze still meandering on her own shoes.
“You need water,” Cuddy remarked, reminding them both of the supposed purpose of them being in this room.
The water. Yes, the water. All Remy needed was to freshen up, and then she would have her spark back. Then, and only then, would she be able to harness her abilities; she would go back out into the main room, find the girl she came with, and forget that she had ever felt this nervous.
Remy, in the moment, though, only blinked. “…Do you have some?”
Cuddy looked as though she was just about done with the younger woman, “No,” she said slowly, as if lecturing a dense teenager, “there’s a tap,” she informed.
Remy’s eyes darted to the bathroom sink she had been leaning against—there was, indeed, a tap. She recognized that Cuddy’s answer was less of an answer and more of an order: drink.
So Remy did exactly that. Her hands trembled on their way to the knob, a movement she did not want to think about, let alone address. Within an instant, water came rushing out of the tap and onto the smooth bowl of the sink, and Remy’s head was soon under it; her neck craned to the side and her mouth open wide.
She did not notice that Cuddy was directly behind her until she felt her hands against her scalp. It was not punishing, she realized—she was holding her hair back. Cuddy’s practiced hands gathered the wisping strands of hair and pulled them back as if to tie it up, but she did not, her hands stayed, holding the hair in place as Remy lapped up water like a dehydrated dog.
Remy drank as if she had been starved of it. Not so much because she thought that she truly needed it, more that she knew that Cuddy was watching, and if she was going to humiliate herself like this, she might as well go all the way.
Once she finally pulled away, wiping her mouth off with the back of her hand, was when Cuddy’s own hand finally fell, Remy’s hair following suit, finding its typical place. Remy couldn’t help but feel the loss in her bones.
Cuddy backed up, leaving room for Remy to straighten up, before she firmly rubbed her bicep, “There you go,” she flashed a small smile, as though she were genuinely happy that Remy had listened to her, “feel better?”
“Yeah,” Remy let out, almost breathless, which she had decided was only because of the amount of water now newly in her system. “Thanks.”
The small, crammed room fell silent. Cuddy’s eyes roamed over Remy as if she was expecting something from her. Remy, too, wondered if she should be doing something now. Perhaps, if she should be making a move on Cuddy. She shoved that thought far, far down as soon as it had appeared in her mind. She was not into Cuddy, she was just high. Out of it. She had a girl out in the main room waiting for her to take her home. She did not need to do something stupid.
So she didn’t. She let the silence pass.
“The band’s starting to play again,” Cuddy was the one to finally break. Her voice was soft, but it could have been screaming, for all Remy knew—it boomed through her ears the same way the bass of the speakers just outside the room did.
“Oh.”
Cuddy bit the inside of her lip, “I’m gonna...” she gestured behind her, “get back out there,” she said.
Something within Remy dropped, or broke, or shattered, or perhaps did nothing of note at all. “Oh, yeah,” Remy nodded. The interaction was coming to an end, she had realized. “Me too,” she replied, though she was sure that if she had the option, she’d stay in that room with her all night.
Cuddy let out a huff of a chuckle, smiling—really smiling—at her, “Have a good night, Dr. Hadley.”
And just like that, Cuddy moved back into the main room, Remy’s eyes immediately losing the dark brown of her hair in the crowd. Too dark to make out even the most familiar of faces; she couldn’t have followed her if she tried—she didn’t even know if she wanted to.
A voice said her name, a hand locked onto her elbow, beckoning her out of the bathroom and back into the adrenaline-pumped show. Lyrics passed through her ears, but she felt the bass deep within her. She watched as the blonde woman danced; tried to get her to do so as well. Remy was preoccupied, for once, she wasn’t the best at reciprocating.
Remy did not see Cuddy again that night. She had lead the horse to water, and had whisked away as soon as her duty was over. Remy wondered if Cuddy often found herself doing such a thing, or if she was a special case.
When she woke up next to a mop of blonde hair in her bed the next morning, Remy didn’t feel accomplished, didn’t feel relieved. All she felt was some sort of sense of longing, but not for the woman next to her—for the nervousness she had felt the night before, for the feeling of gentle hands in her hair and water rushing into her mouth.