Hicsqueak + "You were my best friend."
Hecate unlocks the hotel room and they stumble inside, Hecate holding Pippa’s weight as she sways in her heels. “I’m fine,” Pippa says, trying to brush her off. “Don’t need you to baby me.”
Hecate rolls her eyes, tightening her hold around Pippa’s waist, and ignores the way her words slur together.
“‘S a party,” she says, allowing Hecate to push her down onto the bed. “‘S fun.” She glares up at Hecate. “You don’t know how to have fun.”
“Perhaps it’s simply that my idea of fun isn’t embarrassing myself in front of my colleagues and peers.”
Pippa snorts. “They don’t care. They’re my friends.”
Hecate clenches her jaw, biting back the retort she wants to say and settling for a stiff, “Yes, I could tell by the way they were so quick to care for you.”
“I don’t need care,” Pippa snaps, trying to stand up. “I want to go back.”
“Sit down, Pippa, before you break something.”
“You’re just jealous,” she mutters, even as she slumps back onto the bed, doesn’t protest when Hecate removes her shoes. “You wish you had friends, but nobody likes you.”
Hecate flinches, hard, and fixes her eyes on Pippa’s feet.
“I’d rather have no friends than fake ones,” she says, voice even and controlled.
“They aren’t fake. I’m fine. You just worry too much, about everything.” She purses her lips. “So serious,” she says mockingly, reaching down to poke Hecate’s hair, pulled back in a tight bun. “Even your hair is serious.”
Rising to her feet, Hecate waves a hand to pull down the sheets and maneuvers Pippa under the covers as best she can.
“There’s nothing wrong with serious,” she says, though she doesn’t know why she bothers. Pippa’s eyes are glassy and her limbs are heavy, her coordination nearly nothing.
Pippa snorts. “There ‘s when you push people,” she says, almost a pout. “Leave them standing on their own in front of hundreds of people.” She looks up with a glare. “Coward.”
Hecate swallows, and pulls the blankets gently over Pippa’s shoulders. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a mean drunk?”
Pippa stares at her, and Hecate quickly turns, moving to the ensuite to get a glass of water for the morning, summoning two pills—not quite as good as a hangover potion, but they’ll at least cut through the headache Pippa is bound to have tomorrow. She can make her own damn potion.
She sets them on the bedside table and waves her hand to turn out the lights. “Try to get some sleep,” she says, and turns to leave, to get out of there before Pippa can say anything else, anything that will ring in her ears for the next week, the next year; but Pippa clamps a hand down around Hecate’s wrist, surprisingly strong, and she stills.
“Hecate.” Pippa’s eyes are wide and damp as she looks up at her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
She looks so miserable, so genuinely distressed that Hecate sighs, and shakes her head. “It’s fine.”
Pippa sniffles. “‘S not fine. Nothing is fine.” She blinks up at Hecate in the dark. “I only drank ‘cause you were there. ‘Cause I wanted to talk to you but I didn’t know how.”
“Perhaps next time you should try ‘well met’ instead of half a bottle of witches’ brew.”
Pippa shakes her head, her hand tightening around Hecate’s wrist. “I was wrong. You have friends. You were my best friend.”
“That was a long time ago,” Hecate says softly.
“I miss you,” she says, and Hecate’s heart aches.
“No, you don’t,” she murmurs, carefully extracting her arm.
“Do to,” Pippa mumbles. “Every day.”
Hecate inhales sharply, and part of her wants to ask—if she means it, if it’s true, if there’s someplace they can go from here—but Pippa’s eyes are already closed, her breathing evened out, fast asleep. She thinks about what could be, in the morning—imagines that Pippa remembers, that she comes after her, that they talk and fight and reconcile and that their 20 year silent feud ends. That they become friends.
That Hecate ruins it yet again by wanting more.
Better, she thinks, to save them both the heartache.
Waving a hand over Pippa’s head, she murmurs a quiet spell, resisting, barely, the urge to touch her cheek, her forehead, to brush her hair back from her face. Instead, she slips out of the room, down three floors to her own, and packs her things. In the morning she’ll be gone, and all Pippa will remember is a nameless, faceless stranger.
Put a sentence + ship in my askbox and I’ll write the next 5 (or more) sentences.
