Work Text:
The third time Carol drunkenly calls, asks for some company from Zosia, she wonders how close by she stays. If she’s just holed up somewhere, at her beck and call. The thought makes her feel a little ill, but then again most things do these days. Hence the whole drunk in the early afternoon situation.
Whether she’s close by or not Zosia shows up. She always does.
“Drink?” Carol asks as she steps through the threshold.
It’s not really a question. Zosia will drink if she does, because they think that’s what she wants her to do. And then Carol will get drunk and they’ll suggest water, and she’ll fall asleep on the couch and wake up to Zosia gone again. It’s a pathetic little routine but it’s hers at least, and hey, end of the world and all who is she to care all that much.
“Thankyou, Carol.” Zosia smiles that superficial smile as she hands her a glass.
“Mhm,” she hums in response, already halfway through with her own glass and sinking into the sofa. “Any tidbits about this one?” She deadpans, poking the bottle of vodka with a sock clad toe.
“This particular brand uses soft winter wheat sown in October and harvested in August, which provides it with four additional months of growth in comparison to summer wheat.” Zosia smiles as she rattles off the words, “it is a very nice vodka.”
“Hm,” Carol huffs, “all tastes the same to me.”
“Many people feel this way.” Zosia nods solemnly.
“And you?”
“We can taste the difference.”
“Right. You know everything.” Carol drains the last of her glass, reaching for the bottle again, “probably have the guy who invented it in there with you.”
“Actually-“ Zosia begins.
“That wasn’t a question.” Carol interrupts.
She hates that Zosia’s mouth immediately snaps closed. She really just won’t speak if Carol doesn’t want to listen. It’s unsettling and it feels cruel. She doesn’t want to sit and feel empathy for a body snatcher, no matter how pretty the body they’ve snatched may be.
“Did you have a different topic of conversation in mind?” Zosia asks then.
Carol runs her fingers through her hair, already too drunk for this kind of formal talk. “What is there to talk about.” She murmurs into her glass. “There’s no news, no new films or books. Are you people still making art even?”
Zosia shifts beside her on the couch. It’s almost funny how easily her emotions are to read considering she probably has the worlds’ best spies in her head somewhere.
“We are first focusing on rebuilding, there is a lot of work to be done.”
“Right. That’s why you’re sat drinking with me.”
“This individual is here to-“
“I know.” Carol sighs, “I get it.”
“Perhaps you might find fulfillment in taking up that role for now?” Zosia suggests. “You are a writer, after all.”
Carol snorts. Her head is already fuzzy. She’d usually stop here, practice a little restraint. But fuck it, what is there to be restrained for. There’s nobody left to impress. She has the whole world sat in her living room right now, may as well give them a show.
“A writer, sure.”
Zosia frowns at that. “You are a writer, Carol. A very successful one, in fact.”
“Sure. I sold a bunch of shit, that makes me successful.”
“Many of us found great enjoyment in your work, Carol. We hope you can find comfort in that.”
“And Helen hated them.”
“We would not use the word hate.” Zosia’s face softens. “She was proud of you, Carol.”
She can’t do this right now. The liquor is beginning to seep into corners of her brain she’d rather not touch, and she won’t cry in front of the whole world.
“What did people enjoy then.” She says.
“Many women found them to be a form of escapism, imagining the perfect man.”
“Right. One that fucked them regularly and didn’t play video games all day.” She sighs. “What a demographic to appeal to.”
“Many women felt more than just a sexual enjoyment in your books, they felt an emotional connection to them.”
“Right.” She laughs, a harsh noise. “Remind me, what happens in chapter 27 of the first book?”
“Chapter 27 is well known in the fan base as the chapter that is the most sexually explicit across the series. Raban performs sexual acts such as-“
“Okay.” Carol interrupts. “I get it, Jesus. But people read my books for that chapter. That’s what I’m saying.”
“We are sorry, Carol.” Zosia tilts her head, “we know those chapters were not enjoyable for you to write.”
“What about you, then.” Carol asks, slipping past tipsy and into drunk enough that her inhibitions are lowered. “You find them enjoyable to read?”
“Many of us did, yes.”
“But what about you?” She probes.
Zosia looks down at her drink. She still has half of it left.
“This particular individual does not feel arousal at the words, no.”
Huh. Carol’s eyebrow twitches upwards at that.
“So you guys can feel arousal then?”
“Our bodies react to stimuli, yes.” Zosia nods.
“Sexy,” Carol deadpans.
Zosia gives a shy smile, sipping at her drink.
“What then?” She asks.
Zosia cocks her head in question.
“What stimuli?”
Zosia shifts slightly. “We aren’t sure this line of questioning is helpful.”
“Or do you not know? He hardens against her, tongue hot against her ear,” she quotes, “doesn’t get your motor running?”
Zosia just smiles. It’s as good of a no as the word would be.
“Doesn’t do it for me either.” She slumps backwards. “What should I write then? What gets you going?”
“Perhaps some water might be helpful, Carol.”
She laughs, ignoring her. “You’re meant to be the original Raban anyway, right? That’s the fucked up role you’re playing?” She turns her body to face her. “Don’t you wanna know what I would have written you doing?”
Zosia swallows, the corner of her mouth curling up into a nervous smile. “Carol-“
“You’ve got slender fingers, soft.” She says, too far gone to care what she’s even saying, “maybe three of them would feel better than Raban’s throbbing dick ever could.”
Zosia’s eyes widen but there’s something that passes over her face, a flicker of something, like she momentarily loses her composure. Interesting.
“I bet you have soft lips, too.” She continues. “Is kissing a stimuli that does it for you?”
“Would a kiss make you happy, Carol?”
That throws her off, a little. But she tries not to let it show on her face.
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“The act of kissing triggers a hormonal response in many-“
“Yes, but you.” She insists. “What about you?”
Zosia’s head tilts in a barely there nod. Good enough. And fuck it, she doesn’t care anymore. Maybe if she kisses her she’s kissing a billion people, but she’s drunk and lonely and Zosia’s pupils are blown in that way they get when turned on so she leans in and Zosia doesn’t pull away.
Kissing her is good. It’s more than good. And maybe she shouldn’t be surprised but it’s hard to think of Zosia as human sometimes. She isn’t, really, she supposes, but she kisses like she is. She nips at Carol’s bottom lip and leans forward, but she doesn’t initiate anything further. Doesn’t put her hands anywhere.
Helen used to initiate, before. But Zosia won’t, and Carol won’t either. Not yet, anyway.
She pulls back, running a hand through mussed hair.
“So?”
Zosia seems to shift where she sits, breaths coming quickly. But it isn’t long before she schools her expression back into one of composure, plastering on a smile.
“Would you like something else, Carol?”
She rolls her eyes, can’t stop herself from doing it. “I want to know if kissing is an adequate stimuli.”
She’s pushing it now but she doesn’t care. She’s turned on and if she doesn’t find herself between Zosia’s thighs in the next five minutes she might combust. Still craving pussy even at the end of the world. She supposes conversion therapy really is a scam.
Zosia frowns, thinking, almost like she’s taking stock of her own body. It’s creepy, but unfortunately doesn’t do anything to make her less attractive.
“This body is experiencing arousal, yes.”
“You’re wet?” Carol murmurs, voice low.
Zosia narrows her eyes but she nods. “Yes.”
It’s too composed of an answer and that pisses her off. She wants Zosia to lose control. To feel so much in her body that she can’t give anymore stupid diplomatic answers.
“Tell me, what does Lucasia do to Raban in chapter nine of the second book.”
Zosia swallows, and Carol swears she’s turned on. Even with a billion people in her brain, she can’t fight primal base desire. Even if she’s evidently trying to.
“Lucasia teases Raban in a crowded room.” She says.
“Uh huh.” Carol nods, her fingers trailing along Zosia’s thigh. “What else?”
“She- hm,” Zosia grits her teeth as Carol’s fingers reach the space where the seam of her slacks sits at the apex of her thighs, pressing hard against her. “She touches him. Until he relents and drags her away to their bedroom.”
“Yes.” Carol nods. “And that didn’t turn you on?”
Zosia looks at her through hooded eyes. She doesn’t answer, but the stutters in her breathing quicken as the pads of Carol’s fingers push harder against her.
“But this does?”
“Carol-“
“I’m asking questions,” she murmurs, “I thought you people wanted to answer any I might have.”
“We do but-“
“So?” She shifts closer, so she can sit almost in Zosia’s lap. “Is this turning you on?”
“Yes.” Zosia hisses out, eyes slipping closed.
She moves her hands up, finally, undoing the button of her slacks and slipping her hand beneath cotton. When her fingers find slick heat she’s almost surprised to find that she’s completely soaked. She figured Zosia’s body would react, but like this? Fuck, maybe she should’ve done this ages ago.
“Carol.” Zosia murmurs in a voice Carol hasn’t heard before, a low whine that makes her name sounds like a prayer.
“What?” She grins, “you want something?”
“We-“ but the sentence cuts off into a moan before it can even really start, two of Carol’s fingers pressing into her insistently. She won’t hear we while she’s fucking her. She’s drunk enough that she can forget, she wants to stay able to forget.
“You want this?” She hisses against her ear, curling her fingers and eliciting another whine. “This makes you happy?”
There’s no diplomatic comeback this time, no even toned Carol, just a low moan as pleasure begins to overtake her. She waits until Zosia is shaking, head back in the couch cushions and little gasps leaving her, and then she stills.
Zosia looks at her, really looks, with this raw kind of need, and it sets Carol aflame from the inside out. Her composure has been completely overwritten with desperation and she looks like a person, a desperate writhing mess, but so so human it makes her want to cry.
“Did you want something?” Carol asks then.
“Carol-“ Zosia murmurs, hips moving in search of something to grind against.
“What?”
“Yes.” Zosia finally says, eyes closing. “Please, touch me.”
She’s sure the me is for her benefit, because they know it’s what she wants to hear, but she doesn’t really care because it works. She curls her fingers roughly and Zosia shatters.
She doesn’t give her a chance to recover, doesn’t want to. She can’t hear her speak again after listening to the way she sounds when she falls apart.
She unbuttons the shirt Zosia wears with deft fingers and presses a needy kiss to the swell of her breast, heaving against the constraints of her bra, before she moves lower. She pulls her slacks down with the ferocity of a doomed woman, which yeah, she supposes she is at this point, revealing dark cotton that’s soaked through. She mouths at them, relishing in the way Zosia’s hips buck towards her, before pulling back and sucking a mark into the plush of her thigh as she draws her underwear down too.
Getting her mouth on her feels like a religious experience. For a blissful moment she doesn’t care, she doesn’t care that the whole world is fucked and that she’s pretty much done for, she just wants more. She wants Zosia to fall apart against her a hundred times over until she can never say Carol’s name evenly again. She wants to suffocate against her, with her moans the last sound she ever hears. She wants, and it’s so much better than feeling completely alone all the time that her chest almost bursts with the overwhelming desire.
Zosia’s moans pitch up above her and she feels fingers weaving their way into her hair, gripping tightly. It’s a chain reaction, Carol moans against her and Zosia falls apart for the second time that evening, a breathless gasp and a tightening of her fingers punctuating the silence.
She moves back and drains the last of her vodka, washing away the taste by sucking her fingers clean. Zosia is still slumped against the sofa and she moves to sit beside her, pouring herself another glass. If she sobers up right now she’ll hate herself, and she wants to sleep without that nightmare to deal with.
“You good?” She asks Zosia.
“We are perfectly fine, Carol.” Zosia says, breathing still affected but otherwise sitting up like she didn’t just come twice over in twenty minutes. “Would you like us to assist you in any way?”
She doesn’t move to touch her but the question is evident in her gaze. No, she doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want someone other than Helen to do anything to her.
“No.” She murmurs into her drink. “Can you- can you leave actually.”
Zosia frowns. “Yes.” She says. “Is there something we can do to make you happy, before we do?”
She takes a deep breath, eyes slipping closed. Whatever sex filled haze she was just in is fading, and she just feels sick all over again. That’s all she feels nowadays, but the respite was good while it lasted she supposes. She drains another glass. May as well try to salvage the evening.
“No.” She says. “I’m good.”
“Have some water, Carol.” Zosia smiles. And then she’s gone, all because Carol asked.
Helen wouldn’t have left, not even if she’d asked. She loved her in a way that nobody else ever could. Even though she’s technically one of them or whatever, a billion people that love like Helen means nothing. It was that just Helen loved her that mattered. And she’ll never have that again.
—
She wakes up on the sofa again. Zosia gone, again.
Nothings changed.