Kiss Me, I’m Drunk
Disclaimer: I do not own, or claim ownership for (obviously), any of the characters appearing or mentioned in this. It is not for profit, as I would worry about the sanity of anyone willing to pay for something like this. :o)
“It was the west of times, it was the blurst of times,” Nenene announced dramatically, waving her mug in a manner which made the creamy mixture of coffee and Bailey’s Irish Cream that half filled it nearly slosh over the sides.
“Uh…I don’t think so,” Maggie admitted hesitantly. Half an hour ago, she had knocked softly on the front door to the apartment of Nenene’s apartment to return a book she had borrowed the previous week, only to find the door unlocked. She had slipped in quietly with the intention of leaving the book somewhere obvious, but had hurried upstairs when a sharp thump had echoed through the place.
It had been something of a shock to find Nenene lying on the floor, legs still draped over her chair, a cup of coffee upset on the carpet next to her.
When Nenene had stared hazily up at her for several minutes before barking at her to go pour her a fresh cup of coffee because she’d spilled this one, it hadn’t taken long for Maggie to recognize the girl’s fairly clear state of intoxication. Particularly given the subtle clue of the bright decal across the front of her rather ratty tee-shirt, proudly declaring, “Kiss Me, I’m Irish”. This had sent two small circles of pink into Maggie’s cheeks as she had hauled the author off the floor and half-dragged, half-carried her downstairs to the couch.
However, what had at the time seemed a fairly reasonable and considerate idea, to stay with her until she fell asleep and couldn’t hurt herself any longer, now seemed…less so. Had, in fact, from the moment she had brought Nenene that fresh cup of coffee, at which point Nenene had shoved the bottle of Bailey’s at her and instructed her to “dump a bit it; tastes great in coffee, whatever it is”.
“What’re you talking about?” Nenene demanded, whirling on the other girl and nearly falling off the couch. “It’s a great beginning!”
“Maybe you should start your new book tomorrow.”
Nenene glared blearily at her.
“I’m in the zone right now! I’m unfalliable! I’m on fire! Not literally; that might hurt.”
Maggie nodded and tried very hard to smile convincingly.
“Yeah, I guess it might.”
At that, Nenene slumped back onto to cushioned back of the couch, and her eyes slid shut.
Maggie sighed, and then shook Nenene’s shoulder gently.
This idea was immediately proved a bad one when the smaller girl slumped to the side, and landed with her head directly in Maggie’s lap.
“Uh…” Maggie began, utterly failing to suppress the blush that she knew was creeping over her face to make her vaguely resemble a tomato. “Nenene? Are you asleep?”
“Shu’up,” Nenene slurred. “Of course I’m asleep.”
“Oh. Okay.” Maggie paused for a moment. “It’s just…you’re in kind of an awkward place.”
“What’s the password?” Nenene demanded, her voice muffled by Maggie’s leg.
“Uh…what?”
“If you want me to move, you have to say the password!”
“What password?”
Nenene looked up abruptly, and shot her a cunning smile.
“It’s not a password if I tell you!”
“I guess you’ve got me there,” Maggie admitted, fighting back a smile.
“You’re warm,” Nenene noted happily, snuggling back against Maggie’s lap. “I like it here.”
“Uh…thanks?”
“You’re pretty, too,” Nenene grinned up at her. “You have pretty legs.”
“Th-thanks.”
“They make a good pillow. Soft, yet firm. I don’t know how that works,” she concluded, running a curious finger over the other girl’s thigh. “But it does.”
“Yeah,” Maggie agreed in a murmur, wondering if there were actually flames shooting out of the top of her head, or if it just felt like it. “It sure does.”
“You’re warm,” Nenene said against her leg. “Did I say that?”
“I think you did,” Maggie admitted.
“Okay. Just telling you, it hasn’t changed.”
“I still feel pretty warm.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing,” Maggie said quickly.
Nenene murmured her approval, and soon after fell silent.
Too silent.
“Nenene?” Maggie called softly. “Are you asleep this time?”
No answer.
“Oh, no,” the dark-haired girl sighed.
After several helpless moments of shifting ever so slightly to try to slide out from under the sleeping girl, Maggie gently lifted Nenene’s head off of her lap, stood quickly, and settled the other girl back onto the couch.
She sighed in relief, and started hastily to the door, before glancing guiltily back over her shoulder at the brunette’s decidedly uncomfortable-looking position, legs still hanging off the edge of the couch, neck bent at a rather strange angle.
Knowing even as she did so that she would regret it, as was so often the way with good deeds, Maggie shuffled, defeated by the wrath of her own conscience, back to the couch. Then she gathered Nenene carefully into her arms, and set her down on her back. As a blanket draped over the back of the couch caught her eye, she picked it up and spread it over the sleeping girl.
This accomplished, she made a move to straighten back up…
…only to encounter resistance in the form of two arms tightening about her neck.
“Where’re you goin’?” Nenene demanded sleepily.
“Uh…well, I thought you were asleep, so I was going to go home.”
“But you’re warm,” Nenene whined.
“Do you want another blanket?” Maggie asked.
Nenene glared up at her.
“No; I want my Maggie-blankie.”
At these words, Maggie’s eyes, which had widened considerably when she found herself in a drunken author’s death-grip, began to approach the size of dinner plates.
“Your…what?”
“My Maggie-blankie,” Nenene replied. “That’s when Maggie gets under the blankie with me and keeps me warm.”
“Uh…Nenene…that’s not a good idea.”
“Of course it’s a good idea! I thought of it! Now, do it, or I’ll take my shirt off and sing show tunes!”
“Okay, I’ll do it,” Maggie agreed hastily. Really, there was every chance that Nenene would forget her threat before she could carry it out, but there was also a good chance that she would carry it out before she could think better of it.
Blushing brightly, Maggie pulled the blanket back and climbed onto the couch next to Nenene.
“This is nice,” Nenene noted happily a few seconds later as she proceeded to snuggle up.
This is embarrassing, Maggie noted in silent agony. Michelle would laugh at me for a year. Anita would laugh at me for two years. Drake would look pointedly in the other direction. Junior would ask why. Yomiko would read a book. Nancy would read it over her shoulder. John Woo would fly around aimlessly and crash into things.
At this point, she ran out of reactions to guess, and was left rather desperate for another distraction as Nenene sleepily nuzzled her in a decidedly awkward place a little below the neck and a little above the solar plexus, murmuring as she did so,
“Wubble, wubble, foil, and rubble…”
“Uh…Nenene…” Maggie began without any very clear idea of where the sentence was going, blushing brightly enough that she was sure her face qualified at this point as glow-in-the-dark.
No response, save for more sleepy murmurs of decidedly plagiarized-sounding phrases.
“Why am I getting so embarrassed?” Maggie murmured with a silent groan. “It’s Nenene – she’s my friend.”
“And she wants a kiss!”
Maggie gave a startled shout, and jumped so violently that she nearly threw both her and Nenene to the floor.
“What!” she exclaimed as soon as she had regained her balance and regained Nenene’s balance for her.
“I said, I wants a kiss! I want a kiss. Something like that.” At this, Nenene lifted her head slightly and glared at Maggie. “You drunk or something?”
“No,” Maggie replied quietly. “Go back to sleep, Nenene.”
“Gimme a kiss first!”
After several seconds that were nearly the death of Maggie by sheer embarrassment, she managed to push the other girl away and drag herself into a sitting position.
“I can’t do that.”
Nenene struggled to sit up, and pouted.
“Why the hell not?”
Maggie gaped helplessly. Why not!
“Because I…you…you like Yomiko, not me.”
As soon as she’d said it, she groaned inwardly at her own words. Why had she said that? Out of the millions of perfectly good reasons not to kiss a friend in the process of being blitzed out of her mind – and a purely platonic friend, at that – why had she used that one? She mumbled a quick word of thanks to the heavens that Nenene was drunk, and would neither understand nor remember.
When she glanced back at that same Nenene, she frowned, bewildered.
The older girl had drooped forward slightly, a thoughtful, slightly morose expression on her face.
“Yeah, I like Yomiko a lot,” she finally admitted. “But I like Maggie a lot, too.”
Then, as Maggie attempted to recover from the act of choking on her tongue, Nenene turned to her, expression mildly curious.
“Who’re you again?”
“I-I’m Maggie,” the dark-haired girl replied, too bewildered to say anything else.
Nenene smiled, shifted to face her, and began to tip forward.
“That’s a coincidence,” she noted as Maggie caught her and set her upright again. “Maggie’s the name of this girl I know. You kinda remind me of her, too. She’s tall – really tall – and she’s got these really pretty eyes, and she used to carry me to my coffee when she still lived here. And she’s really cute when she blushes,” Nenene concluded with a wicked grin as Maggie went a shade of red even brighter than before.
“Uh…really?” Maggie murmured, looking away.
“Yeah,” Nenene replied, staring off into space with a fond half-smile. “I think I might really like her a lot. Whenever I think about my friend Maggie, I get a lot less depressed because Yomiko’s been on a short visit with Nancy for a month now and I think she might stay for another one.”
“I’m sure Maggie’s probably really glad to help,” Maggie said quietly, staring down at her hands.
Nenene turned to regard her carefully again.
“Did I tell you that you look a lot like her? If it wasn’t for the fact that you’re not reading right now, I’d say you were her. She reads a lot,” the shorter girl confided very seriously.
“Oh,” was all the response to this that Maggie could choke out.
After another long silence, during which neither girl moved at all, and all the viewers at home began to wonder if this was for dramatic effect, or if their internet fansubs had seized up again, Nenene yawned widely.
“I’m sleepy.”
“Then you should go to sleep,” Maggie said, already reaching for the blanket that had become tangled around Nenene’s legs.
“’Kay,” Nenene agreed, flopping back onto the couch with surprising acquiescence, as Maggie shook out the blanket and draped it over her.
Oh, not again, she groaned internally as, again indeed, the other girl’s arms shot out to cling tightly to her neck.
“Don’t go away,” Nenene murmured, trying for menace but achieving only a sort of childish petulance.
Maggie obediently peeled the blanket back again and settled onto the couch, this time managing not to flinch and merely enjoying the warmth and comfort of physical contact when Nenene snuggled comfortably against her shoulder, half climbing on top of her. After all, even if it was completely out-of-the-blue for Nenene to be saying things like she was tonight, it certainly wasn’t the first time they’d fallen asleep in some state of cuddling or partial cuddling. Of course, Michelle and Anita were usually somewhere to be found within the tangle of arms and legs, too, but overall, this wasn’t all that bad.
Especially now that Nenene had stopped talking. And there was really something to be said for the absence of Anita’s toe in her ear.
I guess there’s no point in fighting it, anyway.
This was to be Maggie’s last fully-formed thought before drifting peacefully to sleep.
Nenene groaned painfully as a ray of pale morning sunlight streamed through the window, aggravating the already considerable pounding in her head.
Had she forgotten to close the blinds in her bedroom last night?
No, that couldn’t be; she would have had to open them first. And she doubted she would have done that if she was trying to work; natural light and fresh air distracted her. Threw her off her game.
Or something like that.
She attempted to struggle into a sitting position, only realizing after this attempt failed completely that she had been lying facedown.
Hmm. The couch seems really lumpy today, she reflected absently, pushing herself up.
Then, as her eyes lit on the sleeping form of Maggie Mui, whom she had seconds ago been quite happily nestled against, she frowned, trying to remember any tiny detail about last night after that fourth mug of Bailey’s and coffee which, she seemed to recall hazily, contained much more Bailey’s than coffee.
Maybe that had been a bad idea.
Maybe she should have just kicked the guy who offered her a complimentary bottle, telling her that a bit of the stuff would prompt inspiration in no time.
Maybe, if she had, she would have some memory of Maggie’s having arrived at some point last night, and exactly what point that was.
Goddamit. She should have known that that guy’s act of goodwill would end up causing her pain and embarrassment. Usually what acts of goodwill ended up doing. Exactly how much embarrassment this one had caused, she would have to make sure to ask Maggie later.
“Thank God it was her, at least,” Nenene muttered with a tiny smile.
There were incredibly few people she’d trust to see her like she’d no doubt been last night, and she’d ultimately prefer no one, but if she’d had to choose, Maggie probably would have been high up on the list.
Somehow, there was just something about the tall, quiet girl that filled Nenene with a calm reassurance that this incident would go no farther than the two of them.
This was not something she wanted Michelle, or Anita, or Drake, or even – especially – Yomiko to find out about.
And anyway, Nenene concluded with a soft laugh, if she'd been as much of a terror as she suspected she had, Maggie'd probably spent the whole evening being monumentally embarrassed.
And an embarrassed Maggie was one of the cutest things she'd ever seen.
Well, maybe she'd look back on this someday and laugh. Not any time soon, but someday.
She took one more look at the girl’s face, relaxed and peaceful in sleep, sighed, and then shrugged, and then snuggled back against her shoulder and pulled the blanket back over both of them, her mouth curving into a contented smile.
End Notes: This was inspired by…uh…well, we’re still not sure. ‘We’, by the way, means my boyfriend and me. Yes, he is partially to blame for this. And I’m sure he shall be partially to blame for subsequent instalments too. :o)
And now, to move on to my usual listing of everything I can find wrong with the story on a quick read-through of the finished product! Well, I guess the main thing is that I still feel a little (okay, a lot) shaky with Maggie’s characterization and general tone. Nenene was drunk, so she wasn’t supposed to be in character. And that’s good, because she’s a LOT more eloquent than I’ve written her. But I guess people aren’t known for eloquence when they’re drunk. :o)
So, yeah; this was just a fun bit of silly fluff which is going to turn into a bit of a series, since I really, really want to try the same premise with Drake and Michelle. It’s not an original premise, by any means, but it certainly is fun. :o)
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