Everything I Need

Part 15

The song is faster and louder and Charlotte finds herself giggling as she struggles to keep up. It’s one of those songs that has a slow build and Shela encourages Charlotte to turn around and face her. Shela’s cheeks are pink and flushed, her eyes glassy, and Charlotte wonders if those few shots she took helped. Shela pokes her tongue through her teeth in amusement when the drop hits and Charlotte jumps. She takes her hands and encourages her into a twirl until Charlotte’s back leaning against her front. Her hands take Charlotte’s and Charlotte giggles when Shela moves her arms into ridiculous dance moves before wrapping them around her. Shela keeps nosing into the back of her neck and it makes Charlotte wish they were in her bed, as much as she wants to stay right here.

“Having fun?” Shela whispers when the song changes again but she doesn’t move to let go, doesn’t untangle them so that they can leave the crowd. Charlotte nods and likes the squeeze Shela places around her middle. “Feeling okay?”

Charlotte hums and she stays in Shela’s arms until her feet hurt, until Shela turns her around and asks her if she wants a drink. Charlotte almost says no, too content with what they’re doing to need anything else. But she’s sweaty and thirsty so she nods instead. Shela leads them to the alcohol and mixes Charlotte a drink. It’s sweet and spicy and Charlotte hums as she takes another taste. She can already feel it going straight to her head.

“Shela ri!” someone shouts and Shela rolls her eyes before turning around to find Sana coming towards her. She looks much more drunk than she had before and she collides into Shela, jolting Charlotte back too. “We need two more for Kings. Come play! Charlotte, you too!”

Shela goes to speak but Charlotte finds herself shaking her head to say it’s okay. Shela gives her a searching look but Charlotte just takes her hand and follows after Sana. She stands beside Shela at the table and ignores the shocked looks from the other girls around them. The game is dumb but she keeps up and probably drinks more than she should. She thinks she’s possibly having a good game because luck seems to be on her side and she doesn’t drink nearly as much as Jinyoung and Sana’s girlfriend, Scarlett.

“s**t, Kavell,” Harper says, still drunk but looking better off than she had before. “You know how to hold your booze.”

Shela looks like she’s ready to agree. Charlotte’s sure it’s just because she’s the only one here who drank a ton of water and lined their stomach with food before she came out. Still, her eyelids flutter and Shela takes her hand once everyone has dispersed. Charlotte’s limbs feel soft and heavy and she stumbles into Shela as Shela guides her back out into the hall.

“Where are we going?” she slurs and tries to ignore the people quite brazenly making out inside the open bedrooms they walk past. Just thinking about them makes Charlotte’s heart pound for something she’s sure she’ll never get.

Shela chuckles and turns to her, reaching for her keys out of the pocket of her jeans. “I think someone needs to go to bed.”

The music still pulses loudly around them and Charlotte wonders how anyone will ever sleep with everything going on. She assumes that the party will probably last into the early hours. She’s used to having to fall asleep listening to music when parties like this happen. Charlotte wonders how much Shela used to drink because she doesn’t seem nearly as bad as she has when Charlotte’s looked after her before. Her eyes are just glassy and dark. She has the use of all of her faculties as she manages to get the door open. She leads Charlotte inside, handing her a bottle of water as soon as she sits down on her bed.

“Drink that,” she chuckles and then gets a bottle of water of her own. She doesn’t even slur her words.

It still feels weird for Shela to be taking care of her when she’s like this, even after the past couple of weeks when looking after her is all Shela’s done. Charlotte drinks the water and then smiles dumbly at Shela. The alcohol just makes her feel warm and sleepy. She doesn’t even feel sick but she knows that she probably will in the morning.

Her dumb smile drops when Shela moves closer and kneels in front of her. She brushes the hair out of Charlotte’s eyes and Charlotte gets stuck staring at her lips.

“How’d you handle all that booze so well?” Shela ponders out loud. “You barely look like it’s affected you.”

Charlotte licks her lips and lets her eyes flutter over Shela’s face before speaking.

“I have exceptional internal organs,” she tells her and Shela shakes her head in amusement. Charlotte smiles and reaches to hold the forearm of the hand that rests on her thigh. “I have exceptional external organs too.”

That makes Shela laugh out loud and she reaches up to brush Charlotte’s hair from her eyes again. “So modest,” she whispers. “Do you want to go to bed?”

Charlotte nods and notices the exhaustion suddenly filling her body past the warm, drunk haze. “I really do.”

She takes her shoes and jacket off as Shela gets up and locks their bedroom door. She grabs her PJs before silently heading for the bathroom. Charlotte doesn’t think twice about shoving off her jeans and the silk blouse Shela had told her she looked pretty in. She changes into a plain white t-shirt and manages to pull her b*a out through the sleeves. She’s mentally punching the air when Shela appears from the bathroom in her t-shirt and sleep shorts.

“Go brush your teeth,” she instructs as she falls into Charlotte’s bed instead of her own.

Charlotte does as she’s told, stumbling gracefully over to the bathroom, and when she comes out, Shela’s already half asleep in her bed. Caramel eyes watch her as she walks over and her body shifts to make room for Charlotte behind her. Charlotte climbs into the space against the wall and snuggles into her pillows.

When an arm wraps around her waist, she doesn’t mention it. It already feels like it belongs there.

Shela buries her head into Charlotte’s hair and that’s the last thing she remembers before she falls asleep.

//

For a moment when she wakes up, she forgets where she is. She’s not sure why she’s awake but when her ears finally tune in to her surroundings, even as her eyes struggle to open, she realizes that she can still hear the music of the party along the hall.

It’s frustrating and annoying and she’s pretty sure that it’s the reason she’s awake until she suddenly remembers where she is. It catches her off guard at first, because something feels different about waking up beside Charlotte to what it usually does. There’s no face buried into her neck, no head resting heavy on her chest. Charlotte feels odd against her and when she realizes why it sets her entire body alight with embarrassment.

Because Charlotte’s not against her, or beside her.

She’s underneath her.

Shela feels a sudden rush of guilt as she takes note of the positioning of their bodies. Charlotte lays on her front, flat against the mattress, the majority of the pillows that were once supporting their heads now shoved off the mattress and littering the floor. Shela feels her heart rate increase as she carefully pulls back and quietly gasps at the way her body fits into Charlotte’s. She’s almost lying completely atop her, her front against Charlotte’s back, her arms pressed either side of her body. The worst part of it all is that her leg is between Charlotte’s, wedged tightly into the apex of her thighs enough that she can feel things she shouldn’t be able to feel.

It makes her breath hitch in her throat and she has no idea what to do. Her brain doesn’t know how to function when she can feel the soft warmth of Charlotte’s body against her own. The heat between Charlotte’s thighs makes her aware of the deep, burning ache afire between her own legs.

She knows that she has to pull away. She knows that the right thing for her to do is to get up and finally sleep in her own cold bed for the first time in days. She should leave Charlotte to sleep comfortably as she struggles to find rest in her own bed, shouldering the burden of what’s happened by herself. But the blankets are tangled around their legs, and she doesn’t know how she’s going to escape this absolute embarrassment without alerting Charlotte to it too.

All she wants is to be able to retreat silently and try to forget that this ever happened. She wants to remember this far in the future and be able to smile that she did the right thing. She wants to keep Charlotte safe and she doesn’t know how to do that when they’re in such a predicament.

She decides to bite the bullet and get it over with like ripping off a Band-Aid. She leans up onto her hands and shudders uncomfortably as the move shifts her closer. She grits her teeth against the feeling before trying to swiftly move away.

It doesn’t work when the thighs on either side of her own clench tightly and refuse to let her go. She freezes at the feel of it and glances down at the body beneath her to finally notice how tense it is. It sets her skin on fire with hope and arousal and she lets her breath hitch as she tunes her body into Charlotte’s. She presses her thigh down harder, just to test the reaction.

Charlotte shudders and Shela gasps as she turns her head and buries it into the pillow beneath her. The sudden power she holds is intoxicating and the kind of drunk she feels right now is richer and more concentrated than any alcohol could ever make her. Charlotte’s wet against her thigh and Shela presses her face between tense shoulder blades to stop herself from doing something stupid like moaning.

Charlotte’s shaking beneath her and she’s so warm. Shela can’t stop herself from moving up to pant against her neck because the sudden craving for Charlotte’s skin is like a fever. She gasps back every moan that threatens to leave her into a shudder and tries to analyze the moment to gauge her next move.

Strong, pale thighs refuse to let up squeezing her own and the wetness between Charlotte’s legs just seems to increase. She wants this, and Shela gasps in the truth of that realization when Charlotte’s hips shuffle back seeking more contact. She needs this and Shela gives another experimental push against her until Charlotte lurches helplessly forward, her hands gripping the sheets either side of her head and holding on tight.

Shela feels like this is the thing she’s needed to do to look after Charlotte all along. She realizes that there’s nothing she wouldn’t do for this girl underneath her and it scares her as much as it makes her feel at peace. She lowers her body to Charlotte’s and gives another, harder rock of her hips, loving the way that Charlotte lets out a sharp, desperate gasp into her pillow.

“Shela …” she starts, pulling back to turn around but Shela drops her weight against her so that she can’t move. She lets out her own gasp against Charlotte’s neck and pants there as her hands fit their way around her body to squeeze encouragingly at Charlotte’s hips.

“Let me take care of you,” she begs into her skin and Charlotte whimpers helplessly, nodding when Shela rocks more boldly against her.