Max / Caroline. She knows how to want well enough, it's the not having she's unfamiliar with.

sweet dreams are made of this

So she might have been lying when she said she didn't like kissing girls. Hell, she might have been lying when she said it had been 2009. It hadn't. It had been 2006 and 'liked it' was an understatement; sparks went off behind her eyes and the world settled into a new orbit. Liking girls was a part of who Caroline Channing was; concealing it was almost as consuming.

But now everything else is spilled out, cracked open, and she mended her left high heel this morning with duct tape and it's been eight hours on her feet and she's on her last pair of clean underwear. Caroline is poor and Max is poor and Max is also the best goddamn friend Caroline has ever had. Max is violent and encompassing, Max fills up the room when she enters it, Max has the best tits Caroline has ever seen. It's fucking indecent, she thinks crossly, that her flatmate gets breasts like that with no augmentation necessary. Caroline can be green with envy and crimson with desire for Max all at once, and black with despair and colourless with impotence.

Caroline thinks about Max sometimes, when she's in the tub and her flatmate is out of the house, thank you very much, and her hand strays between her legs. Thinks about the curves and those delicious lips, but sometimes she ends up laughing herself stupid over whatever crap Max has said at work that evening.

Caroline loves Max. Loves her like chocolate cupcakes and the dark wine colour of Max's beautiful mouth. Like tasting Max's delicious baking straight off Max's lips - and the thought of that alone is enough to stop her dead in her tracks.

But Max is her friend, and Max isn't even a trifle bit into girls.

Well, maybe just a bit.

There's a bar, and there's alcohol, and there's stumbling out into the icy night air, coats clutched tight to their throats. Arm in arm, mostly to keep each other upright, and the five blocks to their flat slides by, all fuzzy around the edges.

"Shut up!" Caroline giggles, her best friend murmuring in her ear as they meander towards their flat. And most of the time, she can bear having Max close, except Caroline's so fucking drunk and she can't stop looking at her.

"Will not," Max retorts childishly. "He was cute. Sexy, and totes yours for the fucking. Why the hell are you coming home with me, then?"

"Not wearing my sexy underwear," she replies. Max grins.

"So? I'm not wearing any underwear," she shoots back.

"Don't tell me that, I might not be able to control myself," Caroline jokes in their usual pseudo-flirting.

"As if that makes a difference, most of the time you can't keep your hands off me," Max serves back, and Caroline decides abruptly, fuck it.

"Agreed," she says brusquely, and backs Max against a wall.

"What the fuck, Caroline?" she asks, and Caroline considers it. What the fuck, indeed.

"Just let me do this," she murmurs, and kisses her best friend.

What she expects is that Max's lips are soft and taste like the $2 daiquiris they've been knocking back all night. What she is expects is that Max's curls are like silk through her fingers, and that Max's body against hers floods electricity through her veins.

What she doesn't expect is for Max to grab by the lapels of her coat, and kiss the living daylights out of her. For Max to reverse their positions and shove her harshly against the wall, to push one cold hand down under the neckline of Caroline's shirt.

"Shit!" Caroline yelps. "Your hand is fucking freezing!"

"Want me to stop?" Max asks.

"Hell no," Caroline replies, and kisses her again.

They manage to get into the flat, where the temperature is not much better than the outside. "Jesus," Max chatters. Any thought Caroline might have had of sex is gone. The thought of taking clothes off is untenable at these Arctic temperatures.

"Gonna go to bed?" she asks. Max nods, and just like that they're back to being friends, not possible lovers.

"Yeah," Max agrees, but: "You wanna come and check whether I am wearing any underwear?" Max asks, eyes dancing with amusement.

"Of course," Caroline says, and follows her into the bedroom. "Conserving body heat is only logical at this point, considering we can't afford to run the heating - Mmph!"

Max had slid her tongue into her mouth, and the door clicks shut behind them.