Who: Claire and Dean When: 5.12 Night, After the 'wedding announcement' dinner Where: Mitchel's Bar What: Drinking away feels. Rating: VERY high. Closed
Claire had gone back and forth about whether or not she was going to take Rory up on his invitation to dinner. It'd taken her a long time to come to a decision, especially after Dean let it slip that it was a 'thing for his daughter and her boyfriend- and his parents'. Only when she was already there and stuck in a weird sort of obligation did it come out that 'thing' was actually a wedding announcement.
For his eighteen year old daughter. And they were getting married in a week.
The dinner itself was mostly uneventful, though Claire's main focus of indulging Rory's curiosity about her kept getting distracted by how uncomfortable she was with a lot of the circumstances. Maybe it was just the whole strange time and age disparities apparently common in this place- that was going to take time to get used to- but she was having a difficult time not quietly judging.
Mary Ellen was barely legal, and the thought of jumping into a marriage at that age, regardless of the obviously head-over-heels fiance, raised every single one of Claire's bad-idea flags. Granted, all she had to go on was herself at 18. The ideals of a trauma-case wild child who trusted virtually nobody probably should be applied here. She realized that, not to mention all the shit-feels she had now, and for some reason it just increased her desire to drown the evening in a liquor haze first chance she got.
She could see Dean had similar ideas about half-way through the evening. That's how they ended up at Mitchel's, side by side at a completely empty bar. A bottle for each of them.
"This no-money thing is clearly going to kill me," she drolled flatly, pouring herself a second shot of bourbon. Eventually she might abandon the shot glass entirely.