ava sat on the floor with her chin on her knee as she worked at the knots in her own feet. she wore an old pajama set she got at a thrift store and had a glass of wine on the bedside table beside her. she was being a little pouty, but this was absolutely because jules and bea were the only two around. she’d just handed over the same flash drive that jules had given her not too long ago. she was bitter, and she didn’t bother hiding it from them, they’d figure it out without too much time anyway.
“college is a fuckin’ scam,” says the woman that never went, instead choosing the military from a young age. truly, her past had everything to do with that choice. she couldn’t imagine facing that environment after how her encounter with a group of frat boys ended, “but lawyers are a bigger scam,” her bitterness shows loud and clear as she takes a sip of her wine before sighing and looking between bea [ @funkymysteriies ] and julián [ @likecaskets ], “sorry i’m a buzzkill tonight.”
just a few feet away from ava , beatriz lies on her stomach , propped up on her elbows as she leafs through some trashy tabloid magazine without really reading it ( she’s just looking at the pictures ). “ it’s justified , ” bea concedes with a shrug. it always sucks when months worth of investigation go down the drain on a technicality. “ i don’t think there was much of a buzz to kill in the first place. ” the loss hit them all pretty hard , so instead of a fun , light , giggly sleepover , their gathering is more of an bitter , gloomy , sulk party. “ we can fix that , however - ” she pushes herself up so she can reach her own wine glass. “ - by actually getting buzzed. salud , ” she toasts , tilting her glass toward each of her friends.
she’s on ava’s side , obviously. like any good partner , she was right there to back her play and hand over the flash drive to the prosecution. it was their hail mary , a last ditch effort to get justice. in that moment , she takes a sip , and pretends to savor the taste like she’s someone far more sophisticated who knows the first thing about wine tasting. “ yo sé que esto es una mierda , but barba’s just looking out for us. ” she knows the ada isn’t popular among this crowd , but thinks is still worth defending him. it was one of those cases where distance was practically impossible - they couldn’t separate their personal feelings from it. bea understands ava’s anger. but she knows the attorney’s hands are tied. “ estaríamos jodíos if he actually used it. ”
he’s bitter. of course he is. this whole ordeal has soured him from day one. evidence was delivered and not acted upon and it’s upset julián more than he’s let on --- and boy has he let on, especially to the both of them. he raises his glass in response to bea’s toast. her next words make him roll his eyes but he hides the worst of it by tilting the glass to his lips, not very much savoring the wine as much as gulping it down. he can always count on bea to be the devil’s advocate when it came to barba. not exactly what he wanted to hear in this moment but he lets it slide enough to sigh and return his eyes to his phone.
“i don’t get what the point of being a lawyer is if you just let scumbags walk,” he murmurs under his breath, scrolling down his timeline. okay, maybe he’s not ready to let this slide. “maybe he just saved the thing to cover his own ass. ever consider that?” he lets his eyes wander to the the memory stick that sits between them, considering. scheming. “what do you think would happen if the tape just... leaked?”
