Title: Small Crimes
Fandom: Thoroughbred
Disclaimer: All characters, story lines, etc. belong to Joanna Campbell, Harper Collins, and the other illustrious authors.
Rating: PG
Pairing: Brad/Samantha
Setting: Oh, sometime during the earlier years of the Giant Gap, I would think. AU, obv.
A/N: I'm sorry this had to happen. The idea got in my head the other day and kept rolling around in my head and making me feel awful, and then listening to Damien Rice finished it off. At least I kept it short! This is a one-shot third-person narrative from Brad's perspective, attempting to figure out why he finds himself in a bad relationship with Sammy. It's not very kind to Tor, but then, I never was in my Sammy fic ;-)
He called it a "game" in his head, but if he had ever truly thought it through he could never have explained his real motivations. Games have winners; this did not.
He knew Ashleigh only ever wanted the horses to be her own. She wanted to be their great protector; a Mother Earth figure that could encircle them and keep them safe. He had been born and bred as though to stand in her way.
The part where he started taking her friends had been her idea, anyway. No one made her marry Mike and give him half her property, bringing him into the contract with Townsend Acres. And the way he had gotten control of Glory had been so convoluted he could only reason that Ashleigh iwanted/i something and someone to fight against. He had long ago decided he was happy to oblige.
The only person in her life he had ever had to try to pursue was Sammy.
Sammy had never dug into and covered herself in Townsend Acres like Ashleigh had. Ashleigh was a part of the landscape; Samantha just loved its transients. She loved Pride and his fleeting legend. She loved the snatches of her mother's memory that floated through her and her father's minds day in, and day out. She loved Ashleigh's moments of brilliance, enough to wait out her stretches of poor decisions and fretful self-sabotage. Samantha moved through life as she always had, giving herself to things that couldn't last.
He did not have to put himself much in her way. He only said some of the right things, often at the wrong times, and he knew that part of it was because at least he wasn't Tor, but whatever it was, it was enough.
iEnough for what?/i was the question, practically voiced, he began to repeat to himself the first time he and Sammy spent the night together. It wasn't like there was some cosmic scoreboard where, at the end of the day, he and Ashleigh would have made some kind of mark. He wasn't sure he believed in things like that, but he wanted to have a reason.
He couldn't just keep wrapping himself up into their lives. Sooner or later, threads were going to start breaking. Life isn't kill or be killed; he understood that much about celestial reasoning. He had no right to treat it like it was. He didn't know what would happen if he did.
Maybe being in a relationship—if he could call it that—with Sammy would be what could take him away. Maybe being with someone who seemed always ready to flee from trouble would provide him the opportunity to leave, too.
Maybe he didn't really want out.