Disclaimer: I own nothing, I just like playing with the characters.
So I started this out as a one shot, but now I'm not so sure ... so I'm going to leave it up to you guys. Review and let me know if you would like to read more or if I should just leave it as a one-shot!
We can't trust Garrett! Call me! Aria stared at the text message she had sent Spencer, according to her phone Spencer had gotten the message, but it had been almost an hour and she still hadn't responded yet. What if she was in trouble? What if she had been with Garrett and he had hurt her. "No," Aria muttered to herself, forcing herself to stop pacing back and forth across her room, worrying wasn't going to help her at all. She needed to focus on something else, anything else.
Unfortunately the only thing to focus on in her house at the moment was her parents yelling at her brother. Mike ... Aria sighed when she thought about her younger brother, he had promised her that he was done breaking into houses, he had looked her straight in the eye and lied to her. Jason had said that Mike probably meant his promise when he made it, but the more Aria thought about it the more she knew that was wrong. Mike had lied to her, and he had known that he was doing it.
After everything that she and Jason had done for Mike he had betrayed their trust and he didn't even seem upset about it. Jason who had cared enough about Mike that he hadn't called the cops when he caught him trying to break into the house and Aria who hadn't told her parents about it ... had Mike even said thank you? Aria shook her head, answering her own silent question.
She turned to her desk where Jenna's candle holder sat and she shuddered. Jenna had been pretty quiet over the last few months, but that did not make the girls trust her any more than they ever had and it worried Aria that the blind girl was involved with the cop that they had dragged into the A drama. No good could really come from that. Aria shook her head again, she couldn't think about Jenna because that made her think about Garrett which made her worry about Spencer again.
She quickly turned toward her dresser and opened one of her drawers, pulling out a tank top and a pair of black yoga pants. If she was going to spend the rest of her evening in her room worrying and pacing she might as well be comfortable. She changed out of the dress and heels she had been wearing for the dinner that never happened and pulled on her comfortable clothes. She was pulling her hair into a messy bun when her phone beeped from her bed, letting her know she had a new text message. She ran to her phone and picked it up, hoping the text message would be from Spencer, but it wasn't.
For once Aria's not the problem child. I wonder how upset Mommy and Daddy would be if they found out just how comfortable Pookiebear was with calling her former teacher "Ezra." - A. As if the message itself didn't shake Aria enough there was an attachment at the bottom of the message, Aria opened it to see a picture of her and Ezra kissing in his classroom at Rosewood high school. So much for baby steps, if her parents ever saw that picture Ezra would never be allowed near her, if her father had his way her boyfriend would end up in prison and she would never be allowed to leave the house again.
Aria quickly deleted the text message, she knew that didn't really matter, whoever A was still had the picture, but it made her feel better to know that the evidence was no longer on her phone. But what was A getting at? What did she want? The girls had decided that A was now bent on keeping the girls quiet, but Aria didn't need to be threatened to keep quiet ... was that text even a threat? Aria shook her head and grabbed a hooded zippered sweatshirt that she had taken from Mike before all the drama started and threw it on over her tank top, suddenly her room had begun to feel claustrophobic, she needed to get out of her house and go ... anywhere.
Her parents were still yelling at Mike so it was fairly simple for her to sneak out the front door and into the night. The wind had picked up and it had started to rain. "Just perfect," Aria muttered to herself as she started a slow jog down the street. She wasn't as athletic as Spencer or Emily, but jogging had always helped calm her down. And she was amazed when she realized that even though the rain had seemed like a foreboding thing when she started her run she actually liked it.
She turned left at the end of her street, heading toward Spencer's house. Aria wouldn't go in and she was trying to convince herself that she wasn't worried about Spencer she figured she could run by the house to see if her friend's bedroom light was on. It wasn't, but that really wasn't that strange. Aria kept running for a few more minutes until she felt her phone buzz from the front pocket of her brother's jacket. She stopped running forward, but continued to jog in place while she pulled the phone out of her pocket to read the text.
Run, run as fast as you can, but you will never outrun me - A. Aria gasped and looked around the empty, dark street around her. A could see her, that bothered her more than anything else. She was alone, in the dark, and someone who was trying to terrorize her and her friends was close enough that they could recognize her. Aria gasped, this was scarier than any other text she had ever gotten from A because she was alone, not close to her house, and no one knew where she was.
No one except A that is.
Frightened tears began to fill Aria's eyes and she gasped, trying to gulp in some air, but it didn't work. No matter how hard Aria tried to breath, it was like she couldn't. She felt like she was drowning and about to pass out. She should keep running, to head back to her house, but she couldn't run if she couldn't even get her lungs to work properly. So instead she sat down on the curb to her right and lowered her head between her legs, trying to control her breathing and stop herself from hyperventilating. The rain that she had liked when she began her run now felt too cold, too harsh, as she began to imagine how her friends and family would react when her dead body was found the next morning.
Or maybe she would turn out like Allie. Maybe they wouldn't find her body. Maybe it would be years before they found her body and when they did find her they would realize that she had been buried in her back yard the entire time. Aria sobbed, trying to keep herself from thinking thoughts like that. Scaring herself to death was not going to help calm her down and get her out of her current situation. She just needed to calm down.
She took several more deep breaths, trying to force her lungs to start working again and calm herself down at the same time. But it wasn't working, nothing stopped the tears that were now streaming down her face or the feeling of terror that was clenching in her stomach. She was so stupid, she lived in a town where you couldn't trust anybody and she had decided to go for a run. By herself. At night. She really was an idiot. "Aria?" someone called through the rain, at first Aria was not sure that she had heard it correctly, she was convinced that her mind was just playing tricks on her, but then someone grabbed her shoulder. She screamed.
"Aria?" the voice asked again, soft, almost soothing, as if trying to quiet her scream just by saying her name. "Aria, are you okay? It's just me." Aria turned her head, expecting to see the elusive A, but instead she was met with Jason DiLaurentis's concerned face. She sobbed and threw herself into his surprised arms, clutching at him as if he could save her.
Jason silently wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer to him, hugging her to his chest as she sobbed his name out in what sounded like relief. He pulled the jacket hood off her head so that he could run his hand through her wet hair as his other hand rubbed her back and he made soothing noises, trying to calm the girl down. When his family had lived in Rosewood he had always acted as if his younger sister and her little friends had annoyed him, but now that Allison was gone and he had grown up a bit he was able to admit to himself that there was a part of him that had always liked the girl who was now crying in his arms.
There had always been something special about her. Something different. Throughout her seventh grade year he had watched the way she would silently rebel against Allison's regime, unlike the other girls in the group. And he really had liked the pink streaks in her hair, they were one of the few things he really did remember from his pot-filled summer before his sister disappeared. "Aria?" he whispered after a few minutes, "are you okay?" Aria's hands balled around the fabric of his t-shirt, pulling him closer to her as if she was worried that he was going to pull away. She shook her head and continued to sob into his chest.
Jason nodded and pulled her even closer to him before he let go of her with one of his hands. Aria whimpered at the loss of contact and Jason smiled, pleased to know that she didn't want him to let go of her anymore than he wanted to let go. "I'm not going anywhere," he whispered, looping his free arm under her knees and carefully standing up. He really hadn't planned on leaving her, but he had decided that it would probably be best to get inside, he didn't want either of them to get sick. So he carried her back to his house and through the front door that he had left open when he went out to see if she was okay. He kicked the door closed behind him and sat down on the couch, cradling her in his lap for a few more minutes as her sobs and tears finally stopped.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, reaching out and trying to wipe some of the tear stains off of his shirt, "You're all wet."
"So are you," Jason said with a smirk, not letting go of her even though she wasn't clinging to him as if her life depended on it anymore. "Now are you going to tell me what you were doing outside my house crying in the rain or am I going to have to guess."
Aria sighed, she knew that she should be afraid or nervous. She and her friends weren't even sure if Jason had anything to do with Allie's death. And as Spencer had pointed out, the field hockey stick had been at their house, and it was kind of convenient that Jason didn't remember anything from that night. She should be running from his house screaming and calling the police, but for the first time, really since the girls had started getting texts from A, Aria finally felt safe. She lived in a town where the people who should be trusted - the police, fellow students, therapists - couldn't be. So why shouldn't she be able to trust someone who shouldn't be trusted? In a weird way, it almost made sense, everything was backwards, and nothing was what it seemed. Noel had seemed safe and he wasn't. Garrett had seemed safe and he definitely wasn't. Ezra had always felt safe to her, but now even he didn't feel safe. Toby had seemed dangerous and so had Caleb, but both of them turned out to be safe. Why couldn't the same thing happen with Jason? It really did fell like it made sense.
"Aria?" Jason asked, he was fine with waiting for her answer, but he had been watching her face as she thought over everything that was going on in her head and she looked upset. The last thing he wanted was for her to start crying again. "What's going on?"
"I just wanted to feel ... safe," Aria whispered, smiling up at him when she realized that she was telling him the absolute truth.
"Safe?" Jason asked, raising his eyebrows and leaning away from her so that he could really look at her. "From what?"
"From everything," she whispered and then before she knew what she was doing she had leaned in and placed a soft kiss on Jason's lips. She had expected him to pull away, to say that she was too young for him and that he didn't like her like that. She had expected him to protest and say something about her parents, her friends, or how the entire town seemed to be walking on egg shells around him. What she had not expected was for his arms to tighten ever so slightly around her and for him to kiss her back. The realization that he was kissing her back should have been enough to cause her to stop kissing him, but instead it was the encouragement she needed to wrap her arms around his neck and sit up properly in his lap so that neither of them had to strain their necks to kiss each other.
It was Jason who pulled away from her. "What about your boyfriend?" he asked, his breathing a little ragged as he rested his forehead against the younger girl's.
"What?" Aria asked, slightly dazed from the kiss they had just shared. "Who?"
"Your teacher?" Jason asked, a smirk resting on his lips. It became a full smile when he saw the shocked look on Aria's face. "Really, did you guys think you were being sneaky? I was in the same room with you guys for less than an hour and I picked up on it." There was a hint of pride to his voice, as if he wasn't scolding Aria for her behavior, but proud of her for pushing the envelope. "I mean, I don't really think he's right for you, but I don't understand why you're kissing me." He stopped himself from saying not that I mind. He didn't want to rush things, but he really did want to kiss Aria again.
Aria sighed and played with her fingers for a few silent minutes. "He's not ..." she started after a while. "He's not ..." she was about to say safe, but another word slipped out of her lips before she could stop herself. "you." And then before she could stop herself, before Jason could even ask her to explain what she meant she began to explain. "I mean, you and I ... we know each other. A lot about each other actually. I don't have to explain why I do certain things to you, you already know because you understand me. I think it's the same way for you. And I was just ... I was scared tonight and I needed someone to hold me and tell me that everything was okay, and ... I wasn't hoping to find you, but I did. And ..." Jason's hand slipped under her chin, gently forcing her to look up at him.
"And what?" he asked, his blue eyes searching her face for the answer that she seemed to not want to give him. "What Aria?" he asked again, this time he sounded a bit more urgent.
"And you make me feel safe," she whispered. This time it wasn't Aria who captured Jason's lips, but the other way around. The kiss started out soft, but soon became harder, more urgent, more filled with need. Aria was enjoying it more than she would care to admit the next morning, but she was beginning to realize that there was a difference between how she felt when she kissed Ezra and when she kissed Jason. With Ezra she felt happy and loved. But with Jason she felt safe, needed, loved, and almost as if she wouldn't know what to do with herself if he pulled away. She gasped into his mouth when she realized that she needed him as much as he seemed to need her.
The next morning she would regret opening up to him and kissing him. She wouldn't know what to do when she saw Ezra or her friends. Her friends would be angry at her and worried for her and try to convince her that Jason was a bad guy, someone she couldn't trust. She knew all of this and yet, she couldn't bring herself to pull away from him. She would deal with tomorrow ... tomorrow. But for now she would continue to kiss Jason and she would finally feel safe.
And that's all I've got for now.
Let me know what you think.
Reviews = Love.