Disclaimer: If I owned MIOBI then the last episode would have ended about a minute sooner than it did.
A/N: I could NOT just let things end the way they did in episode 6. I didn't try to undo it, I just… twisted it around a little bit :)
For the third time since coming to the Rock, Sasha was visiting one of his gymnasts in the hospital. At least it wasn't his fault this time, but it didn't make it any easier. It was funny, he'd always known that Lauren's heart was broken. He just didn't expect it to be literal.
The door to her room was cracked open, so he could hear her voice floating out. He was glad to note that she sounded happy. He'd expected her to be devastated, but maybe he wasn't giving her enough credit. She was a strong girl; she could overcome anything.
"So tell me everything I've missed," she was saying. "What's going on with Rigo?"
He was torn between knocking on the door to stop the conversation or running the hell away. He knew that name, Rigo. That was Payson's new boyfriend, the one Sasha wanted to rip limb from limb. But just as he settled on running away, Lauren said something that stopped him in his tracks.
"Oh my God, you slept with him didn't you?"
He was praying for a flat denial. What he got was a shocked "How did you know? I didn't even say anything."
"Please, Payson, I can read you like a book. It's written all over your face."
Something very strange was going on with Sasha's body. He was cold all over and he couldn't feel his fingertips; his head was spinning; he felt like he was going to throw up. He thought he might be having a stroke.
Payson was having sex. With her boyfriend. Rigo. Not Sasha.
Lauren's next words sounded like he was hearing them through water. "I can't believe you had sex. And before the Olympics. What happened to waiting until you had a gold medal?"
"I fell in love," Payson answered.
It was his worst nightmare. Payson having sex with someone else he could handle, if only barely. He knew it would be that way; he couldn't ask her to wait for something that might never happen. But for her to be in love with someone else? He never thought that would happen and he couldn't deal with it. Somewhere in the back of his mind he always believed that they would be together in the end. It was naïve and sentimental, two things that he had never been before, and it would be his undoing. Killing that dream would kill him too.
While he was paralyzed, the girls continued their conversation. "So how was it?" Lauren asked.
He didn't want to know. What he wanted most in the world right now was to be somewhere else, anywhere else, away from the harsh reality that he'd lost Payson for good, but he couldn't move. He couldn't even support himself. He had to lean against the wall by the door to keep himself from falling down, so he heard Payson's response.
"I was amazing. Better than I've ever imagined. I mean, I've…" she trailed off significantly.
Lauren snorted. "Well, duh. Who hasn't?"
He shouldn't know something like that about Payson, and he didn't want to know it about Lauren. Lauren was like a daughter to him, even though she was the same age as the woman he loved. The disparity in his relationship with the two girls reminded him anew of just how fucked up his feelings for Payson were.
"But what I felt with Rigo was a million times better. It was…" Her voice was rapturous, and she drifted off in a dreamy way, like she was too caught up in her memories to continue.
He fled. His legs were still too weak to walk so he stumbled like a drunkard, but he couldn't stay there. He couldn't listen to Payson rhapsodize about another man's love making. He couldn't stand by while she replaced him with someone else.
o-O-o
Everybody thought he was sick. It was a reasonable assumption; he looked like hell. How could he possibly explain the real reason?
He didn't know what to do. He couldn't stay at the Rock knowing that Payson was in love with someone else, but he couldn't leave either. He promised the girls that he would get them to the Olympics and he had to keep that promise. It was ironic; he had to leave because of Payson, but he had to stay because of her, too. Before he met her he wouldn't have hesitated to break his vow and leave. She made him a better man and that was torturing him. He wanted to drink himself into oblivion, but he couldn't do that, either. Payson wouldn't approve.
He was never going to get through the night. She wanted to redesign her floor routine, to show Coach Macintyre that she was more than just a safe choice, and that meant being alone with her for hours. It was a torture hand-tailored for him.
He didn't mean to bring it up. His plan was to bottle it all up inside, force himself through the next couple of months, and then get the hell out of Boulder as soon as the Olympics were over, but spending time with Payson brought him back to the days when he'd first fallen in love with her. Back before the kiss and the video leak, before things were awkward and people watched them like hawks, looking for the slightest indication of impropriety. Back when they talked about everything.
They were sitting on the floor together while he helped her stretch out her knee, laughing the way they used to in the beginning, and the words slipped out before he could stop them. "I heard you and Lauren talking today, in the hospital."
She didn't have to ask what he was talking about. "Sasha… I don't know what you want me to say here. I won't apologize for what I did. I'm glad I did it."
She wasn't even looking at him, but he couldn't take his eyes off of her. "I don't expect you to apologize. You didn't do anything wrong, I just… I don't even know why I brought it up. I shouldn't have."
"You're right. You shouldn't have." Her voice was like ice. He didn't know how to handle this Payson. She was different than the woman he knew. "You have no right to be upset because I slept with someone else. It's none of your business."
"That's not what I'm upset about," he snapped, letting her distant manner goad him into saying too much.
She glanced his direction for half a second. "Really? Then what exactly are you upset about?"
"You said you loved him." The words were whispered. He shouldn't have said them at all.
He surprised her enough to make her look at him, and he suddenly understood her coldness. She was trying to hide the pain, just like he was, but she was better at it. She whispered back. "I do."
She pressed her eyes closed and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes again she was calm. Mostly. "Are we really talking about this? We never have before."
"We shouldn't be talking about it now," he said, hating himself for opening the wound. "There shouldn't be anything to talk about."
"And that's never going to change. It's not like we're going to wake up one day and it'll be okay for us to be together. If I showed up on your doorstep on my eighteenth birthday you would still turn me away, and you would still be right to do it. As much as I wish we did, we don't have a future together."
It was his turn to close his eyes and take a deep breath. He wasn't sure if he picked it up from Payson or if she picked it up from him. "I know. But I don't think I can hang around and watch you with someone else. I know that I have no right, but I hate that you're with him."
"He's good for me, Sasha. I don't know if what I have with Rigo will last, but he is good for me. I know that whatever we—" she motioned between them "—could have together would last, but it's never going to happen, and I have to move on. I love Rigo, and being with him is helping me get over you."
He reached out a hesitant hand to stroke one finger down her the side of her face. "But who's going to help me get over you?"
She tilted her head so that her cheek was resting against his palm. Her eyes were streaming with tears, but there was no sob as she said, "I wish things were different."
"Me too, Payson." He pulled her in to lean against his shoulder and wrapped his arm around her. It felt so right but was so, so wrong. "Me too."
o-O-o
Wendy stopped the recording on her phone and slipped back through the shadows and out the back door. It wasn't until she was two buildings away that she allowed herself to stop and smile. The night had turned out so much better than she planned. She went to the gym to get proof that Payson was sneaking in and send it to Coach Macintyre, but this was so much better. Sneaking in would get Payson in trouble, but this… this would ruin her.
A/N: Probably a two-shot. A three-shot at the very most.