Pretty Face, Pretty Lies
DISCLAMER: I DON'T OWN THE PLL SERIES AND THE SHOW. I HAVE NO CONNECTION WITH MS. SHEPARD OR THE WRITER OF THE TV VERSION.
SO BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE, I'M GONNA WARN YOU (THE ONE READING THIS RIGHT NOW) THAT I'M GONNA BASE THIS ON THE BOOKS BECAUSE I HAVEN'T WATCH THE SHOW FOR REASONS, LIKE I'VE ONLY BEEN HOOK TO THE BOOKS JUST THREE MONTHS AGO AND I DON'T THINK I CAN CATCH UP WITH THE TV SHOW (MAN, IT'S ALREADY SEASON 5 OR 6…IT'S A LONG JOURNEY FOR ME.) BUT I THINK I CAN COMBINE THE BOOKS AND THE SHOW AS LONG AS I CAN.
BY THE WAY, I'M KEEPING THE TV VERSION OF THE CHARACTERS WHEN IT COMES TO THEIR APPEARANCES BECAUSE I LOVE TROIAN VERY MUCH.
THIS IS BASICALLY AN AU.
CHAPTER I: THE CATCHER IN THE BAR
Spencer Hastings never lose to anybody.
Except for two people she knew, one was her older sister, Melissa, who was more like an archrival than a sibling to her. There was always a silent competition between the two of them even they were like four years apart. And yeah, that rivalry would always involve their parents' attention and affection. As if their only purpose here on earth was to be the most behaved daughter-no room for two, only one. To cut the trip to the memory lane short, Melissa had and would always win in the eyes of the folks.
Spencer lost again for the umpteenth time. She stopped counting even before Ali had magically disappeared in the picture-perfect, catalogue-ready town of Rosewood. She sighed, the thought of Ali gone missing for three years was a pain in the heart. Ali was a close friend, too close to know Spencer and the others' secrets. Ali used their secrets against them, leaving them no choice but to follow her bidding. Maybe Ali being lost was a huge relief in her-their-part, if you were looking at the brighter side of the situation.
She would always be the second best to two manipulative people she had ever known: Mrs. Hastings' clone, Melissa and Rosewood's heart-shaped face, blue-eyed darling, Ali DiLaurentis. Spencer fought the urge to throw up. It happened before, when she saw a crumpled flyer of the lost thirteen-year-old Ali. The former was attainable than the latter. She didn't mean anything with that.
Back to the older sister dilemma, Melissa had won the hearts of Mr. and Mrs. Hastings because she already graduated at University of Pennsylvania undergrad a year early and would enter Penn's Wharton School of Business. The Hastingses, decided to celebrate in Moshulu and Spencer left the said restaurant after half an hour. Spencer didn't need to be reminded of being the imperfect daughter. Maybe Spencer could use a booze to forget for a while that she wasn't what everybody wanted.
Spencer wasn't expecting to stop by the bar in Hollis' main street, Snookers. But then, she needed a drink or two and she couldn't do that at home even there was a collection of liquor displayed in the kitchen and a few in the basement. So Spencer would enter that hideous-looking bar if she really wanted to get wasted without the prying eyes of Rosewood Day's students. She didn't need a gossip column in the school's newspaper dedicated to an overachiever who chose to drink in an awful-smelled bar. She didn't need another reason for her parents to neglect her more because they were the kind of family who didn't tolerate minor drinking except when there was an occasion yet subtle drinks were only allowed.
Obviously, there was an occasion for them to drink. Maybe what Spencer really wanted was to be away from her family. She couldn't phone Andrew though because it could be worse than the last time.
Spencer wasn't surprise to see Aria Montgomery and her younger brother, Mike, inside the bar. Spencer believed that Aria changed a lot after returning from Iceland even though what Aria was doing still looked very Aria-ish. When Spencer, Aria and the others were still friends back to the summer of seventh grade (they weren't now), Aria was always the brave one to break the stereotype. Spencer smiled at herself, she kind of wished that someday she could be like that. She might not admit it to someone but she hated how Rosewood was transforming every single one of them into their lackadaisical-yet-party-throwing parents.
It was already half an hour when Aria noticed Spencer sitting five stools away from them. Spencer gave her a tight-lipped smile and a wave to be polite. Her former bestfriend returned the gesture by raising her drink, a small smile visible to her pink lips. Spencer sighed, wondering how the four of them became constant strangers after Ali's disappearance. She thought it had something to do with their memories together with Ali who randomly picked them as her new cliques.
Another half an hour had passed when the Montgomerys decided to leave the area. Spencer muttered a curse, blaming the awkwardness surrounding the two of them. She really wanted to talk again to Aria. She hadn't spoken to all of them since the disappearance, well except for Emily Fields, and she really wanted to have her friends back. But once upon a time Spencer Hastings didn't really want to talk to any of them because it was painful, if she wasn't stubborn to admit that.
She found herself getting bored. Her gaze glanced from the drink she was nursing to other people inside the bar. They all looked…older than her, old enough to be her mom and dad. It bothered her for a sec. She should have called Andrew instead. Would Andrew come and pick her up here if she asked him to?
"One scotch again, please." Spencer asked the bartender, in which the latter granted with a smile on his face. She thought the bartender-Julio-was the only thing who seemed happy to be in that rotting place.
"Are you 21?" a man's voice distracted. She couldn't make out his scent at first; he smelled like wood and raindrops combined into one. Spencer could see in her peripheral vision that the man sat in the vacant stool on her left. He was tidy and not old enough to be her dad. She swore she didn't notice him minutes ago. "Because you don't look like it?"
Spencer was surprised that someone noticed that she was barely 18. No one seemed to question her age when she entered the place. Most people used to tell her that her maturity was also seen in her physical appearance. She raised an eyebrow, facing the stranger. "I'm 23 actually." She lied, eyeing the guy from head to toe.
He was wearing an atrocious vest but he did have gorgeous eyes. Her heart thudded. Her stomach lurched suddenly. She could feel her blood rising to her cheeks. She didn't feel it before, even with Wren. Wait, who was Wren again?
Oh, Melissa's boyfriend who she brought with her in Moshulu hours ago. Spencer had a tiny crush on him for being so different to her aggravating sister's predictable boyfriend types. Now Spencer didn't care about British accent Wren because all she could see was handsomer Holden Caulfield.
Handsomer Holden Caulfield. She had no idea why she compared him to a J.D. Salinger character. Maybe it was the fact that she imagined the main character differently from the book, not reading into the description of his physical attributes stated by Salinger himself.
"My bad, thought you're on your 20," H.C. said, drinking the glass of scotch in his hand. "I'm Ezra, if you're creep out that a stranger's talking to you." H.C.-now, Ezra-shrugged and then brushed his long fingers in his short, dark brown locks, as if he was in a cliché 90's romcom movie, charming the hell out of every girl in the campus.
She was deciding if she would respond or not.
The hell with it. "Name's Spencer." She stopped herself from saying Jill instead, which wasn't a lie because it was her second name.
Ezra laughed playfully, not insulting. His eyes closed when he laughed. "Guess, they sometimes mistaken you for a boy." It made him look younger than he already was. She guessed he was a few years her senior.
She began to ponder what would Melissa or Ali think of her Bar Comrade.
"There was one time," answered Spencer, admiring Ezra's calm and icy at the same time, blue eyes in a subtle way. "No, I mean, two." She shrugged nonchalantly, as if they had known each other for ages.
"Don't worry, they had mistaken me for a girl once, too. I had a longer, dark hair before, you know, 90s kids." Ezra said, leaning against the counter. "They could have given me a free ride if they didn't find out the next five minutes."
Spencer let herself stifle a laugh. "Poor you." She slightly turned to face him, not to be obviously gawking at the hot and definitely older man. She wondered what he had under that monotonous vest. "Your face kinda look familiar." She lied, trying to expand the conversation because she was afraid that there would only be silence after the boy-girl name thing.
"Really? You know what, I thought I saw you in one of my dreams," the older guy responded and drank again from his glass, not entirely looking at her. It was an old-fashioned comeback but she lost her mind anyway.
Spencer flinched. She was sure that he was hitting on her and she was blushing extremely, wishing the earth would just swallow her. Thank God, it's dark in here.
She could feel her neck sweating but remain to sit up straight, hiding the fact that her legs were starting to feel wobbly. "Europe, maybe?" Spencer half-lied, arching an eyebrow. Their family loved to travel in different countries and she was so sure that there was only 4 or 5 countries left in the Hastingses' Europe checklist.
"You've been to Europe?" He asked with gleam in his eyes like a boy finding his dream toy car underneath the Christmas tree on Christmas morning. It was an adorable sight and Spencer tried to contain her fits of laughter but failed. "What?"
"Nothing." He raised his eyebrow at that. Maybe continuing to laugh wasn't helping her to get away with it.
"No seriously, what is it?" He was very persistent and it made her smile more. "There's something."
"Oh, don't mind me. I just remembered something." She wasn't having a déjà vu, a year from now maybe. She smiled and wished he wasn't reading her mind because she would die from embarrassment if he found out that she was thinking a year from now. She could imagine them walking to the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York (she had a feeling that he's into that stuff), holding hands, and then he would look at her and she would look back with the same intensity. ("Remember when we first met?" Ezra would ask, his fingers grazing her knuckles. Spencer would nod, a tiny smile on her lips, "Are you 21?" Then they would laugh until the people around them gave them hard stares.)
Then, she remembered she wasn't really 23 years old.
"Um, Spencer?" It was Ezra's voice. Oh, she mouthed. Maybe she was daydreaming too hard and forgot that he was still in front of her. "What are you thinking?"
"You." Shut up! Spencer Jill Hastings. You didn't say that! "Did I just say that?"
"Huh," There was a smug look on his face but she wasn't pissed at him for that. He looked even handsomer, to be honest. "I believe that you had just said that."
"I mean, what about you? What are you thinking?" She asked in a fake inebriated tone, pinching the bridge of her nose as if it would distract her from the unknown sensation creeping down her back. She was an actress (in her Rosewood Day's stage plays) and she knew she wasn't being convincing this time. Her gaze flicked from Ezra to the bar's residents and back to Ezra.
"Would I scare you off if I said that I was thinking about you, too?" He was definitely hitting on her. She giggled and sucked in her stomach when she felt his left hand on hers. It was cold and it didn't bother her even a bit. She could feel him moving his chair closer to hers.
She raised an eyebrow at him. "You're pretty fast there, Mr. Ezra."
He shrugged then chugged down his drink. "Heard that a lot in high school."
HOPE YOU ENJOY IT. THIS IS AN AU SO I'M NOT GONNA STAY THAT FAITHFUL TO THE BOOKS, I'LL ADD MY IDEAS. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT. I DON'T HAVE A PROOFREADER FOR THIS SO SORRY FOR THE MISTAKES. THANK YOU FOR READING :)
I KNOW THAT THEY'RE NOT A PAIRING BUT I STARTED TO SHIP THEM WHEN I ACCIDENTALLY WATCHED A FANMADE VIDEO OF SPEZRA. I RESPECT ALL OF THE SHIPS IN THIS FANDOM PLEASE NO HATING. THANK YOU.