AN: Hey, so it's me! Sorry I haven't update A Bleeding Heart in a month but hopefully, this oneshot makes up for it? I wrote it back in August, post 7x06, and then let it sit until right now. Ooops. It's AU but I hope you'll give it a chance anyway and read it.
Thank you, muffins, for all the time you spend reading my crappy writing. It really means everything to me.
Disclaimer: I own nothing besides my own writing.
It started out harmless. Absolutely harmless. She didn't want to be home, in the house she'd left at eighteen, only to be forced to return to a matter of weeks ago. Or rather, she didn't want to be in the barn. She was haunted by the memories built there, memories that were now proof of failure, memories with someone who'd never love her.
She hated love. Or rather, love hated her. The only love she'd ever known was painful and stabbing and brutally exposing.
She'd fallen in love and she'd been rejected, time and time again. He didn't love her. He would never love her. He couldn't find it in himself.
His heart would always belong to her best friend.
She told herself that was okay. That she knew that going in. She knew that Caleb would always love Hanna. She knew the blonde would always love Caleb.
She just didn't know it would hurt this much. To love and be unloved in return.
Granted, her only other experience with love was the polar opposite. Love was just about the only thing that held them together, through the ruthless tribulations that defined their lives.
Through the disapproving parents, depraved step-sister, anonymous threat trying to kill them both at every turn, the corrupt police beat, the drug addiction, the mental hospital stays and -A team stints.
The love Spencer had shared with Toby had survived it all.
But it couldn't survive one pregnancy scare.
After it was over, after the relationship that had been a constant in her life for four years straight evaporated in a matter of minutes, she'd skipped classes for the next two days. Her roommate thought she needed a psych evaluation. No way was Spencer Hastings missing classes, for any reason under the sun.
But her red rimmed, puffy eyes were enough to halt too many evasive questions. No one wanted to mess with a heartbroken girl.
She'd cried herself to sleep for three weeks. She'd felt like her heart was missing from her chest. Like it had been torn out, like Toby had taken it when he walked out the door.
He'd told her he'd always be there for her, no matter what. That she could always reach out if she needed anything.
They both knew it was nothing more than a formality. He could say it in her ear for days, she'd still never call. She was Spencer Hastings. Even with a gun to her head, she didn't ask anyone for help.
She'd thrown herself into her studies after that. Every second of every day was consumed by books and notes and lectures and projects and study groups.
She never gave herself a free second, because if she did, if she stopped moving, stopped thinking, stopped working, she'd break. She'd break and she didn't know if there was any glue strong enough in this world to put her back together again.
But that could only last for so long. She could only keep herself busy, preoccupy her mind, for so long, until the truth became an inevitable force staring her dead in the face.
She was alone. She was completely and entirely alone, much like right now.
Only now the pain was worse. She had two heartbreaks instead of one and getting through the next moment was sometimes so easy, so effortless, it was as if she'd never met either one of them.
But some moments it was violent and searing and suffocating and that was how she ended up here.
Hanna had asked if she was okay. She'd said she absolutely would be. And she will.
Because even fresh from losing Caleb, she didn't feel half as bad as she did a year out from losing Toby.
That was what Spain was really about. She went to Spain to get away, get her mind off the blue-eyed boy she'd loved with all her heavy heart.
She'd found comfort in countless strangers. Well-to-do young men had taken her on date after date, to the movies, to the bars, to museums, to the nicest restaurants in Georgetown.
All the nights had ended exactly the same. With her on her back, shutting her eyes and ready to scream out the wrong man's name. Hours would pass and each time, the stranger would leave and she'd be left to lay there and wonder where she and Toby had gone so wrong, where they went off track, when they became so unrecognizably different.
It was really him that made her go to Europe.
She'd sat down to read the student online newsletter. She'd opened her laptop and clicked on her browser, already in session from where she'd left it.
Her Facebook feed automatically refreshed itself and before she knew it, she was staring at a photo of Toby and another girl. A pretty, darker skinned, long haired beauty with a huge smile and arms that coiled perfectly around the police officer.
Her police officer.
But that wasn't what disturbed Spencer. That wasn't what put an ache in her gut involuntarily or took her breath away. No, the look in Toby's eyes was what did her in.
His oceanic orbs were so full of light, of laughter, of desire and adoration and bliss and it stung her deep inside because she knew exactly what that look meant. He was in love. He was head over heels in love.
She knew, because he used to look at her like that.
The photo haunted her, even after she unsubscribed from seeing Toby's posts in her feed. It stayed with her every second of the day and it wasn't healthy, the impact it had on her.
She was supposed to be happy. Toby was happy and if he had found love in someone else, she should be happy for him. After all that he'd struggled to overcome, after everything he'd been through, how could she not feel joy, just at the fact that he'd found someone?
But that someone was supposed to be her and she hated herself for still feeling like this, for still loving him so much that it consumed her entire being, that it shook her from her toes to the crown of her head. She hated that she couldn't put her own feelings aside to be happy for him, be happy that he was happy.
They say, if you love someone, let them go, but it's so hard to see them without you. It's so hard to see them go on with their lives, thriving, as if you never existed, as if you weren't a vital part of their lives for years on end, as if they literally had washed you away.
There was someone else there now, standing where she'd once stood, and it was like the first night all over again. She thought she might die because there is no way it was healthy to still feel like this. To still feel so much for someone you were supposed to be done with. Someone who was clearly done with her.
A little voice cried out in her head that this wasn't right. That there had to be a glitch somewhere.
Their breakup wasn't meant to be permanent.
She needed to get away. To escape, go somewhere else, somewhere that he didn't linger, that he wasn't with her every second of the day, somewhere she didn't associate with him.
She thought a year abroad would help as it would surely bring about some new experiences, explorations, friendships, knowledge. Or some foreign lovers, hard liquor and heated one night stands.
That isn't what happened. Instead, she saw her best friend's newly ex-boyfriend. And it'd all gone downhill from there. Without meaning to, she'd developed feelings, formed a stronger bond, an undeniable attraction.
It all led to a very complicated relationship. It led to a lot of damage done to her friendships. It led to a new fracture in her heart, a new insecurity in her head, a new ache in her chest.
Maybe she deserved it. Maybe this was what happens to girls who choose to touch what's not their's.
Maybe life really did work like that. Maybe Melissa had been right all along. Maybe she did shop out of other people's carts. Maybe she was naive in thinking people weren't possessions, you couldn't call dibs on them.
Seems like things work out better when you play by those rules.
Melissa got Wren, the real catch he is. Hanna got Caleb. Yvonne got Toby. And she was alone.
Maybe it was better that way.
She'd wound up at the Radley Bar, exactly where she had been only a number of days ago. When she'd only been there to support an alibi, for the murder she'd just aided and abetted. When she'd managed to halfway screw a stranger in the elevator, just like the poised, classy young woman she was raised to be.
To hell with classy and poised. To hell with being dignified and esteemed. To hell with being a Hastings. Everything she'd built in the last few years had dissipated in her time since returning to her nightmarish hometown. Her job was gone, her relationship was dead and over, her friendships were rocky at best.
Her self-worth was shot.
That was what she wanted back the most. Her pride. That was the one thing that had never been taken before, not even when she was at her lowest of all lows, when she'd swallowed handfuls of pills, only hours apart, when she'd laid on the forest floor and contemplated her own death, her lack of ambition to continue, her own broken state of mind. Not even then did she really feel as humiliated as she did right now.
Not even sitting inside the old, creaky, outdated sanitarium did she feel this ashamed.
She knew this wasn't just about Caleb Rivers. He didn't have this kind of clout over her, no matter how much his betrayal had stung. No, this was about every last portion of her heart that had been chipped away, little by little, piece by piece, in the last three years.
This was about every moment of impact that she wished she could take back, change, do over again, forget.
There were so many. So many things she said that she wished she'd just swallowed, so many things she wished she'd thought of saying, so many things she should have done differently, so many things that she could barely count them anymore. Some of them she could still feel, as if they happened yesterday. They still gave her that horrendously wonderful feeling in her chest, like she needed to close her eyes and take a deep breath, like she needed a moment to collect herself.
Horrendously wonderful, because those feelings meant she was still alive.
She'd gone through periods where she couldn't manage to feel anything at all. Periods where she have killed to be embarrassed or angry or devastated.
This wasn't one of those times.
No, she was here, inside The Radley, claiming a seat at the end of the bar, because she didn't want to feel anything anymore.
Feeling is what got her into this mess in the first place. Feeling for her best friend's ex, feeling for the boy crying in the ally, feeling failure, feeling scared or anxious or livid.
The worst thing was, she was mostly feeling those things towards herself.
She set out to numb any feelings left inside her, any part of her still crying out.
She ordered drink after drink after drink after drink. Until things were spinning, everyone was blurry, her head felt disconnected from her body and everything was so free. It wasn't okay or right or good or happy but it didn't matter because she was so free. She felt liberated, like there was nothing she couldn't say or do or conquer. Like no problem couldn't be fixed if the Mighty Spencer Hastings put her mind to it.
She felt completely out of control and totally in control and everything was bright and funny and she was so smart, she thought, so fucking brilliant for having the idea to come here tonight.
Until her bliss started to wear off.
She had no clue when the bartender stopped serving her, when she became too intoxicated to get more, when she became such an obvious mess that anyone without a ten mile radius could tell she was absolutely shitfaced drunk and her life was in shambles.
She didn't mind so much though. Not at first. At first it didn't matter that she was no longer being supplied endless amounts of alcohol to mend the holes burned in her by those whom she'd been reckless enough to love. She was free. She was powerful. She was brilliant. She was Spencer freaking Hastings.
But pretty soon, being Spencer freaking Hastings didn't make her feel powerful or brilliant or free. It made her feel disgusting and used and worthless all over again, and when the emotions all came rushing back, so hard they practically kicked a crater into her chest, she'd simply slumped forward and put her head in her arms.
She couldn't do this, she thought as every last thing she'd felt in the last twenty-four hours came rushing back to her, now magnified even greater. She'd been wrong. She couldn't do anything.
She was a failure.
She knew it was probably wrong to view what happened between her and Caleb as a personal failure, but how could she feel any differently.
She'd fallen for someone who couldn't find it in them, anywhere deep inside, to love her. That was failure, plain and simple.
She was torn out of her thoughts by the voice of someone so familiar, so close to her heart she'd once thought he'd consumed the entire organ.
"Spencer," Toby called out, shocked to see her there. "Spencer?"
He was closer than she thought, as he moved her hair out of her face, glancing at her inebriated profile, trying to decipher how drunk she must be, to be lying with her face pressed against her arms, in the middle of town.
She'd never really been drunk in front of him before. She'd never really wanted to be.
Spencer never drank out of happiness. Not while they were dating, at least.
No, drinking to her was something she did to consume the void life always loved to leave her with. The universe hated her, she'd pissed it off at some point, and it literally despised her.
But whenever she was with him, his presence intoxicated her enough sober. She didn't need to add in alcoholic beverages to feel important and mighty and powerful with Toby. He made her feel like that whenever he looked at her.
Perhaps her entire predicament was his fault. For making her feel so good, for literally being the reason she turned into the person she was, and then ripping himself out of her life. Perhaps if he had been awful or rude or cruel, losing him would have been a relief.
She knew even in her inebriated mind that was bullshit. Caleb had been all those things from one time to another and the last thing she'd felt right now was relieved.
Whatever her facials were showing, they revealed something was very wrong. Spencer lifted her face out of her arms at a snail's pace and Toby's eyes instantly softened, as he grew further acquainted with her disheveled appearance.
"Spencer," He whispered, his voice rightfully concerned. "What happened?"
She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. What could she say? That she had been cheated on? That she had been so blind for so long and only now was she waking up to the truth? That she was hurt and all she really wanted was his arms around her, no matter how impossible that was? That no matter who she was with, in the end, somehow, she always ended up here. In front of him, with her heart involuntarily in her hands, desperate for the sanctuary only he could provide?
She couldn't articulate any of this to him, not because she didn't think he'd understand, but because she didn't. She didn't understand how everything in her life had gone so wrong, so fast.
She felt embarrassed, mortified, humiliated, humbled. She'd stepped on a lot of toes, damaged a lot of relationships, caused a lot of tears and ignored of lot pressing issues, all for a guy who in the end, betrayed her.
He didn't ask another single question, didn't press her for what could possibly be running through her head, didn't even inquire about how much she'd drank.
Instead he did the only thing Toby Cavanaugh had ever been capable of doing when it came to Spencer Hastings. He put her well-being first, whatever that entailed.
"Can I get her tab, please," the young cop requested from the bartender. The employee muttered a gruff reply, somewhat begrudged that Spencer was still there, completely bombed and turning away business.
The brunette eyed Toby warily as he signed the receipt and slipped his card back inside his wallet.
"Thank you," she whispered, nearly inaudible. But he caught it. And he understood exactly what she meant too.
Thank you for being there for me, even now, even after all this time, even after the mountain of issues that came between us.
A lot had changed between them, a lot of irreparable damage had been done. But it was clear to Spencer now one thing had remained. Their mutual and completely unbreakable loyalty to the other.
"You don't have to thank me, Spence," Toby whispered back, his eyes almost hurt that she could have ever thought otherwise, thought there was a chance that he wouldn't do anything he could to help her.
Because this is what they did. This is what they would always do. They stopped each other from spinning off the edge.
Toby wasted no time, half-carrying Spencer to the car, and even going as far as to buckle her in. She didn't mind for once. The alcohol was still coursing through her veins, strong as an anchor dragging her down to the bottom of the ocean. In her impaired state, she would have allowed him to carry her in his arms.
Which was exactly what he did, when they arrived at her house. He didn't even hesitate to reach down and pull her against him, chest to chest, front to front, face to face.
The way he'd always held her. The way he knew she liked to be held.
The way Caleb never had.
He walked gently into the barn, careful to jostle her as little as possible, in order to avoid erupting a vomit hurricane.
He laid her down on the edge of her bed, smoothing his hand through her hair once, his eyes searching her face. It was in those fleeting moments that it was so easy to imagine they were still together. So easy to picture them as a couple again. It felt like water, slipping through her fingers, no matter how hard she tried to grasp it, hold it in her palm and never let it go.
He felt like a hazy cloud of fog, surrounding her at times but never, ever within her reach. She missed him. She missed him so much. She missed him even when he was right in front of her. She missed him especially when he was right in front of her.
Nothing she said or did could make the hurt go away. He was with someone else, and she wanted more than anything to be happy for him. After all, she'd managed to love someone else too. But a loud part of her cried out that even on her and Caleb's best day together, she would have chosen him.
She could feel it now, as he studied her face once more, that she was really losing him this time.
He was engaged to someone else. Somewhere between finding Hanna and researching Rollins' "disappearance", he'd dusted off the ring and asked for Yvonne Phillips' hand in marriage.
He was officially confirming to everyone in the world that he'd found his other half.
And somehow Spencer had to make her heart accept that that person wasn't her.
And suddenly, like a red-hot knife searing her from the inside out, boiling the words out of her throat, she shamelessly spit out everything that was coursing through her mind.
"Toby," she rasped, as he knelt down by her feet, unlacing her boots expertly. To her utter shock, her voice was a lot clearer than she anticipated. "Toby, I'm so sorry."
Her words caught him off-guard. "For what?" he asked gently, curiosity overtaking the calm demeanor he was exuding.
"For everything." She forced herself to take a deep breath before summoning the courage to ramble out everything she'd been trying to say for the last three years. "I'm sorry I didn't want to have the baby."
Toby's hands stopped working, dropping her foot against the bed. He was looking at her more stunned, more bewildered, than he did finding her smashed inside the bar.
"Spence-"
"I was just-I was so afraid. I didn't want to screw up-I didn't want," she cut herself off, stammering uncharacteristically. "I was petrified," she finally admitted.
It took Toby three entire minutes to utter the words, "Of what?"
"Of ruining someone else's life. Of disappointing you," she whispered, looking him dead in the eye, her confidence now completely unparalleled, even for Spencer Hastings.
If it wasn't already obvious to him she was out of her skull, it was blatant now.
"Disappointing me?" he repeated in disbelief, staring at her, point-blank. "Spencer, you're not making any sense."
"I thought that if I had the baby, if I ever had any baby, that I'd do to them exactly what my parents did to me," she admitted, tears gathering in her eyes. "Come on, Tobes. You know me. You know me better than anyone, still. You've seen firsthand how dark and screwed-up I truly am. Okay, there is something not right inside of me. We both know that." He opened his mouth to adamantly protest, his eyes widening, but she continued before he could speak. "I could never have a child," she whispered, her voice cracking like a piece of glass, thrown on the hardwood floor. "I want one. But I just," she shook her head, breaking eye-contact now. "I could never damn an innocent baby to a life with me."
And just like that, the awkward rift, the elephant that had sat between them, in any room, at any time they were together in the last three years, was gone. The floodgates were open and all the hurt and remorse and leftover feelings were rushing to the surface.
"Spence," he started, his crystal blue eyes still just as wide.
But she wasn't finished. "I just-I could see you being the absolute best dad and I knew I could never match that." She paused to swipe at the moisture that had leaked out from her eyes. "I didn't-I don't know how. I never had that. I never had that feeling of a parent loving me without restrictions. My family's love for me was always completely conditional. And all I could see was history repeating itself. And I-I couldn't do it. Not to an helpless baby, and not to you."
Tears were everywhere by the time her spiel came halting to an end. Saltwater raced down both their faces, rivaling each other for speed. Toby didn't try to speak again, knowing his voice was just as broken as her's.
This was everything that had been broken between them, everything that had been haunting their hearts and ripping them each apart, day after day. The devastation that their relationship couldn't work out, that they couldn't fix what went wrong between them, that the love they'd shared wasn't enough anymore.
A deafening silence fell over them as they both waited for the other to speak, their eyes, milk chocolate and the ocean, remained interlocked. Without warning, a loud sob erupted from deep in her chest, like it'd been building up for three years, laced with every ounce of pain she'd felt since that fateful day in her dorm room and Toby couldn't stay in place any longer.
Neither of them knew who moved first, but somehow, someway, he went from sitting on the carpet at the foot of her bed, to sitting on top of her comforter, in a matter of moments.
He tugged her all the way onto his lap, hugging her to him like a lifeline. "Why didn't you just tell me?" he asked, but there was no anger, no fight, no resentment in his voice. In complete contrast with his words, he folded her deeper into his chest, feeling her shake with messy, hysterical sobs.
"I didn't know how," she finally choked out, squeezing her eyes shut against the fabric of his t-shirt. "I didn't know how."
"I honestly thought it was me," Toby admitted soberly.
They had moved from their tight position, huddled together at the edge of the enormous bed. Their two bodies, still completely entwined, were now relaxed onto their sides, their foreheads touching.
They were unable to break eye-contact, as if seeing each other for the first time in years, the gap between them enormously close to dissipating.
"How could you think that it was ever your fault?" Spencer asked, an ache in her tone at the thought that he'd ever blamed himself.
"I thought you needed someone more like you. That you needed someone career driven and ambitious and brilliant. Our differences used to build each other up, but it seemed like you wanted. . . I don't know. Someone more suited for an Ivy-League college."
"Toby," she sighed and it struck her, not for the first time, that they were ridiculous. It was insane just how long they'd both been harboring these thoughts, pent up deep inside. "I never wanted anything else but you."
"You seemed so done with the idea of a future with me."
To his astonishment, she had a reply to that statement ready and loaded. "I just knew that I couldn't give you the future you wanted. The older we got, the more ready you were for marriage and a family and I could barely manage myself. What Charlotte did to me, it was still haunting me-it still haunts me now. To imagine bringing kids into that picture on top of everything else. . .to imagine actually tying you to me, and risking tearing you down with me. . . I just couldn't do it."
He shook his head, his gaze so full of compassion and heartbreak. Tears fell out of the corners of his eyes. "You should have told me."
"You said that we didn't see the same future anymore," she reminded him softly, her own eyes brimming with salt water. "You're the one who dumped me, remember?"
"I just wanted you to fight for us," he confessed, his voice cracking like a twelve-year-old in puberty. "I just wanted to hear you convince me that I was wrong."
"But I was never going to do that," she implored raspily. "If you were ready to let me go. . . I guess I always thought that day would come eventually. I guess I was prepared for it."
Toby sighed once again, reaching out now to wipe her tear-stained cheek with his thumb. "I could never let you go," he stated as though she should already know. "Not completely. I'm just not capable of it. I tried to. I tried so hard to let you go, but you're like another tattoo. You're with me, permanently." Her mouth twisted into a broken smile, his words feeling surreal. It felt like he was reading her own, etched across her brain, back to her. "And for the record," he added, "I think you'd be an amazing mom."
But she rejected it, just like she rejected his praise so much. Like she couldn't accept it when it came from him. "You don't know that."
"I know there is nothing you can't do when you put your mind to it," he countered. "And I know that there is no way that you will ever be anything like your parents." Before she could even react to that, find a way to disagree with him, he continued. "Do you even realize who you are? You love everyone so deeply and so unconditionally. There isn't a doubt in my mind you'd kick motherhood's ass."
His words didn't lift a weight off her chest, they didn't convince her of anything at all, but they did bring fresh tears to her eyes. His opinion meant everything to her and the fact that he could even speak so highly of her, still, after everything, was nothing short of a miracle to her.
"I love you, Toby," she whispered, uncertain if it was a mistake to say aloud.
Evidently it wasn't. Not to him, at least. "I love you too. So much," he whispered back, without a moment of hesitation. "I always have. And I always will."
They both knew deep in their bones that this night changed nothing. He was still engaged and she still didn't see herself capable of motherhood. They had solved nothing and yet, everything felt different. They felt closer. Like releasing this burden that they'd both been holding onto for the last three years had freed them somehow.
Either way, no matter what came tomorrow or what choices they made in the future, they both knew that Toby's words were right. They were etched on each other's hearts, in a permanent scar, for as long as they both shall live.
And to Spencer, that seemed like the biggest blessing she could ask for. To always be connected to Toby, to always have a piece of his heart inside her's.
Like a reminder, that they'd shared a love, selfless and all-consuming and pure, that most people couldn't even dream of.