Like Changes, this is a fic that I started oh so long ago. I think… the week of the season one finale? Sometime around there.

The same as Changes, this was ripped straight out of my dusty old Faking It folder and put up; no editing here. And even if it's really fucking late, I stand by that dedication I wrote months and months ago.

It was a really shitty day. Thanks for making it a better one, Ali.


This piece was started just before the finale came out, when I still hadn't seen it so… AU and everything I guess.

This one-shot is dedicated to Alirose3, whose words made a really shitty day a lot better and gave me the drive to turn this from a passing thought into an actual fic.

Enjoy.


Summary:

We all have lines we won't see crossed, even by our closest friends. (Pre-S1 Finale)


Shane Harvey hated Lauren Cooper. That was a fact. It was normal, the plain and simple state of things. What fewer people knew was why.

Shane liked to claim the high road, to say that he represented the good, forward-thinking, socialist masses that were the assorted youth of Hester High. That he was a paragon of anti-conservative values and equality. Naturally this made Lauren the devil. After all, why else would she be so against someone who was such a pillar of High School society? Clearly she was a bigoted, hateful, rich-bitch who hated everything that right-thinking Hesters stood for!

Amy, however, knew that wasn't the case.

For starters, Hester High wasn't a utopian vision of righteous equality. Only the most deluded of students actually believed that. It was progressive, sure, and generally more accepting than most public high schools, but the real difference was in the social ladder. No matter what anyone said, there was still a very strict food-chain detailing which who preyed on who. After all, simply because a different set of cliques was in charge, didn't mean that they weren't cliques.

Not to mention that Lauren may have been a stuck-up bitch, but she wasn't a bigot. So she didn't buy into the socialist crap that they were force-fed every day; neither did Amy. Hell, neither did Shane, although you would have to actually get to know him to figure that out. Nor was Lauren your typical 'rich-bitch'. Bruce may have been well off financially, but the blonde had never tried to use that to her advantage. She relied on her own skills, planning and force of personality to attract and control others; very much like Bruce did, in fact, the one time that Amy had been to see him at work. Very much like Shane did.

And it was because of all that that to Amy, Shane and Lauren's daily dance had seemed more like two alphas circling each other in a duel for dominance than any kind of ideological debate.

If you knew them well enough they were surprisingly similar. In fact, of all the people to walk Hester's Halls they had more in common with each other than any other student that came to mind.

The were both casually arrogant in that aren't-I-so-amazing way. Both were controlling and demanding taskmasters; slave-drivers who knew what they wanted and settled for nothing less no matter how many people they had to step over to get it. If it weren't for the fact that Shane was gay, the two of them would probably have been dating as an actual power couple, ruling the school with an iron fist.

Instead, their pride was the only thing keeping them from going for each other's throats with their bare hands.

Unfortunately for Shane, in high school—as in many things—it's not the gunpowder that's the problem, it's the unexpected spark in the wrong place that makes it blow up in your face.


"You did what?"

She couldn't have heard right. Surely Shane wasn't that petty, to out a secret like that for a mere distraction.

But he repeated the words again and she had to accept them for what they were.

"I told them all about the pills she's hiding."

Never let it be said that Amy liked Lauren; she didn't, and she strove to demonstrate it every day, but she could respect the girl for standing up for what she believed in and refusing to bow to expectations. Furthermore, she lived with the girl, so she knew a lot more about her than Hester's resident pride-parade obviously did.

Strangely enough, she cared a lot more about her too.

"You can't keep doing things like this Shane! That was fucking low, even for you!"

Shane's face was twisted in affronted confusion, as though he wasn't quite sure what was happening but knew that he should take offense. "What are you talking about?" The tone was flat, harsher than he had ever spoken to her before as he grabbed her hand to try and drag her inside, glancing around at the growing crowd of students who were starting to notice that the Shane Harvey and Amy Raudenfeld were fighting in public.

Tearing her hand from his grasp she crossed her arms and spat, "You told everyone about that in front of her and her friends because you wanted a distraction! Who does that kind of thing?"

Anger was starting to show in Shane's eyes, but he hid it well, smoothing his face into a friendly mask as he placed his arm over her shoulder and started to guide them away from the crow of gossiping students. "Look, I know you were busy with the whole Karma issue, but Lauren was organising a protest to buddy up to some of the girls and I needed to break it up."

"You do see the irony in that, right?"

The boy grimaced briefly, before his smile was back as he went on in a calm, level voice, "That may be but she was targeting Liam, I still had to stop her."

Amy just stared at him. "Even ignoring the sheer hypocrisy of that, talking about her pills was taking it too far. This is even worse than what you did at that first party with me and Karma."

"Well it didn't turn out too bad for you."

From the look on his face he knew that he had just said the wrong thing, but also knew that anything else he could say would just be digging himself in even deeper. The smile that graced Amy's lips proved him right, and while Karma in the distance recognised that look, she was still too far away to stop the imminent explosion.

"Not too bad? Not too bad?" Amy had broken out of Shane's grip and was now stalking towards him. "You outed me at a fucking party, then to the entire school just because you wanted 'lesbian friends'," she made the appropriate air-quotes, "then entered me for homecoming queen without asking me so that I was all but forced to come out to my traditional, conservative, christian mother on the fucking local news."

"Now hold on," Shane said quickly, trying to cut her off before she got any angrier—or any louder; the crowd was huge by now. "Your mother wasn't my…"

"You started it!" Amy was vaguely aware that she was shouting, but at the moment she didn't particularly care. There were things that you just didn't do, and as far as Amy was concerned, Shane had crossed a line.

"But that's not the point. This is about you," she jammed her finger into Shane's chest, "using Lauren's medication as an excuse to drag her through the mud just because she's pissed you off."

Through the anger, Amy noted that the crowd didn't seem to know what to think of her accusation, especially coming from her. She butted heads with Lauren more often even than Shane and everyone knew it. She thought it lent the situation a certain gravity.

"You were so desperate to tear down her attempts at making friends and fitting in that you went behind her back to dig up whatever you could find to hurt her without even thinking of what it was!" Even angry as she was, Amy had to marvel at just how… sheeplike, her fellow students were. Here she was tearing into the most popular guy in school and half the crowd seemed like they were about to jump in, put up signs and join her just because she was shouting in public.

"What did you think they were, Shane? Drugs?" She gestured to a band of older kids behind Shane, "in this freaky high school they're part of the cool kids. Diet pills?" Again, she gestured to a group of people in the crowd surrounding them, "You give them fashion advice for God's sake! And you've slept with most of the guys that take them."

Glaring at the boy in front of her, she took a savage pleasure in watching the rage that was flickering across Shane's face as she broke down every argument he could make before he even got the chance to open his mouth.

"Hell, did you ever think it might be something as innocent as vitamins? Last week you were going on and on about how your fancy smoothie was so much better than taking vitamin pills every day, did that ever occur to you?"

The faint widening of his eyes suggested that it hadn't.

"What happened to accepting people, Shane? 'Doing things differently'?" By now Shane had backed right into the edge of the crowd with Amy glowering at him from barely a foot away.

"Well, yes, but–" Desperation was starting to creep into his voice as he searched for a way out of this unexpected argument. "If they weren't something bad, she wouldn't try to hide them."

Amy just rolled her eyes. "So she doesn't shout it from the rooftops, so what? Do you tell the whole school when you take an aspirin? It's medicine, how is it anyone else's business if she doesn't want to tell you?"

The crowd of students was muttering among themselves, a few cries of "Yeah!" rising above the general whispering.

"And why should she? It's not like you're her friend or anything, Shane. You're probably the only person here who hates her more than me—and even that's just stubborn hypocrisy."

Shane, on the other hand, had narrowed his eyes, a slight frown on his face as he seemingly ignored her latest outburst to focus on one detail.

"Medicine? You know what they are?"

"Of course I do. Are you even listening to me anymore?"

Reaching over her, the boy put his arm over Amy's shoulder and turned them both to face away from the crowd as he started to try and lead her back into the courtyard.

"Come on Amy, what is it? You can tell me."

"No!"

Shane actually pouted at that.

"Why not?"

"Because, Shane, she's my fucking sister!"

The dumbstruck look on his face was mirrored in the crowd, which suddenly became much louder as people started arguing with each other. Amy was almost too angry to notice it, but most of them were glaring at Shane right along with her.

"Now co–"

"Leave it Shane."

Karma's voice broke the moment as she appeared out of the crowd to pull Amy away from the spluttering boy. Ignoring him, the brunette turned to look Amy in the eyes. "Are you okay?"

Staring into those brown eyes, the blonde let out a deep breath and then nodded. "Yeah, I'm good."

Turning towards shane, Karma addressed the boy, "And you?"

"I– but–" After a moment his shoulders drooped and he looked away from her, mumbling, "I'm sorry, Amy."

"Don't apologise to me, it's Lauren you're going to say sorry to."

"But–"

"You're doing it Shane! You crossed a line and you need to own up to that."

For the first time since Amy had known Shane, he was actually speechless, his expression a mixture of horrified outrage and shocked surprise. Finally he managed a choked, "What," before he was dragged through the parting crowd.


By now Lauren was used to Shane Harvey interrupting her lunch, so she wasn't really surprised when he sat down in the empty seat opposite her. What did surprise her was that it was her step-sister-to-be forcing him into said seat. The crowd of students behind Amy was equally unexpected, although she took the fact that none of the angry mob were looking at her as a good sign.

"Lauren," Amy said, bringing her attention back to the blonde," Shane here has something he wants to say."

The only response was a low mumbling as the glorious leader of Hester High stared down at the table in front of him.

"Shane."

The mumbling got louder.

"Shane."

The boy glared up at Amy before turning to Lauren.

"...I'm sorry."

She blinked. Opened her mouth. Closed it. Blinked again.

"What did you say?"

There was the glare she was used to.

"I said, 'I'm sorry." At a none-too-gentle nudge from Amy—and what was she doing anyway, making Shane Harvey, of all people, apologise—he ground out, "For bringing up the pills."

At almost any other time she would have thrown his 'apology' back into his face. Shane? Apologise to her? Give her some credit. But her soon-to-be sister and the crowd behind her were hardly an everyday occurrence. Not to mention that the way Shane was gritting his teeth and forcing each word out as if it physically pained him made her suspect that it was as close to a genuine apology as she was going to get.

If he'd been straight-up lying, he would have said it smoothly was a smile.

Just like she would have. So…

"Apology accepted, Harvey."

Lauren felt a sharp spike of satisfaction at the shock on the boy's face, before Amy spoke up.

"See, was that so hard?"

If looks could kill, Lauren thought, Farrah would be down a daughter right now.

"Well, Shane," she said. "As much fun as this has been, I'd like to eat my lunch in peace. So if you don't mind…"

She made a shooing motion with her hand as Shane stood up, scowling. He looked over at Amy, who just rolled her eyes and nodded, before stomping away without a backward glance. As if today couldn't get any stranger, Amy took the now-vacant seat, leaning forward.

"You okay? Really?"

Her retort died in her throat at the earnest words and genuine compassion on the blonde's face, and she took a deep breath to banish the snark that was her most basic of defence mechanisms.

Finally, looking Amy dead in the eye, she said, "Yeah, I'm okay."

Her step-sister-to-be smiled at that; the full, honest smile usually only Karma and Farrah got to see. "Good."

She stood, adjusting her bag over her shoulder as she started to walk away.

"I'll see you at home, Lauren."

Lauren Cooper, staring at the retreating back of Amy Raudenfeld, hesitated for a single moment before calling out, "Hey Amy!"

The girl paused and looked back at her. "Hm?"

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

And with that, Amy walked off, leaving her sister smiling behind her.