Disclaimer: I'm not Holly.
A/N: This is by far the sappiest thing I've ever written. But that was kind of the point, right? I wanted to make myself feel better after Listen to the Universe, and this definitely did that :)
Making love with Sasha went beyond anything she could ever have imagined, because it was the culmination of a year's worth of love rather than just a few weeks. It felt right being with him, like they were made to go together. It wasn't just about their bodies fitting together perfectly, even though they did. It was so much more. She'd never given much credit to the term, and under normal circumstances she would never have used it, but as she drifted off in the comfort of Sasha's arms, Payson thought they might be soulmates.
o-O-o
He woke to the pleasant weight of Payson's head on his chest. It was a temporary pleasure, one that he knew he wouldn't be allowed to enjoy again, so he reveled in the feeling. He would get as much of her as he could in their short time together.
He resented the time he'd spent asleep. He meant to stay awake, but he hadn't counted on the comfort of lying with Payson or the exhaustion of such an intense release of emotions. He'd fallen asleep without realizing it.
They had two more hours at most. She had to leave before the sun rose or she would never make it back to the dorms without being seen. He would spend every second of that time memorizing Payson—the feel of her body against his, the dimpled skin of her surgery scars, the way her eyelids fluttered in her sleep. No detail was too small.
The fluttering of her eyes grew more distinct until she opened them all together. It was one more thing to memorize, Payson balancing in the haze between sleep and waking.
Her words shattered his peace. "That was supposed to be a goodbye."
"Supposed to?"
"I don't think I can do it, Sasha." A single tear dropped onto the bare skin of his chest. "I don't think I can give this up. I love you too much."
"That's the problem, isn't it? We've always loved each other too much." He didn't have a solution, so he didn't offer her false hope. What he did have was two more hours to make the memories that would have to last them a life time. He made sure not to squander them.
o-O-o
It was still dark when she left. Most of the reporters had gone home for the night, and the few that were still at the hotel were asleep on the front stairs. Nobody noticed her slipping out the back, and it was easy once she got back onto campus. TC security had kicked them all off the property, so she could walk in the open without risk. She didn't go back to the dorms. If she did she'd have to explain where she'd been. She went to the hospital instead.
She knew the nurse on duty from her previous visits, so she didn't get hassled about visiting hours. She sat down in the chair beside Lauren's bed and let herself sleep.
She woke when Lauren threw a pillow at her head. All things considered, Payson preferred waking because of the shift in Sasha's breathing beneath her.
"What are you doing here?" Lauren was never one for small talk.
What was she doing there? She couldn't expect Lauren to listen to her problems and sympathize. She was having heart surgery later that day. She had more than enough worries of her own. But still, this is where she wanted to be.
"I don't know," she admitted. "I would just rather be here with you than anywhere else."
Lauren reached her hand out and Payson took it without thought. "Tell me about Sasha, Pay."
Of course she knew about the video. She was in the hospital, not solitary confinement, but somehow Payson had assumed that she didn't know. "I'm not going to dump my problems on you, Lo. You have more important things to think about."
"Listen, I don't know how it happened," Lauren said, "but at some point you became my best friend. I know I kind of suck at the whole friend thing, but I'm trying, and I don't want to go into surgery knowing that I might have helped you and didn't. Tell me about Sasha."
Payson never made the same mistake twice, so she made sure the door was closed before she spoke. Once she started it was like a dam broke inside of her and it all poured out. She told Lauren everything, how she'd fallen in love with Sasha and the day she realized he felt the same way—"He was looking at me the same way I looked at him, like I was the entire world."—then their unspoken agreement to ignore it and her efforts to get over him with Max, and how that breakup had brought back all of the rejection she felt when Sasha pushed her away.
"And then I fell in love with Rigo," she continued, "and I thought finally I was moving on. He makes me happy, you know? And we're so good together, but then Sasha heard us talking about it and it messed everything up, because he was hurt enough that he actually mentioned it. We never acknowledged it, not once in all that time, but talking about it just brought everything back."
She told Lauren about the confusion and guilt she'd felt the night she'd slept in the hospital with her, and how she'd struggled with her feelings that whole day until the video aired on the news. She gave her all the details of Wendy's betrayal, the endless meetings she and Sasha had been forced to sit though, and her conversation with Rigo.
"I was so confused, Lauren. I didn't know what to do, but I chose. I chose Rigo. I was going to give up Sasha, but I just wanted to say goodbye first so I snuck out and went to his hotel. I don't know what I was thinking, I don't even know if I was thinking, but we slept together. I just wanted one night, one night to remember before we were done for good, and it was wonderful, the most wonderful thing that's ever happened to me, and I can't give it up. But we don't have a choice. Nothing's changed, we can't be together, but I can't be with Rigo now either, not when I feel this way about Sasha."
She finally came to a halt from her rambling speech, and she sat with her chest heaving while she waited for some kind of response from Lauren. None came.
"Lo?"
"I'm sorry," he friend said. "I know this isn't the right thing to be thinking right now, but I'm just stuck on the part where you slept with two different guys over the course of three days."
There was a loaded pause before a horrified cry tore from her lips. "Oh my God, I'm a slut!"
Lauren laughed. She slapped her hand over her mouth and laughed again. Then the absurdity of the situation struck Payson and she laughed too. Both girls dissolved into hysterical laughter which morphed into hysterical sobs on her part. She laid her head in Lauren's lap and cried, not knowing or caring how long they stayed that way, but when her tears stopped and her breath evened out she didn't feel quite so confused.
Lauren was stroking her fingers through Payson's hair. It was comforting. "I used to be jealous of you and Sasha," she said. "I thought the reason he spent so much time with you was because he thought that you were a better gymnast than Kaylie and me. It never occurred to me that he was in love with you."
She was quiet for a long time, just letting Payson calm down. When she spoke again her words surprised Payson. "It must have been so hard for him, spending all that time with you and never being able to say how he felt."
Payson sat up and used a Kleenex to dry her face. "I don't know what to do," she rasped.
Again, Lauren surprised her. "My whole life, what I've wished for more than anything else, even more than an Olympic medal, was for someone to love me the way Sasha loves you."
"You're saying I should fight for him."
"I don't have to say it, Payson."
o-O-o
Morning practice was awkward but uneventful. The other girls stared at her. Coach Mac told her to stop sleeping in the hospital without telling him first. She wasn't sure how he knew about that, but she didn't ask. She didn't want to risk him finding out that she hadn't slept at the hospital the night before.
She talked to Rigo during lunch. They locked the door to his dorm room and she sat on his bed. He sat on a chair. He already knew what her decision was.
"I slept with Sasha." She trusted him not to repeat that. He deserved the whole truth.
"Why?"
"It was supposed to be a goodbye. I chose you. I just wanted one night with Sasha, for us to say goodbye to each other."
He heard what she wasn't saying. "But that's not how it turned out. It wasn't a goodbye."
"It was," she said, trying to ignore the pain in her chest when she said it. She wanted to believe Lauren, but she couldn't risk that kind of heartbreak. "Just not in the way I intended. I can't be with him, but I can't be with you either. Not knowing how I feel about him."
"I love you Payson. I know I never said it, but I do."
A tear slid down her cheek. "I love you, too. Just not as much as I love him."
Before he left he opened his laptop and handed it to her. She didn't look until he was gone.
It was several tabs of webpages, all devoted to her and Sasha. All themed with Romeo and Juliet. They had sprung up overnight. People had collected pictures of them together at competitions, stills of the kiss, the video from the gym. It was on YouTube and already had over a million hits. The comments were mixed. There were people who called Sasha a pervert and her a slut, and some who voiced a more moderate disapproval, but there were also a surprising number of people who supported a relationship between her and Sasha. At least half, maybe more. The media had turned them into martyrs.
Rigo gave her a gift by showing this to her. More than ever before, she knew what a good man he was. He deserved so much better than she could give him.
o-O-o
Coach Macintyre let her and Kaylie out of practice early so they could be there for Lauren's surgery. Sasha was there too.
They talked to her just before the doctors took her back to the operating room. They all cried, and Lauren broke the somber moment by drolly asking if Payson needed heart surgery, too.
There was a small smile on Payson's face when she assured her friend that no, she didn't need heart surgery. Her heart was just fine.
She sat by Sasha in the waiting room and held his hand. He didn't question it and Steve and Kaylie didn't comment on it.
About an hour in Steve went to get coffee. Kaylie took one look at them and hurried to follow Lauren's dad, giving them some privacy. She was alone with Sasha for the first time since she left his room that morning.
She shifted in her chair to look at him and said, "Lauren thinks we should fight for each other."
"And what do you think?"
She answered him with a kiss. "I love you, Sasha Belov," she whispered. "I'm willing to take a chance on us. Are you?"
He stroked his fingers down her cheek, just like he had that night in the gym. "People will judge us," he said. It wasn't a no; he was just stating the facts.
"But not everyone. There are people who want us to be together." It was the driving force behind her decision. 'Wrong' in this case was a social convention, so if the world approved, or at least a large part of them did, then their relationship wasn't wrong.
"The NGO will disapprove."
"They don't have to know yet. We don't have to jump head first into this," she assured him. "We'll take it slow. We've pretended like this wasn't there for so long that we need time to build it back up. We need to re-learn each other."
He gave her his last reservation. "Your parents will hate me."
"Probably." She wished it wasn't true, but they wouldn't be happy. She and Sasha had kept so many secrets from them that it would take a long time to regain their trust. "But it won't last forever. Once they see how much we love each other, they'll come around."
"You're sure you want this?" He asked one more time.
"I'm sure."
He laid his forehead against hers. "Then I love you, too, Payson Keeler. And I'm willing to take a chance."
o-O-o
She spent one more night with him. Kaylie covered for her while she sneaked away, and they spent a single night reveling in each other before they hit the reset button. She left before dawn, and the next time they saw each other they went back to the beginning. Back to shy flirting and holding hands under the table. Back to talking for hours on end. Back to kisses stolen at the end of the night.
The media never stopped hounding them. They followed Rigo around and tried to goad him into saying something, but he never did. He never even confirmed that he and Payson broke up. When the reporters failed with him, they tried to get a comment out of anyone and everyone at the TC, but the ones in the know kept their mouths shut. The only thing they found out was that Sasha visited Colorado Springs every Sunday while the girls were at the Training Center, but that was reasonable considering that one of his star gymnasts just had heart surgery.
Her dad punched Sasha. They still weren't speaking, but it was temporary. He would come around eventually. Her mom sighed a lot. Payson never did figure out that particular reaction.
Rigo was in the stands when she made the Olympic team. He smiled at her once across the room and then turned around and left. It was the last time she ever saw him. It hurt more than a little, but when Sasha swept her into a hug she knew she'd made the right choice.
When she won Olympic Gold they stopped hiding. She kissed him in the middle of a sea of reporters.
It turned out that they weren't Romeo and Juliet after all, because they got their happy ending.
A/N: Okay, so how much do your teeth hurt now? Wasn't this just so sugary that it made you sick?
Review and let me know what you think, whether it made you feel better like it did for me or you thought it was waaay too sappy. I want to know either way :)