Name: Chris
Title: Cold Comfort
Genre: Angst/Romance
Rating: M-just in case.
Summary: We're just trying to find a little comfort. Is that so terrible?
Slight AU.
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The first time it happened was a total shock.
A few shots of the whiskey Dylan kept hidden in the back of the broom closet because Marco didn't approve when she was home alone and suddenly the whole Craig thing didn't seem as terrible.
Ellie knew that it was stupid. Alcoholism was hereditary, and she had enough to deal with by way of self-destructive behavior. But the part of her that was aching on the inside craved the warmth of the bitter liquid as it made its way down her throat. She coughed and spluttered at the burning, but couldn't resist the temptation to take another sip.
Before she knew it, it became a regular occurrence. Night after night until the bottle was empty and Dylan accused Marco of finding it and pouring it out. She didn't have the nerve to confess. But then she had a problem. She wasn't old enough to buy more, and without the mind-numbingness of the liquor, she had no way to force the thoughts of Craig away when they began to creep up on her.
That was when it all began to spiral out of control.
Spinner found her sitting in her room, watching old tapes she had made at band rehearsal while her cell phone buzzed on the floor, Jesse's calls going unanswered.
He had come to talk to Marco, feeling the effects of his break up with Darcy more acutely now that he had found out she was dating some guy from her church.
The sight of this girl that had always seemed so strong and unbreakable, so obviously hurting more deeply than she could say, touched some part of him that had been dormant since Paige's struggle with her rape and his desire to be her hero.
"Ellie?" he said softly, crouching down in front of her. Her eyes stared blankly ahead of her, fixed on the screen but not really seeing it. Carefully, he took the remote she had grasped in her hand and sat it down on her night table. Her hands were like ice, and he saw her phone flashing 'Jesse' on the front with the symbol for a missed call next to an empty bottle of Jack Daniels. He rubbed her palm in between his to try and force the blood to start flowing again.
"I love him," she said softly.
"You love …? Then why didn't you answer the phone?" he asked, confused by her words, but that was nothing new when it came to Ellie. She confused a lot of people, and not just because she was so smart.
She didn't answer, and he turned to the television, seeing Craig grinning back at him as he goofed around in his garage. The tape had obviously been shot during the period of time he had been exiled from the gang. But he didn't need to be there to know why the camera followed Craig around, only showing the other people in the room when they were next to him.
"He's getting help, Ellie," Spinner whispered.
"Why can't I get him out of my head, Spinner? Why can't I just give Jesse my heart? He's perfect for me," she said, tears beginning to fall down her face.
"No, he's not. Not if you have to convince yourself" Spinner said.
Ellie nodded, knowing he was right. Spinner was right more than people gave him credit for, smarter than most knew.
"I know how you're feeling," he told her, moving to sit beside her on the bed but never ceasing his rubbing of her still frigid fingers.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Darcy found someone knew. Someone more Christian, but less judgmental she said," he explained, bitterness dripping from his words.
"Ironic much?" she quipped.
Spinner chuckled. This was the Ellie he knew. The girl with the biting words and smart alecky comments.
"I've been drinking," Ellie whispered. The confession made her soul burn and her heart began pounding in her ears. It was the same way she had felt when he temptation to first put the bottle to her lips came into her mind. She had no idea why she was telling Spinner, of all people. Maybe she thought he would understand "A lot."
"But … your mom. Why would you?" he asked.
"It makes the pain go away," she said, barely audible. Her eyes fell slowly to the faint scars on her arm. The deeper ones would never go away. Like the ones on the inside; Craig, her mom, Sean.
"Ellie," he said as his hold on her had tightened, "you're not going to …?"
"No," she said abruptly. "I just needed something to help me forget for awhile."
"I get it," he replied, his own drinking binges in the ravine with Jay, followed by binges of another sort, coming to his mind. Not his proudest moment.
Ellie looked at Spinner, finally breaking away from the screen in front of her. And a fog began to descend upon her that she couldn't explain and didn't want to fight.
The feel of Ellie's lips on his wasn't as odd as he would have thought it would be. Nor were the sensations that came with her hands in his hair and his own under her shirt.
It was quick and rushed but not as awkward as it could have been under the circumstances. The door was still open and they both prayed that Marco or Dylan wouldn't come home at an inopportune moment.
Ellie sat in a huddle of blankets as Spinner tied his shoes at the edge of the bed and watched as the muscles of his back rippled with the movements.
When he stood to leave, he glanced back at her, unsure of what to say. Should he say thank you? Kiss her goodbye? Pretend it hadn't happened?
"So, um," he tried, "this …"
The look on Ellie's face said clearly that she didn't want to talk about it. So with a nod of farewell, he headed off down her stairs, the brief interlude still replaying in his mind's eye.
Him and Ellie. It was unexpected to say the least, and hardly romantic. He wasn't exactly happy, but not unhappy. Confused was the best way to put it. But now it was over.
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The second time it happened was a tiny bit more planned.
Saturday afternoons at the Dot with Marco, Jimmy, and Ash was the norm and had been for a while. Spinner got off shift, walking over to the table where they had all been sitting for the better part of the morning, prompting Ellie to rise from the table, holding his eye, and announced that she was going home to work on her article.
She had been quiet all day, for longer actually, and they had all noticed. Knowing it was about Craig and Jesse and a million other things that she wouldn't say, they dropped it. She would talk when she was ready.
Ellie had been fine for most of the morning. But the prospect of the Dot and all of their friends looming before cause the panic to set in once again and she felt as if she couldn't breath when she fell into her seat, watching as the Sweet 'N Low dispersed into her coffee. Jesse had stopped calling after a message for her to call him when she was feeling up to it on her voice mail.
The sight of Spinner in the restaurant, encased in the same black tee shirt she had seen him in nearly every day since grade ten was familiar and expected. But the images of him above her, under her, all around her in the way nobody had been since Sean was burned onto her heart and the rushing of her blood began again when she thought of them.
The moment his dark eyes met hers over their friends' heads she knew he got it. And with an only slightly suspicious gulp, he announced that he had to get home for some reason she didn't hear and offered to drive her home.
The ride was silent, not even the radio on in the twelve and a half minutes it took to get to her house. They walked silently up the stairs and into her room, Spinner shutting the door softly behind them. Neither of them spoke a word as the clothes began coming off.
It was just as hurried as the last time, just as desperate. And ended just as abruptly when Ellie pulled back and Spinner tugged his clothes back on. But this was different. The first time had left no trace of either of them on the other, no sign of what had happened.
Now Spinner walked away with tiny scratches on his back and a hickey at the base of his throat. Ellie won bruises on her hips from the grip of his hands. And this time he kissed her goodbye.
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It went on that way for four months.
Ellie would wait for him outside of the Dot when he closed up, following him to his car and he would drive her home afterwards, kissing her chastely on the cheek each time.
He began showing up outside the newspaper office when she would text him with the time. No greeting or even asking, just a number and knew he would be there, having dropped whatever it was he had been doing.
Craig began calling her about a week before school ended for the summer and she sought him out once more, going as far as to sneak into Degrassi and wandered the halls until she spied him through the glass outside Miss Kwan's classroom. Spinner looked up, feeling the pull of her that he couldn't explain, and saw her in the hallway looking pale and anxious and he got up without a word and went to her. He wrapped his arms around her, feeling her shake against him. She pulled him into the janitor's closet, not even bothering to lock the door.
Ellie wondered often what Spinner was getting out of the whole thing, apart from the obvious. She was a girl, fairly attractive in her own opinion, and willing. That was enough of a reason for most eighteen year old guys. But why was he so willing to be used as a distraction by a quasi friend at best that was dating another guy and in love with yet one more, was beyond her comprehension. Surely it had to go against his newfound morals to have a no strings attached sex only relationship.
What she didn't know was what that he didn't need anything other than what she was willing to give him. Ellie was a strong person, but she was hurting and if he could help in any way to ease or lessen it, then he would do it. But he had learned from his one night stand with Paige not to expect anything more in situations like these and certainly not to ask for it.
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The last time it happened nearly broke them both.
Two days after Spinner graduated from Degrassi they were alone in her room while Marco and Dylan were at a hockey game downtown. Like every other time, she laid under her purple cotton sheets while he rearranged himself to appear as if he had never been there. But if anyone who knew them were to walk into her room, they would know. Hours after he left she could still smell him on her pillows, on her clothes that had been discarded to the floor. Spinner's car carried the same small signs. The backseat bore the scent of the jasmine perfume she wore, a gift from Paige, and one of her bracelets was broken and stuck under the front passenger seat.
Spinner had been there longer than usual, since she has called him at two a.m. It was the first time he had fallen asleep there. The first time he hadn't left right away. The first time she had let him hold her afterwards.
Because she knew what she had to do and it was killing her to have to tell him.
"Craig called me last night," she said finally.
He stopped buttoning his shirt and looked back at her the same way he had dozens of time in the past weeks.
"Yeah?"
"He's um," she stammered, "he's coming back in a few days."
"He's better?"
She nodded but felt at a disadvantage being naked under her sheets while Spinner was fully clothed, save the partially buttoned state of his shirt. Scooting to the edge of her bed, she grabbed her bathrobe from the back of her desk chair and pulled it tightly around her.
"I hope you guys can make it work," he told her sincerely and turned to leave but she called out to him.
"You should hate me."
"I don't," he assured her. "I'm just glad I could help you in whatever way I could."
It was what he thought she needed to hear, but didn't mean it. Not really. He was genuinely glad he could be there for her when things had been collapsing around her, but now that things were okay he was out and Craig was in. He would be lying if he said that didn't hurt.
Ellie shook her head. Tears were fighting their way up from within and her eyes stung with the unshed salt. Spinner had been the one to hold her while she cried over her breakup with Jesse and then proceeded to take her mind far away from said editor. He had been there when Marco had first told her that Craig had been calling for her and that he wanted her to call him back. The one to follow her upstairs and pin her to the wall in a deep kiss afterwards.
And now he was the one she was tossing aside in favor of the guy she really wanted the same way she had done with Jesse.
"Thank you, Spinner," she whispered, walking forward and wrapping her arms around his waist tightly.
"Anytime," he whispered back. With a final kiss to her forehead, he walked down the stairs and out the front door to his car parked in front of an empty house down the street so Marco and Dylan wouldn't see it.
And for the first time since the whole thing began, Spinner didn't look back when he got to the sidewalk.
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This was my first time writing this pairing. Any good?