A/N:I'm pretty much disgusted with this next chapter. That may be too strong a term, disgusted, but I'm not happy with it. It feels rushed, unecessary, and utterly lacking. Maybe that's just me. I'm only posting because I really want to move on with it. (Even though I have no idea where I'm going with this.) Basically, I apologize for any impending suckage, just bear with me.

A/N 2: This has absolutely nothing to do with anything, like ever, but the compulsion to share anyway can't be ignored. I worked about six hours today and have been home for nearly five and cannot shake the feeling that I'm still wearing my Juice It Up! baseball cap. It's like, a phantom hat. I know. WTF?

Anyway, ELM pt. IV...

--

Spencer let Ashley take her home. Since it was still early and there'd be nobody there, Spencer felt brave enough to ask Ashley inside and Ashley follows without question. The inside of Spencer's house is like the outside, well-manicured and lived-in. Sometimes Spencer can get lost in the warm walls covered in memories and feel completely, inexorably safe. Other times the walls are a prison, her family's smiling faces the bars that keep her in.

Spencer follows Ashley up the stairs, watching the sliver of skin between the hem of Ashley's shirt and her (surprisingly) low-slung jeans disappear and reappear with each step she takes. It's not a conscious decision when Spencer's hand reaches out and pinches Ashley's bare hip. Ashley stops so suddenly that Spencer nearly walks into her.

"Ow," Ashley says, but, Spencer thinks, she's so surprised that it came out like a question.

"That did not hurt."

"It did," Ashley's rubbing where Spencer pinched, pouting, "a little."

Spencer just reaches over, slides a hand under Ashley's, her thumb tracing the subtle jut of a hipbone. She has to concentrate on not losing herself in the feel of Ashley's skin before she takes her right now (right here, in her mother's stairwell), no matter how tempting the thought. "Come on." Spencer's fingers don't leave Ashley's side.

--

About seven minutes later Spencer's fingers are splayed across Ashley's ribs. The denim of Ashley's jacket is cool under her hand, beneath that: Ashley's skin, hot and waiting. They're on their backs on Spencer's bed (Spencer remembers the private thrill she got when Ashley had sprawled across the clean sheets without invitation, like she belonged there) and staring at the shadows creeping across the ceiling. There's a tree at the edge of the yard, when the light is right it casts delicate shadows into Spencer's room, like a girl's hand covering her eyes.

It's all weirdly intimate, lying this way with Ashley, which is odd considering just how many times they had actually been intimate. This is very different. Ashley hasn't said anything, she's just laying there, quietly breathing. Spencer thinks they should talk, she knows that she has so much she'd like to say. But she isn't good with words, often ends up tripping over her tongue and saying things she doesn't mean or nothing at all. It's how she gets herself into trouble.

She remembers, with aching clarity, exactly how her inability to speak when she needed to lead her here. How she'd said nothing when Ashley had taken her hand and pulled her closer in that cloudy room. How she couldn't remember how to talk when Ashley had pressed her lips to hers. How the only word she knew how say was Ashley's name when she made Spencer come apart under her fingers.

So now Spencer wants to say things, important things that will make Ashley look at her and smile again. But Spencer can't think of anything.

"Ash?"

Ashley rolled her head until she was facing Spencer, there was a look in her eyes like she was a million miles away and stuck there.

"What's going on up there?" Spencer reaches out, taps Ashley's forehead with a finger.

Ashley shrugs, looks away.

"Come on, I can hear you thinking."

Ashley sighed and looked back, "What are we doing, Spencer?"

"What do you mean?"

Ashley sat up and ran her hands through her mop of curls. "I mean, what are we doing? I still don't understand, like, where are we?"

"Where do you want to be?"

Ashley gives her a significant look, says: "With you."

"You're with me."

"Now." Ashley stands, crosses the room. "Now, when there's no one around. When you're bored, when you're horny--"

"Ashley, " Spencer cuts in, "It's not even like that. Why do you always have to pick a fight with me?"

"You asked me what I was thinking, that's what I'm thinking. Will Spencer want me tonight? Will she talk to me tomorrow? Will she hate me the next day? Will she love me the day after that? This is what I'm always thinking."

"What do you want from me?"

"I want you."

"You have me!" Spencer yelled. Everything about Ashley was so completely aggravating and exhausting (and intoxicating and addictive: the worst kind of drug) and Spencer just didn't understand. What more could she give her?

"You don't get it." Ashley said it sadly, hopelessness filling her voice like a glass ready to overflow or break.

Spencer rose and closed the distance between them. She took Ashley's face in her hands, forced her to maintain eye contact. Nowhere to go. "Just tell me what you need to hear."

"Do you love me?"

"I told you I did. Don't you believe me?"

Ashley's eyes fell shut, a tortured sigh shook past her lips, and a biting truth tripped out of her mouth: "I don't know."

It rides in through Spencer's ears and cuts a path over capillaries and veins, through every organ, into every cell. It spreads like a virus that can't be cured, like a demon that can't be exorcised. It settles in the walls of Spencer's heart like a knife twisted. It makes Spencer feel like she could be dying because Ashley doesn't believe me.

"Ashley," she begins with as much sincerity and conviction she can muster (her ears are growing hot and there's pressure growing behind her face and it's all she can do to keep from crying). Her hands drop to Ashley's shoulders, prepared to shake the truth into Ashley if she has to. "I have never loved anything else."

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, Ashley's eyes come open again. A smile tugs up the corner of her lips until she's grinning, her eyes shining bright (like a brand new mirror and Spencer just wants to step through the looking glass). Ashley reaches out, begins unfastening the buttons on Spencer's blouse, one then another, with practiced ease. "Just keep reminding me."