A/N: Oh hello there. Remember where we left off? When then, without further ado, let's get back to our "just friends," shall we?

"So are you going to talk about it?" Chelsea finally heaved out between gasping breaths as she and Spencer paused at an intersection to wait for the pedestrian signal to cross.

"Talk about what?" Spencer jogged in place, keeping her body warm in the icy pre-dawn January air. She fiddled with her wrist watch timer to avoid Chelsea's questioning gaze. Cars whizzed past in front of them, spraying up dirty slush that fell just short of where they were waiting.

"Oh, I don't know," Chelsea replied, spreading her arms in front of her. "Maybe about your dramatic early return to DC after you found out Ashley was engaged? Or how about the subsequent two days that you've spent watching daytime television and eating ice cream from the carton? Or alternatively, you could talk about the bottled-up emotions that have led to this…" She looked down at the phone strapped to her bicep, "… now 7.1-mile hell run that has replaced our usual easy Sunday jog?"

Spencer tactfully avoided looking a Chelsea. "Those all sound like really great topics for conversation, but…" Across the street the little green man flashed on the signal, and Spencer took off at a sprint away from her friend. "…Not interested!"

"Spencer!" Chelsea whined from behind, but Spencer heard her footsteps splashing through the slush and knew that she was following.

The truth was that Spencer needed to run for all of the reasons Chelsea had just listed. Privately, at least, she could admit that she had been wallowing for the past two days. Sure, she and Ashley had never actually been together, and Spencer wasn't even really losing anything, but it still felt like the most painful of breakups. She'd felt perfectly justified in shutting herself into their apartment and letting Judge Judy and the Price is Right distract her from the gnawing pit in her gut that cried out that she was missing a chance for something special with Ashley.

Now Spencer could practically feel the pints of Ben and Jerry's weighing her down with every step. They didn't call it Chunky Monkey for nothing.

She'd woken up this morning, her first official day back on the job, determined to get off her ass and back into some sort of rhythm. Spencer was a disciplined person and she would make this friendship and working relationship with Ashley work. Period. There were no other options remotely worth considering.

Spencer had set out on this early morning pre-work work-out so that she could run away from her problems metaphorically, if not physically.

Poor Chelsea hadn't known what she was getting herself into when she had volunteered to come along. All she had wanted was to try and get some insight into what had thrown Spencer into the kind of funk that Chelsea hadn't seen her best friend in since basic training. If the corporal had to venture a guess, her sergeant's problems likely started with 'Ashley' and ended with 'Davies'.

What else was new?

Spencer finally took pity on her jet-lagged friend somewhere around mile ten and the two marines parked it on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to watch the sun rise through the fog of their heavy breaths rising into the cool morning air.

"I kissed her." Spencer finally confessed after a moment. "I thought I should tell you."

Chelsea wasn't exactly surprised that the inevitable had finally happened so much as that Spencer was willing to admit the transgression. Quite frankly, she was a little impressed that Spencer had fought her feelings for so long. The tension between the Marine sergeant and her charge over the last few months was enough to make even an innocent bystander like Chelsea exhausted simply by association.

Chelsea held her tongue, allowing her friend the space to clear her mind.

"I know it can't happen," Spencer continued, pressing her palms against her forehead, "I do know. There are a hundred logical reasons why Ashley and I can't happen, and we talked through some of them together the night I rushed back here."

"My head knows all of that, but my heart is taking a while to get up to speed on things. I know you already warned me about this months ago Chels, and I also know that the ethical thing to do here would be to recuse myself from this mission, but I don't have the strength to do that right now."

When Chelsea sensed that Spencer was finished, she reached out to wrap an arm around her slumped shoulders.

"As your Corporal, Sergeant you made the right strategic and professional move by stepping back from any inappropriate relationship with Ms. Davies. There's no need to get the higher-ups involved and asking questions that you can't afford to answer by attempting to resign from this assignment."

"But as your best friend Spencer, I'm so sorry. I know how you feel about her."

Chelsea politely looked away when Spencer reached up to swipe away an errant tear from her check. Spencer didn't like appearing weak to anyone, even her best friend.

"I already ask so much of you Chels, but I need to ask you for something more."

"You know I've got your back Spence, no matter what." Chelsea squeezed Spencer's shoulders a little to emphasize her point.

"I need you to be extra vigilant on the job whenever you and Kyla are with me and Ashley. Even more than you already are, if that's even possible. I am doing everything in my power to stay 100% focused on the mission, and I think that I am, but I don't know how my feelings for Ashley could already be distracting me from protecting her."

"Spencer, that's ridiculous, I know you and I've seen you working. You are incapable of giving anything less than 100% of your effort and attention, that's just who you are. The Davies are safe in your hands, I'm not worried about that."

Spencer turned to focus on Chelsea intently. "Promise me anyway Chels. If something happened to those girls because I was too weak to step down from this position, I would never forgive myself. Promise me."

Chelsea pulled Spencer's forehead in to rest against her own and caught her eyes up close. "I promise Spencer. We'll keep them safe. Together."

Ashley was a pretty heavy sleeper, but even she could not sleep through the sound of her phone vibrating up against a nearly empty water glass at her bedside.

With herculean effort, she rolled over onto her stomach to glare with bleary eyes at the device. Just beyond the phone and the glass, she caught a glimpse at her alarm clock.

It was 7:03 AM on a Sunday morning.

Someone had better be dying.

"What?" Ashley rasped in to the phone as she burrowed back into her covers.

"Hey Ashley, just wanted to check in and see where you were!" came a chipper male voice on the other end of the line.

"I'm in my bed. Who dares disturb my slumber?" Ashley growled.

The guy on the other end of the phone just laughed. "It's Teddy! Ashley, come on, the race starts in an hour, you're cutting it a little close, aren't you?"

Ashley's brain struggled to come out from under the fog of sleep. Why was her Georgetown Symphony Orchestra cello stand-partner of three years calling her at 7:00 AM on a Sunday morning over winter break? "Uh, what?"

Ashley could practically hear Teddy shaking his head at her. "The fundraiser for DC Schools music programming? I was telling you about it about a month ago at section practice. You said I could put you down for the 5K?" He sounded a little worried now.

"Oh yeah…right," Ashley answered slowly. She did remember the conversation. Teddy was part of an organization that was raising money to buy musical instruments for inner-city students in the district. It had sounded like a great cause (though admittedly Ashley had been a little distracted during the conversation because Spencer had been over in the corner stretching her neck in that way she did), and so she had readily agreed to donate five thousand dollars to the charity. "I'm sorry Teddy, the holidays have been a little hectic, I'll send a check off to you as soon as I can."

"Oh, a check would be nice too Ash, but I was really counting on you being here. Please don't hate me, but I may or may not have leaked to a couple local new outlets that you'd be participating so the event would get some more attention and backers. And there's actually this adorable little trio of girls who have been waiting since 6:00 AM to see if you'll sign their violas."

Ashley sat bolt upright in her bed, very much awake now.

"Event?" She asked with a trace of panic, pulling her phone down to scroll through her calendar. She didn't have anything on her schedule for this morning, how had she forgotten to pencil Teddy's thing in? Whatever Teddy's thing was…

"The 5K. As in the 5 kilometer road-race that is starting from Georgetown's soccer arena in approximately fifty-five minutes?" Teddy answered in question form, strained hope in his voice.

"Road race? With the running?" Ashley asked, her panic in no way sated. Damn her Spencer-distracted mind for getting her into this!

Ashley hesitated. She was half inclined to come up with one of her world-famous excuses to get out of the physical activity, but stopped herself.

Teddy was a stand-up guy, one of the most genuinely kind and selfless people she had ever met. He was always doing great things to give back the community musically, and he was also a damn good cello player who always kept her on her toes as they vied back and forth for 1st chair in the section.

When you made that kind of guy a promise, you kept it.

"I'll be there in a half hour." And with that, Ashley scrambled unceremoniously out of bed.

She wasted five minutes trying to find a decent outfit of athletic wear before deciding that the yoga pants and tank top that she had worn to bed were probably going to be the best options in her wardrobe.

Keeping in mind that it was January, she tossed on a sweatshirt for good measure. She ran her fingers through her hair and tossed it in a hasty bun before scrambling for the door.

Ashley was half-way toward Agent Dennison's work station before she remembered that it was now Sunday and thus Spencer's first official day back on Ashley-duty.

Great. As if things hadn't been awkward enough in the few days since New Year's. Spencer had managed to completely avoid her for the last three days.

Moments later, Ashley found herself hesitating outside of Spencer's apartment door. "Just knock on the freaking door Ashley," she muttered to herself. She raised and lowered her hand at least 3 times before pep-talking herself into finally knocking. "Carlin, wake up!" she stage-whispered through the door.

"What can I help you with Ms. Davies?"

Ashley froze. That voice had come not come from inside the apartment, but rather from directly behind her. She heaved a sigh before slowly turning around to find Carlin leaning against the hallway wall, arms crossed and the tiniest smirk twitching at the corner of her lips.

Ashley knew without asking that Carlin had seen the whole thing. Pep-talk and all.

"I need to go out," Ashley replied, reaching back to rub out some sudden and unexplained tension in the back of her neck.

Spencer cocked an eyebrow. "I didn't think you knew that it was physically possible to get out of bed before the eight."

"Well here I am breaking the laws of physics." She reached out to grab Spencer's hand so she could tug her along and get them moving toward the garage - she was late, after all.

It was only after her fingers automatically laced with the Marine's that she realized that hand-holding with the girl she was valiantly trying to get over was probably not the best idea she'd ever had. She very unsubtly dropped the hand like a hot potato.

Flustered on all fronts, Ashley whorled back to face the Marine. "Come on, I'm going to be late for the race!"

"Race?" Spencer asked distractedly, opening and closing the hand Ashley had just grabbed. The first daughter wondered if it was now tingling as much as her own was.

Stupid distracting hands. "I'm running a 5K," she explained as she power-walked in the direction of the garage where Big Willy was hopefully already waiting with the SUV warmed up.

"You're going to run 5 kilometers?" Spencer asked in disbelief. "3.2 miles?" The Marine pointed at Ashley's feet. "In a pair of Keds?"

Ashley looked down at her shoes. "What's wrong with Keds?" She threw her hands up in the air. "They're the most sport-like footwear I own! It was this or ballet flats, Carlin, I don't exactly have a lot of options in my closet."

Carlin shook her head with amusement. "Somehow I'm not surprised. Hold on a second." Spencer ducked into her apartment and re-appeared a few seconds later carrying a pair of neon-pink running shoes. "You'd better take these."

Ashley wrinkled her nose, backing away from the foreign footwear. "Ewww, I am not wearing your sweaty funk shoes." Sure she liked the Marine, obviously, but not enough to share foot-fungus. There were lines you just didn't cross.

Spencer rolled her eyes. "They're brand new, I got them for Christmas. They're a size and a half too big for you, but they'll be a heck of a lot better than those. You can thank me later when you're not limping around in misery for the rest of the week."

Ashley ultimately decided that maybe Spencer might know a little more about these sorts of athletic things than she did and slipped on the trainers. She found that they were actually pretty comfortable as they made their way down to the garage.

She wriggled her toes experimentally in the shoes. "You're right, just a little big."

Spencer nodded once, but remained - in Ashley's opinion – uncomfortably quiet. Ashley knew that things would be awkward after New Year's, it was inevitable after the revealing of feelings and kissing of lips and all of that, but awkward didn't have to mean distant. They didn't have to go back completely to square one of their relationship. Ashley was determined to get them back on track.

Carlin just needed a nudge to get them back to their normal, only mildly flirty banter. Mildly flirty was acceptable, right?

"Hey, how'd you know my shoe size anyway?" Ashley asked, testing the waters.

Ashley could feel Carlin weighing out her reply beside her. "I know way more about your personal life…" Carlin began familiarly.

Ashley smiled. "…than anyone should be forced to bear the knowledge of – yeah, yeah I know. Tell me a new one."

Carlin smiled back at her, blue eyes sparkling with a sheepish smile. The Marine saw the olive branch and was taking it. Maybe they could do this after all.

"I see you are already dressed at this ungodly hour of the Lord's Day." Ashley observed as they watched Big Willy pull the car around. She was proud of herself for not pointing out the v-shaped wedge of sweat trailing down from the collar of Carlin's Marine Corps tee-shirt that she found inexplicably sexy-as-hell. She was also proud of herself for mostly not thinking about all of the ways she would like to make Spencer sweat. Those were bad thoughts.

Bad.

"I got up early for mass this morning, and then I went for my usual Sunday run with Corporal Lewis." Spencer replied, oblivious to Ashley's mental struggles.

"Of course you did Bible girl. Well I hope you can handle a few more miles."

Spencer just raised an eyebrow. "I don't think you need to worry about my stamina." Ashley barely contained a groan of agreement. She could easily imagine that Spencer's stamina…

Bad thoughts Ashley, bad thoughts!

"I think we both know I'm not the one we need to worry about on the physical fitness front." Spencer continued, "I don't think I've ever seen you run more than a few feet or so. Do you even know how?"

"Hey," Ashley objected, "I might not be fit with the running, but I can do this 5K thing no problem. Piece of cake."

"Kill me now Carlin!" Ashley heaved out between burning breaths less than an hour later. "I know you're packing some heat under that sweatshirt of yours, just put me out of my misery." She was tired, everything hurt, and they had only just passed the 2-mile marker. This was hell.

"No one says 'packing heat' outside of the movies Ashley," Carlin replied easily from beside her, their run apparently not winding her in the least. Damn her. "And I'm not going to shoot you. Too much paper work."

Carlin was getting some sort of sick satisfaction out of watching her suffer. That was the only explanation.

"Too much paper work? You know what's going to be paper work? When you have to explain how I dropped dead of sheer exhaustion on your watch. I need to stop!" Ashley begged. She was sweaty and she was cold and it was a terrible combination.

"No stopping." Carlin replied calmly for the ten thousandth time. "If you stop, you won't start again. You can do this, just keep running."

"You are a mean person, you know that Carlin? You're a mean, mean girl. You're Rachel McAdams and I'm Lindsay Lohan. All I want to do is find the limit-that-does-not-exist and wear flannel, and you're trying to change me. It's not gruel."

Spencer had the audacity to laugh at her. "Ashley, you made me pinky swear at the starting line that I would not let you finish last and quote 'bring dishonor on you, dishonor on your cow and dishonor on your whole family,' whatever that means. You need to keep running because the only people left behind us are a group of little-old-ladies who are less than half a klick away and closing."

"What?!" Ashley risked a glance behind her and found that Spencer was right. She was minutes away from being passed by power-walking octogenarians. "There were like three hundred people at the starting line!" Teddy had garnered a good turn-out for his event thanks to the rumor that the first-daughter would be there. She and Spencer had made it to the race just in time for Ashley to let the media snap a few photos of her with her cellist-turned-philanthropist friend before the announcer had called them to the starting line.

"And we have been surpassed by approximately 294 of them in the last thirty minutes." Spencer replied agreeably, scanning the race-watchers cheering them on from the side of the road before muttering something into her ear piece.

"This is masochism!" Ashley whined. "Why do people do this for fun? Running should be saved for fleeing from wild animals that are trying to eat you, just as evolution intended."

"Actually humans are pretty well-designed for endurance running," Spencer explained. "There are hunters in the Kalahari that actually run down large game until the animals drop from sheer exhaustion."

"Is that supposed to inspire me?" Ashley huffed. "I'm the one about to drop from sheer exhaustion here."

"I was trying to distract you," Spencer laughed. "Usually that's pretty easy to do. Is there something you would rather talk about than persistence hunting?"

Ashley rolled her eyes. She was glad Spencer was feeling comfortable enough to mock her again after everything, but she had to be sure that their truce wasn't going to end with this race. She'd never admit it, but Ashley had been more than a little hurt that after swearing that they could still remain friends, Spencer had gone MIA for the past few days.

Spencer had asked if she wanted a change of topic. Well she did. "You've been avoiding me," Ashley puffed out between ragged breaths.

Out of the corner of her eyes, Ashley saw Spencer's eyebrows rise in surprise. There was a heavy pause before she responded. "That's not true Ashley," the Marine replied weakly.

"We live in the same house and I haven't seen you since New Year's," Ashley challenged as she continued to put one foot in front of the other.

Spencer cleared her throat. "It's only January 4th, and it's a really big house."

"Sure, okay." Ashley knew for a fact that Carlin hadn't left her apartment at all, merely from word of mouth, of course, and not because she'd been behaving stalker-ishly at all.

"I've been busy… I was still on vacation. I went out… and saw the sights."

"Oh yeah, what'd you see?" Ashley asked.

"I… went to the Washington Monument."

They ran in silence for a few minutes.

"So you're saying that I haven't seen you around because you've spent three days admiring a giant frozen phallic symbol that we can see from the White House lawn anyway?" Ashley asked.

Ashley noticed Carlin's cheeks redden slightly. "Point taken." The Marine finally ceded, "I just… needed some time."

"Yeah, well, I need you in my life Carlin. In whatever way I can have you, okay? You said you'd be my friend, you promised me that much."

"I need you in my life too Ashley." Spencer replied.

Ashley found that her footfalls were just the slightest bit lighter for the last leg of the race. With Carlin's gentle encouragement, she eventually made it across the finish line. Ashley was pretty darn proud of herself for finishing the race, but she knew that her marine deserved a fairly sizeable amount of credit for the feat. Almost everything was easier with Spencer Carlin by her side.

Really, the only hard thing was staying away from her.

Two and a half Long Island ice teas into the night, Carmen Sanchez had come to the conclusion that family sucked. The holidays were always a reminder of that.

If she had to explain to her step-Abeula one more time why she didn't want to quit the military, go out with that nice boy who called bingo at her senior center, and then proceed to have seven babies one more freakin' time she was going to explode. The ancient woman still had the memory of a card-counter, and yet she pretended to forget that Carmen was a lesbian every year.

A few more gulps of LIT served to calm the Latina's rage, or at least loosened her muscles enough to keep her from smashing the glass in her hands.

And then there was her father and her uncles on the other side of the world, still managing to give her hell from thousands of kilometers away. They didn't seem to understand the concept of time differentials as they preceded to blow-up her phone all night long, every night, pressuring her to send them the reports they'd needed her to draw up.

Freaking family business. She hadn't signed up for any of this shit. She could usually rely on her father to understand her, but now she had both sides of her dysfunctional family coming down on her to be someone she didn't really care to be.

Screw it all.

She'd signaled the bar tender for another round, turning to survey the crowd that had filled into the club since she'd first parked herself at the bar a few hours earlier. She'd never been to this club, and probably never would again, based on the establishment's choice of music and seriously unnecessary cache of strobe lights. She'd only come here because it was literally the only bar within walking distance of her apartment and after the first harassing message of the night from her uncles, she'd needed a drink.

The bar tender had just slipped another drink in front of her when Carmen felt an arm slipping around her shoulder at the same time.

"Hey there sexy," a sloppy red-headed twenty-something purred into her ear as she collapsed onto Carmen's lap.

"Not interested," Carmen growled into her drink, using her free hand to brush the girl off of her, none-too-gently. As a rule, Carmen wasn't afraid of getting some action in the civilian world as long as she was safely out of uniform. But she preferred blondes with abs over red-heads with ass-implants.

The red-head scoffed. "Well you should be, bitch," she slurred back.

Carmen slammed her drink down on the bar and stood up to tower over the lanky co-ed. "That right?"

"Yeah that's right," the red-head advanced again, invading Carmen's space. She pressed her center into Carmen's hips as she reached up on tip-toes to whisper in the brunette's ear.

"I can do things with my tongue that make all the girls scream." She ran said-tongue against the shell of Carmen's ear and the Latina couldn't help but feel her body react. Maybe tonight didn't have to be a complete bust.

"That right?" Carmen asked again, this time invitingly, her hands finding the red-head's hips and pulling the girl tighter against her.

"Mmmm," the red-head whispered back. "Ask anyone. Ask the Secret Service, they all know I'm Ashley Davies' favorite."

"What?" Carmen asked, talking half a step back in disbelief.

"Whoops!" The red-head giggled. "I'm not supposed to say that. It's a secret, had to sign the papers. The blonde chick is gonna have shoot me with that gun she thinks no one can see hiding under her jacket." She broke down laughing, holding herself upright with the arms around Carmen's neck.

Well this was interesting. Apparently Ashley Davies and her entourage frequented this club.

Suddenly Carmen's night was looking up. She slid her hands down to squeeze the red-head's ass.

Definitely implants.

"Why don't we put that tongue of yours to use then," She purred in to the girl's ear before pulling her along in the direction of the women's bathroom.

Minutes later, Carmen stumbled back out of the bathroom, satisfied in more ways than one. Her night had taken a sudden turn for the better.

She glanced around, ignoring the pounding bass of the music that had been vibrating through the stall door in the most pleasant way moments earlier. The club had become a pulsating mass of college coeds in various stages of undress and inebriation.

If there was any place that she could possibly get Spencer away from the Davies girl for long enough for Carmen to have a chance at what she wanted, this was it.

She felt a touch of cool breeze and looked over her shoulder to find that an emergency exit leading to a back alley had been propped open with an empty keg.

Perfect, just what she needed.

Carmen stepped outside with a sigh of relief and slid a carton out of her jacket pocket before lighting up a cigarette. A few drags helped simultaneously ease her craving and help bring her down from her high. Her head was clearing from the noise of the club and the alcohol enough for the wheels in her mind to start churning with the beginnings of a plan.

A couple stumbled out of the club about halfway through her cigarette, completely wrapped up in each other.

Carmen snickered, deciding that she didn't need to see their sad excuse for a make-out. She glanced left and right, but no one else was around to share her amusement. She rolled her eyes, stomped out the remainder of her cig, and made her way out of the alley to head home for the night.

She decided that she liked Club Grey quite a bit.

Well, apologies! That was a bit more of a hiatus than I expected. I'm glad to say that my important exam went really well, and I'm super happy to have all that behind me. Life's been pretty good to me these days, and since I have a little more spare time in the coming weeks, I really hope to finish this thing up for you guys ASAP. Thanks to all of you who have decided to stick with the story despite my long pauses, and especially for all of your encouraging reviews and PMs. Happy holidays!