Title: Damaged
Summary: Everyone is damaged, she explained, but not everyone is broken. Ashley never thought that going back to Baltimore with Kyla would bring her face-to-face with the one person who made her feel like she wasn't broken.
Disclaimer: I don't own SoN. What I do own is a computer and the amazing ability to not do what I am supposed to with my time.
Hey, so I meant to thank everyone who has reviewed/alerted/faved this, you guys are super and you make me smile! Also, this chapter was fun to write… like a year and a half ago. But I had to tweak it to make it work for the way the story has changed since I started this thing. Hope you all enjoy it as much as I did.
The blonde mentally shook herself out of her Ashley-induced haze when the particulars of the situation hit her. She was up here to change in her best friend's room so that her girlfriend could pick her up and go to a party, and now she was standing half-dressed in a room with Ashley Davies. Ashley who, from the moment she'd laid eyes on her, had drawn her in and had her carefully constructed walls crumbling like sand. There was just something about her, something that had the blonde acting so out of character it was almost frustrating. But there was the other part of it, the part that made her not want to think and just act.
She paused in that moment, kept her fingers on the buttons of her long shorts and looked at the other girl in the room. For her part, Ashley felt her heart beat a little faster and her breath come in a little more shallow. When she realized that the blonde had stopped she blinked, coming back into herself and glancing back up at the amused eyes of the standing girl.
The little indulgent smile on her lips caused the brunette to flush rapidly and wonder when the room got so hot. "Well," her voice cracked embarrassingly and she winced, "d-don't stop on my account." She infused as much false bravado as she could muster into her normally smooth voice, "You haven't got anything I haven't seen before."
The blonde raised an eyebrow and managed to look amazingly flustered for someone who had appeared quite content in just tight shorts and a lacy, black bra a moment ago. There were too many factors, too many things and people to consider and Spencer was getting a headache from it all.
Ashley picked up on the abrupt tension, but not seeing any of the visible earmarks of regret figured it to be more embarrassment than guilt. "I'm not sure what you're worried about, Spence," she whispered hoping to sound more reassuring than creepy, voice unconsciously lowering an octave, "you have an incredible body."
The blush spread across the other girl's face and Ashley followed its path over her shoulders and down her chest. It was like no one had ever told her that before.
"It's not that-" she cut herself off abruptly when the musician glanced up at her through those long lashes. A challenge was being issued and Spencer wondered not for the first time how this girl could read her so well. So, with eyes locked, the blonde shimmied out of the shorts and the other girl swallowed hard at the darkening of her blue eyes. It wasn't until she bent down to kick off the shorts and pick up a pair of low-riding jeans that Ashley felt like she could look anywhere else.
It was official. Spencer Carlin had a body Ashley could have only dreamed about, and dream she had.
But, there was something that she hadn't expected in an obvious tan line upper-thigh that showed the length of shorts the girl normally wore and just on the inside of her right thigh were dozens of thin, white scars and around the top of her leg was a long, thicker one.
Ashley stared until the view was obstructed when Spencer pulled on her jeans in strong, jerky motions.
The brunette didn't realized that there were tears in her eyes until her vision blurred and she rubbed at them as she stood to turn her back and hide her reaction to Spencer's unintentional revelation. "Whoa there, Ash," the blonde approached her from behind and ducked to meet her face-to-face, "What's wrong? What happened?"
She grabbed at her shoulders and forced her to stand up straight before she could turn away again. Gently, she cupped the girl's face. "Just take a breath, okay?"
Ashley sucked in a shaky lungful and finally looked the other girl in the eyes again, shocked at the concern in those crystal blue eyes. She reached up herself to wrap her fingers around the blonde's forearms and unconsciously stroked her thumbs along the insides of her wrists, not entirely surprised to feel the ridges of scar tissue there.
They stood like that for an endless moment, pressed up against one another, toe to toe, hips to hips, and forehead to forehead, until the tears stopped and Ashley gave a shuddering laugh meant to cover up more than the awkwardness, "God, talk about over-reacting." The blonde brushed away loose tears on the other girl's cheeks when she let her fingers fall from the scarred wrists.
Spencer figured that she should probably let go but couldn't bring herself to break contact. So instead, she ghosted her hands along the brunette's shoulders, down her sides, and rested them lightly on her denim clad hips and giving them a little shake. "Better now, babe?" she breathed lightly.
Ashley took Spencer's right arm in her left and turned it until the inside was face up at waist height. She bowed her head and slipped the fingers of her right hand along the scars slowly. When Spencer didn't pull away or flinch, Ashley looked up at her through her eyelashes. "This is why Kyla worries about you when she's not around, isn't it?" she questioned softly.
Spencer jerked her shoulders back, but Ashley tightened her grip, wordlessly implying that it would take more to force her to let go. The blonde just sighed then, not sure she had the strength to fight for much longer. "She's just paranoid that she's going walk away one time and when she looks back I won't be here," she murmured, hands twitching nervously, not used to people that weren't professionals talking about them directly.
The dark-haired girl frowned at the dismissive tone. "Does she have a reason to be scared of that?" she asks, more terrified of the questions that hung silently in the air between them.
Should I be scared? Are you broken too?
Ashley ducked her head and let her hair obscure her vision, afraid that Spencer would be able to see it in her eyes. She didn't figure out until it was too late that the other girl could read it in her posture.
She shrugged rigidly in response, "It was a long time ago." Ashley looked up at her once more through the tears sticking to her eyelashes and dropped her arms. "I got careless, distracted. I went too deep, the blood came too fast," she shook her head of the memory and let go of the musician's hip to reach up and hold herself by the back of her neck, "but like I said, it was a long time ago."
The smaller girl watched a number of dark emotions flitter across those azure eyes and she wanted nothing more in that moment than to wrap her arms around the other girl. She wanted to feel the warm expanse of skin beneath her palms, to tuck her head under her chin, press her ear against her chest and just listen for a heartbeat.
Instead she asked: "When was the last time you, um." She hesitated unexpectedly, not quite sure how to approach someone else about their vices.
"Cut?" Spencer offered hollowly. "It's alright. You can say it. I'm not ashamed," were the words she offered, but it was in the way she finally, resolutely, stepped back and around from Ashley to stand across the room and the deadened quality of her voice that had the brunette thinking that was exactly what she was.
Ashamed.
"Yeah," she confirmed, palms sweating as they curled into angry fists at her side.
The athlete tucked her arms over her chest, abruptly defensive and self-conscious, "I don't know. It's been a while, months even, maybe longer."
Ashley found that statement odd. "You don't know when the last time you deliberately split open your own skin was?"
Ice-like blue eyes cut into her own and the blonde bit off a sarcastic reply, "It's not exactly something you can mark down on a calendar." The rich brown eyes of her best friend's sister reflected hurt and Spencer almost instantly felt like an ass. She pinched the bridge of her nose tiredly, "It's hard to explain."
"Try me."
And it was there in that softly imploring voice that Spencer felt justified in trusting Ashley Davies. "It's just, some days it feels like I just had the razor in my hands seconds ago and on other days, it feels like it was in another lifetime," she tried to explain, uncrossing her arms and slipping her hands into the front pockets of her jeans. But when she shrugged she unconsciously pressed her lace covered breasts together, sharply reminding them both that she was half-naked and despite the heavy topic Ashley caught her attention wavering once more. The persistent thrumming of tension had her body vibrating like a plucked guitar string and the air between them felt electrically charged.
Ashley took a step forward, fully intent on removing any space between them, Kyla be damned, when-
I'm drunk off your kiss
For another night in a row
This is becoming too routine for me
But I didn't mean to lead you on
They both blinked down at the cell phone that was currently flashing bright lights and streaming music. Spencer recognized the ringtone and moved quickly to scoop it up and flip it open in one motion, but she paused momentarily, thumb over the accept button, watching Ashley with indescribable eyes.
There's no room left here on my back
It was damaged long ago
Though you swear that you are true
I'd still pick my friends over you
She breathed deeply and accepted the call, "Hey, babe."
Ashley wanted to be annoyed and maybe a little pissed about the intrusion but Spencer was still keeping eye contact and she could read in her posture how the blonde was barely restraining herself from rolling those baby blues skyward. The call had the single benefit of breaking the tension, however, and giving them the opportunity to retreat back to safe territory away from the heavy conversation. But retreating from that only brings to the forefront that there is another kind of tension present and it's like going from one extreme to another, but what the hell, right?
"Uh-huh, that sounds fine." Spencer gestures towards the dresser where she had placed the dark shirt she had planned on wearing that night earlier in a vague request for Ashley's help. In response, the brunette crossed her arms and tilted her head with an patronizing smirk.
"Yeah, I'm still at Kyla's, where else would I be?" The blonde juts out her bottom lip, gives her best puppy dog eyes, and mouths 'please' and Ashley finds herself complying before she even realized she'd moved. Well, at least now I know where Kyla learned it from, she thought as she handed the other girl the shirt. "Um, no, I think she's downstairs with her mom."
She mouthed 'thank you' with a grin but her lips quirked down at whatever the girl on the other end of the line said. "I was, uh, talking to Ashley."
The brunette arched her eyebrows in question, but Spencer just shook her head, "Wow, Jules."
There was a stream of near gibberish that exploded from the cell causing Spencer to pull the phone a bit from her ear and Ashley's smirk to turn amused. "Does she think…?" she whispered wiggling her fingers between the two of them.
Spencer nodded with an exasperated look on her face, "To be perfectly honest, Juliet, I-"
The brunette grinned impishly, if she was going to be suspected of nefarious behavior she might as well make the accusations justified. Boldly, she reached forward and glided her warm palm across the tattooed numbers that were just visible above the line of the blonde's jeans on the front of her right hip. The girl squeaked, honest to God squeaked, and batted at Ashley's hand.
"Nothing, I just ran into something," she growled into the phone as she mock glared at the girl currently in her personal space, but her eyes were sparkling something fierce and Ashley decided that this girl had to be the queen of mixed signals. Then her hands were back on the girl's hips, thumbs gently tracing the inked numbers on one side and the sparsely decorated wings on the other, and she wasn't doing anything else but standing close to her and funny things were happening to her head.
"I think you just need to trust me here, Jules," she rasped, breathing becoming difficult when all she could take in was Ashley's scent. "I'll see you in a few, okay? Yeah, bye." She snapped the phone shut and they paused like that for another second.
"Interesting ring for your girlfriend," Ashley commented, sounding way more steady than she felt.
"Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure Toxic plays every time I call her, so we're fairly even on the questionable ringtone category," Spender groused, fingers tightening around the shirt in her hand when Ashley's nails scraped along the sensitive skin over her tattoos, making jolts rocket through her whole body.
"Please tell me you are not dating a girl who listens to Britney." Ashley winkled her nose at the thought; pulling away she gave the other girl a mock disapproving look, "You're losing major cool points here."
"Not a fan, then? So I guess when I finally do get your number not to make yours Womanizer like I was planning on," she stuck out her tongue.
Ashley's jaw dropped, "Oh, no, you did not." She pinched the girl's hips in retaliation, causing Spencer to shriek and drop the shirt in her haste to grab the musician's wrists. They laughed together, pinching and tickling in retaliation, until Ashley stepped the blonde against the wall and they slid palms against palms and interlocked fingers.
It was in the silence that followed, in the way Ashley could feel the sharp thump-thump-thumping of their shared heartbeats as she was pressed so deliciously against the taller girl, that she felt something that she didn't think she'd ever felt before.
It kind of felt like falling.
She tilted her face upward, brushing the tip of her nose against the corner of Spencer's mouth, and heard the blonde's breath hitch. Ashley watched the other girl's blue eyes flutter closed, felt her grip tighten and her own heart beat double and just as she was about to press her lips against Spencer's, the other girl turned her head sharply and Ashley ended up brushing her lips across the underside of her jaw.
Had she really read the situation that wrong? Because for the past day Spencer had been sending her all the right signals and Ashley knew when someone was interested in her, but then why did she turn away? Now, Ashley had been rejected before. It didn't happen often, but mathematically speaking you couldn't flirt with the amount of people that she did and not strike out every once in a while. Although it had never happened when she had invested this much of herself and it had never hurt like this before.
She felt her lungs contract and her blood freeze and it might possibly have been the apology in the blue eyes that sent her over the edge, but suddenly she didn't even want to be around the blonde. She slackened her hold on the blonde's fingers and stepped roughly out of the girl's personal space but what she hadn't counted on was the blonde tightening her hold and all but lunging to stop her retreat.
"Don't! Don't walk away, just, fuck, just look at me, okay?" the athlete implored, releasing one hand in order to wrap her fingers around the inside of Ashley's elbow.
But the brunette was far too embarrassed to comply and kept on looking away, her heart not responding well to the rollercoaster this girl was taking her on. She bit at her bottom lip and mentally counted backwards from ten in some asinine attempt to stop the tears.
"It's not you, okay? It's not." Ashley scoffed at the line, offended because it was a stupid one that she had used before and to be honest she had expected more from this girl. She tugged more insistently against Spencer's hold, nearly jerking her arm out of it's socket in her fervor. "Don't do that, Je-sus!" the blonde exclaimed.
"Just let go of me," mumbled quietly, angling herself to make a break for the door.
"No!" she stepped closer to the brunette's back, "If I do that you're going to leave and not let me explain." She took a chance in releasing her hold on the smaller girl only to rest her hands on the musician's shoulders, and felt them tense under her palms.
Instead of fleeing, however, she whipped around and shoved at the front of Spencer's shoulders, ignoring the way her hands tingled at the contact, "What's there to explain, Spencer? There are two of us involved here and one of us pulled away." She shrugged helplessly and took a step back, "And right now I need to walk away from you before I do something else really stupid."
"No, right now you need to listen to me, okay?" And for some reason, Ashley stopped retreating. "It's not you," the brunette opened her mouth to make an angry retort but stopped at Spencer's pleading look, "It's not you, I swear, and it's not that I don't want to, not that I don't want you." She tucked the strand of dyed red hair behind the girl's ear. "Because, God, do I want you, want this," her voice lowered and Ashley couldn't fight the shiver it sent through her body. "What I don't want is to treat this like something that we can walk away from without anyone getting hurt because I don't think that's possible anymore. I'm not that person and you aren't either."
She picked up Ashley's left hand and played with her fingers, "I won't act like this is just some game, when it's not. I can't do that. And I can't do that to you and," she pressed her lips to her calloused palm before dropping the hand completely, "I won't do that to her."
She stepped back to scoop up the tank top and phone that she had let fall to the floor moments before and even when the muscles of her abdomen contracted beautifully as she slipped the shirt on, Ashley was too distracted to notice. Then, like the final nail in the coffin, the phone lit up in the athlete's hand.
I'm drunk off you kiss
For another night in a row
This is becoming to-
"Jules? Yeah, I'll be down in a second." She snapped the phone shut with a hollow click and just stared at it for a second, like it's presence confused her.
"Girlfriend here already?" Ashley asked, voice forcibly, and noticeably, light.
"Yeah," the blonde blinked and shoved the phone in her back pocket, "she's waiting outside." There was an awkward silence that persisted through Spencer grabbing her wallet out of the shorts she had dropped earlier and slipping on her flip-flops. "How's my makeup? Do I look alright?"
But she was hardly wearing any in the first place, so Ashley offered a half-hearted smile, "Yeah, you look good."
"Good," she picked up her keys from Kyla's dresser, "I'll, uh, I'll see you later, Ash."
"It's not a game to me either!" Ashley called as Spencer was halfway through the door in a last ditch effort. She knew the possibility of it ending well was unlikely, but she'd be damned if it was going to end like this. "I get it, you know," she stepped up as the blonde paused, "I get that you don't want to hurt anyone with this, but the way that this feels? How wrong could it be? But I do get it, kind of, I get that Jules is important to you for some reason."
Her shoulders were shaking and Ashley couldn't tell if the girl was laughing or crying or just stuck, "Yeah," she whispered, "her too."
But before the musician could figure out what the hell that was supposed to mean, the blonde had walked down the hall and out of her sight.
She flopped down on the bed and pressed her hands to her face, headache suddenly back with a vengeance, "Fuck."