Title: When She Cries
Book: II
Chapter: Seventeen
Chapter Title: Pleasure of the Pain
Rating: R.
Coupling: Ultimately: Aggie/Fin. Does anyone else really matter?
Disclaimer: Aye, captain. I hold no
deeds to Gilmore Girls. And I don’t own matchbox twenty’s Back 2 Good.
Author’s Note: To Minieggs. Does anyone else really matter?
*
It's nothin/It's so normal/
You just stand there/I could say so much/
But I don't go there cause I don't want to/
I was thinkin if you were lonely/
Maybe we could leave here and no one would know/
At least not to the point we would think so.
Ashley leaned against the wall and
took a deep breath. Hyperventilating would not help in this situation; it’d
only give them more to laugh about. Luckily she had found a hallway to
hide in. But since she was still near the entrance to it, she could still see
some of the party. Well, actually, just this little set of French style tables and
chairs that was set up in this part of the room. It didn’t matter, no one was
actually sitting at them, and even if they were they couldn’t see her because
of the darkness of the hallway.
She spoke, or rather thought, too soon.
Someone plunked down into one of the tables closest to her, but the person
wasn’t really facing her way. Ashley squinted to get a better look, definitely
male, somewhat familiar…Dallas Mariano. Ashley liked Dallie. He was nice, kind,
and honest. Everything everyone else at this party wasn’t. Apparently that also
included Zander Hanes. What kind of guy gets involved in this kind of scheme
and doesn’t mention- by the way it’ll never be believable because I have a
steady girlfriend. Especially with a girlfriend like that. But Dallie
wasn’t like that, he was genuine. And he was going to be corrupted by Lola
DuGrey.
Ashley couldn’t believe the audacity
Lola had to approach him, after that speech she gave. But then again, Lola
probably didn’t really care what she thought. Right.
“Hey there Cowboy.” So Devon hadn’t
been lying about that. Huh.
Dallie looked up at the 5’10”
blonde. “Lo.” And then he watched as Lola sat across from him.
“How was Harvard?” Lola asked, as
she played with a flower from the arrangement in the middle of the table.
“Everything Paris hoped and dreamed it would be for you?”
He shrugged. Well she wouldn’t want
to say too much to Lola either. “It was a lot better than I thought it was
going to be.”
Lola smirked. “Paris lose her
voice?”
“No,” Dallie replied, leaning back
into his chair. “They separated the students from the parents.”
“Ah,” she replied knowingly. “Even better.”
Dallie laughed, and for a moment
there Ashley could almost see them as children. Sitting in the grass, lying
side by side, looking up at the clouds in the clear, blue sky. Lola’d roll onto
her stomach; get the clovers and blades of grass out of her hair, with a motion
from her hair, before picking at the ground beneath her. There’d be a lot of
silence, but every few moments or so one would speak. The other would reply.
Silence would resume. Something Lola’d get bored with quick enough and she’d
get this mischievous smile on her face and she’d slither over towards Dallie. She
would hover above him, do something that’d cause Dallie to get up, and make her
shriek before running away. Leaving Dallie to chase after her. It was always
him chasing after her.
The image faded from Ashley’s mind as
Lola leaned forward, “If you came all the way from Cambridge, why’d you bother
coming over here?”
“Dad said Devon was here,” Dallie
shrugged, “Figured now was my best chance to see him before he left for Bangor.
But I haven’t been able to find him.”
“Oh,” Lola had the decency to look
the tiniest bit uncomfortable. “Ashley had this, like, meltdown earlier, and
stormed off.” If it weren’t so true, Ashley would have taken offense at that.
On second thought, she did take offense at that. “So he might have gone
off looking for her. Sorry, don’t think you’ll be finding Dev anytime soon.”
Dallie regarded her warily, confirming
the rumors of him being a smart man. “What’d you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Lorelai,” He said in a tone that
Ashley had a very good chance that no one else took, or was allowed to take,
with Lola DuGrey.
“I don’t like your tone,” Lola
pouted. Hmm, so it would appear Ashley was right about that. “But it wasn’t
really me. I think it had more with the Spring deliberately bumping into her,
the Devon ignoring her, and the Zander being taken that really got to her.”
“And?”
“And then I may have said a comment that
may have set her off,” She rested her chin on her hand and sighed. “But it
really wasn’t me.”
“It never is,” Dallie returned, oh
was that a bitter tone Ashley detected?
“By the way, you came off as a
besotted fool, and I a slut.”
“Right. You prefer the term ‘promiscuous’.”
Lola flicked her gaze up to his
face. “Somebody’s cranky.” Wow, she almost sounded hurt there. Guess she
did care what Dallie thought of her.
Dallie pretty much confirmed her
accusation with a yawn. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry for calling you a fool,” Lola offered, she checked her watch. “Paris drive you here?”
“Yeah.”
Lola hesitated. “You want a ride
home?”
“Now?” Yeah, Dallie sounded as
surprised as Ashley felt.
“May as well,” She replied in a
bored tone.
Ashley could tell from his posture
that he was suspicious, “Have you been drinking?”
“Surprisingly, no.”
“Okay then,” they stood up at the
same time.
Ashley watched them leave. Well, she’d
be the first one to admit that she was wrong. If you looked close enough at
Lola DuGrey, you may find out that she is human after all.
*
People who didn’t stop knocking even
after a person didn’t answer for ten minutes, really annoyed Fin. To the point
where he didn’t care if his hair was messy and uncombed from his shower, or the
fact that the only thing that he was wearing was a white towel around his
waist. If people came to call at eight in the morning, they deserved whatever
they got. If he had been surprised that someone was knocking on his door so
early in the morning, imagine his surprise when it was Augusta Mariano, of all
people, on the other side.
“I need you,” were the first words
out of her mouth before she came into the apartment, and shut the door behind
her.
Fin was so surprised he almost
dropped the towel. “Excuse me?” Was he arguing with that statement?
It would figure that she wouldn’t
even look at him after she said that, instead she focused on the book on his coffee
table. She picked it up. “Emotionless by Kate Bowen? Are you reading
this?”
“Yes,” And what did it matter
whether or not he was reading the trials and teen angst of Dodger, Dominique
and Tobey? “Can we get back to the part where you need me?”
“It’s just that…” her voice trailed
off as she lifted her gaze to meet his eyes, but her eyes seemed to get stuck
on his midsection. “That…” Was it the lighting or was she actually blushing? So
this is what happened when Augusta Mariano stopped thinking in psychological
terms, and started thinking normally.
“Do you want me to get rid of the
towel?” Fin asked, he shouldn’t be doing this on purpose. But really, it was
too fun.
That brought her gaze, her rather
wide-eyed, startled gaze, to his. “What?”
“You know, put some clothes on?” He
stifled a smirk; she’d smack him for that. “Change?”
“Oh,” She blinked. “Yes, I want you
to get rid of the…Change. I want you to change. Please.”
“Do you have a preference?”
Augusta seemed to have summoned back
some of her normal self, because she rolled her eyes. “No, I do not have a
preference.”
Fin shrugged, as he walked backwards
towards his room. “Really? Because I’ve heard blue really brings out the color
in my eyes.”
She frowned. “But your eyes are
brown.”
“Notice that did, ya?” He asked
teasingly before going into his room, and shutting the door behind him.
Fin had managed to drop the towel to
the floor, and pull on a pair of discarded jeans when his bedroom door opened. Augusta
managed to look him in the eye this time. Though he must have looked as
confused as he was feeling.
“This isn’t going to work,” She told
him, she was still walking towards him.
It was probably best to ask, “What’s
not going to work?”
Augusta stopped in front of him. “I’ve
been going about this thing with you all wrong.”
“You’re not going to get all
analytical and scientific method-y on me, are you Aggie-lass?” She was, that he
knew without a doubt. And it amazed him how much it never stopped being
adorable.
She ran a hand through her dark
hair. “Look at it this way, for the past few months, I’ve run, you’ve chased.
No conclusion was ever made. So the cycle continues. It needs to stop.”
Fin crossed his arms across his
chest. “And you’re suggesting?”
“That we get this whole sexual
tension thing out of our systems, so you can move on your life, and I can
graduate from NYU with my sanity intact.”
“Are you suggesting that we have sex
so that we can stop having sex?” Fin was pretty sure he had read this in a
romance novel before, but he wasn’t quite caring about that at this particular
moment.
“Yes.” Augusta hesitated, and Fin
pretty much prayed to every God he had ever heard of that it wasn’t because she
was having second thoughts. “I figured that any theory that sounds that crazy
just has to work.”
He drew her closer, because really
what was the point of continuing getting dressed now? “You have a really odd
way of saying that you want me.”
“Shut up.”
For once, Fin did what he was told,
and kissed instead. This was going to be a very interesting experiment.