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He stared blankly at the pasty white ceilings of the hospital room, his mind absentmindedly wandered around as he laid prone across the fairly small hospital bed. He feels a sleepy yawn emanate from his mouth, the dire need of sleep kept rising, he could feel his eyes becoming more heavy lidded every time he blinked, but he didn't dare succumb to his exasperation.
Any time he closed his eyes with the intentions of falling into a deep slumber, the macabre envisions of the nights earlier events haunted his thoughts, the hazy sounds of Olivia's wretched screams as she desperately pleaded for help while she hovered over his maimed body, the foggy tears that glistened in her beady brown eyes, the way her small hands tightly fisted in his shirt as she repeatedly cried for him to “please stay with me.”all of it tortured his mind and eventually became too much for him to handle.
So, he remained roused, deciding to become a prisoner to his insomnia instead of revisiting those horrid memories. Spencer sighs softly, cranes his head down a little. A soft smile settles upon his lips as he glanced down at the sleeping girl that laid snuggled up at his side. She had been with him all night, adamantly fought against her mother or anyone else who attempted to prompt her into going home to rest. She opposed their suggestions, “Spencer needs me. I'm not going anywhere.” He had heard Olivia determinedly say to her mother earlier, when they were standing outside of his room.
And just as he did now, he smiled in appreciation, feeling grateful that he had a friend like her in his life. Olivia had always been the calm in his chaotic life. Spencer was always able to seek solace and tranquility from her whenever he needed it the most, could always talk to her about any and everything no matter what. He feels his jaw clench in anger, hot, salty tears sheen in his pupils and fog his vision at the thought of Olivia possibly being the one laying in the hospital bed with a bullet wound in her at the expense of Tyrone's reckless behavior.
From the moment they first met, Spencer felt this assertive need to protect Olivia. Though he knew that she was perfectly capable of defending herself, Spencer knew that danger could arise at any given moment and had always kept a reassuring eye out for her unbeknownst to her knowledge. She was the first friend he made at Beverly, the first person that didn't make him feel like an outsider and believed in him undoubtedly.
So, when the sight of the suspicious car approaching them with Tyrone pointing a gun out at them through a window came into his view, Spencer didn't hesitate to jump in front of Olivia and shield her body away. Spencer made a promise to always protect the people he cared about and that night, that's exactly what he did for Olivia. And he would do it again — jump in front of a hundred bullets if it meant that she would be safe, untouched and right here, laying in his arms.
“Spencer?” The sound of her sleep addled voice retracts Spencer from his inward reverie. He looks down, watching as Olivia slowly blinked her bleary eyes open. She covered her mouth as she yawned, her back slightly arched as she stretched her wilt body. “Jesus, I forgot how small these beds are. My back is killing me, hey, are you okay?” She asks, shuffling around on the bed so that she's now sitting up and facing him.
Her voice and face both marred heavily of concern as she stared at him. Spencer nods somberly, swiftly wiped away his tear splotched face with the edge of his hospital gown. He smiled weakly at her. “Yeah, sorry. I was having trouble sleeping. It's nothin to worry about.” He insouciantly assures her, attempting to brush it off in hopes of subverting the topic of conversation.
But his efforts are useless to Olivia's unrelenting behavior. “Spence,” She says, voice soft as she reaches down and carefully intertwined their fingers. He diverts his gaze away, looking down at the floor instead of her eyes. “You know you can talk to me, right?”
Spencer swallows the thick lump that formed at the apex of his throat before eventually nodding his head. His gaze flickers to their conjoined hands when he feels the gentle caress of her thumb stroking over the callus skin on his knuckles. Slowly, he shifts his eyes upward and meets her smoldering gaze. She stares at him with an assuring look of content flickering in her eyes.
Spencer closes his eyes shut and exhaled a deep breath before finally confessing, “It's not that I can't sleep, it's that I don't want to.” He opens his eyes to see her eyebrows curiously furrowed. He elaborates further, “Every time I close my eyes all I see is your face looking down at mine, tears running down your face while I'm just laying there in my own cold blood.” He shakes his head, unable to finish the rest of his sentence. It hurts too much thinking about it again.
“I-I could've lost you, Olivia.”
She hears him lowly whisper. Olivia looks up at him and her heart visibly aches in pain at the sheer look of solemnity that marred his face, at the way he sounded so vulnerable and looked so helpless. She shifts closer towards him and tightly wound her arms around his neck, pulling him into a hug, though still cautious of his injury.
Spencer reciprocates the embrace, wrapping an arm around her waist while his face nuzzled against the wispy curls of her honey scented hair. “You didn't lose me, Spencer. I'm right here. I'm here because of you, because you jumped in front of that bullet and saved me.” She adduced, pulling back slightly from the hug so she could look him in the eyes. “You saved my life, Spencer James.” Olivia stated truthfully, the tenor of her voice reflects her upmost gratitude for his sacrifice.
“And I'd do it again.” Spencer says, his hand wrapped loosely around her wrist. “I would do anything for you.”
She smiles at his words because they're so Spencer — full of truth and promise. “I don't want you to jump in front of anymore bullets for me. I want you safe and alive, you understand me Spencer James?” She playfully chastised, a single eyebrow raised accusatorily at him. He chuckled and nodded his head, feeling grateful that the topic of discussion subverted to more a playful tone of manner.
“Yes ma'am.”
Olivia narrowed a piqued glare at him, she gasps, mouth hangs agape in shock as she lightly slaps him against the shoulder.
“Ow. What was that for?” Spencer pouts while he rubbed at the sore spot.
“You ate the rest of my food. I can see the empty container in the trash can.” Olivia states, pointing a finger to where her now empty container of Chinese food was tossed in the small trash bin.
“Sorry, I got hungry and the hospital food is gross.” He apologizes and Olivia rolls her eyes, though she holds no actual malice towards him.
“You're lucky I like you. If you were Jordan, I probably would've fight you for it.”
Spencer laughs, vividly imagining the two Baker twins bantering back and forth with one another. Upon living with them, he had witnessed his fair share of the occasional arguments between the two and let's just say, he was happy that he had yet to be the one on the receiving end of one of those heated disagreements. “What?” He curiously asks, noticing that Olivia had been staring intently at him.
She shakes her head, a small smile tuts upward on her lips. “Nothing. It's just the first time I've seen you smile all night. I missed it.”
“It's because of you. You're the only one that can somehow always manage to make me smile even in the most horrible situations.”
Her heart flutters, cheek shyly flush at the sincerity of his words. She bites at her bottom lip, hoping that it would hide the evidential warm blush that was coloring her cheeks. But if Spencer's coy chuckle of amusement was anything to go by, she greatly failed. They had always had this unspoken thing between them, hidden feelings for each other that neither one of them ever acted upon. At first, it was because of Spencer and his primary ambition of winning the affection of Layla then it was because somewhere along the line, Olivia had grown weary of secretly pining after Spencer so she settled for Asher.
Her relationship with Asher had been a shaky one which she already knew would be the outcome given who Asher was, but still she tried to be with him, tried to find that happiness she so desperate wanted with Spencer. But then Asher started changing, was jealous of Spencer again and accused her of harboring discreet feelings for him. No matter how many times she tried to assure herself (and others) that she didn't like Spencer, Olivia knew it was a blatant lie.
She had never stopped liking Spencer, not when he was in a relationship with her best friend and not while she was in a relationship with Asher. She tried so hard to ignore those feelings because she knew it was wrong, liking another boy that Layla had gone out with first and the last thing she wanted was another incident like last year where Layla had confronted her for secretly pining over Spencer while liking Asher at the same time.
Olivia didn't want to lose her friendship over a boy, not again especially when Layla had just gotten back home from being admitted in rehab.
“Liv?”
She blinks up at Spencer, her eyes wide with curiosity. She sees his tongue drag over his lower lip, his eyebrows furrow in concentration and his mouth opens then closes after a brief moment of contemplation. Just as Olivia parted her mouth open to ask if he was okay, she was taken by surprise as he slowly leaned forward and pressed his mouth against hers. Olivia stood there completely taut at first until eventually, she eased into it and kissed him back.
Their lips brushed softly at first, shyly, almost as if they were still adjusting to the feel of each other's lips. Spencer deepens the kiss and tilts his head slightly, granting better access to her lips. His large hand reaches up to cup her face, a thumb strokes softly against her plush cheek. Spencer's lips are pliant and feverishly in tandem along hers. Olivia sighs softly in his mouth, ravishing in the taste of his kisses, as she moved her mouth insistently along his.
It wasn't until visions of Layla whirred around her brain that she remembered what she was doing. Coming to her senses, Olivia quickly pulled her mouth away from Spencer's and moved towards the edge of the bed, placing some distance between them.
“We shouldn't have done that.” She says, dragging her tongue over her kiss swollen lips, the feeling of his mouth previously pressed against hers makes her lips tingle in avidity. She hastily shakes those thoughts away. No matter how much she enjoyed it, she knew that they could never do it again.
“Did I do something wrong?” Olivia hears Spencer catechize and she doesn't need to turn around to know that a look of worry is settled upon his face, she could already tell by the sound of his voice.
She shakes her head. “No you didn't. I did. Layla still loves you, Spencer. I don't want to hurt her again like I did with Asher. She's my best friend. Us,” She gestures a hand between them, “Kissing. Can't happen again.” It hurts saying these words to him because it feels like she's sacrificing her feelings in favor of Layla's again. After all, she did like Spencer before Layla even slyly inserted her way into the picture but none of that mattered. Olivia promised herself that she would be a better friend this time around and good friends did not kiss the boy that their friend still liked.
Spencer is quiet for a moment and Olivia began to wonder if he was upset at her.
“What about how I feel?” Her head perks up at the sound of this. She turns around, glancing at him over her shoulder. “Look Olivia, I'm not trying to come in between you and Layla. I would never want your friendship to end because of me. But I know how I feel, how I've always felt.” Olivia shifts her body, now turning around to fully face him. “It's you, Liv. It's been you since the beginning and yeah, maybe it took me awhile to see that and fuck, I'll never forgive myself for waiting so long to tell you this but I love you. Not just as a friend as so much more. You're the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
Her eyes widen, bottom lip inadvertently trembled at his heartfelt words. She was unaware that he had felt this way towards her, she knew that there was something between them but love? Hearing him say that just made it more heartbreakingly harder for to deny her evidential feelings for him. Of course she loved Spencer too, always had but Olivia knew that their feelings couldn't be acted upon.
“Spencer,” She whispers, her voice hoarse and nearly on the precipice of tears. She sniffles lowly and shakes her head. “I love you too, but–” The rest of her sentence is cut off by Spencer who adamantly interjects.
“No. No buts. I love you, Liv. And I know that my timing is not right, so I'm willing to wait for you. When things calm down and when I get better I want to give us a try. I know that you're worried about Layla, but something deep down tells me that she knows I've had feelings for you. But I'll wait until we can figure out a proper way to tell her without anyone getting hurt. I'll wait until you're ready.” Spencer says. He didn't want to risk Layla possibly hurting herself again if she found out about them. He wanted to make absolutely certain that she was in a good place emotionally and mentally before either one of them acted upon their feelings for each other.
He still cared about Layla, she was his friend. He didn't want to see her get hurt (which he knew was going to kinda be impossible, because in situations like this someone always ends up getting hurt), but still he wanted to confess his feelings for Olivia to Layla with the least amount of drama as possible.
Spencer shifts his body, scooting upwards a bit so his back is leaned against the bed's backboard. He groans gutturally as he props himself underneath the fluffy pillows. Reaching down his shaky hand grabs ahold of Olivia's, thumb caresses soothing strokes over her soft skin. He sits there quietly, watching as she tentatively bit on her lower lip.
“You're willing to wait for me?” She asks incredulously, in which he scoffs and playfully rolled his eyes in retort as if he feigned a mock offense.
“I mean I've been waiting all this time anyway,” Then his tone shifts into something more serious. “You're worth the wait. Whenever you're ready, I'll be here Olivia.”
Later that night, Spencer eventually does fall asleep. His head rested on her shoulder, his eyes lulled over in perfection, light snores whistled through his nostrils, face softened in tranquility. It was rare that she ever saw him in peace like this before, he was always carrying the burden of the world on his shoulders or doing everything in his power to solve the problems of people that he loved, not minding his own well being. It was a fault of his, being so nice and attentive of others.
It was also one of the things she loved most about him. Olivia sighed deeply as she stared over at the sleeping boy next to her. His words circled around her brain as she contemplated on his proposal. Should she take that preemptive step and finally act upon her obvious feelings for Spencer instead of ignoring them and desperately hoping that they would fade away like she's been doing? Should she put her own happiness before Layla's for once and take a chance on someone that she cared so deeply about? These unanswered questions linger around Olivia's mind as she slowly feels her body softening, her eyes lull over as she quickly falls asleep.