Busted Lips and Lust-Bruised Hips

Amaya wandered around the guest room with a disbelieving smile settled on her face. Glancing up as Pete stepped into the room with her bag, she grinned. "I can't believe you," she told him, "This is just insane."

Pete grinned in return. "I know. Who'd have thought a shitty boy from Chicago could have made it?"

"You're not a shitty boy," Amaya corrected him with a genuine smile, "You're a saviour."

Laughing, Pete placed Amaya's bag on the bed. "Some fucked-up saviour I am," he said.

"It's probably why you suit this fucked-up failure so well," Amaya explained with a shrug.

"Amaya, you're not a failure," Pete told her.

"No," Amaya replied dismissively, "I just have a problem sorting things out."

"Who doesn't? Nobody is perfect."

"But they can cover it up better than me," Amaya retorted, sitting down on the edge of the bed and looking up at Pete with a soft smile, "You know, I still can't thank you enough for this."

Pete crossed the room to sit next to her. "Don't. It's a purely selfish thing I'm doing," he told her, "I just want you away from there, away from him. If letting you stay here does that, then I'm more than happy to put you up until your head is on properly."

Amaya smiled. "That may take a while. It's been unhinged for a while."

"I could have told you that," Pete joked, laughing as Amaya shoved him forcefully, "Hey, if you can call me Oompa, you can at least give me a few jokes every now and then."

"Still," Amaya insisted.

Pete nudged Amaya gently as he stood up. "I'll let you unpack," he told her as he made his way towards the door, "Call me if you need anything."

"I always do," Amaya replied.

Pete stepped out into what remained of the sunshine, watching with an affectionate smile as Hemingway dashed passed him in excitement. He paused by the side of the house, savouring the air and the calm it brought with it, before crossing the backyard to sink beside the pool. Looking up at the house, he could see Amaya's silhouette as she meandered around the guest room, making herself at home. He smiled in relief, knowing that she had reappeared once again without the desperate begging and pleading he needed with Jeanae. Still, there was this inch of concern that niggled inside him over her arrival; the surprise of it all, the random reason for it. He knew there was something more to it than Amaya would let him know, but he didn't want to quake already unsteady ground with even more questions. Instead, he focussed on rattling stabler ground as he pulled his Sidekick from his pocket and keyed in Jeanae's number.

"Hey you," Jeanae greeted, her voice breaking through a mass of background noise.

"Hey," Pete replied, smiling into the distance between them.

"What's up?"

"Nothing much. I just wanted to call and see how you were."

Through the phone, Pete could hear Jeanae's affectionate smile at his explanation. "I'm ok. Work's a little slow at the moment but I'll be finished soon. How'd things go in the studio this morning?"

"They went all right. There's a few things that I want to adjust. I'm sure Patrick has some ideas too. It's just tidying it up, perfecting it a little," Pete explained, scratching the back of his neck nervously.

"So what you doing now?" Jeanae asked.

"Just winding down a little, letting the baby run wild," Pete replied with a slight smile. He glanced back up at Amaya's silhouette in the window, swallowing heavily as he did, "You know, I had a surprise waiting for me when I got home."

"Hemingway didn't shit over your clothes again, did he?" Jeanae asked with a laugh.

"No" Pete replied, internally wishing it was as simple as that, "Amaya was here."

"Amaya?" Jeanae asked, her voice a haze of shock and annoyance.

"Yeah," Pete said, rubbing at his eyes, "She was just sat at the doorstep. I think something's wrong. She said she'd been talking to someone, got scared and wanted to think things through."

"So she came to you?" Jeanae asked with disdain.

Pete shrugged to himself. "I guess there was nowhere else for her to go."

Jeanae paused. "How long is she staying for?"

"I don't know," Pete answered, "However it takes her to get her head focussed, I guess. I mean, it's not like I mind. That's what friends are for, right?"

"Yeah, friends," Jeanae repeated bitterly.

"Jeanae," Pete groaned, "She needs me. I can't turn her away."

"Just...be careful," Jeanae warned.

"Why?" Pete asked.

"I don't know," Jeanae told him, "I just don't trust this situation."

Nearly two thousand miles and a whole mindset away from Jeanae, Pete rolled his eyes at her insecurity. "I will," he replied, half-heartedly.

"Amaya," Pete called as he climbed up the stairs, "You ok?" He paused outside the guest room, listening closely to the silence on the other side. Confused, he pushed the door open slightly to glance inside, taking in the empty room in confusion. Stepping further into it, he looked around, taking in how Amaya had arranged everything so neatly. All of her possessions were either stacked in order or folded tidily, just in arm's reach of her needs. He smirked, amused and yet unnerved at the same time that she could be the complete opposite of him and feel so at home in his house.

"Pete?"

Turning around, Pete stopped as he saw Amaya's head appear from around the bathroom door. Her hair hung in damp curls down her side and, although she tried to obscure herself by behind the door, he could still catch a glimpse of the towel bound around her. "Oh, I..." Pete started.

Glancing down at herself, Amaya bit her lip nervously. "Sorry, I...I thought I'd take a quick shower," she explained, "I'll go...sort myself out." As she disappeared back into the bathroom, Pete rubbed his forehead forcefully to erase the blush that had claimed his cheeks and wandered around the bedroom in an attempt to stem the irregular rhythm his heart had fallen into. "I hope you don't mind," Amaya called from the bathroom.

"Huh?" Pete asked, breaking from his reverie.

"Me taking a shower," Amaya replied, "I hope you don't mind."

"Oh. No, I don't mind," Pete said.

The bathroom door swung open as Amaya stepped into the bedroom, dressed and drying her hair gently with a towel. "I'm sorry," she apologised with a grin, "That probably wasn't the best sight in the world to come up to."

"I...er...I didn't see much," Pete reassured as Amaya placed the towel on the cabinet.

Amaya smirked. "There's not much there to see anyway," she told him. Turning around again, Amaya's smile faded at Pete's blatant discomfort. "You know, you can tell me if you feel I'm imposing," she told him.

"You're not," Pete replied, watching her with an unreadable expression.

Amaya frowned, stopping herself to stare back at the bassist. "What?" she asked.

"Those marks," Pete said, glancing at the black and blue collage along the base of Amaya's neck.

Self-consciously, Amaya's hand rushed to cover the bruises. "It's nothing," she told him quickly.

Pete crossed the room to Amaya, gently pulling her hand down to look closer at the marks. "That is not nothing," he told her. He looked up at Amaya, who her diverted eyes, and dropped her hand. "That's why you're out here, isn't it?" he asked, "You're avoiding Sean."

"No," Amaya replied, catching his gaze with honesty, "I did get scared and I did want to see you. This has nothing to do with it."

"Don't keep lying to me, Amaya," Pete warned, "That's exactly why you're here."

Diverting her gaze, Amaya bit down viciously on her lip. "I just don't know what to do," she confessed.

"You do, Amaya," Pete corrected, "You just won't do it."

"It's not as easy as leaving, Pete," Amaya bit back, glancing back at the bassist sharply, "I mean, look at me. If he does this to me when we're together, what the hell is he going to do when I leave him?"

"He can't touch you then. Once you're out of there, that's it."

"You don't know him, Pete. You haven't seen him when he's mad. He doesn't just lash out. He gets unreasonable."

"Then that's all the more reason to leave," Pete argued, reaching for her hand.

Stepping away, Amaya shook her head at his attempts. "You don't understand what it's like. No one does," she told him as she wandered across the bedroom.

"Then tell me," Pete coaxed, "Give me one good reason why you should stay with him."
"I'm scared," Amaya said as she turned around, "That's the only reason I'm with him anymore. There's no love between us. For him, it's a chance to be masculine, to relieve his aggression. For me, it's just that I'm too terrified to leave him."

"Amaya, you need to get out," Pete told her.

"I know," Amaya sighed, "But I've been in this for so long now. I don't know what else is there for me anymore."

"Everything," Pete replied, walking across to her carefully, "Anything. Something better than that." Pausing behind the waitress, he dug his hands into his pockets and swept his eyes restlessly down her back. "You need to get out of there for your sake. It's not healthy. If it means staying here until you find the confidence, then you stay as long as you have to. But I'm not letting you go home if I think you're not gonna go back to New York and break up with Sean."

"I don't wanna impose," Amaya told him, facing him with tear-lined eyes.

"You're not," Pete replied softly, taking Amaya's hand and pulling her into a hug, "I want you to do this. I told you, keeping you here is for purely selfish reasons on my part."

Smiling through her tears, Amaya tucked her head in against Pete's neck. She coiled her arms around his waist, squeezing him so tightly she could hear his breath hitch with the pressure. As she sealed her eyes shut to stem her tears, she found it mildly surprising that, despite the amount of gratitude flooding through her system, her only thought as she stood there was a reoccuring apology that she was putting Pete out once more time.