Post by AceTheMercenary on Oct 24, 2015 16:53:38 GMT -6
"Agatha...wake up, sleepyhead!"
The sing-songy, thickly-accented voice of her childhood friend prompted Agatha "Aggro" Moss to slowly begin to rise from her extremely heavy slumber, punctuated by a deep inhale through her nose. The twenty-four year old rock star stretched as much as she could in the rather cramped confines of the Charger's passenger seat, her eyes slowly cracking open to settle her line of sight on her best friend. "Sorry, Ari...guess I nodded off for a minute. What's up?" A good-natured laugh from her friend answered her in return, bright blue eyes shimmering with mirth as she kept her attention focused on the road in front of them.
"Just a minute? More like seven hours. The sun is rising. See?" Arina replied, gesturing to the horizon ahead. Agatha's eyes followed her gesture and, true to the Russian girl's words, the sky was in its dawn hours, streaked with orange and red -- a beautiful color to be sure -- but not so much as Agatha realized she had slept the entire night's drive away and left her friend saddled with all the responsibility. The rock star brought a hand to her face, massaging her eyes for a moment to finish waking herself up. "Shit...I'm sorry, Ari. Didn't mean to leave you stuck with the whole drive." Arina rolled her eyes in response, pressing down on the brake pedal a little as the car in front of her began to slow down. "Oh, don't worry about it. Trust me, I've been up way longer than this before." Agatha sighed heavily, pushing herself up into more of a sitting position in her seat.
"Yeah...whole point of riding with you was so we could catch up, though. Can't help but feel bad about missing out on that." She looked down as Arina's hand came off of the gear shift, enveloping the back of her own in a warm embrace. "Seriously, don't worry about it. I slept in yesterday anyway, but we dragged you off the minute you got back from your tour without letting you get any rest. It's no big deal, we'll be at the cabin for two weeks so there'll be plenty of time to get caught up," Arina gave her a warm smile, and Agatha felt the blonde girl's fingers begin to absentmindedly play with the ring on her finger. "Of course, I'm pretty sure you're worried about bigger things than that, so I suppose I'll have to make do with Emma for a while, no?" Arina took her eyes off of the road for a split second to shoot a beaming smile at her friend, her eyes twinkling brightly in the relative darkness of the car. "I seriously can't believe you're getting married! And to such a great guy, too... Do you have any idea how happy I am for you?"
"Engaged, Ari. Not getting married yet. Haven't even begun to talk about what we're going to do for that." Agatha corrected, prompting her friend to pout playfully. "Same thing..." Agatha shook her head with a snort of amusement, bringing up her hand to gaze upon the ring she had been given. The ring itself probably wouldn't appear to be special to anyone else -- it was just a simple gold band, with two diamond-studded musical notes surrounding a heart-cut diamond directly in the center -- but to Agatha, it held all the meaning that words could never describe. A symbol of the love she and Sam had for each other made into reality. She'd never admit it to anyone, of course, but just looking at the ring made her secretly feel like a princess. Since the day Sam had given it to her, she'd yet to take it off, and when she found herself alone in a hotel room while on tour with her band, she'd occasionally catch herself staring at it.
Who would've thought it? Magazine-described all around bad girl "Aggro" Moss getting married, and to someone who wasn't even another rock star. It was almost scandalous according to celebrity news media, and the press had, as per usual, attempted to have a field day with the information...until she'd gotten fed up and punched out a couple of the usual papparazzi stalking around their home in Henderson, Nevada. After that, the only people who showed up were more legitimate at the least, though still equally dislikeable.
With a sigh, Agatha reached into the back seat, where the two had packed several water bottles, sodas and snacks in a large cooler, pilfering a can of Pepsi for herself before settling back into her seat. "How much further, anyways?" She asked, opening the can with a loud pop of the pull-tab. "Hmm...about ten minutes, I believe. So long as traffic stays the way it is. For a while there it was just us on the road." Arina replied, idly shifting the gears of the vehicle. Agatha nodded, taking a sip from the can and glancing out the window as the trees on the side of the road rolled by in a blur. The cabin they intended to rent was far out of the way in a rural area, and was supposed to be situated nearly right on top of a beautiful, large lake. While she knew Emma and Arina were eager to swim, the lake didn't hold so much interest for her beyond sitting on the bank. The cabin itself, on the other hand, definitely did. A nice, long relaxation period, with nobody to bother them, whether it be the press or just people in general.
"Y'know, I'm really surprised you agreed to this," Arina continued conversationally, shooting another sideways glance and half-smirk at her friend. "I half-expected you to shoot Sam down the minute Emma told me about the idea. It's so...domestic. The whole 'living in a cabin' thing, I mean. Are you actually starting to like the idea of the wilderness now?" Agatha crossed her arms, looking down at the spots of the leopard-spotted jacket she was wearing. "Of course not," She rumbled, turning her gaze to the lights of the dashboard and vaguely noting somewhere that they were traveling at 85 miles per hour. "Whoa," Agatha remarked in surprise, netting a confused look from her friend. "Hmm? Is something the matter?"
"You're doing eighty-five, Ari!" Agatha yelled at her as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, one of her hands unconsciously gripping the side of her door. Arina made a face, one that vaguely looked like disgust. "I know. I hate driving slow. But Sam made me promise..." The rock star's eyes widened at that response, her hand gripping the door handle just a bit tighter. "This is slow to you?" She knew that Arina had always enjoyed driving pretty fast -- everybody in Vegas and all the other big cities she'd been to in her life did -- and she was always the one out of her small circle of friends that was constantly looking for the fastest roller coaster in the theme park, but even so... "Well, yeah, silly. I always drive like this. Especially on the interstate. Emma loves it." She took her eyes off the road to shoot another half-smirk at her. "Eyes on the road, Ari!"
Arina pouted a little, glancing back at the road, and Agatha watched as the speedometer slowly decreased to 80, and then finally bottomed out to an acceptable 75. "Better?" She asked curtly, prompting Agatha to nod before leaning her head back against the headrest behind her and close her eyes. "You should be glad I like you so much. I don't take requests like these from just anyone." Agatha ignored her, reveling silently in the contrast between the darkness of her eyelids as opposed to the blurring trees that had been flying by her window.
"Hey," Arina's worried voice brought her out of her silence once again, and Agatha felt her hand cover her own gently once again. "You're not feeling sick again, are you? Do we need to pull over?" Agatha mumbled a quiet 'no' under her breath, and she felt the hand squeeze hers gently. "Are you sure? I've been worried about you." Agatha opened her eyes again, looking over to catch the worried gaze of her friend. She didn't bother correcting her on her, frankly, horrible driving habits once again, instead opting to nod her head. "I'm fine, Ari. Could just really stand to get out of the car for a little while." Arina smiled, turning her attention back to the road and squeezing her hand once more. "Well, you're in luck there. Our turn's coming up soon." She quieted down, and Agatha unconsciously brought a hand to her stomach, glancing out the window once again. She exhaled a breath through clenched teeth as she felt the nagging, stressful feeling she'd been putting up with the past week-and-a-half return full force.
Five minutes later, they had exited the interstate, and ten more minutes later, they were driving up a trail in the mountains. It was a winding trail, one that forced even Arina to slow her driving a little (which she wasn't so happy about at all), with a lot of hard turns and barely any room for a car in the other lane. It finally leveled out a bit further up, however, and they pulled off onto a dirt trail where the road ended. At long last they caught sight of their rented cabin in the distance, and Arina pulled the Charger into one of the makeshift parking spaces just below it, slamming it into park and cutting the engine with a sigh before grinning brightly at her best friend. "We're here." She said simply, before opening the door and stepping out. Agatha did the same, gazing up at the cabin in wonder.
The cabin was a huge, two-story building and seemed to be made out of solid materials, although Agatha certainly didn't know what wood it was made out of -- and didn't really care, either. It was entirely unvarnished and unpainted, but the wood was beautiful and still in remarkably nice condition, with a window on seemingly every wall of the house to allow anyone to look out at the wilderness at any given time. The porch of the cabin stretched around the entirety of the house, and she could see a flight of stairs leading down to the lower part of the cabin, and a sturdily-built stone chimney jutted proudly from the roof, while the roof itself was covered in green corrugated metal. It was a breathtaking home, and quite a bit different than what she was used to from her boyfriend's place back in Henderson. In fact, she couldn't recall a better looking home in any place she had been to, which was saying something considering how many states she had traveled to over the years.
Agatha smiled to herself. It was so obvious that Sam had tried so hard to impress her and make her happy. And, like always, it had worked.
"So what do you think?" Arina asked, and Agatha finally got a good look at her (slightly taller) friend. Whereas her younger sister Anastasia had gotten, Agatha had thought, the raw end of the deal where genetic makeup was concerned (despite the young redhead's obvious beauty, she was very short and far more slender), Arina had very, very little to complain about. Standing taller than even some men her age at the height of 5'11", she was certainly an imposing sight -- in more ways than one. Her hair was blond and quite long as it cascaded gorgeously down to her shoulders, and she had obviously put quite a bit of work into straightening it the day they had left, though the bangs that so often fell in her eyes had been fixed to the sides, and now framed her face. Her jawline was sharp and sculpted beautifully, accenting her face in all the right ways, and even her nose was a modest size, fitting her face perfectly. But the most striking part of her face was her eyes, without a doubt: a chilling and indescribably captivating shade of blue, "as pure as a stream in Siberia during a Russian winter", Arina had described them to her once.
Her attire was quite simple, however. A basic white henley covered her upper body, the sleeves of which she had pushed up to her elbows. Her forearms flexed powerfully with surprisingly hard muscle with every move she made, containing an undeniable strength -- military training had been good to her over the years, and in more ways than one. While she lacked a true hourglass figure, it wasn't so hard to tell that Arina had very little in the way of fat on her body. She also wore dark blue hip-hugging jeans and a pair of military-issued combat boots, and completing the outfit was a set of dog tags hanging from the necklace around her neck, coming to rest just above the gentle swell of her surprisingly ample bustline.
Agatha herself had opted for one of her favorite outfits, an old band t-shirt she had had printed upon the release of her band's first album, which was black and pictured the cover of the CD prominently on the front, overlaid with her favorite leopard-spotted blazer, ripped and faded jeans and a pair of Converse shoes, with her hair done in its usual fashion -- slightly frizzy and wild, with her bangs covering her right eye and the right side of her face almost entirely. Yet, as she stood next to her friend, she vaguely wondered which of them would be considered to be more attractive. She'd snickered a little in her mind upon remembering that this very Russian girl had, once upon a time, had braces on her teeth and wore bows in her hair and stared at her feet, too afraid to make eye contact with anyone but Agatha herself, but now...things had certainly changed. A lot of growing up and filling in had been done by both of them, of course, but Agatha still looked fairly similar to how she had in high school, save being a bit taller and slightly more curvy. Arina had turned into a goddess. It was funny how that worked.
"Dunno. Lot to take in," Agatha replied simply, placing her hands on her hips and looking up at the gorgeous cabin once again, then back to the road behind them. She wondered vaguely where Sam was, but Arina's lunatic driving had put them at the cabin well-ahead of schedule, so odds were they were just lagging behind. "I suppose it is. I haven't seen a place this nice in a long time myself -- not since my mother took me on a vacation to Moscow when I was fourteen. Sam must really like you -- it's obvious he's spared no expense," Arina replied, walking around to the back of the Charger and popping the trunk open. A powerfully-built arm effortlessly threw the trunk open as Agatha walked over to join her, finding their collective luggage contained within. "I suppose we should get our bags up to the porch and get ready, then? We can't go inside since Sam has the key, but it'll make life easier." The heavily-accented voice suggested. "Mm." Agatha replied, as her mind again fell on other, more stressful things. It wasn't that she would be unhappy to see Sam, of course -- quite the contrary, in fact -- but rather what she knew she would have to tell him. And she knew all too well what weight her words would carry. The kind of thing that would make or break their relationship...she didn't even want to think about it. But she had no choice.
She was removed from her thoughts by the crunch of gravel and another engine behind her as another vehicle came into the makeshift parking lot, and she looked up in time to see an older model Trailblazer pull in some distance away from them. "Hey, they're finally here!" Arina remarked, waving at the vehicle in question. The Trailblazer's engine cut off, and three of the four doors opened seconds later, followed by multiple pairs of shoes of various makes hitting the gravel beneath them. "Ari!" Agatha watched as the youngest of the makeshift family -- Sam's little sister, Emma -- immediately hopped out of the Trailblazer, bounding across the lot in a few long-legged leaps before practically jumping into her best friend's arms, prompting a laugh from Arina as she wrapped the much younger girl into a hug. "Hey, Anoushka! I see Sam's old man driving finally got you here at last?" Arina asked, releasing her before poking the girl in the stomach, prompting a giggle from her. "Uggggh! Don't remind me. I wanted to ride with you and Agatha the whole time," She turned to Agatha then, a bright smile on her face. "Hey, Agatha!"
Agatha smirked at her, reaching a hand out to ruffle her hair. "Hey, kiddo. Glad you're here." She replied simply, knowing well that that would pretty much be the end of things as Emma's eyes landed on the cabin on the hill above them. "Whoa...this place is so cool! We're really staying here?" Her eyes flashed back to Agatha and Arina, who nodded simultaneously. "Sure are! C'mon, I'll help you with your bags." And with that the two had left her there, bounding back over to the Trailblazer together. Agatha smiled a bit in response. Arina looked even younger than she normally did whenever she was around Emma, even though she didn't act like it. 'Motherly' would be her word for it.
The soft crunch of boots on the gravel behind her caught her attention, and as she looked up into the handsome face of her significant other, Sam Riley, with that ever-present bright, silly grin on his face as he walked towards her, her heart sank into her stomach coldly as she again remembered what she was supposed to tell him. But even so, the mere sight of him was enough to bring a smile to her face. Everything she ever wanted all rolled into one guy...and he was all hers.
His well-built arms and hands, rough from many years of manual labor working on cars, wrapped around her body, while her hands came up to rest on his shoulders as she allowed him to pull her body close to his. "Hey," He greeted, grinning down at her as he always did. "Hey," She replied breathlessly, right before his lips pressed against hers and they shared a brief kiss beneath the cabin they'd rented together. A quiet wretching noise from somewhere nearby prompted her to break the kiss, and, still in each others' arms, the happy couple turned to find something that made her jaw set firmly in anger. Sam's ex-girlfriend, Sara, was standing there, her arms crossed with the fake smile on her face that Agatha knew was a piss-poor attempt to hide her bitchy attitude. "Can we go inside now, Sam? It's a little warm out here." She asked. Agatha looked back up to Sam, her eyebrows raised in question. "I don't see why not. You ready to see our cabin, Agatha?" Sam asked in response, looking down at her with that handsome, boyish grin she so secretly loved. Agatha took another glance at Sara, a half-smirk on her face. "In just a minute..." She replied, before pressing her lips back to his, although she didn't take her eyes off of Sara as she did so, silently reveling in the enjoyment she felt from the situation as the fake smile on Sara's face slowly gave way to a scowl, something that Agatha decided suited her far better than the usual false pretenses. She idly took one of her hands off of Sam's shoulders to prominently display her middle finger in Sara's direction before closing her eyes and leaning fully into the kiss.
When she broke the kiss a moment later, Sara was no longer there.
"So what do you think?" Sam asked as he finally released her from his embrace, opting instead to take her by the hand and lead her up the brick staircase to the cabin. "It's really something, Sam. Put a lot of thought into this, I can tell that much. You don't know what that means to me." Agatha replied, taking another look up at the cabin. "Hey. Anything for you. If we're going to do this, then we're doing it right the first time. Just call it all my little way of telling you how amazing you are." Sam admitted with a half-hearted shrug, prompting her to look up at him with her eyebrows raised a little in surprise. Not at the words themselves -- she'd certainly been called amazing many times over the years -- but hearing them from him, it...changed them somehow. Made them different. Much more powerful.
And so, she could only smile like a giddy schoolgirl. "No, Sam. You're amazing." She responded. Sam only smiled as he walked up to the front door with key in hand.
The inside of the cabin looked much like she had expected it to. Surprisingly bright due to the light color of the wood and the numerous amounts of windows on the walls, and very roomy on the inside, with a high ceiling and gigantic living area with plenty of couches and chairs all surrounding the fireplace, which had a large flatscreen TV situated above it where everyone could see it easily no matter where they chose to sit. There were other furnishings around the place as well, a deer head mounted on the wall and other things, but for the most part it was relatively spartan and fairly old-fashioned. To Agatha it was gorgeous, but she couldn't vouch for the others.
"Wow...you were right, Em. This place is cool." Agatha remarked as she regarded the inside of the cabin with wide eyes, much to Sam's happiness.
The cabin contained other rooms beyond the living area and the rooms, of course, such as a game room beneath them on the lower level with card tables, dart boards and pool tables, but they all decided that that would be reserved for later when it got too dark to be outside. The small group of people busied themselves with bringing in what luggage they had (noting with displeasure that a rather disproportionate amount of it belonged to Sara), then decided to dole out which rooms belonged to whom (Agatha and Sam had laughed at the pouts on Arina and Emma's faces when they found out the master bedroom didn't, in fact, belong to them), and when each person was finally settled, they met in the living area to discuss what they were to do first. The fridge was pretty bare in its selection, as were the cabinets, so a trip to the store for food was an inevitability considering the duration of their stay (Agatha had again smiled at the conversation that took place between her and Arina on the subject: "I can drive us!" "No. Had enough of your need for speed to last all week." "Aww..."), and the cabinets held precious little as well, namely canned spaghetti sauce and a few boxes of dry noodles, but if they had to dine on whatever Arina could make out of it for that evening, then so be it.
"Well, I don't know about all of you," Arina spoke up when everyone had finally packed away all of their belongings and returned to the living area. "But I'm going to go check out the lake. There's still plenty of daylight left, and I don't want to miss a minute of it." She threw a glance at Emma, who smiled brightly in response. "I'm coming too!" This prompted a laugh from Arina, who again poked her in the stomach. "Race you." Agatha jumped out of their way as the two rushed past her in a whirl of various clothing colors and brown and blond hair, their feet thumping loudly against the carpet-covered wooden stairs as they ran up. Agatha chuckled under her breath, smiling at the sight of them as they finally disappeared from view. Arina was so...predictable. She spent all her time around the pool her family home had in Vegas, so it was only natural that she'd spend all her time by the lake on vacation. She couldn't fault her friend for doing what she thought was the most fun, though. She looked to Sam to gauge his reaction, raising her eyebrows in question, while the look on his face, like always, said "If you want to".
"Well, I suppose I should go get changed, then?" Agatha asked, more rhetorically and to herself than anything. Sam raised a surprised eyebrow, crossing his arms. "You're going to swim?" He asked, knowing well her aversions to water that didn't come from a shower or sink faucet. "Of course not," Agatha replied with a roll of her eyes. "Gonna be sunny today, though, so why not sit on the bank? Might bring my guitar along if you guys wanna do s'mores or somethin' once it gets dark." Sam grinned once again. "Free Aggro Moss concert by the campfire? I'm there." He replied, prompting her to laugh and release his hand. "Be right back." She told him with a wink, before ascending the stairs at a decidedly slower pace than Arina and Emma had before her.
As she shut the door to the bedroom she and Sam were sharing, she finally allowed the breath to leave her lungs in an audible hiss. She couldn't bring herself to tell him. Not while they were all having so much fun (though she was sure she'd put a damper on Sara's mood a little earlier, not that she cared). Maybe sometime during the week she'd finally find the guts to do so, but not today. Agatha allowed herself to stress over the situation for a moment more before taking in a deep breath and gathering herself together. While being a killjoy was her usual behavior -- in fact, it was an art form to her -- she didn't want to put a damper on the mood of everyone else this time.
She was freed from her clothes far sooner than she expected to be, and ran through the few two-piece swimsuits she'd brought (knowing that it was an inevitability with Arina there) for what seemed like an eternity, agonizing over the choice before finally settling on the black bikini that happened to be her favorite -- risque, yet conservative and simple at the same time, still leaving most of the important bits to the imagination. She dressed in it quickly and then, as an afterthought, threw on one of Sam's old white work shirts, noting with a smile that it ran well past her hips and all the way to her thighs on her much less muscular frame. Content with her appearance, she grabbed the case that contained her guitar and descended the stairs to find everyone waiting for her, dressed in much the same way (though Sam still wore his regular clothes, evidence that he wouldn't be going in the water this time himself).
It was a short walk to the lake, being that the cabin was practically situated directly on the bank. Agatha watched as Arina promptly threw her t-shirt to the side to reveal her own blue bikini before diving into the water without a second thought, shrieking loudly as it was evidently still quite cold despite the sun being overhead. Emma wasn't too far behind herself, wearing -- typically enough -- a yellow bikini. Agatha smiled as Sam walked around her, effortlessly carrying two folded-up sun loungers, one under each arm, before taking one from him and helping to set them both up. Sara merely brought a towel and a pair of sunglasses, and Agatha noted with no small amount of disgust that the swimsuit she wore left...very very little to the imagination. Typical enough, she supposed, but she still couldn't help wondering what the woman's angle was. She'd thought Sam had made it clear enough that he didn't want her anymore.
Averting her gaze as the sight quite literally disgusted her and was making her feel ill all over again, Agatha took a couple steps away from the set-up lounger in front of her, reaching down to pull her pilfered t-shirt over her head and cast it aside. She noticed Sam's obvious look of desire and smirked at him, pleased with the effect she'd pulled off before carefully lowering herself down onto the chair. Sam set his up next to her, and when he'd made himself comfortable, she reached over to take his hand, which he gladly accepted, to the soundtrack of Arina and Emma's laughter in the background as they splashed around in the water. "This is...probably the best idea we've ever had, Sam. Don't have the words for it." She remarked, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. Sam smiled over at her, mimicking the squeeze of her hand. "I'm glad. It's nice to see you so happy. And feeling better, too. That was a rough bout you had with all the throwing up." Agatha froze, her grip loosening slightly in his hand, but she quickly forced a smile in his direction. "Yeah...feels like it's over now, though, so no big deal." She replied.
And as she turned her head to gaze out at the lake where Arina and Emma had begun a half-hearted splash fight, with Sam's comforting grip still present on her hand, Agatha had to admit that all felt right in her world.
The sing-songy, thickly-accented voice of her childhood friend prompted Agatha "Aggro" Moss to slowly begin to rise from her extremely heavy slumber, punctuated by a deep inhale through her nose. The twenty-four year old rock star stretched as much as she could in the rather cramped confines of the Charger's passenger seat, her eyes slowly cracking open to settle her line of sight on her best friend. "Sorry, Ari...guess I nodded off for a minute. What's up?" A good-natured laugh from her friend answered her in return, bright blue eyes shimmering with mirth as she kept her attention focused on the road in front of them.
"Just a minute? More like seven hours. The sun is rising. See?" Arina replied, gesturing to the horizon ahead. Agatha's eyes followed her gesture and, true to the Russian girl's words, the sky was in its dawn hours, streaked with orange and red -- a beautiful color to be sure -- but not so much as Agatha realized she had slept the entire night's drive away and left her friend saddled with all the responsibility. The rock star brought a hand to her face, massaging her eyes for a moment to finish waking herself up. "Shit...I'm sorry, Ari. Didn't mean to leave you stuck with the whole drive." Arina rolled her eyes in response, pressing down on the brake pedal a little as the car in front of her began to slow down. "Oh, don't worry about it. Trust me, I've been up way longer than this before." Agatha sighed heavily, pushing herself up into more of a sitting position in her seat.
"Yeah...whole point of riding with you was so we could catch up, though. Can't help but feel bad about missing out on that." She looked down as Arina's hand came off of the gear shift, enveloping the back of her own in a warm embrace. "Seriously, don't worry about it. I slept in yesterday anyway, but we dragged you off the minute you got back from your tour without letting you get any rest. It's no big deal, we'll be at the cabin for two weeks so there'll be plenty of time to get caught up," Arina gave her a warm smile, and Agatha felt the blonde girl's fingers begin to absentmindedly play with the ring on her finger. "Of course, I'm pretty sure you're worried about bigger things than that, so I suppose I'll have to make do with Emma for a while, no?" Arina took her eyes off of the road for a split second to shoot a beaming smile at her friend, her eyes twinkling brightly in the relative darkness of the car. "I seriously can't believe you're getting married! And to such a great guy, too... Do you have any idea how happy I am for you?"
"Engaged, Ari. Not getting married yet. Haven't even begun to talk about what we're going to do for that." Agatha corrected, prompting her friend to pout playfully. "Same thing..." Agatha shook her head with a snort of amusement, bringing up her hand to gaze upon the ring she had been given. The ring itself probably wouldn't appear to be special to anyone else -- it was just a simple gold band, with two diamond-studded musical notes surrounding a heart-cut diamond directly in the center -- but to Agatha, it held all the meaning that words could never describe. A symbol of the love she and Sam had for each other made into reality. She'd never admit it to anyone, of course, but just looking at the ring made her secretly feel like a princess. Since the day Sam had given it to her, she'd yet to take it off, and when she found herself alone in a hotel room while on tour with her band, she'd occasionally catch herself staring at it.
Who would've thought it? Magazine-described all around bad girl "Aggro" Moss getting married, and to someone who wasn't even another rock star. It was almost scandalous according to celebrity news media, and the press had, as per usual, attempted to have a field day with the information...until she'd gotten fed up and punched out a couple of the usual papparazzi stalking around their home in Henderson, Nevada. After that, the only people who showed up were more legitimate at the least, though still equally dislikeable.
With a sigh, Agatha reached into the back seat, where the two had packed several water bottles, sodas and snacks in a large cooler, pilfering a can of Pepsi for herself before settling back into her seat. "How much further, anyways?" She asked, opening the can with a loud pop of the pull-tab. "Hmm...about ten minutes, I believe. So long as traffic stays the way it is. For a while there it was just us on the road." Arina replied, idly shifting the gears of the vehicle. Agatha nodded, taking a sip from the can and glancing out the window as the trees on the side of the road rolled by in a blur. The cabin they intended to rent was far out of the way in a rural area, and was supposed to be situated nearly right on top of a beautiful, large lake. While she knew Emma and Arina were eager to swim, the lake didn't hold so much interest for her beyond sitting on the bank. The cabin itself, on the other hand, definitely did. A nice, long relaxation period, with nobody to bother them, whether it be the press or just people in general.
"Y'know, I'm really surprised you agreed to this," Arina continued conversationally, shooting another sideways glance and half-smirk at her friend. "I half-expected you to shoot Sam down the minute Emma told me about the idea. It's so...domestic. The whole 'living in a cabin' thing, I mean. Are you actually starting to like the idea of the wilderness now?" Agatha crossed her arms, looking down at the spots of the leopard-spotted jacket she was wearing. "Of course not," She rumbled, turning her gaze to the lights of the dashboard and vaguely noting somewhere that they were traveling at 85 miles per hour. "Whoa," Agatha remarked in surprise, netting a confused look from her friend. "Hmm? Is something the matter?"
"You're doing eighty-five, Ari!" Agatha yelled at her as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, one of her hands unconsciously gripping the side of her door. Arina made a face, one that vaguely looked like disgust. "I know. I hate driving slow. But Sam made me promise..." The rock star's eyes widened at that response, her hand gripping the door handle just a bit tighter. "This is slow to you?" She knew that Arina had always enjoyed driving pretty fast -- everybody in Vegas and all the other big cities she'd been to in her life did -- and she was always the one out of her small circle of friends that was constantly looking for the fastest roller coaster in the theme park, but even so... "Well, yeah, silly. I always drive like this. Especially on the interstate. Emma loves it." She took her eyes off the road to shoot another half-smirk at her. "Eyes on the road, Ari!"
Arina pouted a little, glancing back at the road, and Agatha watched as the speedometer slowly decreased to 80, and then finally bottomed out to an acceptable 75. "Better?" She asked curtly, prompting Agatha to nod before leaning her head back against the headrest behind her and close her eyes. "You should be glad I like you so much. I don't take requests like these from just anyone." Agatha ignored her, reveling silently in the contrast between the darkness of her eyelids as opposed to the blurring trees that had been flying by her window.
"Hey," Arina's worried voice brought her out of her silence once again, and Agatha felt her hand cover her own gently once again. "You're not feeling sick again, are you? Do we need to pull over?" Agatha mumbled a quiet 'no' under her breath, and she felt the hand squeeze hers gently. "Are you sure? I've been worried about you." Agatha opened her eyes again, looking over to catch the worried gaze of her friend. She didn't bother correcting her on her, frankly, horrible driving habits once again, instead opting to nod her head. "I'm fine, Ari. Could just really stand to get out of the car for a little while." Arina smiled, turning her attention back to the road and squeezing her hand once more. "Well, you're in luck there. Our turn's coming up soon." She quieted down, and Agatha unconsciously brought a hand to her stomach, glancing out the window once again. She exhaled a breath through clenched teeth as she felt the nagging, stressful feeling she'd been putting up with the past week-and-a-half return full force.
Five minutes later, they had exited the interstate, and ten more minutes later, they were driving up a trail in the mountains. It was a winding trail, one that forced even Arina to slow her driving a little (which she wasn't so happy about at all), with a lot of hard turns and barely any room for a car in the other lane. It finally leveled out a bit further up, however, and they pulled off onto a dirt trail where the road ended. At long last they caught sight of their rented cabin in the distance, and Arina pulled the Charger into one of the makeshift parking spaces just below it, slamming it into park and cutting the engine with a sigh before grinning brightly at her best friend. "We're here." She said simply, before opening the door and stepping out. Agatha did the same, gazing up at the cabin in wonder.
The cabin was a huge, two-story building and seemed to be made out of solid materials, although Agatha certainly didn't know what wood it was made out of -- and didn't really care, either. It was entirely unvarnished and unpainted, but the wood was beautiful and still in remarkably nice condition, with a window on seemingly every wall of the house to allow anyone to look out at the wilderness at any given time. The porch of the cabin stretched around the entirety of the house, and she could see a flight of stairs leading down to the lower part of the cabin, and a sturdily-built stone chimney jutted proudly from the roof, while the roof itself was covered in green corrugated metal. It was a breathtaking home, and quite a bit different than what she was used to from her boyfriend's place back in Henderson. In fact, she couldn't recall a better looking home in any place she had been to, which was saying something considering how many states she had traveled to over the years.
Agatha smiled to herself. It was so obvious that Sam had tried so hard to impress her and make her happy. And, like always, it had worked.
"So what do you think?" Arina asked, and Agatha finally got a good look at her (slightly taller) friend. Whereas her younger sister Anastasia had gotten, Agatha had thought, the raw end of the deal where genetic makeup was concerned (despite the young redhead's obvious beauty, she was very short and far more slender), Arina had very, very little to complain about. Standing taller than even some men her age at the height of 5'11", she was certainly an imposing sight -- in more ways than one. Her hair was blond and quite long as it cascaded gorgeously down to her shoulders, and she had obviously put quite a bit of work into straightening it the day they had left, though the bangs that so often fell in her eyes had been fixed to the sides, and now framed her face. Her jawline was sharp and sculpted beautifully, accenting her face in all the right ways, and even her nose was a modest size, fitting her face perfectly. But the most striking part of her face was her eyes, without a doubt: a chilling and indescribably captivating shade of blue, "as pure as a stream in Siberia during a Russian winter", Arina had described them to her once.
Her attire was quite simple, however. A basic white henley covered her upper body, the sleeves of which she had pushed up to her elbows. Her forearms flexed powerfully with surprisingly hard muscle with every move she made, containing an undeniable strength -- military training had been good to her over the years, and in more ways than one. While she lacked a true hourglass figure, it wasn't so hard to tell that Arina had very little in the way of fat on her body. She also wore dark blue hip-hugging jeans and a pair of military-issued combat boots, and completing the outfit was a set of dog tags hanging from the necklace around her neck, coming to rest just above the gentle swell of her surprisingly ample bustline.
Agatha herself had opted for one of her favorite outfits, an old band t-shirt she had had printed upon the release of her band's first album, which was black and pictured the cover of the CD prominently on the front, overlaid with her favorite leopard-spotted blazer, ripped and faded jeans and a pair of Converse shoes, with her hair done in its usual fashion -- slightly frizzy and wild, with her bangs covering her right eye and the right side of her face almost entirely. Yet, as she stood next to her friend, she vaguely wondered which of them would be considered to be more attractive. She'd snickered a little in her mind upon remembering that this very Russian girl had, once upon a time, had braces on her teeth and wore bows in her hair and stared at her feet, too afraid to make eye contact with anyone but Agatha herself, but now...things had certainly changed. A lot of growing up and filling in had been done by both of them, of course, but Agatha still looked fairly similar to how she had in high school, save being a bit taller and slightly more curvy. Arina had turned into a goddess. It was funny how that worked.
"Dunno. Lot to take in," Agatha replied simply, placing her hands on her hips and looking up at the gorgeous cabin once again, then back to the road behind them. She wondered vaguely where Sam was, but Arina's lunatic driving had put them at the cabin well-ahead of schedule, so odds were they were just lagging behind. "I suppose it is. I haven't seen a place this nice in a long time myself -- not since my mother took me on a vacation to Moscow when I was fourteen. Sam must really like you -- it's obvious he's spared no expense," Arina replied, walking around to the back of the Charger and popping the trunk open. A powerfully-built arm effortlessly threw the trunk open as Agatha walked over to join her, finding their collective luggage contained within. "I suppose we should get our bags up to the porch and get ready, then? We can't go inside since Sam has the key, but it'll make life easier." The heavily-accented voice suggested. "Mm." Agatha replied, as her mind again fell on other, more stressful things. It wasn't that she would be unhappy to see Sam, of course -- quite the contrary, in fact -- but rather what she knew she would have to tell him. And she knew all too well what weight her words would carry. The kind of thing that would make or break their relationship...she didn't even want to think about it. But she had no choice.
She was removed from her thoughts by the crunch of gravel and another engine behind her as another vehicle came into the makeshift parking lot, and she looked up in time to see an older model Trailblazer pull in some distance away from them. "Hey, they're finally here!" Arina remarked, waving at the vehicle in question. The Trailblazer's engine cut off, and three of the four doors opened seconds later, followed by multiple pairs of shoes of various makes hitting the gravel beneath them. "Ari!" Agatha watched as the youngest of the makeshift family -- Sam's little sister, Emma -- immediately hopped out of the Trailblazer, bounding across the lot in a few long-legged leaps before practically jumping into her best friend's arms, prompting a laugh from Arina as she wrapped the much younger girl into a hug. "Hey, Anoushka! I see Sam's old man driving finally got you here at last?" Arina asked, releasing her before poking the girl in the stomach, prompting a giggle from her. "Uggggh! Don't remind me. I wanted to ride with you and Agatha the whole time," She turned to Agatha then, a bright smile on her face. "Hey, Agatha!"
Agatha smirked at her, reaching a hand out to ruffle her hair. "Hey, kiddo. Glad you're here." She replied simply, knowing well that that would pretty much be the end of things as Emma's eyes landed on the cabin on the hill above them. "Whoa...this place is so cool! We're really staying here?" Her eyes flashed back to Agatha and Arina, who nodded simultaneously. "Sure are! C'mon, I'll help you with your bags." And with that the two had left her there, bounding back over to the Trailblazer together. Agatha smiled a bit in response. Arina looked even younger than she normally did whenever she was around Emma, even though she didn't act like it. 'Motherly' would be her word for it.
The soft crunch of boots on the gravel behind her caught her attention, and as she looked up into the handsome face of her significant other, Sam Riley, with that ever-present bright, silly grin on his face as he walked towards her, her heart sank into her stomach coldly as she again remembered what she was supposed to tell him. But even so, the mere sight of him was enough to bring a smile to her face. Everything she ever wanted all rolled into one guy...and he was all hers.
His well-built arms and hands, rough from many years of manual labor working on cars, wrapped around her body, while her hands came up to rest on his shoulders as she allowed him to pull her body close to his. "Hey," He greeted, grinning down at her as he always did. "Hey," She replied breathlessly, right before his lips pressed against hers and they shared a brief kiss beneath the cabin they'd rented together. A quiet wretching noise from somewhere nearby prompted her to break the kiss, and, still in each others' arms, the happy couple turned to find something that made her jaw set firmly in anger. Sam's ex-girlfriend, Sara, was standing there, her arms crossed with the fake smile on her face that Agatha knew was a piss-poor attempt to hide her bitchy attitude. "Can we go inside now, Sam? It's a little warm out here." She asked. Agatha looked back up to Sam, her eyebrows raised in question. "I don't see why not. You ready to see our cabin, Agatha?" Sam asked in response, looking down at her with that handsome, boyish grin she so secretly loved. Agatha took another glance at Sara, a half-smirk on her face. "In just a minute..." She replied, before pressing her lips back to his, although she didn't take her eyes off of Sara as she did so, silently reveling in the enjoyment she felt from the situation as the fake smile on Sara's face slowly gave way to a scowl, something that Agatha decided suited her far better than the usual false pretenses. She idly took one of her hands off of Sam's shoulders to prominently display her middle finger in Sara's direction before closing her eyes and leaning fully into the kiss.
When she broke the kiss a moment later, Sara was no longer there.
"So what do you think?" Sam asked as he finally released her from his embrace, opting instead to take her by the hand and lead her up the brick staircase to the cabin. "It's really something, Sam. Put a lot of thought into this, I can tell that much. You don't know what that means to me." Agatha replied, taking another look up at the cabin. "Hey. Anything for you. If we're going to do this, then we're doing it right the first time. Just call it all my little way of telling you how amazing you are." Sam admitted with a half-hearted shrug, prompting her to look up at him with her eyebrows raised a little in surprise. Not at the words themselves -- she'd certainly been called amazing many times over the years -- but hearing them from him, it...changed them somehow. Made them different. Much more powerful.
And so, she could only smile like a giddy schoolgirl. "No, Sam. You're amazing." She responded. Sam only smiled as he walked up to the front door with key in hand.
The inside of the cabin looked much like she had expected it to. Surprisingly bright due to the light color of the wood and the numerous amounts of windows on the walls, and very roomy on the inside, with a high ceiling and gigantic living area with plenty of couches and chairs all surrounding the fireplace, which had a large flatscreen TV situated above it where everyone could see it easily no matter where they chose to sit. There were other furnishings around the place as well, a deer head mounted on the wall and other things, but for the most part it was relatively spartan and fairly old-fashioned. To Agatha it was gorgeous, but she couldn't vouch for the others.
"Wow...you were right, Em. This place is cool." Agatha remarked as she regarded the inside of the cabin with wide eyes, much to Sam's happiness.
The cabin contained other rooms beyond the living area and the rooms, of course, such as a game room beneath them on the lower level with card tables, dart boards and pool tables, but they all decided that that would be reserved for later when it got too dark to be outside. The small group of people busied themselves with bringing in what luggage they had (noting with displeasure that a rather disproportionate amount of it belonged to Sara), then decided to dole out which rooms belonged to whom (Agatha and Sam had laughed at the pouts on Arina and Emma's faces when they found out the master bedroom didn't, in fact, belong to them), and when each person was finally settled, they met in the living area to discuss what they were to do first. The fridge was pretty bare in its selection, as were the cabinets, so a trip to the store for food was an inevitability considering the duration of their stay (Agatha had again smiled at the conversation that took place between her and Arina on the subject: "I can drive us!" "No. Had enough of your need for speed to last all week." "Aww..."), and the cabinets held precious little as well, namely canned spaghetti sauce and a few boxes of dry noodles, but if they had to dine on whatever Arina could make out of it for that evening, then so be it.
"Well, I don't know about all of you," Arina spoke up when everyone had finally packed away all of their belongings and returned to the living area. "But I'm going to go check out the lake. There's still plenty of daylight left, and I don't want to miss a minute of it." She threw a glance at Emma, who smiled brightly in response. "I'm coming too!" This prompted a laugh from Arina, who again poked her in the stomach. "Race you." Agatha jumped out of their way as the two rushed past her in a whirl of various clothing colors and brown and blond hair, their feet thumping loudly against the carpet-covered wooden stairs as they ran up. Agatha chuckled under her breath, smiling at the sight of them as they finally disappeared from view. Arina was so...predictable. She spent all her time around the pool her family home had in Vegas, so it was only natural that she'd spend all her time by the lake on vacation. She couldn't fault her friend for doing what she thought was the most fun, though. She looked to Sam to gauge his reaction, raising her eyebrows in question, while the look on his face, like always, said "If you want to".
"Well, I suppose I should go get changed, then?" Agatha asked, more rhetorically and to herself than anything. Sam raised a surprised eyebrow, crossing his arms. "You're going to swim?" He asked, knowing well her aversions to water that didn't come from a shower or sink faucet. "Of course not," Agatha replied with a roll of her eyes. "Gonna be sunny today, though, so why not sit on the bank? Might bring my guitar along if you guys wanna do s'mores or somethin' once it gets dark." Sam grinned once again. "Free Aggro Moss concert by the campfire? I'm there." He replied, prompting her to laugh and release his hand. "Be right back." She told him with a wink, before ascending the stairs at a decidedly slower pace than Arina and Emma had before her.
As she shut the door to the bedroom she and Sam were sharing, she finally allowed the breath to leave her lungs in an audible hiss. She couldn't bring herself to tell him. Not while they were all having so much fun (though she was sure she'd put a damper on Sara's mood a little earlier, not that she cared). Maybe sometime during the week she'd finally find the guts to do so, but not today. Agatha allowed herself to stress over the situation for a moment more before taking in a deep breath and gathering herself together. While being a killjoy was her usual behavior -- in fact, it was an art form to her -- she didn't want to put a damper on the mood of everyone else this time.
She was freed from her clothes far sooner than she expected to be, and ran through the few two-piece swimsuits she'd brought (knowing that it was an inevitability with Arina there) for what seemed like an eternity, agonizing over the choice before finally settling on the black bikini that happened to be her favorite -- risque, yet conservative and simple at the same time, still leaving most of the important bits to the imagination. She dressed in it quickly and then, as an afterthought, threw on one of Sam's old white work shirts, noting with a smile that it ran well past her hips and all the way to her thighs on her much less muscular frame. Content with her appearance, she grabbed the case that contained her guitar and descended the stairs to find everyone waiting for her, dressed in much the same way (though Sam still wore his regular clothes, evidence that he wouldn't be going in the water this time himself).
It was a short walk to the lake, being that the cabin was practically situated directly on the bank. Agatha watched as Arina promptly threw her t-shirt to the side to reveal her own blue bikini before diving into the water without a second thought, shrieking loudly as it was evidently still quite cold despite the sun being overhead. Emma wasn't too far behind herself, wearing -- typically enough -- a yellow bikini. Agatha smiled as Sam walked around her, effortlessly carrying two folded-up sun loungers, one under each arm, before taking one from him and helping to set them both up. Sara merely brought a towel and a pair of sunglasses, and Agatha noted with no small amount of disgust that the swimsuit she wore left...very very little to the imagination. Typical enough, she supposed, but she still couldn't help wondering what the woman's angle was. She'd thought Sam had made it clear enough that he didn't want her anymore.
Averting her gaze as the sight quite literally disgusted her and was making her feel ill all over again, Agatha took a couple steps away from the set-up lounger in front of her, reaching down to pull her pilfered t-shirt over her head and cast it aside. She noticed Sam's obvious look of desire and smirked at him, pleased with the effect she'd pulled off before carefully lowering herself down onto the chair. Sam set his up next to her, and when he'd made himself comfortable, she reached over to take his hand, which he gladly accepted, to the soundtrack of Arina and Emma's laughter in the background as they splashed around in the water. "This is...probably the best idea we've ever had, Sam. Don't have the words for it." She remarked, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. Sam smiled over at her, mimicking the squeeze of her hand. "I'm glad. It's nice to see you so happy. And feeling better, too. That was a rough bout you had with all the throwing up." Agatha froze, her grip loosening slightly in his hand, but she quickly forced a smile in his direction. "Yeah...feels like it's over now, though, so no big deal." She replied.
And as she turned her head to gaze out at the lake where Arina and Emma had begun a half-hearted splash fight, with Sam's comforting grip still present on her hand, Agatha had to admit that all felt right in her world.