A/N - This is just... I don't even know what the hell this is.

Soft.

The kiss against Paige's lips was hard. But the lips were soft. Surprisingly soft.

Paige had been kissed before. Kissed by boys. She had gotten used to the way it felt with them – the lips predictably rough and chapped. Abrasive. Hard. This was different. The lips being pressed against hers were soft. Smooth; succulent; tasty.

Spencer Tasty. Paige did her best not to giggle at the thought of how Spencer would react to being called by that name, but her attempt to hide the laughter from Spencer was futile. Spencer always demanded perfection – of herself and her teammates. Any momentary lack of focus was unacceptable. Spencer slammed her shoulder into Paige. Hard. It wasn't a rebuke. It was just Spencer's way of nudging Paige's head back into the game, the way that she might have done during an intra-squad scrimmage.

Spencer pulled her head back and looked into Paige's eyes, to make sure that her message had gotten through. Paige took the opportunity provided by the separation of their lips to kiss Spencer on the shoulder.

The skin she found there was soft.

Spencer's muscles were hard. Paige knew that from some of their furiously aggressive encounters on the practice field. When Spencer forechecked you, you knew it. Her forechecks had knocked the wind out of Paige on more than one occasion.

Slammed up against the closet door in Spencer's bedroom, Paige was losing her breath for a different reason. She bit down on Spencer's shoulder, worried that the bite was a bit too hard. Paige relaxed at the sound of the moan that Spencer released in response. It came out sensual; soft.

As their bodies started to grow warmer, Paige caught a whiff of Spencer's scent. The aroma was light; soft – unlike the harsh scent emanating from the gaggle of male jocks whom Paige often wound up hanging around with. You could smell them coming from yards away; the tangy, pungent odor of too much after shave, a vain attempt to cover over the stench of their sweat. Spencer's scent, in contrast, was soft; delicate, barely perceptible but definitely there, like the tips of Spencer's fingers, as they ghosted, almost imperceptibly over Paige's thighs. Paige couldn't quite identify the scent, but it smelled welcoming; appropriate. The soft scent of an unexpected summer rain - or just afterwards.

Spencer moved Paige roughly over onto her overstuffed, queen-sized bed. Paige's back fell against it hard, although the bed was soft. It would have been easy for Paige to drift softly off to sleep, enveloped in the soft warmth of its mattress and pillows – were it not for the fact that her every nerve cell was tingling with anticipation.

Her brain was struggling to stay focused. Thinking had become hard.

The look that Spencer was giving her was soft. She knew that this was something new for Paige, and beyond unexpected. It wasn't just the lesbian thing. It was the McHastings thing. The two of them were barely able to get along on the field hockey team; able to tolerate each other just well enough to cooperate towards the common goal of hoisting the championship trophy at the end of the year – although they would probably find themselves wrestling with other – hard – for control of the trophy.

The kind of wrestling going on in Spencer's bed was different. Soft.

There was a break in the action, for the shortest possible of instants. Paige barely registered the pause. She might not have noticed it at all, were it not for the fact that something in the atmosphere had changed. It took a moment for Paige to recognize what the change was. Spencer had reached for her phone, adding music to the background. The notes were barely audible; unobtrusive; soft. It wasn't like the music in the girls' locker room – hard, with its thumping, pumping, insistent beat calculated to whip the girls into a frenzy before they took the field. Nor was it like the hard pounding of the percussive, heavy metal soundtrack to every boy's party that Paige had ever suffered through, pumped through the speakers with the same goal of whipping girls into a frenzy.

The soundtrack in Spencer's room was romantic; lyrical; soft. It wasn't there to pump up their emotions, but to enhance them, the way that a subtle bit of fine seasoning enhances a good meal; not overpowering the sensations, but drawing them into sharper focus.

Paige smiled up at Spencer's caring face, silhouetted above her in the dim light provided by a lamp on the table at the side of the bed. The light was soft, not like the hard, incandescently white overhead lights of the girls' locker room, or the brash halogen spotlights that lit up their evening scrimmages and night matches. The glow from the bulb in Spencer's room was just enough to cast a faint shadow against the wall. The play of the shadow diverted Paige's attention from feeling to watching what Spencer was doing to her. The shadow had its own perspective on what was going on. The image that it offered up was dim and fuzzy at the edges. A dull gray. Soft.

Spencer was giving it to Paige hard.

But her fingertips inside Paige felt soft. Paige had no real experience to compare it to. The closest that she had come was some slightly aggressive dry-humping from some overstimulated boys. Even through the fabric of her slacks, the persistent grinding of the denim in their jeans felt hard against her; invasive. But Spencer's fingers were warm and welcome. It was a feeling like that of being introduced to a new friend; an old soul; a kindred spirit.

"Paige"

Spencer's tone was soft. Paige, still coming down from the experience, wasn't sure that she had ever heard Spencer use her first name before. Up till then, she couldn't have said for certain that Spencer even knew her first name. All of the times that Spencer had yelled her name before, her attitude had been severe and accusing, the syllables coming out clipped, staccato, hard: Mc! Cull! Ers!

Paige was too caught up mulling the implications of how Spencer had addressed her to reply. Seeing Spencer flinch slightly, worried at the silence, Paige gave her a slight nod, to let her know that she was okay.

Spencer, relieved, relaxed, letting her body go soft.

Paige felt Spencer's grip hard around her waist as she drifted off to sleep, finally able to allow herself to give in to that welcoming mattress and those overstuffed pillows. It would have been hard to still her racing thoughts and calm her body down enough to get to sleep, had it not been for Spencer' warm, steady breath, falling gently upon her neck. Like a baby's breath, Paige thought. Soft.

In the soft silence, Paige allowed herself a moment to reflect on what they had shared in the moments preceding. She had long feared that her passage from girl to womanhood would be rough; like a cross-country voyage in one of those 19th-century covered wagons, back in the days when the journeys were hard, the living was hard, the people were hard. But, with Spencer, it had the feeling of traveling in the presidential suite of a luxury cruise ship. Spencer was caring, attentive, patient; soft.

Paige thought about the path that she had taken, starting from the earliest appearance of puberty and leading, ultimately, to the point in time where they found themselves, alone in Spencer's house. Paige's life had been hard: dealing with the changes in her maturing body, dealing with the confusion of her maturing feelings of attraction, dealing with her personal demons. On top of all that, there were all of the pressures of high school: the pressure to perform – the pressure to conform. To have the right look, the right friends, the right stuff. There were the difficult friendships, the tentative romantic relationships, the haters and the bullies. Taken together, these had taken Paige to a sad and rough place. She had convinced herself that it had all made her stronger. But, in reality, it had only made her hard.

When it hit her, the irony wasn't lost on her.

Right there, with what they had initiated that night, Paige was becoming soft.