Chapter Text
Seven weeks. It’s been seven weeks since Ema last saw Kay, at least outside her very frequent dreams about the girl. There’s a short list of things Ema truly regrets, but chickening out with Kay is definitely on that list. Five seconds and she would have asked Kay out, but Franziska just has to re-enter the picture and mess her up. And now, seven weeks.
In the moment she’d figured it’d be fine, Kay would be back in a few days or a week like before, and then she could ask her. It’s not like a handful of days matters that much, Kay is either interested in her or she isn’t and that fact doesn’t change without something significant happening between them. Of course, now there’s nothing happening between them.
A week passed, and Ema didn’t think much of it. And then another, and maybe she was a little curious but two weeks is reasonable. And then Kay was gone for a month, and she started to worry, and as Ema approaches the second month without Kay her priorities are shifting. Her care for whether or not Kay is interested in dating her has vanished, replaced by genuine concern for the woman. Kay works a dangerous job in a dangerous field, for all Ema knows she could have got arrested again or murdered for knowing something she shouldn’t.
Or, maybe, even if it’s the more selfish though; sometimes Ema thinks she’s misread their entire relationship. That maybe where Ema sees a friend and a crush, Kay only sees a florist that she’s nice too because she’s naturally nice to service workers. Ema’s been tempted to ask Lana for her advice or information on the matter, but ultimately been too nervous. She’d also considered asking Edgeworth about the girl but figured if she is alive and well that might come off as a violation of her privacy and make things awkward between them.
No Kay, no Lana, no Edgeworth. And for Ema, there’s not a lot else right now. Ultimately she’s relegated herself to simply marching forwards through life. Marching until she stops crushing, until she stops caring, or until she sees Kay again; Ema tries not to have a preference for what option comes first. Today her march is a literal one, Lana in possession of the car and working late thus leaving Ema to walk home in the late evening. LA’s not a pretty place, not by the standards Ema’s few short years in Germany and England set, but a spring sunset is a pretty sight anywhere in the world.
Unless one happens to be walking west, then sunset is a rather troublesome thing to deal with. Ema’s solution is crooking her neck to stare off into the grassy park as she walks, hoping her feet can follow the path without her needing to pay it any mind. Ema looks over at three girls hanging out in the park, two kids trying their hardest to climb a tree and an older one watching on as she sits on a swing. Ema’s feet move without her mind all right, right towards the girl on the swing she immediately recognizes.
“How are you doing?” Ema walks up behind Kay and gently lays a hand against her back after she speaks.
“AHH!” Kay jumps at the touch and promptly falls head first onto the ground. Her eyes flick over to Ema with considerable panic in them, and she yells, “Oh my god, you could have killed me!”
Ema almost wants to give a sarcastic snicker, but the fear in Kay’s eyes feels concerning real. “Kay, you fell two feet.”
“I have pre-existing head trauma, Ema! Any fall could destroy me.”
“Really?” This time, Ema lets her snicker come out at Kay’s verbose word choice.
“Well…” Kay rolls her head and smirks at her a tad. “My head trauma is real yeah, took a nasty fall a while back, but I’m not high risk for re-injury or anything.”
“Well, even so, I’m still sorry that I almost killed you.” Ema offers her hand to Kay and when she grabs it pulls her back onto her feet.
“As you should be.” Kay takes her seat back on the swing and Ema sits down on the one next to her, “Y’know it’s weird seeing you outside the store.”
“I don’t live there Kay.”
“Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.” Kay nods along with her verbal confirmation. “I know that now, you haven’t been working the last few times I visited the store.”
Ema’s body nervously tightens up, and her voice grows quieter. “Oh. I only work the register in the evening cause of school.”
Kay snaps as part of her confirmation this time. “Right your life runs on a fixed schedule.”
“And yours doesn’t?” Ema’s eyes had mostly been facing forwards, but that draws them curiously to Kay.
“Not really.” Kay shrugs, her eyes turning to look Ema in the face. “Crime never sleeps, so we work cases day or night as needed, and unless you want to count the statute of limitations, investigations don’t have a clock on them until we make the arrest and the three-day trial stuff kicks in.”
Ema’s nervous to meet Kay’s eyes, looking back out at the two girls in the tree. “I guess that makes sense.”
“Well, I think so. Work when work calls, sleep when sleep calls. Relax when the opportunity presents itself.”
“Is that what you’re doing now?”
“Just because I’m chilling does not mean I don’t have a greater purpose at the moment, Ms Skye.” Kay’s hand comes into her side view as she points. “Pearl and Trucy, cousin and sister adjacent, and I am watching them so their guardians can do date night.”
“Ah, very important task Ms Faraday.”
“It is, I have got to protect those kids.”
“So should you stop them from falling out of that tree?”
Kay chews the air for a second, testing sounds in her mouth. “Nah I don’t see a reason to do that, it builds character.”
“Of course it does.” Ema pauses to watch the kids build character. Working together they can get one of them up into the low-hanging branches, but each time trying to pull the second up brings the first tumbling to the ground. And yet, despite the immediately recognizable pattern of partial success and subsequent failure, the girls aren’t dissuaded from their goal. “Hey Kay, can I… do you mind if I ask you something?”
“As long as it's not about my parenting style.”
“No not that. Do you want to…” Ema’s throat coils on itself to suppress her word attempt. Go on a date with me? It should be simple, binary yes or no followed by minor excitement or disappointment. She shouldn’t struggle with it so badly, and yet she does. “Um… do you. One of the times we talked I asked you what you thought about the law being wrong, and you looked excited to answer. Do you want to finally talk about that?”
“O-oh…” Kay sound slightly disappointed at first, but that quickly shakes off. “Yeah no, my philosophy is… So I’ve seen a lot of unjust laws that make the world worst. I’ve seen a lot of prosecutors and detectives and defence attorneys and agents abuse their power to do evil. I’ve seen a lot of innocent people go to jail in the place of criminals, I once talked to this innocent man who’d been given the death sentence and I prom…”
Kay takes a shaky breath and Ema rubs her hand against her arm to try to comfort her. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“Yeah, no, I. Long time ago, but I’m fine. And you can connect those dots.” Kay takes another breath and shakes her nerves away. “Um, what was I…? Right, so my thought is all that sucks and I want to change it. Whatever I can do, whatever it takes, becoming a prosecutor for me is about changing those unjust laws, getting rid of those corrupt officials, the whole progressive prosecuting shebang. If a law feels wrong, you change it. Basic philosophy, but its philosophy.”
“So…?” Ema lets her voice slide into silence, a single thought crossing her mind but stopped before it can escape her mouth.
“If you want to ask Ema, you should ask.”
“I don’t know if I want the answer.”
“If it was that bad I wouldn’t be friends with you.”
Kay’s hand comfortingly brushes up and down Ema’s arm, and she looks over with a smile Ema returns. “What did you think about my answer to that question? Black and white adherence to the law goes pretty far against you…”
“It does, but I don’t think that’s who you are.”
“W-what?”
“You’re in college Ema, you’ve got an image of what being a forensic investigator means, but you haven’t done it. Maybe I’m wrong and when you graduate you’ll go out and be all black and white about things, but, and don’t ask me to explain it, but I think you’ll be different. Talking to you makes me think you’ll be more concerned about the greater good than the letter of the law.”
Ema sits quietly for a moment before speaking. “Thanks, Kay. That means a lot.”
“Don’t mean to, just speaking the truth.”
“Still.”
A few minutes pass in silence, Kay and Ema sitting and swinging in silence as they watch the girls keep up their fruitless quest. Except for the moments where Ema looks at Kay, and apparently, the moments where Kay looks at Ema because she catches the other girl looking entirely on accident. They're briefly suprised, but then they smile at each other and Kay opens her mouth.
“Hey, Ema, can I show you something?” Kay blushes towards her.
Ema blushes towards Kay, “If you’re fine with leaving them alone.”
“It’ll only take a minute.”
“Okay.”
Kay grabs Ema’s hand and leads her over to a small community garden on the side of the park, their collective blush growing even more aggressive. Kay leads her to a corner of the garden, having them squat down in front of a few young stems with tiny red blubs not yet in bloom. She looks at Kay a few times expecting an explanation that never comes.
Ema doesn’t know what pushes her to ask, but she eventually does. “So what are these?”
“They’re, um.” Kay scratches the back of her head, eyes kept firmly on the flowers. “They’re roses. Or they will be eventually, they’re still a little young right now.”
Ema fixates on the flowers as well. “Did you grow these?”
“Y-yeah, I did.”
Her mouth dries out. “So what’s this about?”
“Um, well, I-. I kinda wanted-. It’s just-. I’ve actually got a reason why I think you’re good, but I don’t know if you’ll like it. It’s a pretty selfish reason, but I also want to be honest with you…”
“Yeah?” Ema’s heart is beating a mile a minute.
“Mm-hmm. I, um, I like you?”
And now Ema’s heart is refusing to beat, “You like me?”
“Yeah.” Kay says happily as she looks at Ema, and whatever she sees on her face turns her look and voice nervous. “Or I think I do? I don’t know. Like I’ve never had a crush before, and Miles and Franziska are demi and really bad with feelings, so I don’t have anyone to talk to for help in understanding. But I think, maybe, I might have one on you. Possibly.”
“Um, I…”
“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable!” Kay stands up and slowly back away from Ema. “Y’know you don’t like owe me a response or anything, and I don’t mean to be that weird person you talk to once who suddenly says they're in love with you, I just… Well you’re pretty, and we seem passionate about the same stuff, and you’re really nice to me when most people just dismiss me as stupid and annoying, and I guess those are bad standards and now that I think about it, it’s probably just part of your job to be nice but…”
“Well I, I really do like you, Ema. So I’m growing these flowers, so I can use them to ask you out.”
Ema stares at Kay without moving for a very long time, and then suddenly she’s on her feet and grabbing at Kay’s scarf to pull her into a delicate kiss. It’s a brief one, overbearingly sweet like Kay’s voice and equally awkward, but all that makes her want to do is try again. But for the second she holds back, letting them stare into each other’s eyes while they bask in the afterglow.
“I… I really do like you too.” Kay emphatically nods at Ema’s words, the fact made apparent by their kiss. “Do you wanna go on a date and see where this goes?”
“God yes.” And then the second ends, and Kay kisses her again.