Work Text:
When it's finally over, Emma spends the first few weeks in a desperate, sleepless sort of mania.
She spends her nights cowering in hotel rooms with Brooke and Stavo and Noah and Audrey. All of them together because it feels safer as a group, in a place where they've never experienced the violence that's infected their homes.
They're restless, each of them waiting for the next twist in the story: another murder, Kieran's escape, Kieran's release.
Days are passed in an endless string of appointments. Interviews with police investigators, appointments with therapists, meetings with lawyers: long, agonizing hours spent wading through the details of the worst year of her life, pulling each awful event apart moment by moment until the horror she'd experienced is almost dull in its familiarity.
Emma's sleep is fitful and sporadic, mostly incidental and never even slightly restorative. Her dreams of killing her friends have been supplanted by dreams of Kieran. Sometimes he's with Piper, who narrates the murders in that smooth, calming radio host voice that Emma once had trusted so much.
Mostly, though, he's with Emma.
In these dreams, Emma stands in the background, motionless and silent while her friends beg and plead for her help. Sometimes she tries to move to them, but discovers she's stuck in place. Others, she doesn't even do that, just covers her eyes or her ears and lets it continue.
The outcome is always the same: Riley, Will, Tyler, Nina, Brooke, Audrey, Zoey, Stavo, Eli, Sheriff Hudson, her Mom die again and again while she stands by, helpless. No, worse than that — complicit.
In the absolute worst dream, she's lying in Kieran's arms after sex. His skin is warm, his embrace tender, breath released in soft puffs against her neck. This one is the worst because it feels so safe at first, damningly so, the way she’d always felt with him. The comfort and familiarity fades the longer the embrace lasts until she's cold and clammy and his body presses down like lead on top of her and she realizes the dampness on her skin isn't sweat but blood. And then she looks over and realizes it's not Kieran she's laying with but Will, chopped in half; or Eli, with a chest full of bullet holes; or Audrey, dead-eyed in chains.
Even the nights without dreams leave Emma feeling guilty and on edge when she wakes, the brief bouts of unconsciousness themselves turning into defeats, a failures. She envies Noah and Brooke who manage to sleep through the night most days of the week, and even Audrey who sleeps far less but only ever wakes with a jerk and a sharp gasp, never a scream on her lips, never in tears spilling down her cheeks.
Only Stavo seems to struggle in the same way. Runaway imagination he tells her, in low tones, over breakfast one morning when the others have stopped paying attention to them. Bad dreams since childhood. Worse now with the things he's seen, but at least he turns it into fuel for his art, as twisted as it is. Emma has nothing to show for her terror and brokenness but bags under her eyes and shaky hands and a steadily declining capacity for thinking or speaking.
Noah becomes the first to peel off from the group, heading home in the third week. "I miss my bed," he tells them as he putters about the suite, stuffing his backpack with clothes and toiletries. "And I'm tired of waiting around here for something else to go wrong. They caught him. He's in jail. It's over. And I'm not going to let him control more of my life than he already has, not anymore."
Audrey makes it a few more days before telling them she's going back to her house too. Emma takes it hard, feeling inexplicably betrayed — abandoned — even though rationally she knows that her therapist is right, she shouldn’t compare her recovery to anyone else’s. It’s hard not to feel like she’s struggling uniquely, struggling more, even though she knows it’s not fair.
Brooke and Stavo don’t ask her to leave — they never would — but she barely makes it to the end of the week before the awkwardness of living with a couple sets in and she finally packs her own bag to return home.
Her mom is so happy to have her back, she makes Emma’s favorite meal, invites her friends over to eat with them, can hardly stop reaching over during dinner to stroke the back of Emma’s hand or squeeze her wrist. It makes her feel guilty and embarrassed but also needy and hungry for affection, for comfort, like she had as a little kid with the flu or a stomach bug.
Sleep is easier without the others to distract herself, but the dreams are worse. Emma wakes her mother up every night with screams that leave her throat raw and her mother jittery and concerned. She’s embarrassed every time, she’s sick with guilt and frustration every time, but nothing she tries to stop herself ever works.
“How are you doing?” Emma asks Audrey over lunch. The question’s hardly necessary, not with Audrey’s sunken, bloodshot eyes peering back at her from across the table.
“I’m getting by,” Audrey says noncommittally and Emma adds a bit of flint to her stare. Audrey squirms uncomfortably, taking a sip of her drink to cover. For a moment she looks so miserable that Emma thinks she might get an honest answer, but then she’s slumping back into the booth, pushing a lungful of air out her mouth. “I’m okay.”
Hot, jagged frustration sinks down into Emma’s gut like a coarse stone, tearing and ripping all the way down; loosing a pink flush that climbs up her neck, the tips of her ears.
“So, we’re doing that again,” Emma says, hands clamped to the edge of the table just to stop herself from reaching across it to shake Audrey by the shoulders.
“Doing what?” Audrey asks, defensive, but she won’t look Emma in the eye and the edge of guilt clinging to her words is unmistakable.
“Lying,” Emma says bluntly.
“Okay, so I’m not doing great, if you can already tell then why did you ask?” Audrey snaps, drawing a few concerned gazes towards their table.
Emma scoffs, staring at Audrey hard as if the sulky pout of her lips, the low dip of her brow might give more away. Because Audrey can’t be this dense, right? After everything that’s happened and how there’s no way she can’t understand something as simple as this: if they are not being honest together, there is no hope for them. And if there is no hope for them, they are doomed, because they’ve tried that already — not being in each other’s lives — and it’s only made everything worse. And, god, she can’t take any worse than this so she bites back the rant on her tongue and leans in close to speak low across their half-cleared plates, “Because I wanted you to say it.”
“But you knew.” Audrey insists, sullen and obtuse, mostly, but with just enough of a hint of scared kid underneath to convince Emma to keep trying to explain.
“That’s not the point. Not saying things to each other when we should have been is what got us into this whole mess in the first place,” Emma says.
Audrey flinches so sharply that Emma almost apologizes on instinct. She stays her tongue, biting it between her molars to keep the words at bay.
She’s not wrong, she won’t take it back.
“Jesus, Emma,” Audrey says and crumples back against her seat, scrubbing a tired hand down her face. She leaves her palm over her eyes, takes a few deep breaths, barks out a bitter laugh. “Guess we know how not sleeping is taking its toll on you, then.”
“I’m not being a bitch,” Emma mutters, leaning back into her side of the table, tense. “Just honest. We owe that to each other, after everything.”
At this Audrey finally looks at her again, studying her quietly for several long moments. “I didn’t say you were being a bitch,” she clarifies carefully. “Yeah, no, I’m not sleeping well. I’m tired all the time, but I can’t wind my brain down enough to relax. Although, honestly, I don’t try that hard anymore. I hate being in that house with just my dad and me. It’s too empty. It feels...”
Audrey trails off, gesturing helplessly. And Emma could push, if she wanted to, really drag the rest of these awful feelings out of Audrey, force her to put them to words. Part of her wants to, she won’t deny. It’s not a new part of her, this grief voyeur, it was the part of her that always kept quiet when the gossip her friends dished out turned vicious, the part of her that let Nina keep filming that night they found Audrey and Rachel in the parking lot. No, it’s not new at all, but it’s become hungrier, after everything; it craves details, craves to know, craves to see the pain in her friends that matches her own, just to prove that her trauma isn’t as solitary as it feels.
But it’s shameful and unkind, that kind of want, so she pushes it down, lets Audrey off the hook for both of their sakes.
“The first few nights I moved my tallest bookcase over the window,” Emma admits in a quiet rush. “And I slid my dresser in front of my door. But my mom asked me to stop doing it, because it made it hard for her to get into my room to check on me when I woke her up screaming.”
“Fuck,” Audrey breathes, tacking a weak laugh on the end of the word. She shakes her head, propping her elbows onto the table and resting her face in her hands, peering down at her half-cleared plate. “Two peas in a fucked up pod, huh?”
“It was easier, at the hotel,” Emma continues, because it feels good to let the words out. It’s different with Audrey than with anyone else, different from Brooke or her mom or her therapist. Audrey is the longest, most fraught relationship she’s had outside of her family. The things they’ve done for each other, to each other, with each other should make it impossible to even be in the same room, but some days she’s the only person Emma can stand.
It’s not that Audrey doesn’t judge, Emma thinks even trying not to might kill her. No, it’s that she knows, bone-deep, that it won’t change anything. Audrey might not understand everything Emma’s going through, though she tends to better than most, and she might not be able to relate to it all but that’s never kept her from being there, not through any of this.
Emma can admit to herself it’s probably not entirely healthy. There's a part of her that finds it easier to lean on Audrey because she knows Audrey can handle it. She knows Audrey will always take it, because she knows she’ll do the same — this is what they can do for each other, after everything they’ve inflicted on one another through distance and deception and carelessness. This is how they can make amends.
“Easier to sleep?” Audrey asks and Emma realizes she’s just trailed off, lost in her head again. It’s been happening more and more, with the sleep deprivation. It’s a little scary sometimes, how foggy and out of her body she’s been feeling lately, but she can’t see a way to stop it.
“To stay awake,” Emma clarifies. “And I didn’t dream as much. But when I did and I woke up and it was the three of you in that room with me it was…”
Audrey nods, gnaws on her thumbnail the way she does when she’s not sure if she should say the next thing she’s thinking of. Emma knows she could wait her out, let the words come or go, but she can’t quite seem to stop herself from reaching out, gently tugging Audrey’s hand away from her mouth.
There’s blood just under the nail, spit along the top of it. Wordlessly, Emma swipes a thick diner napkin over the damage, shoots Audrey a chiding look that has her ducking her head in an uncommon display of bashfulness. “Sorry.”
“It’s not my nails you’re tearing up,” Emma murmurs and finally remembers to let go.
Audrey retracts her hand slowly, flexing it in the air over her chest before hiding it under the table, on her lap. “Can I come over?”
“Sure,” Emma says automatically. Then, “When?”
“Tonight,” Audrey says. “Now, even. Just…”
Audrey brings her hands up again but this time Emma catches her eye in a warning glance before they get too far. They drop to the table with a thunk, fidgeting around until she’s grasped her napkin, tearing it idly into strips while she stalls.
“C’mon, what?” Emma pushes, gently.
“I mean, look, clearly neither of us is coping very well on our own,” Audrey starts, “if we’re being miserable and not sleeping. So, let’s just — I can stay with you and we can not sleep together.”
It’s involuntary, the way Emma’s eyebrows rise at the unintentional innuendo. Audrey glances up just in time to see and flushes bright red, pursing her lips in a pout that makes Emma want to lean across the table and—
And—
She doesn’t know what, exactly, she wants to do, only that she’s been wanting to do it more and more often the longer they’re back in each other’s lives.
“C’mon, I didn’t mean it like that,” Audrey says with a feeble grin.
“Like what?” Emma teases, smiling back, hoping that if Audrey notices the dusting of pink on her own cheeks she’ll chalk it up to the midday sun streaming through the window over their booth.
“So. Yeah?” Audrey asks again, redundantly.
“Yeah,” Emma says and doesn’t stop herself this time when she feels like reaching across the table and staying Audrey’s restless hands.
X.x.x
The first night goes well. Audrey comes over for dinner and stays after. Emma tells her mom, quietly, that she’s staying for the night and her mom only nods, doesn’t ask questions, just reminds Emma to offer Audrey the good towels, if she decides to shower while she’s there.
Emma can’t quite relax in her bedroom, even with Audrey there with her, so they head downstairs to the living room. The windows make Emma nervous, even with the blinds drawn, but Audrey tugs her to the couch, flips the TV on to a classic movie channel, turns the sound way down low and suddenly it could be ten years ago with how familiar it feels.
Audrey starts them off, speaking ridiculous lines over the low burble of the television speakers, elbowing Emma in the side to get her to join in. It’s an old game, one they’d perfected as kids, trying to see who could make the other crack up first. It’s distracting and soothing and Emma doesn’t even realize they’ve collapsed into each other until she glances up at Audrey’s sleeping face from where Emma’s leaning into her shoulder.
Her mind feels fuzzy and slow, but she still braces herself for the terror to set in, that feeling of being alone at night and vulnerable for it, but it never quite comes. By the time sunlight perforates the drapes, Emma knows she can’t have slept much or for long. She feels tired, still, but comfortable and that’s better than before.
When her mom heads downstairs, Emma slams her eyes shut, pretends to sleep until she feels her mother’s gaze leave them, hears her moving around in the kitchen instead, trying to be quiet as she gets ready for work.
Audrey sleeps a solid few more hours while Emma drifts in and out and it’s the first time she’s felt close to peaceful in months.
X.x.x
The third night, she has the longest period of unbroken sleep in weeks; nearly four hours when she checks the clock.
It’s Audrey that wakes her up again, voice low but insistent in Emma’s ear, hand clasped on Emma’s shoulder and delivering firm, rhythmic squeezes. “Emma. Em, c’mon. Wake up, Emma.”
It’s like one moment she’s underwater, mind blank, and the next she’s breaking the surface to realize she was drowning. Images from the dream she’d just escape come crashing back through her awareness — Kieran and a knife and blood, so much of it. Audrey, chained to the water heater, but this time Emma isn’t distracting enough, isn’t quick enough to stop Kieran from killing her in that awful, dark room.
“Shhh, you’re alright, you’re alright,” Audrey’s saying, lips pressed right up against Emma’s ear, holding her as her body shakes and she gasps for breath. “You’re alright. I’ve got you. We’re safe.”
Emma doesn’t feel alright, but Audrey’s voice in her ear, her arms around Emma’s shoulders, the rabbitlike thump of her heart against the flat of Emma’s palms all do make her feel safer.
A light flickers on and Emma jerks back to see her mother at the living room entrance, looking worried but calm in her dressing gown.
“See?” Audrey keeps talking, running a soothing hand down Emma’s trembling arm. “See? We’re fine, we’re at your place. Your mom’s here.”
“Emma, sweetie,” her mom starts and then trails off, wandering closer to settle next to them on the couch. She runs a hand through Emma’s sweat damp hair. “It’s okay, Emma. Bad dream?”
“Y-yeah,” Emma manages, after another round of deep, shuddering breaths. She collapses back against the couch, body still thrumming with adrenaline. “Sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” her mother promises at the same time Audrey assures her, “No problem.”
It’s about an hour before her mother’s alarm, so she elects to stay up. She leaves them in the living room after a few more minutes of comforting Emma, drifting off to the kitchen to make pancakes, like she used to after the slumber parties they had as kids.
That’s what her mother’s been calling Audrey’s extended stay, voice free and teasing. That is if she’s calling it anything at all; mostly she’s continued not to comment, which Emma remains profoundly grateful for. She can’t help but wonder what Audrey’s father thinks of the arrangement or if he’s even noticed that Audrey hasn’t been at home this week.
“Didn’t mean to wake you up,” Emma says hoarsely, after they’ve been alone for a few minutes. It’s a pointless thing to say, something Audrey already knows, but it pierces the silence just as it was starting to feel too thick.
Audrey sighs, smiles a bit lopsidedly in that way that makes her look so young, the smile of the girl that used to steal every last tootsie roll from Emma’s Halloween haul. She pushes the heel of her palm across her forehead, brushing back the messy swoop of her bangs from her eyes. “Don’t sweat it.”
“Do you have dreams about it?” Emma asks, later, after they’ve eaten and her mom has left for work.
Audrey stiffens out of the corner of her eye but doesn’t move away or deflect. “Not this week,” she says, looking Emma right in the eye.
Emma flushes happily, the simple statement feeling more like praise, more like a thank you than it probably deserves to.
X.x.x
Kieran shocks them all one last time by pleading guilty.
It shouldn’t be that surprising, not really, when the mountain of evidence against him is as high as it is, but still — each of his surviving victims had expected he’d drag them through the painful, arduous trial process just to spite them, just to twist the knife.
Emma knows he must have done it to spare himself a death penalty, and not out of any remorse or latent display of mercy, but she’s fine with that. Audrey takes the news with less calm, spending the rest of the day tense and sullen — she disappears for hours in the evening, only to show up at Emma’s house late, red-eyed and bloody-knuckled, refusing to say where she’d been.
Emma knows that Audrey wishes he were dead. She wonders in dark, quiet moments if Audrey forgives Emma for not pulling the trigger herself that day. She wonders if it’s a choice Audrey will never be able to stop resenting her for, in some way. She doesn’t have to wonder if Audrey would have chosen differently — she’s asked. She knows.
For Emma, it’s really just a relief and a startlingly uncomplicated one at that. She doesn’t need Kieran dead, she just needs him locked up somewhere where she’ll never have to see him or think about him ever again. It’s as good as dead for her — she doesn’t need the blood.
It’s this realization, more than anything, that feels like a tremendous weight lifting off her shoulders. It’s knowing that he’ll be going away for the rest of his life and feeling nothing but a distant relief. No hunger for his suffering, no all-consuming outrage that he gets to keep breathing while so many of her friends are dead in the ground.
In her worst moments she was afraid of what this day would make of her. She’d spent anxious, sleepless hours wondering if there was something in her blood — hereditary, shared with Piper, the stuff that fueled her dreams of violence — that meant she could be a killer too.
That she should have been, or on some level had wanted to be.
It’s a scenario she’s admitted to her therapist, one she finds herself haltingly spilling out to Audrey the night of Kieran’s arraignment, pressing an icepack down into Audrey’s swollen knuckles.
“I kept thinking that I’d see him again and I’d just lose it,” Emma murmurs. “I thought I’d want to kill him. I thought I’d hate myself for not doing it before, that it would be the biggest regret of my life. I thought I might just go after him in the courtroom, or else just… suffer and stew over it for the rest of my life. Let it change me. Let it make me like them.”
Audrey nods, but stays quiet, flexing her fists gently in Emma’s grasp.
Emma takes a moment to breathe, to just feel the weight of Audrey’s gaze on her face, the coldness from the icepack seeping into both of their hands. She extends the fingers on her left hand, the one supporting Audrey’s busted fist, and strokes her fingertips against Audrey’s palm until she coaxes her hand open.
And then she continues.
“But I saw him there today and I just felt…” He’d been so much smaller than she remembers. This greatest villain of her life, the man who’d lied to her and violated her and tortured her for fun looking unkempt and powerless, slumped in his orange jumpsuit, hair askew, face wan and expressionless. I won, she thought, looking at him as he sunk back down on the bench after entering his plea. I won, you bastard. “It was what I didn’t feel, actually.”
“What’s that?” Audrey speaks up finally, pinning Emma with a gaze so intense it makes her shiver in a way the ice hasn’t yet.
“Fear,” Emma whispers, like a secret even though she’s suddenly giddy with how much she wants everyone to know. “I wasn’t afraid of him at all.”
X.x.x
It’s like her body was waiting for a conclusion this whole time.
The week Kieran pleads is like a dam breaking, the tension binding her suddenly snapping, and she’s flooded with relief, exhaustion.
Suddenly, sleep is all Emma craves.
Hours and hours and hours of it to make up for all the time she’d lost to panicking and raging, those long hours spent bloodshot and petrified at night.
They vacate the living room, finally, and Emma drags Audrey into her bed.
In the private cocoon of Emma’s room they strip down, bare legged in their softest t-shirts, and crawl under the covers. It’s summer now, but Emma keeps the AC low, because it’s just not as good if they’re not burrowed under blankets.
They sleep at all hours, not content to wait until night. They sleep close and apart. They sleep lightly, waking up by degrees for murmured conversation between drifting off again. They sleep deeply, dreamless oblivion that ends with Emma’s mother rousing them for meals, a lingering concern in her gentle gaze.
She doesn’t like to worry her mother, but resisting the call of that fathomless, decadent slumber is too difficult a task. The sleep she shares with Audrey in these weeks is like nothing she’s ever experience. It fills her whole body up like warm water and then keeps going, until her mind is submerged in an inky sea of nothing. It weighs down her limbs, slows the beat of her heart to something steady and ancient, begs her eyelids all the way down. It’s almost spiritual, how restorative the long hours in her bed have been. How can she be anything but grateful for this, after everything? How can she be anything but a willing, eager supplicant?
Emma thinks she must be sleeping more than Audrey, though it’s hard to tell. She wakes up from time to time with Audrey close by; calm but alert. Emma catches her reading, typing away on her laptop, scrolling through her phone, gazing blankly at the ceiling. Other times, Emma catches Audrey watching her quietly, intently while she rests. It becomes Emma’s favorite way to wake up, the sensation of Audrey’s eyes on her tugging her gently into wakefulness, filling her up with safety and warmth.
She can’t quite bring herself to feel guilty for this, certain as she is that she’s wasting Audrey’s time. Surely, Audrey could be outside, enjoying the endless summer days with their friends. She could be behind a camera lens again, clawing her way back to the path that Rachel’s death had knocked her off of.
But she stays, beside Emma in her cold, sunless room and she never complains. She doesn’t complain when Emma dozes off in the middle of a movie, her head propped against Audrey’s shoulder, or nestled on Audrey’s lap. She doesn’t complain when Emma wakes up to find she’s twisted all of her limbs around Audrey’s pliant body in her sleep, holding her tightly, without restraint or apology. She doesn’t complain when they’re out somewhere and a wave of sleepiness strikes Emma, and she drags Audrey back home for a nap.
“What’s up with you guys?” Brooke asks one night, after luring Emma away from the group with a now obviously fake request for help in the kitchen.
“What do you mean?” Emma stalls, not exactly sure why she’s being cagey — only that this thing feels fragile and private and not quite real yet. It feels wrong to share it with anyone else before its finished growing, before they know what it is for themselves.
“You and Audrey,” Brooke presses, looking interested but not disapproving. “Did something happen?”
Emma’s not sure what to say. Denying it feels wrong, but so does confirming it.
Brooke sighs, too softly to be fully frustrated, “You just seem different lately. Closer. I’m not, like, constantly terrified she’s about to snap at any moment anyway. And you’re not rocking insomniac chic anymore, either.”
Emma runs a hand through her hair, biting her lip as she tries to balance the truth that Brooke deserves against the uncertainty she feels. “I don’t know. We’re working through some stuff together, y’know?”
Brooke nods, slow and thoughtful. “Okay. Well, I just wanted to say it’s like — It looks good on you.”
“What?” Emma asks.
“Rest,” Brooke laughs, reaching out and taking Emma’s hands in hers and squeezing. “Happiness.”
And it’s nice to have this from Brooke, the approval, the sincerity. Emma feels a smile blossom across her face, simple and unguarded, “Thanks.”
Brooke squeezes again, lets Emma’s hands fall from her grasp. “Whatever she’s doing, she must be doing it right,” Brooke says, sultry, and tacks a cheeky wink to the end of it just to startle a laugh or a blush out of Emma.
She gets both.
X.x.x
The heavy veil of exhaustion withdraws much more slowly than it descended.
Emma still covets the long hours spent with Audrey in her room, hiding from the world beneath the cover of her heavy blankets, but she’s finding more energy returned to her with each waking breath.
By mid-July she’s feeling halfway normal again, more capable of spending a day out with friends without needing to recover in the quiet dark for twice as long.
They don’t go to the lake — Noah can’t, and they won’t make him — but they’ve taken to piling into Emma’s car and driving a few towns over to take in a movie or lounge in a park where they’re less likely to be gawked at openly.
Emma’s settled under the shade of a massive sycamore, a book propped open on her lap when Noah drops down beside her. He’s just finished seeing Audrey and Brooke off to the car as they head out to pick up lunch for the group. Stavo’s asleep on his back a few feet away, the hoodie he’d worn this morning shucked off and draped over his face to shield his eyes from the midday sun.
Emma glances up at Noah’s arrival, shooting him a small but genuine smile before returning her attention to the book.
It’s nice out. A light breeze keeps the leaves rustling overhead, keeps the warmth of summer from turning stagnant and oppressive. As much as Emma has cherished the dark, private oasis of her bedroom, she can’t deny that there’s something invigorating, empowering about the sunshine, the fresh air, the wide open space of the outdoors.
“I was really worried about her for a while,” Noah says abruptly, drawing Emma’s attention away from her book and her own wandering thoughts. “Even before all this started, if I’m being honest.”
Emma holds back the ‘what?’ on her tongue. She knows who he means.
“She’s always been, so… restless, y’know?” Noah continues, looking carefully away from Emma as he speaks. “Like a caged animal sometimes. Angry. And trapped. Like she couldn’t find a way to get comfortable, not ever.”
Emma knows. There had been a hint of that frustrated energy in Audrey even when things were simple, even when they were kids — it had always made a sort of sense. Audrey always had trouble making friends, even before kids started really cliquing up after elementary school. Then there was the rest of it: sick mom, distant father, a mold everyone insisted on that only bruised and chafed her as it pressed down.
They grew, up and apart, and Emma watched as it all got worse, took more from her, until Audrey stopped being a part of her life. The worst part, the part Emma still feels guilty about, regardless of everything that happened after, is the feeling of relief after Audrey had cut her off. The freedom from a responsibility too big for her, the distance from problems she didn’t have a clue how to handle.
“There’s nothing good about what happened,” Noah continues, voice strangled enough for Emma to know exactly who he’s thinking of. “Nothing. But if there was it’d be… this. You guys. Well, all of us but, y’know…”
The memory drifts to the forefront of Emma’s mind, suddenly, of Audrey’s hushed, mortified voice late one night, relaying Noah’s awkward, truncated love confession at the carnival and she shifts uncomfortably. Is this some kind of misguided torch-passing? A blessing? An interrogation? “Noah…”
“I’m glad for you,” he hurries on. “Both of you. I don’t… I don’t worry for her like I used to, that’s all I’m saying. She’s doing better now and you’re a big part of that, so. Thanks. And congratulations.”
It’s awkward but sweet and mercifully, it appears to be over. Tentatively, Emma reaches out and rests a hand on Noah’s shoulder.
Brooke and Audrey are back within an hour, Audrey nearly crashing into Emma’s lap with a bag of greasy fast food she practically hurls at the still-sleeping Stavo. He sputters awake under an explosion of french fries and Audrey grins wickedly, twisting around on the grass to catch Emma’s eye and smile even wider, sweeter.
“Hey,” Audrey greets her softly, handing over a smaller bag with Emma’s order much more politely.
“Hey,” Emma says and sweeps a hand out to brush Audrey’s bangs back out of her eyes, stomach lightening pleasantly when Audrey blushes and glances away.
Stavo is restless again, once they’ve finished eating. He pesters and cajoles and charms until Brooke and Noah are leaving with him, to walk down to the paddle-boats they rent near the pond.
“You mean you guys don’t want to rent one of those little swan two-seaters? But they so romantic,” Brooke teases.
Emma bites her lip but Audrey’s voice is surprisingly smooth when she answers for them, “You go on ahead. And when Noah and Stavo tip the boat over and dump you all in the water, don’t say we didn’t warn you.”
Audrey waits a few minutes after they’re gone to stretch her legs all the way out in front of her and pluck the book from Emma’s hands.
“Hey,” Emma protests sluggishly, making a halfhearted swipe to recover the battered paperback. “I was reading that.”
“No you weren’t,” Audrey says shortly. “C’mon, you look tired.”
Emma shrugs. They’re doing less of that thing where they deny what’s right in front of them.
“Yeah, c’mon,” Audrey encourages and then her hands are on Emma —- gently, gently — and she’s guiding her to spread out on their threadbare picnic blanket, her head pillowed in Audrey’s lap. “It’s alright.”
It’s more than that, Emma wants to say, but her eyes are drifting shut and she can only produce a weak, pleased hum when Audrey’s fingers drop against her temple, begin sliding through her hair.
X.x.x
Emma’s bedroom is empty when she gets out of the shower. There’s a low murmur of voices from downstairs, so she follows the sound, quiet out of habit.
It’s when she’s close enough to make out the words that she freezes, hidden from view at the bottom of the stairs.
“She’s been through a lot,” comes her mother’s voice, measured but earnest. A pause. “And you have to, of course.”
“She has,” Audrey acknowledges quietly, and Emma can picture the exact, specific slow nod that must have punctuated her words. “I’ve been through a lot of it with her.”
“I know that. And I’m grateful,” a sigh, a shuffle. A hug? “I’m very grateful, Audrey, that you two girls have each other. Again, I mean. I know things have been… complicated. But you’ve always been good for each other, I think.”
“Thanks, Maggie.”
“You’ve been doing a good job taking care of her. I hope you’re letting her take care of you too?”
“I’m trying,” Audrey’s voice falters a little, uncomfortable.
“That’s the only way things like this last, Audrey,” her mom’s voice again, gentler now than it’s been this whole conversation. “Give and take. You have to be open with each other.”
“I really mean it. We’re trying.”
“Good, good,” her mom sighs again, and then her voice drifts further away. “Well, you don’t need a lecture. I just wanted you to know that I’m glad you’ve been here lately and you’re always welcome. Always.”
“Thanks, Maggie.”
“You’re welcome, Audrey. You better get up there. I can’t hear the water anymore, and I’m sure she’s missing you now.”
There’s no time to get up the stairs before Audrey’s around the corner and they’re face to face.
She stops just short of running into Emma and flushes bright red after a moment, when she realizes what Emma’s overheard.
Silently she gestures up towards Emma’s room and they ascend the stairs together.
“She was right,” Emma admits, once they’re far enough away not to be overheard. Impulsively she reaches back, grabs Audrey’s hand in hers and tugs her along toward the bedroom. “I missed you.”
“I’m right here,” Audrey murmurs back, each word a drop of sweet, warm honey down the back of Emma’s throat.
X.x.x
August comes, hotter and wetter and slower than the rest of the summer.
They’re at Brooke’s mansion, taking advantage of the pool. On a bright, cloudless day like this it’s almost impossible to remember the horror of the last year at all.
Audrey’s been watching her all day, eyes roving over Emma in her swimsuit in a way that makes her feel hot and excited and sexy and only a little bit scared. More than anything what she feels is anticipation — that sensation from the tip of the diving board, the moment after you’ve decided to leap but before you’ve left the ground. She’s ready for the freefall, for the inevitable cooling splash.
It comes after a few hours of swimming around. Audrey and Brooke have retreated to lounge chairs under an umbrella, watching as Emma and Stavo and Noah paddle around like kids, flipping each other over on inflatable furniture.
Brooke gets up with a leisurely stretch that draws everyone’s attention and announces that she’s going inside to order pizza. Noah and Stavo take it as an invitation, hurrying over each other to get out of the pool and follow, arguing about toppings before they’re even out of the water.
Emma watches them go with an amused smile before they’re gone and her gaze drifts, inevitably, towards Audrey.
Audrey who’s sitting up higher in her chair now. Audrey who’s watching her back.
“Hey,” Emma calls out and swims up to rest her arms on the lip of the pool. She feels buoyant and playful, weightless in the water. “You’re looking lonely over there.”
Audrey pops a sarcastic brow and waggles the fashion magazine that Emma knows she wasn’t reading at her. “Get your eyes checked.”
“Fine, then,” Emma switches tact, with an easy shrug. “I’m lonely. You’re not gonna leave me all by myself over here, are you?”
It works, of course, because there are ways to get Audrey to do pretty much anything and over the past few months Emma has become less skittish about using them.
“What now?” Audrey asks, sitting with her legs dangling down in the water.
Emma takes her in; all board shorts and bikini top and close cropped hair. She’d gotten it cut again yesterday, the sides shaved almost all the way down, but with the floppy fringe on top left practically untouched. Emma extends her hands, pulls gently when Audrey grasps them until they’re both in the water.
She brings her wet hands up and runs them through Audrey’s hair, just to mess it up, get it wet again. She smooths it back, water droplets from her palms running down Audrey’s face like droplets of rain. There’s a hitch in Audrey’s breath and Emma feels a surge of pride and confidence in knowing she put it there herself.
It’s not until she feels concrete scrape against her bare back that Emma realizes they’ve drifted all the way across the pool just looking at each other, not talking. She wonders, idly, if Audrey remembers the night she invited her to Brooke’s party after the video leaked; when she’d asked probing questions so desperately, so awkwardly, stomach twisted in jealous knots she couldn’t make sense of as she teased answers out of Audrey about Rachel, about the video.
She can remember with sudden, excruciating detail everything she’d forced herself not to ask that night, everything she’d been scared, even back then, to let herself feel.
She won’t bring it up now, not sure if it would ruin the moment, too scared of letting this get away. Audrey’s touchy on her best days and skittish with her heart, even with Emma, even after all this time.
So she’s careful as she switches their places, pressing Audrey back into the wall of the pool instead. Leaning in close enough to smell the sunscreen on her skin, for their wet foreheads to brush as Audrey’s eyes drift shut and Emma’s face dips lower.
“Emma!” Stavo’s voice shatters the moment and Audrey’s eyes fly open. “Settle this for us! Pineapple or no pineapple?”
Audrey blinks rapidly, a panicky look on her face and Emma reacts without thinking, raising a wet hand to cup Audrey’s jaw gently. She swipes her thumb along the apple of Audrey’s cheek and follows its path with the slightest brush of her lips.
It’s not ruined. It’s not over. Just paused. Delayed.
They’ve waited this long, they’ve survived this much, they can wait a bit longer.
“Yes pineapple,” Emma calls over her shoulder turning and swimming toward the ladder to haul herself onto the patio. “But not with olives or artichoke or anything.”
She follows Stavo back into the kitchen where Noah is agonizing over some pizza chain’s online menu.
A few minutes later Audrey stumbles in, looking dazed but giddy. She settles next to Emma, leaning close enough to her against the counter for their bare arms to brush.
Pizza is ordered and eaten, Emma and Audrey share a recliner, pressed close together in a way that hardly draws a second glance from their friends any longer. Emma makes it through an entire movie without drifting to sleep for the first time in weeks.
Afterwards Brooke invites them to stay over, but after hours with Audrey on a tightrope of tension, the only thing Emma wants is the comfort and privacy of her room. It’s only fitting to let this next step play out there, in the place they’d taken back together, where they learned how to be steady together.
They get home and part of Emma wants to drag Audrey up the stairs by her arm and push her into the dark room immediately, but she won’t rush this. She keeps herself calm, doesn’t break their routine, each of them taking their turn in the shower, brushing their teeth, settling under the covers.
It’s freezing cold with the air conditioning on full blast to combat the August heat. Emma thrives like this, pressed close enough to Audrey for their legs to tangle, to feel Audrey’s minty breath against her cheek.
Emma is the kind of satisfying full-body sore that only comes from a day as long as the one they’ve just had, hours of activity and exertion stacked atop one another. It’s dark in the room, but for the string of lights tacked over the wall, which cast a pretty blue glow on Audrey’s pale face.
Thinking back to the pool, Emma reaches out to run her palm along the short prickly hairs on the back of Audrey’s head, giggling when Audrey squirms under her touch. “I don’t know how you don’t just do this all the time.”
“It’s just hair,” Audrey grouses, but there’s no heat to it.
“It feels so weird,” Emma says, letting her fingers drift up to tease and tug at the longer hairs atop Audrey’s hair, scratching her nails lightly along Audrey’s scalp until her eyes drift shut in contentment. “Doesn’t feel weird to you?”
Audrey shrugs relaxed and boneless in Emma’s bed.
It’s easy, takes barely any effort at all, to close the space between them. Brushing her lips over the same spot on Audrey’s cheek as earlier, but not stopping there this time. She keeps her hand moving through Audrey’s hair as her lips drift lower to Audrey’s jaw, her chin, the corner of her mouth.
Audrey sighs against her and tips her face just so and it’s more of a sliding into place than a first kiss.
It’s so much like the thing they’ve been trying to be for each other. Gentle and tender and unhurried — simple, not fraught like so much of their past, not desperate or dangerous like it would have been months ago.
They break apart after a few long moments, Audrey shifting to nuzzle her forehead into Emma’s. “What took you so long?”
“I didn’t want to rush it,” Emma breathes and dips down to kiss Audrey again.
It’s different this time, though no less tender. Emma can feel Audrey’s mounting confidence in the sure, thorough way she kisses Emma, one hand cupping Emma’s jaw to tilt her face, the other playing lightly in the hair at the nape of Emma’s neck.
She rolls Emma over with just the barest suggestion of her hands, settling her slight weight half over Emma’s body. Emma’s hands find their way to Audrey’s back, to clutch her shirt and hold her closer still.
And it’s all new, technically, but it doesn’t feel scary or uncertain the way new things always have for Emma. She doesn’t have to fake the confidence to gasp into Audrey’s mouth, to twist the cotton under her hands when Audrey’s lips drift down her neck, when her teeth gently scrape Emma’s jaw.
The press of Audrey’s body isn’t new at all to Emma. The feeling of Audrey in her bed, the weight of her complete attention, the longing for more of her and closer and now are all sensations Emma has beens steeped in for days, weeks, months.
They kiss deeply and then softly and then deeply again, guided by the gentle electricity of desire tempered by sleep. It will only be kissing tonight, Emma already knows. As much as part of her thrills at the thought of more, at the memory of Audrey’s bare skin at the pool, she meant it earlier when she said she didn’t want to rush.
The knowledge does nothing to ease her breathless panting into Audrey’s hair as she works a bruise into Emma’s shoulder with her teeth and her lips. It doesn’t stop the lazy rocking of her hips up to meet Audrey when she grinds down, just for a few moments before she catches herself and pulls back.
“Sorry,” Audrey mumbles, rolling off her. She looks as breathless and dazed and disheveled as Emma feels.
Rolling over, Emma takes advantage of the new position to run her hands through Audrey’s hair again, kissing her ear, the side of neck, and her mouth again. It’s a slow, careful kind of kiss. Something to comfort, to steady them, bring them down together.
It’s so hard to stop touching her, now that she finally can. Emma pushes her mouth against the side of Audrey’s head, breathes in the citrusy smell of her shampoo and bestows a final kiss to her scalp.
“I’m tired,” Emma laughs into Audrey’s hair, eyes drifting shut with her admission.
“Sleep, then,” Audrey mumbles and moves to take Emma into her arms.
Emma nods drowsily, sliding down to bury her face in the crook of Audrey’s neck.
“I’ve got you,” Audrey says and the words carry Emma off on a gentle wave.
When she wakes, it’s earlier than usual, the light streaming through her windows is soft and white. Audrey is slow-breathing and warm, molded to her side like she’d been cast to fill every miniscule crevice and cavernous gap in Emma’s body.
Emma takes a deep breath of the cool, recycled air in her room. She feels Audrey stir against her, mumbling something sleepy and unintelligible into Emma’s skin.
“Good morning,” Emma says and pulls her closer still.