Work Text:
Audrey’s two feet short of leaving her classroom when she hears her name from behind her.
“Yo, Jensen, wait up!”
The voice is newly familiar, and when Audrey turns around, she finds a girl she knows from a group project from the first month of the semester.
“Hey, Jess,” she greets the other girl, waiting for her to catch up before she continues into the hall. “What’s up? Do you need the notes from yesterday?”
“Actually, yeah, if you don’t mind,” Jess replies as she falls into step with her. “But I really wanted to ask you about that hot blonde you’re always with.”
Considering the only other hot blonde Audrey regularly hangs out with currently lives in New York, she can only mean one girl.
“Emma?” she questions unnecessarily, digging through her bag for the notes her classmate needs.
“Yeah,” Jess nods, pausing for a moment, and then, “Is she your girlfriend?”
The first time someone asked her that, Audrey almost choked on the pizza she was eating, but it’s happened enough times since then that she doesn’t even miss a step.
“My best friend,” Audrey corrects her, smiling triumphantly when she finds what she’s looking for in her bag. “Why?”
“We talked a little at the Sigma party the other night, and I was thinking of asking her out,” the other girl explains, taking the pages being handed to her. “Just wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be stepping on any toes.”
This, however, has never happened before.
“Uh, no toes,” Audrey responds, slowing down to a stop and turning to face the other girl. “But I don’t think Emma’s gonna be interested.”
“Is she seeing someone else?”
Audrey almost snorts, because ever since Kieran, Emma’s pretty much been notoriously single, if she doesn’t count that disastrous attempt with that Alex psycho last Halloween.
“No,” she shakes her head. “She’s just not into girls.”
Jess raises her eyebrows in obvious surprise, like she’d never even considered that. “Really? Are you sure? Because I got a different vibe.”
This time, Audrey does snort as she laughs. “I think I would know.”
“Mhmm,” Jess hums, considering it for a moment before she shrugs, completely unfazed. “Well, the worst she can say is no, right?” Slipping the borrowed pages into a book in her hand, Jess pats Audrey on the shoulder as she takes a step back. “Thanks for the notes, Jensen.”
Audrey watches her go and shakes her head in amusement and a little bit of sympathy; it’s not fun getting rejected by Emma Duval, but Jess can’t say Audrey didn’t try to warn her.
The conversation is completely forgotten until the next day, when Audrey spots Jess and Emma talking animatedly in the East Campus quad, where she and Emma were supposed to meet for lunch.
She watches them as she waits in line at the coffee cart, trying to gauge how the conversation is going.
Both of them are all smiles, and Audrey can tell that Jess is flirting, with the way she keeps leaning down and touching Emma’s arm while she’s laughing, but her best friend is harder to read.
Jess is still there by the time Audrey makes it to the front of the line, but once she’s got two drinks in her hands and is ready to head over, the other girl is taking her phone back from Emma and departing with a victorious smile.
Narrowing her eyes, Audrey stalks over to the table Emma’s seated at, trying to think of any other explanation for what she just witnessed that would make more sense than what she’s thinking.
“What was that about?” she asks as she approaches, handing Emma her coffee and slipping into the chair opposite her.
Emma offers her an appreciative smile before she explains, “That was Jessica, we met at a party.”
“Yeah, I know, she’s in my Film History class,” the brunette is quick to dismiss. “What were you guys talking about?”
“She just asked if I wanted to get dinner tomorrow night,” Emma explains with a shy smile, either not picking up on Audrey’s growing distress or just ignoring it.
“And you said yes?”
Emma nods, smiles and shrugs all cutely, like this is the time for that. “Yeah, she seems cool.”
Audrey is still desperately trying to make this make sense.
“You did get that she was asking you out on a date, right?” she asks to make sure. “She’s not trying to be study buddies with you.”
Emma practically fucking giggles. “Of course,” she laughs, rolling her eyes a little before checking her watch. “I know I’ve been single for a while, but I do still know how dating works.”
Audrey feels like she’s going insane.
“Then why-” she starts to ask, but stops when Emma abruptly stands from her chair.
“Anyways, I’m sorry to bail on lunch, but I totally forgot I have a meeting with my Psych prof in ten minutes,” the blonde explains apologetically, shouldering her bag and grabbing the coffee Audrey had bought for her. “I’ll see you at home, okay?”
Not waiting for a reply, Emma flashes her one last smile and hurries off, leaving Audrey to question her entire existence.
“What the fuck?”
The first thing Audrey does when she gets back to the dorm she shares with Emma is call Noah.
“Since when does Emma date girls?” she demands to know after explaining what just happened, as if the boy could possibly answer her.
“You’d know better than me,” is all he can say, somehow sounding amused, sympathetic and scared all at once.
“Since never!” she snaps in annoyance, mostly at the situation, but a little bit at Noah, too. He is so not helping. “That’s when.”
He lets out a nervous laugh and offers, “Maybe she’s just branching out?”
Audrey stops pacing the small space. “Branching out?”
“Girls experiment in college, right?” Noah theorizes, sounding unsure; pretty much everything he knows about girls comes from movies and TV shows. “Is that a real thing? Is that offensive for me to say?”
“Ugh!” Audrey scoffs, unceremoniously hanging up and falling backwards onto her bed with a huff.
She should have known Noah was not the person to call when she needed counsel on a girl.
No, there was really only one person Audrey should have called.
“Would you go out with a girl?” she asks Brooke an hour or so later, once she’s given herself a little time to get over her shock enough to be able to hold a civil conversation; Brooke won’t take her shit the way Noah does.
“Are you finally asking me out?” is Brooke’s expected playful and flirty reply.
Audrey hates to admit that it does wonders to help her relax. “You still wish,” she teases back, smirking at the laugh she receives in return.
“Okay, seriously,” the blonde is quick to get them back on track, knowing they can both carry on forever if neither of them puts a stop to it. “What are you spiraling about now?”
“Emma,” Audrey sighs dramatically.
“What else is new?” her friend quips in faux exasperation.
“No, Brooke, listen,” she insists firmly. “This girl in one of my film classes asked Emma out and Emma said yes.”
“Did she know that’s what the girl was doing?” Brooke wants to clarify, knowing their friend as well as Audrey does. “‘Cause I love Emma, but she can be a little clueless about people that are into her. Case in point: you.”
“Yes!” Audrey immediately confirms, considering she’d assumed the very same thing. “I asked to make sure, and she said she knew and was completely nonchalant about it. Like it was this totally normal thing I wouldn’t freak out about.”
Brooke hums, and Audrey waits for the same shock she experienced, but doesn’t ever get it.
Instead, she gets logic and understanding.
Ugh.
“Well, maybe that’s because she wanted it to be,” Brooke suggests all sensibly. “Not everyone comes out with a viral video of them making out with a catholic school girl.”
Audrey scoffs at the teasing. “Like that was my choice.”
“I’m just saying, maybe she acted like it wasn’t a big deal because she doesn’t want it to be one,” the blonde reasons, but the other girl isn’t ready to do that just yet.
“But it is one!” she exclaims indignantly.
“To you.”
Audrey scoffs again. “Uh, yeah!”
“But why?” Brooke presses.
And suddenly all of Audrey’s confusing and messy feelings dissipate, leaving her with just the one.
“Come on, Brooke,” she sighs, her shoulders slumping and that familiar sting of rejection settling in her gut. “You know why.”
“Yeah, I do,” her friend replies sympathetically, pausing to give her a moment, before she forges on and tells Audrey what she really needs to hear: “But I also know this isn’t about you.”
And even though Audrey knows she’s right, it’s really fucking hard not to feel like it is.
Audrey spends the next couple of hours moping and pouting and contemplating what Brooke said.
Her friend is right, the objective part of Audrey’s brain knows that, but the much bigger, more irrational part - the part that (unknowingly) sends letters to a serial killer because she’s in her feelings - can’t fully accept that yet.
How can she, when the only reason she was able to come to terms with her feelings for Emma being unrequited was because she thought Emma didn’t like girls?
She spent years learning to live with that, Brooke can’t really expect her to be fine with learning Emma does like girls, she just doesn’t like Audrey, within a few hours.
But it looks like she’s gonna have to try, because suddenly Emma’s coming through the door and Audrey’s got to try to hold it together.
“Hey,” the blonde says in way of greeting, sounding surprised to see her. “Don’t you have a class right now?”
Audrey turns to look at the alarm clock on her bedside and finds that yes, she actually is supposed to be in class at the moment.
Shit.
She shrugs. “I didn’t really feel like going,” she answers, leaving out the part where it wasn’t intentional.
“Everything okay?” Emma asks with concern, placing her books on her desk and giving the other girl her attention.
“Yeah,” Audrey forces herself to say. “Something weird happened earlier, and I just wasn’t in the mood to listen to my prof drone on and on about shit I already know.”
Audrey silently begs her best friend to just leave it at that, because she only has so much self control and she’s really trying here, but of course she can’t.
“What do you mean by weird?” Emma inquires, her concern ticking up a notch as she perches herself on the edge of her bed, sitting opposite Audrey. “Weird like you walked in on people hooking up in a bathroom stall? Or weird like someone with a voice changer app called and threatened to slit your throat?”
Well, fuck, now Audrey has to tell her the truth, because she can’t risk Emma not believing whatever lie she comes up with on the spot and thinking she’s hiding something worse from her. Again.
It took almost a year for Emma to truly believe that the nightmare they lived through was really and truly over, and Audrey’s not about to let her think otherwise for even a minute.
“Weird like I found out my previously assumed to be straight best friend goes on dates with girls,” she admits, not sure if it comes out as lightly as she wants it to, but pretty confident she at least kept the accusation out of it.
Emma’s eyebrows lift, but otherwise, she doesn’t betray much else; still managing to make Audrey feel like she’s going crazy for finding this development so shocking.
“Oh,” is all she says to that, leaving Audrey no choice but to continue speaking.
“Look, Em, I’m sorry if you were trying to play it down or whatever, and I’m totally fucking that up,” Audrey starts apologetically, but not enough to not follow it up with, “I’m just really… surprised.” And confused, but something about that sounds a lot more self centered. “You could have told me.”
Not that that’s any less so, now that she’s said it, but it’s not like she can take it back now, so.
“I did tell you,” Emma counters plainly, and Audrey’s confused again. “This afternoon,” she elaborates.
“Okay, well, you could have told me sooner,” the brunette insists again, and it’s obvious to both of them that what she means is that she wishes Emma would have. “How long have you known?”
Emma shrugs and averts her eyes, the only sign that this isn’t as easy or casual a conversation as she wants to pretend it is.
“Senior year, I guess,” is as specific as she’ll get. “But after everything we survived, it just didn’t seem like that big of a deal. And it’s not like I was seeing anyone, so there was never a reason to mention it.”
“But there’s a reason now?” Audrey presses, remembering the smiles she saw the two girls exchange with a scowl of her own.
Not that she’s jealous or anything.
Emma considers her question for a moment before settling on, “There was an opening.”
Audrey’s not sure what to do with that - or anything else she’s feeling - so she doesn’t ask Emma for anything more.
After an awkward and silent rest of the night, Audrey’s thankful for her 8 A.M. Friday morning lecture for the first time all semester.
She gets up, gets ready, writes Emma a note wishing her luck on her date, and leaves, with no intention of coming back until that time tonight.
With only two early classes on her schedule, Audrey is free by noon, but instead of going back to their dorm, she wanders around parts of the campus she knows Emma won’t be, looking for things to keep her busy until it’s safe to go back.
She doesn’t want to see Emma before her date - or worse, be there while she’s getting ready for it - because she doesn’t want to ruin it any more than she probably already has.
It’s obvious this is her best friend’s first date with a girl, and despite all of Audrey’s conflicting feelings about it, she knows for sure that she doesn’t want to ruin this for the other girl, and her being around will only do that.
This time, Audrey doesn’t want to bring anyone else - especially not Emma - down with her.
(Some people might consider that growth.)
When Audrey figures it’s late enough that Emma has to have left for her date by now, she finally heads back to their dorm.
But when she gets there, the room isn’t as empty as she expected.
“What are you still doing here?” she asks the blonde when she spots her perched on the edge of her bed, like she’s been waiting for her. Audrey glances at the clock to check that she has the time right; she does. Which means… “Shouldn’t you be on your date?”
There’s no accusation or bitterness or weirdness in her tone like yesterday, just genuine confusion and curiosity.
But it’s like Emma doesn’t even hear her, because instead of answering the questions Audrey just asked her, she answers a different one entirely.
“I didn’t tell you I liked girls because I wasn’t sure if I did,” the blonde confesses abruptly, but in a strangely calm and level manner. “I just knew I liked one girl. You.”
Audrey blinks and falters, surprised at both the words she’s hearing and the suddenness of them.
There’s no fucking way Emma possibly means them.
Right?
“Em, you don’t have to-” she tries to cut her off before it’s too late, but the other girl won’t be stopped.
“I knew I loved you, actually,” Emma corrects herself, even more firmly than her last bombshell, but somehow stating it so simply, too. “I just, I didn’t know if it was real. After everything with Piper and Kieran, my hallucinations and just… everything, I didn’t know what was real - what or who I could trust - except for you.” She takes a deep breath and shakes her head, frustrated with her inability to explain everything she’s feeling, even though it sounds like she finally understands it all. “I wasn’t sure what my feelings meant, and I needed to be sure before I could tell you, I owed you that much.”
Audrey nods dumbly, as if she’s truly registered even half of what Emma is really telling her, let alone understood the gravity of it.
Because what the fuck?
But she still manages to, again, ask, “How long have you known then?”
“Since Gina,” Emma admits shyly, rolling her eyes at herself. “At first I just thought it was separation anxiety or codependency or something, but…” She pauses to laugh a little. “I really did not like her.”
Audrey has to laugh at that, too.
“Yeah, she didn’t like you, either,” she tells her with a smile she can’t fight, considering how hard she tried to hide that fact from her when they were dating.
And apparently she did it well, since Emma looks genuinely surprised to hear it, and a little hopeful, too.
“Really?”
“She was neurotically jealous, like to the point of stalking,” Audrey informs her with a grimace, countless arguments flashing in her mind. And as they do, she can’t help but judge herself as much as her ex. “But I guess I can’t blame her, because she was right.” Audrey didn’t realize it at the time - or maybe she just didn’t want to admit it to herself - but after these past two days, she knows it now. “She knew I was still in love with you; I kept telling her I wasn’t, so much that even I started to believe it, but she never did.”
Emma perks up at that, eyes a little bigger than they were a moment ago. “You were?” she asks, not sounding confident for the first time since they started this conversation.
And Audrey recognizes that uncertainty - that disbelief - and she has to give her best friend that reassurance she didn’t get when she was the one putting her heart on the line the last time.
“I am,” she confirms and corrects, not leaving any room for doubt. “Did my own neurotic jealousy yesterday not make that obvious?”
She shrugs helplessly, mouth slanting into a crooked grin that feels heavy; she’s exposing herself to Emma in a way she swore she’d never do again, and she can only hope she doesn’t regret it this time.
But when Emma stands up, another familiar look in her eyes, Audrey’s pretty sure she won’t.
“I thought maybe,” the blonde admits softly as she steps closer, with a small smile of her own playing on her lips. “But I was never sure what you meant that day in the barn, if you still felt that way then, let alone now. But then I talked to Brooke.”
Audrey barks out an endeared laugh. “Of course,” she mutters into the decreasing space between them. “I called her, too.”
“She mentioned that,” Emma giggles, standing right in front of Audrey now. “When I asked if she thought you still loved me, she said considering the meltdown you had about my date, she thinks so.”
The shorter girl’s cheek tint pink, but her gaze doesn’t falter. “I did not have a meltdown,” she denies weakly, and they both know it’s a lie.
“No, of course not, you’d never,” Emma plays along, her teasing sounding so much like flirting that Audrey just goes for it without giving it a second more thought.
She pushes up on her toes and kisses Emma like she’s wanted to do so many times before, and it’s better than any one she’s ever imagined.
And when Emma pulls away, her eyes fluttering open to look down at her with a look Audrey knows she’s had in her own eyes since she was twelve, she wonders how it possibly took them this long to see it.
An hour later finds them in Audrey’s bed, the two girls laying together in a comfortable silence that they’ve only ever had with one another.
“Did you even go on your date?” Audrey wonders suddenly, breaking the quiet bubble they’d wrapped themselves in.
Emma groans, covering her warming cheeks with her hands. “I got there and saw Jess waiting through the window, and just couldn’t bring myself to go in,” she admits with an embarrassed laugh. She lets Audrey pull her hands away from her face and finds her gaze. “I texted her to say I couldn’t make it and came back here to wait for you.”
Audrey’s beyond endeared - and even more disbelieving - and she replaces Emma’s hand with one of her own.
“Hope you didn’t have to wait too long,” she teases lightly and with a playful pout, thinking about how much time she wasted earlier.
Emma’s eyes soften and she shakes her head.
“A little bit,” Emma says all meaningfully. “But not as long as you did.”
Audrey’s breath catches, but before she can get emotional - or get embarrassed for almost getting emotional - Emma’s kissing her again, and none of it matters anymore.