#anything always

One time, in middle school, when Spencer tries to throw a sleepover in the barn, Hanna and Aria both bail. They’ve got boys they’re seeing, or trying to see, and they’ve had sleepovers a million times. There’s no contest.

Spencer apologizes to Emily profusely, again and again, but Emily just shrugs.

“You know I’m still coming over, right?” she asks.

Spencer blinks. “But…the others?”

“What? We can’t have a sleepover just us?

“Of course we can,” Spencer says, maybe too quickly. “But what will we do?”

Emily grabs her gym bag and shrugs again, “Anything.”

--

That sleepover becomes the first of many they have, just the two of them. They sleep in Spencer’s room instead of the barn, and talk shit about Aria’s taste in boys, giggling all the while.

One time, in eighth grade, before the summer, they talk about high school, and what they think it will be like.

“Melissa seems to like it,” Spencer says. Emily rolls onto her side, facing Spencer.

“Isn’t she like crazy stressed half of the time?” she asks.

“Well, yeah,” Spencer nods, “that’s a Hastings Specialty.”

Emily laughs. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

Then she gets kind of quiet, and Spencer can see her thinking. That was one of the first things she learned about Emily, during these one-on-one sleepovers. Quiet though she may be, Emily isn’t stupid. She’s thoughtful. Steady.

Spencer’s intellect feels like steel – it’s powerful, yes, but it’s sharp, dangerous too. Emily is steady as a rock, and Spencer is in awe of her.

“Do you think we’ll all still be friends in high school?” Emily asks, eyes downcast.

Spencer’s heart drops. She swallows, and finally picks up the courage to answer. “I can’t promise anything for Aria or Hanna, but I can promise for me,” she says. It’s not that she thinks poorly of Hanna or Aria, but she literally can’t promise for them. Typical Spencer, always rational.

“Yeah?” Emily asks.

“Always,” Spencer says.

--

There’s a homecoming dance during their sophomore year that goes…badly. Emily is newly out of the closet to her friends, but not to anyone else, so she came with some guy none of them know. They’re all a little tipsy, and Spencer spends most of her night ignoring her date, craning her neck to try and find Emily. As long as Emily is in her sights, she knows everything is fine.

Halfway through the night, Emily is missing, and Spencer excuses herself. She runs around the gym, looking for her, and but she only finds Hanna.

“She’s in the coat check,” Hanna sighs. “I can take her home if you want.”

“No, I’ve got it,” Spencer says. “You should have fun.”

Hanna nods, and Spencer squeezes her hand quickly before running off to find Emily.

Emily is pulling on her coat when Spencer arrives, one of the sleeves all twisted, and when Spencer reaches out to fix it, Emily jerks her arm away.

“I can do it myself!”

Spencer holds her hands up, trying not to feel burned. Emily’s just drunk, she reminds herself.

“Can I take you home?” Spencer asks.

Emily looks at her for a moment, and then rakes a hand through her hair. “No.”

“Em–”

“Take me to your house. I don’t wanna be alone.”

Spencer nods. She rests her hand on Emily’s lower back as she guides her out of the dance and to the car. Spencer tries to get Emily’s door for her, but Emily wrests it away.

“I can get my own door!”

Spencer just nods, walking around the driver’s side. She’s never known drunk Emily to act like a petulant child, but there’s a first time for everything.

She gets Emily to her house, gets her some water, tucks her into bed. She’s about to go downstairs when Emily’s hand reaches out and wraps around Spencer’s.

“When will I get to have someone who loves me?” she asks quietly, and Spencer can barely breathe from how hard her heart breaks.

“Oh, Em,” she says. “You will.”

“Sure.”

Spencer sits on the bed, next to Emily. “What can I do to help you?”

“Anything.”

--

When Emily does come out it, too, goes badly. It starts out a regular Tuesday, and they all go their separate ways, and Emily goes home, and Spencer is walking off of the turf after field hockey practice, digging through her bag to find her phone as she heads back to the locker room.

She has six missed calls. Four from Emily. Two from Hanna.

She stops walking.

The first voice message is indecipherable. It’s all sharp gasps and heavy sobs, and Spencer’s heart plummets. She gets to Hanna’s message and –

“It’s bad, Spence,” the recording says. “Emily’s gonna stay at my house for a while.”

Spencer is still covered in sweat, and her knees are scuffed up from the turf field, but she races towards her car, locker room be damned.

She has to get to Emily.

She barely says hi to Ashley or Hanna, just runs up the stairs two-at-a-time until she gets to the guest room. Emily’s sitting on the bed, her eyes red and her face puffy, but she’s no longer crying. No. She looks…god she looks shell shocked, and Spencer aches at the sight.

“Em?” she calls softly.

Emily looks up at her, blinks, and that’s when she breaks.

A strangled sob works its way up from Emily’s chest and Spencer is walking over before she can stop herself, wrapping her arms around her. Emily is burying her face in Spencer’s shirt and she cries, she cries, she cries.

Spencer rubs her back, trails her fingers through her hair, and she cries, too. Softly, silently, but she does.

When the sobs get smaller, she hears Emily say, muffled, “you stink.”

Spencer tenses. Shit. She just got out of practice. She bolted right over here. She must smell terrible.

She pulls back a little. “I didn’t shower. I-I ran right over. Sorry. Let me just go home and shower–”

She goes to step back, but Emily’s hand circles around her wrist, anchoring her to the spot, and Emily looks up at her with wet eyes, wet cheeks, and a puppy-dog stare.

“No,” she says. “Stay?”

Her lips tremble as she asks, as if Spencer would ever, could ever, say no.

Spencer softens, stepping towards Emily again, pushing a hand into her hair. “Always.”

--

Spencer stays at the Marin’s for two days, either in Hanna’s room or in the guest room with Emily. She showers, too. Then, after those two days, she goes home when her mom won’t stop calling. A few weeks later, Emily goes home, too.

Spencer is rigid the whole day, waiting for a call, or a text, waiting for anything. She feels like a coil about to snap.

When she does get the text, it says We talked. It’s okay. I’m okay. Or. I will be.

Spencer unspools, and things go back to normal.

Well. Normal-ish.

Emily gets comfortable with her sexuality quickly, which is what Spencer could only ever hope for her, but it means Emily also gets crushes pretty quickly and that…

Spencer has never liked the boys Emily likes. Now, she doesn’t like the girls, either.

And now it feels different, and she doesn’t know why.

Emily is giving some of her attention to Paige now (Paige! Paige who tried to drown her, and Spencer feels like she’s having an aneurysm) and if Spencer is crankier than usual, that has nothing to do with it, she’s sure.

She just knows she wants Emily’s attention back on her and that’s perfectly normal, right?

They’re in the library during study hall when she hears Emily complaining to Hanna about her algebra homework, and Hanna, god bless her, isn’t even attempting to pretend that she knows it any better.

“I can help you, Em,” Spencer says from her spot.

“You probably have a million other things to do,” Emily protests. “You’ve got more homework than any of us combined.”

“That’s an exaggeration and you know it,” Spencer says. “It’s fine, really. Just come by mine tonight and we can work on it together.”

“You mean you’ll do it for her,” Hanna whispers under her breath, and she gets swiftly kicked in both shins by Emily and Spencer.

If Spencer can’t stop smiling the rest of the day, well, that’s completely unrelated.

Spencer does not, actually, do Emily’s homework for her. She walks her through the problems, and lets Emily try to do it on her own while Spencer works on her advanced chem homework. They lay next to each other on Spencer’s bed, and Spencer checks over her work periodically.

“See!” she says at one point. “You got it.”

“You mean you got it,” Emily laughs. “Seriously, Spence, you’re a lifesaver. And a genius.”

Spencer grins. “Well, thank you. But you’re not giving yourself enough credit.”

Emily hums, and her foot bumps against Spencer’s. “I missed this,” she says softly.

“What? Algebra?”

Emily rolls her eyes. “No. Us. I missed us hanging like this. You and me.”

Spencer’s heart flips. “Yeah. Me too.” Emily looks at Spencer then, and she bites her lip. Before she can say anything, though, Spencer blurts out, “wanna watch a movie?”

Emily pauses but after a second she nods. Spencer immediately wonders what Emily was going to say, and is kicking herself for speaking up at all.

“What do you want to watch.?” She asks.

“I don’t know, you pick,” Emily replies.

“Seriously? No preferences?”

“I’m here with you. That’s all I care about.”

Spencer’s heart is racing as she grabs her laptop and pulls up Netflix.

“So, anything?” she asks.

Emily nods, sending a soft smile in Spencer’s direction, sliding next to Spencer as they sit back on the bed.

“Anything.”

--

A week later, Emily and Paige are dating, and Spencer feels like she’s swallowing glass.

She realizes a little too late that she’s got feelings for Emily, because now she’s dating someone else, and Spencer’s world is spinning off of its axis.

She gets really, really good at learning how to fake a smile.

The state swimming champs are in late February, after Valentine’s Day, and of course, Spencer, Aria and Hanna go to support Emily. Spencer doesn’t mind, really, because it’s one of the few times her smile doesn’t have to be faked at all.

She’s proud of Emily. She’s always proud of Emily.

They make a big sign, and Spencer sits, biting her nails as they watched the races.

She yells her voice hoarse when Emily medals.

And after, they wait for her to come from the locker room, hair still wet, still smelling faintly of chlorine, and Spencer can’t hide the smile on her face when Emily finds them in the crowd.

Emily smiles right back.

“Hey, champ!” Spencer says, pulling her into a hug. “You were so great,” she says against her ear.

“You came,” Emily says, hugging Spencer tighter.

Spencer smiles even wider. “Always.”

--

It takes until next October before Emily and Paige break up. Well, for good. They’d been on and off most of the summer. Either way, Spencer can breathe again. She realizes she’s been holding her breath for months, waiting, and now she can breathe again.

Except. Except she can’t, really. Because she goes from waiting to something perhaps even worse.

She starts pining.

Quietly, and hopelessly, and deeply. She pines.

Spencer hasn’t often been shy in going after who or what she wants. But typically she wasn’t going after guys because she liked them, but because she was young and frustrated and wanted the attention. Because kissing Ian or Wren or whomever seemed like the only way to get her family to even look at her, and because Melissa always took what was hers and she was young and thought that was what justice was.

This is. This is different.

And suddenly she’s frozen. How do you make a move on your best friend?

Short answer: you don’t.

She pines most of junior year. She withdraws, too.

She and Emily don’t hang out alone as much. It’s not super obvious during the school year, what with how busy everyone is, and how much they all hang out together.

It’s obvious by the deep of summer time.

It’s hard to avoid when Hanna is off in New York for the summer, and Aria is in France or where ever, and Spencer and Emily are left alone in Rosewood.

Spencer is taking classes at Rosewood college, so at least she has that excuse, but it’s not much. Spencer bails on lunch a few times, she avoids Emily’s house, and she waits hours before replying to her texts. She just can’t. She can’t handle it right now. She doesn’t trust herself.

It’s not her best moment.

By August, Emily shows up at her door, angry and crying, and Spencer knows she’s fucked up.

“Did I do something?” Emily asks, wiping at her tears.

“What?”

Emily makes a frustrated sound. “You…I never see you anymore. You avoid me like I’m diseased, Spencer! I just want to know what I did.”  

Spencer shifts from foot to foot. “You didn’t do anything, Em. I’m just–”

“Really busy, I know, Spence,” Emily spits out. The words make Spencer wince, to hear them thrown back in her face like that. “I’m not asking for a lot here. I just…I miss you. I want to see you.”

“I…I miss you too,” Spencer offers, even though it’s probably not enough. “What should I have done?”

“Anything, Spencer,” Emily snaps, but her eyes are pleading. “Anything.”

--

Emily doesn’t speak to her for weeks. Even through the first week of school. Even though Spencer has texted and called, and even waited outside of Emily’s door for hours. It’s payback, Spencer thinks, and it stings like a bitch.

It’s worse than pining.

It’s worse than waiting.

It’s worse. It’s worse. It’s worse.

Not having Emily at all is intolerable.

“I don’t know what happened between you, or what you did,” Hanna hisses at her locker one day, “but you have to fix it. This sucks. It’s like my parents’ divorce all over again!”

“You think I’m enjoying this?” Spencer replies, shoving her AP Lit books into the locker. “It’s killing me! I’ve tried talking to her–”

“Try harder,” Hanna says. Then she rolls her eyes, “or, I don’t know, try a softer touch. Have you tried listening to her?”

Spencer bites the inside of her cheek. A softer touch isn’t Hanna’s worst idea. Sometimes, Spencer knows, she’s a bit of a bulldozer.

She’s also been a bit of a mess since her fight with Emily. She’s getting looks from people. Mostly her parents, Hanna and Aria.

So she skips field hockey practice and she waits on Emily’s porch. She waits for hours. When Emily comes home, she sees Spencer and freezes. Her eyes harden, and Spencer thinks she’s going to turn right back around so she–

“–Em, wait!” she calls. “Please, I…I wanted to apologize.”

“You’ve done that,” Emily says coldly, but she comes up the stairs, anyway, stands right in front of Spencer, anyway.

“I know,” Spencer forces herself to look at Emily. “You don’t have to forgive me. But I…I came to talk. And I came to listen. Because I’ve been a bit intense, I know.”

Emily nods. “Okay,” she says quietly. “So talk.”

Her gentleness almost makes it worse, Spencer thinks, but she swallows and steadies herself.

“I fucked up. I was having a rough summer,” she says, because it’s not a lie, even if it’s not the full truth, “and I thought it was better and easier if I kept it to myself. I thought seeing you would make it harder. And yet,” she laughs here, brittle and sad, “all I did was push you away and make you have a rough summer, too. It wasn’t fair or kind, but I did it, and I was wrong. I miss you, Emily. I missed you then, and I miss you even more now. We’ve got one year left together before we go off to school who knows where and I…”

“Yes?” Emily prompts, her voice barely a whisper.

Spencer closes her eyes. It would be so easy to so say. Three words. I love you.

Instead she says, “I don’t want to lose any more time with you. I don’t want to lose you. You’re the one thing I can’t lose, Emily.”

She doesn’t open her eyes, but she feels the warmth, the solidity as Emily sits down next to her, legs pressed together, leaning against Spencer’s side. She feels Emily’s fingers slide in between hers.

Feels her breath as she whispers, “the one thing?”

Spencer opens her eyes. “Yeah.”

It’s the closest she can get, for now.

“You’re not going to lose me, Spencer. We’ve been friends too long for that. You’ve got me for as long as you want me.”

Spencer squeezes Emily’s hand, wishes she was braver. But she knows how long she wants Emily, she wants her for –

“Always.”

--

Nothing changes, after that. Well, nothing tangible. Hanna mentions, once or twice, how the two are even more inseparable than usual.

“What do you mean?” Emily asks. “The four of us are always together. How are you and I or Aria and Spencer or any other combination any different?”

Hanna waves a hand dismissively, but when Emily goes to class, she elaborates to Spencer.

“You two like…what do planets do?”

“Orbit?” Spencer asks, her heart hammering in her chest.

“Yeah,” Hanna says, quirking an eyebrow. “That. You two orbit each other. It’s like you don’t even think about it. You guys always sit next to each other, the second you walk into a room, you end up near each other. Like magnets.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Spencer shrugs.

It’s a lie. She’s definitely noticed. She doesn’t think about it, really, about going to Emily every time she sees her, but she does notice how much it happens. She notices the way they touch, casually and without thinking, way more than the other girls.

They sit next to each other with shoulders brushing, knees knocking.

There’s no personal space anymore. It’s their space.

It’s not the worst thing in the world.

That’s how they spend the last few months of high school. Glued to each other’s sides, and hanging out with Hanna and Aria.

It’s how they spend the summer, too, but they really don’t get any time alone, then. It’s either Hanna, or Aria, and their families, and it’s fine. It’s good, really.

But as it gets closer to their leaving dates, Spencer feels…sad.

As if she can read her mind, Emily shows up at her door one day, while her parents are out visiting Melissa.

“Hey,” Spencer says, leaning against the doorframe.

“Hi,” Emily smiles. “Wanna hang?”

“Of course,” Spencer says. She looks around the porch. “Hanna and Aria?”

Emily shrugs innocently. “I thought maybe it could just be us today.”

Spencer’s smile only grows, and Emily ducks her head, grinning. “Yeah, okay. What do you want to do?”

“With you?” Emily meets her gaze again, warm and bright and sad and happy all at once. “Anything.”  

--

The ‘always’ that matters, the first one Spencer really pays attention to, happens over spring break of their freshman year of college. Instead of going to the Bahamas, or Florida, or Palm Beach, they come back to Rosewood, to see each other.

Aria is in Capri, Hanna is in Cabo, and it’s just the two of them.

Spring break in Pennsylvania is still decidedly cold, and rather un-springlike, but it feels like spring to Spencer. Feels like the world is coming alive again.

They sprawl out on Spencer’s bed, Spencer resting back against the pillows, Emily lounging at the end of the bed, and they have the house to themselves. It feels just like old times.

“If you had algebra homework to do, this would just be like high school,” Spencer laughs.

They have more alcohol this time, having stolen a bottle of vodka from her parents’ stash, but other than that…

“God, if I ever have to look at an algebra equation again, I’m flying to New Haven to knock on your door.”

Spencer’s heart flips a little. “I wouldn’t mind that,” she says. “You could even come without the algebra.”

Emily traces a pattern on the bare skin of Spencer’s calf, and Spencer pretends it isn’t making her shiver.

“Yeah?” Emily asks.

“Yeah.”

“You know,” Emily says, in this quiet, throaty tone that makes heat pool in Spencer’s stomach, “I could’ve kissed you for saving my GPA. I was so desperate. And you were so…wonderful.”

Spencer looks at her, letting her head loll a little. “I would’ve let you,” she says softly.

Emily’s gaze flickers up to Spencer’s again, and her fingers slide higher up Spencer’s legs, under her knee, towards her thigh.

“Yeah?” she asks again.

And it’s breathy, this time, it hits heavy in Spencer’s heart, and her pulse is racing. She sits up, leaning over, just a little.

“Yeah.”

Emily tilts her head and it’s just the right angle…it’s just the right…

Spencer stops thinking, for once, and kisses Emily hard and messy, it’s all lips and tongues and heavy breathing and then Emily is pushing up off of the bed to get closer, tugging at Spencer’s shirt for leverage.

Spencer tugs Emily into her lap and pulls back, just a little, just to catch her breath.

Her hands skim the skin above Emily’s waistband.

“How long?” Emily asks, and she looks so dazed, so happy, that Spencer can’t help but laugh.

She feels it too. Punch drunk happy.

“I’ve always…” she pauses then, because Emily is trailing open-mouthed kisses up her neck and it’s impossible to concentrate. Besides, that’s really the best answer for it. “Just…” she starts, and tries to concentrate as she says, “Always.”

--

It becomes their new normal. Not that much of it is new.

Well. The kissing. And the sex. That’s new. And of course now the hand-holding, and the late calls across the country…they mean something else now.

The three words ‘I love you’, mean something else, too.

Spencer can’t believe this is her life, sometimes. That she pined for so long and she’s here now. That she gets to kiss Emily, whenever she wants. Well, almost whenever.

“Babe, that’s crazy,” Emily says over the phone. “You’re not…you’re not lucky. You deserve the love you want. You’re perfect.”

Spencer hums. “I can be both.”

Emily laughs. “Yeah, I guess you can,” she says. She pauses then, and Spencer thinks she can hear her unlocking her front door. “I’m lucky too, you know. My heart is in the safest hands possible.”

Spencer smiles to herself, lays back in her bed, and pretends Emily was there with her, instead of in California. “Yeah. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to it.”

“Not anything?” Emily asks innocently.

“Anything,” Spencer promises.

There’s a pause, and Spencer can hear the smile in Emily’s voice when she says, “hey, that’s my line.”

--

Six years later, when they’ve both graduated, when they’re on the same coast, when Spencer’s done with grad school, when their friends and family are all gathered around…

They both wear white, they both say ‘I Do’ and later, when they’re dancing, Spencer pulls her wife close, kisses her cheek and whispers in her ear.

“I’m yours. Have been, and will be, for as long as you’ll have me.”

Emily pulls Spencer closer, but angles herself so she can look in her eyes and holds steady as she says it.