fic: in function of no logic, emily/paige
Title: In Function of No Logic
Rating: PG
Length: 1040
Fandom: Pretty Little Liars
Summary: Emily visits Paige. She's not quite herself.
Spoilers: through 3x08, though I'm fudging some of the details
A/N: It's been a while. Hopefully someone will read this?
It’s late when Paige hears a noise outside, late enough that her mother has called twice from the Humanitarian League charity dinner.
Her parents are doing well with the gay thing, generally, but there’s a wariness now in the way they treat her. They check in more often, ask more questions, and in the second after she gives an answer she can feel them wonder whether there’s not something else she might be hiding.
Thus when Paige hears a noise outside, late enough that her mother has called twice, too late for it to be a friend stopping by, she assumes her father asked Mrs. Banner to drop in on her. It’s what he does: her mother calls, her father makes spies of the neighbors. She gets the speech ready in her head - everything’s fine, I’m working on college applications, it’s never too early to start - and so, when she opens the door, she’s unprepared to find Emily Fields on its other side.
Emily Fields, who is sitting on her steps, reclined against the railing.
“Hey,” Emily says, tucking hair behind her ear. She smiles up at Paige, easily, comfortably, as if there is nothing extraordinary in her presence here.
“Um,” Paige says, because she didn’t even know Emily was back from Haiti. (Also, because she’s run her hands through that hair, knows how soft it feels sliding around her fingers, and while she meant it when she said she’d be Emily’s friend she hasn’t figured out how not to want more than that.)
“You gonna come sit down?”
Emily seems to be losing letters at the end of words, and as she pats the stair at her side, sliding her legs up to give Paige room, it becomes clear her motor functions aren’t quite all there, either.
“You could come inside? You’ve got to be cold, without a jacket.”
Emily nods and shuffles herself into upright position. She can barely stand, is vertical for only a moment before she starts slumping sideways into the rail. Paige realizes Emily is several degrees of magnitude worse off than she’d assumed - is way past tipsy and into wasted.
Paige reaches for her arm, hesitating just short of skin. She has a new resolution when it comes to Emily: try not to be an idiot 100% of the time. Which translates into keeping safe distance more often than not. Now, though, Emily has chosen her porch to drunkenly sway on, and so she forces herself past the awkwardness, puts one hand on Emily’s elbow and the other at her back and together they manage the stairs in a slow, graceless stumble. Aside from those two points of contact they aren't touching, but Paige can feel the warmth radiating out from Emily’s body. It’s more distracting than it has right to be.
“Thanks,” Emily says. “Gravity’s playing tricks on me tonight.”
She smiles and Paige gets caught in it at exactly the wrong moment, so that she doesn’t see Emily’s foot snagging on the doorframe, doesn’t react until Emily is already falling. By then, there’s no hope of maintaining distance while keeping them both off the floor. They make it inside, but Paige ends up with Emily in her arms.
She stiffens, closes her eyes, thinks friends over the stuttering of her heart. Their closeness burns through her, though, through the things she tells herself in the hope that someday they’ll be true. Friends goes up in smoke, and all that’s left is the reality of her desire and the way Emily is leaning into her.
Even in their brief, abortive attempts at dating, she never had the chance to learn how to think with Emily this close, to inoculate herself against the press of Emily’s chest and the whisper of Emily’s breath on her neck. Now, when she hasn’t seen Emily in months, her effect is devastating. She is beautiful - even after a night of whatever she's been doing she's the kind of gorgeous it's rare to see and rarer to touch. Her proximity short-circuits Paige’s brain, overrides the alcohol Paige can smell on her breath and the opacity of her motivations.
And so Paige forgets to let go even after Emily is standing more or less steadily. She forgets to let go, and by the time she realizes the line she’s crossed she’s no longer the one in control. Emily is holding her up now, backing her into the closed door. Her eyes are bright (lucid, Paige lets herself think) and she's close enough that her hair brushes Paige's cheek.
A hand traces down Paige's arm. Goose bumps rise in its wake.
“I know you want to,” Emily says, and then she is kissing Paige.
Paige kisses back immediately, selfishly, without second thought. There is no thought at all involved here. She wants Emily beyond reason and sense, beyond “this is something I shouldn’t let happen”; she wouldn’t be out now had that not always been true. She wants to the point of desperation, and she’s not good or strong enough to turn down the thing she dreams about most nights, however compromised its offering.
It feels almost like a dream, Emily pulling her closer, licking into her mouth. Emily saturates her senses, and the universe contracts until there is nothing beyond Emily’s lips and hands (and Paige would stop time here if she had the power, and live out her life in the euphoria of reciprocated desire).
When the kiss ends, Emily leans their foreheads together.
“I miss you so much,” she whispers.
Her eyes are closed and her voice is soft. She is not thinking of Paige.
And just like that, the world comes rushing back in; gone is the dream, the phantom symmetry of their desires. Paige is a substitute at best, is more likely taking advantage. Tomorrow Emily may not remember any of this.
Paige slides out from between Emily and the door. Emily's touch has turned to accusation, and its weight is too heavy to bear.
“I should get you some water,” she says, looking at the ground.
In the kitchen her hands shake, and it’s more than a minute before she can hold a glass steady enough to fill it with water. The front door is gaping by the time she gets back. There is no sign of Emily.
Out in the dark, she sits on the stairs with the glass of water. Emily’s voicemail message plays in her ear.