Paige stared down at the phone in her hand, delaying the inevitable. She didn't recognize the number, but, since it was from Rosewood's area code, she knew who was calling. She could have let it go to voice-mail, but she knew that they would have told talk, eventually. With a long sigh, she tapped the "Talk" icon.

"Hastings," she said flatly.

"McCullers," she heard in reply.

They had lapsed back into the way that they greeted each other when their paths crossed back in their field hockey days. Respectful disdain. This was before Paige and Spencer became friends. Friends of a friend. Before there was Paige and Emily.

Emily. Paige wondered how Spencer would get her number. She knew that it would have to come from Emily. It had to have been an awkward conversation.

"So," Paige said, with no hint of rancor.

"So," Spencer echoed. "You know why I'm calling."

Paige did. She knew that the call was going to come. It was only a question of when.

When Stanford's field hockey coach began recruiting a prospect from Rosewood High, she got in touch with Paige right away. Even though Paige was no longer playing field hockey at the time she finished Rosewood, the coach knew that, in such a small town, Paige would know anyone who was on the team well enough to give her an assessment. And Paige gave an honest assessment - as honest as she could be without betraying Spencer's trust, or Emily's. She could only offer a guess as to why Penn turned Spencer down, but she made it known in no uncertain terms: It was the University of Pennsylvania's loss.

It came as no surprise to Paige when her own swimming coach mentioned, off hand, that Spencer had accepted Stanford's offer.

"Yeah," Paige replied. She knew why Spencer had called. "When are you flying in?"

"Next week. Tuesday."

"You can't get into the dorms next week."

"Yeah."

The two were so alike that they didn't need many words between them.

"I'll talk to my parents," Paige said matter-of-factly, "but I'm sure that it'll be okay."

Whatever Spencer's feelings for Paige at that moment, they were going to be classmates at Stanford. They would have to learn to get along. Spencer was never one to delay the unpleasant. She just plowed ahead.

Paige met Spencer in baggage claim with a respectful nod, which Spencer returned. There were no hugs, and no words, really. Spencer gestured to her bags as they came off the carousel, and Paige helped her hoist them onto the cart. Paige gestured in the direction of the parking lot and steered the cart to her car.

The silence made the ride feel longer. There was a lot to talk about, but they had too much respect for each other to get into it in the car.

Paige pulled into the driveway of the California house. It was way too big for the three of them, but it sent the right message.

Of course, there was a pool in the back.

Spencer took note of the two twenty dollar bills on the counter next to a note that read, "Welcome Spencer." The bills meant that Nick and Elaine wouldn't be home for dinner. Had it been any other girl, Paige would have gotten a lecture about focusing, avoiding distractions, and making good choices before her parents left them home alone. But they knew Spencer. She was focused. She was driven.

Most important, she was straight.

Paige helped Spencer carry her bags to one of the spare rooms in the rear of the single-level house and let her get settled in. She was waiting at the kitchen counter with twin bottles of water and some chips and dip when Spencer came in, having splashed some water on her face to freshen up.

"So," Spencer said, twisting open the bottle in front of the stool on which she had planted herself.

Paige was leaning with one forearm planted on the counter, twirling the same chip back and forth through the glob of guacamole on her plate with her other arm.

"So," she echoed, without looking up.

"You really hurt her, you know," Spencer rasped, not hiding her anger.

"I know," Paige affirmed, still focused on her plate.

"Is that all that you have to say?"

Paige let out a deep sigh and, finally, looked in Spencer's eyes. "What do you want me to say, Spencer?"

"I'd like an explanation, Paige. We all would. Don't you think that you owe her that? I mean, whatever Emily ever did to you, you always knew why. It was never just, 'I need space.'" Spencer dripped contempt as she lowered her voice to pronounce the words which Paige had spoken to Emily.

Paige opened her mouth to speak, but, before she could, Spencer added, "You wounded her, Paige."

"I know. I know!" Paige's voice broke as she fought to keep her composure. "And that was one of the hardest things that I ever had to do." Spencer scoffed, despite herself. She wanted to give Paige a fair hearing. She certainly didn't want Paige to cop an attitude and just shut down.

"But it had to be done," Paige concluded, with a shrug.

Spencer raised an eyebrow, intrigued.

"Emily... Emily is a force of nature. She's like the Sun. Women are just drawn to her like planets." Paige was idly using her hands to depict planets orbiting around the Sun. "And, when I got out here, it was as if I got out of her gravitational pull. Don't get me wrong. I never stopped loving her. But it was just as if, with some perspective, I could see what was going on. I mean, Emily is always going to have women orbiting around her. And she always seems to come back to me, for whatever reason. I just - I just realized that she needed to be free to explore whatever - whoever - is out there. You know the saying. If you love someone, set her free. I just have to hope that she comes back to me, when all the dust settles."

"Paige, that's just..." Insane, Spencer was about to say.

"Is it?" Paige cut her off. "I mean, it didn't take long for Talia to slip into her orbit."

Spencer recoiled a little, surprised that Paige knew about Talia. That wasn't one of Emily's finer moments, and she didn't exactly trumpet the news, even to her three best friends. "And Sara," Spencer whispered, not realizing that she had actually spoken the name out loud until she saw Paige do a slight double-take. In a moment of compassion, Spencer reached for Paige's forearm. She hadn't meant to break the news like that.

"Sara," Paige repeated pensively. She had been caught off guard, but she couldn't say that she was surprised. "And, I'm guessing, Sara is a blonde."

"Wow - really?"

"Am I right?"

"Yeah, but..."

Paige smiled, for perhaps the first time since Spencer had been in California. "It's the pattern, Spencer. Predictable. Repeatable. 'Blonde, brunette, brunette. Blonde, brunette, brunette.'" Paige rattled off.

Spencer curled her lip as she took mental inventory. Paige watched her as she processed: Alison. Maya. Paige. Samara. Maya. Paige. Alison. Paige. Talia. Sara.

She shook her head at Paige's depth of analysis of all things Emily before she got back to the point. "So, why didn't you just discuss it with Emily? Like an adult?"

"You know me - 'Right thing, wrong way McCullers.'" Paige smiled, but Spencer rolled her eyes.

"Don't you think you owe her at least that much?"

"Yes. Of course. I know that I do. But you don't understand Emily's pull, Spencer. It was the hardest thing in the world for me to walk away from her at the airport. If she asked me to stay again, I know that I would have said yes. And we'd just be back to the same old cycle."

Spencer finally relaxed her posture. She didn't understand fully, but she knew, at least, that Paige had a reason. And that, as always, Paige had only hurt Emily because she was trying to look out for her.

"And, besides. You know how it works. I knew that, eventually, Emily would find out why," Paige smirked.

Spencer dropped some chips onto her plate. Yes, she knew how it worked. Emily hadn't asked her to get an explanation from Paige, but Paige was imploring her to give Emily one. "She says hi," Spencer said, looking down at her plate as she finally got around to delivering the message that Emily had asked her to relay. The first message, rather. There were others, but they would have to wait.

"So, Toby?" Paige asked after a respectable pause.

Spencer looked up, shaking the hair away from her face with a quick swish. "We're good," she affirmed.

"And the distance?"

Spencer shrugged. "We've survived worse."

"I suppose you have," Paige said, focusing anew on her snack.

The two saw surprisingly little of each other as the year unfolded. There was no animus between them, or any conscious decision on the part of either one to avoid the other. Stanford was a larger pond than Rosewood High, and they each had their own circles of association, formed around their separate sports and courses of study. Paige gave Spencer rides on those rare occasions when she needed one, until Peter Hastings was able to come through with a local set of wheels. Spencer was an occasional guest at the McCullerses' dinner table. It was a given that she would join them for Thanksgiving weekend, since she couldn't go home.

But when it came to campus life - study breaks, movies, or hanging out in the dorms - they were in two separate worlds.

Paige hoisted her head off of the pillow when she heard the insistent knocking on her door. Her first glance was to the clock. It was almost one o'clock. Her second glance was to her roommate's bed, which was empty. It wasn't unusual for Katie to find someone else's bed in which to spend her Friday night. What was unusual was for her to come back. Paige assumed that she didn't have her key - or didn't have the coordination to use it.

She opened the door and was immediately engulfed in a hug by Spencer Hastings. As soon as they made contact, Spencer broke, dissolving into deep sobs. Paige shuffled her inside the room and closed the door, correctly thinking that Spencer wouldn't want an audience for what she was going through.

They ended up sitting on Paige's bed. Paige comfortingly smoothed the hair on the side of Spencers face, which was buried in Paige's shoulder as Spencer cried and cried.

Paige waited, allowing Spencer to decide when she was ready to break the silence.

"It's over," Spencer said, looking up at Paige. Paige just held her tighter, rubbing her back. "It was too much," she said, separating their bodies. She sat up, facing forward, with her hands clasped between her thighs. Without realizing it, Paige mirrored the pose. "Four years is a long time. Three thousand miles is a long way."

Paige wasn't surprised that her quote had made it to Spencer's ears. "I'm sorry," she said.

"I didn't know where else to go."

"You came to the right place."

Spencer leaned against Paige's shoulder, and Paige wrapped her arm around Spencer's shoulder, squeezing once.

Over the next hour or so, Spencer unloaded. She told about the subtle changes in Toby ever since he joined the police department, about how those changes grew more pronounced when Spencer decided to come to Stanford, about how they had been kidding themselves when they decided to try to make it work long-distance.

She speculated that it was her fault; she knew that she had changed - and how could she not have, with everything that she and her best friends had been through?

And, all the while, Paige never said a word. She never yawned, she never judged, she never flinched; only occasionally shifted her body as Spencer curled more vulnerably into her.

When there were no more words to say, Spencer just sat in Paige's grasp. Paige let her. When Spencer moved to speak again, Paige looked down, to read her eyes. Spencer closed the distance with a kiss.

It was quick and perfunctory. It wasn't wrong or right. It was just there. Paige would have forgotten about it, but Spencer leaned in again, more purposefully this time, as if she had something to prove.

"Spencer," Paige chided.

"Let me," Spencer whined, in a soft rasp. She reached behind Paige's neck to pull her in. "Please."

Paige stood up and took a step away from the bed. "No," she said with authority.

"Paige!" Spencer stood up and walked in front of Paige, annoyed.

"Spencer I know," Paige said impatiently. She walked in a tight circle in the small space between her bed and her desk. "I get it, okay? You need to feel. Something. Anything. I know." Paige shook her head. "But not like this. Not when you're so vulnerable."

"Ugh!" Vulnerable? Weak? Paige had gone too far. "You think you know?" Spencer spat, grabbing her sandals from the floor beside Paige's bed. "You don't know shit!"

Spencer slammed the door behind her, pulling her sandals onto her feet without slowing her brisk pace out of Paige's dorm, back to wallow in her own room.

Paige gave a fleeting thought to chasing after Spencer, but even if she had decided that it was a good idea, she couldn't have done it. She was frozen to the spot. She ran her fingers over her lips that were still tingling from that brief contact. Her head was starting to swim from the repressed memories that the kiss had unleashed. She fell down onto her bed as the memories swirled around in her brain; some stopping and coming into focus for a moment before the carousel started up again. She recalled the smirk on Spencer's face as she stood on the other side of the bench in the locker room, her eyes daring Paige's to take an eyeful of her half-naked, sweaty form. She recalled the pivoting of Spencer's head in the shower as she subtly but unabashedly sized Paige up. She recalled the aggression on the field, both of them letting out pent up tension; neither in a hurry to disentangle when they tumbled into each other during a scrimmage.

These were the dark days. The days that Paige had done her best to forget. The days of confusion and bullying and self-loathing. The days that had long lain buried.

Awakened by a single kiss.

Maybe Paige and Emily weren't the only thing in this universe that was inevitable.

Paige shook her head to clear it and reached around to find her phone. She fired off a message to Spencer: "Let me know you made it back to your room safe."

The response was quick and to the point. "Fuck you, McCullers."

Three words that Paige knew said a whole lot more.

"Fuck you," not "Fuck off." "Fuck off" would have meant, "I despise you. Get lost" "Fuck you" meant, "I could care less that you're worried. You don't get to worry about my safety right now."

And "McCullers" indicated detached respect: "I don't have to like you, but we have to get along."

So, "Fuck you, McCullers" meant "Leave me alone, for now."

They would be all right. Spencer just needed some space.

Spencer read the reply from Paige: "Whatever, Hastings." It really meant, "Whenever." Paige was letting her know that she would be there, whenever Spencer was ready.

She knew that Paige was right. She was needy and vulnerable, and Paige was trying to keep her from doing something that she would regret. The only thing was, she wouldn't regret it. This wasn't about rebounding from Toby. This was about the universe finally aligning.

Spencer remembered the explanation that Paige had given her about breaking up with Emily. She and Toby were right for a time, and maybe they would end up being together for all time. But, right now, maybe it was Paige and Spencer's time. Maybe this was a necessary leg on the journey to their final destination - wherever that final destination was for them. For all four of them, she thought.

The universe would sort it out. It would just take time.

Over the next month, Spencer and Paige reverted to the "Hastings"/"McCullers" interactions of their pre-friendship high school days. In contrast to their early days of Stanford, when they rarely saw each other, they seemed to keep running into each other. Spencer didn't know whether it was the universe giving them a gentle shove or, more likely, Paige being Paige and keeping a protective eye on her friends. Their run-ins never happened in any obvious times or places; - Paige didn't just happen to be walking past Spencer's dorm at a time when, she knew, Spencer would be leaving for class, and she didn't show up to jog around the track just as field hockey practice was breaking up. But Paige and Spencer were too much alike. They thought too much alike. It would be easy for her to figure out how to run into Paige, if she wanted to. And it was easy for her to figure out that Paige wanted to run into her. And that Paige would know that Spencer would figure it out. Message received, McCullers. Paige was still giving her space, but she was still going to be there for whatever Spencer needed.

So, Spencer decided to end the stalemate, and the two found themselves sitting, with their oversized, plastic dinner trays pushed off to the side, in a crowded campus cafeteria. Spencer chose a very public place, to allay any of Paige's fears that Spencer would try something stupid with her lips again. So why was Paige bouncing her leg up and down like a meth addict going through withdrawals? "Cut it out!" Spencer chided amiably, and she smiled at the expression of shock on Paige's face when she realized that she had been doing it.

"I wouldn't insult you by trying to talk this through with you before I had a chance to process it. And I have. Processed it." Spencer's sentences were choppy; forced.

Paige nodded once, slowly. She was afraid how she would react to whatever it was that Spencer had come up with.

"You're trying to convince yourself that this is about Toby and me," Spencer continued. "Even though you know that it's not. You know that it goes back much further than that. Before Toby. Before Emily." Spencer looked into Paige's eyes, to confirm that she was keeping up. Paige dipped her head to confirm that she was.

"Back then," Spencer sighed, you thought that I was toying with you. Trying to knock you off of your game. Whatever. But you know better than that, now. You've known for some time. Haven't you?"

"Y-yes." Paige would never let Spencer - or anyone - intimidate her on the field. And she was no longer scared of who she was or of who else knew who she was. She had the courage to show up at Emily's door when Emily wanted nothing to do with her. So why was she turning into a puddle of goo over this conversation?

"I've been thinking about what you said. And you're right. But Emily's not the only one who has people orbiting around her. So, yeah, our orbits are aligning right now. And who knows how long we'll be in synch?" Spencer leaned forward in her chair and gazed unflinchingly into Paige's eyes. "Paige. I'm not saying that we're endgame. I'm not saying that we aren't. All I'm saying is that we're right now."

Paige sat in stunned silence, but she never dropped her eyes from Spencer's piercing gaze.

"You need time to think this through," Spencer asserted as she centered her tray in front of her. "I get it." She stood up, leaning over the table to give Paige one more thing to process. The kiss was slow and insistent, and Paige felt an exchange of breath as their lips parted.

Spencer picked up her tray and walked away. Paige's eyes followed her all the way to the conveyor belt, and from there to the exit. Spencer paused at the open door and turned around, as Paige knew she would, and smirked when she caught Paige's eyes locked in on her. As she knew they'd be. With a flick of her head, she spun around and disappeared from view.

When Paige could breathe again, she collected herself and her tray and headed back to her room.

It was a while before Spencer heard from Paige - or even ran into her - again. Spencer was walking up the hallway to her door and saw a figure sitting on the floor next to it, legs bent at the knees, balancing a laptop against her thighs. When Paige looked up and saw Spencer approaching, she folded the laptop and stood up. Spencer walked past her and unlocked the door. "Get in," she rasped, and Paige did, sporting an unmistakable smile that Spencer couldn't see from her position behind Paige. Paige sat down on Spencer's bed, her expression now blank, drumming her fingers against the knees of her jeans. Spencer locked the door.

Paige would never compare making love with Emily to making love with anyone else. It wouldn't be fair to the other person. But it was markedly different with Spencer. With Emily, it was like swimming: Becoming one with the water, being surrounded by it, letting it propel you. With Spencer, it was like field hockey: Jockeying for position, pushing past your opponent, slamming it into the goal. Swimming could almost be relaxing, at times. Field hockey, the way that she and Spencer played it, was war. In the years since she switched exclusively to swimming, she forgot what she ever enjoyed about field hockey. One night with Spencer Hastings ensured that she would never forget again.

"You've done this before." Paige's statement was actually more of a question.

Spencer moaned something that sounded like, "First Time."

"Really?"

Spencer lifted her head from between Paige's thighs and let out a groan of frustration. "For fuck's sake, McCullers! It's not brain surgery!"

Paige pushed Spencer's head back into position and stopped asking questions.

"Are you okay?" Paige asked, looking at the top of Spencer's head as it lay peacefully atop Paige's chest.

"Don't," Spencer spat, more sharply than she had intended.

"Don't what?"

"Don't treat me as if I'm made of glass."

"Spencer," Paige pleaded.

"McCullers!" Spencer retorted, sitting up to glare at Paige. Paige raised her palms in front of herself, in surrender. After a bit, Spencer settled back onto Paige's chest, her palm on Paige's breast. "I'm fine, okay? I wanted this. I want you."

"I know, but... my first time..."

"I'm not you, Paige!"

"Jesus, Hastings! Do you have to be so..."

"So what?"

"So... recalcitrant?"

Spencer burst into laughter. "Who whips out... a word... like 'recalcitrant'... in the middle of a fight?" Spencer could barely get the words out through her laughter.

It was contagious. Paige laughed, too, and the tension was broken.

"I know that you have to talk things through, okay?" Spencer was drawing circles around Paige's areola. "I just need to process things. In here." Spencer moved her finger from Paige's breast, momentarily, to tap it against her skull. "I'm okay." She kissed Paige's neck. "I like you." She kissed Paige's neck again, longer and wetter.

Paige relaxed. Turning her head, she kissed Spencer's lips. "I like you, too. I'll be quiet."

Spencer pulled Paige's arm tighter around her. "I just want to lie here with you."

Paige kissed the top of Spencer's head, and they lay there.

A/N - So, I wrote this, to be honest, to try to make some sense in my head out of Paige's "I need space" write-off from PLL. Spencer is basically a sounding-board for that.

I wish that I could do a proper McHastings fic, but I don't really watch the show (I just trawl for Paily scraps.), and Spencer being such a complex character, I couldn't do her justice with the little that I know of her.

There are a lot of good McHastings fic out there, though. PM me if you want recommendations. . . :)

Anyway, for those who follow me (Thanks!), I'm working on a very good prompt for a Paily multi-chapter. (The prompt is very good - no promises about the fic that comes from it.) I'm still hashing things out in my brain, but I hope to start posting on August 1st.

Oh - and if anyone cares, the title of this fic is a variation on a line from the poem "Evening Star," by Edgar Allan Poe.