A/N: After a wonderful conversation with a fellow Jaria shipper on Tumblr, I've come to the conclusion my feelings for Jaria were too big to not write about, and this is what's resulted. Enjoy! xo
Sooner or Later
"Are you okay?" Aria looks up from where her eyes were glued to the floor, stopping momentarily from twirling her coffee cup to notice it's Jason speaking to her. Hanna and Emily took off to find Spencer and find out why she has been so distant lately, leaving Aria and Jason alone in the coffee shop. Aria opens her mouth to respond before stopping herself because for once, she didn't know the answer to that question. "Sorry," Jason continues, "I didn't mean to intrude or anything. You just seem distracted that's all."
Aria offers him a small sad smile, slightly touched that Jason cared enough to ask. "I…" she starts before trailing off. How can she tell Jason she's upset because of her Ezra's absence?
As if reading her mind, Jason understands almost instantly. "Does it have something to do with your boyfriend?" he asks, taking a seat beside her. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," he adds quickly, noticing the discomfort on Aria's face.
"No it's not that it's…he left a few days ago to take care of some personal things, and I just haven't heard from him," Aria admits, her eyes traveling back down towards the floor. "He hasn't been this distant in a long time, that's all."
"I'm sure there's a good reason why he hasn't called," Jason tells her in comfort.
Aria nods her head, though obvious sadness is plastered across her face. "It doesn't change how sucky it feels, though," she murmurs, her hands moving to rub her forehead to stop herself from crying.
"Hey," Jason says softly, placing an arm around her. "Come here; it'll be okay, I'm sure," he tells her, leaning in closer.
Aria places her head on Jason's shoulder in comfort, and for the first time since Ezra left, she finds herself feeling slightly better.
Burying Ali's body in the Rosewood mausoleum takes a lot more out of Jason than he expected. The ceremony, hearing various family members sharing their favorite stories involving Ali only cease to remind Jason of their relationship when she was alive. He remembers when they were younger, when they were closer and how all that changed as they grew older. His family focuses on the happy memories they have of Ali, of times they were proud of her or moments in time when everyone was blissful, but Jason can't get passed the bad ones. For every happy memory his family reminisces on, Jason thinks back to all the times he fought with Ali, antagonized her, and most importantly, all the moments in his life when he was too drunk or high to notice how much trouble his little sister was getting herself into.
Alison may not have been the best person, but it didn't change how terrible Jason was as a brother too.
He stays strong throughout the ceremony, mostly for his mother who needs his strength more than anyone. He remains calm as Ali's friends come by to pay their respects, and it's not until the girls are leaving that Jason's straight face cracks and tears form at the brim of his eyes as he realizes this is the last time he'll get to say goodbye to his sister.
He's so lost in thought of Ali that he's almost taken by surprise when he feels someone grab his hand. Jason doesn't have to look back to know it's Aria's small hands squeezing his.
"If you need anything, I'm here for you," she murmurs to him quietly, giving his hand a final squeeze.
Her words are enough to fill Jason with enough comfort that he's not alone in the world; that he doesn't have to face everything on his own.
They're sitting in a coffee shop when Aria's phone beeps once, signaling she has a new text. She reads the message, her mouth turning into a frown as she does. She lets out an exasperated sigh before placing the phone back down on the table.
"Was that Ezra?" Jason asks her nonchalantly, taking a sip of his coffee.
Aria nods her head. "Another 'I'm sorry, I've been busy. I'll call you later' text from him."
"He just has a lot on his plate right now, that's all," Jason tells her in hopes to bring her comfort.
Aria nods once more. "But how hard is it to pick up a phone to call your girlfriend? Even if just for a minute?"
Jason reaches across the table, giving Aria's hand a small squeeze. "Everything will work out for the best, I'm sure. I'm here if you need anything."
"I know you are," Aria replies, giving him a small, sad smile.
"And for the record, if I was him, I wouldn't be able to go this long without talking to you," Jason tells her, causing her to grin once more.
"You're a good friend Jason, you know that?" she says sincerely.
"Tell me something I don't know," Jason replies, and for the first time in what seems like forever, Aria gives him a genuine smile, happy to have him around.
"Tell me again why I agreed to this?" Aria asks, folding her arms across her chest.
"Because," Jason replies, bouncing a basketball towards her that Aria barley catches. "the agreement was I'd go check out that new art gallery opening with you if you learned how to play basketball for me."
Both were keeping good on their promises; they were there for each other when necessary, and ultimately a friendship had formed between them, one that brought them both happiness and distractions when they needed it the most.
"I don't understand the point of basketball, anyways," Aria tells him. "I mean all you do is dribble a ball up and down a field-"
"Court," Jason corrects her matter-of-factly, though he's grinning. "And it's fun, I promise. Try dribbling towards the net and I'll try to block you okay?"
Aria playfully rolls her eyes. "This is stupid, you know that right?" she points out.
Jason gives her a look. "Just dribble the ball...unless of course you're scared you won't be able to get past me," he tells her, smirking.
Aria glares at him, attempting to keep herself from smiling, as she begins to dribble the ball. Her movements were awkward and Jason couldn't help the smile that spread across his lips watching Aria attempt to dribble a basketball. Noticing his smile, Aria stops dribbling, holding the ball with both her hands as Jason stands in front of her, blocking her view of the net.
"Now what're you gonna do, Montgomery?" Jason asks with playful arrogance in his voice. Aria bites her lip before attempting to dodge to Jason's right. "Hey!" he exclaims. "That's traveling, you know. Now it's my ball."
"Yeah…I don't think so," Aria replies before moving to run past him. She goes to take a shot on net before she feels Jason's arm wrap around her waist, picking her up and twirling her away from the net. "Put me down!" Aria exclaims in between laughter. Laughing along with her, Jason finally puts her down only when the ball slips out of her hand. He takes off after it, partially to grab it before Aria can and partially so it doesn't interfere with any of the other more serious games going on around them. He reaches down to pick it up, only to feel Aria's arms on his shoulders as he does. She jumps on his back with ease, causing Jason to almost fall over.
"What are you doing?" Jason asks, still laughing. "You broke the rules! I told you, it's my ball!"
"You're not getting that ball, DiLaurentis," Aria tells him matter-of-factly, her legs gripping around his waist tighter as Jason stands up straight. Aria's arms slip slightly from around his neck, and in fear she'll fall, Jason drops the ball in order to grip onto Aria's legs. Before either of them can grab the ball, it rolls over onto the court next to them, almost causing someone playing to trip over it.
Aria instantly jumps off Jason's back. "Oh my god," she says as the guy angrily throws the ball at Jason, her hands moving to cover her mouth to stifle her laughter. "Sorry!"
"Do you see what you cause?" Jason mumbles to her, shaking his head as he throws an arm around her shoulders, leading her away from the basketball courts.
"Me?" Aria asks incredulously. "You're the one that tried to take the ball away from me!"
"Because you were cheating!" Jason replies, grinning.
"Well…I couldn't see. I deserved a second chance," Aria says, placing her hands on her hips.
"That's probably because you couldn't see through all that hair," Jason murmurs, motioning towards the messy curls that surrounded Aria's face. He reaches up gently, carefully moving pieces of hair out of her face and tucking it behind her ear. His hand rests on the side of her face for a moment. "I still miss that pink hair you know," he murmurs to her softly, his eyes seemingly lost in a daze. Aria reaches up, gently touching Jason's hand with one of her own and neither of them say anything for a while.
Aria momentarily reminds herself that despite his distance, she is still in a committed relationship.
But still, she can't deny the spark of electricity that seemed to pass through her when she felt Jason's touch.
"What do you think of this one?" Aria asks quietly, pointing to the painting in front of them.
Jason stares at it for a moment. It's a painting of what seems like a ship in the middle of the ocean during the storm, and that's all. "It's…blue," he finally settles on, the statement coming out more as a question rather than a fact. Aria rolls her eyes playfully at him. "What?" Jason asks innocently, throwing his hands up to claim innocence. "It's my first art gallery; give me a break!"
"Maybe if you spent less time playing basketball, you'd be able to experience once in a lifetime looking artwork."
"Aria, that's just a painting of a ship at sail," Jason says matter-of-factly.
"But there's so much more meaning behind it!" Aria exclaims. "Like here, look at this one," she says, grabbing his hand to pull him in the direction of brightly colored painting. There's splashes of color everywhere, covering a black background. The title read 'life' under it. "What do you see when you look at this?"
"…Life?" Jason replies before getting a light smack from Aria. He can't help but to let out a small laugh. "Okay, Miss. Know-it-all, what do you see?"
"Love," Aria replies for a moment. "How love is a conflicting emotion; how sometimes it's bright and joyous, and others it's chaotic and heartbreaking. Sometimes it's a straight, perfect line, and other times it's a wave of complications and emotions." Her voice trails off, as if she was talking to herself. It takes Jason a moment to realize she's still holding his hand, and that he doesn't want her to let go.
Jason silently wonders if this is what genuinely falling in love feels like.
Ezra returns to Rosewood a few days later, and Jason goes from seeing Aria every day, to barely talking to her at all. Most of his phone calls go unanswered, and his texts are replied to with vague, one word answers, leaving Jason confused and hurt.
He's stuck with asking Spencer how Aria is, since he never sees her anymore.
"She's good. Her and Ezra…they just have a lot of catching up to do," Spencer always tells him, and it's after the third time hearing it that Jason realizes he's tired of his half-sister's excuses for her best friend's absence.
"She cares about you a lot, you know," Spencer tells him one day at his house after coming over to check on him.
"She has a funny way of showing it," Jason mumbles in reply to her, and for the first time since his accident months back, he opens a beer and takes one long drink from it. He hands Spencer one because he knows in some way, she understands where he's coming from with her separation from Toby.
"You knew she had a boyfriend," Spencer reminds him quietly, and though he knows it's true, the words still sting because boyfriend or not, it doesn't change how he felt about Aria.
"Doesn't mean it hurts any less," Jason replies, taking another drink. Spencer sits beside him, downing her drink almost as fast as him, and he numbly thinks to himself this is what getting along with your sibling looks like.
"It's complicated," Spencer softly says a moment later, and Jason isn't sure if she's talking about him and Aria or her and Toby anymore.
"It always is," he tells her and the duo share a heartbroken look before finishing their drinks.
"Jason misses you, you know," Spencer comments to Aria one day nonchalantly as they're in her room studying.
Aria tenses at the sound of Jason's name. "I know he does," she finally says a moment later. "And I miss him, but I've just been busy lately."
"Too busy to take one of his phone calls? Or to see him?" Spencer asks, and Aria almost winces in pain as she remembers saying almost those exact words to Jason the week prior about Ezra.
"Look," Spencer continues, sitting upright in her bed to talk to her friend. "I love you, Aria, but…I mean you can't be that blind."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Aria replies, though deep down she's sure she does.
"All I'm saying is I love him too, and he's been hurt too many times in his life. Don't add onto that; don't string him along."
I'm not, Aria thinks to herself, but she doesn't dare say it out loud because Ezra Fitz is her boyfriend, not Jason, and she knows she shouldn't be thinking about Jason the way she use to about Ezra.
Jason's fixing one of the floorboards on his porch two days later when he hears a car pull up. He looks up, fully expecting it to be Spencer checking up on him once more, and he's almost taken back in surprise when he notices it's Aria's car in his driveway.
He stands up, crossing his arms across his chest as Aria gets out of her car. "Hey," she says to him softly as she approaches.
"What do you want?" Jason asks, and his voice sounds more bitter than he intended.
"I…" she starts and it's when Jason notices the circles under her eyes and the puffiness around them. "Ezra and I broke up," she admits to Jason.
"Did you only come here to tell me that?" Jason asks her softly, his voice tense and distant.
Aria stares at him for a moment. "I came here because I'm hurting, and I need someone to talk to," she tells him defensively. "The last time I checked, we agreed we'd always be there for one another."
"Yeah, well that was before your boyfriend returned to town and you stopped caring about my existence." As soon as the words escaped Jason's mouth, he regrets them instantly. Despite the truth they held, he wasn't looking to hurt her worse than she was already feeling.
His words already had an effect on Aria, however, as tears filled her eyes. "Maybe I shouldn't have come," she says, and before Jason can stop her, she gets back into her car and drives away, and leaving Jason to fear, out of his life.
Aria's sitting in her bed, a stuffed animal from her childhood on her lap and a box of tissues beside her, when she hears a knock at the door. Despite her initial temptation to ignore the visitor, Aria gets out of bed to answer the door. She's taken by surprise when she opens the door to find Jason standing on her porch, one hand rubbing the back of his neck and the other shoved into his pocket.
Instantly his words from earlier that afternoon hit Aria all over again. "What do you want?" she asks him bitterly, though deep down she knows she has no right. She knows how she's treated Jason over the past couple of weeks, with her distance and mixed signals, but how could she tell him she'd been ignoring him in hopes that thoughts she had about him and not her boyfriend would pass?
"To apologize," Jason finally replies, as Aria steps outside to join him on the porch. "I know things probably aren't the best with you right now, and I shouldn't have tried to make you feel worse. I'm sorry."
Aria's quiet for a moment. "I haven't really been the best friend recently," she finally settles on.
"Do you wanna talk about it?" Jason asks her softly.
"He said he needed some space…he thinks things are different between us," Aria tells him.
"And what do you think?"
Aria looks up at him. "That he's right; things between us haven't been the same since he left."
"Since we started hanging out," Jason murmurs to her, willing to say the words she's afraid to.
"Jason…" Aria says softly as his hands grab a hold of hers.
"I mean what I said a couple weeks ago; if I was him, I wouldn't be able to stand being apart from you for so long. And I sure as hell wouldn't be so willing to let you go," Jason tells her quietly.
Aria doesn't reply, only squeezes Jason's hands tighter. She leans in closer to him, resting her head on his chest as his arms wrap around her, engulfing her into feelings of safety, comfort, and the undeniable feeling of love.
"Am I going to regret letting you pick the movie?" Jason asks her as he reenters his living room, a bowl of popcorn in his hands. It had been a few days Ezra and Aria's breakup, and Jason had been doing the only thing he knew how to do: be there for her.
"Absolutely not because I pick great movies," Aria says, taking a seat on Jason's couch, controlling the DVD player from the remote in her hand.
"So what you're saying is your promising me that's not the Notebook or any other Nicholas Sparks book turned movie in there, right?" he asks, taking a seat next to her on the couch.
Aria rolls her eyes. "My name's not Hanna," she tells him, giving him a small shove before happily taking a handful from the bowl of popcorn on his lap. "It's actually the movie adaptation of East of Eden."
Jason nods his head in approval. "James Dean movie…okay, I can appreciate that."
Aria doesn't make it half way through the movie before she's asleep, leaning against Jason as she drifts off into the first soundless sleep she's had in nights. Jason grabs a blanket from the back of his couch and drapes it over Aria and himself, careful to not move too much to wake her. He leaves the movie playing, but he's too focused on the girl sleeping next to him to notice the end of it.
He regrettably wakes her up an hour later so she'll get home in time for her curfew.
"Well hey there sleepy head," Jason says to her when she opens her eyes.
"Hey," Aria responds softly, her voice groggy. She offers him a small smile before sitting up, realizing she was using him as a pillow. "What time is it?"
"A little after eleven," he tells her, trying his hardest not to stare as she continues to try and wake herself up. She gathers her stuff and Jason walks her out.
"Thank you for tonight," she says to him as they're standing out by her car. "I needed it…even if I did fall asleep on you."
"It's no problem," he replies. "I'm glad you were able to get some needed sleep." He places his arms around her waist, pulling her in for a hug, one that fills Aria with enough warmth that she doesn't want to let go.
Before pulling away, she stands up on her tippy toes to place a small kiss on his cheek. "Goodnight, Jason," she murmurs to him before getting into her car.
"Goodnight, Aria," Jason replies quietly as he watches her car pull out of his driveway.
Suddenly, Jason's sure he's not falling in love, because he's already in love.
Aria's reading on her porch when Jason pulls up to her house the next day. Though she wasn't expecting him, she's pleasantly surprised by his visit.
"What are you doing here?" she asks him as he approaches her porch.
Jason doesn't reply, but rather walks up the two stairs and meets Aria with a kiss. He cups her face gently before covering her lips with his own. Aria's taken by surprise, and while she doesn't exactly react to the kiss, she doesn't push him away.
"Jason…" Aria finally says when he pulls away a moment later.
"I know you just got out of a relationship," Jason says before Aria can continue. "And I know you're probably still in love with him. But you have to know…I'm in love with you, Aria. It's not the same as before when I kissed you last year; it's different because this isn't just a crush for me anymore. I'm in love with you, and I need you to know that. I'm willing to wait for as long as it takes for you to figure out how you feel or who you want to be with…but I just needed you to know how I felt first."
Jason doesn't wait for a response before turning around and getting back in his car, leaving a stunned Aria on her porch, gently touching where she just felt Jason's lips.
"Jason kissed me," Aria blurts out suddenly to her friends later that afternoon as they're all gathered at Spencer's house for a study session.
"What?" Hanna and Emily simultaneously say, taken back in shock.
"It's about time," is all Spencer murmurs, mostly to herself.
"What did you do?" Hanna asks her friend.
"I…nothing," Aria admits. "He kissed me and told me how he felt…and then left before I could respond."
"So what are you going to do then?" Emily asks her.
"I-I don't know," Aria responds hesitantly. "I mean, Ezra and I just broke up."
"And why is it again you guys broke up?" Emily questions. "because things were 'different' between you guys?"
"Does this difference have anything to do with your feelings towards Jason?" Hanna asks, raising an eyebrow.
"I don't know how I feel," Aria responds to her friend quietly, though her voice sounds unsure of the words she speaks.
"I'm sure you do," Spencer tells her friends. "If you allow yourself to feel the way you do, then I'm sure you'll know exactly how you feel."
With her friends' words still ringing in her ear that night, Aria's suddenly sure what she wants to do.
Jason's on his couch, staring at his phone intently, replying yesterday afternoon's evens over and over in his head, hoping that he didn't just ruin his friendship with Aria, when he hears a car pull up in his driveway. He peeks out his window, his eyes suddenly going wide as he realizes it's Aria's car.
He heads outside, but doesn't leave his porch, suddenly worried what Aria was doing here. Was she here to tell him she didn't feel the same way? That she didn't want to see him again?
It takes him a moment, but his eyes go wide in shock once more at Aria's appearance as she approaches his porch. Noticing his expression, Aria can't help but to sheepishly smile. "Your…your…" Jason stammers as she walks up his steps.
"My hair? Yeah it's a little different," Aria responds, leaning against one of the columns on Jason's porch as she motions to her hair. Her hair is once again streaked with the same colored pink highlights from junior high. "I guess I missed that pink hair too," she tells him before covering the distance between them in one long stride to capture his lips with her own. Jason's taken back for a moment before his hands wrap around her waist, pulling her closer to him as their kiss intensifies.
"Wow," Jason comments as they pull apart a moment later, grinning.
"I love you too, Jason," Aria tells him, smiling. "And I'm sorry it took this long for me to realize it, and I'm sorry I put you through everything that happened between Ezra and I. But I do…that is, love you."
"It's better late than never," Jason murmurs to her, still smiling as he covers her lips with his own once more. It took a while, almost five years in the making since Jason first laid eyes on Aria, but it's happening; he's with the girl he loves and that's all that matters to Jason.
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