A/N - Ugh. This was a hard chapter to write, but I feel that it's important for an understanding of the character of Paige in this AU. Apologies in advance to those of you who don't like the way I've written her in this fic - any of you who are still reading it, that is... :(
Paige was walking briskly, heading nowhere, just making a grand loop around the campus in the dusky darkness. Her arms were hugged tightly around her waist, for fear that, if left on their own, they would punch something hard, or something breakable. She had no idea how long she had been walking.
Like most wars, it started over something small. Paige tripped over Emily's boots, which were in the exact middle of the floor, as she was dashing out of the door. Emily, after a late night in the library, hadn't had time to put her boots away the night before She just wanted to get to bed.
To hear Paige tell it, Emily never had time to put her things away. To hear Paige tell it, she was sharing the room with a pack rat.
Emily's side of the story was that Paige felt compelled to be in control of every single thing in the room. Emily, as she pointed out, managed to navigate their room just fine without tripping over things.
Paige was running late, so they didn't take the time to talk things through. So, things festered, as each of them continued with mock arguments in her head all throughout the day.
They went to bed that night lying to each other that everything was okay, neither one wanting to seem so petty for holding on to a squabble over nothing.
The next day, it was obvious to Sydney that something was up between them, but they just smiled perfunctorily, convincing themselves that their charade was fooling the rest of the team.
On the evening of the third day, when Paige was trying to concentrate on Dynamics of Organizations and Emily was chatting with Hanna - something which Paige ordinarily found amusing - Paige lost it. Emily was self-centered, inconsiderate, and a slob. Paige couldn't believe the words that were spilling out of her mouth.
And Paige, according to Emily, was a spoiled, entitled baby, who allowed the smallest thing to set her off. Emily wasn't in the mood to be understanding of Paige's childhood and how it had shaped her. Paige had hit below the belt, and Emily was sick of making excuses for her.
"Fine!" And that was it. Paige slammed the door behind her.
Emily had given back as much as she got from Paige, matching her in volume and venom. They heard some of their neighbors' doors open as they went at it with each other. Paige glared a couple of them back into their rooms on her way out of the building.
While Paige roamed the campus, Emily lay curled up in the corner of her bed, crying as she clutched her phone, willing it to ring. Paige hadn't taken her calls, and Emily was sure that she hadn't listened to any of the messages that she had left, pleading for her to come home so that they could work it out. But Emily's anger shifted to fear when her calls started going straight to voice mail. She had no idea where Paige was or what might have happened to her. She only knew that Paige had been gone too long. Emily feared the worst: Paige, in her distracted state, wasn't paying attention when she went through an intersection. It wouldn't have mattered whether Paige had run away on foot, on her bike, or in Emily's car. The end results would have been the same.
Emily would have ignored the knock on the door had it not been for Paige's weak voice that accompanied it.
"Emily?"
"Oh, thank God," Emily whispered as she rolled out of bed and bounded over to the door, not bothering to attempt to get herself together first. As soon as she threw the door open, she threw her arms around Paige's neck and clung to her. Paige grabbed Emily's waist and held on just as desperately. Both of them were on the verge of tears.
Emily abruptly pulled out of the hug when she remembered why she was mad at Paige. "Why didn't you call me?" she demanded, striking Paige on the shoulder, her voice louder than she intended.
Paige was knocked back a couple of steps and rubbed the spot where Emily's blow had landed, more out of shock than out of pain. Reaching into the back pocket of her jeans, she pulled out the pieces of her phone that she had salvaged after she launched it into the side of the sciences building. Emily rolled her eyes. Then, suddenly realizing that they were in the hall and very much in public, she pulled Paige inside by the wrist. As she did, she asked, annoyed, "Forgot your key?"
Paige shook her head contritely, looking down at her sneakers. "I wasn't sure that you would want me to come back."
Emily slammed the door shut with a long, loud groan. "Uggggggggggh!" Her voice was heavy with frustration, anger, and disbelief at what Paige had said. "Oh, God!" she continued shouting, "Jesus, Paige!"
When she turned and saw Paige standing there like a wounded fawn, she stepped back from her anger, remembering their hungover morning-after, so many months ago, when Paige had talked in her sleep about how everyone always left her. "Come here," she said softly. She hugged Paige, not with the desperation of their previous hug, but with love and assurance. When the hug ended, Emily kept her hands on Paige's shoulders and looked into her eyes, speaking softly and calmly. "I'm not going anywhere, okay?" Paige nodded, sniffling, and hugged her again. "And you're not either, okay?" Emily had stepped back so that she could look Paige in the eyes again.
Paige grabbed onto Emily by the biceps. "Yes, Emily - I swear!"
"We work things out, okay?"
"Yes! I swear, Emily!" Paige's voice was cracking in surrender. She would have said yes to anything. She couldn't lose Emily.
But Emily wasn't looking for surrender. She smoothed away the hair on both sides of Paige's face, leaving her hands on Paige's cheeks as she kissed her softly. "Because we love each other... Okay?"
Paige kept nodding. "I'm sorry," she said softly.
"Just hold me," Emily whispered. As Paige eagerly did, Emily added, "I'm sorry, too."
Paige and Emily lay face-to-face in their pushed-together beds that night. They were both exhausted, mentally worn out by the evening's drama, but they knew that they weren't about to get to sleep. The air was still too thick with tension.
Paige spoke first, her arm resting loosely on Emily's hip. "Are you still mad at me?" Emily shook her head. "Really?"
"Paige, we're going to fight, sometimes. And, sometimes, it's going to go over the line, the way it did tonight. But that's okay. You know that, right?" Paige shrugged. "Look," Emily sighed. "When things build up like that, it's not healthy to keep them all bottled up. I mean, best case, we talk it through before it gets out of hand, but if we explode, then we explode, okay?" Emily kissed her softly. "And then we go back to normal again," she pleaded with another kiss. "Back to Paige and Emily."
"And if we don't?"
Emily shrugged. "Just promise me that you won't leave. Whatever happens, we talk it out. And, if we can't work it out..." Emily shrugged. "But don't you quit on me, and I won't quit on you."
As top-tier swimmers, one of the things that Paige and Emily had learned of necessity was how to let go. After a bad leg in a relay, a bad race in a meet, or a bad meet in a season, they moved on, not letting the experience get them down. This discipline was what helped them leave the previous day's fight behind them when they got up the next morning. They settled quickly into their morning routine.
Paige was on the floor by the side of the bed doing push-ups when Emily woke. Emily put her legs over the side of the bed, resting them on Paige's back and letting them take the free ride up and down. Paige's skin felt warm against the soles of her feet, and she enjoyed feeling the bumps of Paige's vertebrae as her back rose up and dipped down.
"Ah! (15, 16, 17) Emily, your feet are freezing!"
Emily laughed wickedly. "Well, if you can't handle my popsicle toes, put on a shirt next time you do push-ups on the side of the bed!" Of course, Emily was perfectly content with Paige's choice of short running shorts and a sports bra, though.
"Okay, but (21, 22, 23), how did your feet even get that cold? (26, 27, 28)"
Paige made it to 30 and rolled onto her side, leaning up on her elbow, taking deep breaths after the exertion. Emily became entranced, her eyes focused on Paige's abs as they contracted and expanded in a steady, pulsating rhythm. She slid onto the floor next to her, reaching out to feel the ebb and flow. "You sure are touchy today, Roomie. What got into you?"
"These," Emily said, grabbing the index and middle finger of Paige's right hand. "Have you forgotten so quickly?"
"I haven't forgotten a thing." Paige shifted and Emily found herself on her back, with Paige hovering over her. Emily's hands were on Paige's ribs, supporting her, and her eyes were shifting rapidly, taking quick snapshots of all the different aspects of her girlfriend's anatomy.
Paige rolled off of Emily, onto her side, with a groan. "We've got to get to the pool."
Emily rolled on top of Paige, tight against her chest, her hands trapped between them. "Mmmm - kiss me first."
Paige smiled eagerly and craned her neck to kiss Emily. Emily had leverage and quickly dominated the kiss. Before long, she let her lips wander along Paige's cheek and down to her shoulder. Paige held Emily in place on top of her, her hands behind Emily's back. Her left hand headed north to her shoulders as her right hand roamed south. She gave Emily's cheek a pinch, and Emily squirmed in surprise, letting out a squeal of delight before she gave Paige a bite at the junction of her neck and shoulder. She arched backwards, tapping her hands against Paige's chest. "We'd better go!" she exclaimed, but, before she did, she slid her hands down a bit for a quick massage of Paige's chest. "To be continued," she promised.
"Not that one," Emily cautioned as Paige pulled out her Speedo. She tapped a spot on her own shoulder, and Paige laughed as she checked the corresponding spot on her shoulder, opting for a suit that provided more coverage instead. Emily had mastered the art of marking Paige so that, while Paige's regular Speedos wouldn't be enough to cover, Paige could still wear a conventional suit to train in the pool. It was a game that Paige didn't really mind playing. She liked having a private secret with Emily. And getting marked was more than half of the fun.
Emily never would have guessed that she would enjoy training in the pool with Paige. When the freshman coach first buddied them up together, it was a chore that Emily dreaded. She always swam for fun, even when it was repetitive, grueling training. "Was" – until Stanford. Until Paige. Paige was just too hardcore. She put everything under the microscope. They had to start on-time and swim their laps with only the prescribed break between each one. Paige dissected every stroke that Emily took in the pool, and, worse, she expected a similar level of scrutiny by Emily.
Things changed even before she and Paige got together. Emily just began laughing off Paige's obsessiveness and politely but firmly telling her when she needed to chill. Emily had gotten the reputation of being a pushover in high school, but, by necessity, she learned to stick up for herself with Paige. At first, Paige gave in purely out of shock that someone would dare stand up to her, but, gradually, she began to lighten up. She and Emily more than held their own against the other freshmen and the sophomores, and they could even give most of the upperclassmen a run for their money. Paige was able to relax as she came to realize that she could be still be serious about swimming even when she was enjoying herself. It reminded Paige of when she was a kid, and her father showed her how to load a disc into the blu ray player. He told her to line the disc up so that the label was oriented toward her, with the writing right-side-up. For years, she meticulously lined up the discs at the perfect angle whenever she loaded them into the player. Then, at a friend's sleepover, she watched in horror as the mom just casually dropped a disc into the tray. Paige held her breath, expecting the worst: The disc wouldn't play, or it would skip, or the whole thing would explode. When nothing happened, it felt surprisingly liberating to know that she didn't have to obsess over the way that she loaded discs into the player (even though she continued to load them the right way). Swimming with Emily was similarly liberating. Not everything had to be perfect, but she could still train hard - not from fear of the consequences, but because she was enjoying the experience.
And, now that they were together, swimming was even more enjoyable, especially in the early mornings, when it was just the two of them. The blatant staring, flirting, touching; the teasing, in the water and out of it; the rub-downs that led to kissing that led to more rubbing that led to showers – either cold showers, to cool down, or quick showers, so they could hurry home and blow off a little steam.
When the two of them were back in the locker room, Emily eyes doubled in size as Paige pulled down the straps of her bathing suit. Paige gave her a puzzled look, not understanding why Emily was reacting as if she'd never seen her breasts before.
"Shit, Paige! Was the water a little cold for you?" Without thinking, Emily reached out to check how Paige's nipples felt beneath her palms.
Paige leaned her head back and moaned at the contact. "Just be careful," she said, subtly moving Emily's hands down and to the side. "They're a little sensitive right now."
"Right," Emily said dreamily. "We should probably get going before the caf closes, anyway." But her hands refused to move. Paige finally had to take a step backwards.
"Not in the locker room." Not again.
"So," Paige began, wiping her mouth with the hand that was holding the apple that she had just bitten, "Now that we're girlfriends and sleeping together, don't you think it's time you that started working out with me?"
Emily laughed. They had had this discussion before. Several times. Swimming was one thing. Emily could even handle running with Paige every so often. But she would never hit the weight room with her. Paige was way too intense. Emily had a moment of inspiration, suggesting, "You'd be better off with my friend, Spencer," and Paige looked down, sadly. It took Emily a second to figure out why Paige had taken her response so hard, but, once she realized, she put her arm around Paige's shoulder. "You'll win her over, Paige. You won me over."
"So, what are you saying?" Paige scoffed. "Spencer and I are going to have to room together next year?"
"No way," Emily said as she possessively took hold of Paige's bicep with both of her hands. "You're all mine!" Paige brushed her shoulder against Emily's, forcing a smile. "But, really, Paige. She's going to like you, because I like you. So, she'll get to know you, just as I did, and, once she gets to know you…." Emily left the thought dangling.
Paige grabbed Emily's hand, still feeling and acting defeated. "Whatever you say," she said weakly.
Emily squeezed Paige's shoulder. She really wished that Paige could learn to forgive herself. She wished that her forgiveness could be enough for Paige; that she could forgive Paige enough to make Paige forgive herself. Patience, she thought. Healing was a journey, and she was determined to stay by Paige's side through every agonizing step.