2012

Sex was easy. Sex was fun, and simple, and could be negotiated to include zero complications.

But getting to know Aubrey had nothing to do with sex. Which should have been her first clue.

Stacie had had very few friendships with other girls before, so befriending a whole group of them at one time had been a new experience, but Chloe, co-captain of the Barden Bellas, made sure everyone got along and found friendships among the Barden Bellas. Since a majority of them were Barden freshmen, there were a lot to learn and discover together, and it wasn't uncommon for them to have lunch together or share a table at the library or at the quad during breaks. Chloe, who seemed to be friends with almost everyone in campus, could be counted on to go out with them to the different sorority and fraternity parties, the all-ages clubs, and basically just show the Bellas around.

Aubrey was a different story. Aubrey, when not around Chloe, usually kept to herself or her small group of friends outside the Barden Bellas circle. She was popular enough, because she still made appearances at parties, but she could usually be found with the same set of people, in varying combinations, and didn't try to socialize with the new Bellas very much.

Stacie honestly had no idea what had first made her try to crack the senior Bella, why she sought Aubrey out at parties and why she'd started invading Aubrey's lunches and library time, but in the end she'd learned Aubrey's coffee order and Aubrey stopped making a dramatic show of giving Stacie space to sit when a table was crowded, and knew when to give Stacie a protein bar when a class ran late heading into rehearsals.

What she did know was this: with Chloe hounding Beca and befriending the entire Barden Bellas, Stacie was sure Aubrey needed some kind of companionship to Bellas-related events, and since everyone else seemed to be deathly afraid of her, Stacie found that she liked the idea of being the one who could be Aubrey's friend.

And, really, that's all that it was: companionship. Someone to sit with in a room, a friendly smile across a crowd. Aubrey was reluctant to talk, and Stacie never pushed. At most they offered witty asides and honest critiques of each other's work – Stacie, the former, and Aubrey offered the latter – but they didn't need to know each other's life stories to be friends, for trust to become part of their relationship.

Sure, Stacie was aware that Aubrey found her at least attractive – the staring during her audition was pretty hard to miss, and she doubted it was a coincidence the way Aubrey's eyes raked over her body when they ran into each other at parties and Aubrey was at least two drinks in – and Aubrey had definitely found herself into some of Stacie's more salacious daydreams; but there was a line, and even though Stacie enjoyed playing up how she flirted with Aubrey, she knew just how hard it was to find someone she could just trust, or someone she could just be with, and sex was sure to mess that up.

Yes, she was aware of the irony.

She had never intended Aubrey to know, until the week before finals and Beca had sent the Bellas a text message with instructions to head to the residential lane for student organizations, to a house that was apparently reserved for the Barden Bellas. Maybe it was seeing Aubrey sharing whiskey shots with Beca, with whom she had been so antagonistic over the course of the year, or the fact that Aubrey was deliberately avoiding Chloe, but Stacie realized with a start just how much she was going to miss Aubrey, how much she dreaded the prospect of Aubrey graduating and forgetting about the Bellas, leaving them behind.

Leaving her behind.

That she and Chloe were obviously at odds had not helped the creeping dread, because if the argument was true – Chloe wasn't graduating and Aubrey was pissed that Chloe hadn't bothered to share that information beforehand – then there was really nothing that was going to keep Aubrey from just walking away.

And some fatalistic part of Stacie had decided that she had to tell Aubrey, at least clue her in that their friendship, as based on companionable silence as it was, meant something to her.

And Aubrey kept… not so much avoiding, as not-addressing it. She acknowledged the remarks, and said general words of reassurance, but nothing that indicated she'd felt the same. And… that was fair, maybe, because Stacie had gone to Aubrey to try and comfort her about her confrontation with Chloe, not to be made to feel better about having a crush.

But a part of her had wanted some actual sign of acknowledgement, some recognition that there was something between them.

So Stacie had sacrificed her pride at the altar of dignity and confessed that whatever attraction was going on between them had not started when Aubrey stared at her during auditions.

Because Stacie had caught a glimpse of Aubrey during the Activity Fair, had seen her laughing with someone at a table for one of the more academic-based organizations, and had been sufficiently ensnared. She hadn't caught her name then, but two days later saw her again at the coffee cart near the Arts Building, tacking a light-blue flyer, and that was the first time Stacie had learned about auditions for the Barden Bellas.

Stacie hadn't known what she had expected, or even what she wanted to come out of her confession, but what she never would have expected was to end up making out with Aubrey in one of the rooms of the newly-reacquired Barden Bella house.

She knew they couldn't start something – Aubrey had been graduating and Stacie really had no clue how to be in a relationship – but she had meant it when she'd answered Aubrey's warning with the fact that she was sober enough not to start anything that night. It wasn't a drunken tryst in the dark of night, nor was it an attempt to start a relationship that they both knew would go nowhere, fast. Because she knew just how stacked against them the odds were, and was self-aware enough not to promise anything she probably wouldn't be able to keep.

But they had kissed, and if everything that could ever had been between them started and ended with that kiss, Stacie was going to make sure it damn well counted.

Sex was easy.

But occupying the same bed with Aubrey, sharing kisses as if it would make up for every kiss they never got to share and possibly never would, being intimate in a way that she never had been with any of her previous sexual partners… well, that had been easier than breathing. Sometimes they would talk, about stupid things like TV shows and movies they'd watched as children, or how they preferred their chocolate chip cookies – Aubrey liked hers smooth and buttery, Stacie preferred the chunky variant – and their favorite books, but mostly there was just kissing.

Stacie had fallen asleep, and she would never know how Aubrey managed to make it look like her and Stacie sharing a bed was perfectly innocent when apparently Denise and Ashley had gone to check on them, but the next thing she knew, Aubrey was waking her up before she left.

Had she known at the time how much that small gesture would bother her in the coming months, she would have preferred Aubrey left her to sleep, because at the time she had appreciated that Aubrey hadn't wanted her to wake up alone and be left to wonder why Aubrey had left. But it was late – or very early in the morning – and Aubrey needed to talk to Chloe before everybody woke up and they wouldn't have the discretion of the cover of darkness.

Stacie had caught her wrist as she slipped away, and asked her to promise to see her one last time before she graduated and left Barden behind.

Aubrey had looked at her then, and gave her a weak smile. "I'm going to try."

It should have been enough.

It should have been enough, sitting through breakfast with everyone and seeing Aubrey and Chloe doing better than they had been the previous evening. Stacie should have seen the repaired friendship and felt comforted by the fact that Aubrey hadn't sneaked off into the night, that the repaired friendship implied that Aubrey would still have ties to Barden. She could have taken comfort in the fact that Aubrey saw nothing weird about sitting beside her even though everyone at the table knew Stacie had ditched a drinking contest the night before to go see Aubrey.

But she knew there was a reason why Aubrey hadn't made the promise.

Which was why Stacie ended up sneaking into the hotel after-party of Barden's recent graduates, over a week later, knowing Chloe had to head home immediately after Aubrey's graduation ceremony and knowing the after-party was being held and hosted by the graduates who either didn't have family visiting or were left to their own devices for the night. The Treblemaker known as Unicycle - whose real name she'd never bothered to know and didn't care – had friends among the graduates (like Chloe, he, too, was to remain a Barden student after his fourth year in the university), had let slip that Aubrey was attending the hotel party.

Stacie would often remember the way Aubrey had looked at her when they'd first seen each other that night.

Because she had been the subject of many lustful gazes in her life, but she had never felt more wanted than under that particular gaze.