A/N: To my reviewers, infinite thanks! It's nice to have feedback, always makes me feel like I'm on the right track. So thank you to toffeema and fwentworth, glad you both enjoyed it. To JRB - I don't have twitter but I was following the Vegas trip (how dare they, really) and some of it may inspire future fics! Otherwise, thank you for such amazing commentary, I feel very honoured to have my chapters described as "perfect" haha.

Now on to the new chapter: So this started out with some really good intentions...and then fell down a hill of confusion into a pit of angst. Not really sure how or where that came from but it's about time we had some I think? I don't even know how to explain this so I'll let it speak for itself.

FYI: More alcohol in this chapter (because I apparently enjoy writing drunk people?), it's a lot stronger in this chapter than the last one (hence, the angst) so just keep that in mind if you read it, please.

My ownership of any of this is limited to the crazy ideas I have in my head and does not include any of the characters, their likenesses, or the book/webseries. (sigh)

We have different definitions of happiness

Alex curses his good upbringing when he gets up from the couch to answer his door. If it weren't for the politeness ingrained in his system, he would have told whoever was behind it to simply go away. Well, he probably would have used some more choice words than that. He swears though, if it's someone trying to sell him something or "enlighten" him, he may end up delivering those choice words after all.

Instead, he finds Emma at his door, holding a fast food bag and a six pack of Coors Light. Even though Alex should have really expected her to show up, Emma believed she could fix everything after all, he was still surprised to see her.

"If you're not going to invite me in, could you at least take this, I feel awful just holding it," she makes a face at both the beer and the fast food, holding them out towards him. Alex isn't sure why, maybe because he was tired of sulking alone in his apartment for the last three days, or maybe because listening to Emma's incessant chatter will drown out his own thoughts, but he lets her in.

"Thank you," Emma says cheerily, entering his apartment, slipping off her heels, and dropping what she was carrying onto his kitchen counter. He follows her into his small kitchen – it was more of a kitchenette really, but it did the job – grabbing one of the beers out of the packaging.

"Why are you here, Emma?" he asks, taking the bottle opener off the fridge and breaking the seal on one of the beer bottles. For someone who was complaining about holding the bag earlier, Emma seems all too comfortable taking out the burger and fries she'd purchased and putting them on a plate. Alex figures she was using this as an excuse to avoid his question.

"Emma," he whines, as she continues to ignore him and turns to wash her hands in the sink, acting like she had just touched biochemical waste. "You're going to have to talk to me sometime," he reminds her, picking a fry off the plate and putting it in his mouth, wondering absentmindedly when he last ate. After the first, he reaches for another fry and Emma swats his hand away from the plate. "I believe that's my line, Mr. I-don't-pick-up-my-phone-even-when-my-best-friend-calls-me-six-times-in-a-row," she states in a huff, picking up the plate of food and the beers before heading back into the living area of his apartment.

Alex follows her, mostly because she's still holding onto his food and he was finally realizing how hungry he was. Emma placed the plate, some napkins, and the beers down on his coffee table, nudging each of them slightly until they were perfectly aligned. Alex wondered what had her so worked up, she only got so antsy about stuff like this when she was truly worried.

"You okay?" he asks, as he sees her turning each of the beer bottles around so that their labels faced her. Alex almost immediately regrets his decision when she turns to look at him with both anger and worry etched in her eyes.

"Stop stealing my lines! I'm here for you, not the other way around," Emma whines, slouching into his couch. Alex falls into the seat beside her, grabbing the plate and putting it on his lap, before continuing, "Why are you here for me? Am I missing something?"

Emma purses her lips at him, "Alex, I know about you and Amanda, you can cut the tough guy act."

He diverts his eyes from her gaze, focusing on shuffling the food around on his plate – suddenly feeling a lot less hungry. "It's not much of an act, I've been through break ups before, you know?" he comments, before returning the half full plate to the coffee table and sipping more of his awful beer.

"I know. She just…meant a lot to you, one way or another," Emma replied, absentmindedly pulling at the cap of one of the beer bottles. "Here," Alex says, pulling the beer out of her grasp and popping off the lid with his bottle opener that he'd brought from the kitchen. He moves to hand the drink back to her before he fully realizes what he's doing. "Hey…"

Emma reaches for the beer and raises an eyebrow when he jerks it away from her.

"What?"

"You aren't allowed to drink this stuff."

She snorts, "Alex, you've seen me drink before."

He rolls his eyes, pulling the beer back again from her grasping fingers, "Yeah, at parties, maybe. But you can't just drink illegally in my apartment."

Emma ignores his request, however, grabs another bottle from the pack and expertly opens it after stealing the opener from his side of the table in one fluid motion. She takes a sip with a triumphant grin on her lips as Alex groans and leans further into the couch. "Relax, Alex, I'm practically 21, and you have that extra room here for me to stay in just in case I get drunk, right?" He doesn't quite have an argument for that, outside of the fact that being 21 and being two months shy of 21 were not the same thing, so he simply lifts his hands in exasperation. Emma beams, adjusting herself slightly on the couch, and Alex realizes that he had unwillingly put himself into a position where he was now required to converse with her.

As a result, he does the respectable thing. He pretends to be falling asleep.

Emma hands are on his shoulders in a matter of seconds and she's practically shouting, "Oh no you don't, Alex! You still owe me an explanation."

He removes her hands from his shoulders and furrows his brow, "For what?" Emma chugs the majority of her beer before replying. "The six phone calls and two messages I've left you. And that's just today!"

Alex groans before drinking a bit more himself. "You already deduced that I am newly single, why do you think I wasn't up to picking up my phone every time it rang?"

He sees a gleam return to Emma's eyes, "So you admit that the break-up is bothering you?" As her comment registers in his head, Alex picks up the beer bottle, wondering if there was something stronger in it than alcohol since something was making his brain seem so muddled. But, then again, it was Emma – it wasn't like she didn't always get what she wanted.

So he groans in response, "Yes, Emma, I admit that I'm, quite naturally, upset that my girlfriend dumped me. Are you happy now?"

On her part, Emma at least had enough decency to look shocked, "Of course I'm not happy about that Alex! Why would you even think that?" Now the shock was forming something different on her face – she was beginning to look upset.

But Alex just rolls his eyes, "Emma, everyone knows you don't like her. You could hardly be around Amanda for more than five minutes before the two of you were at each other's throats."

"That was as much my fault as it was hers," Emma complains, stealing a couple fries off of the plate that he abandoned, grimacing at the unfortunate taste. "Besides, she may have been barely tolerable, but she somehow managed to make you happy."

"Gee, thanks, for noticing." Alex finishes his first beer and places it on his coffee table, noticing the other empty beside it. How had he missed Emma finishing a whole bottle of beer when she could barely stand to drink the stuff?

"It doesn't matter; we aren't here to talk about how I felt about her. I'm just hoping you'll get drunk enough so I actually get to see you cry," she winks at him, dropping another empty bottle onto the table. Alex has to blink to confirm that she was actually drinking the beer, since she seemed to be throwing it back as though it were water.

"Yeah, that's likely," he finally responds, rolling his eyes. If Emma thought ridiculing him would help him get his mind off of his ex-girlfriend, she was in for quite the surprise.

Suddenly, realizing that Emma was beyond capable of taking care of herself inside his modest apartment, Alex stood up, stretching slightly. "Actually, I'm heading to bed. You know where everything is, right?"

Emma almost looks like she wants to laugh, before pulling him back onto the couch by the hand. He doesn't even vocalize any protest, he knows how fruitless that was with her. "You're quite the comedian tonight, Alex," she hiccups slightly, "but you are not getting out of this. Period."

He leans off the edge of the couch with his head in his hands, "What exactly is this, anyway? All you've done so far is fatten me up," he points at the plate of fast food, "ridicule me, and try to get me drunk?"

"Wallowing in self-pity is not Emma approved, Alex," she says, smiling through her newly coined term. "Getting you drunk enough to actually talk about your problems? Now that's something I can do and approve of, more or less."

"I don't need alcohol to talk about my problems, Emma."

"A – thank you for willfully admitting you have problems and b – need I remind you of the SIX missed calls and TWO messages?" She drops her third finished bottle on the table and pulls the fast food plate onto her lap, picking at the fries gingerly.

Alex turns to face her on the couch, letting his arm fall behind her head. "Okay then, try me," to which Emma rolled her eyes before grabbing him another beer. "You are in no way drunk enough to be honest with me."

"Really? Because you look fantastic tonight," surprisingly, Emma blushes slightly, hiding it by moving to brush her hair out of her face. "Honest enough for you?"

Emma returns the plate to the table, most of the fries having disappeared, before responding. "Stating facts is hardly what I had in mind, Alex," and he can't help it, he laughs. She joins him, leaning back against the couch, and slightly into him as well. And it must be all the alcohol in his system, which is admittedly more than a single beer, because he finds himself leaning into her too.

"You're supposed to drink it," she says, pointing to the beer in his lap. Alex was more focused on the beer in her hand though, seeing as it was her fourth of the last half hour. But at this point, he knows she won't listen to his advice, so he just lets her keep drinking – lets his own guilt settle for another day.

Alex still doesn't drink his beer though, he already feels himself getting drunk (or maybe past it?) so he takes that as a warning sign to at least slow down, if nothing else. Emma doesn't seem to notice his stopping though, "So what happened, exactly?" And even though he doesn't feel like talking about Amanda, even though he doesn't particularly want Emma to get her way, Alex also realizes that he hasn't talked about this at all yet, with anyone. And it was burning in him to get out.

"She's moving to New York," he says, surprised at the sound of his own voice. Surprised that he could sound so casual about something that broke his heart.

"Why would she leave California for New York?" Emma asks, in genuine confusion. It was a shared Knightley and Woodhouse family trait that they believed their families lived in the best corner of the world and anything else was hardly worth their time. It wasn't arrogance, merely tradition. A tradition Alex hadn't felt like breaking for a girl who didn't even bother to ask him to.

"Her father's company is set up all along the Western coast. She thinks wherever she establishes herself here, someone will accuse her of riding her father's coat tails, and she doesn't want that," he shrugs.

"That's idiotic," Alex snorts, "I'm serious. The best way to succeed in life is to use all the tools you have at your disposal. Throwing away all of those opportunities is hardly the best way to start a meaningful career."

Alex isn't sure he agrees completely with her on that. It wasn't as though it was any of their faults that they grew up in specific families, so distancing themselves from that was a choice they were all free to make. But he understood where her head was at; he knew of Emma's childhood dream to help people, though she had yet to turn that into a sound business strategy. Nevertheless, Emma would use her father's name with good intentions, which made a lot more sense to her than throwing it away in order to succeed on her own.

So he sighs and says, "Well, you aren't Amanda," to which she scoffs and replies, "Thank god for that," before practically finishing her fourth beer. For the first time, he sees her grimace after she swallows, before shuffling the bottle onto the table with the others.

"I think you're plan backfired," he reports, gesturing to her many empty bottles.

"What do you mean?" she asks, confused, brushing her hair out of her face.

Alex chuckles, "Well, I'm not the one who ended up drunk."

She narrows her eyes at him before understanding dawns on her. "I am not drunk, Alex!" she responds, smacking him lightly on the knee. The motion brings them closer together somehow and Alex wonders if she's not the only one who's had too much to drink.

"Mhm, would you like to try the walking a straight line test then?" he asks, raising his eyebrow slightly. His hand seems to move of its own volition, curling onto her shoulder, his fingertips brushing the skin just shy of her blouse.

Emma laughs and pulls her legs up onto the couch, her knees resting somewhat on the pillow and somewhat in Alex's lap. "I'm underage, I don't think they'd be checking if I was drunk, I think they'd just care if I even had a sip." Her words sober him up a bit and he drops his arm from around her as she turns to face him. Admittedly, he didn't have much of a response to that.

"So why don't you just go to New York with her?" Emma asks, and it takes him far longer than it should have to remember what she's talking about.

"I couldn't leave here. It's home," he gestures towards his apartment, which had, unfortunately, seen better days. Emma laughs, "Says the guy who has traveled most of North America with his family."

But Alex shakes his head, "That's different, I always know I'm coming back then. This would be a permanent change." He may love extreme sports and sight-seeing, but living somewhere else was a totally different story. Just leaving for university had been an odd change for him, and at least then he'd been in the same state. Packing up his entire life and moving somewhere completely different, that just wasn't his style.

"You could like it out there, especially if you're with someone you care about," Emma says, with a kind of dreamy naivety he would expect from his match-making friend. But she also wasn't looking him in the eye just then, which Alex thought was slightly strange.

"Life doesn't work like that, Emma. Besides, I'd miss too many things."

Emma shifts slightly closer towards him, almost crowding the small space they were occupying on the couch. His arm is back to resting on the back of the couch but now he has to physically stop himself from wrapping it around her again.

"What's there to miss?"

He blinks, scratching the back of his head with his other hand before letting out a deep breath. "I don't know. Everything: the beach, my parents, John, you, your family, the food…" he trails off because he sees Emma straighten slightly.

"You'd miss me?" she asks, and there's a teasing undertone to it, like she's not sure how he'll react to the question. But there's also a kind of confusion and unease in her voice, which is making him confused too.

"You're kind of important," Alex replies, in a joking tone that doesn't fully hide his true meaning. As he says it, he moves to push a lock of her hair behind her ear and he's so focused on it that he doesn't see the expression on her face. If he had been paying attention, what happened next might not have seemed so surprising.

But, surprised or not, Alex Knightley suddenly found himself being kissed by his best friend. Emma is pressing against him with a certain hesitation in her lips, which is potentially more surprising than the kiss itself because Emma doesn't hesitate about anything. But once Alex lets himself blink and fully registers what is happening, he begins reacting to the feeling of her lips on his. He doesn't hesitate or overthink what's happening, he just wraps his hands around her waist and pulls her closer towards him because he needs her to keep kissing him for as long as she is physically capable.

Emma's uncertainty seems to evaporate as she moves her arms up to wrap around Alex's neck, pulling herself closer to him until she was practically in his lap. Alex's hands manage to find their way under her shirt, his palms pressed lightly against her back. The kiss stops being something innocent and becomes harder, more desperate, and Alex is sure they're going to have to break apart soon for air. So as Emma's arms unlock from around his neck and her hands begin working their way down his torso, Alex reaches up to cup her face with one hand, slowing down the kiss to an agonizing speed. Emma retaliates by riding his shirt up tentatively, smiling at his reaction when he breathes in sharply to the feeling of her fingertips on his skin. In a motion so quick he didn't even know he was capable of it, Alex slips out of his T-shirt and throws it somewhere into the apartment, returning his lips to Emma's immediately because he can't seem to function without their soft pressure on his own.

Eventually, Emma's hand finds its way to his shoulder and she's pushing back from him because she can't breathe. They sit there with their foreheads pressed together and Emma breathing heavily for less than five seconds before Alex begins kissing the curve of her jaw because he's too drunk to stop himself. Emma releases a giggle that's only forced out of her because of the alcohol in her system. Then his lips begin tracing down her neck and Emma realizes she's probably not going to get the chance to catch her breath after all.

"Alex," she breathes out when he finds a particularly sensitive spot on her collarbone. At the sound, Alex stops everything he's doing and pulls back from her. He blinks, looking at her but not really seeing her face. When he manages to focus, Alex notices the crease forming on her brow coupled with the blush on her cheeks and the bruising of her lips and then he's jumping off the couch like he's been hit with an electric shock.

Alex begins pacing the small width of his apartment, feeling like he wants to both scream and pull his hair out while also wanting to crash into bed and pretend this never happened. On one of his strides back to the couch, he sees Emma readjust herself so she's properly seated with her feet on the ground. He can tell that's she's sufficiently rattled too.

"Alex. Stop pacing," she finally says, not meeting his eyes but with a forceful enough tone of voice that it gets him to stop anyway. But once he's stopped, he doesn't know what to do. So he just stands there waiting for her speak again.

When she doesn't, he suddenly finds his voice. "We're drunk. That's all it is."

Emma shakes her head, "Alex, we're not that drunk." He laughs in response. Then, he contradicts her, "Emma, there's more alcohol in my system right now than anything else." Emma looks at him skeptically, so he continues. "I drank a whole bottle of whiskey before you even showed up, and I couldn't tell you the last time I had a full meal," he admits, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand because he isn't exactly proud of that fact.

In reaction, Emma closes her eyes and breathes with his lips pursed. The look makes Alex realize how overwhelmed he was by how much he wants to, no, needs to kiss her again. But he sets his jaw and balls his hands into fists instead, though the thing he was mad at wasn't exactly something he could physically fight.

Then, suddenly, Emma's on her feet, albeit a little shakily, but she's standing not far from him. "Then kiss me again," and she looks so confused, like the words she's saying aren't even her own. Alex can practically feel his jaw popping from the strain he was putting it through but he shakes his head. "Emma, I'm not going…we can't…this was a mistake."

She puts her hand to the side of her head like it hurts and her confusion visibly deepens, "What do you mean?"

Alex runs his hands down his face, "We just can't."

"Why?"

"Because we're drunk –"

"I'm not drunk, Alex!" Emma shouts at him, meeting his eyes for the first time. He can tell from the look in her eyes that she believes her own words, but he knows her. He's seen her drunk, he knows what she's like. So he just shakes his head in response to her outburst.

"Well I'm heartbroken and drunk, so I'm not going to do it," he says, maintaining eye contact even though his restraint is weakening every minute.

"You're not…she's not even worth…Jesus Christ, Alex," Emma's hands are moving frantically and her face is getting red like she's flustered. "For the love of God, if you're going to argue with me, put your stupid shirt on!" And Alex looks down to notice he still wasn't wearing one. Noticing it on the floor by her feet, Alex realizes that he would have to move over to where Emma was standing to get his shirt back. So he held his breath and tried to grab it as quickly as possible. But when he rights himself after retrieving his shirt, Emma's fingers are curled around his belt loop and she's pulling him towards her. Then, they're kissing again and Alex can't make himself stop because he hasn't felt this good in days. He was so tired of being hurt and sad about someone who turned out to not be worth it in the end. All he wanted was to keep kissing Emma and forget that anything else mattered.

But then he starts tasting the alcohol in her mouth and he breaks the kiss. But instead of storming off and trying to sort out the craziness in his head, Alex pulls her into a hug, lifting her off the ground and letting her bury her face in his neck.

Emma hiccups slightly before saying, "I just want you to be happy, Alex," and he tightens his arms around her waist. Alex feels her breathing slow down and knows she's fallen asleep, the day and the alcohol having taken their toll on her. So he lies her down on the bed in his spare room, making sure she was comfortable before shutting off the light. Then, he grabbed himself two pain killers before calling it a night himself.

In the morning, Alex found out how awful hangovers were on Emma. She didn't stumble out of bed until four in the afternoon, and even then she was just asking him for medicine. He obliged, of course, and also made her some of the lightest food he had in his apartment. And even though Alex felt like he had somehow finally gotten over Amanda, or at least what she'd done to him, he still couldn't make himself eat too much. He had a feeling that that now had more to do with his own guilt than his alleged heartbreak.

Around nine, Emma asked him if she could stay for another night. She was feeling better but didn't see the point of leaving when it was already so late. Alex didn't have a problem with it, in fact he felt like he owed her that and more for his actions.

"It's weird," Emma says over dinner that night, "I remember bringing the beers to your apartment, to get you drunk funnily enough, but I don't remember much after that."

Alex looks at her for a second, as if to determine whether or not she was being honest. But then he realizes that he really doesn't want to know, and just decides to trust that this is how things would return to normal. So he takes her comment for whatever it is, shrugs and replies, "You didn't miss much."

Well, yup. I still don't know what to say about this so review? Maybe?

Also, I'm having a bit of writer's block where this fic is concerned. I still have another chapter to go that I've been working on, but otherwise I haven't been able to come up with many new ideas. It might be because I'm just too busy, or because I haven't had anything new to work with since the hiatus, so if I don't update again until the show comes back in February, I deeply apologize!