A/N 1: For those of you who might remember the "Aria" chapter in "Speeding Up". There's some rewriting of 2x16 too.
"But… this can't be right."
Aria's ruling was announced with the characteristic widening of her big, candid emerald eyes.
"It says Smittie's right on the sign."
Perplexed as well, Spencer looked up at the small neat letters that were written up on the newsstand where they'd ended up after following the instructions of the GPS phone. They matched the receipt. The receipt was a clue. Therefore, it had to beright, even if it seemed wrong.
It was right.
It was a clue.
It was right.
Aria turned to look up at the letters, around in every direction of Hyperion street and finally straight into Spencer's deep dark hazel eyes.
"Spencer, are you sure this isn't your sister's?" Aria asked the question while holding the receipt in her hand and waving it in front of her face as a call for attention. "Maybe she just came here to buy the paper."
There was an accusatory tone in the question even Aria couldn't completely hide. She had sacrificed a whole afternoon with Ezra for this, and she didn't completely get the amazing relevance of the receipt Spencer had found in her lake house. Everything about that receipt, including the location they were at right now, said this was only a receipt either Melissa Hastings or the Hastings themselves had left in the Hastings lake house. She usually trusted Spencer's instincts blindly and wholeheartedly, especially now, but maybe this was just too much. And she was a little tired to be the Watson to Spencer's Sherlock. The Watson role should have been divided between all of the girls, but the recent changes in the group's life had dropped all the burden of the assistant-detective part on her small, delicately drawn shoulders. And she usually loved to be the companion of Spencer's adventures… but she preferred it in small doses.
Spencer returned the accusatory tone with the sole intensity of her gaze. It was a powerful gaze that had gotten all the more powerful during the last weeks' events, at the same rate her mania and the lack of sleep took complete charge of her detective soul.
"She lives ten blocks away, Aria. It doesn't make any sense", she declared, totally convinced. "Besides, it matches one of the pictures Caleb found in the phone, so I think it's screaming A pretty loudly to us and we just have to listen."
Exhaustion did that to Spencer.
That was when she started to stress every word she said, like it was important to underline absolutely everything so she was perfectly understood by those who were at her disposal.
After nearly searching all of Rosewood and its immediacies for leads and clues, restlessly working with Caleb, Emily and Aria while she first tried to keep Hanna entertained and then appeased once the blonde discovered the secret plan to ice her out and declared eternal hatred on them for their betrayal, but obviously not on her boyfriend, Spencer had accidentally run into a mysterious receipt in her own lake house. It hadn't been entirely an accident because she had actually gone there also in search of clues, after discovering one of the pictures in A's phone had been taken there, right in the attic. One thing had led to another, logically. At first, when she'd found the receipt, she had thought it'd been left there by her parents or by Melissa, who had been living in Philly for months. But then something had rung a bell and she'd checked each and every one of the pictures Caleb had rescued. A had been in her lake house. Not once but several times. Maybe even close to the dates she'd been there with Emily, or Hanna had been there with Caleb, all of them enjoying life… meaning love and sex. Yes, it was ironic. It was hideous and tragic too: the only place where they thought they'd be safe, they'd be apart from everything that ever hurt them, was just another place A had found to play games on them, could've even been A's lair, for all they knew; and it was a place owned by the Hastings. It was a funny, funny life - funny as in a Greek tragedy. Not that those tragedies where people slept with their mothers and creepy stuff like that happened were actually funny at all, but the sense of irony was there, dark and humid and irreversible like a guffaw after a silly little joke. Whatever the case, whatever the joke, the receipt was a clue: that was why she'd recruited Aria to come with her to Philadelphia. That was why they were now standing in front of a kiosk full of newspapers, right in the middle of one of the busiest streets of the city, on an ordinary school day when they had millions of homework to do and Aria had millions of kisses to share with her illegal boyfriend.
Aria snorted so very slightly, too aware of her helpful role as Watson to really protest.
"Okay", she surrendered, sheepishly, "so where do you wanna go now?"
"Doesn't it say anything else?", Spencer curtly asked, instructing Aria to re-read the receipt she'd herself already scanned a trizillion times. "Nothing about what A might've been after?"
"Papers? Magazines?", Aria half affirmed and half asked, suppressing the need to roll her eyes. "Cream for stretch marks?"
Death glare.
Spencer wasn't getting true irony and, most especially, defeat very well lately.
"Maybe it's a set-up."
This was as close as Spencer would ever get to admitting the receipt might mean nothing at all.
"I don't know", Aria carefully chose to let out, "maybe there's something else around."
She looked around as if to demonstrate there might be something else besides the obvious fact that Melissa lived not so far away from the newsstand.
Spencer looked around too, both encouraged and enraged over the possibility.
"We should walk the entire street", she decided, "and check the whole neighbourhood."
This time Aria couldn't totally suppress the eye-roll, because an eye-roll would always be better than a howl of desperation or a murder attempt on one of her best friends.
The eye-roll didn't go unnoticed, though.
Nothing went unnoticed to Spencer these days.
"Ar", Spencer roared in an amazingly low, menacing tone, "you can go home if you want to, I can do it myself."
The sound of the word home seemed to imply home was hell and jail, where Aria belonged for seducing a former high-school teacher. But Spencer just implied it, not really said it. She would never say it, because they were not only linked by all their secrets and detective activities, they also shared a bond of love and respect and a mutual, yet private dedication to an undying, almost artistic, concept of romanticism. Aria had learned this over the last months, even if Emily was no illegal love for Spencer. Emily just seemed to be the reason why Spencer was both able to calm down and to spin like one of those toys that were running out of batteries; or one of those hologram-robots that suddenly started speaking really fast before completely vanishing into the air because they weren't real or belonged to an alternate universe. Spencer had confessed it to her once… that Emily was the only person who could always really calm her down. But at that time they didn't know she was also the person who could drive her crazier than she already was. It reminded Aria a lot of how she felt sometimes in her own love affair… like it was the only thing that could tie her to the ground, simultaneously destroying her life and all of her human bonds with mother earth… or with father earth… although she doubted Emily and Spencer would accept the comparison, really. Emily would probably widen her eyes in honest shock and Spencer would make a long argument about how their love was solid and legit as the light of day and the Bill of Rights and the human genome, instead of a shady, turbulent affair.
"No, I don't wanna go home", she finally denied, "I said we'd come here to sort this out… and we're here."
Besides, home was a complicated place. And Spencer needed her.
She shot her a grateful look.
"So… let's just keep walking around", Spencer offered, a little less curtly, "and maybe we'll see something, cause there has to be something to see."
They aimlessly took some steps, passing by the kiosk with the sign Spencer had identified.
This would take hours.
But Spencer did need her now. Although she probably needed to rest and talk more than to endlessly walk around the streets of Philadelphia in search of nobody-knew-exactly-what. Things were so hard for all of them back in Rosewood. It wasn't only that Hanna was mad, especially at Spencer. It was also Emily. Ever since she'd quit the team two weeks ago she'd been out of sight, mainly because she'd had to dedicate all of the time to convince her parents, Ms. Marin and the whole school that the reason to quit what had been both her one true dream and her ticket to a scholarship was that she actually wanted to excel in academics, in all (doubtful) Hastings fashion. People seemed to believe she'd gone out of her mind, but they were giving her the chance to prove herself, mostly because her parents had decided they wouldn't change her town of residency when she'd already started senior year… unless something worse happened. Therefore, nothing worse should happen, and the library had become Emily's new solitary home.
It was becoming her hideout too, in so many ways.
They were ways Spencer seemed to take badly, although she didn't talk about it. Emily didn't talk about it either, whenever she did show up. So basically nobody talked about it, although Aria was convinced both of them needed to talk about it and, based on her knowledge, and by all clear evidence in sight, Spencer did need to talk about it even more than Emily, simply because she'd taken all the responsibility for the A-hunt. Maybe they were talking about it when they saw each other in private, though. But that probably wasn't enough, and at least Spencer was more reachable in all of her Sherlock-madness. Now that Hanna was in hatred-mode, she guessed she'd have to try reaching out for Emily at some point. But that was damn difficult. With all of her sweetness, or precisely due to it, Emily was a master at closing off oyster-like. You really had to develop your best oyster-diving techniques and psychological devices to trap her, open her up, steal the pearl and force her to have a real conversation. It wasn't always that hard, but it required a lot of time and effort and agility, qualities that normally only Hanna had learned to master. Now it had to be her, Aria guessed, because Hanna was pissed at Emily too – again.
Trying to keep up with Spencer's pace as they steadily walked down Hyperion street, inspecting every meaningless store and every irrelevant apartment building, Aria stole some glances at the leading figure of the group. Easy things should be solved first, and Spencer's shell, intelligent and sarcastic as it always was in self-defence, was always easier to break. If confronted with a little pressure by someone she trusted, she would crack open in a heartbeat.
Aria knew how to do it.
"There's a café over there", Aria blurted out while semi-trotting, "if you want to stop for coffee."
Spencer would always fall into that trap.
"Later", Spencer dismissed though, her hologram-battery still running, "we really need to keep our eyes open."
"Which is why coffee will help", Aria agreed pointedly, "at least me, cause I'll probably need rehab after trying to follow you running all thru the city."
"Are you into drugs now?"
"And are you into marathons?"
"We're not running."
"I am."
Spencer slowed down to inspect her. Yes, Aria was running. The obvious difference in height meant a short person such as Aria would have to run to follow a tall person such as Spencer around. Besides, Aria was covered in a synthetic-fur scarf and a synthetic-fur hat which were probably asphyxiating her right now. She normally approved of Aria's edgy style, but this was too much… Philadelphia in late October was not Siberia.
"Maybe you should take the Siberian fur off", Spencer smirked, not really able to stop herself, "before they take you to the Philadelphia zoo and leave you there."
"It's synthetic."
"You should know what they do to those animals over there."
In Siberia.
Or in the Philadelphia Zoo, although it'd been ages since she'd been there.
"It is synthetic, Spence."
"One of these days you're gonna run into some PETA naked model who's gonna burn all of your clothes."
Aria shot her a dirty look.
"You'd probably enjoy the naked model more than me."
The dirty look was shot in return with a certain degree of surprise and amusement. Spencer would have expected this kind of counter-attack from Hanna, but not exactly from Aria.
"It could be a male model, you know. They also exist and they do get naked."
"I thought you were bi… so you'd still like it better."
There was nothing Spencer loved more, besides Emily and getting straight As, than this kind of verbal battles. And that was why she smirked and her eyes brightened up in a strange way before darkening again.
"Right", she answered sharply, "I tend to forget you only wanna see one person naked. Mr. Ezra Fitz. The Fitz-man. Ezzzz-rrrraaaaah." She used her huskier voice to say the name, but something in her eyes was burning and Aria wasn't sure why. "But I guess the rest of us are just dying to see the whole human population stripping for us."
That was a little too sharp for Aria's taste, but her objective was one and only one: to lure Spencer into the café.
"I wasn't talking about the human population", Aria argued, "and anyway you already see your naked model every day."
Spencer blinked, as if she were suddenly considering it over her own dark, sharp cloud, and Aria immediately regretted her words because she'd probably touched a nerve she didn't want to exactly touch before they could reach the café.
But she did see Emily naked all the time, right?
As opposed to Aria herself, who barely got to see Ezra without a shirt on.
"I don't see her naked every day", Spencer muttered, somehow responding Aria's internal question, and then she lowered her eyes before shooting another direct, challenging look, "but anyway I won't be the one who'll end up covered in some endangered species' blood."
"That's gross, Spence", Aria grimaced, "but it's also false, cause this is synthetic and PETA models love synthetic."
Aria was starting to feel pity for Emily. No wonder she sought refuge in the library lately. Hologram-Spencer was certainly difficult to handle.
"I guess we can say you're safe then", Spencer prepared to shoot the last bullet, "unless you do run into some stupid zoo keepers."
She had won.
But Aria still had another idea in mind.
"Coffee, Spence."
That was all her response. She wasn't going to follow the fur route. It was synthetic. She loved animals. She loved seals. She loved Siberian seals… or whatever they were.
Spencer watched her, thoughtful for a moment.
"All right", she finally gave in, "but we'll just grab the coffee to go."
Winning was always a relative concept, and Aria knew that, right now, she had won. The moment they entered the café, the distinct aroma of the steaming black petroleum filling their lungs with all of its addictive power, the plan started to work: like a hunter following a trail, like a CIA agent following a secretly coded message, like a drug-addict who'd just seen a white-powder bag flash into her eyes, Spencer followed the smoking smell of coffee, grabbed her cup like a well-deserved trophy and sat down on a table waiting for Aria to come sit with her own double-caramel fake-espresso. They both loved coffee, but Aria was into caramel and Spencer was into pure caffeine.
White powder talk, black petroleum filler, it didn't matter.
Dressed in her synthetic-fur detective uniform, Aria Watson Montgomery sat in front of Spencer Holmes Hastings to discuss something that wouldn't be A, A's phone, A's videos, A's pictures or A's receipt. It was difficult, though, because the first thing Spencer mentioned as soon as Aria sat on her seat was A's receipt, A's visits to her lake house, A's new messages and new phones, Ian's death at the hands of one of his A accomplices, Garret's position in the police, Jenna's blindness which apparently incapacitated her to chase or be chased by Emily in the forest, and her own conviction that Jason DiLaurentis still had something to do with the whole thing. Aria hardly managed to say a word here and there, barely trying to defend Jason because there was really no proof of him being involved in any of the videos, and coffee just seemed to excite Sherlock more than to placate her, as she should have imagined anyway, because coffee was a stimulant and not a narcotic. But she wouldn't give up easily. She would make Spencer stop the madness, breathe and talk.
"Don't you have anything to say?"
Spencer asked the question while sipping her black coffee.
"About what?"
"About the fact Ian couldn't leave the receipt in my lake house because he was already dead."
"So it was your sister", Aria shrugged, "big deal."
"Big deal, Aria. It's not my sister."
"I'm not saying she's A. I'm just saying the receipt is hers."
"It doesn't make sense. She reads the paper in her iPhone!"
"Maybe she stopped just once to buy a paper the old-fashioned way."
"What's the point in that?", Spencer asked, wrinkling her nose, "we're Hastings, we don't waste our time, we don't look back."
"You don't know Melissa that well, Spencer."
"Meaning what? She's my sister."
"Meaning she's… I don't know, okay? It's her receipt."
"It's not."
Maybe Melissa was part of the A conspiracy, now that Aria thought about it. Why not? If it was her receipt, and there were pictures that had been taken in the Hastings lake house, it could all be Melissa's doing. She'd been Ian's fiancé and had protected him against everything, including Spencer. And she had reasons to hate Alison, like… almost everybody in Rosewood, apparently. So maybe Melissa had something to do with it. Or maybe not. They only had proof of Ian, Garret and Jenna in Alison's room.
"Melissa's not A, Aria", Spencer asserted, reading Aria's mind, "she was pregnant for all of those months."
"Being pregnant doesn't keep you from texting people."
Death glare.
"It does keep you from trying to murder them."
"I'm not saying she's A. We don't have any proof", Aria backed down. "Same with Jason."
Eye-roll.
For some reason, Aria didn't like Spencer's constant attempts at blaming Jason without any kind of evidence except the fact that he used to be drunk a lot and that he took a few weird pictures of her. Anyway, this wasn't where Aria wanted to direct the conversation.
"Jason was there, I'm sure he's gonna appear in the videos, Aria", Spencer insisted, "I mean, it was his house too. It just kills me to wait for so long."
Aria nodded, waiting for her chance while Spencer kept complaining about how long it took for Caleb to des-encrypt the rescued files.
The chance came in another occasion when Spencer thoughtfully sipped her coffee.
"So… how's Emily holding up?", Aria asked innocently, but in a direct manner Spencer would appreciate, "you know, with everything."
The question seemed to startle Spencer for a second, the second it took to re-structure her whole mind-schemes.
"Well, you should know, right?" There was an acidic, bitter taste to the words that matched the darkening of her powerful gaze. "You've probably seen her around school during the last weeks… and you're her friend, aren't you?"
"Yeah, I am", Aria cautiously replied, "and that's why I'm asking."
"She doesn't talk to you, huh?"
Spencer adorned the statement with her classic lop-sided smile, but there was something sad about it, not exactly sardonic as it was intended.
"She doesn't say much when I ask her. You know how she is."
If there was someone who knew how Emily was, it was Spencer.
"It's worse than that", Spencer agreed, getting suddenly talkative, "she smiles, she talks about stuff… it's like everything's fine."
"But it's not", Aria tentatively said, "right?"
Spencer shrugged her shoulders, looking more tired by the second.
"You tell me." She tried to smile unsuccessfully. "I don't really know what to do."
Here it was.
Spencer Hastings was being decoded and cracked open over a coffee cup, exactly like Aria had expected.
"Have you tried talking to her about it?"
"About what?"
"About how you feel."
Spencer shot her a weird look.
"And how do I feel?"
"I don't know, you tell me", Aria fired back, "bad? Stressed? You don't know what to do?"
Spencer smiled, and this time it came out sardonic, but it was still sad.
"She feels worse than me, Ar", she asserted, and then looked over Aria's shoulder through the crystal windowpane that opened their sight to the street, "and it's not like I see much of her anyway, cause she spends all the time pretending to study so she can convince everyone on earth she made the right decision."
"Even you?"
The question surprised Spencer again.
"Especially me", she accepted, "for some reason."
Aria smiled back. "Yeah, I wonder why."
The comment gained her a resentful look.
"She's got to go back to the team, and you know it", Spencer heatedly stated, "and everybody knows, even Hanna knows when she bothers to speak to her."
Yes, Hanna knew that too.
"You're not gonna convince her by insisting on it, Spencer."
"I'm not insisting on it", Spencer defended herself, "I hardly open my mouth, but it doesn't matter what I say, it's always the same result."
"Why?"
Spencer's gaze was now intense, yet it was also timid in an unusual way.
"I'm not gonna talk to you about her."
She looked down and then away again, trying to hide from Aria's psychologically mature eyes.
"Why not?", Aria softly asked. "We're not saying anything bad."
"She's your friend. You should talk to her yourself."
"And I'll try again, Spencer, but right now I'm talking to you", Aria argued, making her most vigorous point to encourage Spencer. As she got further and further with her, she realized Spencer desperately needed to confide her non-A feelings to someone. "And anyway we're not saying anything bad about her, and I know you… I'm just trying to help."
Spencer exhaled a long breath of air, and her eyes finally shone with hidden, secret tears.
"I hate feeling like this."
"You probably really need to sleep, Spence."
She smiled weakly.
"I can't sleep much, I really need to solve everything, Ar. It's not like we have lots of time."
"We're doing the best we can."
That sounded so much like Emily it made both of them bat their lashes in harmonic surprise, aware of the everlasting presence of their friend in the conversation.
"Well, the best is not enough this time", Spencer deadpanned, "I swear… if Jenna ever gets her sight back I'm gonna blind the bitch again, and this time it will be on purpose."
A again.
It was going to require a lot of skill on Aria's part to redirect the conversation topic, because Spencer seemed to be expressing all her frustration and fears through the A-investigation.
"I don't think that's really gonna help Em… or you, or us."
"It might help me."
"What's exactly the problem that's driving you so mad?"
Spencer grew impatient, her features twitching a little on her forehead and the corners of her mouth.
"The problem is we have to get A, Aria", she exclaimed nervously, "I have to get the freaking HGH report so Em can go back to the team." She took the cup of coffee in her hand as if to strengthen herself. "But I can't mention the team to her or I'll die an awful death because I'm being such a bad girlfriend."
Aria raised her thick brows at the dramatic exclamation.
"Is it that bad? Cause I'm sure it's not that bad."
"It's like it's my fault, when it was me who tried everything to get her to stop it."
Aria was touching plenty of nerves here, even getting close to cutting to the bone.
"Maybe that's why."
Spencer furrowed her brows in offended confusion.
"So what should I do? I told her it'd be a mistake."
"And do you say that to her?"
Another resentful look.
Close to the bone.
"No, of course not."
Aria seemed to find those words unbelievable. She knew how insistent Spencer could get when she thought she was right about an important matter.
"You sure about that?"
"Are you trying to be the new Dr. Sullivan?", Spencer reacted in sarcastic fashion. "Cause I should warn you, some people think I actually killed her."
"But I know you didn't."
"I'm serious, Ar."
"Serious about what?"
They stared at each other, and suddenly Spencer's eyes filled with tears again. She really needed to talk or she was going to explode at some point.
"I don't say anything, Aria", she explained, "maybe just a couple things, not really much, cause whenever I happen to mention it she looks at me like she's a lost puppy and I'm kicking her out of my house."
Lost-puppy, kicked-out-of-Spencer's-house-puppy Emily was really a bad image, yes.
"She feels bad too, Spencer", Aria argued, "but that doesn't mean she blames you. It totally sucks for her to be like that when you're out chasing A on your own. She probably hates it."
A little smile twitched one of the corners of Spencer's mouth now.
"She does hate it", Spencer nodded. "Every time I tell her I'm taking you somewhere she gives me this look… like I'm cheating on her or something."
Aria couldn't help but smile.
"She's jealous?"
"That's when she looks up from her books and actually notices me standing there, you know, talking."
Aria laughed, even though Spencer was being bitter again.
"That's funny."
"It's not."
But Spencer smiled too, and this time it was wider.
"She's worried about you."
Spencer sighed, sort of nodding her head in approval.
"I'm worried about her too", she continued, "and I have more reasons. You know who called me to ask me about why she'dactually quit? Her mother. I almost died that day." Her whole body seemed to tremble at the remembrance of Pam Fields' call. "And I felt like she was calling me out on it, but I had to lie to her about the reasons and then I had to promise her I'd convince Emily to go back to the team. Can you believe it?"
Pam Fields.
The terrifying mother.
Although Aria had always thought she was sweet, except when she looked weird at her pink hair.
"Yeah, that must've been scary."
"It was the worst thing ever", Spencer said, "like, I was totally shitting my pants. Me, Aria. And I promised her I'd get Em back on the team when I can't even say the word team without getting this feeling she's gonna strangle me."
Was Emily a lost puppy or a strangling puppy? Because, somehow, Aria wasn't totally getting Spencer's imagery about Emily so well.
"I'm sure it's not that bad, Spencer."
"Well, maybe you should talk to her about it and see how it goes for you", Spencer bitterly answered, "or maybe you shoulddate her. It'd probably save us all a lot of trouble."
There was definitely a very painful nerve and it was running so deeply into the bone.
"You'd pass her on to me?", Aria mocked, trying to lighten Spencer's mood up. "Watch out, I might accept the deal."
"And stop seeing Ezzzz-rrrrraaaaah without clothes?"
Aria laughed. It wasn't as if that actually happened a lot, unfortunately.
"You never know", she continued the joke, "and Em's got a pretty nice body."
A blush crept to Spencer's neck and cheeks.
Aria had touched another nerve.
"Well, you should definitely try", Spencer replied, cocking her left brow and trying to stop her blush from expanding, "you might have a chance, you know, since you're another one of her best friends."
Acid, nerve and bone: Aria felt like a surgeon.
"I've seen how she looks at you, Spencer."
"And how is that?"
"In a way she doesn't look at anybody else at all."
"You mean when you see us together", Spencer still tried to joke away the blush, "which's been like… maybe three times in the last couple weeks."
Aria rolled her eyes at Spencer's exaggeration.
"It doesn't matter how many times… she lights up. And it's not only that… it's worse. It's like Hanna says… it's totally dirty. But I'm not Hanna, so I won't really get into that."
The blush increased.
But then Spencer's eyes projected the darkened glow again.
Man, this was definitely a touchy, touchy nerve close to a big, big bone. Aria remembered the previous joke about naked models and the strange way Spencer had reacted to the words. She was cutting a bone and, since she was the dog this time, or the surgeon, she had to bite it. She felt herself blowing a whistle inside her head to try to call herself up and get into it. It wasn't really her favorite topic. She wished Hanna was here with her dirty, pornographic wisdom.
"Spence, you can talk to me about it, whatever it is."
Spencer averted her eyes shyly. Obviously this wasn't something she was going to enjoy discussing either, but it was somehow hurting her, so it was better to confront the topic, embarrassing as it may be for both of them.
"I'm not talking about that. And you're not Hanna."
"So you'd talk to Hanna?"
"I don't see how, since she seems to hate my guts."
Yes, that was something they had to discuss too… later.
But this bone… man, did everything have to have second meanings? Anyway, this bone Aria couldn't let go. She sipped a little bit of her caramel coffee, swallowed slowly to let the sweet flavor sink into her throat, breathed deeply and whistled herself in her head once more before exhaling.
"So", she started, "you two aren't… you know, you're not having sex as much as you used to?"
That could explain why Spencer was going nuts, after all.
"Aria, I'm not going there", Spencer warned, a little shocked at Aria's unusual straightforwardness, "cause it's none of your business."
"I know that, for god's sake", Aria replied, "you think I actually wanna know?"
"Well, it's you who's asking."
"I don't wanna know", Aria repeated defensively, "but I have to ask cause you're constantly blushing and being bitter about it, so there's something there that's obviously worrying you."
"It's weird to even ask!"
Yes, it was.
"It is weird, fine", Aria conceded, lowering her voice in the middle of the café, "for me too."
"I'm not gonna talk to you about sex with Emily."
Aria raised her brows in clear mockery.
"Well, thank you for that, cause I really don't wanna know any detail", she joked, "although I've always wanted to know the difference between, you know, lesbian sex and making out."
Spencer went completely red now. Tomato red. Dark-red-paint red.
"You are pretending to be Hanna."
"I'm not", Aria denied, "I'm just trying to make you talk about what's worrying you."
"You know lesbians don't have sex, right?", Spencer acidly said, "we just fall in love and hold hands and look at the sky while the birds sing and the raindrops fall."
"Birds don't sing while the rain's falling, Spencer", Aria replied, "but thanks for the info."
Spencer let out a snort.
"Why do you wanna know?"
"To help you", Aria whispered, "cause you're obviously having some kind of trouble with it."
"What makes you think that?"
Now they were both whispering, in fear of being heard around the café. Funny as it was, they didn't do it when they talked about A, but they were doing it now. Apparently, having trouble with (lesbian) sex was more embarrassing than being stalked by a psycho-killer.
"I mean, it was so obvious when you guys took the big leap you could almost trip over it and fall into your…" Aria stopped to think of a good metaphor, but the ones she came up with were too Hanna-related. "Naked bodies." She decided to go for the naked-body image they'd already used before. "And now you're obviously feeling bad about something related to… you know, that. And you're whining about Emily not paying attention, so I figured…"
Spencer suddenly burst out in (tomato red) laughter.
"So did you enjoy falling into our naked bodies?"
Aria shot a steely look.
"Only into Emily's."
"Go to hell."
Aria smiled widely. "I'm glad you're still the same territorial person."
Spencer leaned back on her seat, a little more relaxed now.
"You know", she confessed, "it was kind of hard to figure out lesbian sex at the beginning."
"It was?"
Spencer looked over her shoulder to the street again. A was calling her.
"Only for a while", Spencer clarified, "now everything's pretty clear."
"Good for you."
Spencer offered a wise, light smirk. "Yeah. Pretty good."
"But that doesn't answer my question."
Spencer leaned forward again, a scowl on her face because she hated to be pressured.
"I think it pretty much answers a lot of it."
"So if you're having great sex all the time", Aria shot back, "why're you so bitter about all of this?"
"I'm not bitter", Spencer defended herself, "of course we're not having as much sex as we used to… We hardly see each other, we're both too stressed all the time."
Aria decided to back down, her back touching the back of the seat as she inspected Spencer.
"That's it?"
"That's it."
No, that wasn't it. Aria could sense it.
"You should talk to her about it", Aria advised, her eyes fixated on Spencer, "you know."
"Yeah, Aria, I know." Spencer was returning to her sarcastic, sulky tone. "Because that's our worst problem, right now. Sex."
"I'm not saying it is", Aria said, "but there's something bugging you about it."
"I know you all think I'm obsessed with sex, but I can perfectly survive without it while we solve everything else, okay?"
"Without it?"
Spencer rolled her eyes, but then returned Aria's inquisitive gaze. Did she always slip important information when Aria decided to question her about Emily? It didn't happen very often, because Aria was the sort of free-spirited friend who left you alone and didn't call you up on anything. But sometimes, only sometimes, she decided there was a subject she had to stick her nose into, and in that territory Aria somehow mastered so well – the territory of asking the right questions and picking up on the right clues – Spencer always, always slipped and fell over some word. Which was funny, because she was supposed to be the detective and the one who was good with words. Although Aria was good too. A poet of all sorts. A rigorous psychologist. The Master of Feelings and The Voice of Wisdom.
Or maybe it had to do with Emily.
When she spoke about Emily, Spencer slipped and tripped over too many naked bodies and meaningful words.
"It's not the best moment", she confessed, finally giving up, "we're both feeling bad and tired, and I can't really ask for sex when we have important things to solve."
"You already said that."
"So… you get it."
Now it was Aria who leaned forward decidedly.
"No, Spencer, what I get is you're gonna explode if you don't talk to Emily about your feelings. And your sex-feelings are included in the talking package."
"I can't come across as a creep now, Aria!", Spencer protested, "I'm trying to help all of us here!"
"You're not a creep, Spencer", Aria replied, a little exasperated at her friend's resistance, "I mean… just talk to her. It is Emily, Spencer. She's totally in love with you and probably wants it to happen as much as you do."
"Right, I guess that's why she hardly looks at me anymore."
The bone was nerve-wracking for Aria - Spencer was.
"She looks at you, Spencer."
The darkened glow reappeared as Spencer directed her gaze to the window once more.
"You're not gonna escape from this conversation until we're done", Aria warned, "because you do need to sleep and to get laid or you're gonna go nuts, Spencer."
"Aria!"
"Fine, sorry", Aria apologized, "shouldn't talk about you and Em like that. But you're just being stubborn right now."
"We don't have time to talk about feelings, Aria."
"Well, I guess you're gonna have to find it if you don't want this to get worse", Aria advised again, "and it's gonna get worse, Spencer, trust me, because you just know you're getting mad. You know how things work. You know you are going toexplode if you don't find a way to talk about it."
"I am not getting mad", Spencer replied, more calmly now, "I swear."
"Fine", Aria answered, calmly too, "I'm glad."
They stared at each other for a long, silent moment when everything about their conversation seemed to fall into place.
Spencer breathed deeply before deciding to speak again.
"I know she looks at me like that", she finally conceded, her voice low and secretive, honest and true, "I can feel it."
Aria allowed her eyes to send a flow of warmth away, and took Spencer's hand in hers. It'd been a long way until this point. Now Spencer just needed to come to terms with whatever was troubling her. But Spencer didn't say anything else. She just fell silent, like there was nothing to say but that blunt admission that there was nothing wrong and that, beyond all of her sarcastic, bitter complaints, the reason she was feeling so bad was still somehow unknown to her, no matter how much they talked about it.
"So?"
Aria tried to help her get it out this way.
"We don't see a lot of each other. She's always studying and I'm always… you know."
Aria nodded: she knew.
"So it's just not happening, okay? I guess it's normal. I have to be patient."
Spencer shrugged, displaying her helplessness and all her difficulty to be a patient person.
The truth was that, before Emily had quit the team, they'd been using every chance. Even after Emily got A's phone and they fought and then sort of worked it out, they still took advantage of every chance. Because nothing could stop them. Because, apparently, they were unstoppable. Because love and sex were a kind of energy that no one could really control, not even them; least of all A. She tried to be disciplined and orderly about it; she tried to control it, sort of managed schedules and times so she wouldn't lose her mind, so she could still direct the A operation and keep focused. But she knew… it was unstoppable. And, one day, right after Emily quit the team, which was exactly what they were trying to avoid at all costs, it stopped. At least that part stopped. The sex stopped. Completely. Absolutely. Radically. And it was Emily who stopped it, not because she said anything or tried to actually really stop it in explicit terms, but because it became complicated and uneasy and there was always something else to do or someone else to discuss. So much for being the perfectly fuckable Spencer Hastings every day without even needing to try. So much for sex-appeal and raspy voices and lower lips and long legs. It just stopped. Yes, she understood the situation had changed, circumstances made it harder, more complicated, they were feeling overwhelmed. And Emily, particularly Emily, was feeling like crap, even if she didn't want to admit it; and Spencer knew she herself was very difficult to handle when she was overstressed. But they weren't even kissing that much. And a kiss wasn'tsex, was it? They planted just a kiss here and there, from time to time, like they were ashes of a burned out fire, like they couldn't even heat it up in fear of what would happen next. But what was the fear? Fear of what? She still felt the damnlonging, dirty gazes Aria was talking about. That was all there was now: longing, porny gazes. Nothing ever happened after that. Nothing really followed. And they had made out once, probably because Emily couldn't really help it either, couldn't manage to control it that well after all, exactly like she'd said she wouldn't be able to do it that dawn while they talked about quitting this or quitting that in Spencer's car. Once. After that, it absolutely stopped. Because there was an imaginary rule Emily had enacted that suddenly eliminated sex out of the equation. Was it Emily, in her aspiration to rule over the relationship? Or maybe it was her when she tried to control everything they were doing so she wouldn't be distracted from the A-hunt? Maybe Emily sensed that. Or maybe it was just difficult. She'd tried a couple of times… but she hated to feel like a needy creep when she'd been feeling like a goddamn Sex Symbol all the freaking time, even when she was wearing the orange suit, even when Emily got mad at her after Wren and sort of punished her for it. She hated that. And they would work it out somehow. It'd only been two weeks since the sexual abstinence started, and it was just sex anyway. It was just sex. There were more important things: catching A, getting Emily back into the team, making it through senior year alive… and not only alive... They had to get what they deserved. The four of them.
The love remained.
The sex remained too, hidden in those longing glances they were awkwardly dedicating each other, and would be somehow rescued like one of those encrypted files Caleb managed to recover from all kinds of machines. At some point, when they started feeling better, they would recover the heat too. But she couldn't explain all of that to Aria. Or to anybody. She wasn't even sure she could explain it to Emily without getting into a fight or saying stupid things she would regret later; or, worse, without hearing things she was too afraid to hear. She just wasn't sure she could talk about any of it. Not yet, not while they were getting so close to A. They were getting so close. A was first. Sex came at the end of their list.
They had to leave to keep searching the neighbourhood.
She moved, feet getting antsy and intrepid again, but Aria stopped her with her hand.
"Listen", Aria spoke softly now, "I'm just saying it'd be good to talk to Em about how you feel… about all of it, not the sex only. It'll help both of you."
Spencer nodded, in control again. "We'll be fine."
Aria sighed, but didn't let go of Spencer's hand. Spencer and Emily could be so stubborn sometimes. Between Emily's oyster moments and Spencer's proud reactions, they were probably suffering over the other's well-being and safety without even sitting to talk about the other's well-being and safety at all. At least that was something she and Ezra were good at: talking. Endless talking. That was what they did best… for now.
She suddenly remembered an important date for these two. For all of them, really.
"Isn't Em's birthday coming in like a week?"
Spencer seemed annoyed about the lack of a resolution to leave, but she shook her head in admittance.
"Week and a half."
"What are you gonna do?"
For the look in Spencer's eyes, she had again touched a nerve.
"I have like one hundred presents for her, but I'm not sure if…" She wasn't sure if they were the right presents at the present moment, but she decided to drop the topic and to be less bitter about everything or Aria would never let her leave. "I have no plan because, you know, I had a plan, but now all plans are hard to sort out."
Aria narrowed her eyes.
"What plan?"
"I talked to Hanna a couple of months ago about a surprise party", Spencer clarified, "but, yeah... Hanna, right now... you can imagine."
Aria nodded, concerned.
Hanna was another nerve they both needed to operate on.
"And the surprise party", Spencer continued, "I'm not so sure it's a good idea either, cause I was gonna invite the team and… yeah... the team, right? You can imagine that one too." She paused, shrugging her shoulders. "Plus I won't throw a party without Hanna."
Aria seemed thoughtful about everything in that particular candid, slightly weird way of hers.
"I think a surprise party's a great idea, Spence", she finally exclaimed, "I mean, she'll love seeing her teammates. It'll be great for her to see they're still there and want her back."
"She knows they want her back."
"Yeah, but this way she'll see they care for her even if she's not in the team."
Spencer scrunched up her nose, doubtful.
"You think?"
"Sure", Aria said, "I mean, we can't throw a party with just us and Caleb."
"Especially now that she's so talkative, right?"
Aria squeezed her hand, the one she hadn't let go of yet. People who heard them talk about lesbian sex earlier probably thought they were a couple.
"Especially now everything's difficult, yeah."
"And you don't think she'll take it badly, like it's another coded message we're sending so she goes back to the team?"
"I think she'll love it, Spencer", Aria explained, "it's Emily, it's not you. She doesn't see coded messages everywhere."
Spencer gave a smile. "You obviously don't know how mean she can be."
"No, but I know you can be mean too." She squeezed Spencer's hand again. "But it's a great idea."
"And Hanna? We can't have a party without her. I can't do it."
"I know."
"Has she talked to you lately?"
"If talking means saying hi and see you later and fine and I'm meeting Mona for lunch, sorry, yeah, she has."
"That's more than she's said to me."
Aria nodded.
Hanna was angry with everyone, but especially with Spencer. She felt so sorry for Spencer: leading the A-hunt, stressed over Emily's situation, pressured about everything she was always pressured about (studying, exceeding), not having sex and, finally, hated by one of her best friends.
"So let's take it one step at a time", she proposed, "first step, Han; second step, Em's party."
"It's easy for you to say it", Spencer whined again, "you'll just go and talk to her with your big eyes and she'll forgive you. I've tried talking to her three times and she keeps blowing me off, saying she wasn't expecting that kind of backstabbing precisely from me, that I'm worse than A and that she's never gonna forgive me for it."
"She's said the same to all of us."
"But she hates me more."
"We'll talk to her tomorrow. Both of us."
"So your big eyes will do the job?"
"Trust me, if Em's puppy eyes can't do the job and they live together… my big eyes won't do it either."
Yes, that was true. Hanna was so pissed at Emily too. Although Emily was also the one Hanna said more words to and the one who would be forgiven first.
"So how're we gonna do it?", Spencer asked, suddenly letting herself be guided by The Master of Feelings, "I did it for hertoo, we did, but she keeps saying she would've never done something like that to one of us."
"And it's true, she wouldn't have."
Yes, Hanna was different. She was Loyalty Incarnated, no matter how caustic and tactless she sometimes seemed to act.
"So what do we say? She doesn't listen."
Aria was thinking hard.
Somehow this topic had occupied a lot more of her brain during the last week, and it was definitely easier for her to approach than the sexual thing with Spencer.
She looked directly into Spencer's eyes.
"We're not gonna explain why we did it", Aria thought out loud, "we're just gonna tell her the truth."
"Isn't that what we've already done?"
"No", Aria said, "we've tried to explain, but she doesn't want an explanation. She knows why we did it."
"She just wouldn't have done it to us."
"Exactly."
"So we go and say we're sorry."
"We need her."
"We can't do any of this without her."
"We won't do any of it without her."
"Cause it doesn't make sense without her."
"Cause we can't lose her to A."
"Cause we already lost too much to A", Spencer summed up, "but we won't lose her."
They looked at each other. All of a sudden, both of them had watery eyes: Aria's emerald was blurry like a discarded paint or a rainy day in the countryside, and Spencer's hazel was glowing with a restricted, encaged sorrow.
"Yeah", Aria said in a nasal voice, "that."
"Shit, Aria", Spencer replied, "we really work well together."
"I know. That's why Em's jealous."
"You're little, but you're big."
"And you're smart and you're tall."
They both laughed a little stupidly.
Now people were probably really convinced they were a couple.
"We're fucking Team Sparia."
"You wanna get your sex life back… say that to Em."
"That'll probably kill it even more."
"Why's that?"
"Anyway she won't believe it for a second."
Aria scowled at her. "Hey", she protested, "why's that?"
"Ezzzzz-rrrrraaaaaaah", Spencer summarized, gaining a wide smile from Aria, "and you're her friend, she trusts you. Plus you're as straight as one can get."
"I kinda remember a time when you were as straight as one could get."
"Apparently I wasn't."
"Right. Emily's gay sixth sense, right?"
"Exactly."
They both laughed again.
"Man, we're weird."
"I know, look at all those people looking at us like we're crazy."
"We're crying, laughing and holding hands."
"Now we just need birds and rain and we'll be lesbians!"
"You already are", Aria joked, "or are you more, like, Emisexual?"
Spencer smiled crookedly. "I'm A-sexual right now", she joked back, stressing the A in the word to make the double sense clear.
"Sure, I totally believe that."
"You're the one who wants to go back to Rosewood to get some naked modelling."
Aria winked. "You're right. I hate your crazy Smittie's receipt."
An hour ago the comment would have been responded with a death glare, but Spencer was in the right mood now, so she burst out in a dry laughter.
"I know."
They stayed in silence for a long moment, and Spencer decided to let Aria go. She'd been coming with her to almost every single expedition, and she was probably right about the receipt. And, as usual, she was very helpful when actually needed.
"You should go back to Rosewood."
"No, I'm staying", Aria refused to take the offer, "so we can search the whole city for the secret code of A."
"No, it's okay", Spencer insisted, "I'll take the chance to visit Melissa."
Aria seemed to give it some thought, but finally accepted. They were already picking up their satchel and purse when Spencer had an idea about the party they'd been discussing for Emily.
"Can I ask you another tiny favor like yourself?"
Aria turned around, already on her way to the exit, and raised her brows.
"Sure, what is it?"
"It's about the party", Spencer said, "I'll invite everyone in the team… but could you talk to the psycho?"
Aria didn't understand, and her immense eyes struggled to squint in hesitation and confusion.
"What psycho?"
"Aria", Spencer called out, "I'm not talking about A."
"Oh."
"The psycho."
Aria widened her eyes in final recognition.
"You mean Paige McCullers."
"That's clever of you."
"Why do you still call her a psycho? It's not like she ever did anything else."
"Oh, so she should do it more times to deserve the name?"
"No, of course not", Aria replied, "but she's… Why don't you forgive her already?"
"Because I don't want to", Spencer explained stubbornly, "she scared the shit out of Em, for no reason at all except she apparently wanted to fuck with her… and I mean it in every way. She's a freak, and she's violent, and she still wants her."
"So that's the reason."
"There are a lot of valid reasons."
"So it's easy", Aria exclaimed, "don't invite her."
"No, I have to…", Spencer said, pouting like she was offering herself in sacrifice, "it's not my party, it's Em's, and she's now the team captain. I can't invite the whole team and not invite her… especially because Emily was the one who spoke to the coach on her behalf."
"But I've never talked to her. It's gonna be weird."
"It's a tiny favor."
Aria grunted. "It's gonna be weird. You should be the one to do it."
"She knows I hate her. It's okay."
"She knows?"
"Oh, she does. Trust me."
Aria rolled her eyes. Of course Paige McCullers would know Spencer Hastings hated her. It was like a law of nature. Spencer knew how to make her presence felt in a good or a bad way for every organism, human or not, to acknowledge.
"I don't even know why I asked", she admitted. "Okay, I'll do it. But you owe me so much."
"It's not a big deal, she means nothing to you."
"You owe me." Aria lifted a warning finger to Spencer's face. "And you'll pay me."
"Do you wanna hold hands now?", Spencer asked, grabbing Aria's finger. "Or is it gonna be in the future?"
"You'll have to get me a date with Em."
"Go to hell."
"Team Emaria… Or is it Team Arily?"
"Go. To. Hell."
"It doesn't sound very good, I'll give you that."
She slapped Spencer's ass to make her keep walking, and now all the people in the café confirmed they were either a couple or two crazy teenagers; most probably both. They finally walked into the street, armed with the receipt (now back in Spencer's hands) and with Aria's collection of synthetic-fur accessories, and hugged in the bus stop that would take Aria to the train station and back to Rosewood. Waiting as Aria sat in the bus as though it'd be a long farewell, Spencer watched her friend's mouth breathing a warm, humid canvas on the window and drawing a heart crossed with a set of arrows sticking into it with violent passion, the words Team Sparia and Team Arily written in it with a big question mark. Spencer laughed out wildly, shaking her head as she silently spelled the name Ezra, and then watched the bus go with Aria in it. It was all right. She was actually in the mood to continue the exploration of the city on her own, and she was feeling better now, especially about Hanna. The thing with Emily… it was different, it'd require different skills, a different sort of patience. No matter how much Aria dominated the Art of Feelings, she'd been wrong about something: she wasn't getting mad at Emily. She just couldn't discuss feelings with Emily now, because all feelings drove them in one single direction: A. A was in the middle and she had to push him - her, them, it - out of their relationship. So there was only one thing Spencer could do now: move. Explore, question, think, look around, walk, even run if there was a need for it, just like Emily had run that night. But she would never stop moving ahead. She would never look back, not even if she was far away from home, not even if she didn't see what was in front of her. With time and effort, she would see it and she would blow the final hit to A's head, the one that would knock him - her, them, it - down.
Ready for the fight, Spencer was waiting for the deadly chance.
She had to build herself in courage and iron.
Ironically standing at a traffic light, waiting for the human figure to blink in green again so she could cross Hyperion street in order to explore narrower, more secretive places in the neighbourhood, a light illuminated her head. It wasn't Emily's light. No, that light was kind of dim right now, although Spencer did keep it so closely, so guarded in her heart… and basically everywhere in her body, sometimes to her dismay and (bitter) desperation.
It was Hanna's.
Hanna had been taking care of her, not only of Emily, in that special joking-but-deadly-serious way of hers. Hanna and Spencer had an alliance nobody knew about. That was why Hanna hated what Spencer had done. Hanna would have neverdone that to her. Not even for Caleb. But Spencer was Spencer; and Hanna was Hanna. Spencer made the ugly decisions. Spencer dictated the moves for every one to follow, right? Sure, Emily and Aria agreed to leave Hanna out of their investigation after Hanna destroyed the flash drive with part of the evidence Caleb had gathered, and then they had the nicety of ignoring Hanna's calls so they wouldn't have to directly confront their act of betrayal, whereas Spencer picked up the phone, answered the calls, met Hanna for a movie, lied to her in her face while keeping her in the blind, while ruthlessly pushing her out of the game. And here Hanna had thought she was protecting her boyfriend… all the time while her best friends, Spencer leading the way, Spencer dictating the rules, were basically using him (with his consent) to win the war. Aria and Emily had big, puppy eyes; walk-away eyes, look-away eyes, protective eyes. But Spencer had another type of eyes. They were knock-down eyes. And that was why Hanna was so mad. That was what Hanna couldn't forgive. They were similar… they would always take care of each other, with the difference Spencer didn't think twice to strike a blow while Hanna simply didn't think at all… she just didn't strike a blow when striking it meant hurting a friend.
Hanna's light.
It blinded her in recognition.
Her knock-down eyes welled up, her iron heart swelling in tears. She needed to say she was sorry, she was so sorry.
Preferably tonight.
Spencer crossed the street while texting Aria, asking for her permission to have the talk with Hanna tonight – and alone. Aria texted back her okay (it was Aria, queen of independence and free-spirit) and offered to help if her presence was needed. With Aria's okay in mind, Spencer turned in a corner where an optician's store offered fashionable glasses maybe Emily would appreciate at some point, since she'd admitted once that she found her old dorky glasses kind of appealing in a weird way. No, sex - go away, step away. You don't belong here now. You're dead… or in purgatory. Maybe later… surely in some time. When feelings were important again, when A was caught, when the receipt in her hands spoke - sex would find a way to make its comeback.
Right there, she saw it - a stroke of luck - but luck didn't exist as such - a product of opportunity, effort and conviction.
A crosswalk.
A Labrador dog bridled in a brown leather jacket to help a serious-looking girl - nothing in her eyes.
Nothing in her eyes.
Blind.
Yes, the girl was blind.
The receipt was a clue.
It was right.
It was about Jenna.
It was about A.
It was right.
Spencer's iron heart swelled, not in tears but in joyful, deadly pride.
A/N 2: THANK YOU, READERS AND REVIEWERS!
TwoFive25: Here you go! The girls are here! :D I know I take looooong to develop the story... but it's coming.
LaughLoveLiveXx: Claiming... that's a big thing for Spencer; but as you correctly caught, she wants to claim Emily in a good, right way. Is she still furious? What do you think after this chapter? :P And, yes, you perfectly saw it coming: they ARE confused about sex. It's clear in this chapter but you'll get to see Emily's perspective... although I think you can already get a part of her reasons at the end of "Fire".
Sora Yogami: thanks for your always personal and developed comments! Yes, you're right, Spencer's obsession about "the beginning"... It is going to be there until the end of the fic. We'll see more of it. She doesn't seem to understand it herself, but she needs to. So now they're fighting the war... But Emily's kind of absent from it... Oh, and thank you, thank you for not hating the long chapters, really.
spicy emily: hehe, nice nickname. Thank you!
x-sugarfree-x: LOL! Hope you're not mad like Hanna...
anon: :)))) Very heartfelt thank-you to you.
dmpanda5: :)) Emily's words definitely weighted and dropped on Spencer's heart and mind like everything Emily does and says, so if she has to be the leader, she'll be the leader (she is NATURALLY the leader), but she'll try to make it work the good way. They're trying to mend it but A's in the way. A's gonna keep being in the way... because that's what A does.
xkxtxfx: Toy Story is THE BEST. I knew Emily had to quote a cartoon movie and that one seemed perfect... because Woody is so Spencer LOL! So we only got a glimpse of how Emily's quitting is affecting or "killing" her (we'll see more), but we did see how it's somehow "killing" Spencer. Breaking points will happen, yes.
IxHeartxGlee: they did clarify their feelings, but was it enough? Spencer's definitely trying to get rid of the "cheesy, horny" kind of dictatorship, but now she's kind of pissed it's (apparently) easier for Emily to help her get rid of it...
Maxi-Luca: as always, thank you for your great review. And here you got a lot more of Aria and a little of Spencer's reflection on Hanna. I thought that part, when Hanna got mad at Spencer, was left so underdeveloped... So I realize I'm kinda doing what you do in "Circumstance", sort of re-shaping season 2 in a Spemily form. Anyway, what did you think of our Lady of the Feathers here? LOL And Paige's shadow is already here... But she'll have a VERY important scene in chapter 30 (I just decided to give more space to Spencer first.)
LittleLiarLovesEmily: Hope you keep liking the story. If you ever get here, hello and thanks so much!