something in us will always know | camren oneshots

and the rest is rust and stardust

It's very probable, in fact a little too probable, that this will be the last party that both Lauren and Camila will attend.

Lauren's had ten years and a trillion more opportunities to stop it, to make it end differently, and this is all she gets when it's all said and done: Camila in a white dress and a shining ring on her second-to-last left hand finger, like a dagger to the spot in Lauren's chest where the knife always falls.

It's fine.

She's the maid of honor (well, co-maid-of-honor, Sofi shares the title with her), and Camila promises to toss the bouquet at her when the time comes, or at least try her best, because she has no aim even when she's throwing something in front of her, and Lauren is telling herself that this is enough.

It's all she gets, so it sort of has to be.

1.

They go bridesmaid dress shopping and Camila decides that she wants the color to be green. The wedding planner nearly has a stroke when he hears that, and Dinah immediately starts moaning about how red would compliment her skin so much better, but Camila has decided and that's that.

Well, Lauren thinks, fuck. And it doesn't really help that the dresses, when Camila shows them to the four of them, are almost the exact color of Lauren's eyes.

Lauren could cry but she doesn't.

She tries on the dress and falls in love with it almost immediately, spinning in the dressing room almost violently, almost as if she's desperately trying to dizzy herself so much she forgets why she's in this dress and can't think of anything else besides the fact that Camila wants her to wear it.

It doesn't work. She leaves the dressing room when it stops swooping in on her and Camila doesn't see her at first, she's talking to Normani about how no, she can't turn her bridesmaid dress into a two-piece so she could show off her new belly-button piercing, when she catches Lauren's reflection in the mirror and her words die in her mouth.

"Oh my God, you look so stunning, babe." Camila says, turning to look at her, hand lifting to her heart. Lauren pretends the flash of diamonds dazzles it all out, dazzles all the ugly, garish wrongness of it all away.

"I love it," Lauren says.

She means to say, "I love you." She always means to say it.

Camila reaches out for her and Lauren steps forward, letting herself get wrapped in Camila's arms, toned and tattooed, so different and yet entirely the same as when she was fifteen and they hugged for the first time.

In a different universe, universe number two, Lauren is dressed in white and she's mouthing at the Spanish quote curling in ink on Camila's collarbone in a way only a lover could. Camila whispers in her ear, "You're the most beautiful bride. 'M so lucky."

Lauren moves her mouth to slot against Camila's, finding her heart just beyond the taste of her chapstick and her lips, and says into her mouth, "Ditto."

Or maybe the second, perfect universe doesn't exist and all there is is this, is Lauren collapsing into Camila's body, the one that belongs to someone else, all there is is Normani watching in the mirror with sad, knowing eyes and Ally and Dinah silently doing the same in their dressing room doorways, is her heart pounding and bleeding and begging her that she not let anything, anything ever feel this wrong again.

This is it. All she gets.

2.

They go cake testing, just the two of them, because apparently cake testing is exclusive bride-and-maid-of-honor responsibility.