Chapter Text
Alex was five years old when she decided that Princess Aurora is her favorite princess.
There’s an entire section in one of the Morgan family albums filled with Alex in her Princess Aurora costume because for many months after that declaration, that was all she would wear.
If you flip back a few pages, you’ll find that she had been a pumpkin on her first Halloween. Then a bunny. You’ll find an empty slot next to the bumblebee that came after the bunny, because that had been the year she was dressed in the ugliest sheep costume, and Alex had snuck that one out and torn it to pieces the moment she was tall enough to reach for the album on the top shelf without any help.
But when she was five years old her mom decided that she was grown up enough to choose her own costume, and five-year-old Alex Morgan did not take that lightly. She thought real hard about it and decided that she was going to be Princess Aurora for that one night...
...and many nights after that. Even when she decided that her Princess Aurora dresses weren’t for everyday wear anymore (she could run faster and kick the ball better in shorts and sneakers, and Daddy told her that princesses don’t have to wear dresses every day to be princesses), for four years after that, she still dressed up as Princess Aurora on October 31st.
She made Tobin from next door be Prince Phillip every year she’s Princess Aurora, because a princess needs a prince.
(Really, Tobin dressed up as a ghost or scarecrow or whatever it was she wanted to be that year. But she carried a plastic sword that Alex’s mom got her, and whenever some lady asked her what she was dressed as, she would say that she was a scarecrow-prince or ghost-prince or something to that effect, and that was good enough for Alex.)
Her mom tried to get her to dress up as Snow White or Cinderella one year, but well. Alex hated apples (unless it’s the juice kind), and maybe Cinderella had a fairy godmother who made her a pretty dress, but Sleeping Beauty had three fairy godmothers who made her a dress that could change colors. So that’s that.
+
When Alex is fifteen, she meets Servando.
He’s the hotshot transfer and the new striker on the boys’ soccer team (and super dreamy, if you ask Alex). He asks Alex to the school dance and shows up with a navy blue tie to match her blue dress, and he tells her she looks beautiful. He dances with her the entire time, and when the guys tell him they’re ditching to go to a party at a senior’s house, he turns them down. And at the end of the night, he lets Alex wear his blazer when she gets cold and walks her home.
When he asks Alex to be his girl before first period two days later, Alex thinks about how sweet he was and how handsome he looked, and she says yes.
They date the next two years, and everyone calls the two star strikers Diamond Bar High’s new It couple. Alex doesn’t believe in princes and princesses anymore, but she thinks that if she did, Servando would come pretty close to a prince.
+
Alex is seventeen when Servando breaks her heart.
He’s off to college and he wants to focus on school and soccer, and it’s nothing personal, or it’s not you, it’s me (or something like that). And Alex reminds herself that it’s okay, that she doesn’t believe in princes and princesses anymore. She’s old enough by then to know that a princess doesn’t need a prince, anyway.
+
Tobin goes off to college that year too, and that hurts a little more, because Tobin’s been there way before Servando. But it also hurts a little less, because at seventeen losing your boyfriend may seem like the end of the world, but just for a little while, and all it takes is one phone call in the middle of the night to realize that yes, her best friend left too, but she didn’t lose her. Isn’t going to lose her.
+
The first time Tobin kisses Alex, Alex has to stop the small part of her alcohol-muddled brain that thinks about fairytales again, about princes saving the day and waking up princesses with True Love’s Kiss.
She’s nineteen now and has since moved on to rom coms and reality TV, and real life doesn’t work like fairytales.
Real life is best friends going to school on opposite sides of the country, is playing phone tag because of time zones and different schedules, because of classes and soccer and all nighters, because of new friends and hookups and boyfriends and girlfriends. Real life doesn’t guarantee happy endings - it’s messy, is unpredictable, is a patchwork of laughter and tears and everything in between.
But real life is also the game of phone tag ending the moment a text with the words I had a bad day or we broke up is sent, because yes, they’re both busy, but never too busy when it matters and who do I need to beat up? and fuck that guy, you can do better than him anyway. It’s late night Skype conversations and impromptu pep talks and sneaking out after joint Morgan-Heath holiday dinners and summers tanning and surfing at the beach. It’s I miss you and I wish you were here and everything else that doesn’t get said out loud but still manages to get heard through meaningful glances and hugs that last longer than they should.
It’s right now, in the bathroom at the end of the hall, with the water running and an uncapped Neosporin and a band aid on Alex’s palm.
Not the most romantic of places, Alex thinks, because there are dozens of sweaty gyrating bodies on the other side of the door and she can still hear the heavy thumping music outside blasting some version of Get Low.
Not that it’s Tobin’s fault - being there was Alex’s idea in the first place, because Brad their high school quarterback insisted that this would be the party of the summer and she’d really just wanted to get drunk and maybe see if anyone from high school had gotten cuter in the year they’d been gone. And Tobin’s never been very good at saying no to Alex.
+
A semester without seeing your best-friend-who-might-be-more-than-that is a semester too long, Tobin decides, because they may have kept in touch the entire time they’ve been apart, but hearing Alex’s voice and seeing her face through a phone or laptop screen isn’t quite the same as having Alex actually be here with her (even if here is currently this stupid party).
Alex is a sloppy drunk, but Tobin doesn’t mind very much (at least she’s not a pukey drunk - not yet, at least). She only minds when Alex cuts her hand trying to pick up the pieces of a shot glass she’d dropped, only minds when she has a moment of weakness because Alex looked so cute smiling at her Superman band aid and she’s looked amazing all night in that dress, and -
She doesn’t mind so much anymore when Alex kisses her back.
She worries a little that it’s the alcohol’s doing, because Alex had been dancing a little closer and leaning into her more than usual all night, but when she pulls away later, she hears -
“Fuck, I’ve been wanting to do that for a while.”
So she stops worrying after that.
+
And Alex, well. Tobin looks at her with that goofy grin when she pulls away, and dammit, she had been annoyed when Tobin showed up at her door wearing a snapback and t-shirt and jeans after Alex had texted her to dress to impress, but okay, she’s impressed.
+
Tobin texts Alex good morning :) the next day, and Alex smiles through breakfast even if she’s nursing the biggest hangover.
She thinks about their kisses the night before, about the first one in the bathroom, about the second one when Tobin dropped her off at home (and the third one she blew at Tobin, who caught it and held it to her chest because she’s a huge dork - but she’s my dork now, I guess, Alex thinks).
She thinks about everything that’s led them to this point.
There was no dragon to be slain (just a douchebag frat boy that Tobin had to shove off because he was stepping just a little too close into Alex’s personal space) and no spindle to prick her finger on and curse her to eternal sleep (just a shallow cut from a party foul).
And there was no prince - just the girl next door she’d forced to pretend to be one when they were kids. Just the girl next door who became her best friend. Who never let a thing like distance keep her from being exactly what Alex needs (and wants).
Alex’s eyes were wide open the first time Tobin kisses her, but she feels as if something in her woke up all the same.
(It’s no True Love’s Kiss, Alex thinks as she sips on her orange juice, but it was a fucking great kiss.)
Alex thinks about the fairytales she grew up on, and how real life isn’t quite like it, and she decides that maybe sometimes, life spins a different kind of fairytale that’s even better.