Emmett Forest tried to pinpoint when, exactly, Elle Woods stole his heart.

Was it the night on the bench, or the day she got Callahan’s internship, or the time she had taken him shopping? He pondered this, knowing that all of those moments had made him love her more, but had not actually initiated his devotion. What was it, then, that made her so desirable to him?

Suddenly, it clicked. The moment he’d been missing, the piece of the puzzle that had been lost.

It was a cold night in January, the week of final exams quickly approaching, and Emmett was walking down the hall to Elle’s dorm room after reading a frantic, disjointed email from her that afternoon. He knocked softly, and after getting a muffled sounding, “Come in!” opened the door.

Among all the pink and brightness of the room, Elle sat on the floor, laptop open and books and papers strewn around her.

“What’s up? Your email sounded-“ he was cut off suddenly by Elle catapulting herself into his arms, wrapping herself around him tightly.

“Thank God you’re here.” She mumbled into his jacket, and he was stunned into silence as he let his arms find their way around her.

“Elle, what’s going on?” He trailed off, noticing that she had begun to cry, her shoulders shaking against his arms.

“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” he asked, leading her to sit down with him on the edge of her bed. She wiped her eyes, although still crying, and managed, “I can’t do this.”

“Can’t do what?”

“This,” she said, motioning vaguely to the materials covering her floor, “I thought I could do this, but I can’t. I’m never going to make it past finals, and I can’t remember anything that I try to memorize, I’m so tired, and I’m just not good enough for this! Not for Warner, not for Harvard, not for anything!”

He pulled her to him with the arm around her shoulders and said, “You are good enough. You’re smart, Elle, you just need to trust yourself. You’re just really stressed out, and you need to calm down if you want to put any of this studying to use.”

“Okay,” she replied, taking a deep breath and wiping her eyes, “But what do I do? I’ve never studied so hard in my life and it’s not helping me any.”

He smiled, “That’s what I’m here for. Come on, let’s look at this and I’ll quiz you. Okay?”

She smiled back, weakly. “Okay.”

He didn’t know if it was the vulnerability of the moment, or the true humanity she showed, or the fact that she truly needed his help, but her emotional stress breakdown kept him up for nights on end. He found himself wanting to know everything: her parents, her home life, her time at UCLA…seeing her as a victim that night just made him more in love with her.

Now, if only he could find a way to tell her…

XXX

Elle wondered when, exactly, she fell hopelessly in love with Emmett Forest.

It could be one of the countless late nights he spent helping her study, or the time she’d taken him to buy a suit to impress Callahan, or when he bought her an outrageous, yet thoughtful, Christmas gift.

But it wasn’t those moments. As much as she studied their every detail, they weren’t the moment that made her realize that what she felt for Emmett was much more than friendly acquaintance. She realized, after time passed, that the moment had been brief, and completely random, and flat-out ridiculous, but it made her love him nonetheless.

They were studying until late hours on a night in January, her finals only two days away, and she had just finished answering their last practice question when she peered out the window.

“Omigod! Emmett! Come on!” She jumped up spastically and threw his coat at him, frantically trying to get hers on. Before he could ask what was going on, she had gone running out of the room in a frenzy, forcing him to chase after her.

“Elle!” he called, out of breath, as they reached the front door of the building, “This is crazy! It’s twenty degrees outside, what are you doing?”

She spun around to face him and looked up to the sky, grinning. “It’s snowing!”

He looked up and smiled, letting out a laugh. “So it is.”

“Come on!” she grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the bigger lawn to the side of her building, then pulled him down, flat on his back, into the snow.

“What the…” he glanced over at her, moving her arms and legs rhythmically, and sighed. “You brought me out here in the freezing snow with my jacket half on and throw me in the snow at eleven at night to make snow angels?”

She grinned, looking over at him, “Yeah. Didn’t you ever make snow angels when you were little?”

“Maybe…I don’t remember.”

“Oh, come on, you have to remember at least one time.”

“Well, I guess I did once. I was with my mom grocery shopping, and when we came outside of the store it had snowed a ton. So she just left our cart next to the car and pulled me to this little clearing near the front of the store, and we made snow angels until our faces froze.” A smile played on his lips as he stared up to the sky, “That was fun.”

Elle grinned, “That’s so sweet! Now come on, you have to make one. For old time’s sake.”

“Elle, I don’t do snow angels.”

“Please, Emmett,” she said, turning her head and pouting at him, “For me?”

He thought about it, sighed, and began to move his arms and legs through the dusty snow around him. When he finished, they stood, brushing the snow off of their clothes and being careful not to ruin the lines of their snow creations. They turned back to look at the ground they had been on, the light of the streetlamp casting a dim glow on the white snow, and Elle smiled.

“Look,” she said, pointing to the ground, “They’re holding hands.”

Sure enough, the snow arms had blended together, no end to one or beginning to the other.

He smiled, taking her arm and leading her towards the door, “Come on, we’d better get inside before we both turn into icicles.”

She followed him, but took one last glance over her shoulder at the two snow angels, grinning.

She knew, then, that she loved Emmett, because it must be fate. And who was she to argue with the word of the snow angels?

XXX

Two weeks after Brooke’s trial, Elle was sitting in her dorm room, laptop open on her desk. There was a knock and she closed the computer, rushing to answer the door.

“Emmett!” she exclaimed, moving away from the doorway to let him in. “What’s up?”

When he seemed to be struggling with his words, her smile faded. “What’s wrong?”

“I…it’s just…okay, do you remember that night you said that you weren’t good enough?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I...we both know that you are good enough, that you’re better. And I know, for sure, that you’re much too good for me.”

“Emmett, what are you-“

“Please, just let me finish.”

She watched silently as he began pacing.

“I know that you’re much too good for someone like me and that I shouldn’t even be bothering, but I can’t help the way I feel about you. I know that no man on this earth is even remotely good enough for you, but I can’t…I can’t not tell you. I’ve waited too long, and soon it’ll be too late.”

He looked her in the eye for the first time since he arrived and said, softly, “I love you, Elle. I love you, and I know that I can’t do anything about it, but I had to tell you.”

He moved for the door, then, and it took her a second to absorb what had happened before she jumped up, grabbing his coat sleeve and spinning him around.

“Emmett, you’re the one who’s too good for me. You’re so smart, and kind, and amazing, and I don’t deserve someone like you, no matter how much I love you.”

“No, Elle, that’s not-“

“Wait!” she yelled, jumping, “This is crazy! We are such complete idiots!”

“What-“

“What is wrong with us? We just confessed our love to one another and we’re wasting all this time trying to find reasons not to believe it!”

“I…” he trailed off, what she had said finally catching up with him. He smiled, laughing. “You’re right, we are idiots.”

With that, he kissed her, months of bottled up feelings finally given a release. Elle tried to make herself believe that this was really happening, that the magic she felt was real and not some realistic daydream.

When they pulled apart, hands held and foreheads resting together, she smiled. “Tell me you love me.” She whispered.

“Why?” he asked, smirking back at her.

“Because I need to know this is real.”

He pulled her closer to him. “It’s real, alright. I love you.”

He kissed her again and it didn’t matter anymore how many times they made snow angels or studied or went shopping for suits, this was it. This was the moment they’d been dreaming of, the moment they’d been waiting for forever.