September 5: D/J, We're Dating?

[kinetic_elaboration]

Daria/Jane, this old verse, ~850 words, 25 minutes

For the May 2025 YOTP prompt “We’re dating? Since when?”

*

Not that Daria needs an excuse to escape from her house and head over to Jane’s, but this weekend there are plenty. Putting distance between herself and the Yaegers. Helping Jesse sell his parents’ vinyl at the flea market. All perfectly innocent reasons, as she’ll explain to her mother. Objectively.

Initially, she’d only planned to spend the afternoon at the Lanes’. Maybe into the evening, past dinner, and hope the Yaegers were greet the sun with yoga people and thus also early to bed people. Then Jane volunteered them to greet the sun themselves, to haul crates of old records halfway across town at 7am—suggested, by implication, that Daria spend the night. Trent and Jesse didn’t seem to hear that unspoken undertone. Daria hissed under her breath, “Are you nuts?”

 

“What? You don’t want to?” If she was hurt, she hid it fast behind an arched brow. “Would you rather go home and swap yogurt recipes with the Yaegers?”

“And what’s wrong with my yogurt recipe?” She sighed, crossed her arms tight against her chest. “I doubt my parents will go for it.”

“Is that the only issue?”

Jane was watching, then, not Daria’s face but Trent, behind her, arranging a piece of tinfoil on the floor and taking off his socks. 

Or do you just not want to spend the night with me?

The issue was she wanted it so badly, all that wanting got caught up in her chest and bruised her lungs.

But instead, she answered, “It’s a pretty big issue,” but low, already in capitulation.

Now she’s holding the receiver of the Lanes’ phone in her hand, listening to the dial tone faintly burring, aware that Jane is behind her on the bed and pretending to watch her helpfully muted TV. Commercial for soap. Commercial for chips. Anti-smoking PSA. 

“You could just not call them,” Jane suggests. “See if they notice you’re gone or if it’s too much of a full house.”

A trick that would work on her own parents. But not on Helen. “No—I got it.” She dials her own number, waits for it to ring. Her mother picks up on the third.

“Can I speak to the old lady of the house?”

“Daria, where are you?”

Hard to tell from her tone if she’d noticed her elder daughter’s absence. Might not have. Might be annoyed now that she didn’t. Maybe Jane’s see-if-they-notice plan was better.

“Jane’s.” She hesitates, only barely, but she imagines they both hear it. “Can I stay over?”

The pause after that is even longer. She’s too aware of Jane through it, watches her out of the corner of her eye: her stillness, her legs crossed, only her foot moving back and forth through the air. 

“At Jane’s,” Helen repeats. Slow and wary.

“Yes. At Jane’s.” She waits a beat. “She’s promised to take a break from the drug-fueled orgies for the night.”

Behind her, Jane snorts.

“Daria. Did you really think I’d just agree to let you spend the night at your girlfriend’s house?”

“Girlfriend?” She feigns innocence, confusion. And it actually half-works.

“At the house of the girl you’re dating,” Helen corrects.

"We’re dating?” She opens her eyes wide, and hopes her mother can hear the expression in her voice. “Since when?”

Helen sighs, and there’s a sharper warning in the way she says Daria’s name again. “Anyway, I had hoped you’d want to get to know our friends.”

“My old soul has already made their acquaintance in a previous lifetime.”

On the other end of the line, after that, a vague sound of exasperation, and then a very nerve-wracking, thoughtful, considerate silence. “Only if you stay in one of the spare bedrooms. I know that house has plenty.”

Daria has no intention of doing that, but she just nods. “Okay. I acquiesce to the terms of the agreement.”

“And I want to see you back here by tomorrow afternoon. Be polite to our guests in this lifetime.”

“I dig.”

She hears Helen exhale a sharp breath again at that, but at least she doesn’t rescind the offer, and soon Daria is setting the receiver back down in the cradle again.

She turns to Jane. “Okay, I can stay. I’m supposed to sleep in one of the other bedrooms.”

Jane blinks at her, and whether she’s surprised that Helen agreed on any terms, or at the terms themselves, Daria can’t tell. “I’m not sure if that means your mother trusts me a lot or not at all.”

“Somewhere in the middle.” She sits down at the end of the bed, next to Jane, and instinctively their hands meet and their fingers twine together. 

“What does she think would happen if you slept over in this room?” Jane asks. 

“Mayhem. Madness. Debauchery. A general loss of virtue.”

The corner of Jane’s mouth curls up. “These are your parents’ commune friends?”

Daria nods.

“Then she would probably know all about those things. Don’t worry, Daria.” She lifts their hands, presses a kiss to the back of Daria’s hand. “Your virtue is safe with me.”