September 21: D/J, Can't Get You Out of My Mind

[kinetic_elaboration]

Daria/Jane, ~760 words 19 minutes

From my happy alternate esteemsters ‘verse, for Year of the OTP June: “I can’t get you out of my head.” This follows directly from the last installment in this series.

*

Daria’s virtue is not safe at Jane’s.

Like any daughter trying at least vaguely to follow rules set by her parents, she does, in fact, prepare to bunk down in a bedroom that isn’t Jane’s. She’s in Wind’s instead, two doors over but it feels a continent away, when she’s lying on her back in bed, staring at the shadows the tree branches, caught in the streetlamp outside, make on the ceiling. She’s in one of Jane’s oversized band tees and a pair of borrowed shorts that aren’t really her size, and she keeps running her hand over the fabric of Jane’s clothes like that’s a substitute for being in bed with her again. This is silly. This is a farce, like playing a role. She should be in Jane’s room, even on the floor. She pulls her shirt up by the collar, over her face, but it smells more like Jane’s laundry detergent than like Jane.

 

Not tired, but thirsty, she gets up and wanders her way to the bathroom, in between the two bedrooms, where she drinks water from the sink out of her cupped hands. She doesn’t have her glasses. Her face looks blurry in the mirror, even this close.

Then instead of going back to Wind’s room, with its walls each painted a different color and its short shelf of self-help books, she turns in the other direction and she goes to Jane’s. The door’s halfway open anyway. When she peers in, she sees the bedside lamp is on.

“Psst.” She whispers through the doorway, still loud enough to hear. “Lane. You awake?”

Jane sits up a little straighter and looks up. She’d been half-up, hunched over her pillows, possibly reading something by the near light. It’s hard to tell in the shadow, but Daria thinks she might be smiling.

“Get in here Morgendorffer,” she answers, not a whisper at all, and Daria slips inside and closes the door behind her.

She almost steps on some clay left on the floor, and stubs her toe against the easel, but eventually, she bumps up against the mattress on the far side of the room. Jane is pulling her in before she can quite get her legs to work. She ends up half-falling on her ass as she scrambles under the covers.

And then Jane is holding her so close and so warm, the silhouette of her outlined by the light behind her, her hands gently pulling the blanket up over them both.

Jane’s legs tangled up with her legs.

Jane’s mouth on her mouth, soft and slow.

Jane’s arm around her waist, hand splayed steady against the center of her back.

Jane’s body pressed against hers, Daria’s hand fisting into the fabric of her shirt like she just needs to hold on, needs her this close—

The kiss neither breaks nor gets deeper or wilder, just stays a low and steady thrum between them, but neither one will break it or let go. Kissing Jane is like breathing. Matching the working of her lungs to the kiss, or the other way around, or both at once. Feeling Jane in the rhythm of her lungs and her heart, caught up in the warmth of her body heat, the shape of her, the feel of the bare skin of her legs and the softness of her.

When they part, it’s barely parting. Jane’s breath warm puffs of her air against her lips. She feels the way Jane swallows, more than she hears it, and she can barely see anything at all in this poor light. 

Her name, when Jane says it, sounds like a sigh. “Daria.”

“Jane.” She licks her lips, she tries to catch her breath. 

“Couldn’t sleep either?”

“Barely tried.”

“Me neither. I’ve been thinking about you.”

“Me too.” She kisses Jane again, not as long this time, but with more pressure, more insistence and need. “I couldn’t get you out of my head.”

“Can never get you out of my head.”

“Mmmf—” The sigh, the hum of agreement, gets cut off in another kiss, and Jane’s mouth gently sucking on Daria’s bottom lip. She doesn’t care. Her thoughts are a haze—maybe she’s more tired than she thought—and she just sinks into it, just lets herself sink. Jane presses a little closer, presses her back into the pillows. She reaches up and tangles her fingers up in Jane’s hair, and in the quiet and the dark and the middle of the night, she thinks she could not possibly stand to be anywhere but here.