November 24: Daria/Jane, Thinking Too Much

[kinetic_elaboration]

Back at it again with another YOTP 2025 prompt–and it’s still 2025, too!

Daria/Jane, ~630 words, for the August prompt “you’re thinking too much.”

Previous parts on the tag ‘alternate esteemsters’

*

Jane picks up a small, silver stud from a display of jewelry by the wall and holds it out for Daria’s inspection. “What do you think?”

Daria squints, uncertain. She has found herself at Axl’s Piercing Parlor for the second time in less than a month. Which is about two more times than she had ever intended to visit any piercing parlor. She is not the right person to be giving opinions on any of this.

“Are you thinking of getting your other ear pierced?” she asks.

“No, my nose!” Jane grins. Her smile widens all the more at Daria’s reaction. “What, you don’t think I could pull it off?”

“It’s not that." 

 

Jane could pull off anything she wanted. Jane could pull off nipple piercings—which Daria almost says out loud, until she remembers that Axl is behind the counter, flipping through a magazine but very much in hearing distance. 

"Then what? Come on, Daria, you’re thinking too much.” She holds the stud up in the vague vicinity of her nose, which does nothing really to show what a nose ring on Jane’s face would actually look like, but Daria narrows her eyes again anyway, as if that would help. “Does it look hot?”

“Don’t ask me to be the judge of hotness. I’m the wrong person to ask about that.”

Jane sighs, sets the nose stud back down, and crosses her arms. “You? Daria Morgendorffer, the most honest person I know? The most blunt person I know?” She steps a little closer, lowers her voice. “Daria Morgendorffer, the only person whose opinion on hotness I care about?”

Annoyingly, she feels the skin of her face burn pink. She glances over to the counter, but Axl only flips another page in his reading material and doesn’t look up.

Jane is still watching her steadily, patiently, with her big, blue eyes and her slightly devilish grin.

Daria steps back. “You like to watch me squirm, don’t you?”

“I love it.”

“Fine, why don’t you try a belly button ring? I hear those are in.” She rolls her eyes, crosses her arms tight against her hest, and puts the slightest bit of snobby emphasis on in. Her own navel somehow itches at just the suggestion of having a hole punched in it and a little ring of metal stuck through. Ew.

“Are you still mad about Trent suggesting you get one?”

“No.”

Yes. 

“Well, he wasn’t wrong in thinking it would have been a great birthday present for me,” Jane answers, and shrugs as she turns back to the jewelry display again. She runs her fingers across a collection of earrings, none of which particularly match her style. “Because it definitely would have looked hot.”

Damn that blush again. 

With a sigh, Daria relaxes her shoulders, lets her arms fall back down to her sides, and walks the few steps to stand next to Jane again. She looks at the various studs, hoops, rings. For a moment, she pictures one of those small silver ones in her belly button again, but this time instead of being grossed out, she feels a small shiver of something else, instead. Something—almost pleasurable. Creeping up on her at the image of Jane pushing her shirt up, running her tongue in a circle around that spot, playing with the ring with the tip of her tongue—

Daria clears her throat. Her face feels like it’s on fire. With less reluctance this time, she reaches out and picks up the silver stud again, and she hands it to Jane. “You can definitely pull it off,” she admits. “Just don’t ask me to help you get the two-for-one special, okay?”

Jane smiles again, wide, and kisses Daria’s cheek. “Don’t worry, I think that special ended last week anyway.”