December 24: Daria/Jane, Coming Out of My Cage

[kinetic_elaboration]

Daria/Jane, 1,080 words, 27 minutes

For the Year of the OTP October prompt: Mr. Brightside by the Killers

Brainstorming for this slightly crack-y idea came from a conversation with @riotsquirrrl. Some ideas that didn’t make the cut: Trent incorporates “my soul’s waves of grain” into the lyrics, and Brandon Flowers is secretly in the audience.

Some dialogue from “Jane’s Addition”

*

A flat Ultra Cola and a bass-heavy sound system that will probably be the reason she’s wearing hearing aids at forty. Or: just another Friday night at the Zon. What distinguishes this particular evening is that Jane has convinced her that they should include Trent in their multimedia project for Language Arts, and they’re supposed to talk to him about it during intermission. Daria can’t say she’s looking forward to that conversation. She can already feel the waves of anxiety coming off of Jane about this potentially grade-saving collaboration, anxiety hidden so well no one else could discern it beneath her usual stream of sarcasm and jokes. Adding another Lane to the project doesn’t seem like it will help in any way.

But Daria has a hard time saying no to her.

 

And maybe it will work out: Spiral is debuting a new song, a rough version of something that might, with more work or in a somewhat different universe, be good. So maybe Trent is on a creative high. 

“I’m coming out of my cage,” he sings, rough, so close against the mic that feedback buzzes underneath. “And I’ve been feeling some rage. Gotta gotta be down because I want it all—”

She’ll give the band one thing: that melody will be stuck in her head for days. 

Upon some more consideration, she reaches out and elbows Jane in the side. “Hey.” The band’s so loud, especially that damn bass, that Jane doesn’t hear her. She’s not even looking in Daria’s direction. She’s staring, her head slightly tilted, a curious furrow between her brows, at some preppy looking kid on the other side of the room.

“Hey,” Daria tries again, and elbows her a little harder.

“What? Oh, sorry.” Jane shakes herself out of it and turns back to Daria again. “That guy over there keeps looking at me.”

“Yeah, I can see you’re upset about that.”

“Oh, come on.” Jane jostles her back, so that Daria’s remaining Ultra Cola sloshes up the side of her cup. “You’re not jealous, are you? He’s wearing khakis.”

“He’s your type.”

“Huh? No way. Maybe he’s your type, and that’s why you noticed him. Anyway, what were you saying?”

Unsubtle topic change, but she’ll allow it. “I’ve been listening to these lyrics—”

“That’s your first mistake.”

“Do you think Trent had a threesome?”

The brief flash of confusion and faint horror on Jane’s face tells Daria that she did very well hear her. But she feigns ignorance. “What was that? I couldn’t hear you over this bass.”

“I said—never mind.” She knows if she raises her voice any higher, the song will end at the perfect time for her to yell “threesome” to a crowded room. The mortification of that experience might cause her to literally burst into flames. “I’ll tell you later.” She drains the last of her soda and adds, “I’m going to the bathroom.”

When she returns not five minutes later, the preppy guy from the far side of the room has become the preppy guy standing right next to Jane. Daria approaches just in time to hear him ask, “So does your brother write the lyrics, too? Because I’ve been trying to figure out if this song is about a threesome or a love triangle.”

“Let’s go with love triangle, for the sake of my own sanity,” Jane answers. “Trent’s been scribbling lovelorn lyrics in his notebooks since he was fourteen. He doesn’t have a lot of luck with women.” She catches sight of Daria, then, arms crossed and frowning next to her, and immediately wraps an arm around her shoulders. “I don’t have that problem. This is my girlfriend, Daria. Daria, this is—”

She cuts herself off, a questioning sort of opening there at the end of the sentence, and it becomes incredibly clear that she has no idea who this guy is.

“Tom,” he finishes for her. He’s recovered decently from the shock of this new information, although his eyes won’t stop bouncing between Daria and Jane, like he can’t figure out how to get the two of them in his field of vision at once. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” Daria mumbles.

“And I’m Jane,” Jane adds, in a stretch of silence as the final chord of the song rings out. “By the way.”

For once, the Zon is way too quiet. Daria can hear the scratch in Tom’s throat as he clears it. 

“Hey, I was thinking of getting something to eat,” he says, in a middling imitation of a casual tone. Like the idea really had just come to him, like the sentence wasn’t tested at least fifty times in front of the focus group in his head. “Maybe burgers? If you’d like to come. Both of you.”

“We do come as a set!” Jane answers brightly. “What do you say, Daria? Burgers?”

“Aren’t we supposed to be talking to Trent?”

Even that seems more fun than watching some guy she doesn’t know flirt with her girlfriend.  Flirtation that Jane is either oblivious to, or pretending to be oblivious to. Usually, she strings guys along for a while, until it stops being fun, then drops them with a well-timed reference to Daria. But she doesn’t usually go off with them to get fast food on a Friday night.

“We can talk to him later,” Jane answers. “Come on, I’m starving. And Tom has a car that’s falling apart.”

“And that’s a good thing because…?”

“I’m appealing to your spirit of adventure,” Tom answers.

Daria sighs. “All right. But if the car explodes and we all go up in a fiery inferno, you’ll never get off academic probation.”

“If the car explodes, I won’t care about academic probation,” Jane answers with a shrug.

“Don’t worry,” Tom assures them. He sticks his hands in his pockets and starts walking toward the exit. “It’s a Pinto. It’ll only explode if it’s hit from behind.”

Daria and Jane exchange a short glance, a wordless question. Did they both hear that? Did he hear that? Should they—?

A quick movement of one shoulder, up and down, Jane’s answer.

“How comforting,” Daria answers. “And hey, Tom. If I had to guess about the song, I’d say it’s about a threesome.”

Luckily, they haven’t stepped outside yet, and the light of the Zon is bright enough to reveal the blush rising across his face before he laughs and tries to shrug the whole thing off.