January 26: Daria/Jane, Are You Sure?

[kinetic_elaboration]

Finally getting to the end of YOTP 2025, with a fill for November: “are you sure?” with a bit of “touch-starved” thrown in.

Daria/Jane, established relationship; takes place during Anti-Social Climbers

1,300 words, 35 minutes

All parts of this ‘verse on the tag “alternate esteemsters”

*

Sometime after the worst of the snow lets up, even before it stops falling entirely, Daria starts to regret her confessions in the middle of the blizzard. Specifically, admitting that she was jealous of Tom sometimes, because he so clearly has a thing for Jane. She’d planned to take that one to the grave, and unfortunately, for a space of twenty minutes or so on a doomed class field trip through a real-life Call of the Wild scenario, she’d quite truly thought her grave was right ahead. 

Now the sky’s completely clear, and the worst the storm has left behind is a persistent numbness in her feet, fingers, and nose. So they probably won’t die. Most likely. Yet.

(It did help that Jane had confessed, in turn, that she’d assumed that Tom had a crush on Daria, and that she’d been jealous of him, too.)

 

Jane takes off her hat and beats the thin layer of snow off the top of it and into the drifts they’re still trudging through. According to Jane’s calculations, they’re getting close to the parking lot, close to the buses, where they can wait out the rest of this field trip in peace. And—the thought has occurred to her—in privacy. Daria isn’t so sure about these calculations, if she wants to rely on Jane’s half-forgotten scouting knowledge from sixth grade, and yet there is some evidence they’re heading in the right direction. The dense trees around them are starting to thin, and up ahead, Daria can barely discern an open clearing, a brighter sheen of pale winter snow on white.

When they reach the tree line, they find themselves in a flat, open area, snow-blanketed, with an old-fashioned wood cabin at its center.

“Are you seeing that too?” Jane asks, as she puts her hat back on.

“Yes,” Daria answers. “Which can only mean we’ve entered a state of mutual psychosis.”

She looks at the cabin, then glances back toward Jane. 

"What do you think the chances are,” Daria asks, “that we’ll find a family of cannibalistic serial killers in there?”

“Solid sixty percent,” Jane answers immediately, but she’s already trudging across the snow to the door.

Daria jogs to catch up, an awkward feat through the soft, tall snow, and is just able to stop Jane with her hand on the doorknob. “Are you sure about this?” she asks. The worry in her voice is so honest, all the joking drained from it, that Jane does hesitate, neither turning the handle nor pulling away.

“Sure about going inside and getting warm? Daria, my face is numb. I can’t feel any part of my face right now. I think there’s snow in my boots.”

“I mean sure about not going on to look for the buses.”

Jane sighs. “Daria. There aren’t actually serial killers in this cabin.”

“How do you know that?”

“No smoke from the chimney. No signs of life. No conspicuously bloody axe or hung-up human skin outside—”

“Very funny.”

“Do you want to warm up or not?” Jane takes her hand from the door, finally, and instead holds Daria still by both shoulders. She meets her eye with an intense, insistent stare. “Do you want me to warm you up, or not?”

Something, despite the light gusts of bracing wind, the frigid cold of the air, brings a warmth to Daria’s cheeks.  

It is a very solid argument, after all.

She slips out from Jane’s grasp and opens the door herself. “At least we’ve already shared our death bed confessions.”

“Right,” Jane agrees, following her easily. “Now you know my real feelings on the blue M&Ms.”

The cabin, mercifully, has electricity. Also minimal, mostly wooden furniture, a bear skin rug, and a working fireplace. Jane manages to get a fire going, while Daria explores the premises. “All signs point to uninhabited rental,” she announces, when she returns from the bathroom, and then she stops short.

Jane has already gotten out of her hat, scarf, coat, and boots, and she’s leaning against the back of the rustic, plaid-upholstered couch, rubbing the toes of one foot between her palms. She looks up when Daria doesn’t say anything more. 

“Okay,” she answers. “So why are you still wearing all your layers?”

It’s an excellent question. She pulls down the hood of her jacket, struggles to unzip it and pull her arms free with any kind of speed. Quinn’s thermal neck insulator is the next to go. She unlaces her boots and runs her fingers a few times through her hair, and then Jane is right next to her, against her, also running her fingers through Daria’s hair.

She passes her fingers through a couple of loose knots, then starts again, this time letting her palms come to rest against Daria’s cheeks. Leans in and kisses her slowly.

Daria’s arms wrap around her waist and pull her close until their hips bump up against each other, and her feet in just their socks are freezing against the cold wooden floor, and she doesn’t care. In the last cabin where they found shelter, they were surrounded by all of their classmates, and it was a very particular and new sort of hell to sit up on the top bunk of an otherwise abandoned bed, and have her leg pressed up against Jane’s, and Jane’s hand on her knee, and not be able to do anything more. Now she makes up for lost time, opens her mouth, presses her mouth against Jane’s hungrily.

“Mm—mmph! Wai—” Jane starts to separate, is caught up in another insistent kiss. She’s smiling as she pushes Daria gently away and puts the tiniest sliver of space back between them. “Fire,” she says.

“What?”

She sniffs the air on instinct, wondering if the place is burning down.

“Fire,” Jane repeats. “Warmth. Bear-skin rug. You and me…?”

Daria’s brain is currently working on about the same level of complex thought, so she just nods, twines her fingers through Jane’s and skirts around the couch with her. They end up on their knees first, not even bothering to sit properly, just letting the sound of the flickering flames drown out any remaining thought and the warm air wafting from the fireplace bring feeling back to numb skin. Jane’s fingers card through her hair, and she grips at Jane’s waist again. She doesn’t want to kiss too fast but she does want to kiss deep, missed her so badly, missed her worse for being with her all day and yet unable to do this.

“Missed you,” Jane murmurs, and Daria’s thoughts twist and knot: what is the difference anymore between her thoughts and Jane’s? Between what she thinks in the quiet of her mind and what Jane whispers against her lips? 

Still unwilling, unable, to separate, they find their way awkwardly down onto the rug, and then Jane presses her back against it, and starts kissing a slow, patient line along the curve of Daria’s jaw. She blinks her eyes open blearily. Her glasses are still on, and through them she can see with unusual clarity the long lines of the beams up above, the gray stone column of the chimney to her left. She can feel the flickers of heat from the fire, warming her left side more than her right. She stretches her neck and points up her chin and lets Jane settle in against her neck, kissing there not quite hard enough to leave marks, swiping circles with her tongue.

Daria wraps her arm loosely around her, one hand splayed along Jane’s side. She closes her eyes again. 

It’s a good thing, she says to herself, though the thought is hazy and ponderous and slow, that she doesn’t trust their classmates to make it back to the buses anytime soon. She and Jane can take their time here. They can take all the time in the world.