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”

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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.)

More of my Tom/Daria fic, previous parts on the tag ‘cliche’

740 words, 25 minutes

Very, VERY explicit, okay?

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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’

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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." 

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

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

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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?”

More of the fic. See the tag ‘cliche’ for previous parts.

This isn’t really any more explicit than what’s come before but who knows, that might change soon. Completely under a cut for a reason!

Tom/Daria, 645 words, 24 minutes

Some more. Click the link to the tag with all the parts, here.

~650 words, 18 minutes

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All parts on the tag ‘cliche.’

~900 words, 28 minutes

Just under the wire

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By the time Tom picks her up from school two days later, she has just about convinced herself that the afternoon in his bedroom was a dream. Or at least, that it was a makeout session like any number of others, over the course of months of dating. They were just kissing. That was all, and any weird, uncanny shiver she gets when she tries to remember it, in bits and pieces, is just her inexperience. 

It’s certainly not the kind of thing that one could gossip about. That one could tell one’s friends–if she were in the habit of telling Jane anything about her romantic life with Tom, which she probably wouldn’t do, even if their history was simpler.

It wasn’t a base. It was kissing. And cuddling under the blankets in bed.

[So I forgot when I wrote this that I’d written Part 14; it’s intended to follow Part 13. Not for this reason in particular, but I’ve mostly decided to abandon this fic, at least in this form. Unless I change my mind, this is the last installment I’ll be posting.]

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By now, almost 2 years into the often unusual and sometimes cruel experience of going to Lawndale, and being Mr. O’Neill’s student in particular, Daria is used to weird, useless assignments like this. Pick something at which you know you’ll fail, be bad at it, and learn that failure is okay. Why does every idea this man has sound like it was cribbed from some crackpot self-help guru’s rejected manifesto first draft?

“Probably because it was,” Daria answers, when Jane poses the question. She pulls down on the lever that opens her locker, and yanks it open with that sweet spot of force it needs, even when it’s unlocked. “Do you know what you’re going to do for it?”

Jane shrugs. “Preferably something that requires very little effort.” She pauses. “Better yet, no effort.”

Jane & Trent, background Jane/Daria stuff, from my (unpublished) College AU

~540 words, 15 minutes

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At some point, Jane gets it into her head that if she just gets Daria back to Boston, everything will clear itself up. 

Her friends suggest inviting Daria to the avant-garde play some of the seniors are putting on this Saturday—the rumor is there’s only three lines of dialogue in the whole thing and they’re all at the end. And she almost brings it up because it’s sure to be pretentious and awful and the sort of thing Daria would probably like, in a loving-to-hate way, but before she can, Daria mentions that she’s doing an all-night movie marathon with Tom on Saturday. So in other words, she’s already busy.

Daria’s aware of a presence on the other side of her locker before she even closes the door. A high-pitched, squeaky sigh. A hint of bouncy movement. Blue sneakers, a pair of legs, and a cheerleader’s skirt visible beneath the gray metal shield of the door. She takes longer than necessary switching out her books.

When she does, and clangs her locker shut, she finds Brittany impatiently waiting for her. “Oh, Daria,” she sighs, in a passable impression of a tragic, Romantic heroine. Or the lead on a daytime soap. “I’m sorry. It’s so sad.”

“Lawndale decided to only play football during the football season?”

“What?” Her eyes go wide—wider—for just a moment. “No, they’d never do anything like that!” She leans in closer, like she’s about to share a secret, but her voice only approximates a lowered volume. “I mean about Jane.”

For a second, only a briefly flash of time, Daria’s heart skips, as if there were any world where something could happen to Jane and she wouldn’t be the first to know. Then she accepts the conversation as the likely nonsense that it is. “What do you mean?” she asks, and swings her bag over her shoulder, an indication that she doesn’t plan to be here long. “Jane’s fine.”

“No, I mean you and Jane.” She draws out the ‘you’ an extra syllable. “She’s dating that guy from the private school.”

Yeah. Old news. Jane’s been dating him for a month, has already left to go off with him—wherever. Luckily Brittany isn’t observant enough to catch the tight set of Daria’s jaw. “Tom,” she answers. And when Brittany seems confused, she adds, “The private school guy’s name is Tom. Why are you sorry about Jane dating him?”

“Because I didn’t even know you two broke up!” The up is so high-pitched only dogs could hear it, and so temporarily distracting that Daria doesn’t immediately understand or acknowledge the rest.

She shakes her head, like freeing it of cobwebs. “We didn’t break up.” And, before Brittany’s face can fully take on the look of scandalized, prurient interest it threatens, “We were never together. We’re just friends.” I’m not even gay.

Brittany just blinks at her. It’s annoying, how absolutely, urgently important it feels that Brittany understand the truth. What has always been true and will always be true.

“But I already voted for you for class couple!” Brittan yelps. “For the yearbook!” And in another attempt at a secretive tone, “Even over me and Kevvy. Don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t,” Daria promises, because it seems the shortest path out of this conversation. “Don’t worry about me, Brittany. I’ll handle the heartbreak.”

Brittany’s eyes narrow, like she’s trying to look shrewd. “So there was heartbreak.”

But Daria is already backing away. “About losing to you and Kevin for the yearbook awards. Now I’m off to drown my sorrows in a gallon of ice cream.”

She has the feeling Brittany is watching her steadily as she leaves, but she doesn’t turn around to check.