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.)

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”

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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.

Year of the OTP September prompt: “Date night gone wrong.” But I took a lot of liberties with “date night.”

Daria/Jane, established relationship, all parts of this verse on the tag “alternate esteemsters”

Some dialogue taken or adapted from Lane Miserables

~1,100 words in about 34 minutes

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Daria knows that asking ‘are you sure we’re alone?’ is a good way to jinx this quiet afternoon at the Lanes.’ But she does it anyway. She just has to be sure. Whenever they’re by themselves, they end up making out. And if they’re by themselves in Jane’s bedroom, that’s fine, but in her living room, right next to her front door, one room away from the kitchen, around the corner from the stairs, where just anyone could walk by and see them..? 

“I’m sure,” Jane promises.

“What if we went upstairs and watched TV instead?”

“What if you let me play you this record instead?” Jane counters, kneeling down by the shelf of vinyl next to the busted TV. “I don’t have it on CD. You’ll like it.”

More ‘cliche.’ Previous parts on that tag. This fic is rated E for sexual content. Seriously.

~670 words, ~20 minutes

Back again, after some hiatus.

Tom/Daria, ~970 words, about 30 minutes

Previous parts on the tag ‘cliche.’

This fic is rated E for sexual content.

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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.

More of this!

~800 words, 24 minutes

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In the darkness, Bellamy lies on his side, waiting to adjust to the near-total black of the room. Only the glow of the emergency lights on the other side of the door break the color up to gray. He’s somehow formed this habit, over the last several weeks, so subtly and stealthily that he didn’t realize he was doing it, of talking to Wells every night before they go to sleep, and that habit pulls on him now. But he’s too aware of Clarke on the couch on the other side of the room. He finds himself listening for her breathing, trying to make out if it’s steady enough to indicate sleep, wishing he knew if she snored or made noises when she dreamed. Anything. 

To listen better, he holds his own breath.

Without their usual conversation, the hard knots in his back don’t unkink, the stiffness in his shoulders stays taut and steady.