get your lips on me | JENLISA

One

Tuesday is a normal day, until it abruptly is not. Lisa is reading for next week's seminar when Jennie appears as if from thin air and slams her palm down onto the table next to her open book.  

Lisa does not jump. Few things surprise her. It is one of the things in which she prides herself most; she meets every situation head-on, eyes-open, mind already preparing a plan of attack.

The words that come tumbling out of Jennie's mouth prove to be an exception to that rule.

"I need you to give me a hickey," Jennie says, a little out of breath like she's just run across campus to deliver this incredibly important mission.

"I..." Lisa starts, brain going unfortunately muddled. "I beg your pardon?"

"I need you to give me a hickey," Jennie repeats, like Lisa's confusion was due to her teammate merely not hearing her fully, not that it's a ludicrous string of words for Jennie to direct at her.

"I—" Lisa furrows her brow, shakes her head, "— what?"

"A hickey." The other girl helpfully points to a place on her neck halfway between her ear and her shoulder. "Like right here or something."

Lisa stares at the spot and, for exactly one second, imagines it. Imagines brushing Jennie's wind-tousled hair behind her shoulder and pressing her lips, the blunt edge of her teeth, her tongue to the area halfway between Jennie's jaw and shoulder and—

Lisa slams her book closed far louder than she'd like to given that they're in the library and she is desperately trying not to look like a flailing lesbian on the brink of a gay crisis.

Amazingly, her voice is only partially strangled when she asks, "Why?"

Jennie flips her hair over her shoulder in a move disconcertingly similar to what Lisa had just imagined and flops sideways into the seat next to Jennie's, one elbow on the back of the chair, one on Lisa's literature notes, knees pressing distractingly into the side of Lisa's thigh.

And, again, Lisa prides herself on her quick-thinking, on keeping a level head in all situations, on being able to take in a wealth of facts and quickly and efficiently assimilate them into a cohesive argument or strategy. It's her best skill, she's been told (usually by Mary after a well-placed pass). It's her best skill, and still. This–Jennie's absurd words and her body voluntarily and openly angled into Lisa's own–it's... It's a lot for her to handle all at once.

Though to be fair: Jennie is a lot to handle. Something Lisa has been learning and relearning ever since Mary dragged the small hellion sitting next to her onto the frisbee pitch last fall.

Thankfully, Jennie is talking, leaving Lisa free to gather her disparate pieces before they go spinning out beyond the atmosphere.

"This guy in my geology seminar," she's saying quickly–of course quickly, Jennie never does anything slowly so far as Lisa has seen– "keeps giving me 'The Eyes' and I don't want it to be awkward because, like, I don't want to date him, I just want his notes, see? But I don't think he'd be as likely to give them to me if I just, hard no-ed, never-gonna-happen-ed him. Y'know?"

Actually, no. Lisa does not know. She takes excellent notes and usually her concentration face is far too unapproachable for a classmate to ever mistake it for interest. Which is preferable, really. Much less awkward that way. And certainly much less... Whatever it is that Jennie is going on about.

But Jennie is looking at her so expectantly, like she assumes Lisa must understand, like she out of all people is as magnetic as Jennie just naturally tends to be.

Lisa doesn't want to leave her hanging. When it becomes apparent that that is all the explanation Jennie thinks is necessary, she spins the wheels in her brain, desperate for some kind of traction.