Rebound (jade x tori)

crush

a/n so hey peoples, there shalt be more ✨flirting by oblivious idiots ✨ until one of them gets smart and kisses the other

Jade's Pov

 I don't know why I called her Tori. Okay? I don't. It's a one-time thing only. No nickname and no affections behind it. Just trying to get her to sleep because she's drunk, I tell myself. It's morning. I know because the morning light is yellow on my eyelids. But I keep them closed, trying to fall back to peaceful sleep where I had no complicated thoughts parading through my brain.

 Getting her to sleep is all I did. No feelings or emotions at all-oh, who am I fucking with. I... am vulnerable to her. I am. I cry in front of her; she's the only one. I let her hug me, touch me, hold me. Only one. I saved her, and she saved me-saving her from pregnancy, saving me from my own suicide. 

 And she asked to kiss me.

So yes, there is an issue. There is a possibility that I do know why. I am not an expert in the feeling department, at all; on no account am I good at predicting or telling the feelings of myself or anyone else, whether to help or hurt. That's what she's good at. But unless I am much more mistaken than I think, I love her.

 I don't even know what did it, but if I was completely honest I think it's what I felt when I suicided. For a split second as I was falling I thought of one person. The memories we'd made, however many and however brief. Tori Vega. It was something unlike I'd ever felt before-and now I realize that's how she felt when she saw me dead, the reason she hugged me when I came back like her life depended on having me safe in her arms. 

 I feel her wake up; she's curled with her front on my back, one of her hands draped around my waist. "Jade?" her voice comes softly. "Just so you know, I wasn't... drunk last night." What was I feeling? Nothing. I was not feeling. That was ridiculous, of course. I was not feeling. Why would I feel? I WAS NOT FEELING. NO. I need to go shower.

 I say so, and she nods. I get in. And my eyes fall on the razor.

I hesitate, and then I grab the razor and do it, slashing my flesh open along my legs. I've done it before. There are scars, on the inside of them. Ugly scars. I want to cry at how ugly and twisted they are. Like my feelings. So I do. I cry. On the floor, bleeding. I managed to jam on underwear and a bra and a shirt, but I can't get pants on. The sound is blurred. I'm bleeding a lot. And then someone's in front of me. Who... Tori. She's getting first aid shit from the medical cabinet, she's working on my legs, on my cuts.

Tori's pov

We sit side by side in silence on my bed, my head buried in her neck. She's got baggy cargo pants on, and her legs are all right. I never want her to do that. God, I was so stupid to leave her alone in the shower with razors. I won't again. And then I see a tear drop in front of my eyes, and I lift my head, and Jade's crying.

I pull her back onto the bed with me, laying side by side with my head on her shoulder. "Why?" I didn't have to ask more than that. She knew what I was asking. Why are you crying. "They're ugly," she whispers. "My scars." And it happened to be just then that I felt something fierce bubble up in my chest. Love.

I love her. I do. I have a crush on Jade West! I do. This new side of her, the side that woke up with me in the middle of last night to stay up reading horrible knock knock jokes and pickup lines and make 3am macaroni and eat cereal on my floor even though there's a perfectly good couch behind us and beat someone up to protect me. She's beautiful, too.

I reach out with one hand, tilt her chin towards me, meet her eyes. "Jade," I said quietly. "This is the most compliments I can possibly give, so I'm only saying this once. But I also want to say it however many times you need, whatever you need. I want to help you and fix you and make you feel better. I also need to tell you something. Do you hear me?"

Jade nodded, fighting the tears.

"Your scars are the most radiant things I have ever seen. I don't want you ever, ever to be ashamed of them or think anything bad of them. Every time I look at these scars they show me how incredible you are. They show me that you fought, and that you won. They show me that you protect the people you love with everything you have. They show me that you're a warrior, and you're triumphant. They show me that you are amazing, inside and out, and no matter what anyone else says I don't want you to listen to them. When I look at these scars it lights a kind of fire in my chest, and I have never and could never be prouder of anyone. You are amazing, you are a fighter, you are a champion, you are a friend and a defender, and I need you to understand, more than I need anything else and more than you do too, that your scars are beautiful."

 I love her. I have a crush on her. 

 "I'm gonna go search your attic to find a coffee machine," she says, and I nod, smiling. She gives me a small uncertain half-smile in return, and I watch her go. After a tiny bit I decide to join her, going to the attic as well. After a little bit she called, "FOUND ONE!" so I follow her voice into a closed-off little closet. 

 It was dark, and musty, but on a shelf at about elbow height there was a coffee machine. I'm a little taller than her, maybe an inch, so when she tried to plug it in she couldn't reach the outlet. She said, "help me out a little," and because the closet was so small I had to step close behind her, reaching around her back to plug in the machine, and she turned at just the moment where our lips were three centimeters away and our eyes met and we froze, for seconds, all the while drawing closer and we closed our eyes and then the coffee machine made the most IDIOTIC GRINDING NOISE. IT SOUNDED LIKE A GOOSE SCREAMING BLOODY MURDER.

 So I unplugged it, and she carried it out, and when we got downstairs to where Trina was asleep on the couch, we were both blushing, and I didn't know why, or maybe I did, maybe it was because I just came THIS CLOSE to kissing her.