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The first time it happens they’re, ironically, in the janitor’s closet.
Jade told Tori to stick out her arm and then dragged her across the hall into the small room like she’d done so many times before.
It was angrier this time though, made obvious by jade practically throwing Tori against the door after it shut.
“Are you sleeping with Beck?” Jade yelled, very much encroaching on Tori’s personal space as she asked.
Tori didn’t know what the hell was going on. “What?”
“You’re too pretty to play stupid Vega.”
“Thank you?”
“No! Just answer the question.”
“Jade, I told you I wouldn’t do that to you. Why are you accusing me of this for the 100th time?”
In the past, Jade would snark back some comment - probably something about Tori being a bad singer - and then she would storm out of the closet. Presumably to yell at Beck for the same thing.
Tori braced for the dig, but instead Jade gave her a weird look, put one hand behind tori’s neck and the other on the door beside her head and pulled her in for a kiss.
It didn’t last long, much to Tori’s (surprising) disappointment. And then the other girl was out of the janitor’s closet and back to tormenting the hallways of Hollywood Arts.
Tori took a moment to collect herself before exiting the janitor’s closet herself and running to a class that she was very late for thanks to Jade.
If she spent all of her class thinking about what just happened, well that was to be expected, right?
—————————————————————————————
The next time it happens Tori feels like neither of them can really be blamed.
André brought them all to a party he heard about at some Northridge girl’s house. The drinks were free and they had all made some dumb pact to try and enjoy their last year together more, so they went.
Being that most of the students were from a different school, Tori thought that the group would stick together while they were there.
But shortly after they got there Cat made friends with a group of boys playing beer pong, Robbie decided that Cat needed supervision and stayed by the table (definitely not because of his obvious crush on the red head), and beck and André quickly split off to hit on a group of blond girls standing by the keg.
Which left Jade and Tori nursing their almost empty drinks together in silence.
“Drink?” Tori asked.
“Please.”
“Soooo… this is a Northridge party.” Tori said, carrying back two cups of beer with her and looking around at the giant house packed with kids she’d never seen before.
Jade took a big swig of her drink, clearly unimpressed. “Pretty lame for a bunch of rich kids.”
“It’s weird being at a party where nobody is breaking out in song or acting out some play in the corner. Makes me miss public high school a little bit.”
“Eh, you’re too good for them anyways. ”
“If I didn’t know better I’d think that was a compliment.”
“Don’t get all wonky over it.”
Tori smiled despite Jade’s comment, poking her in the arm teasingly. She was definitely starting to feel the two beers now. Damn her for being such a lightweight.
Jade practically growled at the contact. “Vega.”
Tori was not deterred. “Just admit you enjoy my company West.”
“Never.”
“But you’re hanging out with me by choice right now.”
“You’re better than these ganks .”
“Awwwww.”
“Why do you ruin things?”
Before Tori could answer, two guys walked up to them.
“Ladies.”
“You must be new here because I’m sure we would’ve remembered seeing you before. What’re your names?”
They both had smirks on their face and Jade instantly decided she did not like them. Not that she liked many people.
Tori wasn’t as charmed by their introduction as they clearly thought she was, but she was definitely too nice to ignore them or walk away.
But, as Jade always seemed to bring out her feistier side, she wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to mess with her friend a little.
“I’m Tori, and this is my best friend Jade.” She threw an arm around her.
Her arm was quickly thrown off.
“I am no such thing.”
“That’s no way to talk to your bff.”
“Vega.” Jade tried with her ‘warning’ voice, even though they both knew that never worked on Tori.
The boys, Chad 1 and 2 as Jade started calling them in her head, were clearly not seeing that this was a two-person conversation. “Are you beautiful ladies here alone?”
Jade saw her opportunity to mess with Tori back and an exit from the conversation. She put on a big fake smile. “No boys, we're here together.”
Her voice was clearly fake and laced with innuendo that even these waz bags wouldn’t be able to miss.
Tori definitely didn’t miss it or the way her body lit up, giving away how she truly felt about the idea.
“That’s hot.”
“Why yes, yes it is. So, if you’ll excuse us, I’m gonna show my girl here a good time.” Jade dragged a stunned Tori away from the two boys and towards the nearest door.
Which turned out to be, of course, a closet.
Tori looked around at her new surroundings, and managed to gather herself quickly once she realized where they were. “Well that was effective.”
Jade shrugged. “Figured you would never tell them to fuck off so I got creative.”
“I’m sure dragging me into a tiny coat closet definitely helped put their minds in a very creative space.”
Jade looked around, just now seeming to realize how small space they were in was. Her eyes darkened a bit as she closed the very small gap between their bodies.
“And what about you Tori?”
Tori visibly gulped. That was definitely not Jade’s normal voice. “What about me?”
“What did it do for your mind?”
Their eyes simultaneously glanced down then back up, scanning each other’s faces for a sign that they were on the same page.
Tori noticed that Jade had the same look on her face that she did in the janitor’s closet. This time, though, Tori wasn’t sure who closed the gap between them first.
Her back was pressed against the door, Jade’s lips attached to hers and hands roaming over her back. They hovered at her waist line, ghosting just under her shirt before Tori flipped Jade so Tori was pressing her against the door now.
Tori broke for air, glancing briefly up to make sure Jade was okay with what was happening. She didn’t want things to end and Jade to run out as quickly as she did last time. But she didn’t look like she had any intentions of leaving anytime soon, and Tori reattached herself to Jade.
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when she felt her phone buzz in her back pocket. She ignored it at first, occupied with the how breathless and hot she was, but when it buzzed for the 4th time she decided she reluctantly pulled away to answer it.
It was André. The group was outside waiting for them to leave.
“Time to go.” Tori said, still somewhat breathless.
Jade, however, seemed to instantly revert back to normal.
“I’ll leave first. Collect yourself and then follow.”
And that was the end of her second encounter with Jade.
————————————————————————
The third time, Tori was sure there was no chance of ending up in a small, uncomfortable space where her weird and confusing teenage hormones would take over.
Her and Jade had been meeting up, accidentally, in closets for well over a month now and Tori needed to know what the hell was going on.
She couldn’t sleep, she was distracted in all her classes, and she was even more on edge than usual around Jade. And the girl had threatened her with bodily harm on more than one occasion, so that was really saying something.
At lunch on Tuesday, Tori had gotten so flustered by jade sitting down next to her at the group’s table that she spilled water on herself and then fell backwards off the bench. And when her friends stared at her and asked her if she was okay, she sputtered out some excuse about inner ear issues and poor balance and then just ran away.
Then, Jade came up to her locker the next day and Tori didn’t even wait for Jade to speak before she slammed her locker and tried to run away. But, obviously, Tori had managed to shut her shirt in her locker and instead of making a dramatic exit, she ripped her sweater in half and twirled out of what was left before stumbling out the front door of Hollywood Arts.
Something needed to change or else Tori was going to seriously injure herself. So Tori texted Jade and asked the girl to come over to the Vega residence so they could talk.
Honestly, Tori was surprised she said yes, but also thankful that she had. Otherwise their only options were a car or the janitors closet and both of those spaces were entirely too small for Tori to trust herself around Jade.
Tori was sure that at her house there would be no reason that they’d have to hide or make a quick exit into a closet. At least, that’s what Tori thought. But really with Trina around and how her general luck had been going lately, she should’ve known better.
“Knock knock.” Jade stated as she strolled in to the Vega household.
“If you say knock knock while you’re already walking into my home don’t you think it kind of defeats the purpose?”
Jade just shrugged. “I could’ve gotten here early and snooped around your room again if you’d prefer that.”
“Entering through the front door while I’m present is definitely preferable.”
Jade made herself comfortable on the couch, looking at Tori somehow already impatiently despite being in her home for less than five minutes. “Why am I here?”
Tori sat across from her on the couch. “I thought that we should maybe talk.”
“Why?”
“You can’t seriously not know why?” Tori was already starting to feel familiar signs of frustration that only Jade could bring out in her.
“Let me guess. You’ve realized you’re a terrible actor and we’re hoping I’d give you some pointers?”
Tori huffed. “No”
“Singing?”
“Jade, no, this has nothing to do with my talent or my supposed lack thereof.”
“Then I’m stumped.”
Tori was sure that Jade knew what this was really about but just enjoyed pushing Tori’s buttons. Falling back into their bickering was comfortable. And comfortable was the opposite of talking about what had been happening between them.
She gathered the courage to ask what she really wanted to, dropping her voice a bit as if there was anyone around to overhear them. “You don’t think our little closet rendezvous are anything worth talking about?”
Jade immediately closed up. “No.”
Tori tried to reach out for her. “Jade come on.”
Jade groaned., shrugging Tori’s hand away and standing up suddenly. “Vega why do you always insist on talking about things? We’ve kissed a couple times, so what? It’s not like we have to skip off into a rainbow holding hands now.”
“Jade I’m not asking to skip off into the rainbow or whatever. I just – ugh – I just want to know if this means anything to you.”
“Why does it have to mean something? We’re high schoolers, it’s normal. And for once I’m actually having fun with you.” Jade crossed her arms and turned away from Tori.
“It doesn’t feel normal Jade.” Tori was standing now too. Circling around Jade so that she was forced to look her in the eyes. “It’s not like we’re two friends who got drunk and did something dumb. You’ve always said you hated me and told anyone that would listen that we weren’t friend. And now we’re doing whatever and I just wanted to talk about it.”
Jade is silent for a moment, still looking anywhere but at Tori, but her shoulders sagged and her face relaxed from the scowl she had earlier.
She turned back towards Tori, and practically whispered her response. If Tori wasn’t anticipating it, she’s sure she never would’ve heard it.
“I never hated you.”
Before Tori could respond though, Trina burst into the living room ruining any chance continuing confessions.
“Tori, you and Jade have to leave. Now.”
“Trina, this is my house too. I’m not leaving.”
Trina whined. “Come on! I finally got the pizza place to send their cute delivery boy and I need you not to be around when he gets here.”
“I thought they refused to deliver here anymore.”
The doorbell rang and Trina grabbed their arms and shoved them into the living room coat closet yelling, “NOW IS NOT THE TIME TORI, JUST GET IN THE CLOSET!”
Tori couldn’t believe that they had ended up in a fricken closet. Again. If she was internally panicking just a little bit less, she’d appreciate the irony of these engagements happening in closets.
This closet was smaller and darker, Tori realized, which only meant their bodies were pressed even further together in between the many coats and shoes, having to hold on to each other for balance.
When their eyes adjusted to the darkness and they were finally able to see how close they were to each other, the mood intensified.
“Jade, I—”
“Enough talking Vega.”
And Jade’s lips were on hers.
This time felt different after Jade’s small confession, laced with more vulnerability than Tori ever imagined Jade could show. Like Jade was trying to tell her something that she didn’t have the courage to say out loud. It was so much more than Tori was used to.
And, apparently, more than Jade could handle because almost as quickly as it had started, Jade had pushed Tori off of her and stormed out of the closet, past Trina, and through the front door.
Trina whipped around, glaring at Tori while the pizza guy used the momentary distraction to slip away.
“What the hell Tori?”
Tori was confused, and a little hurt, and could absolutely not deal with her insane sister right now. Without even justifying Trina with a response, she ran upstairs and threw herself onto her bed.
Maybe if she screamed into her pillow enough she would understand how the hell to make sense of Jade West.
-------------------------------------------
The fourth time it happens makes Tori think that she should just start to avoid closets altogether. Or, a different part of her brain suggests, she should only hang out in them.
The gang had gone to Wanko’s Warehouse for some stupid sale that had everyone all hyped up. As if any of them could afford to spend more than $50 without wiping out their savings of allowances.
They all crammed into Andre’s grandma’s van and drove to Wanko’s only to find out, unsurprisingly, that Trina had been wrong about the sale time. But nobody wanted to turn around and come back earlier the next morning, which led to Jade coming up with a ridiculous plan that Tori was sure was against at least a couple different laws and now the seven of them were killing time in Wanko’s until the store closed.
Trina had vanished almost as soon as they entered the store and Tori felt like she was better off not knowing where she was or what she was doing.
Tori was smelling some candles with Robbie and Andre until Cat had dragged her and Jade to the clothing section claiming that she needed something to wear that wouldn’t clash with her hair.
“Cat if you try on one more piece of clothing I’m going to put my head through a wall.”
Tori didn’t feel like dealing with her attitude. “Jade, you don’t have to be here. There’s a whole store for you to browse around.”
“But little Cat here needs fashion advice and I can’t leave her with you for that.”
“What is wrong with my clothes?”
“I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
Cat jumped in. “My brother thought about getting into fashion.”
Jade paused her arguing to address Cat’s comment. “What?”
“They wouldn’t let him get on the plane to Paris.”
Tori and Jade stared at each while Cat giggled and skipped off out of the dressing rooms.
“I don’t get that girl.”
“No chiz.”
Before Tori could retort, the store’s speaker crackled on.
“We will be closing in 15 minutes. Please head to the check-out counters.”
“Time to put my plan into action. I’ll text the others, everyone needs to find their hiding places and stay there until the security guards have finished their check.”
“Where are we going to hide?”
Jade looked around before dragging them into the nearest changing room.
“Doesn’t this feel a little obvious?”
“It’ll be fine trust me. Just hop up onto the bench so they can’t see your feet.”
So it wasn’t a closet per se, but it was small and they were alone. Tori couldn’t help but replay the events from the last couple of times her and Jade had been in such close proximity. She was doing her best not to let her rising blood temperature show on her face. She didn’t need Jade picking up on what she was thinking and having more ammo to make fun of her with.
Luckily Jade wasn’t as in tune with her emotions as she feared.
“Are you claustrophobic or something? What’s with the red neck?”
“You’re too pretty to play dumb, West.” Tori parroted Jade’s words back to her from their first closet encounter.
Jade’s eyebrows scrunched together. “No idea what you’re babbling about.”
“Come on Jade, I told you what this does to me.” Tori waived her hand between the two of them.
“What what does to you?”
“You know … being here … with you … in close proximity.”
“Oh, the sunshine and rainbows thing again.”
“Well no, this is more … wonky.”
“Tori Vega.” Jade quirked an eyebrow, getting closer to Tori partly to whisper and partly to continue making Tori uncomfortable. “Are you saying that I make you feel all wonky on the inside?”
“Ugh, don’t make me admit it again. I thought you didn’t want to do the whole ‘talking about it’ thing anyway?”
“I don’t. But you know I love to make you squirm.”
“Apparently in all types of ways.”
“Look Tori—”
Tori had enough. She was confused and the only person that could give her any type of clarity was standing in front of her refusing to have a meaningful and necessary conversation.
“No Jade. I need you to just be quiet and stop fighting this for two minutes so I can talk.”
Jade was shocked, but decided not to fight it. Honestly, Tori taking charge was one of the things she liked about her. Plus, whisper fighting was always fun.
“This – whatever is between us – is confusing. We keep finding ourselves in these weird, closed off situations and people that are just friends don’t respond to close proximity by making out. And I know you said you don’t want to talk about it, but I need to. I like talking things out and you’re the only one who I can talk to about this so I need you to give me answers. What are we doing?”
“What do you want to be doing?”
“I like what we’re doing.”
“Okay great! Conversation over.”
“Jade. I think – I think that I want more.”
“More, like more making out? More hands? I can do that.”
Tori smiled despite Jade either obviously or obliviously missing her point. “You have a one-track mind.”
“You’re the one that’s saying it Vega.”
“Well if you would just let me finish my sentence.” Jade was silent again. “What I’m trying to say, Jade, is that I want something more with you. Not the kissing or the hands, although I am definitely in favor of that as well, but just more. I want to stop meeting in closets or having to run away from you at lunch because I don’t want the guys to pick up on what being close to you does.”
“That’s all nice Tori, but what do you want?”
“You, Jade, I want you.”
This time Tori was sure that they both crashed their lips together in sync, mixing the passion with the softness and making them feel everything.
When the alarm system went off, Tori wasn’t sure how long they had been there. They broke apart, with Tori ready to watch Jade walk away from her again and go back to their friends without a glance backwards.
Instead, Jade interlocked their fingers and dragged Tori from the dressing room, not even letting go when they rejoined their friends in the van.
Nobody said anything, but Tori was content to keep holding Jade’s hand in silence for the whole ride back to LA.
After Wanko’s, Tori and Jade had come out of their metaphorical closets. Although not expressly because Jade refused to “bend to the heteronormative expectations.” They had started holding hands and making out at their lockers instead of in the janitor’s closet.
But that hadn’t stopped either. Jade made sure to continue dragging Tori into the janitor’s closet, bathrooms, or coat closets and Tori kept bugging Jade about feelings and being nice.
Really not much had changed between the two. They still bickered, but now whenever Tori started to panic or get frazzled for whatever reason, Jade would grab her hand and Tori would relax.
They still weren’t walking off into a rainbow together anytime soon, but somehow it worked. And if the whole group started avoiding closets when the two were around ‘just in case,’ well then, that was on them as far as Jade was concerned.