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The thing about Kit and Jade is that they had no reason to be as obsessed with each other as they were. There was nothing the two girls could do about it - they were drawn to each other - and they would be, no matter the universe, the millennium they were born into, where it was they would meet, they always would be obsessed with each other. Even if they were a knight and princess in some medieval time. Or so that’s what it felt like.
The girls had actually met each other in a chemistry lecture not even two weeks ago, but no bystander would be able to tell that, not with the way the two girls had been draped over each other since, closer than any two acquaintances should or had any reason to be.
Every Tuesday morning and Thursday night without fail, during their chemistry lecture, the two girls would be in the same spot, close enough to the front that their professor could see them but far enough to talk without it interrupting the entire class, sitting next to each other, close enough that they could most certainly hear each other breathe.
It was quiet one Tuesday morning, the two girls being the only ones in the lecture hall - understandably, given that it was the middle of winter and the class didn’t start for another half an hour when Jade offered Kit some hand cream.
Now, even though it had only been two weeks, this became a routine the two girls had with each other. Jade would offer Kit something, like crackers, cheez-its or even once a breakfast wrap, and Kit would always make the same face of shock at the offering.
Kit, whose hands were always far too dry, according to her mom, who insisted that she needed soft hands to play the harp. Kit didn’t like the harp that much, and didn’t really believe her mom, but if listening to her mom meant that she could keep playing volleyball, which was all Kit really wanted, she would do it. Kit did eventually grow into the routine, and so she took the hand cream Jade offered.
“It kind of smells like cologne by the way,” Jade says, as she’s giving Kit the lotion. “So people might think you have a boyfriend or something, because of the smell,” For some reason, something about the way Jade said boyfriend made Kit’s chest feel tight and weird but she couldn’t place why. So she just didn’t think about it.
But then Jade backtracks as if she had a weird feeling in her chest too. “I don’t actually know if you have a boyfriend, um, sorry, I didn’t mean to assume anything. You could have a boyfriend for all I know,”
Oh. Kit smiles, “Um, yeah, it’s okay, I actually-” and never gets the chance to finish her thought, never gets to tell Jade, because one of Jade’s other friends walked into the lecture hall and they start talking about some other class they had together.
And Kit just sat and thought about the hand cream for the rest of the day. It made her smell like Jade. Which was something she was incredibly normal about, of course.
They didn’t see each other for another week after that - Kit had gone to class and Jade hadn’t been there. It wasn’t too bad until their professor called her out on it.
“Your friend isn’t here this week,” he says, and Kit forces a smile onto her face and fakes a laugh. She leaves the lecture halfway through to go cry in the bathroom. Because she’s stressed about the upcoming midterm season, of course. Not because of Jade. That would be crazy.
The next time that Kit and Jade talk is during an intramural game of volleyball they both happened to be at - it was one of the first things that they bonded over when they first met, three weeks ago now. They’re both off, playing for opposing teams, when Jade breaks the silence after the two girls had been sitting on the same bench, watching the six or so games going on throughout the gym for about a minute.
“I saw you at the Scindere on Friday night,” is the first thing that Jade says to her in a week. “I was on the dance floor with my friends when I saw you. It took me a second, but yeah, it really was you. I was having a rough night, sorry I didn’t come say hi or anything,”
The thing about the Scindere was that it was a lesbian bar across town from their campus. And while Jade got to see Kit there, Kit was a little bit upset that she didn’t get to see Jade.
And then Jade starts telling Kit about some girl that she went home with from the bar, and Kit starts getting mad for a reason she couldn’t really understand. Maybe she was tired.
Jade’s talking about how great this girl was at everything when Kit interrupts her for the first time. “I’m not feeling too well, I’m gonna head home. Nice seeing you, though,”
“Get home safe,” is what Jade says. She must’ve remembered that Kit lived kind of far from campus - further than most people did at least. The idea that Jade remembered made Kit’s chest hurt, and she found some ibuprofen and ran to her bus stop.
She wasn’t even halfway home when she started to feel better. She didn’t think about it - she just used the afternoon to catch up on her different classes. Besides, there was nothing that she needed to think about. They were just friends.
That weekend, Kit went out with an old friend of hers, a girl named Elora, who had always been a very nice and sweet person, so much so that Kit gave her the nickname Dove, which sounded just enough like a pet name to confuse some people. This time, she saw Jade at the Scindere and made a point to go up to her. With Elora in tow.
“Oh, who’s this?” Jade greets with a smile.
“This is my - dove,” Kit hesitates. Something about Jade’s easy smile had a way about disarming her. Jade and her pretty freckles and curly red hair and that fucking smile.
“Elora,” Elora says, extending her hand towards Jade, trying to save Kit from her unfortunate fate. It works, if only a little bit, in that it gave Kit a second to recover. Elora looks between the two girls, and then back at Kit. “I’m gonna go get us some drinks, alright love ?” Elora, like the bastard she is, emphasizes the last word.
“Thanks dove,” Kit responds out of nothing but pure impulse.
As soon as Elora is out of earshot, Jade smiles that damning smile that makes Kit just want to punch a hole in the wall or swim across an entire ocean to prove a point, and says, “since when did you have a girlfriend?”
Now, Kit and Elora are very decidedly not dating. That was not a thing that would ever happen. They just didn’t see each other like that. So, Kit goes to say this. “We’re not-I’m-me and Elora are not dating, I promise,”
“Sure you aren’t, that’s why she calls you babe,”
“She’s just doing me a favour. Some guy was trying to hit on me earlier and she pretended to be my girlfriend to save me from him. And she thinks it’s funny.”
“Yeah. That’s what’s going on between you and dove, ” Jade emphasizes the last word and Kit was about to say something when Elora returns with three drinks - something Kit has never had before, most definitely, that she drinks anyways, as do Jade and Elora.
The three girls dance together for a while before Elora leaves to go to the bathroom or something like that. To be quite honest, Kit was not paying much attention to anything but Jade, and Jade’s easy smile, and the way Jade was dancing without a care in the world.
At one point, Jade started to dance closer to Kit - not that she had ever been very far from the other girl, as she had spent the whole night next to her, even as many beautiful girls tried to dance with her. But all of the sudden, Jade was close enough for Kit could feel Jade’s breath on her cheek and the pounding of her heart from the loud, sweaty club. The alcohol in her system let Kit’s mind produce one thought and one thought only: that Jade Claymore was beautiful.
“We should get out of here, get some air,” Jade all but gasps into Kit’s ear. Kit couldn’t really do anything but frantically nod in agreement.
The two girls aren’t even fully outside the door of the club when they’re kissing. Neither of them knows who kisses the other first, but they don’t really care. Even though they’ve barely known each other for a month, the whole month was wasted because they weren’t doing this.
Kit can barely stand with the way that Jade is kissing her, the way that Jade bites her upper lip and she’s whimpering as Jade puts her thigh between her legs. It’s barely been a minute and Kit is ruined for anybody who’s not Kit.
And then Jade goes back inside, and Kit follows her, and Jade spends the rest of the night dancing with at least fifteen other girls and Kit goes home and cries herself to sleep.
On Tuesday in class, the two girls don’t talk about it, but they sit as close to each other as they always do. They hang out in the library and talk - and Kit learns about Jade’s cats back home. It’s the best day of her life, seeing Jade talk so passionately about something.
Kit thinks that Jade could talk to her about bond order for hours and she would still want to listen to Jade talk more. But unfortunately, they both have things they need to do, so, she can’t. But she really wants to.
The next time Kit and Jade kiss, it’s a Thursday night and they’re both fully sober and at school. Their chemistry professor gave them a fifteen minute break during the lecture and the two girls took it to wander around the building they were in.
“I can’t believe I’ve been going here for years and I’ve never been anywhere but that one lecture hall in this building,” Kit says.
“So let’s see somewhere else then,” Jade starts a timer on her phone for fifteen minutes, just in case they lose track of time or something. And then she quite literally grabs Kit’s hand and starts walking up a spiral staircase, with Kit in tow. The two girls climb the stairs until they get to the building’s fifth floor - which neither of them had known existed - and start wandering around it. At this point, there’s no reason for the girls to be holding hands, but neither of them move to separate and now they’re just walking around an empty floor, holding each other’s hand.
Kit starts talking about something, wanting to break the silence that was making her nervous, and Jade starts to stare at her lips. So this time, Kit kisses Jade and pushes her against the wall a bit as she does. It’s a good second kiss, Kit has to say.
They break apart quickly, as the timer Jade set goes off, and the two girls all but run down the stairs back to their lecture hall, still holding each other’s hand.
Their professor, who is honestly only a few years older than them sees the two flushed girls run into the room and has to hold back a smile at their interlocked hands. He knew it.
And here’s the thing. It just keeps happening. Jade and Kit would never talk about it, but they would just kiss - sometimes casually, sometimes decidedly less so - and then act like the friends they were again. Sometimes they would go back to the Scindere and Jade would dance with other girls, but she would always come back to Kit.
And Kit could live with that. A little bit of Jade was better than no Jade at all.
Sometimes Kit and Jade would go to their professor’s office hours - sometimes because they had legitimate questions about the subject matter, other times because he happened to have the most comfortable couches and bean bag chairs in the room and almost no one went to them, so they’d have it all to themselves. It didn’t take long for him to learn their names.
He told them to call him Boorman - not mister, not sir or anything. Just Boorman.
One week, Kit came to his office hours without Jade - she was sick, is what she said. “Where’s your girlfriend?” Boorman asked, nonchalantly, like he was asking about the weather.
“My what?”
“Jade, right? That's her name?”
“Jade and I-we’re-we’re friends. We’re just friends.”
Boorman gives her a look. “I would say something but I am your professor and I would like to keep my job. So I am just going to say that this is a chemistry class after all,”
“Oh my god, Boorman,”
Boorman laughs at his own joke.
But his words stay at the back of her mind. And then she’s hanging out with Elora, her friend, who can be as honest as she wants with her. And when she too refers to Jade as Kit’s girlfriend, Elora just says something about how obvious it is that Jade’s in love with her, as much as Kit is in love with Jade.
Kit wants to deny that, she really does, but deep down, she knows it’s true. And she knows that it’s been true for a long, long time.
And so the next time the two girls kiss, which happens to be on a Thursday night after class when Jade had invited Kit back over to her house to watch Star Wars - a movie she was appalled to hear that Kit hadn’t seen - in Jade’s bed, Kit breaks the kiss and decides that she and Jade need to talk.
“I have something to tell you,” Kit says.
“Okay,” Jade says, with that same easy smile she had when they met, and leans up against the headboard, and wow she looks so hot and it would be so easy for Kit to just lean forward and press her lips against Jade’s - but she doesn’t. She needs to have this conversation first.
“I think, um,” Kit hesitates. She wishes she could be more poetic about this, “that I’m in love with you and uh, yeah. I just wanted to say that,”
“I know,” is what Jade says back.
“Don’t quote star wars at me,” Kit throws a pillow at Jade’s head.
“Too late.” She’s laughing now. “But seriously, I was waiting for you to notice or do something about it. I was trying to make you jealous, every time we went to the club. But you didn’t do anything not really. I love you too, by the way. Have ever since. Well, I don’t even know. I’m glad you finally figured it out and all that,”
“So are we dating now?”
Jade pretends to think about it. “Yeah. I think we are,” and she moves a bit so that she can wrap her arms around Kit in her bed before she starts the next Star Wars movie.
“Elora and Boorman are going to make so much money off of this,” Kit smirks.
“Oh my god, shut up, just watch the damn movie,” Jade says, and kisses her girlfriend into silence. Yeah, that’s nice. She’s glad Kit finally got her shit together.