Disclaimer;

I don't own Victorious.

Warnings;

This fanfiction contains femslash - Jade and Tori. Also, it's rated M. If you're not into lesbians or this pairing in particular, that's cool, but I'd suggest you not read this fanfiction.

Author's Note;

Hello again!

I got an idea a couple months ago. It involved Jade, Tori, and an appearance or two by Cat, and I knew I wanted to try my luck at a multi-chaptered fiction. So here, have some Jori.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the first part. It's a little short, but it's just the tip of the iceburg.

Can't Stop

Part One

She decided Jade was some kind of sadist.

On a daily basis, Tori was threatened to be mowed over by her car or told she'd have her head slammed in her scissor-covered locker, and on some occasions, the threats weren't entirely empty, such as those numerous times she'd been shoved out of her seat or over a rail by one of those big, clunky combat boots of hers, (although lately, Tori noticed, she'd often opted for heels.) She decided that Jade was a dangerous game, like playing with fire in a house made of matches and gasoline; one little spark and the whole thing could light up the horizon.

That thought alone attracted the brunette to the girl in a way she hadn't thought entirely sane.

Tori wouldn't say she was straight. She'd found herself sneaking glances in both directions, and in the hetero direction, a little more openly. However, there were a few girls who caught her eye, and in her silently dangerous ways, Jade had managed to capture her attention and keep it to herself. She found that though her affections weren't all for the girl, (as obviously Jade would probably rip her throat out if she outwardly displayed any form of "closeness,") she found that most of her attention and her attraction were caught up on her. Only her. Anyone around Tori could tell you she couldn't hold down a boyfriend. Her eyes were elsewhere.

Often, Tori wondered what Jade felt - or if the dark-haired girl had any idea that she was silently fascinated with her. The way she moved; her voice; and naturally, that little ripple of anger that could turn into a full-force tidal wave. If she had felt Tori's eyes boring holes into her when she walked by in the hallways, or had the slightest idea of the thoughts that ran through little Vega's head, she was disguising herself well. Not once had she offered any hint of reciprocating those feelings. (Were they actually "feelings?" The word "urges" seemed more appropriate.)

It wasn't until the other night when they had been at Nozu that Tori had gotten anything out of her. Sikowitz sent them on a date together to prepare for their roles as a loving married couple. It had worked; the play was a success. Aside from that, however, it seemed as though Jade was becoming more restless and irritable when she was around Tori, as if she couldn't relax. Tori had been slightly put off at first, but after a few days, she decided that it was just Jade trying to repair the breach in her walls - so she could shut Tori out once more, and so she could pretend that nothing had changed and so she could just move on.

Tori could not have touched closer to reality than that.

Jade found that after that stupid date their teacher had sent them on, she was confused. Things had gotten beyond complicated, (by her standards.) She didn't want to let this girl into her world - no, her world was just fine as it was. Sure, she'd lost Beck, and he would probably not be coming around anytime soon. And sure, Cat had been off looking at boys lately, rather than spending time with her, (rather than taking the opportunity to kiss her when they watched movies, or taking her with her when she went to shop for those cute outfits the blue-eyed girl loved to see her in, or just plain being there when Jade fucking needed her.)

Tori wasn't going to be the one to catch her as she fell. Jade knew she could do a lot better than that.

So she'd begun pushing Tori away again, although this time, not so openly. Quietly, she barred the little brunette from her mind. She spent her nights alone, not caring that the silence of just herself between the sheets of her bed was driving her mad. There was no one who would replace Beck - and god damn it, he wasn't ever coming back - and certainly there would be no girl to rule her world as Cat had for so long. It would be wrong to let anyone take their places, because in her heart, those places were private and sacred, and they needn't be touched or even discovered by anyone. Ever.

But she could sense Tori's growing uneasiness as she began to avoid her in the hallways. As she came to a dead stop with the teasing glances, the snide remarks, the physical contact in general. She knew that one way or another, there would be a confrontation, and that she would have to get Tori away from her - and she had to find a way to keep her from returning, and seeing as the more she hurt the brunette, the more she'd come back for more, she'd have to find some other way.

She decided that Tori was a masochist.

x-x-x

A week and a half had passed since their "date," and Tori found that she could no longer stand being pushed aside by Jade. That day at school, she walked straight up to her as she stood at her locker. As she opened her lips to speak, Jade shot her a glare.

"Vega. Can I help you?" Jade asked quietly, silencing Tori.

"Yeah," Tori said before stumbling over her next words. "What's wrong with you?"

Jade's eyebrow quirked, as it always did when she found something genuinely surprising, (or even amusing.) She shut her locker and gripped her purse in her hands, beginning to dig through it as she averted her eyes from Tori's gaze.

"What did I do?" she asked as she pulled out her Pearphone, beginning to text away on it, (forming random words addressed to no particular number.)

She suddenly felt Tori's hands on her wrists, and her phone dropped to the floor. She looked up and found Tori giving her a rather intense look, and having been caught by surprise, Jade's mouth hung open ever so slightly.

"This," said Tori. "This 'ignore Tori' thing. It's got to stop."

Jade revelled in the touch of the brunette for a short, fleeting moment before she ripped her arms out of her grasp and snarled at her. Then, biting her lip, she remembered to contain herself, to not give Tori the satisfaction of her emotions showing.

"What do you mean, 'ignore Tori?'" she said in a voice hardly more than a whisper.

"You're avoiding me," Tori replied, her voice a little less demanding than before. "I really thought we were going to be friends after the other night."

"Well, you thought wrong."

Jade bent down to pick up her phone, and as she did so, Tori couldn't help but sneak a glance down her shirt. Of course, Jade wore those low-cut shirts to show off something she obviously had, and Tori often found herself quite blatantly staring at her chest. Jade felt her eyes on her, and as she looked up, she caught Tori's eyes quickly tearing themselves from her cleavage to the blue eyes now staring daggers at her.

Immediatley, Jade stood, shoving her phone into her purse and feeling furious enough to slap her there in the hallway in front of anyone who even looked at the two of them anymore, but finding instead that she suddenly hadn't the strength in her arm.

"That date wasn't real," Jade quietly hissed, "and you mean nothing to me."

She turned on her heels and stormed off toward wherever the hell Tori wouldn't follow.

Tori watched her walk off, and although the words had stung like venom, she knew that Jade was lying - to her and herself. Tori looked up at the girl's locker and then around the hallway, where she found that she was standing out in the middle of an incredibly desolate emptied hallway that seemed to suffocate her with silence. She obviously hadn't heard the bell ring.

x-x-x

Tori inspected the pair of scissors, looking for whatever Jade found so special about them. No, they weren't the pair from her favorite movie - these were her other scissors that she'd been toting around since before Tori had arrived at the school, (and she now pondered the legality and the safety of the girl carying them around at school.)

She had managed to convince Cat to slip them from Jade's purse, saying she wanted to clean them for her, and of course, Cat would believe anything that came out of Tori's mouth. Now she sat here, and, having posted a vague allusion to the whereabouts of Jade's scissors on TheSlap, she had nothing left to do but wait for the center of her attention to come knocking on her door.

Surely she would. Tori had the audacity to steal something from her, and now that she was holding it hostage, Jade would have to come retrieve what was taken from her. So Tori sat on the couch, texting Andre and flipping the channels on the television whenever commercials came on.

Her phone vibrated, and she opened the text without looking at who'd sent it.

"What are you trying to accomplish?" it read.

Tori stared at it for a moment before scrolling up to see who'd sent it. It was Beck.

She quickly typed back, "I just want her to talk to me, that's all" before mashing the send button. A few moments passed before the phone vibrated again, and she read the next words twice to make sure she'd not been mistaken.

"Just be careful."

x-x-x

Well, apparently, Jade was perfectly able of leaving her scissors in Tori's care, because Tori had waited up half the night without a single visitor to her home.

She walked into school the next day and talked to Andre and Robbie for the first few minutes before class. The bell rang, and as she closed her locker and turned to make her way down the hall, she felt a hand harshly grab her by the wrist, and before she could react, she was being dragged in the opposite direction of her first class.

"Jade!" she quietly yelped, and looking to the dark-haired girl, she saw a deadly storm brewing in her eyes.

In a moment's time, they were in the janitor's closet, and after shoving some heavy-looking items in front of the door, Jade turned and had her pinned, her hands pressing Tori's shoulders into the shelves.

Tori looked rather frightened, and for a moment, Jade simply burned into the brunette's eyes with her own angry gaze.

"You have my attention," she said, her voice heavy and strained to keep from screaming. "Talk."

All Tori could feel was Jade's breath tickling under her chin and on her neck, and she felt bumps rise to the surface of her skin. For a moment, she hated herself; becoming excited, (exhilerated even,) by a furious Jade threateningly pressing her into the rough edges of the shelves behind her.

"Can we try this again?" Tori finally spoke in a whisper. "Just all of this. Start where we left off."

Jade's brows furrowed further, and she found her eyes wandering down to Tori's trembling lower lip. It looked perfect, sitting there in waiting. Begging to be kissed. She leaned in for a moment and breathed her scent, and it reminded her of Cat - and the thought of the redhead caused her to tear herself away from Tori and turn away.

"Convince me," she said as she kicked the buckets and a few metal objects away from the door of the closet. "Give me a reason to want to try you again."

And just as quickly as she had appeared, Jade was gone.

x-x-x

"Well, this is exactly where I want to be," Jade growled as Tori walked her into Nozu. So much for forgetting about what had happened - she was now taking a seat at the same bar she'd been sitting at two weeks ago when they had been under the watchful eyes of Sinjin and... Well, whoever the other guy was. Tori took her seat beside the girl in fishnets and the server came up and asked them for their order.

As he moved away, Tori faced Jade and smiled. For a moment, Jade ignored her - but the fact that Tori was giggling made her self-conscious enough to give her a hard glare.

"What?"

"I'm just thinking about those two douchebags who hit on us," Tori replied before turning to the drink that had appeared in front of her.

Jade's lips curled into the slightest of smiles. "They're probably too traumatized to come back here," she said with a snort, and Tori laughed quietly.

"It probably would've been easier just to tell them we're gay."

Jade gave Tori a hard glare, and the brunnete simply shrugged, idly taking a sip from her glass as the blue-eyed girl contemplated what was going on inside the other's head. After a moment of silence, Jade surprised Tori by laughing quietly.

"Yeah," she murmured. "I guess that would've been easier."

Jade was not dense. She knew that Tori had more in mind than just a friendship between the two of them - in fact, she knew it was damn near impossible to hope for only that when there was so much tension between the two of them. Not just an emotional stress, nor just a mutual agreement to challenge each other, but a physical, sexual tension that she was sure could be cut with a knife. Jade knew she had a thing for girls - she'd proven it true. With Cat. On more than one occasion. But what about little Tori here? Was she really bisexual, (or even gay?) Or was she simply infatuated? Fascinated? Curious? (The last word hurt Jade a little for some reason.) Well, as often as she lost herself in Jade's chest, she might as well have been.

"So why are we here?" Jade asked, eyeing the sushi the guy across the bar was clumsily stabbing at with his chopsticks.

"To have a good time," said Tori, giving her a grin. "You know... Eat some sushi... maybe sing some karaoke. . ."

The last suggestion caught Jade's attention.

Everybody knew Jade could sing, but what many people didn't understand was how deeply it affected her. There was something about singing that put her in a sort of adrenaline high; the sound of her own beautiful voice entrapped her in her own little world, and for a moment, she felt nothing but the tones and beat of the music to which she sang. Even if it was in some stupid karaoke bar, the music enveloped her, took over her. And that little duet with Tori - something had felt so inexplicably right about it.

"Alright, Vega," she said, her lips curved into a slight smirk. "I'll take you up on that offer."

It had been around twenty minutes and their food hadn't arrived. Something was obviously happening in the kitchen, as they had sent out the host to distract the patrons with music. Everyone was up and gathered around the speaker system with only a few people sitting in the booths, having already received their meals.

Tori and Jade were still sitting at the bar, talking over the music about whatever they could, (mainly school,) until a Ginger Fox came on over the stereo. After a moment, Tori had begun singing along, and Jade's eyes settled on her, entranced by the way the muscles in her throat and face worked when she hit the higher notes. It was as if Ginger Fox wasn't even singing anymore, like the track had died completely, and it was just Tori, singing to her glass in front of her, unaware of Jade's watchful stare.

After a few moments, Tori looked over to the girl next to her, and her singing trailed off. Jade had her head propped up on the palm of her hand, and there was a small smile on her lips. Their eyes met, and immediately, Tori felt a heat rise in her cheeks. Jade hadn't looked at her that flirtingly in a long time, and although it was certainly a welcome change of attitude from the cold shoulder she'd been receiving, the brunette found that it stirred a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Tori smiled. "What?" she asked playfully.

"Nothing," Jade replied, her eyes migrating to the other end of the room and then back to the girl before her. "Your singing's not terrible."

Tori bit her lower lip to keep from smiling any larger, and Jade found that her eyes settled there again; on those thin, finely-shaped lips. The impulse to lean in and press her own against them shot through her, but she immediately shook the thought and looked off aimlessly around the room.

"Thanks," Tori said. "And you sing great, too."

The blue-eyed girl shook her head and muttered something unintelligible, and Tori's eyebrows arched. She leaned in a little closer and asked what she'd said, and Jade nearly froze at their sudden closeness. For a moment, she stared at the condensation running down the side of her glass, trying to think of something snarky to say, something so dangerously threatening that Tori would have to be a complete idiot to pursue this any further.

But instead, she turned to the other girl, their faces within mere inches, and said in little more than a whisper hardly audible above the music, "You're making it hard for me to hate you."

They stayed like that for a moment, each staring at each other, each wanting the other to make the move that would end all of their current struggles and start something new entirely. Jade was ready; ready to just throw her inhibitions and hopes to move on right out the window and just make this girl melt into her lips and hands.

However, when Tori refused to step up to the plate, Jade narrowed her eyes and gave a wry smile, slowly retracting and grabbing her purse from the stool beside her. She stood, adjusting the neckline of her shirt, (giving Tori a fleeting view of what was hidden by the thin gray fabric,) before shaking her head.

"Thanks for the sushi, Tori," she said and turned for the door, leaving the brunette sitting alone as the next song started up, her mouth hung agape.

Tori was now stranded here without a ride and left with the bill of the sushi that hadn't even arrived, and the scent of Jade's hair that lingered around her was driving her insane.