Title: i don't want to fade
Summary: But eventually, we all grow up. Ensemble!Fic
Author's Note: Wrote a lot this at the end of my senior year of high school, but never fully finished it. It's probably a little rushed, but so is senior year, am I right?
/
Senior year, and everyone's tired of being different. Robbie's thinking of going into accounting, Jade thinks she'll major in English with a minor in Theater, and everyone else dreads reciting line after line and singing the same old pop songs about love and kisses. Everyone seems to be worried about their future – about the real world.
Jade tells Beck after school one day, "We can't fight forever, Oliver. When the fighting stops, we stop. And I don't want to fade."
They break up, and three other couples break up within that week. People start to realize that high school relationships have been baby steps. Cat kisses Robbie at a party and tells him she doesn't want to just kiss him – she wants to kiss everyone. He cries on her shoulder as she kisses a boy with blue hair.
Everyone starts to party more. Tori can't count the amount of times she's been carried home and tucked into bed on one hand. At one party, André tries to drop it low but ends up falling to the floor, almost concussed. Jade, with the non-existent curfew, comes to school late most days with dark sunglasses perched on her nose.
No one stays on campus for lunch when they have senior privileges, so no one shares stores over french fries. Beck smokes weed in his car during the lunch break, and sometimes, Tori joins him, just for company. Once, when they're high, Tori tells Beck something she's noticed. A year ago, they were all furiously in love – Tori, Beck, Robbie, Cat, André, and even Jade were almost nauseatingly close.
"Beck, I feel like I'm going through an excruciating break up or something. We're all getting over each other, you know? It makes me so goddamn sad."
Beck takes another hit because he's thinking of Jade, and when he hands the joint back to Tori, their fingers brush.
Tori laughs and it dies in her throat, "God, Beck. I think I'm about to cry."
And Beck kind of smiles and holds her hand for a while. The smoke trapped in the car fills their bloodstreams and it's kind of like they're connected, maybe. The joint burns out eventually and singes Tori's hand, but when she cries, she isn't crying about the burn. When she tells Beck that, sniffling into a crumpled Dunkin Donuts napkin, he laughs so hard he snorts. And then she laughs too, and it's kind of okay.
And yeah, senior year is when Tori admits she loves Beck just a little. They get drunk on New Years at some house party thrown by this girl in Beck's calc class and Tori's drinking champagne when she thinks, Jade gave up on me. And she doesn't really know what that means, so she drinks more and more until she ends up straddling Beck's lap three minutes before midnight, mouth on his. They take their lips away at twelve, listening to everyone cheer. Beck is smiling and tracing Tori's lifelines. Tori's head is on his chest and she thinks, okay, now what.
And like, Tori hears that André picks up some girl from the party and fucks her. At three in the morning, he wakes up to the sound of her vomiting in her bathroom. It's the second girl he ever has sex with and he doesn't write a song about her. Cat tells her that she kisses Robbie and this guy Theo and this girl named Jazmine with a z and Robbie drinks blueberry vodka and gets called a pussy. Jade doesn't even go to this party – she goes to the local college bar, gets hit on by some hot Russian Lit major, and meets his girlfriend after she makes out with him on the cracked leather booth.
Tori's walking to campus when she sees the glimpse of black and blue from the top of Jade's sunglasses. Jade laughs at Tori's gaping mouth, makes Tori buy her a coffee, and for the first time in months (no, maybe ever, really), Jade and Tori talk.
"I got into NYU," Jade says, blowing on her coffee. "Early decision."
"Congrats!" Tori says excitedly. "I didn't hear about it."
"Well, I'm telling you now."
Jade smirks, but it's softer now. A little light on the edges. Tori smiles back, pushes her hair behind her ear, and breathes deeply. She closes her eyes for a minute and Jade doesn't say a word, just takes a deep breath too.
"Heard you hooked up with Beck," Jade says, after a few minutes of silence.
Tori winces, "Jade – look, I'm so-"
Jade puts up her hand, "I'm happy it happened. It was always going to happen – inevitable. He and I are done. It's alright."
Tori blows on her chai tea and sighs, "Well, it happened. What does it really matter now?"
Jade snaps her fingers and rolls her eyes, "It matters, Vega. I'm not going to pull out the whole 'I see the way he looks at you' crap because you know. Now stop feeling sorry for yourself, drink up, and look forward to the fact that we're finally leaving high school."
Tori opens her mouth and Jade interjects before a syllable can be uttered, "And don't tell me that you loved high school. Our high school may be fun, but it's still a high school."
"I was going to ask you about your eye, actually," Tori says, finally closing her mouth.
Jade looks at her for a minute and then laughs hard. For some reason, the situation seems hilarious and Tori joins in too. In those moments, Tori doesn't miss the past.
But things get fast, quick. Robbie gets into USC and almost cries because finally, finally someone's noticed his potential, and promptly throws out Rex in a McDonald's garbage can filled with ranch dressing. Beck gets into every school he applies to – small liberal arts colleges people pretend not to know the name of. He decides to take a gap year.
Tori gets into two colleges of the ten she applied to and waitlisted to three. She wants to die, but gets drunk at some underclassman's party with Jade, instead. Beck calls her about seven times and she puts her phone on silent. Jade tries to kiss her – NYU is so far away and Tori isn't but Tori hates the way Jade looks when she's leaning in, so she pulls away. Tori gets a ride from some sophomore's mom, asks to go to Beck's RV. On the car ride there, she asks the concerned mother, "We're not going to be together anymore, are we?"
The woman does not respond, so Tori puts her head on the window.
Cat gets an internship in Scotland and squeals "home of the redheads!" every time someone brings it up. André fucks his admissions officer and gets into a Juilliard fellowship program at seventeen years old.
Tori and Beck fuck during lunch breaks now. He wants to be clean for his gap year, so he stops smoking weed. Tori thinks about her almost kiss with Jade, sometimes, when Beck sleeps over and falls asleep early. He's tired, lately. Tired all the time and Tori is always awake and thinking.
Cat finally tells Robbie she wants a commitment, during senior skip day. Robbie laughs, strings his arm around Cat's shoulders.
"You're going to find someone in Scotland, Cat," Robbie says softly. He's become somewhat calmer over the past year, after finding out that people think he has potential in big gleaming lights. "A man with a Scottish accent who rides motorcycles and thinks you laugh too much."
Cat cries and asks when Robbie stopped loving her, but Robbie quiets her, "You're just getting nostalgic for the past, Cat."
André starts to pen poems over songs and calls his admissions officer, one day out of the blue, and apologizes. His admissions officer laughs into the phone – his laugh is harsh, yet lovely, and André writes a song about it after the man asks him out for dinner. "I'm twenty three, for god's sake," the man says, voice lilting. "I'm allowed to be a little unprofessional for a hot guy with a good voice."
Jade never says anything about the kiss to Tori. She starts going to clubs even though she hates the crowds. Does her first line of coke with a girl with a gap between her teeth, whose hair shines under the fluorescent lights. "Wanna fuck me?" she asks Jade. "You're so fucking hoooot."
Jade shrugs and brings her in close. When she closes her eyes, the girl could be anyone. But she's someone and she bites Jade's lip and pumps her fingers into Jade. Jade wonders why she's not interested in this girl, because she's beautiful, makes her feel things she hasn't felt in ages — but knows, deep down, why.
Tori sneaks out of her house one night and calls Beck.
"I love you," she whispers while the phone rings. When he answers, she can't say a thing.
"Tori?"
"I—I'm going to miss you," she stammers out.
"Come over, baby," he pleas. "Let me hold you."
Tori feels sad for everything. For the end of an era, for the end of friendship, for the possibility that this, this beautiful, precious gift of love, will end too. She can barely breathe.
"I don't know if I can see you anymore without it hurting."
André is the first to leave. Tori is the only one to say goodbye. He kisses her nose, wants to tell her about the admissions officer, Hasan, who makes his blood wail. But her eyes are too sad and she keeps holding him so tight that his bones creak, so he saves his breath. Tori drives him to the airport and, in the car, outside the departure gate, she starts to cry.
"Have you loved someone so much that it physically hurts to think of being away from them — but you also can't be around them?"
He knows she thinks he loved her. Once, he might've. But now, all he sees in her is a little doll that's been loved too much and then left alone for a long time. He grabs her hand, squeezes it tight, and quickly kisses it.
"That's how goodbyes taste," he says.
Cat's next, but she's long stopped talking to everyone. She leaves Robbie a cupcake on his bedside table, along with a list of diary entries about him. They're not very personal, just observations that feature him, but there are a few that still make her want to cry. She gets on her plane with her fingers crossed, thinking: Scottish man, motorcycle, laugh too much — Robbie.
Tori shows up to Jade's house after Cat leaves. It's still the middle of the summer and Tori's flip flops stick to her feet from the humidity. Jade opens the door and wants to slam it closed immediately, because her head is moving in circles and she's afraid, for the first time in her life, she'll say something she won't be able to take back. Tori comes in anyway.
They curl into each other in Jade's bed, Jade's stomach against Tori's back. The black sheets tossed on the floor because it's too hot, too hot, too hot. Jade wants to touch Tori so badly her fingers shake.
"I'm sorry," Tori says.
"I want you," Jade says.
Tori turns to look at Jade and everything between them is excruciating.
"I'm in love with Beck, you know."
Jade wants her so badly that the pain doesn't even register. Her fingers are dying to be inside of Tori, her ears are dying to hear Tori say her name, her organs are beating, crying, wanting.
"Tori," Jade whispers, "I think I've loved you since I met you."
That's when Tori kisses Jade, twisting her fingers in her hair, moving her body so that she straddles Jade, hips crunching against hers. Tori's kisses are so soft but her body is harsh. Jade's hipbones have never suffered so much abuse, and yet, it's the most painless experience of her entire life. Jade's fingers twist inside Tori and she watches as Tori's eyes turn from sad to dilated sorrow pools. Jade can hardly look at Tori without her heart feeling stabbed, so she lowers herself down and licks and sucks and Tori's thighs are against her cheeks, soft, loving cushions.
When Tori comes, she comes in sighs.
"Do you want me to —" Tori asks after she recollects herself. Her cheeks are flushed.
The thing is — Jade knows she won't be able to breathe again if Tori touches her. Never before has she wanted someone so badly to touch her, but if Tori touches her, Jade knows she will never be okay again.
"What I need right now is for you to go to Beck, Vega," she says.
Tori nods, eyes sad again, and puts her clothes back on. When she leaves, Jade could convince herself that she was never there. But her bed smells like her and her mouth tastes like her and she is aching in every way, so she calls Robbie.
"It's your lucky night," she smirks.
He fucks well. She missed having someone inside her, having someone be a part of her, and wishes he could stay in her forever.
"I've always wanted to touch you," he says, when she's panting in his ear. "I've always wanted this."
Jade knows the sentiment too well, so she gets on top and rides him good and proper. When she leaves for NYU, he hands her a pack of condoms.
He laughs, "If you ever want to save another nerdy boy."
She kisses him harshly, smiles against his mouth, "I think I met my quota with you."
Tori avoids Beck for ages and soon his calls are less frequent. One day, she sees a Twitter post from this poet and it's stupid really, but she knows just from that. She goes to his RV and knocks on the door. When he opens it, he's shirtless and wearing dark shorts. No socks, she notes.
"I love you," he says, speaking before she can recite the speech she came up with in the car. "I'll love you even if you finally tell me this… isn't."
Tori feels her mouth open and close. She closes her eyes and exhales them open.
"I'm scared, Beck."
He nods. She pulls out the acceptance letter to UCLA.
She shakily laughs, "Will you bear with me?"
When he kisses her, his tears fall against her cheeks, but for the first time in a long time, she doesn't feel sad in the slightest.