She (For Jade)

by yesterdaymorning

She has no problem with secrets. She knows how to keep them. But it's eating Robbie up inside.

She (for Jade)

A/N: Hello, hello. An outpouring of a Rade feels for you then, inspired by the song 'She (For Liz) by Parachute. (in italics in the fic) This song is so perfect, it even says Liz the tile and I squealed because Jade/Liz. Anyway…

Discalimer: I'm pretty sure you'd know if I owned it because the storylines would suddenly take an interesting turn for the Rade side of town. Spoilers: I don't.

She has no problem with secrets
She knows how to keep them

The room is dark, and I if waved my hand in front of my face right now, I doubt I'd see it. In fact, I'd probably just result in hitting myself in the face, because that's the kind of nerdy thing Robbie Shapiro would do. It doesn't help that my glasses are on the floor somewhere from when they were wrenched off my face minutes ago. I hope she doesn't step on them. I can't see a thing. But I can feel.

I feel a hand on my belt buckle dragging me closer to her chest, and her body heat burning through my button up shirt. I feel her other hand fisted in the hair at the nape of my neck, scratching slightly and sending shivers down my spine. I feel her lips on my neck, finding my pulse point and biting down and then caressing over it with her soft tongue. I feel the breath shuddering out of my lungs and I feel my hands hanging idly by my sides, unsure. But, I am not allowed to touch. Not yet.

She moves away from my neck and I feel her lean away from me, the air between our bodies increasing. I'm cold. She's looking at me, I can tell, because my own eyes feel like they're burning in their sockets. If she stares any harder, they'll fall out, like something out of her favourite horror movies. I don't know, maybe she'd like that. Maybe that's what she's aiming for. She's scrutinising me and I desperately try to read her mind or something, catch her opinion of me, but like trying to see through the dark, it's impossible. Jade West is impossible to understand. I should've given up ages ago. Yet, I'm still here.

Maybe it's because I can't quite believe that a girl like Jade West, hot, stunning and sassy as hell would even consider being within ten feet of a stammering geek like me. What is she doing here? If I were her I'd be running down the corridor right now. She's still looking at me and I can imagine her eyebrows, one quirked up and her black hair tumbling over her shoulders as she assesses the situation. As she assesses me.

My lips are dry as I part them and my words stumble into the room, an ungainly ring to them. '…Jade? Are you..uh..okay?'

'Quiet Shapiro. I'm thinking.'

Her response doesn't invite a further question because her tone is harsh and short but I take a breath and ask anyway. If she were going to kill me, she would've done it by now. Probably when her hands were so close to my neck before. I shiver at the thought.

'…About us?'

I'm met with silence and I blink furiously trying to find Jade's face swimming in the gloom but everything remains in darkness. I can hear her breaths though and they're shallow.

'There is no us, Shapiro. This is nothing, you understand?'

My chest clenches and my lips crash together as my last breath rushes out. Her words have torn into me and I'm half surprised I'm not bleeding over the carpet, it hurts so much. My insides have tuned to stone. Jade may carry scissors around wherever she goes to threaten people, but she doesn't need them to cause an injury; her words are enough to cut through anyone. Scissors can cut flesh but words can cut relationships, words can cut the very essence of a person. This is Jade's most powerful weapon.

The devil on my shoulder stares
Laughing that the one thing I can't get
Is what I need

She's moved forward again and her lips crash into mine expectantly. They're soft and full but she tastes like the iron of blood, mixed with the bitterness of copper, or maybe I'm imagining it. She's brutal and the kiss is not one of affection, it's of dominance.

Everyone knows I'm not a brave person. This includes Jade, so she's surprised when I prise her off me and take an unsteady step backwards and flick the lights on. This time she's the one to question it.

'Shapiro?'

I don't give an answer though I want to feel her against me again, hot and soft and moulding to my chest, and feel her lips on mine, scorching in their passion. I want to cradle her back and let her fall against me while she assaults my body, her fingers like trails of fire. I want all this, but I want it permanently. I don't want to be her go-to, her second choice, her dirty little secret. I just want her.

What a surprise, Robbie Shapiro has grown a backbone.

She, she is the words that I can't find
How can the only thing that's killing me make me feel so alive?

'…Rob?'

It may be the first time she's addressed me by my actual name and it feels foreign hanging in the air between us, but like a language I could learn and translate quite easily given the time and thought.

'…Robbie? What are you doing?'

My words stutter and die in my throat though and they sit heavy on my tongue, a promise of suffocation if I don't speak soon. I gather what little new found courage I have and let the words fall into the space between us.

'Jade, I can't do this anymore.'

Her fingers are on my belt, but I push her away reluctantly. 'I can't do this, okay?' It's all I manage and it doesn't even begin to explain my feelings towards her. She captivating, intoxicating ad I'm a brown stick-in-the-mud compared to her but I want her so much. I don't care that she's trying to get over Beck, and maybe I should but I've decided this is not the way to do it anymore. Jade ensnares you and it's hard to let go. I don't deserve but I'll give it a good try.

My vocal chords have been fighting
My mouth likes to spite me
It never says the words that come to mind.

'What do you mean Robbie?' For the first time since this started her voice is unsure and drips slowly into the room. I may have just got the upper hand, but I'm so unused to this that I freeze and Jade collects herself enough to creep forward and place a gentle kiss to my cheek.

I brought a stick to a gun fight
And I'm stuck with my tongue tied
I run but I can't hide what's always there

She's so close to me that all I have to do is whisper. Her hair is brushing over my shoulders and her eyelashes flutter against my skin. It's pale on pale, our skin bleeding into each other and she's so perfect. She's fierce and frightful but I want her, I need her to be a constant in my life, not this flitting and twisting she's been doing. I've been trying to keep up so hard, I've got whiplash.

Her finger trails down my shirt and subtlety pops a button open and she strokes my pale chest through the hole she's created and I the air stops in my lungs. If only she were mine.

And I couldn't speak
I couldn't breathe to save my life
All of my chances swim like sinking ships
This time it's it
I'll drown or make her mine

My words make the tendrils of hair next to her hair sway and I can't believe I'm doing this. 'Jade, don't lie, there is an us. Don't keep me a secret anymore. I want this… I want this out in the open.'

Her short caresses through my shirt stop, but somehow I hold my ground, unbelievably. Jade looks up at me and I feel shocked because instead of the mirth and hatred I expected to see in her eyes, there's only confusion.

'You want to be connected to me, in front of everybody?'

I only trust myself to nod before something stupid escapes from my mouth instead. Jade looks down again and I'm worried. Worried that anything we ever had is now going to be destroyed. But why is she confused?

'Are you serious, people think I'm a nut case, Shapiro. Robbie. I thought if we kept this quiet, you'd never have a reason to leave me.'

I openly gape at her because her reasoning is ridiculous. I've been mocked ceaselessly for just being me, and she thinks that just because I would have a stunning, intelligent, amazing girl next to me I'd suddenly care? She's wrong.

Jade West is stripped bare in front of me and I never knew that inside that hard shell of a ganky exterior was a girl who was just a little insecure. I feel this is the most worthwhile piece of knowledge I've ever learnt.

'I don't care.' And they're the truest words I've ever said, because I don't tell lies Jade smiles and I'm reminded again that when she's not glaring at me, but actually even then, she's the most beautiful girl I know. Her red lips are stretched and upturned and I give her a hesitant kiss.

'Here's to the future then, Rob.' She whispers.

A/N: My feels kind of ran away with me there, this isn't as coherent as it should be. Oh wells. Hey, I wrote a fic for a straight couple on Victorious! WOWZA. Hope you enjoyed anyway. Leave a review on your way out? – Thea.