An awkward non sexy interlude! In Holly's POV. Mainly Jade angst. Probably set a few hours after 1st base ends.

Holly looked up from her papers as Jade emerged from the upstairs level and started down toward the kitchen. She looked a little rumpled and sleepy, and smelled like... shenanigans. When she spotted Holly she flinched a little. Holly carefully glanced back down at her work. "Hello Jade."

"Um, hey." Jade came down and stood awkwardly in front of the table. "Is there - can I have something to eat?"

Holly glanced up. She shouldn't be this awkward about asking for food. God, what had her parents done to her? "Sure. Go scrummage in the fridge. You can eat anything you want here, you know. Whenever you want. You don't have to ask."

Jade cast her a suspicious look over her shoulder from the fridge. "Thanks."

"Though I'd avoid anything on the bottom shelf in the door. That's Trina's, and... well. I'm not responsible for the side effects."

Jade's eyebrows lifted. "I will steer clear."

"What's Tori up to?"

"Sleeping." Jade made herself a sandwich and came to sit at the clear end of the table. "Apparently she's not a fan of Anguish."

Holly wrinkled her nose. "That's a terrible movie. Why'd you show it to her?"

"I needed to check if she actually was interested in what I was showing her or if she was just faking it to maintain access to my tits."

Holly laughed. "Got your answer?"

Jade smiled. "Yep."

"How are things going, generally?"

There was a slight dart of Jade's eyes away that worried her, but then the corner of her lips quirked up slightly. "Pretty good, I think. I mean, I'm a jerk a lot, but she's stubborn enough to not let me get away with it. Or," Jade frowned. "Sometimes it seems like she likes it. I'm not sure why."

"Probably because she likes you."

Jade looked at her, looking anxious and a little upset. "Why?"

Holly shrugged. "Probably the same reason she likes the color pink, and singing."

"Oh." Jade sounded resigned. "Endorphin high."

"No, Jade. Because she likes it. Not everything is reducible to just chemicals."

Jade eyed her with stubborn resistance. Logic - that was what was required. Logic her out. Holly pulled up a picture of Tori on her pearphone. "Look at this."

Jade's lips twisted, just slightly, in something that might have been revulsion, but really wasn't.

"You think she's pretty?"

Jade darkened slightly. "Yes."

Holly glanced at the picture. Tori had just dropped something and was looking surprised. It was not one of her most alluring photographs. That was... good. She zoomed in on the photo until the image went pixilated and unrecognizable. She showed it to Jade. "Do you think this is pretty?"

Jade scowled. "Of course not. It's just brown pixels."

Holly zoomed out one degree. "Pretty?"

"No."

The next. "Pretty?"

"No."

"Pretty?"

"No."

"Pretty?"

Jade hesitated. "No," she said, but it was more slow.

"Pretty now?"

It had almost resolved. Jade nodded slowly. "Yeah, I guess."

"Now?"

"Mhm."

"It's all the same picture, right? Yet when it's broken down into blocks of color you don't feel a certain way about it. When it resolves you do. You can't explain everything based on its basic components."

Jade made a face. "Well, no. But there's perception, and recognition, and association, and..."

"There's a lot that goes into it, right?"

Jade nodded.

"Just think how lucky you have to be for all those things to come together and be focused on you. Think about how that makes you special."

Jade was quiet for a long moment, staring down at her half eaten sandwich. "Okay," she said finally. "Okay."

Holly leaned back in her chair. That had gotten a little unexpectedly heavy. "So, 'access to your tits'?"

Jade choked on her sandwich. When she had finished coughing and swallowing she glared at Holly. "You know, I recall you mentioning something about not taking your little girl's virginity on the porch because of future humiliation, and that you knew from personal experience, and you never explained that."

Holly grinned. "Oh you want to know?"

Of course I want to know!"

"It's not actually all that exciting. Just, back in my day we didn't have the daily heat suppressants with the slow build hormone resistance. We had to take high strength ones right at the right time, and if your cycle changed or you miscalculated, sometimes you ended up unprepared." Holly grinned. "And, imagine, if you've just recently broken up with your douchebag alpha boyfriend, and you've decided that you're in love with your best friend, instead of going home and taking your pills, you decide to go to his house."

Jade laughed and covered her face.

Holly laughed. "Well, his, his parents', his grandmother's, and his six brothers' and sisters' house. Of course it was his grandmother who opened the door. She took one look at me and one sniff and then yelled up the stairs, 'David! Your girlfriend's here!' He tumbled down the stairs, fresh from the shower, utterly confused because he didn't have a girlfriend. I kissed him on the porch, and... lets just say things got rather heated. I dragged him up to his room and we barred the door.

"Unfortunately, after three days in his room we had to actually come out and face his family and apologize to his brothers who had had to sleep on the floor. They were nice about it, mostly, but there has not been a single Christmas when I haven't been teased about it. And it's been, what, twenty years?"

"Oh, come on!" Jade exclaimed. "That was like nine people! Who would have teased me if I got off on the porch?"

Holly pointed her thumb at herself. "That would be me."

Jade glanced away. "It's nice," she said, "that you got to pick him like that."

"Yeah, because we omegas always make such great decisions when we're horny." Holly shook her head.

"Do you regret it?"

"No. Of course not. But the going to his house and sleeping with him wasn't choosing him. It was... being an omega. Choosing's what you do after that. Choosing's telling your family, and getting thrown out, and getting adopted into his, and deciding to get married. You choose little by little for a long time until you've made a choice, and then you keep choosing, because you can always change your mind."

"You got thrown out?"

Holly looked at Jade, at her high tension, her whitening knuckles. She sighed. "I don't talk to my parents anymore. They weren't like yours, they didn't try to sell me, but they did want final approval over my alpha. They... made suggestions. I did not really like any of their suggestions."

Jade sagged slightly, staring down at her hands.

"I got knotted early, by one of their choices, and I had liked him, until then. But afterwards he turned into a controlling asshole, and he didn't want to let me leave him. I had to get another alpha to fight him off, and then I had a series of shitty guys. Not all of them were bad. Some were fine, but I only knew they were fine when I said I wanted to break up and they didn't start screaming. David was different because we were friends first. And he was so self-effacing, because he thought I was out of his league. That's what my parents thought too. They were wrong."

"Why'd they think that?"

"Because his family was poor, and he was a cop, and he was Puerto Rican, and a bunch of other stupid reasons. Because they thought that my alpha was supposed to take care of me, and not that we could help take care of each other. They just... never came around to it. So we don't talk anymore."

Jade leaned against the table and sighed. "You know, I'm so angry with my parents for doing what they did to me. But... but I miss them too."

"Of course you do." Holly moved and hugged Jade. "Of course you do."

"I hate my dad for what he did, and for getting away with it, but my mom, she never fought for me, and she never gave me any support, but she never abandoned me either, even though she thought my dad was right and that I was being a selfish and ungrateful omega brat. But Tori said that she let her in - that she looked at her, and smelled her, smelled what she was to me, and let her in."

"You know she loves you."

Jade flinched. "I don't know that. I don't know if it had anything to do with me. Protecting me, helping me. She didn't do that. But she was very into the mating thing. Your mate's the one you stick to. And I suppose it doesn't matter how it happens. Your mate's your mate, and Tori was mine, and she had rights or something."

"That would be perfect reasoning, except that most people who think that way also think female alphas are demons. But she let Tori in."

Jade sighed. "Yeah. She let Tori in."

She was too sad. Holly pulled her out of her chair and onto the couch, wrapping her arms around her. Jade leaned into her chest, resting her head on her shoulder. "It's not like I can get in contact with her. I can't even ask what she was thinking. If dad found out..."

Holly tightened her grip.

"Thank you," Jade murmured. "Thanks for looking out for me, like you did. No one did that before. It... kind of freaked me out."

Looking out for her? Not letting Tori make an idiot of herself by bringing an omega into her bedroom? Breaking it up when there was uncomfortable touching going on? Honestly. That was the minimum. "You know," Holly said. "I'm not your mother, and I'm never going to be your mother. But, regardless of whether I end up as your mother-in-law, I want you to feel safe here, with me. You will always be safe here, and always welcome, all right?"

"Even if I fuck up with Tori?"

"Even then."

"I don't really believe you."

"You won't know for sure until you have to try. But... if you need to, remember to try, and I'll remember that I made you a promise. Okay?"

"Okay."

Jade didn't let go. Holly rather liked it. After the whole 'well, the reason you like cuddling is actually kind of embarrassingly sexual and you're an alpha' debacle, Tori got skittish about being clingy, and Trina had never felt a lapse in confidence enough to need a hug, so it had been a while. She wondered if it was unfair to Tori, making this promise. If Jade broke her heart, as threatened, and as was entirely possible, having her to family holidays and looking after her might be considered a betrayal. But Tori would have to live with it. Holly didn't have any omega daughters, and Jade didn't have any supportive parents. Why leave that gap unfilled?

"I don't know if I can't believe it because I don't trust you, or because I just can't visualize any sort of way my future could be. I've been looking one sort of future in the face for so long, and now it's gone, and I don't know what I'm supposed to fill it with."

"You know, you don't have to over-think it. Sometimes it's all right to just take things day to day and see how they turn out."

Jade sighed and leaned into her. "Maybe," she said. "Maybe."

It was a couple of minutes before a blinking and yawning Tori emerged from the upstairs and frowned at her mother and her girlfriend curled up on the couch. She wrinkled her nose. "Should I be worried about this?"

Holly laughed.

Jade gave Tori an ironic eyebrow raise. "Would you like to worry about this?"

Tori turned red.

"Don't worry about it!" Holly told her. "Just come over here and you can give us both a hug."

Tori's expression brightened and she crawled onto the couch, looping one arm around her mother's neck and pressing her nose into her girlfriend's shoulder. Jade huffed lightly. "Hug-slut."