Tori's POV
Unfortunately for me, the janitors' closet wasn't that far from Sikowitz's classroom and, even more unfortunate for me, I was right in my assumption that Jade West had tried to hide herself away in said closet. As I approached, I kept myself concealed behind the wood, standing on my tiptoes to peer through the window, and, sure enough, there she was, sat on the floor with a large pair of scissors in one hand and a broom in the other, the bristles of which she was currently chopping to pieces.
I placed my hand on the door handle and hesitated; why was I even here? I could've just wandered around the school for a little while then gone back and told Sikowitz that I couldn't find Jade, I still could. I knew Jade wouldn't want to see me right now, or ever again, but curiosity was nagging at me. It wanted to know exactly why she had stormed out of the class instead of just brushing it off as part of the play, or even used what had happened to humiliate me in front of everyone, which was usually her style. There was something else too. Whatever happened back on the stage, I knew it wasn't just me who made it happen. Jade hadn't pushed me away or tried to stop me, she hadn't done so the time before that either, not until Cat came barging in. I'm not sure if it was just these new found feelings playing tricks on my mind, but it almostseemed like Jade wanted this… whatever it was.
"Jade?" Curiosity won. I entered the little room and the scissor-wielding girl rounded on me, whipping her arm around so that the blades of the object in her hand were dangerously close to my leg. Intentional or not, I wasn't sure.
"Fuck off, Vega." Jade said in a monotone then returned to massacring the broom.
Tempting, but-
"Jade." I sighed and, for some reason, sat down next to her on the floor. "Sikowitz told me to find you and get you back to class."
"Oh, so you're my minder now?" She spat, an eyebrow arched as she turned to face me again, the scissors now very near to the tip of my nose, making me go crossed eyed just to keep the metal instrument in my line vision.
I scooted back a little "Yes, of course, I'm now you're minder, Jade." I said sarcastically, but she acted as if she hadn't heard me. I huffed. "Sikowitz just sent me to get you back, that's all."
"I'm not going."
I rolled my eyes. "Fine, whatever, that's all I'm here to do. I tried and failed, and now that's done, I'll leave you to vandalise more of the schools property."
I wouldn't usually give up like that, but I couldn't be bothered to deal with Jade if she was in one for these moods. I stood up to leave, but there was the sound of something shifting behind me and a clatter as the wooden broom fell to the floor, telling me that Jade had also stood up. I felt the now all too familiar touch of her fingers closing over my wrist and my arm I was yanked so I span around in a circle to face the paler girl, our noses just millimetres apart. Jade fixed me with an intense glare; I gulped, my eyes closed automatically as I prepared myself for the pain that was bound to follow, but it didn't and, to my utter surprise, the next thing I felt were Jades lips crushed roughly to mine, causing me to take a couple of steps back to keep my balance.
It took my body all of two seconds to get over the shock and respond enthusiastically to her kiss, but my mind was still stunned, the wheels in my brain turning slowly as it tried to work out if this was real or not. Jades free hand found its way to my waist, the other gripping my wrist a little tighter, pulling our bodies closer and my free hand moved up, coming to a rest on Jade's shoulder. Her lips parted, the wetness of her tongue brushed hungrily over my bottom lip causing my breath to hitch and a tiny, squeak of a moan escape me before I could stop it. I opened my mouth a small amount and her tongue darted inside, exploring eagerly, meeting mine fiercely as the kiss deepened and my fingers shifting to tangle in her hair. I could hardly breathe, my heart was pounding rapidly in my chest, and then… there was nothing.
I opened my eyes just in time to see Jade bend down to grab her bag off the floor. I stood frozen, staring at her in confusion as she marched passed me, straight out the door, not even bothering to so much as glance in my direction. I took a couple of deep breaths, my rapid heartbeat slowing as I just stayed rooted to the spot, gawping in bewilderment over my shoulder at the now closed door. My finger traced over my lips; I could still feel Jades presence on them, and my brow furrowed… What just happened?
Xxx
Jade's POV
Oh God! What just happened? I kissed Tori Vega! Not just the stupid stage kissing we'd be practicing before, but a full on, tongue-shoved-down-her-throat assault! That wasn't supposed to happen! And to make matters worse, she kissed me back!
My head was spinning. She just had to follow me out of the classroom and hunt me down to where I was wallowing in my own self pity and annoyance. I was meant to be pissed off when she turned up. I was meant to be angry. I was meant to yell at her, tell her to get out of my life and leave me alone forever, but no, that happened.
I stomped through the doors of Hollywood Arts out into the warm sunshine of parking lot, not stopping, not even when I heard Lane call my name, until I was at my car. I threw my bag into the passenger seat and gripped the steering wheel hard in my hands, resting my forehead against the hot leather and closed my eyes for a few moments. I don't know what had gotten into me lately. This project had twisted my mind, made me feel things I didn't want to feel and they all centred around perfect princess Tori Vega. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the new air freshener in my car, a shade of purple, lilac, and all it did was remind me of Tori and her annoying habit of wearing something purple all the time. I grabbed the useless thing and tore it from the mirror; opening the window just enough so I could throw it out, wishing I could do the same to certain other purple things.
My eyes stung and I wiped at them furiously, because tears were really going to help. I shouldn't be reduced to tears anyway, not over something as irritating and insignificant as Tori Vega. No, I wouldn't cry for her. I wouldn't do anything for her. I needed to get away from here.
I fumbled with my car keys, taking three attempts to jam them into the ignition and three more to get the car started. I was about to slam my foot onto the gas pedal and hightail it out of here, when a streak of vibrate colour flashed passed the window and the next second, Cat hopped up next to me, pushing my bag onto the floor as she took her seat.
"Hi!" She said brightly.
"Out." I stated simply.
"But I just got here!" She pouted.
"Now."
"No."
My head whipped up. Did Cat just say no to me? Innocent little Cat Valentine just said no to me. I wasn't sure if I were more angry or impressed by this sudden defiance from the shorter girl, so I settled on fixing her with a glare, hoping to get whatever it is she wanted out of the way. "Spit it out then."
She sighed.
"Running away isn't going to help." Cat said quietly, looking up at me with her big brown eyes, a little darker than Tori's, a little wider too… wait, why was I comparing her eyes to Vegas!
I shook my head. "Don't know what you're talking about."
"Jade." Cat huffed. She looked frustrated, and determined. This side of Cat was rarely seen by others, most just brushing her off as the dizzy little red head that was always skipping around school with a smile plastered across her face. I hardly saw it either, but when I did, I knew she was serious.
"I'm not as stupid as everyone thinks." She muttered.
"Cat-" She held up a finger and I was silenced in an instant.
"I saw the two of you in the Black Box the other day. I saw how you reacted and how she reacted. And I can see that you and Beck aren't as close as you used to be-" I opened my mouth to speak, not wanting to hear any of this, but Cat ploughed on "Listen to me, Jade! I may not know all the details of whatever's going on, but I do know that it's hurting you, no matter how much you try to deny it-"
"Nothing's going on!" I interrupted with a growl, bringing my palm crashing down on the dashboard. That hurt, but I ignored the pain, glaring down at Cat who was looking back at me as if she didn't believe a word I just said. She knew me far too well.
"You like Tori." She said, exasperated
"I don't."
"Fine. You love Tori."
"I- I-" I spluttered with rage that I really shouldn't take out on Cat. I pursed my lips and took a deep breath in to calm myself. "I hate her."
"There's a fine line between love and hate."
"There's not."
"Is so."
"CAT!" I yelled, causing her to jump, her eyes suddenly wide with fear. I backed down a little then; I hated scaring Cat., she was far too fragile for me to keep getting angry at like this.
After a few seconds of silence, in which I allowed myself to calm down again while Cat played with a loose thread on her seat, the red head turned back to me, her seriously look back in place, it was slightly unnerving to see her like this.
"What happened when Tori found you?"
"How do you-"
"She came back to class just before the bell went saying she'd found you but you stormed off." Trust goodie-two-shoes Vega to snitch on me. "So, what happened?"
"I-" I looked down at my lap, debating what to say, but the truth came out sounding small and pathetic. "I kissed her."
Cat simply nodded then shifted around, cracking the door open as she prepared to leave. Before she did, she turned back to face me, looking even more stern than before. "Like I said, you can't just run away from this, you've got to face it sometime, sooner rather than later. You can't keep toying with your heart like this, Jade, or Tori's, or Beck's."
She said nothing more as she climbed out of the car and closed the door behind her before skipping back to school, her usual happy grin back across her face. I watched her go in awe; I can't deny that Cat always amazed me, she was the only person I'd ever get close to calling my best friend, and if she was serious about this, then maybe I should face these feelings head on instead of trying to escape. I heaved out a sigh and shut the car off, deciding that it was probably best to get back to school and carry on with my day. I could deal with everything later, so long as I stayed away from Tori.
Xxx
"Hey, babe!" Beck stood up from his locker and greeted me cheerfully, tucking an arm around my shoulder and pulling me in to plant a kiss on my forehead. I smile up at him but inwardly I cringed; it didn't feel right anymore. I hated that, I wanted it to feel right again.
It was just the end of school and, due to my class schedule, I'd managed to avoid everyone in my little group of 'friends' since the Cat incident just before lunch. Beck had text me sometime during last lesson to ask if I'd meet up with him when the bell went, so here I was, stood beside him and his locker, waiting to find out what he wanted.
"So, the five of us were thinking of heading out to grab something to eat,." He grinned, leading me around the corner to where the rest of the gang stood including, much to my dismay, Tori. But, of course, they were all crowded around her locker, as usual, and it seemed like they were waiting for Beck and I to turn up. "and we were wondering if you'd care to join us."
"Do I have to?" I said dryly.
"Come on! It'll be fun!" Cat giggled. She was all smiles again, which hopefully meant she wasn't going to broach the subject we'd discussed earlier any time soon.
I chanced a glance at Vega, who was looking fixedly at the floor while scuffing her canvas shoes over the tiles. She looked almost shy. Tori peeked up and caught my eye, but we both quickly turned away just as soon as it had happened. This exchanged seemed to go unnoticed by everyone, except Cat, who gave me a sympathetic, knowing smile. I didn't need that.
"Alright, fine, I'll come!" I said eventually. "I've got nothing better to do anyway."
"Yay!" Cat squealed, clapping her hands together happily. Next to her, Rex groaned loudly, only to have his mouth covered by Robbie's hand when I glared at him. Beck tugged me into a one armed hug and kissed my forehead again; out of the corner of my eye I saw Tori turn away just as he did so. She never used to care when Beck kissed me, but now…
"Are we all just going to stand here or are we getting a move on? 'Cause I'm starving!" Rex piped up, now Robbie had removed his hand.
"Rex!" Robbie cried, before turning a sad smile on us. "Hey, can we hitch a ride with one of you guys?"
"Not it!" Andre said all too quickly. "I'm already taking Tori and Cat."
"Looks like you're with us then, Rob." Beck said, squeezing my shoulder.
"Great." Rex and I said in unison, sarcastically of course.
Xxx
We'd been in the car for five minutes and I already wanted to shove that puppet down the ventriloquists' throat. I'd already suffered through the two of them singing their poor rendition of Forever Baby, and now the doll was whining on about how they had to share a car with "The Wicked Witch of the West." as he kept calling me.
"If you don't shut your face in the next five seconds I will show you what your insides look like." I hissed through gritted teeth, but at least it made the two of them go quiet, only the radio to be heard. That's more like it.
"So." Beck ruined the peace. "What was that about earlier?"
"What was what about?" I asked, staring out of the window instead of looking at him.
"You know what, why'd you storm out like that after yours and Tori's scene?" He glanced over at me as my stomach lurched at the memory. I heard a shuffle behind as Robbie shifted closer, obviously interested in what had happened too.
"Eyes on the road, Oliver." I said. He turned back almost immediately. "And I felt sick."
"Sick?" Robbie question dumbly.
I rolled my eyes and twisted around to face him; he retreated back in his seat. "Yes, sick. I had to kiss Vega, so what do you expect?" I spat. They'd buy that. "I'm surprised you and Sinjin both didn't puke your guts up after that vomit-inducing display earlier."
"I did." Rex stated.
Robbie flushed and muttered something about it not being his choice.
"And you." I accused, spinning back in my seat to face my boyfriend. "I missed your little stint with that other Vega! What happened?"
"Well, if you hadn't run off you would know." Beck said under his breath, but I hadn't missed it.
"What." I gritted my teeth again, ready to fight back his retort, but it didn't come.
"It went surprisingly well, actually." He said, turning the steering wheel to the right as we pulled up into the restaurants parking lot. "Well, for Trina."
He flashed me a smirk as we got out of the car and slammed the doors to. A quick look around told us that Andre, Cat and Tori were here already, judging by his car parked not too far from ours, so we made our way inside in near silence, save for one thing Rex just had to bring up.
"You looked like you enjoyed your kiss with Tori, Jade." He said suggestively, leaning closer to me as he spoke.
"That's disgusting." I said, shoving my hand in his face to push him away while inside my stomach did some kind of summersault. God, I hoped the puppet was the only one to notice that… no! I didn't enjoy kissing Vega, so there was nothing to notice... hmm, maybe I should stop lying to myself.
We found the other three easily. Beck went off to the bathroom while Robbie shifted into the booth next to Andre leaving the only space for me to sit right next to Vega. Typical. She didn't look too pleased about this either, from what I could tell by the look of her face as she stared down at the table, maybe I could convince Beck to swap seats when he came back.
The three others began their usual mind-numbing chatter, I think Andre was saying how pleased he was to have found Jessica as a stage kissing partner, but I was too distracted to pay attention. The booth we were in was small, and I'd tried to leave enough room for Beck when he came back without being too near to Tori, but apparently that wasn't working. All she did was move slightly so she could rest her elbow on the table, but when her arm brushed might I felt my skin erupt with goose bumps and an unexplainable wave of something like butterflies hit my stomach. Urg, just what I need. Thankfully, Beck came back just at that point, but he sat down in the place next to me, giving me no time to ask if we could switch places.
We browsed the menus, little conversations held here and there about the food, what sounded better, who was going to get what. I did my best to avoid touching Vega with my arm as I tried to move around, but the tiny space was making it difficult. It seemed to take forever for the waiter to come to our table and take our orders, then another eternity for the food to actually arrive, although everyone else seemed pleased to have time to catch up, seeing as we were all so busy with our projects to spend much time together. Not that I cared much, I was quite happy to have a break from them.
The waiter from before placed a big bowl of pasta and shrimp in front of me, and, of course, they hadn't bothered to remove the shrimps tails. He must have seen the look on my face because Mr waiter had run off to another table before I could open my mouth to complain.
"I told you not to order it." Beck said with a slight sigh.
"Yeah, well, this is what I want to eat." I snapped back, deciding to eat around the shrimp instead of wasting my precious time squeezing the disgusting little things just to do the job the chief should have done in the first place.
"Hey! What did the young shrimp say when his mom asked him why he wouldn't share any of his toys?" Cat giggled, earning one of said crustaceans to the face- "It slipped!" I protested when everyone else at the table turned to glare at me.
The meal was boring. Everyone else was droning on and on about whatever while I sat there just picking at my food, trying to tune out Vega's voice when she spoke, or ignore the tingle I felt in my arm whenever we accidentally made contact. After a short while I decided that, as I'd paid for the shrimp, I'd eat it, so spent my time squashing them with my fork rather than my fingers in order to rid them of their tails. It worked, thankfully, but I still had the tail to get rid of. Picking it up gingerly in my fingers, I took the shrimp tail out of my bowl and deposited in the first place I could find: Vega's hair.
"Jade!" She squealed, jumping up from her seat. Unfortunately, this caused a chain reaction. Her knee hit the table as she moved knocking the spaghetti bolognese she'd been eating all over me.
"VEGA!" I yelled, also jumping up from my place, the spaghetti slipping down my shirt to the floor. "Look what you've done!"
"I've done!" She screeched, pointing a finger at my face. "What you've done, more like! You put the shrimp tail on my head!"
She picked the thing out of her hair and threw it on the table, her jaw set in anger as she glared at me. By this point we'd drawn rather a lot of attention from other customers in the restaurant. Both Andre and Beck seemed too noticed too, as the both stood up, Andre placing a comforting arm on Tori's arm, Beck doing the same to me, but we both shook them off. The memory of earlier in the janitors closet was still fresh in my mind, no matter how hard I tried to forget it, and right now I couldn't tell if I wanted to punch the half-Latina in front of me, or repeat what had happened. It was a very weird contradiction of emotions, thoroughly confusing me, almost driving away the frustration at this incident . But I couldn't let that happen, I had to keep up my angry front around everyone else, I couldn't let Tori Vega break me like this.
"You're lucky we're in public, Vega, or I'd rip your head off." I hissed, pointing my finger to her face instead. I couldn't let her get away with it, though, so I picked up my bowl and emptied the remaining food right over her head.
Xxx
"You're unbelievable." Tori said, washing her hands off in the sink.
After our little argument, the restaurant owner came barging over to our table, obviously not too pleased by what had happened. He'd ordered us to leave immediately, but was kind enough to let Tori and I clean ourselves up in the restrooms, so long as we promised not to kill each other. It was a difficult promise to keep, but I needed to get rid of the bolognese sauce that was splattered all down my front.
"You overreacted." I scoffed as I picked at a piece of spaghetti that had stuck itself to my clothing and dropped it down the sink.
"You put a shrimp tail in my hair!"
"You deserved it."
Tori turned round to face me as I said this. "How did I deserve it!"
I shrugged. Okay, maybe she didn't exactly deserve it, but it was funny nonetheless, for the short space of time that it had only been her covered in food. We continued our clean up in silence, it reminded me a little of the time I'd faked my black eye to get Tori in trouble, then ended up helping her scrape crusty food off the walls. I still don't know why I'd bothered to help her out then, but I was starting to lose sense of anything I did around the brunette lately.
"Is this about earlier?" Tori said quietly after a while.
"What do you mean?" I replied, freezing in the action of sponging my shirt with a paper towel. I knew exactly what she meant, and she just had to bring it up.
"You know what." She said, her voice still quiet "You kissed me, Jade."
"It's called stage kissing, Vega. You know, acting. It's what we go to school for."
"Oh yeah, in the janitors closet with no one else around, and after we'd done our play, that was really stage kissing, Jade." She retorted, sarcasm dripping from every word.
I didn't want to talk about this now. I didn't want to deal with it, or admit exactly why I'd kissed Vega in the closet, not now. So, maybe I liked her. I didn't want to, but I did, and that kiss had only confirmed those feelings. It wasn't just the play that made me feel that way, but something more, something real. Urg, I hated it! Why Vega! Of all the people in the world it could have been. I must be being punished for something.
Of course, I didn't say any of this to the girl in question.
"It meant nothing." I snarled, chucking the used paper towels into the trash can and grabbing my bag. "And I'm with Beck anyway."
I wasn't sure what made me add that last part, but I did, and before Vega could say another word, I headed to the door.
"Just forget about it." I said and, with that, I left Tori with a look of annoyed confusion on her face so I could meet up with my boyfriend and the others in the parking lot and go home.
A/N: Hey! I hope you all enjoyed reading that chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it! And it was a very fun chapter to write.
And thank you again to everyone who read/fav'ed/alerted/reviewed last time!
Anyway, I'm going to use this space to do a little shameless self promo. I'm part of a Victorious RP on Tumblr (Victorious-rp) along with a couple of other writers here.
I play Tori, and Balzotheclown (our Andre) recently started posting our roleplay up on ff . net.
If you're interested to read what we're doing then just go here:
www. fanfiction .net /s/ 7162435 /1/ VicJORIous _A_ Victorious_RP
(take out the spaces, of course.)
Feedback is much appreciated.