"Matilda, hold up a moment." Jenny called from the Kitchen as Matilda passed the entry on the way up the stairs.
"Yes, Jenny?"
"I wanted to put something past you." Matilda sat down at the kitchen table as Jenny continued chopping vegetables at the counter behind her. "I was thinking you might enjoy starting out this year at the dorms."
"Why?"
"For a start, to experience independence and socialize more with people of your age group. You don't really need to take PE with the 6th Formers, you could sign up with the collegiate teams. You're still a little young, but the average freshman is around 17, so I am sure you would fit in fine. Or you can drop the sports, I think you've succeeded in staying well rounded, despite the size of your brain."
"Actually, weight may be a bigger determiner of smarts than size." Matilda informed Jenny, like the teacher's pet she so unrepentantly was.
"Your brain must be obese, then."
Matilda smiled lopsidedly at the joke. "You forgot to mention it would separate me from you and perhaps allow me to let go of my unhealthy attraction to the woman in my life who was supposed to be a mother figure."
"I can't get anything past you, can I?" Jenny said putting down her knife and drawing her fingers through the fuzz on top of Matilda's head idly.
Matilda leaned into the caress and would have purred if she'd known how. She had buzzed the Mohawk off a week ago, coming to the conclusion that it was backwards to rebel in such a conformist way. Of course, that left her with 1 cm long reddish brown fuzz on the top of her head, which she loved for the simple fact that Jenny could not resist touching it. She wasn't alone in that, of course. Shawna and Lavender and even Mack had rubbed her head so often recently that she often joked about renting herself out to a petting zoo.
"What do you think?" Jenny asked.
"I love having a furry head."
Jenny burst into laughter, and mock slapped her up the side of the head. "About moving into the dorms this fall. You might as well, you will be graduating-"
"-finally-"
"-this year."
"I have thought about it, actually, and I think you're right. It will be a bit troublesome, what with my power control problem- unless you'd sleep with me?"
Jenny shook her head.
Matilda pouted with mock petulance. "But I think I can manage that. I've got pretty good control of how I let it out of the box nowadays."
Jenny's hands had begun to kneed Matilda's back and shoulders, which caused Matilda to groan contentedly and roll her shoulders into the touch. Yes, if she could have purred, she would have sounded like a well tended motor.
"So we have a yes then? I'll make sure to call the dean."
"Wait a minute, I do have a requirement." Matilda caught Jenny's arm as she stood up and with a slyly flirtatious look on her face, used to it to pull the semi reluctant Jenny closer to her, "You have to give me something you haven't given me in a long time.
Jenny laughed nervously. "Matilda, I'm not going to kiss you!"
Matilda feigned a blank look, "Who said anything about a kiss? I meant a hug."
"I can give you that." Jenny said, with small wince, for indeed it had been a long time since she had hugged Matilda. "My dearest friend," she murmured.
The embrace was innocent at first, but Jenny found that the longer she held her, the harder it was to let Matilda go. Jenny sensed Matilda's heart rate increase, which pushed her own up as well, and her own hands tightened around Matilda's waist until they seemed to clutch more than to comfort.
"Jenny," Matilda's voice was soft and sort of muffled against Jenny's chest, "I love you."
"I love you too." Jenny said, her voice coming out lower and rougher and more full of the truth than she'd meant it too.
Matilda's head came up and her eyes, wide with shock, looked in to Jenny's.
"Not like that!" Jenny lied feebly, pulling herself out of Matilda's arms and puting the kitchen table between them. "I am not attracted to you." Something she had said many times, but this time, it seemed much less convincing than usual.
"Liar."
"It's in your head.
"It may not be as obvious for you as it is for me," and Matilda juggled the fruit from the basket at the center of the table in front of her in example, "but you want me."
"I do not!"
"Then kiss me, just once."
"That's just nonsensical."
Matilda tilted her head and looked up Jenny, her eyes Bambi like.
"Oh, stop looking so pathetic." Jenny picked up her knife and started chopping vegetables again in self defense. Matilda took advantage of the fact that Jenny's hands were busy to wrap her arms around Jenny's middle and hug her from behind. Jenny's stomach rolled over nervously. She put the knife back down.
"Would you kiss me if the world was about to end? Say if a meteor was about to hit us?"
Matilda's hands remained safely around her middle, but one of them had somehow slipped beneath her shirt and lay softly on her stomach.
"Er?" Thought came slowly to Jenny's mind, though warning bells rang distantly.
"If it was my last request before we died? Would you kiss me then?"
"Uh..."
Matilda's hand barely stirred, but had the suggestion of straying upward, causing Jenny's stomach to writhe in ticklish sensations and her mouth to open automatically in a half gasp.
"Y-yes, probably, and..." she pulled Matilda's hands apart firmly and turned around to face her, "that is quite enough of that. You are being-"
"Naughty?"
"Oh God, please save me from Lolita's who think too much of themselves. Yes, you bad little girl. Now go to your room before I cut you, or myself. I'm trying to make dinner!" Jenny raised her knife threateningly, but however stern she tried to make herself look, her lips couldn't help but twist into an amused smile.
"Fine with me... Humphrey," Matilda taunted as she left the kitchen. Some of the fruit from the fruit basket followed merrily after.
Jenny sat down at the kitchen table and clasped her hands in front her. Her lips tingled. Her stomach still rolled in nervous anticipation. This was how Matilda had been for the last couple of weeks. Taking liberties, constantly flirting, ignoring any sign that she was getting into Jennifer's personal space. She was getting better at it and it was having its intended effect, that was for sure. Jenny had wracked her brain for any way to get Matilda out of the house, and the dorms were the only thing she had come up with. But it was still only half way through summer. With a month and a half left till the school year began, she did not know how she would manage not to give in to Matilda's constant little dares. What's more, she was finding it harder and harder to remember why she should not give in.
---
Upstairs in her room, Matilda hugged her pillow to herself as she lay in her bed, a huge smile on her face as she reviewed what had just occurred. First of all, Jenny had been the first to initiate physical contact, petting her head and rubbing her shoulders. And then when Matilda asked for the hug, she didn't know which one of them had been more reluctant to let go. And Jenny had said she loved her, a treasured gem of a phrase that would warm Matilda's heart for weeks to come. She'd said it before, but in recent months, always flatly, as if to ignore the weight of the words and reduce them to platitudes. To top off, Matilda had (through devious means, sure) finagled Jenny into admitting that there were conditions under which she would kiss her.