Verse, So Barren of New Pride (Nita/Kit, PG-13), Part 1

[araine.livejournal.com]

Title: Verse, So Barren of New Pride
Author: araine 
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 4,500
Pairings: Nita/Kit, implied Dairine/Roshaun
Prompt: 31. The college years. How does it effect their relationship?
Summary: Sometimes, people fall apart from each other; how they fit back together is the hard part.
Notes: Thank you, thank you, thank you, readingredhead , for putting up with my complete and total inability to commit to a deadline and betaing this at the last minute. The title is from a Shakespeare sonnet (Number 76, to be precise). Of the sonnets featured in this fic, the first is Shakespeare (Sonnet 14). The second is, uhh, mine. It seems I'm just over the limit, so this will be continued in a second part.

 

“I’ll be back soon,” Nita said, pulling her purse over her shoulder and walking towards the door of her dorm room. Nita’s new roommate looked up from the book that she was halfway through, bending the spine in the process. “I won’t be too long, but if you want to go to sleep then just turn the lights off.”

 “You don’t want to take a shower?” Allison – already used to Nita’s schedule – asked.

 “I’ll take one in the morning,” Nita said. “I promised somebody I’d meet them after my first day was done.”

 “Oh? Your boyfriend?”

 Nita’s smile pulled wryly at the edge of her lips. “Something like that.” She slipped out of the door, before Allison could start inquiring as to how she was meeting her boyfriend when she had moved out-of-state for college. She hadn’t yet decided what – if anything – she was going to tell her roommate about wizardry, but that was not a conversation to have during her first week of college.

 She walked briskly across the Dartmouth campus, taking in every bit of scenery. The school was still new enough to be fascinating to Nita. Even this late in the evening, people still wandered to and fro. Around the dorms they were mostly students: carrying bags and books and chatting on cell phones and meeting other students.

 Even with people out and about, Nita was able to find a darkened corner from which nobody would spy her. Her charm bracelet tinkled on her wrist, as she reached for a familiar charm and drew it out of the bracelet. She checked the values once and her name twice, then laid the line of Speech down onto the ground.

 As she spoke the spell, the glowing letters lit up the brownbrick wall with silver shadows.

 Nita’s shield did what the moon’s atmosphere – less than one hundred trillionth of earth’s – did not, filtering out the blazing warmth of a noon-high sun. A figure stood illuminated in white glare from the moon’s surface. Nita bounded towards Kit, waving until she reached him.

 They hugged. Nita pecked Kit on the lips.

 “How’s college?” Kit asked. His hands easily found her hips, his natural warmth adding to the sun’s rays.

 “Fantastic,” Nita said. “I love my classes—well, except math.”

 Kit laughed. “You’re good at math!”

 Nita expressed her opinion by sticking her tongue through her teeth.  “I’m not the one who took calculus last year.”

 “Fair enough,” Kit said. He returned Nita’s peck on the lips. “How were the rest of your classes?”

 “Good. I already know I’m going to love my English professor. How about you?”

 “Great, great,” Kit said. “I started that Shakespeare class I was telling you about.”

 “How exciting,” Nita said. And she was excited – it seemed like Kit had talked about nothing else, since he had received his schedule. “You’ll blow everyone away.”

 Kit laughed. “We have to write a sonnet,” he said.

 Nita groaned. “Seriously?”

 Kit leaned back, feigning his hurt with a raised brow and a pouting lip. “What? I thought girls were supposed to love poetry.”

 “Stick to wizardry. Poetry’s not your strong suit.”

 Kit laughed. “Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;
And yet methinks I have astronomy,
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;

Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well,
By oft predict that I in heaven find:

But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;

Or else of thee this I prognosticate:
Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.”

 Nita rolled her eyes. “Well now you’re just cheating.”

 “Okay, I didn’t write that one,” Kit admitted. “How’s everything else? How’s your roommate?”

 “She seems nice enough,” Nita said. “She likes to read. We’re talking about buying a bookshelf for all the books we brought from home.”

 “And all the ones you’re going to buy?”

 Nita punched Kit’s arm. She didn’t refute his claim, however. Instead she said, “Shut up. How’s rooming with Raoul?”

 “It’s good,” Kit said. “He keeps calling me Merlin, though. It’s getting kinda annoying, honestly.”

 Nita snorted. After choosing to room with Raoul Eschemeling after his early graduation, Kit had made the difficult decision to reveal his wizardry. Raoul had taken it rather well, considering his friend had been hiding an entire aspect of his life.

 Kit laughed, unconsciously scratching his neck. “Well, I guess he deserves a little bit of revenge,” he said. “Do you know if you’re going to tell your roommate?”

 “No idea,” Nita said. “That’s not the kind of conversation you have during your first week, anyway.”

 “Yeah, you’re right. You said she reads a lot? You think she’s a wizard?”

 Nita shrugged. “If she is, well—there are no coincidences.”

 As she said it, it felt vaguely prophetic.

 --

 Kit arrived on the moon to find Nita already there, perched on a rock, textbook settled on her knee, a notebook lying on the rock beside her.
He smiled and bounded over towards her.

 “Hey, Neets,” he said. “Studying?”

 Nita looked up from her textbook. “Oh,” she said. “Yeah.”

 She looked down at the book, picked up the notebook and made a quick note. Then she looked up at Kit. “Sorry,” she said, looking legitimately apologetic. “I just—I missed a day of class because I had Errantry with Allison, and then I thought I’d make time but—I don’t know what happened. Finals.”

 “Hey, don’t worry about it,” Kit said. “School’s important. And I know the feeling.” Nita had suddenly been accosted with a plethora of new friends in college, and had trouble balancing schoolwork, and wizardry with her new partner.

 New partner.

 It felt strange to even think of it. Even when he and Nita had worked on separate assignments, they had never had separate partners. Of course, Nita’s roommate was closer to New Hampshire, and Kit had his own projects to work on.

 You’re still her boyfriend, he thought. And her best friend.

 “Do you want to study together?” Nita asked, a smile curling at the edge of her lips. “There’s room on the rock.”

 “Yeah, sure,” Kit said. He reached into his claudication, and drew out his book of Shakespeare. It was the only textbook he had with him, but he didn’t feel like designing a wizardry to bring his other books with him.

 He sat next to Nita, and opened his book. Her back pressed into his, and he could feel the warmth radiating from her frame. He began to read.

 For the next hour, neither of them spoke a word.

 --

 Nita was early arriving at the meeting place. School was not yet in full swing, although she was quickly learning that Junior year would not be anything like the previous two. She looked around for any sign of Kit: he wasn’t there, and Nita hated that she was relieved.

 She needed to think. Spying a large rock – where she and Kit had once sat and talked, watching the moon and the sun hang steadily in the sky above – Nita sat down, looked up at the stars, and made a very difficult decision.

 When Kit arrived late, Nita was still perched on the rock. The moment his personal air bubble merged with hers, Kit said, “Sorry I’m late, I had—”

 Nita’s wan smile stopped him up short.

 “—a test to study for. What’s wrong, Neets?”

 For a moment, Nita wanted to say nothing. She took a deep breath. Wizards did not lie to themselves, and she had already thought this through. She met his eyes.

“Kit,” she said. “I think we should break up.”

 For a moment, Kit said nothing. Nita was caught between wanting him to speak and get it over with, and an intense desire for the moment to freeze as it was before he could respond. She trembled on her rock, suddenly chilled.

 “Oh,” Kit said. And then he said, “Okay. Are you sure?”

 “Yes,” Nita said. And then she amended her certainty. “Maybe?”

 She looked down at her hands. Even when she heard Kit’s footsteps crunch over moon dust, she didn’t look up. Kit sat down on the rock beside her. They did not touch. Nita, suddenly and absurdly, wished that Kit would put his arm around her shoulder.

 Stupid, she thought. You’re breaking up with him.

 Her eyes flickered across the canyon of inches between them.

 “So what do you think?” The uncertainty in Nita’s voice shivered in their tiny air bubble, reminding her that they were probably the only life forms on the moon. She wondered if she should have asked Kit to go somewhere else for this conversation.

 “Well,” Kit said, after a long pause. “I didn’t expect it.” A smile flashed across his face, sudden and wry.

 “Yeah,” Nita said. “That’s what everyone will think. I’m pretty sure everyone’s still wondering when we’ll announce the wedding date.”

 “Neets—“

 “I was flirting with a boy earlier,” Nita said. “His name is Benjamin Dewayne. He’s nice—cute, you know. Intellectual type.” 

 Kit affected a casually disinterested look, and Nita realized that throwing the problem in his face wasn’t going to work. She sighed.

 “I don’t think I want to date him,” Nita said. “Not really. He’s kind of a hipster.”

 “I didn’t—I mean, it’s okay—“

 It was Nita’s turn to smile wryly. “You’re great, Kit,” she said. “Really great. It’s okay to be jealous.”

 Kit’s face twisted up: eyebrows bent, mouth askew.  Nita thought that he was about to say something, but instead he closed his mouth.

 Nita took a deep breath, not worrying about the air shield. She had brought a lot with her; she had anticipated a long conversation. “But that’s just the thing, isn’t it?” she said. “You’re amazing, and I really like you, but—what’s my basis for comparison? Sure there was Ronan, but that wasn’t really dating, and I was fourteen, and all I really learned from that is I kinda like the rakish douchebag aesthetic more than I probably should. Neither of us have dated anyone else, and—and what if we’re missing out because of it? What if I did want to date Benjamin Dewayne or—or what if you wanted to date someone else, and we can’t because we’re dating each other?”

 “Oh,” Kit said. And that was all he said, for a long while. And then he said: “You want to widen your data set. One is a pretty terrible sample population.”

 Nita laughed in spite of herself.

 “Sorry,” Kit said, laughing with her. “I spent all day with statistics.”

 Nita sighed, pulling in her mirth. “That’s exactly what I mean,” she said. “How can we know we’re a good match, if we’ve only dated each other? Especially when—“

 Nita had closed her mind off from Kit’s, but he still managed to know what he was thinking. He grimaced. “When we hardly even talk anymore,” he said.

 Nita looked away from Kit, the misery of that reality welling up in her stomach and throat. “Yeah,” Nita said.

 “Well,” Kit said, his voice heavy with the attempt to speak lightly. “I guess we go our separate ways then. We hardly talk anymore, and you want things that I can’t give you, and that’s hardly the way to be in a relationship, I suppose.”

 “Yeah,” Nita said. She felt dizzy with lightheaded relief and simultaneously heavy, as though dragged down by sudden exhaustion. She forced a smile to her lips.

 Kit smiled back, although it came slowly. “Friends?” he asked, unsure and uncertain.

 “The best,” Nita said, without hesitation.

 She and Kit hugged, and then parted. It was strange to say goodbye, and know that Kit was less a part of her life than he had been. She did not regret her decision: Kit had broached the subject she had been most dreading – that of their friendship – and as she spoke the spell to go home, she felt the lightness of freedom and relief.

 But Nita still felt as though she had lost something in the bargain.

Part 2