Verse, So Barren of New Pride (Nita/Kit, PG-13), Part 2

[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.

Part 1

Despite her promise of friendship, Nita did not see Kit again for another two months. She returned home from her talk on the moon, exhausted and miserable and happy and hating that she was, and fell into bed and cried herself out.

 Life returned to normal quicker than she would have thought possible. She went to class, studied, worked on ongoing projects with Allison, who was no longer her roommate, but still her wizardly partner, and spent her free time reading or with friends. She asked Benjamin Dewayne on a coffee date and summarily declined others.

 A time distortion appeared in the library that had several students missing for days. Nita and Allison fixed it, and staved off a schoolwide panic with the tricky application of a timeslide.

 “I think,” Allison said, when the patch on the timeline seemed to be working with negligible ill effects, “that we deserve a break.”

 Nita grinned. “But we’ve got midterms coming up,” she said, protesting in jest. She did not feel like she could manage any sort of studying at the moment.

 “We didn’t actually lose any time with that job,” Allison said. “Timeslide patch, remember? So handy.”

 Nita stuck her tongue out at Allison. “Where should we go?” she asked.

 “Moon?” Allison suggested. “China? New Zealand? Or we could go see if your sister’s hot boyfriend is visiting.”

 “Moon,” Nita said. “I think I need someplace quiet.”

 Allison laughed. Nita grinned, and pulled the transport wizardry from her charm bracelet. It was an old and familiar spell, and over years of use had some of that worn and familiar feel in her hand – like a well-loved book.

 She spread it out like it was a sheet she was placing over a bed, and Allison placed her name into the diagram. Together, they spoke the words.

 Nita had designed the transport wizardry to the moon and connected it to her charm bracelet abstratus years ago, and she had seen no reason to change a spell that worked so well. The coordinates – as they always had been – were set to drop her at the old meeting spot she and Kit had used.

Just as he was using it now.

 It’s not like you’re avoiding him, she thought.

 Nita swallowed hard and looked down. Kit was not alone: he had one arm draped around the shoulder of a petite, dark-haired girl. Darryl was also there, and he was the first to see them.

 From the distance between their air bubbles, she could see – if not hear – Darryl say, “Nita!” At the sound of that, Kit turned to look.

 His eyes caught Nita’s, strangely guilty. Nita looked down, and bit her lip. Before she could decide if she wanted to talk to Kit right now, Darryl bounded over in his own air bubble.

 “Hey, Darryl,” Nita said, with a genuine smile. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Kit and the unnamed girl wander closer. “How’s it been?”

 “Good,” Darryl said. “We’re working a project on the rail lines. Dai stiho, cousin.” Without missing a beat, he turned to smile at Allison.

 The curly-haired girl smiled and held out a hand. “Dai,” she said. “I’m Allison Pickett.”

 “Darryl McAllister. This is Kit Rodriguez and Olivia Dianh.” He introduced the two as their own personal air bubbles merged with the rest. Kit, Nita noticed, had taken his arm from its perch on Olivia’s shoulders.

 Olivia smiled and said, “Dai, cousins.”

 Kit also managed a smile. “Hey, Neets.”

 “Hi Kit.”

 Olivia looked first at Nita and then at Kit, her eyes suddenly wide. “You know each other?”

 “They’re, uhh,” Darryl said, before Nita stopped him by speaking. “We used to be partners, but I moved out of state for school.” She smiled, in a desperate attempt to seem cheerful, and floundered for a change in subject. “So, uhh, new girlfriend, Kit?”

 If she’d had a list of terrible and awkward things to say upon chance meeting with an ex-boyfriend, she could hardly have done better.

 Kit looked down guiltily. “Well, uhh,” he said. He looked back up at Nita. “We’ve been working on wizardry together, and then—“

 Nita almost wanted to laugh – and then, absurdly, she wanted to cry as well. “Right,” she said. “Well, we’re gonna get going.”

 Kit shifted his weight. “Yeah,” he said.

 Darryl waved. “Bye, Nita!” he said. “You should visit more often!”

It was Nita’s turn to look guiltily at Kit. “Yeah,” she said. “I should do that.”

Allison already had the transport wizardry ready. Nita placed her name into it, checked over the wizardry, and then minutes later she and Allison were back on earth.

 “What was that about?” Allison asked, once she had rolled up the spell and stored it.

 Nita flushed red. “That was, uhh.” She began to finger comb her hair out of nervousness. “My ex-boyfriend.”

“Oh,” Allison said. “So that’s the one you were visiting all the time? And now he’s got a new girlfriend? What a jerk.”

Nita’s fingers caught on a snarl in her hair. She tugged it out. “Well, that was kind of the idea,” she said. “That we see other people. It was my idea to break up anyway, and it’s been two months, it’s not like I expected him to pine forever—“

“Still weird though?”

 Nita thought of Kit’s arm draped so casually around Olivia’s shoulders, and of the way he’d used to do that to her sometimes, when they were on a date or when they were tired after a long assignment or just when they wanted to sit together, thighs touching, her body curled into his.

 “Yeah,” she said. “Still weird.”  

--

 Nita’s graduation party was small, and held in the landscaped backyard of her Nassau County house. Her father was grilling burgers at the old grill for a number of guests – many of whom didn’t belong in this solar system, many more of whom were wizards.

 Sker’ret – disguised as human for the day – was watching the cooking burgers with rapt attention even as he chatted with Nita’s dad. Tom and Carl both had sodas and plates for burgers, and were talking to Allison. Irina – having just stopped in for a quick chat – watched her toddler run amok through the backyard, simultaneously carrying on a conversation with Carmela and a disguised Filif. Dairine and Roshaun were half-obscured by the old rowan tree; Nita wasn’t sure if they were arguing or about to start making out, and didn’t really want to know.

 Nita grinned – happy and tired and dizzy from all of the congratulations – and went inside to fetch condiments for the burgers. Just as she had finished stacking lettuce leaves, the pile of sliced tomato and onion, and the mustard and ketchup bottles on a tray, she heard the doorbell ring.

 She set the tray down, rushed to the door, and wrenched it open.

 It was Kit.

 Nita’s heart beat sharply in her ears, and she took a deep breath. She had seen Kit only a sporadic few times over the past year. “Hey,” she said, breathless with both happiness and surprise. “It’s great to see you! I wasn’t sure you’d make it.”

 “Yeah, well, I had to find some things,” Kit said. He looked down, and Nita noticed the wrapped package he had in his hands. “Plus, Mela wouldn’t stop giving me grief, so I didn’t want to walk down with her.”

 “When does she ever stop giving you grief?”

 Kit laughed, and Nita laughed too. She was almost surprised at how easy it was.

 “Yeah,” Kit said. “But she kept making smoochy faces at me and—“ He blushed, and looked at Nita guiltily.

 Nita took a deep breath, and frowned. This was never going to be easy. “Kit—“

 “Yeah,” he said. “We need to talk, I know.”

 Nita nodded. “You wanna set it up? I have a plate of condiments I’m supposed to bring out, and I should probably tell my dad if I’m gonna be awhile.”

 Kit almost looked startled. “The moon?” he asked.

 “Yeah,” Nita said. She smiled at Kit. “Back in a flash.”

 She left him to setting up the wizardry, grabbed the tray from the kitchen, and brought it outside. It took only one quick word to her dad, and Nita was free to go – as long as she didn’t neglect her guests too long.

Kit already had the transport wizardry set up – it glittered in the growing dimness. Nita checked Kit’s work quickly. His name was different, she realized. Not by much, but a few syllables had changed. There was lead in Nita’s throat, as she looked at the characters in the Speech. She looked away, and quickly wrote out her own name to attach to the spell.

 “Ready?” Kit asked, once he was done with his own check.

 Nita looked up, and into Kit’s eyes. “Yeah,” she said.

 They began to speak together. She had forgotten how easy it was to spell with Kit. They matched cadence perfectly, leaping into the spell, daring the other to say the words faster. The air around Nita began to listen, to sing its own song.

 Her eyes were drawn to Kit. Caught up in the wizardry, the effervescent air pressed in around him, he looked as handsome as she had ever seen him. His hair – in need of a cutting – fell haphazardly across his forehead and over his dark and serious eyes. His light green polo shirt contrasted his sun-dark skin, highlighting his collarbones and strong arms.

 Nita took a deep gulp of air, and finished the spell.

 They stood on the surface of the moon. It was their usual meeting spot – Nita knew every rock, and could name a memory to go with each one. She smiled tentatively at Kit. “So,” she said, not sure how to begin the conversation.

 Kit held out his wrapped package. “Here,” he said. “I got you this.”

 Nita took the gift from his hands, and opened in slowly. It was a small and old shoebox. Nita reached in and drew out a smooth seashell.

 “That’s from—when we went to the beach together,” Kit said. “I thought I’d bundle up things that reminded me of our friendship.”

 Nita smiled at Kit, looking through the box. There was the gimbal they had used during their joint Ordeal, a rock from Mars with her father’s old cell phone number carved into it, and a small and plastic queen chess piece that had figured into one of their later exploits.  

“This is great,” she said.  

“Well I was thinking,” Kit said. “We haven’t really been—anything like friends lately—“ 

“We haven’t been talking lately,” Nita said. “I think we kind of royally screwed up our friendship.” 

Kit laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess we did, kinda.”

 Nita smiled, and looked back in the box. There was a small piece of lined notebook paper, folded up, its perforated edges still visible. She pulled it out.

 “What’s this?” she asked, already beginning to unfold it.

 Kit flushed a darker brown,. “Oh, that’s uhh—“

 Nita was already reading the paper. Fourteen lines of what she suspected was iambic pentameter, finishing in a rhyming couplet. She laughed, and began to read it aloud. 

“In shining air bejewel’d o’er with frost
Where Sun in bitter Sky imparts no fire,
And breath like fairy’s shroud suddenly lost
To steam like kettle brewed upon the fire,

 “When evergreen is bent with weight of snow
Like weary men do bow at end of day,
When river wild begins with ice to slow
To wait in frozen sleep for hint of May,
 “My heart so cold like ice begins to crack

With pond’rous weight of glacier upon mount
‘Tis poised to fall in water inky black
That sea which no Sun’s light could hope surmount
“I look into my heart and think of you

And thus recall my heart to spring anew—Kit, this is terrible,” she said, snorting her laughter. She looked up from the sonnet, at Kit. His mouth was curled into a grin. “No, this is really, really bad.”

“I thought you might miss my terrible sonneteering,” he said. “I wrote it for that class assignment, y’know—whenever it was I took that Shakespeare class.”

Nita smiled. She had missed Kit – his wry sense of humor, his easy smile, his steady presence. It felt good to laugh with him again. “Was it supposed to be to me?” she asked. It was out before she could check herself.

Kit paused. Then he said, “Yeah. You guessed it.”

Nita took a deep breath, and kept smiling, to smooth over the awkwardness. “You’d never win a girl over with this.” She grinned up at Kit. “Well, maybe if she thought your dorkiness was cute.”

Kit smiled, already flushed darker, and then said, “Did you think my dorkiness was—“

“Cute?” Nita finished for him, mirroring his flush. “Yeah I guess I kinda did. But let’s not—let’s not jump into that just yet?”

“Yeah,” Kit said. “You’re right.”

“Besides, what about—what was her name? From the moon?”

“Oh,” Kit said. “Olivia. We broke up—ehh, about this time last year. She’s in the Caribbean for an internship, now.”

“I see. And—anyone else?”

“Nothing serious,” Kit said with a shrug. “How about you? Are you dating anyone?”

His tone was light, but Nita glared at Kit and punched his arm. “Stop that,” she said, with a laugh. “I said we should hold off. Just because I’m not seeing anyone doesn’t change that.”

“All right, all right,” Kit said. “No more. Don’t worry.”

“And don’t you dare try to win me over with more sonnets.”

“Absolutely not.”

Kit laughed. Nita laughed with him. Their mirth carried through their air bubble, filling it even long after it was gone and the two had fallen silent. Nita stared up at the familiar constellations, and sighed through her teeth.

“I’m glad,” she said, haltingly. “That you’re not mad at me.”

“It was awkward, but—you did what you needed to do. Of course I’m not mad.”

Nita grinned, her teeth flashing in the glare of the sun on the moon’s surface. “Friends?” she asked.

“The best,” Kit said.

“Good,” Nita said. “We should probably go back to the graduation party. Maybe we can still snag a hamburger – if Sker’ret hasn’t eaten them all.”

“No time to lose, then,” Kit said. He pulled out the transportation wizardry once again.

“And, hey,” Nita said, stepping into the spell diagram. “I’m in New York all summer. Do you want to, I don’t know, get lunch sometime?”

Kit grinned, and took Nita’s hand from across the spell. “Yeah,” he said. “We may as well grab a few. I’ve been holding down the fort here, but I’m sure there’s some place in New York that could use a Callahan-Rodriguez wizardly intervention.”

Comments

[talon.livejournal.com]

<3

[lyras.livejournal.com]

Awww! I love the ending, the way they just slip back into their old ease with one another - but they're older and more confident, and you know they can make it work this time if they try.