Fic - Now I Cling to What I Knew (Jenna, John/Jenna) R, 1/1
Title: Now I Cling to What I Knew
Summary: Here's a truth Jenna doesn't like to share, but everybody already knows: She was never her mother's favorite daughter. Falling into old patterns has always been easier than not.
Rating: r
Author's Notes: 2,502 words. General series spoilers. Set pre-series. For empressearwig who requested the prompt and sometimes I find I catch myself letting you back in. New to this fandom, so con-crit is both welcome and appreciated. All mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not.
Here's a truth Jenna doesn't like to share, but everybody already knows: She was never her mother's favorite daughter.
It was always Miranda with her darker hair and wider eyes, that lovely disposition that could light up whatever room she was in and her father's mood within seconds and without so much of an effort. Miranda who fell in love with the right guy first and never had second thoughts to battle with. Miranda who gave their parents relevance again, let them be born anew in the form of their two perfect grandchildren, the ones they always wanted and knew Jenna would be painstakingly slow to give them.
Another truth? Jenna never really hated her for it, not once. There was no ill will, no love lost between them. Jenna always loved her sister and depended on her, learned to use her for support, to lean on when she needed it because Miranda was good and simple in only the best way, knew when her little sister needed her to carry some of her weight, when the pressure was too heavy against her tiny shoulders. Miranda was there after Logan broke her heart the first time and the second time too. After Jenna attempted the GRE's that initial, disastrous time and did horribly because she was full of too much pride and thought she knew everything there was to know, but didn't.
For as long as Jenna's memories will allow her to remember, Miranda was always the one who kissed her skinned knees and helped mend Jenna's broken hearts. Always a mother and a sister wrapped up in a young adult whose heart was always bigger than anyone ever really knew.
It's why, Jenna muses, she agrees to take care of Elena and Jeremy after.
Why she chooses to trade in her young life and precarious ways, the promises of a bright future anywhere but here and stays in Mystic Falls to lessen the adjustment for the kids the only way she really can. Why she chooses to raise them to the best of her abilities, the way Miranda and Grayson would have wanted them to be raised, the way that would have made them proud because that's what her big sister deserved, that's what she would have wanted.
It's why, at just twenty-nine, she finds herself in Grayson's study holding back tears and trying to forget memories that tangle and intertwine and get stuck somewhere in the back of her throat with the sob that is itching for release.
Jenna’s dress is black and her heels are covered in mud because the ground was soft when they put her sister into it and the stilettos had been a bad choice, had sunk in too deep as she stood with her hand in Elena's and her eyes on Jeremy as they said goodbye to their parents. When she looks up the door is sliding open, hinges squeaking from lack of use and she's not at all surprised to see John saunter on in. He has a glass of something full-proof between his fingers, smile soft and oddly sincere as he looks at her.
The kids are upstairs sleeping - or not sleeping as the case might be. Jenna has lost both her parents and knows sleep doesn't find you until days later when your body is too exhausted to fight it any longer - and the reception has been over for an hour at least. Jenna knows this because that's how long she's been in here, since she said goodbye to the very last person, smiled tightly at their if there's anything I can do and disappeared into Grayson's study for what might very well be the last moment she has to herself.
In just the short span of a single week she's gone from being a lowly twenty-nine year old grad student with no romantic prospects just trying to get by, to a surrogate mother to two teenage kids that she barely even knows. Some things, Jenna muses, you are never truly able to wrap your head around.
"What are you still doing here?"
John shrugs, settling his weight evenly between both feet as he stands too close to her. There is a moment or two where he says nothing, just watches her, eyes tracing the lines of her face and Jenna's chest feels too tight.
"I wanted to make sure you were alright," he finally replies quietly, setting down his glass on the oak wood of Grayson's desk and resting his right hip against the edge.
Rolling her eyes, she moves the tumbler onto a nearby coaster and takes a wide step away from him.
"You never seemed to care before."
There's always been too much self confidence coiled within him and he smirks without hesitation, fingers reaching up to trace the gentle curve of her stubborn jaw. Jenna's two exhausted to move away, to flinch, but she doesn't let her eyes fall closed like they once would have, doesn’t let herself lean into him.
"I always cared, Jenna."
"About yourself, maybe," she snorts something unladylike, something Miranda probably would have laughed at. "About the best way somebody's presence in your life you could benefit you."
His hands fall, curling into fists at his sides. John doesn't deny it, just smiles like he always would when she called him on whatever bullshit he was trying to sell her. It's what he always liked best - the fight inside her, Jenna's apparent inability to take his bullshit in stride like everybody else in his life. Grayson was that way once, if Jenna remembers correctly, but eventually he grew older and tired and gave up trying discern John's motives and intentions because of the sheer exhaustion the effort caused.
Jenna eventually did, too.
Moving away from her and towards the bookshelf, John's shoulders are stiff as he turns his back towards her. In the beginning when things were still good between them and Jenna had tricked herself into believing somewhere underneath it all he really was a nice guy, they had bonded over living in their older siblings shadows, never feeling quite at place in their own homes. John's parents favored Grayson just as much as hers did Miranda, the only difference was John and Grayson's relationship was always a vicious circle, volatile in the worst possible way. John never liked being second best, couldn't handle not having his way, and for him it defined almost everything in his life.
He's fingering a bottle of scotch that's pressed in-between medical journals and textbooks with cracked spines and curling edges, that have been worn down with age. Jenna recognizes it as the one John's father had given Grayson on his wedding day, told him not to open it until he and Miranda's silver wedding anniversary. It must be about twenty-years old now, if not more, and John's always appreciated a good bottle of scotch more than anyone she's ever met. Definitely more than Grayson ever did. It was his father's favorite, after all.
"Think they'd mind?" he asks, turning towards her with the bottle in-between his fingers.
Jenna sighs and crosses the room towards him. "No," she says, taking the bottle out of his hands and placing it back on the shelf, in-between the same textbooks and magazines, right over the ring of dust that had been collecting around it for years. "But I do."
There's a laugh that falls between them, short and distant and Jenna can't remember him being this cold before. Even when he was at his worst, even when they would fight and Jenna would scream and yell until she was blue in the face and push him just to garner a reaction, he was never like this. Never this indifferent. It causes her blood to run cold in her veins, makes her heart stop and start, pound inside of her throat. Death, she finally realizes, really does change everybody.
"They're dead," he says, not looking at her. "They're not going to be drinking it any time soon."
With fingers curling into fists are her sides and nails digging into the soft skin of her palms, her laugh is incredulous, borderline hysterical.
"You really are a bastard, aren't you?" She breathes, practically seething and all she wants to do in that moment is smack him so hard she draws blood. To push him until he stumbles backwards, because this is her sister and his brother, their house, and they've only been in the ground for less than six hours and the least he could do is show some damn respect.
Of course he kisses her then.
Of course he does because this is John and he's the king of saying inappropriate things at inappropriate times and this is how it all started between them way back when . Alcohol and a funeral, a terrible metaphor dropping between them like nails running down a chalkboard and he had kissed her just to drown out everything else, just because he could and that's always been a good enough reason for him to do anything.
John kisses her hard and bruising, fingers finding the curve of her jaw and digging in. Kisses her with his tongue pressing against the roof of her mouth without any precision whatsoever and he tastes like mint and something heavier, something that burns the tip of her tongue when she opens her mouth beneath his and kisses him back.
There are certain things that experience has taught her, certain truths life has proven she can't ignore and kissing John Gilbert and expecting it to lead anywhere good means nothing but trouble. Jenna knows this just as surely as she knows the back of her hand, just as surely as she know she's going to wake up tomorrow and her sister will still be dead and life as she knew it will be completely over, irrevocably changed. It's still no surprise, though, that she catches herself in a moment of indecision, converts back into the little girl she was once upon a time. The girl who drank and screwed and did what she wanted because it felt good and right then, in those moments, that was all that mattered. She needed that to be all that mattered. Jenna fists her tiny hands in the fabric of his shirt, fingers leaving wrinkles in her wake and starts to pull and fight against him for only a moment, for only a brief, fleeting amount of time, before he's pushing her backwards, towards the desk.
Jenna lets him.
Lets him shove her hard, the curve of the oak digging into her spine so sharply that she winces. John catches it, uses his hands to lift her upwards until she's sitting right on the edge, papers crumbling under her weight. There are no mumbled hesitations when his hands leave her face and smooth down her sides, over cotton and skin until it reaches the slenderness of her thigh. John uses his knuckles to part them, to open her wide to him and Jenna Moans something low into her throat when his fingers skim the soft skin of her inner thigh, traveling up up up until it reaches the soft silk between her legs.
John's always known how do this well. They've always known how to do this well. Even when there was nothing else between them, even at the end when distance and time had shown them both that there was never going to be any possibility of a future for them, they still had this. The way he teases her gently at first than harshly, applying pressure ever so often and then releasing, waiting until she has to tear her mouth away to gasp. The way she buries her face into his neck, lips and tongue attacking the soft skin under his collar, fingers digging into the skin at his hips until he groans her name, voice choking in-between the syllables.
There is no progression, no preamble.
Just John's fingers between her legs, shoving the silk of her favorite pair of underwear aside and hers working against his belt and then his zipper, her hand inching under fabric until she finds him hard and waiting and ready. His fingers curl inside her, searching out that spot he first discovered and barely anyone has found since, the one that makes her toes curl and eyes roll backwards. When he finds it, when his fingers curl into her like the curves of his grin against her neck, she jerks, moans into his shoulder with her teeth digging into fabric and the skin underneath and tightens her tiny fingers around him until he does the same.
John coaxes her softly and her spine straightens as her hands work against him with practiced ease and skill and she's so tightly wound that it doesn't take long at all. Just a few flicks of his thumb against her throbbing clit, motions smooth and circular with just the right amount of pressure. Jenna comes hard and blindingly fast, her face buried in the crook of John's shoulder, the skin were bone meets neck muffling her cries, her beautiful sigh of release. Her fingers never stop moving against him, wrist aching from the harsh movements she knows he needs and it is relief, almost, when he comes in her hands, his sigh oddly sweet against the soft skin of her neck.
There's a moment of haze, of lightness and Jenna closes her eyes against it, lets it settle on her shoulders and press into them. Let's herself forget for just a moment, lets herself breathe without pause for just a short stretch of time.
Upstairs there are footsteps, water running through the pipes in the ceilings and the facade breaks. Comes crashing down around the two of them as her eyes slide open against the soft light within the room.
In the aftermath she slides off the desk and straightens the hem of a dress she will surely never wear again. Makes an attempt to slow her breathing, the harsh rise and fall of her chest as she smoothes her hair, and wipes her lips with the back of her hand. John is looking at her, eyes bare and lips parted, breathing starting to slow, and for the first time in ages she sees the man she once knew. The little boy who only wanted his brother's approval and father's love.
Jenna tries so hard not to think about how harshly time has treated them.
"You should go," Jenna says. Her jaw is squared like her father's, eyes narrowed like her mother's, voice soft and slipping with gentleness like Miranda's - always a perfect mixture of the ones who have left her behind. When she's at the door she pauses, fingers tight around the knob, her thighs slick with reminders. "And you better leave that scotch."
John's soft laughter filters through the door after she pulls it closed behind her.
*Because I like to pay credit where credit is due: The timeline used within this is based off of empressearwig 's work when will I feel soft because I consider that a part of canon. It is just that good. If you haven't checked it out yet, you should.
Summary: Here's a truth Jenna doesn't like to share, but everybody already knows: She was never her mother's favorite daughter. Falling into old patterns has always been easier than not.
Rating: r
Author's Notes: 2,502 words. General series spoilers. Set pre-series. For empressearwig who requested the prompt and sometimes I find I catch myself letting you back in. New to this fandom, so con-crit is both welcome and appreciated. All mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not.
Here's a truth Jenna doesn't like to share, but everybody already knows: She was never her mother's favorite daughter.
It was always Miranda with her darker hair and wider eyes, that lovely disposition that could light up whatever room she was in and her father's mood within seconds and without so much of an effort. Miranda who fell in love with the right guy first and never had second thoughts to battle with. Miranda who gave their parents relevance again, let them be born anew in the form of their two perfect grandchildren, the ones they always wanted and knew Jenna would be painstakingly slow to give them.
Another truth? Jenna never really hated her for it, not once. There was no ill will, no love lost between them. Jenna always loved her sister and depended on her, learned to use her for support, to lean on when she needed it because Miranda was good and simple in only the best way, knew when her little sister needed her to carry some of her weight, when the pressure was too heavy against her tiny shoulders. Miranda was there after Logan broke her heart the first time and the second time too. After Jenna attempted the GRE's that initial, disastrous time and did horribly because she was full of too much pride and thought she knew everything there was to know, but didn't.
For as long as Jenna's memories will allow her to remember, Miranda was always the one who kissed her skinned knees and helped mend Jenna's broken hearts. Always a mother and a sister wrapped up in a young adult whose heart was always bigger than anyone ever really knew.
It's why, Jenna muses, she agrees to take care of Elena and Jeremy after.
Why she chooses to trade in her young life and precarious ways, the promises of a bright future anywhere but here and stays in Mystic Falls to lessen the adjustment for the kids the only way she really can. Why she chooses to raise them to the best of her abilities, the way Miranda and Grayson would have wanted them to be raised, the way that would have made them proud because that's what her big sister deserved, that's what she would have wanted.
It's why, at just twenty-nine, she finds herself in Grayson's study holding back tears and trying to forget memories that tangle and intertwine and get stuck somewhere in the back of her throat with the sob that is itching for release.
Jenna’s dress is black and her heels are covered in mud because the ground was soft when they put her sister into it and the stilettos had been a bad choice, had sunk in too deep as she stood with her hand in Elena's and her eyes on Jeremy as they said goodbye to their parents. When she looks up the door is sliding open, hinges squeaking from lack of use and she's not at all surprised to see John saunter on in. He has a glass of something full-proof between his fingers, smile soft and oddly sincere as he looks at her.
The kids are upstairs sleeping - or not sleeping as the case might be. Jenna has lost both her parents and knows sleep doesn't find you until days later when your body is too exhausted to fight it any longer - and the reception has been over for an hour at least. Jenna knows this because that's how long she's been in here, since she said goodbye to the very last person, smiled tightly at their if there's anything I can do and disappeared into Grayson's study for what might very well be the last moment she has to herself.
In just the short span of a single week she's gone from being a lowly twenty-nine year old grad student with no romantic prospects just trying to get by, to a surrogate mother to two teenage kids that she barely even knows. Some things, Jenna muses, you are never truly able to wrap your head around.
"What are you still doing here?"
John shrugs, settling his weight evenly between both feet as he stands too close to her. There is a moment or two where he says nothing, just watches her, eyes tracing the lines of her face and Jenna's chest feels too tight.
"I wanted to make sure you were alright," he finally replies quietly, setting down his glass on the oak wood of Grayson's desk and resting his right hip against the edge.
Rolling her eyes, she moves the tumbler onto a nearby coaster and takes a wide step away from him.
"You never seemed to care before."
There's always been too much self confidence coiled within him and he smirks without hesitation, fingers reaching up to trace the gentle curve of her stubborn jaw. Jenna's two exhausted to move away, to flinch, but she doesn't let her eyes fall closed like they once would have, doesn’t let herself lean into him.
"I always cared, Jenna."
"About yourself, maybe," she snorts something unladylike, something Miranda probably would have laughed at. "About the best way somebody's presence in your life you could benefit you."
His hands fall, curling into fists at his sides. John doesn't deny it, just smiles like he always would when she called him on whatever bullshit he was trying to sell her. It's what he always liked best - the fight inside her, Jenna's apparent inability to take his bullshit in stride like everybody else in his life. Grayson was that way once, if Jenna remembers correctly, but eventually he grew older and tired and gave up trying discern John's motives and intentions because of the sheer exhaustion the effort caused.
Jenna eventually did, too.
Moving away from her and towards the bookshelf, John's shoulders are stiff as he turns his back towards her. In the beginning when things were still good between them and Jenna had tricked herself into believing somewhere underneath it all he really was a nice guy, they had bonded over living in their older siblings shadows, never feeling quite at place in their own homes. John's parents favored Grayson just as much as hers did Miranda, the only difference was John and Grayson's relationship was always a vicious circle, volatile in the worst possible way. John never liked being second best, couldn't handle not having his way, and for him it defined almost everything in his life.
He's fingering a bottle of scotch that's pressed in-between medical journals and textbooks with cracked spines and curling edges, that have been worn down with age. Jenna recognizes it as the one John's father had given Grayson on his wedding day, told him not to open it until he and Miranda's silver wedding anniversary. It must be about twenty-years old now, if not more, and John's always appreciated a good bottle of scotch more than anyone she's ever met. Definitely more than Grayson ever did. It was his father's favorite, after all.
"Think they'd mind?" he asks, turning towards her with the bottle in-between his fingers.
Jenna sighs and crosses the room towards him. "No," she says, taking the bottle out of his hands and placing it back on the shelf, in-between the same textbooks and magazines, right over the ring of dust that had been collecting around it for years. "But I do."
There's a laugh that falls between them, short and distant and Jenna can't remember him being this cold before. Even when he was at his worst, even when they would fight and Jenna would scream and yell until she was blue in the face and push him just to garner a reaction, he was never like this. Never this indifferent. It causes her blood to run cold in her veins, makes her heart stop and start, pound inside of her throat. Death, she finally realizes, really does change everybody.
"They're dead," he says, not looking at her. "They're not going to be drinking it any time soon."
With fingers curling into fists are her sides and nails digging into the soft skin of her palms, her laugh is incredulous, borderline hysterical.
"You really are a bastard, aren't you?" She breathes, practically seething and all she wants to do in that moment is smack him so hard she draws blood. To push him until he stumbles backwards, because this is her sister and his brother, their house, and they've only been in the ground for less than six hours and the least he could do is show some damn respect.
Of course he kisses her then.
Of course he does because this is John and he's the king of saying inappropriate things at inappropriate times and this is how it all started between them way back when . Alcohol and a funeral, a terrible metaphor dropping between them like nails running down a chalkboard and he had kissed her just to drown out everything else, just because he could and that's always been a good enough reason for him to do anything.
John kisses her hard and bruising, fingers finding the curve of her jaw and digging in. Kisses her with his tongue pressing against the roof of her mouth without any precision whatsoever and he tastes like mint and something heavier, something that burns the tip of her tongue when she opens her mouth beneath his and kisses him back.
There are certain things that experience has taught her, certain truths life has proven she can't ignore and kissing John Gilbert and expecting it to lead anywhere good means nothing but trouble. Jenna knows this just as surely as she knows the back of her hand, just as surely as she know she's going to wake up tomorrow and her sister will still be dead and life as she knew it will be completely over, irrevocably changed. It's still no surprise, though, that she catches herself in a moment of indecision, converts back into the little girl she was once upon a time. The girl who drank and screwed and did what she wanted because it felt good and right then, in those moments, that was all that mattered. She needed that to be all that mattered. Jenna fists her tiny hands in the fabric of his shirt, fingers leaving wrinkles in her wake and starts to pull and fight against him for only a moment, for only a brief, fleeting amount of time, before he's pushing her backwards, towards the desk.
Jenna lets him.
Lets him shove her hard, the curve of the oak digging into her spine so sharply that she winces. John catches it, uses his hands to lift her upwards until she's sitting right on the edge, papers crumbling under her weight. There are no mumbled hesitations when his hands leave her face and smooth down her sides, over cotton and skin until it reaches the slenderness of her thigh. John uses his knuckles to part them, to open her wide to him and Jenna Moans something low into her throat when his fingers skim the soft skin of her inner thigh, traveling up up up until it reaches the soft silk between her legs.
John's always known how do this well. They've always known how to do this well. Even when there was nothing else between them, even at the end when distance and time had shown them both that there was never going to be any possibility of a future for them, they still had this. The way he teases her gently at first than harshly, applying pressure ever so often and then releasing, waiting until she has to tear her mouth away to gasp. The way she buries her face into his neck, lips and tongue attacking the soft skin under his collar, fingers digging into the skin at his hips until he groans her name, voice choking in-between the syllables.
There is no progression, no preamble.
Just John's fingers between her legs, shoving the silk of her favorite pair of underwear aside and hers working against his belt and then his zipper, her hand inching under fabric until she finds him hard and waiting and ready. His fingers curl inside her, searching out that spot he first discovered and barely anyone has found since, the one that makes her toes curl and eyes roll backwards. When he finds it, when his fingers curl into her like the curves of his grin against her neck, she jerks, moans into his shoulder with her teeth digging into fabric and the skin underneath and tightens her tiny fingers around him until he does the same.
John coaxes her softly and her spine straightens as her hands work against him with practiced ease and skill and she's so tightly wound that it doesn't take long at all. Just a few flicks of his thumb against her throbbing clit, motions smooth and circular with just the right amount of pressure. Jenna comes hard and blindingly fast, her face buried in the crook of John's shoulder, the skin were bone meets neck muffling her cries, her beautiful sigh of release. Her fingers never stop moving against him, wrist aching from the harsh movements she knows he needs and it is relief, almost, when he comes in her hands, his sigh oddly sweet against the soft skin of her neck.
There's a moment of haze, of lightness and Jenna closes her eyes against it, lets it settle on her shoulders and press into them. Let's herself forget for just a moment, lets herself breathe without pause for just a short stretch of time.
Upstairs there are footsteps, water running through the pipes in the ceilings and the facade breaks. Comes crashing down around the two of them as her eyes slide open against the soft light within the room.
In the aftermath she slides off the desk and straightens the hem of a dress she will surely never wear again. Makes an attempt to slow her breathing, the harsh rise and fall of her chest as she smoothes her hair, and wipes her lips with the back of her hand. John is looking at her, eyes bare and lips parted, breathing starting to slow, and for the first time in ages she sees the man she once knew. The little boy who only wanted his brother's approval and father's love.
Jenna tries so hard not to think about how harshly time has treated them.
"You should go," Jenna says. Her jaw is squared like her father's, eyes narrowed like her mother's, voice soft and slipping with gentleness like Miranda's - always a perfect mixture of the ones who have left her behind. When she's at the door she pauses, fingers tight around the knob, her thighs slick with reminders. "And you better leave that scotch."
John's soft laughter filters through the door after she pulls it closed behind her.
*Because I like to pay credit where credit is due: The timeline used within this is based off of empressearwig 's work when will I feel soft because I consider that a part of canon. It is just that good. If you haven't checked it out yet, you should.