"So, how do you feel like you did on the assignment Mr. Oniell gave us? It was about your favorite subject."

"About the positive aspects of how high school makes me feel and why? It was quite a riveting subject to write about." Daria said to Jane

"I think he may have missed most of the sarcasm since he gave you an A on the paper." Jane said

Daria shrugged and lightly smirked for a split second. "Even though I failed in my mission to make him see the error in his positive ways, I at least got to embarrass Quinn."

"Speaking of that, shouldn't we be hearing a high pitched shriek right about…." A few hallways away they heard it. As if right on cue. "Now."

Jane and Daria were both smirking now, they heard the stomping of tiny feet growing ever closer and had to hold in a laugh. Soon the younger Morgendorffer stood before them, clearly she was unhappy.

"Daria do you know how much explaining I'm going to have to do to convince those boys that we're not related again? How could you!? Not everyone has to be as sad and unpopular as you."

"I'm sorry, I didn't know telling the truth about our blood relation could lead to such dire consequences." She said sarcastically.

"Thanks!" Quinn said with a huge smile.

Daria sighed and shook her head. Sometimes she felt as if her comedic stylings were lost on the stupid, which seemed to be almost everyone around her sadly. She was about to insult her sister's lack of self awareness but they were interrupted by a boy. Her and Quinn both turned to him.

"I just wanted to say you're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen."

Quinn smiled and flipped her hair over her shoulder. She had no idea who he was, but maybe she could get him to take her to chez pierre. He was kind of cute too.

Daria rolled her eyes and motioned to Jane that they had to leave. She was not about to stand around and get an even bolder confirmation that Quinn was the much more attractive sister. Also, it slightly hurt that so many guys fell for her stupid games. Well, at least half of the population has to be stupid at any given time, so it's to be expected. As she was walking away she heard a squeaky scoff then felt someone grab her hand softly. She turned around, it was the same boy. Maybe he wanted to apologize for interrupting their almost non existent conversation.

As soon as she turned around he snatched his hand away, not sure if she was comfortable with someone she didn't know grabbing her. "I was talking to you, not her."

"Excuse me?" Daria said, monotone in disbelief.

"I heard you speak a few times in class and when I saw your face it just...fit. My heart skips a beat every time I look at you or I hear you talk. I can't wait to hear what the next thing you say will be."

Quinn was slackjawed. Jane was stunned for a second, then covered her mouth to hide her laugh. She looked on as Daria grew redder and redder. She knew exactly what the next word out of her mouth would be.

"Eep!" Daria took a few steps back then turned around and began to run as fast as her combat boot laden feet would take her. The reaction was instinctual.

The boy was….confused to say the least. He turned to Jane. "Did I say something wrong? Is she angry at me?"

Jane cocked her head while she thought for a second. The way he just blurted that spiel out with a blank expression made it clear he was similar but not the same as Daria in terms of thought pattern. Direct was the best approach here.

"She just needs some time to take in what you said since that never happens to her."

"Really!? Look at her. She's so beautiful."

Jane had to purse her lips to hold back a laugh again. This was gold. "Maybe you'll be able to snatch her up before someone else in her sea of admirers can get to her. I have to go find her, see you around Romeo."


Unfortunately for Jane he happened to catch Daria on her last break between classes. She avoided all of her usual hiding spots and her final class wasn't one they had together. She sighed and walked home by herself. She would talk to her when she was ready. On her walk home she saw the boy again and ran up to him to start a conversation.

"Hey."

"Heylo."

She waited a few seconds but when he kept walking in silence it became apparent to her that he didn't really follow standard social etiquette.

"What's your name? I'm Jane."

"I'm Lapis."

"That's a….unique...name." Jane said, trying not to be rude.

"My mom was kind of a hippie. I like it."

"Yea, my mom is a free spirit too. All about going where the wave takes you and that jazz. They're from a different time."

"Yeah."

Once again he reverted back to silence. 'Jeez, he's harder to read than she is.' Jane thought. She decided to get to the point, given how this conversation was going he could randomly turn a corner towards his house and she'd have to wait until she saw him at school for an answer.

"So, why did you confess your love for Daria earlier? Did someone from the fashion club pay you to embarrass her? A certain bouncy haired someone?"

Lapis raised an eyebrow. "I don't know who you're talking about, I did it because if I didn't I would hate myself."

Jane shook her head. A robot romantic. How sweet. "What do you like about her again? I'm not saying that Daria isn't great….it's just she isn't the first brush people would paint with if you get what I'm saying."

"There's too much to list right now given how little time we have left to talk, just know I'm not trying to hurt your friend."

There was a pregnant pause hanging in the air as Jane waited for him to explain himself. He seemed trustworthy but she wanted to be nosy. They walked another half a block before she thought about the rest of his statement.

"Why would we not have much time to talk? Is your house that clo..." before she finished her statement she realized he was gone. She whirled her head around and realized he had already crossed the street and was at his front door. As soon as he was sure she was looking he flashed her the peace sign and went into his home. By her guess his walk to school was around 10 minutes shorter than hers.

Jane squinted her eyes and muttered to herself "Lucky quiet bastard."


Daria avoided Jane for the better part of the weekend, sitting around playing twenty questions that are embarrassing as possible didn't seem like her idea. Thankfully Quinn had dates and useless fashion club things so she could just sit in her room reading books and surfing the web in peace besides needing to grab dinner. A few times she slipped and allowed herself to look up ideas for why in the hell someone would like her. She was rather plain in almost every conceivable way besides being a brain, and there were nicer, and possibly more attractive, brains than her at the school. A few of the highlights she typed into google were:

"Why would anyone like me?"

"How to tell if a guy is flirting as a prank?"

"Why do guys find plain girls attractive." this was the one that made her log off, as the answer she saw most prominently was "You're not plain to him."

She just couldn't wrap her head around it. Quinn and Jane were right there. Quinn was probably the most traditionally pretty girl at school, even if she had the depth of a small puddle. Most teenage boys (and disgustingly enough grown men) seemed unaware of that simple fact and thought with their other head. She had no illusions about her position in the friendship, she was the smart one, Jane was the artsy hot one. She had the whole punk vibe going on. Sometimes she even gained popularity due to her art or athletic skills.

Her? She was just a brain. In no universe would she be the most beautiful girl anyone has seen. Yet here she was, and she had school tomorrow. He would likely be expecting an answer and she had no idea what she would even say. She would probably end up like one of Quinn's friends when they tried talking to her and fumbled over their words.

Contrary to popular belief she wasn't a hermit, and she wasn't asexual, it just never seemed to happen for her and the few times she was interested in a guy things fell through. Jane had had a couple of relationships while they were friends, plus if she got it over with now she wouldn't have to suffer through Jane's quips on her walk to school on monday. With a sigh she decided to rip off the bandaid today.

She got out of her desk chair and made her way towards the kitchen. Ignoring the latest monstrosity that her dad was probably planning on forcing on them as dinner, and being ignored by her mother as she rambled about more business meetings on the phone that she had to take care of today or the skies would ran fire and the oceans would boil. She grabbed a packet of cinnamon pop tarts and began her journey to Jane's house.

It was only a short distance but her boots felt like they were filled with lead. Not only was she nervous about the numerous jokes that would ensue, but Jane could also be mad at her for ditching her and ignoring her calls. She hoped she understood that it wasn't about her, she was just too much of a nervous wreck to talk. Soon she found herself at the door, and with a heavy sigh she knocked.

Jane opened the door looking rather frazzled. Her eyes were still halfway shut "Do you have any idea what time it is?"

"Uh, ten thirty." She said dryly.

Jane walked off but left the door open so she assumed that meant she could come in. She gave Jane about five minutes to splash some water on her face and change out of her pajamas into some house clothesbefore she wandered up to her room. She didn't bother saying hi to Trent since he would be asleep until mid afternoon at the earliest. Jane was working on another painting that Daria thought she wouldn't understand so she just jumped onto Jane's bed and laid her head over the edge on her back. She liked that it helped her feel something besides the usual nothing or embarrassment.

"So, Daria, I'm guessing you came here just to look at my magnificent masterpieces." Jane joked.

"Cut the crap, you know why I'm here. Start the jokes."

Jane tilted her head up for a few seconds then looked back at Daria. "I don't have any."

Daria raised her eyebrows. "What?"

"I don't want you to date or not date him because I'm making fun of you. You don't show it a lot but you're kind of emotional, sometimes." Daria sat up to look indignant but Jane just raised her hands and smiled. "I just want to see how it plays out, although personally I think you two would be kind of cute together."

She laid her head back down to hide her stupid blush. "How would you know? He only said one thing to me. It could be a prank or something."

"Doubtful."

"Huh?"

"I saw him on the walk home. He doesn't seem like the 'pranking' type. At least for stuff like this."

"How could you get that from what I'm assuming was a less than ten minute conversation?"

"The same way I knew we'd be besties within two minutes of our first conversation."

Daria groaned. Jane was right. She was fairly sarcastic which made people believe they were similar, but Jane was much more empathetic to common issues than she was. "If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles."

"I'm sorry Daria, I don't speak brain." Jane said with a smirk.

"I'm asking you to tell me about him. I didn't really get much before I ran away. Did you talk about why he has this undying love for me?"

"He didn't say much, you would probably be able to get more out of him than me." She peered closer to her painting to make sure the minor details were correct. "Just something about regretting it if he never told you."

Daria thought about it, she read a few novels with this premise. She still couldn't picture herself as the one that got away for anyone. Well, maybe she would be able to peer deeper into his mind during class tomorrow.

Jane raised her eyebrows quickly. "Oh! His name is Lapis and he said there were too many positive things to list about you in a short conversation."

Daria managed to keep her blush down this time but sat up to look at Jane. She returned the gaze and smiled while turning the painting around. She had painted Daria as an angel in a white robe with lapis sitting on the other end. Similar to the creation of adam. What was different was that she seemed to be smiling in the picture and grabbing his hand, with him reciprocating and holding her hand tightly, giving her a similar look to the one he had at school. Looking at her like she was a goddess.

She didn't bother trying to control or hide the blush this time. She just looked at the ground and groaned. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.


Now that she was aware he existed, she realized he was in a couple of her classes. Her heart nearly beat out of her chest every time she was caught by him staring his way but she didn't show it. She hoped. Usually his face seemed pretty blasé, but every time he found her staring his face lit up with a damn boyish smile and she had to admit he was kind of cute.

Still...she controlled her hormones. He had only said a few sentences to her, and she didn't want to end up like Quinn only dating a guy for his looks. For all she knew like most people at lawndale high he would show no signs of sentience whatsoever. He spent at least half of each class sleeping and the other half looking disinterested. She couldn't really blame him given that most of the teachers were incompetent though. It would be fairly hard for a guy to be interested in a class where the teacher was openly sexist for instance.

Mr. Demartino was easily her favorite teacher, he wasn't condescending unless you put in no effort to learn the material. The two biggest offenders being Kevin and Brittany, it was almost like they shared a brain cell most of the time. Actually, now she was curious as to why he let Lapis sleep in class. She never paid attention when he answered questions before, but she would this time. Mr. Demartino would let him sleep, but he was bound to interrupt it once or twice just because that was who he was.

She sat quietly while reading beyond good and evil until she heard a tap on a desk and the groan of someone waking up.

"Yes?"

"Now Lapis, do YOU think you can tell ME and the rest of the IMBECILES in this class WHY the roaring twenties ended and the great DEPRESSION began."

"The stock market crashed which lead to panic selling, likely accelerating the global economic downfall."

"Very good La-"

Lapis seemed deep in thought for a second. "Although if you boil it down, low wages, lack of regulation for the stock market, and corrupt stock brokers telling people that there was no way the stock market could ever fall, and that they could only make money, not lose any, were all major contributing factors that helped lead to the downfall. The natural human reaction…."

Mr. Demartino smiled. "Very GOOD Lapis. It's nice that someone else besides miss Morgendorffer and miss LANDON have a brain in this god forsaken cesspool of IDIOCY."

"Thank you sir." He said in a monotone fashion, right before his head hit the desk again and Mr. Demartino walked away again.

So, sentient, definitely sentient. He was allowed to sleep since he knew the material already and there were bigger problems in the class. That was….interesting. And also one less reason for her to reject him.

She turned her head to look at Lapis while Mr. Demartino broke down crying after asking Kevin and Brittany a question about Hoover's popularity and they said the vacuums were a household name. Almost as if he had a sixth sense he sat up just enough to look at her and he smiled again, and oddly she smiled back without a thought. After a few seconds Jane commented.

"I like your tastes Daria, but you shouldn't snack during class."

She heard him chuckle lightly, and she turned forward and blushed horribly again. She hated this. She probably wouldn't be able to talk to him today. She was far too anxious at the mere thought of it.

"DARIA!"

"Yes?" She said, nearly jumping out of her seat. Did he catch her staring? Was she about to be the subject of this weeks round of gossip at the school?

"On this group project YOU will be working with Mr. Chamberlain. I will not stick you with any of these SIMPLETONS as a reward for your continued INTELLIGENT participation in my class."

Daria leaned over to Jane. "Wait who's chamberlain?"

Jane pointed to the side with her thumb, and the guy she wanted to avoid today was waving at her kindly. She sank into her seat and put her hands on her head, trying to make herself as small as humanly possible. She laid her forehead on the desk now.

Lalalalala


Daria was distracted all through dinner. Fortunately her father had spared him another one of his horrendous inventions and they got to order pizza. Unfortunately they noticed that she was eating slowly.

"What's wrong honey?" Jake said

Daria sighed. "Lapis is coming over around six thirty to work on our history project."

Quinn frowned instantly. "Is that that jerk that ignored me in the hall?"

Helen stopped scrolling through her PDA as soon as she heard that tidbit. "What?"

"This jerk ignored me in the hall and called Daria the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. He was acting like I didn't even exist! I thought I looked super cute too! Daria didn't even try, she looked normal!"

Helen and Jake were slackjawed, while Daria sunk lower in her chair, holding her slice of stuffed crust pizza in her two tiny hands.

"Daria why didn't you tell us earlier!"

"Because I still have no idea what to say to him. I'm kind of...scared around him. "

"Is that little punk intimidating my little girl? If he threatened you I'll...raaaaaaah" Jake shouted while ripping up a napkin.

"Caaaalm down jake, Daria is just nervous because she likes him. Isn't that right?"

Daria was currently wishing she could melt into the floor like a T1000, thankfully Quinn's rambling kept some of the awkward silence at bay.

"He was super cute too! And he has this style most of the other boys at the school can't pull off. Actually only one I can think of. Anyway his clothes are baggy but name brand. I would have let him take me to chez pierre for sure!"

"Quinn we can talk about that later honey." Helen said with a smile to placate her huffing and pouting daughter. "Daria, sweety, just be yourself. That's what got you to the ball, you don't really need to change yourself to be asked to dance at this point."

"Hopefully he doesn't take one of my shoes and slips it on the foot of every girl in lawndale."

"I hope so too! Your shoes are like so ninety two, no girl should be caught dead wearing them."

Daria was about to comment on her sister's stupidity with more biting sarcasm, but then she heard the doorbell ring. Fight or flight kicked in and she immediately ran up to her room. Her heart was beating a mile a minute.

Helen rolled her eyes and went to get the door. For all Daria's intelligence, sometimes she was still a teenage girl with gaping holes in her experiences. Hopefully they could talk it out and she would be her normal self by the end of the night. She opened the door and was….surprised to say the least.

"Jake! Honey! Come greet our guest." She yelled out. Jake quickly came to the door and had a similar reaction.

"Oh, hey. You must be the Lapis we've been hearing so much about!"

"That's my name." They stood at the door for a few seconds then he felt as if he had to comment. "So are you going to invite me in or?"

"Right right come on in! Daria is upstairs waiting for you."

Lapis made his way towards the stairs and grabbed the banister before turning back. Helen and Jake were still all smiles but he could tell something was off. "It's fine to notice I'm black you know." The comment made them jump and he almost burst out laughing.

"We didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. We're down with the struggle! We hate the fuzz." Helen said while raising a fist.

He balanced a himself with the banister while he swung down a little while dying laughing. "I'm sure you are Mrs. Morgendorffer. Look I don't think you're racist. You just probably haven't seen another black person in a while. I'm use to it. We moved around a lot."

Helen was saddened. "I'm sorry if we were awkward. We never pictured ourselves being those people when we were younger."

Lapis raised his hand. "Say no more. You seem like nice people. Where did you say Daria was again?"

Jake soon perked up again. "Up the stairs, turn right and her room is on the left hand side."

"Thanks."

Lapis shook his head and smirked when he made it up the stairs. It was never not funny when that happened. Now onto Daria's room. He ran his hand over his fade, then rubbed his hands together nervously. He knew they were just working on an assignment right now but he wanted to show her...something. He wasn't exactly sure what she liked so he just decided to dress nicely and try not to be an idiot around her since she was brilliant. He let out a silent breath then knocked on her door. He heard a squeak for some reason then after a few seconds she said come in.

"This is your room?"

"Uh, yes?"

"You just get cooler every time I learn something new about you."

Daria giggled. 'I just giggled, I'm turning into Quinn' "Thanks, the room use to belong to a mental patient before we moved in so the walls are all padded. The only downside is that you can't hurt yourself."

"I kind of hurt myself already." He said, rubbing his arm.

"You just came in though, how?"

"By falling for you."

"What a line." She said with an eyeroll. Although deep down she liked it. She was still a nervous wreck and didn't quite know what to say. She didn't notice how quiet she was being until he pulled up her desk chair and was staring at her already.

He noticed she was going silent again and thought he knew what was wrong. "You don't have to answer me right now. I'm just some random guy that hit on you."

"….Thanks."

"I was being serious though, you're gorgeous. Mixed with that brain it's deadly combination."

She figured another thanks would be redundant, so she shifted the subject. "So what's did you want to do our project on? He was pretty vague in saying we had to pick a culture or aspect of a culture and write at least two thousand words on it. I'm assuming you have more that a passing interest in early nineteen hundreds America so we can do that if you want."

"I'm good. We could look at how Romans generally lived during the 100-0 B.C.E. It was quite an interesting time period but rough if you were a Roman citizen. Due to all the civil wars and political uprisings."

"Yea. I'm sure those Romans had it much rougher than the people they enslaved and sent to the mines. Times were hard For those damn Romans." Daria said dryly. After a few seconds she looked at him smiling and her eyes widened. She blushed but stood her ground. "Roman mining slaves might have had it worse than american slaves so don't give me that look. You know what I meant. "

Daria looked at the ground still blushing and inwardly cursed herself. She had to bring up the singular most awkward subject possible because of her sanctimonious sarcastic critique of a culture long past. And she wondered why every guy she ended up kinda liking ditched her, at this point she thought she deserved it.

He nervously gave her hand a pat, hoping she wouldn't slap him or something for being presumptuous. "I got what you meant and I agree on all counts. I actually love reading about that time period. Although for some strange reason I have a soft spot for Spartacus. I never understood why"

His face was fairly blank, and his tone was almost as flat as hers, but that was clearly a joke, a very good dark multi faceted sarcastic one she might add. Maybe Jane did have an intuition for this kind of thing.


So I randomly had an idea for this as I was rewatching Daria while working. There will be more chapters. The experience happened to me a few times and I just found it comical. I'd love to know what you think since I enjoyed writing it. Tell me if it's "boring." and I need more excitement. I tried to keep it like the show and mundane but slightly ridiculous and a little funny.

Also I'm highly considering acting like Tom doesn't exist since he was just a plot device with no real personality in the show. Both Jane and Daria can find someone more compatible, even if Jane found him slightly attractive at first glance. Message/include in your review how you feel about that idea. Seriously though, I had to google his name just to write this and I'm rewatching the show right now. That's how much I remember about him. Please consider my suffering when giving your recommendation.