Chapter Text
i.
Hyde picks at her nails, carefully scratching the polish from her thumb. It helps, gives her something to focus on that’s not the light streaming through Donna’s hair, or the curve of her jeans. When she looks up, Jackie is staring at her. She raises one defiant eyebrow in her direction, taking pleasure when Jackie turns away.
Forman slides his hand into the small of Donna’s back. He’s been doing that a lot, recently. Like he wants to remind himself that Donna’s real, and he really is dating the girl he’s been in love with since he was six. Hyde wishes it didn’t make her stomach turn.
She also wishes that Jackie would stop trying to fit in, because she’s sure that’s what possesses her to insist on repainting Hyde’s nails. She agrees, but only because the alternative is watching Donna and Eric make cow-eyes at each other. Predictably, it doesn’t take long for Jackie to bring it up, because Jackie’s a cheerleader and apparently that’s what they do.
“So,” she says, swiping on some more neon-green polish. It seems very out of place in Jackie’s pink room, and Hyde wonders if she bought it specially. “Are you, like, in love with Eric, or something?”
There isn’t a second where Hyde contemplates telling her. She just grunts and avoids Jackie’s eyes. “No.”
Jackie’s hands slow, like she’s working up the courage to say something but doesn’t want Hyde to know that’s what she’s doing. “...Donna?”
It’s kind of weird, in retrospect, that Jackie even thought of that option. Doesn’t change Hyde’s mind, though. “No.”
Jackie sighs. “You’re being very annoying.”
Hyde sends her a shit-eating grin. “Kind of my thing, doll.”
She can’t tell because of all the pink in the room, but she thinks Jackie blushes.
***
It becomes a thing. It shouldn’t, not really - Hyde’s never hung round with girls, always the guys. It’s mostly a rebellion thing, but partly also because none of the other girls seemed keen on wrestling with her in the mud, bar Donna. Even if it wasn’t a guy/girl thing (and Hyde’s not trying to make it one, because traditional gender roles aren’t very punk at all), Hyde should absolutely hate Jackie’s guts.
And she does. Kind of.
It’s just harder than she expected, because even though Jackie’s valley girl voice is grating and even though she only ever talks about her nails and Pam Macey and who’s sleeping with who, it’s kind of funny to see Kelso bend over backwards for her. She keeps insisting on buying Hyde food, as well, and she’s never been one to turn down a free meal. Once she even offered to have Hyde’s favourite leather jacket dry-cleaned, and that was sort of nice of her.
Sometimes Jackie doesn’t even talk to her, just hums little tunes as she paints Hyde’s nails, and Hyde can admit to herself that that’s not half bad.
She likes Jackie, but she wont miss her when she’s gone.
***
“Wow,” says Hyde, her mouth moving of its own accord, as she finally acknowledges Jackie’s presence. “You look beautiful.”
She flushes, instantly, but Jackie just beams at her. “Oh my god, so do you! I wasn’t even aware you knew what dresses were.”
“Har har,” grumbles Hyde, and tugs on her sleeves. Her feet already hurt from the heels. “It’s prom. I’m an anarchist, but I’m not completely dense.”
Jackie looks at her strangely. “I never said you were.”
Hyde wonders, briefly, if this is what Jackie is really like underneath all the money and the cheerleading and the disco. It’s certainly weird that Jackie’s agreed to go to the prom stag. She wonders if maybe that’s just how Jackie’s chosen to defend herself - Hyde chose eyeliner and sex and smoking pot, and Jackie’s carving her way out from the inside. It’s kind of a weird thought.
“C’mon,” she mumbles, and gestures towards Jackie’s car, surprised when Jackie reaches up to grab her wrist.
Both of them stare at their connected hands. Jackie’s bottom lip trembles.
“I - thank you for tonight, Stephanie.” Nobody calls her Stephanie but Mrs Forman. “It means a lot to me.”
Hyde blinks. “Oh. Let’s, uh. Let’s not do that.”
Jackie frowns at her in confusion.
“Feelings. After tonight we’re going back to hating each other.”
Jackie drops her hand, rolling her eyes. “Fine.”
And, shit, that wasn’t what she wanted to do. She reminds herself that Jackie’s young and fragile and dumb, and kicks at a bit of gravel.
“Wait,” she says, and Jackie turns around. She really does look very pretty. Hyde sighs. “If you won’t call me Hyde then at least... at least call me Steph. I’ve always hated Stephanie.”
Jackie stares at her, and then shrugs. “Okay. You wanna drive, Steph?”
Hyde smirks. “You got insurance?”
Jackie blinks, the hand extending her keys pausing mid-air.
“I’m just kidding,” says Hyde, taking the keys. Jackie relaxes. “I don’t care if you have or not.”
***
“You’re gonna have a girl in the house? Permanently?”
Hyde takes a lot of pleasure in the fact that her and Forman hit Kelso simultaneously, and even more when he yells and jumps back.
“Damn, guys!” he whines, hugging himself as he attempts to grab both points of injury. “What was that for?”
“For insinuating Forman and me can’t live together because we’re eventually bound to sleep together, you moron.”
Forman nods. “Yeah, Kelso, c’mon. Hyde’s Hyde. She’s like Laurie, if Laurie were cool and smoked pot.”
“Thanks, man,” says Hyde, the warmth in her chest Kelso had temporarily driven away returning. She’s going to live with the Formans. Holy shit.
“That’s exactly what I mean!”
Hyde rolls her eyes. “Kelso, would you fuck me?”
He opens his mouth, then shuts it again, looking flabbergasted.
She smirks. “That’s what I thought.”
Kelso stares at her some more. “But you’re... but you’re a chick!”
“Yeah,” says Forman, slowly, and claps Kelso on the shoulder, “but she’s also the chick who knows about the time you crapped your pants at-“
Kelso slaps his hand across Forman’s mouth. “Shut up, Eric!”
Hyde laughs.
***
Kelso and Jackie eventually do split, for real this time, and that’s one hell of a relief, because recently whenever Jackie talks all Hyde wants to do is rip her own arm off and throw it at her. It’s got nothing to do with the fact that whenever she speaks recently it’s to talk about Michael. Hyde doesn’t give a crap about their relationship. Admittedly it does mean she has to go back to doing her own nails, but she’s sure she’ll survive. So what if the only colour she has is black, and none of the funky ones Jackie has? It’ll be fine.
With this is mind, Hyde’s all set to go back to relative peace and quiet, before she realises that Jackie’s still here.
“I think,” says Jackie, as she kicks her feet against the dryer like a little kid, “that if I left you’d really miss me.”
Hyde doesn’t say anything.
“Right?”
“Sure.”
Jackie whacks her arm, disrupting her laundry folding. Hyde sighs.
“I... suppose,” she says, looking down at Forman’s t-shirts and not the girl in front of her, “That it’s important... when you have a, uh... bad breakup.... that you have friends... for... support... and... stuff...”
Jackie beams. “Right! So let’s go to the mall!”
“Woah.” Hyde takes a step back. “I meant friends like Donna. Or, not me.”
Jackie rolls her eyes. “But you’re so different to them! Donna just ends up relating it back to Eric, you actually give good advice.”
Hyde deploys option 3 of her how to avoid Jackie Burkhart strategies, and leaves. Jackie’s whines follow her back to her bedroom.
“It’s just that I noticed you’re alone a lot, and now I’m alone too. So let’s be alone together!”
“Look,” she says proudly, and when Hyde turns round Jackie is standing confidently with her hands on her hips. “We’re alone right now!”
Hyde has some highly unexpected (and highly inappropriate) thoughts. She blinks, then pushes past her and heads back to the safety of public spaces, trying to clear her head and not think about Jackie’s lips or her eyes or how good she looks amongst Hyde’s stuff. “That’s not really a good reason for us to....”
“Stephanieeeeeeee,” pouts Jackie, and Hyde wishes it were half as endearing. “Let’s go to Sizzler. They’ve got a salad bar? And five different colours of Jello.”
Hyde frowns.
“I’ll buy.”
“You’ve been through a rough time,” she concedes. “Let’s go, kid.”
***
“Those boots look really nice on you,” compliments Jackie as they get back into her car. Hyde looks down at her feet, biting back a smile.
“Jackie, you buying me boots is just plain wrong.”
She lets the smile come out in full force as she teases her: “Shoulda let me shoplift them.”
Jackie grins back. “Please. There’s no way you could have gotten past that shop assistant.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” says Jackie, flicking down her visor. “She had her eyes trained on you the second you walked in.”
“‘Cause I’m hot,” quips Hyde, looking away while Jackie fixes her lipstick. The other girl huffs.
“Because you look like a shoplifter. Me? I’m just a well-behaved, rich girl with daddy’s credit card. Nobody would look twice at me!”
“That doesn’t sound like something you’d usually brag about, but I agree.”
“Oh har har,” grumbles Jackie, slapping Hyde’s arm lightly. “You wanna go home?”
Hyde bites her lip, something in her heart twinging. “Nah. Let’s go get burgers, or something. You need to eat more.”
Jackie looks pleased. “Okay.”
She puts the keys in the ignition but doesn’t turn them. Her other hand fidgets on the steering wheel. “I - thank you for hanging out with me.”
The words are accompanied by a bright blush. “I know... I know you didn’t really want to, but, thank you. Today was very special.”
The twinging in Hyde’s heart strengthens, but she tries to downplay it and not think about the fact that Jackie seems to thank her a lot for doing the bare minimum. “It’s cool.”
She taps Jackie’s bicep lightly with her knuckles. “You know, you’re kinda fun to hang with, when you’re not being annoying.”
The smile Jackie gives her could light up the night sky. She takes her hand off the ignition, and turns to face Hyde. Hyde looks back at her, and there’s something there, something she can’t quite -
Jackie bites her lip, and leans in.
Hyde panics.
She jolts back as far as she can go, her back connecting with the window with a loud thud. Jackie’s expression rapidly turns to hurt.
“Woah,” says Hyde, panic flaring in her chest, and her cheeks on fire. “Nuh uh. I don’t do hugs. You want that, go find a new boyfriend.”
Jackie stares at her, and then whatever is lingering in her eyes fades, and she huffs. “You suck.”
“Anything for you, doll.”
It doesn’t really make sense, but Jackie smiles anyway.
ii.
“Hey Stephanie!”
Hyde rolls her eyes behind her sunglasses. She knows her and Jackie are friends, okay? She might not be past acknowledging that it’s not just because she feels she should support Jackie through her and Kelso’s breakup, but she knows they’re friends. She’s made her peace with that. But holy shit, the girl is persistent.
“Hi Jackie. Roller disco let up early?”
Jackie giggles.
“You’re so funny!” she coos around a blush, and Hyde feels a warning prickle dance across her neck. “But wrong, I brought you a gift!”
She presents Hyde with a paper bag, who takes it wearily. “You shouldn’t have.”
“Look inside.”
Hyde does. Nearly dies of exasperation right then and there.
“Is this -?”
“Oh yeah.” Jackie puffs up her chest. “I brought it. In the ghetto.”
Hyde raises her eyebrow.
“Fine, so I got it off my house keeper, so what? You shouldn’t be ungrateful.”
Hyde sighs, and tosses the bag onto a nearby car out the back of The Hub. She folds her arms. “What’s going on, Jackie?”
“What do you mean?”
Hyde waves a hand in her direction. “The... this. Hanging out with me. Buying pot. Kelso dumps you and you decide you wanna be a burnout, or something?”
Jackie’s face hardens. “Michael didn’t dump me. And that’s not what this is. I just...”
She shuffles on her feet a little, looking embarrassed. “You’ve just been so nice to me, and I wanted to show you that I’m not a square cheerleader.”
“Jackie. You are a square cheerleader. There’s nothing wrong with that, man. But you gotta stop using me to replace that Kelso shaped hole in your life, or whatever.”
“No! No,” says Jackie, panic in her voice. She puts two hands up like she would to steady one of her horses. “No, Hyde, that’s not what this is, I swear. I just... I just think you’re like the coolest, sweetest girl I’ve ever met.”
What the fuck? Hyde knew it would happen eventually, but Jackie’s hot rollers have finally given her permanent brain damage.
“No you don’t!”
“Yes, I do!”
“Is everything okay here?”
Hyde panics. It’s a cop, because of course it is. She’s suddenly acutely aware of the bag of pot.
“Yeah,” she says, immediately dropping her aggressive posture. She tries to school her face into one of neutrality, and keeps her hands loose at her sides - hands in pockets make you look shifty, or that’s what she’s heard. “Yeah, everything’s fine, right Jackie?”
“There’s nothing in the bag!”
Hyde’s gonna kill her. The cop stares at them warily, and then moves to inspect the bag. He scoffs, and gestures at Jackie.
“Ok, Miss. You’re gonna have to come with me.”
Jackie’s lips fall open, pink rising in her cheeks. “Oh - no, no, I cannot go to jail. I have to cheer tomorrow!”
The cop rolls his eyes, and grabs her elbow. Something in Hyde’s chest starts sending alarm bells through her body. Jackie’s too small, she’s too innocent, she can’t defend herself -
“Hey.”
She pushes herself between them. “What’re you doing, man? The bag is mine.”
She keeps her eyes focused on the cop, and not on the way Jackie snaps her head to look at her.
“C’mon,” she says, when the cop visibly hesitates. “Cheerleader, mixed kid. It ain’t rocket science.”
The cop shrugs, moustache twitching downwards. He lets go of Jackie’s arm, and a small part of Hyde unclenches. “Okay.”
As he leads her away, Jackie yells three things after her.
“Stephanie!” she cries, and Hyde determinedly ignores her.
“You’re wrong, we are friends! We’re best friends!”
Hyde gets into the cop’s car.
“I - I love you!”
She stares at her handcuffed wrists while something claws at her chest, unbidden and persisting and feeling a lot like she’s drowning. She’s really done it, this time. She picks at the polish on her right thumb. Christ.
***
Hyde stares at the phone for a long time, unable to get her arms to move. She stares so long that the officer starts to get angsty.
“Look, are you gonna make your call or what?”
Hyde bites her lip. Picks up the phone.
“Hey Red.”
“Stephanie!”
Mother of fuck, Red actually sounds excited to hear from her. This day could literally not get any worse. She listens to his story about Eric embarrassing himself, and manages to choke out a laugh in the appropriate spot. She mustn’t do a very good job, though, because Red questions it.
“Is everything alright?”
“Um.” Hyde twirls the cord round her fingers. “Actually, Red, I sort of. I sort of got arrested.”
The line crackles.
“Arrested for what?”
“I -“ She closes her eyes, as if that will help ease the nausea rising in her throat. “Possession.”
There’s silence.
“Possession of what?”
“Red.” God, her voice even breaks on the word. She can’t look at the officer out of embarrassment, and instead focuses on a dent in the drab wall. “I’m sorry.”
Red hangs up.
***
“Stephanie,” cries the voice Hyde wants to avoid for all eternity, the minute she steps out of the station. “Thank god!”
Jackie throws her arms around her, but Hyde stays stiff and unmoving. She can’t believe she got arrested. Red’s gonna - Red’s gonna kill her. And Jackie is still, for some reason, here, even though all she wants is to go home.
“Stephanie? Are you okay?” Jackie’s talking at a million-miles a minute. She used to think it was funny, but now it’s just giving her a headache. “I asked my dad to help make bail, and he wasn’t pleased, but he did it, and I’m so sorry, I can’t believe I mentioned the bag, and now you’ve gone to jail for me and -“
Hyde pries her hands off her. “Jackie. Go home.”
“What?”
“Just. Go home.” Hyde sticks her hands in her pockets and walks past her. She’s got no time - no energy - to deal with Jackie right now. The younger girl’s clogs click on the pavement as she follows her, evidently not giving up on her just yet.
“I don’t understand. Are you okay? Did something happen?”
“You mean aside from getting arrested?”
Jackie flinches at her blunt tone. “Are... are you mad at me?”
Hyde wants to rip her own hair out. She wants to kick things and smash things and hit someone. She settles on digging her nails into her palms.
“Yes.”
Jackie’s bottom lip quivers. “Why?”
“You got me arrested.”
“I know.” Jackie tugs her to a stop, pink nails clenching around Hyde’s arm. “I know, Stephanie, I’m sorry. Thank you.”
“What?”
“Thank you? You saved me from - from - that. You went to jail for me. Thank you.”
Hyde feels surreal. She feels like she’s in art class, being asked to decipher meaning from a picture of a fruit bowl. “I didn’t go to jail for you.”
Jackie furrows her brow. “Yes you did.”
“No, I didn’t.” She did, kind of. Whatever. “I’m not - I’m not gonna be your protector, Jackie. That ain’t my job.”
“I never said it was. Where did you even get that from?”
Hyde pulls her arm from Jackie’s grip and folds it across her chest instead. “Look,” she says, deciding that it’s about time Jackie was made aware of the exact nature of their arrangement, friendship, whatever.
“I know you dumped Kelso,” says Hyde. “And you may not realise you’re doing it, but I know you latched onto me because you’re feeling vulnerable. And that was fine, for a while, but I’m not gonna be there to save your ass every time. I’m not protecting you from the big bad scary world, okay? So would you please just leave me alone. I want to go home, have a nap, and try to work out how I’m going to face Red. I don’t have time for you right now.”
It’s harsh. Hyde doesn’t care.
“That’s such bull,” cries Jackie eventually, after losing their impromptu staring match. “You’re such - you’re such an asshole, Stephanie! I’m not protecting you, blah blah. Stop acting like you’re some kind of commitment phobic douchebag! You’re not my boyfriend, you’re my friend. I don’t need you to protect me. I just want you to be my friend.”
Hyde’s glad she’s wearing her sunglasses, because right now she feels like she wants to cry. She feels a bit like she actually might. “Go home, Jackie.”
Jackie’s mouth opens and closes a few times, and she’s looking at Hyde like she doesn’t know her, and god, doesn’t she have enough to deal with, right now?
She starts walking, and this time Jackie doesn’t follow her.
***
“What were you thinking?”
Red’s speech blurs into a stream of disappointment, and yelling, and Mrs Forman biting her nails in the background. Hyde can’t even bear to look at him. Shame fills her entire being, yet it still takes all her willpower to throw Jackie under the bus, like she’s betraying her somehow.
Red gets Mrs F to call Jackie over, and wow, okay, ouch. Half an hour of yelling and lectures and it still didn’t hurt half as bad as that simple, unembellished moment where it’s revealed he doesn’t trust her.
Jackie stares at her with wide eyes when she gets there, mascara smudged along the bottom of her eyes. There’s a terrible moment when Hyde thinks she’s going to lie, use the truth against her to punish her for being rude, but she doesn’t.
Jackie hangs her head, and she fesses up, and Hyde feels even worse, somehow.
“Jackie,” (and isn’t this poetic, she thinks, how she’s the one chasing after her now?) “Wait up.”
Jackie raises her eyebrows at her, gaze steely.
“Thank you,” says Hyde. She tucks a non-existent bit of hair behind her ear, a nervous tick she’s never quite managed to shake. “I thought, I thought maybe you wouldn’t, uh. Thanks.”
Jackie gives a hollow laugh. “We’re not all like you, Hyde. I’d never do that.”
Hyde blinks at her. “Whatever.”
Jackie juts her chin upwards.
“Whatever,” she mocks, practically spitting the word. “Look. I’m still grateful to you, I guess, but I want you to know that I take back what I said earlier.”
Her eyes are shiny in the light of the Forman’s porch. “I didn’t get you arrested, Stephanie. You got yourself arrested, because like it or not, I am your friend. When you’re done being pissy about the fact, give me a call. Your nails look terrible.”
It’s such a Jackie thing to bring up that it leaves her speechless, and staring after her as she disappears into the night, a comeback still resting half-formed on her tongue.
iii.
Chip’s... an asshole.
This becomes painfully evident within the first couple of words Hyde says to him. She’s a little biased (although she’s not admitting that), because yeah, Jackie just decides to show up with some guy? After not being in the basement for two weeks? And now she’s acting like their fight didn’t even happen? Like everything’s fine? But even objectively Chip still turns out to be a piece of shit.
“You know,” he says slyly, after trapping her in conversation while Jackie’s off elsewhere, “You and I could get out of here if you wanted.”
Hyde scowls, and shoves her hands in her pockets, leaning away form him. “Aren’t you here with Jackie?”
“Yeah, but, you know. We’re not ‘together’, or anything.”
Jesus, Jackie really does know how to pick ‘em. Probably why she hung round Hyde so much.
“You’re not my type.”
In the pockets of her coat, Hyde curls her fingers around her brass knuckles. She’s not gonna punch him, she’s not, because she’s trying real hard to be less angry and aggressive all the time (Jackie being in shit with her has not helped this, at all), and so instead she just glares and focuses on where the cold metal digs into her skin.
“What is, then?”
Dark hair. Short. Bossy. A smile to light up the sky.
“Not you. I don’t do cheaters.”
“Jackie and I aren’t a thing. Won’t be, either.”
“Maybe you should tell her that,” grits out Hyde. “She’s kinda young, only had one boyfriend. Might be gettin’ the wrong idea from you.”
Chip scoffs, and his stupid knock-off leather jacket bunches around his shoulders when he shrugs. “Whatever, man. She’s a bitch.”
With those three words, Chip seals his fate. She’s almost relieved.
“Oh, no,” mumbles Hyde, because Red’s not going to be pleased that she laid out some rick kid on his driveway. Her left hand is already curling into a fist and she gives herself a second to look at Chip, and during the second she thinks about getting arrested, and the sleazy cop who hit on her, and Red’s anger and the withdrawal she’s going through and Jackie throwing her zen lessons back in her face, and then she thinks about the exact way Chip’s mouth moved when he said the word bitch.
She hits him. It feels good.
“Stephanie!”
Fuck.
“Oh my god!”
Double fuck.
“What happened?”
Hyde stares at her. Tell her he grabbed your ass, she thinks. Tell her he grabbed your ass. Say nothing. Say something. Jesus Christ, just tell her he grabbed your ass.
“I... nothing! You... and the guy... said bitch and - and - nothing!”
Jackie looks between her and Chip’s deadweight body like a freakin’ slot machine, excitement dancing across her features. She points, bouncing on her toes and throwing her arms around.
“Oh my god.” She places a hand over her heart. “I - he called me a bitch, and you - you hit him! That’s what happened, isn’t it?”
“...No?”
“Liar!” accuses Jackie. She puts her hands over her mouth. “You - oh, you do care!”
God, Jackie really is just amazing at making her feel bad.
“I - of course I - what the hell? We’re friends. Of course I care.”
Jackie’s eyes quickly narrow, happiness sliding off her face. “Oh, so now you’ll admit it?”
Hyde pinches the bridge of her nose, acutely aware of the fact that several party-goers are still looking at her. “Do we have to talk about this now?”
Jackie folds her hands on her hips. “Um, yes?”
Hyde groans, rubbing her hand across her eyebrows. “I - fine. I’m sorry. We‘re friends.”
Jackie taps her foot, and the gesture somehow drags the words from Hyde’s throat.
“Look,” she says, and internally wonders whether she should invest in blood pressure tablets, with the amount of spiking her heart rate’s doing, “the other night was a fight, okay? I was mad, and tired, and... and I was freaked out about facing Red. I shouldn’t have said that stuff to you.”
It’s the most emotionally honest she thinks she’s ever been with Jackie in her life, which is probably a worrying statistic. It does the trick, though, because Jackie’s expression melts back into one of tentative happiness.
“Thank you,” she says, voice small. “I really am sorry about mentioning the bag, though. And for... for making you feel like you had to protect me.”
Hyde shrugs. “S’ok. You didn’t, really - well, you kind of did, but I was mostly using that as an excuse for why I kept hanging round you. I mean, you’re annoying as shit, Jackie. It goes against the very fibre of my being that I like you as much as I do.”
Jackie beams, and throws her arms around her. Hyde pats her shoulder awkwardly.
“I know there were a lot of insults in there,” she says, voice muffled against Hyde’s jacket, “But I’m electing to ignore them in favour of the fact that you like me.”
Hyde sighs deeply. When it doesn’t seem that Jackie’s ready to let go, she tentatively puts her own hands on Jackie’s waist. “Don’t shout it around.”
She feels Jackie smile against her shoulder. “I almost definitely will.”
They pull apart, and Hyde spends a few seconds grinning goofily at her, which is a new development. And then Kelso wolf whistles and she promptly jumps backwards, crashing into the esky and knocking ice everywhere.
“Shut up, dillhole,” she yells, half tripping over a can of soda. She bends to clean up her mess, still muttering insults to herself, and misses the way Jackie’s cheeks are beet red.
iv.
Things go back to normal. Jackie invites herself back to Hyde’s room post BBQ and practically forces her into letting her do her nails, and then again a week later, and eventually they fall back into their old routine where the only difference is the fact that Hyde’s interior monologue is a constant stream of curse words. Her eyes start catching on Jackie’s lips, and her hands, and (on several occasions) her ass. This is bad.
For the most part, Hyde ignores it. She successfully did it with Donna, after all, so she’s sure Jackie’ll be no different. Give it a couple of weeks, and it’ll all go away.
It doesn’t go away.
Whilst this is still, unbelievably, atrociously bad, it doesn’t really culminate until a few weeks post Veteran’s Day when they start to head into the Christmas season.
“Secret Santa,” proclaims Donna happily, thrusting the paper-filled top hat at Hyde. “Come on, Hyde, you gotta.”
There once was a time when that smile would have made Hyde bend over backwards on hot coals. It’s kind of weird how now it doesn’t do anything.
“Yeah, come on, Stephanie,” coos Jackie, and right, okay, there’s the stomach flips. “It’ll be fun.”
Hyde looks at her. The outstretched hat. Forman’s smug looking smile like he knows exactly what’s going on. Her stomach flips for an entirely different reason.
She sighs in resignation, and picks out a bit of paper. Kelso. She sends a silent prayer of thanks to Jimmy Hendrix.
“That’s the spirit,” says Donna, and punches her shoulder. “Your go, Jackie.”
***
Coming out to Forman makes her feel... not good.
In fact, it makes her want to get in the Cruiser and drive hellishly fast down the highway until she’s halfway to Canada. This does not, however, appear to be an option, and this is how she ends up in Forman’s room at one in the morning, pulling her own hair out and being decidedly un-zen.
“Alright,” he says, eventually, in his rarely used Red-voice. She’s still not entirely convinced he knows he can do it. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” mutters Hyde, unconvincingly.
Forman quirks an eyebrow. “Really? You’ve been pacing a hole in my carpet for a half hour.”
She stops. “Have not.“
“You have.” Forman looks up at her from his bed with a worried expression. “Seriously. Steph. What’s going on?”
Ah, fuck.
“Don’t call me that,” grumbles Hyde, although it’s ruined by the choked up nature of her throat. Freakin’ Forman and his use of first names. “You’re such a pansy.”
Forman just looks at her.
“Fuck,” she says, and starts pacing again. “Okay. Here’s the thing. I’m going to tell you something, and it’s not really a good something. I mean, it’s okay, like, I’m fine, but it’s also, not. So. I’m going to tell it to you. And. You can do with it, uh, what you will. So.”
“Hyde,” says Forman, and leans forward on his elbows, footie-pyjamas creasing with the movement. “I’m not gonna freak out about your whopping big crush on Jackie.”
She chokes. Forman continues as if he hasn’t noticed.
“I mean, I’m kind of freaked out that it’s on Jackie, because she’s, you know, evil, but I somehow suspect that that’s not what you’re worried about.”
Hyde stares at him. “How did you - you know? Since when?”
“Honestly?” Hyde nods. “The look on your face after I told you about Buddy.”
Static fills her brain.
“What the fuck?” she says eventually, and frogs him hard on the shoulder. “Are you - you couldn’t have told me?”
“I thought you would when you were ready!”
“I -“ Hyde shakes her head. “This is unbelievable. I hate you.”
Forman grins stupidly. “Ah, but you don’t hate Jackie -“
“Get bent,” she replies, and hits him again. “Jesus fucking Christ. I’m going to bed.”
“No, don’t do that,” says Forman, reigning in his mockery and swallowing his grin. “Look, I’m sorry. And seriously, it’s okay, you know, be who you are - “
“Oh my god, shut up,” grumbles Hyde, although she feels almost ridiculously light, like she could float out of her body at any instant. Forman knew. Forman knew and he still let her live with him, was still ready to stand up for her when she got busted for pot, still let her hang around with him and Donna without ever being weird about it. She shoves at his shoulder, which is pretty much a hug, for her. “Thanks, Forman.”
He smiles back her, brotherly affection radiating from every dimple and making her feel sick. “Anything for you, orphan girl.”
“Alright,” says Hyde. “We’re done talking.”
“Just let me love you,” cries Eric dramatically as she leaves, her only response a casual flip of the bird. She goes to bed feeling better than she has in a long while, and even manages to avoid thoughts of Jackie as she drifts off to sleep. Things are good.
v.
When everything does, inevitably, go to shit, it’s about week before Christmas and all the fault of an old Bowie interview.
Jackie was insistent she watch it, and nobody could be bothered to fight her on it. Forman’s doing homework and Kelso and Fez are distracted with some stupid game, so the TV was pretty much up for grabs anyway. Hyde’s reading a comic and not really watching, with her feet propped on the table.
She does, however, pride herself on being relatively aware of her surroundings at all times, and it’s for this reason that she goes stiff as a board when it happens.
You’ve been asked the question whether you’re bisexual or not, says the interviewer, and Hyde’s eyes snap up.
Yes, too many times, says Bowie.
Even though she knows, logically, that nobody’s looking at her, she can feel an unbearable prickle at the back of her neck, just like the one she gets before shoplifting something. She knows what she is. She’s cool with it. It’s still freakin’ weird to hear it said on the TV.
You’ve never quite answered it.
Oh, I have. I said I was bisexual. That’s enough.
The atmosphere in the basement doesn’t change as much as she might have expected it too. There’s no silence quiet enough to hear a pin drop. There’s no sudden undercurrent of tension. Fez and Kelso are still making ridiculous amounts of noise, it’s still a flurry of movement. The only difference is how goddamn on edge she feels.
Does that mean, though, that you are? Or are you keeping something—
Hyde’s hands curl around her magazine. Her chest is tight.
I’ve answered the question, says Bowie.
There’s a sudden, shuddery gasp from the couch. Hyde looks over from the corner of her eye.
“Jackie?”
The girl’s knuckles are snow white and clenched in her skirt, everyone else suddenly eyeing her with concern. Donna touches her elbow gently, confusion ripe across her face.
“Are you okay?”
“Cramps,” says Jackie numbly, and all three of the guys make similar noises of disgust. Fez and Kelso grimace, the latter planting his hands firmly over his ears.
“God, Jackie,” he cries loudly, “Give a man some warning!”
Jackie twists her fingers in the fabric, eyes still wide and panicked. “I gotta go.”
She disappears in a flurry of movement, and Hyde hates herself for wanting to help. She’s pretty sure she never used to be so caring - pretty sure that less than a year ago, she would have celebrated Jackie’s sudden departure. Forman gives her a look, and Hyde sighs.
***
The night air outside is cold, and Stephanie shivers against it, drawing her jacket closer around her. Gravel crunches under the boots Jackie bought her as she heads over to the younger girl’s car, rapping lightly on the window. Jackie jumps about a foot in the air, hands flying away from her face to reveal mascara streaks. She flicks the lock, though, and so Hyde slides in next to her.
“Hey.”
Jackie throws herself on her.
“Oh,” mumbles Hyde. “Um, okay.”
Hesitantly, she brings her hands up to hold onto Jackie. The other girl shakes against her.
“Hey, woah now, Jackie. It’s okay. You’re okay. This is gonna be fine. This whole thing is gonna be fine.”
“I’m - I’m -“
Hyde pats her shoulder gently, wishing she was better at this whole talking thing.
Around sobs: “I’m a lesbian.”
She does pull back at that, just slightly, so she can see Jackie’s face. “You - really?”
“No,” sniffles Jackie. She wipes her nose with her sleeve. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”
She buries her face back in Hyde’s neck. “Do you know you just gave every possible answer?”
“Shut up,” grumbles Jackie, but at least she’s not crying, anymore. Hyde strokes the back of her head.
“I’m serious, Jackie, it’s okay. And if anyone ever tells you it’s not, you send them my way, alright? I gotta pair of brass knuckles.”
Jackie’s chuckle flutters across her collarbone, sending shivers down Hyde’s spine. She presses her lips against the top of her head, in something that’s not quite a kiss, but not quite not one, either.
“You want me to drive you home?”
She nods. “Yes please.”
“Okay.”
***
Jackie shows up bright and early next morning, looking her usual put-together self. Bleary-eyed, Hyde takes her offered cup of coffee, feeling confused and more than a little out of her depth.
“Hi,” she says. Jackie plasters on a smile.
“Hello,” she says, rocking back and forward on her toes. She looks nervous as shit, but like she’s trying to hide it. “I just wanted to apologise about last night. I must’ve caught a high off of you guys, or something.”
Still half asleep, Hyde frowns, but out of respect for Jackie’s dignity elects not to mention that they’d hadn’t smoked anything. “Okay? I - you don’t have to apologise, it’s fine. Figuring that out is scary stuff, man. I get it.”
Jackie waves a manicured hand at her, sounding far too breezy for it to be real. “Well, thanks, but don’t worry about it. I’m not a lesbian.”
She gives a horrible, false laugh, raking her hands through her hair. “Don’t know what I was thinking. I’m probably just upset about Michael, or something. Whatever.“
She looks at her curiously. “What do you mean, you get it?”
“Uh.” Hyde hesitates. Last night, she was more than prepared to come out to Jackie. Make her feel like she was less alone, or whatever. Maybe she should have guessed that the realisation would have been followed by backtracking, and prepared accordingly.
“I - uh - get it,” she says, eventually, deciding to fuck it, she trusts Jackie (and isn’t that a development?). “I’m, you know. I - I like - Bowie.”
It’s hardly her most articulate moment, and she frowns down at her coffee, trying to drag her feelings into coherent sentences.
“Sorry,” she says, and tugs on the collar of her Zeppelin tee self-consciously. Her stomach is doing that thing it does when an elevator comes to a sudden stop. “I don’t like Bowie. I mean that I’m - I’m like Bowie.”
“Bisexual,” Hyde adds, belatedly. “Yeah.”
Jackie’s face flits throughs several emotions in the space of five seconds, the predominant one being gaping like a fish.
“You - oh. Oh.”
Jackie looks like she’s scrambling for footing on a particularly slippery rock. “Um, that’s cool?”
Hyde feels a blush spread across her cheeks. “Yeah, well, whatever. I just thought, since you, you know, that -“
“I’m not,” Jackie says again, clasping her hands tightly in front of her. “I’m - I’m not.”
Her eyes have got a panicky, animal quality to them. Ah, thinks Hyde. She remembers this bit.
“Alright,” she says, placatingly. “Sorry.”
Jackie shuffles on her feet. “Um, Stephanie? Even though I am, completely, one hundred percent not that, could you maybe not spread what I said around? To like, anyone?”
Hyde nods.
“I don’t gossip,” she says. “Promise.”
Jackie still looks fidgety, so Hyde says: “You wanna do my nails? I’ll need breakfast first, though.”
Relief drains out of Jackie in waves. “Of course. I know a place.”
vi.
Although Hyde’s not happy about it, she’s neither surprised or pissed when Jackie gets back together with Kelso. On a personal note it‘s less than ideal, sure, but objectively? Objectively she understands.
If she had to hazard a guess, she’d say Jackie freaked out about her identity crisis and decided to run back to something familiar. That makes sense. She was prepared for it. What she wasn’t prepared for was for Jackie to start acting like she didn’t exist.
They stop hanging out so slowly that Hyde doesn’t even realise until it’s too late. Jackie stops addressing her in conversations, stops even looking at her when they’re with the group. On the rare occasion Hyde manages to grab her by herself, she always finds some kind of excuse to leave before she even gets a word in. It’s weird.
She’s got a suspicion. It’s not a great suspicion, and it’s probably a little out of whack. But Jackie’s acting like she’s scared to be around her, so she had to come up with something.
Either, she decides one night, with a joint in one hand and a beer in the other, Jackie freaked out about the bi thing, or...
Hyde blows a smoke ring.
Or, she thinks again, Jackie likes her. Romantically.
How about that.