Work Text:
Overbaked
“I finally got the results back from my SAT re-take, and it looks like I did well enough to apply to some of those schools my mom and dad want me to.” Eric said to Hyde.
“Hey man, I’m just glad I convinced Jackie that I’m not cut out for college,” Hyde said to Eric as they walked down to the basement from upstairs.
“I wish I could say I’m not cut out for college, but if I’m going to marry Donna I need to have a good job to support us,” Eric said as he walked behind Hyde.
Hyde reached the bottom of the stairs and turned to look at Eric, “Why because you don’t think Donna is going to work and have a good job?”
Eric paused for a second and started sputtering, “No— that’s not— don’t tell her…” He trailed off, “You know that’s not what I meant, man.”
“Whatever, Forman,” Hyde said. He grabbed his jacket from on top of the washer and started walking toward the door. He squinted when he noticed that there was the smell of weed coming from his room. He stopped walking while Eric continued toward the basement door.
“Aren’t you coming? Kelso’s picking us up any minute.” Eric said, hand on the doorknob.
Hyde squinted toward his bedroom and waved Eric off. “I’ll meet you guys at The Hub.” He needed to investigate. He had a hunch of who would be smoking up in his room, but he needed to confirm his suspicion.
Eric shrugged, “Whatever.” He opened the door and exited the basement taking the steps two at a time. He let the door slam behind him.
Hyde walked over to his bedroom door and slowly opened it. He was met with a wall of smoke in his face. He quickly stepped in and closed the door behind him. He took the jacket he was holding and stuffed it along the bottom of the door. He stood back up and looked at the source of all the smoke.
His suspicions were correct, it was Jackie. She was sitting on his bed, a lit bowl in one hand and a lighter in the other. She looked at him but didn’t say anything. Maintaining eye contact she put the bowl to her lips and took a long hit.
Hyde raised an eyebrow at her, waiting for an explanation.
Jackie released the smoke from her lungs and blew it in his direction. She didn’t cough, and she didn’t break eye contact until she put the bowl down carefully on the floor with the lighter. She sat back up and stared at Hyde again, waiting for him to say something.
He observed her for a while longer, trying to figure out why she was in his room in the middle of a Saturday smoking his weed alone. He noticed her eyes were red, more red than they’d be just from smoking. She’d probably been crying. Her hair was a mess, flyaways near her eyes, and the rest was thrown into a messy braid at her shoulder. She had bags under her eyes, it looked like she hadn’t slept in days. And she wasn’t wearing make-up. That was the true indicator of something wrong, Jackie was never seen without makeup.
Hyde walked over to the bed and sat down next to her.
Jackie’s stoic expression exploded into a pout and tears started flowing in streams down her face. She flung herself onto Hyde, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face in his shoulder.
Hyde turned toward Jackie and patted her back gently, like he’d done in the past. “Shhh,” he comforted to little avail.
Jackie cried for a while longer before she started sniffing, a sure sign her sobs were coming to an end.
“Can I ask what’s wrong?” Hyde asked tentatively, he didn’t want her to burst into tears again.
“My mom fired all the house staff, and then she left for a trip without telling me. I found out from a note on the fridge this morning.” Jackie untangled herself from Hyde’s neck and wiped her eyes with her sleeve.
“Damn, that sucks,” Hyde replied. He leaned down and picked up the bowl and lighter from the floor and handed it to her. “I’ll smoke the rest with you if you want.”
Jackie nodded, “Okay,” she lit the bowl again and took another hit, then another, before she handed it to Hyde.
The bowl was already pretty kicked when it got to him, so he took one hit and put it back down on the floor.
“What do you want to do now?” Hyde asked, “Everyone else is at The Hub, and I think Red and Kitty are out for a while.”
Jackie raised an eyebrow at him and smirked, Hyde blinked back at her behind his sunglasses.
She reached forward and removed the dark frames from his face. “I can think of a few things,” she said.
She pulled him into a kiss and down onto his bed, but it didn’t take long before she was just lying there next to him. She was breathing deeply, in through her nose, out through her mouth.
“Why’d you stop?” Hyde asked, “Things were just getting started.” He turned to his side, facing Jackie, and propped himself up on his elbow. He leaned down to start kissing her again, but she didn’t kiss him back. He stopped, “What’s wrong?”
Jackie was staring up at the ceiling, “It’s too much work to move my lips,” she mumbled.
“Too much work?” Hyde asked, a smile forming on his face. She was amusing when she was like this.
“Yes,” Jackie replied.
“Then how are you talking?”
But Jackie ignored his question. “Steven, I think I’m floating off the bed. Am I floating?” Jackie threw her hands down on the bed, palms flat, like she was going to catch herself from floating away.
“No, you are not floating,” Hyde assured her.
“My mouth feels dry.” He could almost see the gears turning in her head, she couldn’t hold on to any one thought more than a few seconds. He’d been that high once before, it wasn’t fun.
“I can go get you some water,” Hyde offered.
Jackie nodded and closed her eyes.
Hyde laughed to himself as he exited the room, he couldn’t believe Jackie had gotten this high, without him, no less! He went upstairs to get her a glass of water and some snacks. He’d never seen Jackie after she’d had more than a few hits of the circle joint, and he wasn’t sure how much she’d smoked before he came into the room. He guessed that she was higher than she’d ever been before, and she was going to need a lot of water, snacks, and reassurance that nothing was moving around her.
After Hyde gathered the things she would need he went back to the basement and back into his room. He was glad that the Formans were out somewhere for the day.
Jackie opened her eyes when Hyde came in, “Steven,” she cooed, “I wanna make out some more.” Smiling, he put down the bags of snacks and the glass of water he was holding.
“I thought your mouth was dry?” Hyde asked as he lay back down on the bed next to her. She ran her hands up his stomach and stopped at his chest, she loved to feel him, he knew that, but then she did it again. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” Jackie admitted. “Your shirt just feels good, and you’re warm, and… Steven, I think I’m really baked.”
“Oh, really?” Hyde smiled again. He couldn’t help but ask, “How much of my stash did you smoke?”
Jackie mumbled something. There was no way…. he couldn’t have possibly heard… No. She didn’t.
“What?” he sat up.
“All of it,” she mumbled again.
“You smoked all that I had left?” He was shocked. He was livid. He was annoyed. That was supposed to last him at least another 2 weeks.
Jackie sat up next to him and nodded.
“I had enough for maybe four or five joints left.” He tried to tamp down the anger that was surely rising in his voice.
“I was alone for a while.” Jackie said, quietly, like she knew he was upset and felt guilty.
Hyde’s brief moment of anger quickly turned to concern when he looked at Jackie’s face. Lying down she had looked fine, but now that she had sat up she looked pale. “Are you okay?”
Her eyes widened and she viciously shook her head. Hyde knew what was coming next. She slapped her hand over her mouth as Hyde reached over to his wastebasket and shoved it in front of Jackie.
She grabbed it from him and all the contents of her stomach were unleashed into the wastebasket. He held her hair back and rubbed her back as she let everything out.
She handed him back the wastebasket. He took it from her and brought it outside while trying not to look inside. He tied the bag up and threw it in the trash can.
When he returned to his room, hands freshly washed and with a washcloth for Jackie, she was already sipping on the water he’d left her before.
“Feel better?” He asked her, handing her the washcloth. She took the cloth and wiped her face, then she scooted over on the bed and let him in next to her again.
“Much,” she admitted, throwing the washcloth on the pile of dirty clothes at the foot of the bed. “What happened anyway? I’ve never felt sick from smoking before.”
“The spins,” Hyde explained to her. “It can happen if you smoke too much, or you drink and smoke at the same time.”
“I guess I shouldn’t have had all those cocktails Kitty showed me how to make before I smoked your stash,” Jackie said.
Hyde looked at her, “Are you serious?”
Jackie laughed, “No, I’m not that sad.”
“But if you were, you’d tell me, right?” Hyde asked. While he enjoyed drinking, probably a little too much for an eighteen-year-old, it wasn’t like Jackie to depend on substances to change her mood. Materials things and shopping, sure, but weed and alcohol had always been recreational for her.
“Seriously?” Jackie raised her eyebrows at Hyde, “You want to talk about my feelings?”
“No, no, not really,” Hyde backtracked.
“Good, because if you did I would think something is seriously wrong with you.” Jackie smiled. “Where are those chips you brought in? I’m starving.”
“Are you serious right now?”
“Oh, I’m serious,” Jackie replied.
He got the bag of chips from earlier and they ate some of them, talking about random things, enjoying each other’s company. “Do you want to go out and watch TV?” Hyde asked Jackie after they’d been just lying in his bed for a while. Jackie in the crook of his arm, leaning on his chest.
“No,” she responded. “Not unless The Price is Right is on.”
“Well, it’s,” he paused and looked at his watch, “7 o’clock on a Saturday, so I doubt our daytime television favorite is on.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“You coming down now?” Hyde asked her.
“I think so,” she replied. “I’m really sleepy though.”
“Should we get you home?” Hyde asked her before she fell asleep.
“I’m scared to go home,” Jackie admitted.
“Because no one is there? Yeah, I get that,” Hyde said, because he did. He hated being in his tiny house without Edna there, he couldn’t imagine staying in a mansion with no one else.
“Can I…” Jackie paused, “Could I stay here?”
“Yes,” Hyde replied without hesitation. He knew Red and Kitty would not be okay with it, but it didn’t matter.
“What about the Formans?”
“They don’t have to know, and if they kick you out at curfew, we’ll just sneak you back in.” Hyde pulled her closer to him.
“Thank you,” Jackie whispered.
“Anything for you, doll,” Hyde replied and felt her breathing become even. She’d fallen asleep, wrapped in the comfort of his arms.
He kissed the top of her head and extricated himself from her. He needed to make sure no one was going to discover her here past curfew. He heard their friends come into the basement from outside, and he went to join them (and inform them they would have to wait a while before they could have another circle, though he wouldn’t tell them why.)
Jackie continued to sleep over most nights for the next few weeks, sometimes Hyde would sneak out after curfew and stay at her house until the early hours of the morning. They didn’t have sex, and they barely made out when they went over to each other’s place to sleep.
It was going fine, and Hyde was enjoying waking up with the warmth of Jackie next to him with his arms wrapped around her every morning. That was until she tripped over Eric’s LEGO and they were discovered. But it had been nice while it lasted.