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you do it because you're bored, alright? you're here in this basement and kelso and donna are gone and forman's whining in his bed and you can see past the shrill voice and bitchiness that jackie is really hot. so you kiss her. or she kisses you. it's kinda hard to tell who started it. you kiss her and hey she's good at this which you should know from that kiss on her daddy's lincoln but you tried so hard to block it out it worked.
it starts because there's nothing else to do in point place. it continues because there are worse ways you could spend your time.
.
“i’m not gonna be your boyfriend,” you say two weeks after that first time and jackie walks in and kisses you, neither of them bothering with the pretence of watching tv. “this isn’t what this is.”
“god, steven, chill,” she says and then she laughs, a cackle that has her throwing back her head. you watch as she comes back, ruffles her hand with one hand. she purses her lips and glances up at you under her eyelashes. “this is just physical, right?”
“right,” and then you tug at the hem of her dress until she gets the hint and pulls it over her head, wriggling down the couch until her head rests against the arm. she reaches up and pulls your glasses off while you’re distracted by her boobs. “you don’t know how creepy it is sometimes looking into these. look, your eyes are blue! you know, they’re sort of pretty, you should let people see them more.”
“stop talking, jackie,” you say gruffly, allowing the shades to stay in jackie’s hand as you move down to kiss her belly button, sucking a bruise onto the soft skin just above the line of her panties. she shuts up after that. mostly.
.
it takes almost a month before she lets you fuck her and this isn't what you do. what you do is this: you talk to a chick, throw her a compliment, take her for a ride, and then most of the girls you've been with have done that stupid giggle and then climbed over the gear stick into your lap and that's it. done. with jackie you spend so long making out on the couch, your hands pressing at her waist and holding her there before you move to her breasts. when you're allowed access you roll them in your hands, duck your head to mouth at her nipples, dragging noises from her that she tries to stifle in her hand until you pull it away and you can hear how good you're making her feel. this is all for your benefit remember and you're getting off on the low moans that break apart and crumble when you lean up and kiss her. you spend hours and hours lying on that couch with jackie underneath you, her hands on your neck and pushing under your shirt, scrabbling at your skin, and you want more, can feel your dick aching in your jeans, but you don't push, not too much. kissing with jackie is exploratory and fuck she's so responsive when you find a spot behind her ear her knees dig into your waist or when you roll your hips against hers she makes this noise, this drawn out moan that she looks half-embarrassed by when she realises. sure you really wanna hear what she’s like when you’re fucking her, when you can feel her tight and hot around your dick, but you’ve got all summer, and forman doesn’t know shit about foreplay, you’ve heard donna tell jackie that enough times, but you’ve got the experience, you know how great and long and drawn out it can be, and jackie’s pretty enthusiastic about it too.
one time fez walks down the basement when you’re so so close to sliding past third and into home. jackie scrambles off of you, throwing your shirt over her head leaving you to sit back with your arms crossed, glaring at her behind your squint glasses.
“what’s going on here?” fez asks, humming the national anthem. you should tell him the government’s corrupt and that singing that song is a form of conformity he shouldn’t abide to but jackie’s face is flushed, her lipstick smudged, and when she curls her knees up under her your shirt rides up her thighs and your mind goes blank. you’re only human.
“eric’s just coming,” fez says, swapping his orange popsicle for a cola one after three licks. you get up for your own when he offers you it then grab a spare shirt from the pile on the dryer and nod when jackie glances at you with a look of relief. “he is not feeling so sad about his broken heart today.”
“circle?”
.
you pass the joint to jackie, holding it for her while she pulls her hair out the way. she’s laughing before she even takes a hit, rocking forward, her hand falling on your knee. “you’re such a lightweight,” you say, voice low. she slaps your leg, withdrawing quickly when forman glances over.
“i wonder what donna’s doing,” he sighs. “hey, guys, you don’t think she’s met someone else, do you?”
“i can’t even tell you how little i care,” you reply. “you know what i think you should do? go out and bang some slutty chick from out of town. get over it.”
“mm. being with someone else can help you get over someone,” jackie says, tapping her finger on her chin and smiling.
“how would you know? you were crying over kelso last week.”
“i was not,” she argues, pulling the plate of cookies out of forman’s reach. “i’ll have you know, michael is out the picture for me. for good.”
“oh, sweet jackie, your heart wants what it wants,” fez says. “but your body. i can see it wants me.”
“ew, fez. no way,” and she hasn’t even looked at you this whole time but her foot is just there beside yours under the table and when you move yours it bumps against hers, resting there. “there are plenty of people outside of this disgusting circle who find me attractive. it’s hard going out in public looking like this -- not that any of you would know."
“hey, princess, take another hit.”
“steven,” she says suddenly, grinning a little too widely. she coughs on the exhale. “remember that thing the other day and you were --”
“what thing?” forman interrupts. “you two don’t have secrets together. tell me.”
“can’t handle me knowing something you don’t, can you, eric? well, tough.” you nudge the cookies further towards her. she picks up two, breaking them in half and then fitting them all into her mouth at once. you feel an odd sort of pride at that. fez squawks about being a lady. jackie laughs and laughs. “if these didn’t make you fat i would eat them every day for the rest of my life.”
.
the night forman goes to california you and jackie go to the hub, just the two of you. you know she's thinking it's a date, especially when you give her half of your fries, just like that first time on veterans day, and it seems too much effort to deny it so you sit beside her in the booth at the back and you let her tangle your fingers together under the table and you think maybe this dating thing isn't so bad.
later you drop her off at that giant house of hers and when she asks you to come up with a smile and a wink you don't think you could say no if you tried. her mom mumbles something when you pass but jackie's hand tightens on your wrist and you follow her up to her room silently.
you ask about her mom because you don’t want to be here if everything blows up, you know how you felt when edna went off on one when kelso was around, and when she smiles at you it’s kinda watery but then she brushes it off, says something about it happening all the time since daddy went to prison, and then she pushes you over to the bed, discussion over. you go willingly, falling back onto the soft pink pillows, reaching for jackie. when she leans on her elbows and looks at you, her eyes narrowed, you bend your neck and kiss her hard, licking away the questions about families and coping.
you fuck her in that prissy pink bed with donny osmond looking down on them from above the headboard. she digs her nails into your shoulders, a groan tumbling from her lips when you tilt your hips just this way, and when she comes it’s with a loud gasp and a biting steven. you close your eyes and keep going, clumsy when she kisses you because the girls you’ve been with before weren’t so much for kissing and more about getting off as quickly as possible, and it's throwing you off your game. you feel her hands on your skin, skating up and down your back, and she's breathing hard into your mouth, your lips sliding together, and you think it feels so much better than all those other times with all those faceless girls.
.
she makes you breakfast in the morning. or, really, she finds the cereal cupboard after five tries and then she dumps the milk in front of you. you find two bowls, pushing the bigger of the two across the table to jackie. “how d’you eat around here if you don’t know where anything is?”
“oh, well, you know...” she trails off.
“is this why you’re always at the formans’?”
“no,” she says hotly. “i’m there to see you, actually, and it would be rude to say no to mrs forman, you know that.”
you can’t believe you’re saying this but “jackie. if your maid’s gone you need to learn how to eat properly.”
“steven, i can handle fine. i’ve been getting carry-out. not from the tacky chinese, you have no idea what they put in there, mandy from the squad told me she saw a rat in someone’s soup once, but the pizza place is alright.”
“you can’t live off pizza. believe me, i’ve tried.”
“hey, steven,” she says after a minute. “the others don’t know what it’s like to be left by a parent but you and i do and i know my situation isn’t the same as yours, i mean, this house has to be worth a hundred of yours but --”
you stop her there because when she’s self-conscious and scared she runs her mouth too far. “yeah. i know what you’re going through, princess,” and when she slips off her seat and comes round to perch in your lap you let her, your arm round her waist to stop her falling. “come round to forman’s; she’ll cook us bacon i bet.”
“you think she’ll make pancakes?”
“for me she will.”
“and then you’ll give them to me, great, thanks steven,” and she kisses your cheek and leaps up. “i’m going to get changed. don’t move.”
you pour yourself a bowl of cereal and sit back. this feels easy.
.
and then kelso comes back and everyone finds out about you and jackie and the way they go on it's like you killed someone. you roll your eyes at jackie and she understands because you know each other better now, however accidentally it all came about, and when you sit beside each other in the basement, when you pull jackie into your lap, you smirk at the expressions on your friends faces because no one's ever told you not to do something before and you haven't done it anyway. come on, that's like your thing. they should have known better.
"did you like it better?" she asks you after you've rolled off her and you haven't made the effort to get dressed again. you can feel her on your skin, everywhere, and you lean into her hand when it twists in your hair. shut up. it feels nice. "before?"
when it wasn't our own little thing that could be explained away without anyone ever needing to know, she's asking. a dirty memory.
"nah. i like everyone knowing you're my girl," and that's not even a lie. you don't know how to feel about that so you shut it away and kiss her again. she sighs into your mouth and you press your body against hers and when you suck a mark onto her neck, right above the collar of her dress, forman spits something out about the devil and kelso turns red, spluttering about codes and best friends. you curl your hand at jackie's waist and laugh when she blushes and calls kelso a good for nothing cheat who has no right to comment on what she does with her boyfriend, and when you whisper in her ear about what you’ll do to her next time. she wriggles in your lap, her lips brushing your cheek when she tells you to make your excuses, she’ll meet you in the car in ten minutes.
.
"i am a perfect gentleman to jackie but no, fez does not get to do things with her. how do you do it, hyde? when you are not such a nice person?"
you take the joint forman is holding out, inhaling the smoke deep into your lungs and out again before turning to fez. "i know how to please a chick where it counts. none of this feelings crap."
"will you teach me how to do that?" fez asks through a mouthful of candy.
"jackie's slumming it with you for a bit to make me jealous," kelso says before you can answer. he tosses his hair back, looking like a fucking idiot, and you kinda want to punch him, just to shut him up, so you do. "damn, hyde, i thought jackie made you less of a bastard."
"ain't no woman can change me," you say, tipping back in your chair.
"you just wait," kelso says, grabbing a taffy from fez. "she'll be braiding your hair soon. she did that to me once --"
"why is this the first we're hearing this?" forman cackles.
“jackie’s not like that anymore,” you say and then you bare your teeth at fez when he opens his mouth to ask for more. “now stop talking about her and pass me the chips. i need to tell you about this car.”
.
she calls you steven and you don't hate it.
.
mrs forman says jackie’s good for you and you want to say you don’t need jackie to do shit for you you’re fine how you are but she comes into the kitchen just then and kisses you quickly, her hand resting on your shoulder and mrs forman’s giving you a knowing look like she can tell you’re trying really hard not to smile.
this has to stop. your rep is getting ruined.
.
people notice jackie burkhart: head cheerleader talking to the burnout with no parents and they talk because they have nothing better to do. you see them flock around jackie, asking if the rumours are true, as though there aren't more important things to talk about than if you're fucking someone several ranks above your social circle. you know about government conspiracies and the fake man on the moon and you know that jackie likes oreos when she smokes and that she's more like you than any of those airheads will ever know.
you walk her to class because it's on the way to yours and you hold her books because she's talking too much to remember her biology textbook and she had spent so much time last night talking about the test she has that you had barely gotten her dress off before she was rhyming off bones in your leg, her fingers tapping along your thigh, and dammit you’re going to make sure all that was worth it.
she kisses you at the end of the corridor, right at the busiest part of the hall, and you smirk against her lips because the gasps around you are audible and what the fuck is this, a school or one of those soap operas mrs forman’s obsessed with? you lean in and slip your tongue into her mouth, playing it up a bit, and she’s smiling, you can feel it, and here you are in front of all these people kissing someone in a cheerleading uniform and everyone’ll know and ah what the hell, everyone was always going to know. you’re dating the biggest gossip in point place.
anyway, all this adds up to the two of you dating and that's something point place's student body can't handle. you knock a guy to the ground when he makes a joke about head cheerleaders and you guide jackie away with a hand around her shoulders when a sophomore says the two of you together is the most unnatural thing she's ever seen. you could care less about anything said about you and jackie but you know she hates it. so you lead her into your car and you spend the rest of the day making out on the back seat, running a hand down her side to cup her ass when she makes half-hearted comments about getting to class. "you're with me now, doll. gonna have to get used to breaking the rules."
she laughs and tells you about one time in middle school when she had cut school to stay in bed all day. "i was the biggest slob ever that day, steven, i swear. but i needed it to relax. i didn’t even really know you back then."
you know other ways of relaxing.
jackie is giggly and chatty when she smokes. it’s one of the times you don’t mind it so much. when it's just the two of you she clambers clumsily into your lap and nuzzles at your neck, her mouth hot and wet on your skin. she does this now in the back seat of your car, her skirt flared across your thighs and her hair brushing the roof. you find a packet of oreos in the glove compartment, you always seem to have them around now, and you eat one to prove they're not stale, kissing the chocolate from her mouth when she believes you.
they get caught in a car full of smoke by the vice principal. jackie bats her bloodshot eyes and curves her lips into a coy smile, always the innocent even with her blouse unbuttoned too much and her hand resting too high on your thigh, and the vice turns his head the other way and looks right at you, disappointment and meeting expectations right on his lips. jackie leans forward into his eyeline, flashes her chest, and this time all the vice can do is mumble something about parents and really he expected better of you, miss buckhart.
"i'm being led astray, sir," she says, her voice dipping low, her hand still so fucking close to your crotch. "steven just knows exactly what to say to me to make me say yes."
"i'm teaching her how to live the right way, sir," you say, pushing your glasses up your nose from where they'd fallen on the seat beside you when jackie had leaned in and blown smoke into your mouth ten minutes before. "sure you can understand."
the two of you dismantling the social hierarchy extends to the staff, you see, smirking when he coughs and says he'll be calling your parents. you haven't passed on the new contact info for red yet and jackie's mom drinks too much to answer the phone after midday so you've just been caught smoking on school property and thanks to jackie and her big eyes you're getting away with it.
"you're so badass," you tell her when he's gone.
she laughs and says her mom taught her to use her boobs in an emergency -- they're the best things a woman's got. "but not me, steven. i'm going to have my own tv show one day. you just watch."
and you know she’s not like the other girls you’ve been with. you know she won’t settle for second best or for point place or for anything that’s not right for her. it’s why you haven’t protested much when she says about hanging out in public because you’re still not really sure why she’s dedicating her time to be with you. you’re not destined for high places. you’re heading for prison probably and that’s not something you’re ashamed of, it’s just the way it is but jackie, damn her, is making you think about that sort of stuff and how if you ever pulled your head out of your ass you could be somewhere a little higher than a prison cell.
you know that if jackie says she’s going to be on tv one day then she will be and you won’t be with her but you’ll watch it at home and think of when you were with her and she had coughed smoky rings into your neck and laughed until you kissed her.
“yeah. keep dreaming, jacks,’ you say, which is encouragement from you. she knows this.
.
when her mom leaves she doesn’t tell you until a week later that she’s living in that huge house by herself and even then it’s only when you drop by after work one night that you realise something’s up and you force her to tell you what the hell’s going on.
you fit in your tiny bed if you sleep curved around each other like spoons and you won’t tell jackie this but you sleep better those nights, her hand small and hot in yours, her breathing something to focus on when your head is buzzing too much to shut down.
“you’re hogging the covers, steven,” she whispers.
“you’ve got them all.”
“why are my feet freezing then?”
“c’mere. budge up.” you rearrange yourself so jackie can curl against your chest, her frozen toes pressing at your shins. ‘jesus, jackie.”
“told you.”
“i know a way we can warm up,” you say, shifting your hips against hers.
“mm. not tonight. too tired,” and then she’s yawning and rolling over, asleep in moments.
your arm is falling asleep under her body. you curl in closer and then you shut your eyes and sleep.
.
you fuck up. you fuck up so badly even forman tells you you should have known better and forman fucks up every week with donna so you dig the heels of your hands into your eyes and you wish the time travelling machine the government is hiding from them wasn't so hidden.
jackie tells you it's over and that sits so wrongly in your throat it makes you feel sick. you realise then that this is the best thing you've had going for you in a long while, maybe the best thing ever, and you've fucked it all up over fucking michael kelso.
you tell jackie you love her because you do. you've not told anyone that before, don't think you've ever felt it before, apart from maybe something for edna a long long time ago, but you know this is what this is. you tell her you love her and she listens with a blank face, shaking her head and leaving you there in donna's room with no idea what to do next.
.
this year summer lasts forever. you miss jackie when she heads to florida with her mom and you try with other girls but look, jackie fucking burkhart has somehow found a way to mess with your head a thousand miles away and so you drink beer in the basement by yourself for a week feeling like forman and then you go out and kiss a girl in the alley behind the fotohut with her boobs almost falling out of her shirt and it feels shit.
“hyde is in loooove.”
“shut it, fez.”
“and jackie left you and doesn’t love you baaaack -- ow, hyde!”
“i don’t care about jackie, man. who does she think she is anyway? taking all summer to choose between me and kelso?"
"you did cheat on her," donna calls over from the freezer. "i mean, so did kelso, but for once i can kinda see where she's coming from with her melodrama. you’re both bastards."
.
you get her back after too long. she kisses you in the driveway and you lean into her, the car beneath her warm under your hand.
"steven, you love me," she says into your neck. she laughs and looks up at you, her eyes shining, and fuck it. yeah. you do.
"shut up," you growl and then you take her hand and lead her down to your room in the basement because summer's been so long and you haven't gotten jackie in that bikini out of your head for days. “or i’ll tell mrs forman what you said about her oatmeal cookies.”
“you wouldn’t,” she says, eyes narrowed. “steven, no american likes oatmeal cookies. i’m the one in the right here.”
it’s progress, you think, that you’re agreeing with her and not trying to get her to stop talking. “get your bikini out and i’ll consider it.”
“you’re an ass, steven hyde,” she says, but then she kisses you, pressing in close, and it’s quiet in the basement for once, just the two of you, and when you pull away you catch her smiling, the one she doesn’t do for other people, and you think that you were so stupid to throw this away. “steven, stop thinking and kiss me.” yeah. it’s going okay.