Work Text:
Chicago, 1979
“Oh my god,” said Jackie, shock palatable on her features. “Steven, what are you doing here?”
“Uh,” said Hyde, and stuck his hands in his pockets. Jackie was fiddling with the neckline of her nightie, readjusting it and crossing her arms over her chest like she was nervous. He almost smiled at the action — she was always so damn insecure, like she wasn’t the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen. The he realised that he’d helped fester that insecurity, and he looked down at the carpet instead. “I was just in the neighbourhood.”
Jackie didn’t even tease him for the obvious lie, and his alarm bells started ringing. He’d thought she’d be happy to see him — what, did she think he’d drive all the way to Chicago to say no? He opened his mouth to ask her about it when the door burst open.
“I checked, no-one can see us doing it from the parking lot— Hyde!”
Kelso shrieked, and the bucket of ice in his hands spilled across the motel floor, almost in slow-motion as Hyde’s brain caught up. Right. Of course. He really should have seen this one coming.
“You’re dead,” he ground out, hands curling into fists instinctively. Kelso fled and Hyde moved to chase him, but — he turned back to Jackie, even though his head told him not. He expected a rush of excuses, but Jackie just bit her lip, silent. Huh, thought Hyde, distantly. Of all the times he had to be right.
“Jackie?”
Jackie gave a tiny, helpless shrug, face drenched in guilt, and Hyde reverted back to a tried and true method of survival: cut ‘em and run.
“He’s dead,” he re-iterated, and ran after Kelso. Jackie didn’t grab his arm, or follow him, and that — that felt like an extra ton to the weight on his chest. Kelso was long-gone from the parking lot, but the thought of him being stuck in Chicago with no clothes made up for it, albeit not as much as pummelling him to the ground would have.
“Fuck,” whispered Hyde, and collapsed against the El Camino. He slammed his fist onto it’s roof, Jackie’s expression seared into his brain. “Dammit!’
He could drive away, but that’d open up the possibility for an accident — he wasn’t looking to get himself thrown through a windshield. And the temptation to run down Kelso, if he spotted him, might be too much to resist. He fished around the back of the car for a beer — it wasn’t good beer, instead some cheap, crappy brand that Forman liked, but it’d do. He downed a few mouthfuls. God, he’d been so stupid. All of Jackie’s crying about Kelso, and then back to him she’d run again. What had Fez said, that time? Rich Girl ends up with Whore, and Orphan Boy ends up alone. Story of his frickin’ life.
And Jackie, man. What a joke. Hyde’d been perfecting his aloofness, his zen since he was nine years old, but apparently that counted for nothing when faced with a ninety pound brunette. Ridiculous. She’d had him fooled with her words, and her promises, and he’d actually started to believe the crap that came out of her mouth. Bud and Edna hadn’t taught him shit.
It was the prom’s fault. He’d shown her a weakness, and she’d spent the next three years exploiting it. If he could go back to that night… but then he wouldn’t have a summer of happy memories in his head, and he wouldn’t have a dad or a record store either. Would have saved himself a shit-ton of heartache, though. Freakin’ Jackie. She came with complications and contradictions and he probably couldn’t have given her up if he tried.
Like her little blue swimsuit, with its stupid ties she pretended she couldn’t undo and always needed help with. That time he’d gone round to her house to find her walking around in his Zeppelin tee. The cookies she’d made to cheer him up. The way she always looked to him after burning Forman, like she wanted his approval. Kissing her against Mrs Forman’s fridge. Her pushing him into meeting W.B., and holding his hand through it. Just Jackie. All the freakin’ time.
Hyde swore. He’d spent so long trying to keep her out, and what had happened? He’d finally opened up the gates, only to realise she’d been there the whole time and had had enough. Love — it was a goddamn Trojan horse.
***
He drank another of Forman’s girly beers, and maybe there was something in them, because he was starting to do some annoyingly Forman-like thinking himself. He was getting an unpleasant, niggling sense that this might have been a misunderstanding, and also that it might have been his fault. He’d block it out, but then a few seconds later it’d reappear, like a goddamn mosquito. Mosquitos. Jackie. How his brain could link the two was beyond him, but there it was. She really was like freakin’ Tahiti.
Alright, said a voice in his head, sounding spookily like Mrs Forman. What if it was Eric who walked in on Donna? Would you let him give up without talking to her?
Hyde scoffed at the thought. As if Donna would cheat on Forman with Kelso — she liked ‘em spindly and nerdy, two things Kelso wasn’t. And Forman and Donna, they’d basically been pre-destined, if you believed in that sort of crap. Hyde didn’t, but he could admit that if it did exist, Forman and Donna were it. Best friends since they were kids, growing up next door to each other their entire lives. Compare that to him and Jackie, who’d hated each other from the get-go. They’d never stood a chance.
But if it did happen, and he came to you for help, what would you say to him?
Hyde could see it now, Forman pacing around the basement all squeaky-voiced, throwing his arms about the place and eyebrows going berserk. The answer rose up as easy as breathing, but he ignored it.
You’d tell him to man up and go talk to her about it, and you’d remind him that Kelso’s a jerk who’ll turn anything into an innuendo. C’mon, Hyde, he once made a sex joke about ham sandwiches.
When the hell had Hyde’s conscious absorbed his friends personalities? Donna’s voice was right — Kelso had a history of turning even the most innocuous situations into something dirty. And he did hit on Jackie a lot, there was no reason for this to be any different. He’d probably been hitting on her the entire drive to Chicago. It didn’t have to mean Jackie’d been responding.
Hyde groaned and rested his head on the steering wheel. This was all Jackie’s fault, her and her stupid ultimatum. And for some reason he was still sitting here thinking about it. Forget Kelso, Jackie really did make him stupid. Why the hell else had he put up with her this long? She was killing his braincells faster than the circle.
“Fuck,” said Hyde, again, and went to do something stupid.
***
This really was a bad idea, thought Hyde as he rapped twice upon the motel room’s door. No answer. He tried calling her name and was reward with a muffled yelp and scuffling.
“Hi,” he said, flatly, as she opened the door. Her face was pale, but colour rose in her cheeks as she looked at him.
“Steven, I’m so sorry, Michael was…” She trailed off, pressing her lips together, and stepped back from the door. “Do you want to come in?”
Hyde nodded, and stepped into the room. It was tiny, just a bed, table and armchair. Jackie’s suitcase was open on the floor, it’s contents messy, like she’d been planning on high-tailing it the hell out of Chicago. She shut the door and came to stand in front of him, the rims of her eyes red and wet.
“Steven, I swear…”
“Stop,” he said, before she could say anything. Get the answer, and then get the hell out, that was his plan. “Look, Jackie, I gotta know what happened here, okay? Whatever the truth is.”
She nodded, and fiddled with her sleeves. She’d pulled a sweater over her nightgown, and without her makeup he suddenly noticed the dark circles under her eyes, like back when her mom had disappeared for the first time. It made him feel even worse, because they weren’t the kind you got from missing one night. She couldn’t have slept properly in weeks. He clenched his fist — he was the one supposed to be pissed, he didn’t have to feel guilty over her. Jackie pulled him down to sit on the bed.
“Michael,” she started, and then went back over her words. “Baby, I thought I’d lost you. And Michael offered to drive me here, so he could visit Betsy, and I said yes. He wasn’t — he was making passes to cheer me up, I think. You know, like how he used to, so I could snap at him and burn him or whatever.”
She chewed on her nail. “You didn’t answer me, Steven. I wasn’t gonna sit around and be humiliated when you said no. But when we got here it was dusk and I didn’t wanna be alone, so I asked Michael to stay. And I… I…”
She breathed in, looking away briefly. “Nothing happened, Steven, I promise. But it might have. And I honestly can’t say if I would have stopped it.”
Hyde swallowed, staying silent for a long time. It wasn’t ideal, and it — it hurt like hell, actually, but he’d done worse to her. And like him with the nurse, it hadn’t been done out of lust, just revenge and hurt. And she’d forgiven him for that. Plus he’d driven all the way to freakin’ Chicago. He couldn’t afford that gas money for nothing.
“Okay,” he said eventually, and hooked his sunglasses on his shirt. He made eye-contact with her so she could see that he meant it. “Nothing happened. I can live with it.”
“Oh, Steven,” gushed Jackie, relief spilling over her features. “Baby—“
“Don’t,” he said, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, Jackie, this isn’t how I wanted this to go, alright? This ultimatum thing, I’m still mad about it. But I want you in my future, so we gotta — we gotta talk, man.”
Jackie gave him a cold look, suddenly unimpressed. “Steven, I have been trying to talk to you. I’ve been trying to talk to you for months, and you haven’t said a thing. Don’t you dare try and act like this predicament is my fault.”
Hyde bristled. “Uh, I wasn’t the one about the sleep with Kelso.”
Fury slipped into Jackie’s eyes, and she shifted away from him on the bed, putting a good foot of space between them. “You know what, Steven, if this is going to become another ‘get off my boyfriend’ repeat then you can save us the trouble right now and leave. You either forgive me or you don’t.”
He clenched his jaw. “Jackie, it was an hour ago. I said I’d live with it, not that I’d like it.”
“Urgh,” cried Jackie, throwing her hands up. “God, you’re insufferable. I really thought you wanted to talk about us, but already you’re just fixating on the same crap you always do! I just want you to admit that you pulled away first.”
“Hey, when I said ‘talk’, I actually meant ‘talk’, not that I was gonna sit here and say we could blame all our shit on me. You were the one with the ultimatum! I mean, marry me or I’m moving to Chicago? What the hell, Jackie?”
“Is that really what you think that was about?” asked Jackie. “Steven! All I’m asking is for you admit that you see a future with me!”
“Sure have a funny way of going about it.”
“Oh my god.” She got up from the bed, pacing. “What was I supposed to do, huh? I tried bringing it up with you, and whenever I did you broke up with me!”
Hyde clenched his fists, and matched her stance. Chick was delusional. “Uh, in case you’ve forgotten, that was you. Both times.”
“Well you didn’t exactly fight it!”
“What the hell was I supposed to do, drop to my knee then and there?”
Jackie gave him a dirty look, and sat back down. Hyde stayed standing, moving over to the corner so he was as far away from her as possible. This was a freakin’ terrible idea. Who the hell had ever advocated for talking to each other?
“That’s not what I’m saying,” she said. “Steven, we’re growing up. I’m not in high school anymore, I wanna start my life. And I wanna start it with you, baby.”
What was this, three weeks ago? Jackie’d been saying this since the second she graduated — hell, before. Like she didn’t understand sitting ‘round and doing nothing for a year was basically a rite of passage.
“Why are you so obsessed with this?” snapped Hyde. “You don’t need to plan out every single aspect of your life when you’re eighteen, man.”
“God, Steven,” whined Jackie, and rubbed her temples. “Would you shut up about that? That’s not what I’m asking for.”
Hyde scoffed, and parroted her own words back at her. “No, right. You just wanna make sure you don’t waste any more time on me.”
Jackie’s mouth dropped like a fish, and satisfaction pooled in Hyde’s stomach.
“Oh, you are such a jerk!” she cried, jumping up from the bed. She looked like she’d rip her own hair out if it didn’t cost her so much to maintain, and he half wished she would.
“I’m the jerk?”
“Um, hello?” Jackie stalked over to him, jamming her finger into his chest. He backed slightly further against the wall. This hotel room was like a goddamned escape room — there was nowhere to freakin’ go. “All I wanted was something — anything! — to know that I wasn’t just something to pass the time and that you wanted a long-term commitment.”
Hyde pushed her hand away. “Jackie, I was with you for two years, I was already in a fucking long-term commitment! You’re the one who expected me to bail on it after your freaking ultimatum, okay?”
“Oh my god,” said Jackie, closing her eyes. “Steven, I — when did you tell me that was what you thought we were, huh? When did you last tell me you love me? I say it all the time, and you never say it back!”
Hyde pinched the bridge of his nose. He wanted his shades back, but he thought if he reached for them Jackie might legitimately crush them in her tiny hands. “Jackie, you know I — you know how I feel about you.”
Jackie let out a high-pitched, horrifically false laugh. “Oh my god, really? You can’t even say it now?”
She sat back down on the bed, and put her head in her hands. “Steven, I — I can’t do this. How can you not get that I need something concrete? That’s what the ultimatum was about. I wouldn’t have cared if you’d told me we’d been getting married in ten years. I wouldn’t have cared if you’d said twenty. I wouldn’t even have cared if you’d said no, if you’d at least promised me you’d still be around. I just wanted you to tell me you loved me, because I don’t know that you do anymore.”
She bit her lip and looked away from him, chin resting on her hand. He sat down next to her, and cleared his throat.
“When did, uh. When did you stop? Knowing, I mean.”
Jackie twisted her head back to him. “I— I don’t know. It was… we used to do things, you know? Have fun, and go places. Steven, these last few months our relationship has just felt like work. And I feel like I’ve been doing all of it.”
Hyde sighed. She was right. Even before their breakup things had been off, and they’d only gotten worse after getting back together, like they were going through the motions of what they’d used to be.
“You’re not going to like it,” said Jackie, hesitantly. “But I think it was the Christmas party.”
The Christmas — “The Christmas party? You’re still hung up about that?”
Jackie rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’m still ‘hung up’ about it. You promised me you’d go—“
“Jackie, it was a bunch of stuck up, rich snobs getting their rocks off by bitching about everyone else. I thought you were over that stuff, and then you just reverted back into queen bee mode!”
“Queen bee mode?” repeated Jackie incredulously, voice dangerous. In any other situation he’d have backed off, but he’d already heard it twice in the last half hour, and he hadn’t been kicked in the nads yet. “Steven, I didn’t care about the freakin’ party, I cared that you promised me something and then backed out on me!”
“But why the party, man? Jackie, you went on this whole bender about getting grown up and shit, you think that didn’t freak me out a little? You got too busy trying to change me into your perfect guy, or whatever, and then got mad when I didn’t.”
“Steven,” Jackie’s mouth dropped, and she pulled her legs up onto the bed, twisting towards him. She put her hands on his shoulders. “Baby, I wasn’t trying to change you. I just wanted — you have so much potential, Steven, I just wanted you to see that.”
“Potential to make money?”
“No! Steven, is that what you think this has been about?”
Hyde didn’t answer. Jackie’s face looked like her heart was breaking.
“Oh my god, baby, no. I was just — I was gonna marry you, Steven. That — that’s been my plan ever since we got back together after the nurse.”
He had a few choice words about that, but Jackie cut him off. “Not — no, not like, not in a scheming way, or whatever you think I’ve been doing. I mean that I wanted, I do want, to marry you. I wanna spend the rest of my life with you, Steven. And maybe I didn’t wanna spend it living in Mr and Mrs Forman’s basement, so maybe I did try and push you toward a few jobs, but it wasn’t because you weren’t enough for me. Okay?”
She ran her palms over his shoulders a few times, soothingly, and Hyde eventually gave in. “Okay. But you gotta understand that I’m never gonna be that guy, Jackie, the one who goes to dinner parties and works an office job and shit. You gotta get that through your head.”
“You went to a dinner party before—“
“Jesus Christ, it’s like talking to a brick wall.”
Jackie removed her hands. “Don’t be a jerk, Steven. You know what I’m trying to say.”
“And what’s that? That you expect me to bend to your beck and call?”
“Oh my god,” said Jackie again, exasperated, and got up from the bed. “Don’t you see that it’s impossible to talk to you when you refuse to listen to me?”
“Hey, I’m not refusing anything—“
“Then stop—“ She waved her hands around. “—Stop wilfully misunderstanding what I’m saying! You’ll do anything to get out of hearing me, it’s infuriating!”
Hyde scowled at the motel’s carpet. He wasn’t wilfully misunderstanding anything, and he wasn’t convinced that Jackie didn’t still want him to miracle into Prince Charming.
“Ultimatum seemed pretty scheming to me,” he muttered. Jackie let out a tiny shriek, throwing her hands up in the air.
“Ugh, I hate you!” she cried, and disappeared into the en suite, slamming the door behind her. He felt a rush of relief at the respite, falling back onto the bed and closing his eyes, but then realised that without Jackie there to distract him he had no choice but to analyse what she’d been saying. And to feel increasingly bad about it.
She had a point — pre-Forman and Donna’s disaster wedding, they’d been more or less joined at the hip. It was only after that that real-world responsibilities had started pressing on them. And where Hyde had tried to run from them, Jackie had embraced them for both of them. He had stopped telling her he loved her, and worse, he’d stopped showing her. Hanging out with Jackie started to become associated with post-graduation annoyance, the frustration that his life was now expected to be doing things and going places he didn’t want. And he’d started avoiding it in any meaningful sense.
“Shit,” he whispered. Jackie trying to offer him opportunities wasn’t her trying to change him — it was her trying to help him. And she’d been willing to put her own life on hold for it.
He gave her twenty minutes by the motel’s radio clock, and then when she didn’t emerge went and knocked on the door.
“Jackie?” No answer, not that he’d expected one. “Jackie.”
He let his forehead thunk against the door, closing his eyes. “Come on, man, d’you eat a bad salad or something?”
He waited for the indignant shriek, but that didn’t come either. “You climb out the window?”
“Go away, Steven,” came Jackie’s voice, muffled.
“Nowhere to go. You gonna come out?”
“No. Not until you stop being an asshole.”
Hyde sighed, and turned around to lean his back against the door. He could use a cigarette. “Jackie.”
“No.”
“C’mon, doll.”
A noise thudded near his right elbow — Jackie had thrown something at the door.
“Don’t you ‘doll’ me,” she snapped. “It’s not happening.”
Hyde puffed his cheeks, and slid down to sit on the carpet, still resting against the door. He waited another few minutes, fidgeting with the hem of his denim jacket.
“Jackie, I’m sorry, okay? I get what you were trying to say.”
An indignant huff sounded from inside the bathroom. Hyde was beginning to lose patience.
“Jackie.”
“Steven,” she parroted, with a haughty sniff. “Fine. I accept your apology.”
“You wanna come out now?”
She didn’t dignify with it an answer, and Hyde groaned.
“Jesus, Jackie, you’re such a piece of work.” He lent his head back until the base of his skull collided with the door. “Look, I’m sorry. I love you. You know I love you. I came here to freakin’ propose to you, Jackie.”
He’d hoped it might prompt her to come out, but it didn’t even get a response. He sighed again. “I love you.”
The weight suddenly disappeared from behind him as the door opened, and he lost balance, falling backwards. Jackie looked down at him, her arms crossed.
“Hi,” he said, her face upside-down in his vision. Jackie pursed her lips.
“This time I’m not saying it back.”
She stepped over him and went to sit back on the bed, back ramrod straight and her legs crossed to match her arms. He almost laughed. “Guess I earned that one.”
She tilted her chin upwards. “Yes, you did.”
She let that hang in the air for a moment, and then glanced at him guiltily, like she just couldn’t contain it. “And I love you too, Steven.”
He did smile then, slightly rueful, and Jackie gave him a matching expression. It cooled some of the heat left in his veins, and he went and sat in the armchair opposite her. He wanted to go to sleep, but now they’d started talking he didn’t know how to stop. “So, you got anything else you wanna throw at me?”
Jackie raised her eyebrow at him. “Well, there’s always your obsession with me and Michael.”
And the heat was back. He scowled at her. “Yeah, I think that one’s pretty justified. Case in point: tonight.”
She pointed a finger at him. “If you bring that up one more time during this conversation, I will steal the Camino and leave you here.”
“You can’t drive stick, Jackie.”
“I’ll learn as I go.”
Hyde shuddered, and Jackie continued. “You obviously have some trust issues, and I get that — Steven, of course I get that. But I’ve never cheated on you, not with Michael or anyone else. You cheated on me with the nurse, and I forgave you for that, Steven. So you have to forgive me for having a past with Michael, or we’re never going to move on.”
Hyde exhaled, avoiding Jackie’s eyes. He leant forward and rested his elbows on his knees. Freakin’ Jackie, man. She always knew how to get to him.
“Look, Jackie,” he said. “You gotta understand it’s not you. I don’t trust anyone.”
“That’s not good enough,” she said sharply, real anger in her voice. “And it sure as hell looks like you don’t trust me, when every time you see me and Michael alone you assume we’re sleeping together.”
Jackie was right, and he swore internally. This was a conversation he’d been dodging since before they even started dating, but if he didn’t answer it he might as well give her up.
“Christ,” he muttered, and fixed his eyes on a mark on the floor. He’d probably remember the colour of this damn carpet forever. “Jackie, it’s not that I think you’re gonna cheat with Kelso. Well, it is, kinda, but it’s more. It’s more like I don’t trust you’re gonna stick around. Kelso’s just kind of... there.”
He met her eyes again. They’d softened around the corners, but she still looked annoyed.
“I just don’t understand why you can’t accept that I’m not leaving. I don’t understand why you don’t believe me.”
Right, okay. Real world example.
“Jackie, when your Mom asked you to go live with her again, did you really think she was there to stay?”
“Well, no, but that’s different—“
“Is it?”
“Yes. Steven, I love you.”
“Yeah, and I bet your mom told you that too. Didn’t stop her from fucking off to god knows where, though, did it? Bud ’n’ Edna were exactly the damn same.”
Jackie sighed, and Hyde glanced at the clock. God. They were well into tomorrow. Jackie patted the space beside her on the bed, shifting over a little. “Steven, would you come here?”
He did. Jackie covered his hands with her own, warm and familiar.
“Listen to me, Steven. I’m sorry your mom left you. I really, truly am. Nobody deserves that, not me and especially not you, baby. But you don’t get to throw that in my face and use it as an excuse to treat me bad, okay? You gotta find a new record to play. Else this one’s gonna eat you up from the inside.”
He watched as she stroked her thumb across the back of his hand, nails painted in a dark pink, an uncomfortable feeling in his chest. He turned his palm up, and she laced her fingers with his.
“If I ever leave you it won’t be in the middle of the night, Steven,” she said softly. “It’ll be after a long and lengthy divorce settlement, and you’ll have forked up your life savings for it. You’ll see it coming.”
It was a risky joke, but Hyde laughed. He squeezed her hand, the only acknowledgement he could give, but Jackie returned it and he knew she understood. “I hear ya, doll.”
She smiled, and rubbed her eyes. “Lets go to bed, Steven.”
“You don’t want me out?”
Jackie shook her head, and let go of his hand to snuggle up under the covers. He shed his boots and jacket, then followed suit.
“You really drove all this way for me, huh?” whispered Jackie. Hyde shrugged.
“Don’t let it go to your head,” he muttered, and Jackie smiled again. She reached out to click the light, then wriggled back against him. He wrapped an arm around her waist, finding her hand and twining their fingers together. It felt like too long since they’d done this, just slept without sex beforehand, and he kissed her shoulder through her sweater. This trip to Chicago had been hell, and the opposite of what he’d expected, and it had turned out alright despite that.
“I do wanna marry you,” he said, into her neck. “Not tomorrow, an’ not because it’s that or lose ya. But I don’t want you giving up your dream for me.”
Jackie pulled him tighter around her, and pressed a light kiss to his knuckles. “You are my dream, Steven. We’ll figure something out.”
Hyde closed his eyes, and breathed her in, and hoped that maybe they would.