for good
summary: The classic tale of best friends turned lovers. Or vice versa. Whichever. / BeckJade, BeckTori.
disclaimer: Victorious isn't mine.
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"I'd give anything to be in love with you."
Somewhere inside of her heart – at least, in the basic place where it was or is supposed to be – she knows he's telling the truth. He has honest eyes that are a deep brown, and they warm her from the inside out, as though they have built a hearth inside of her stomach and lit a fire.
"Yeah, yeah," she says, because she is Jade West and something like this is not supposed to affect her, so she doesn't let it, "I'm sure you would."
"You know," Beck The Heartbreaker starts, the end of his lip curling upward into something of a smirk, "You could never lie to me. I can see right through you."
"I wouldn't flatter yourself," Jade says through pursed lips, kissing him for the last time, just at the corner of his mouth that lifted slightly in a smile, "I haven't lied, either. I never told you I was okay with this." She settles herself back on her heels, lifting her gaze to meet his. They are so close she can feel his breath, can count the translucent mars of his skin.
Who would have guessed it? Beck&Jade, falling apart so easily it was like pulling pieces out of a puzzle. Beck&Jade, going out with a whimper. Beck&Jade, civil and calm and calloused by time, ending things without so much as a goodbye.
Beck&Jade turned into Beck and Jade without hitting or kicking or explosions or passion. It, of course, isn't an unexpected turn of events – them growing apart, ending things. One could predict it, even. They could predict it – Jade had predicted it. But they fell apart just as easily as they went together. And that, somehow, wasn't expected.
In their own little way, they are unpredictable.
"So I guess this is it," Beck says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Jade's throat closes up. Her hands shake. Her scalp tingles from the touch of his fingertips. There is fire, there is passion, there is love, sizzling behind ice blue eyes.
"I guess so," she manages, and somehow she sounds civil; dignified, even. Okay.
"Okay," Beck says, and he leaves, not for the first time, but certainly for the last.
Okay. She breathes. Okay.
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And Jade is okay – after the first few days, that is.
Friday afternoon, she doesn't do much. She loafs around the house in a numbed sort of state and doesn't really remember much past crawling into her bed at midnight and falling asleep to dreams that she once found comfort in before the break-up.
On Saturday, she types out a three page long text message to Beck that sounds so pathetic that she can't find it in herself to send it, but she saves it to her drafts and prays to God for possibly the third time in her entire life to bring Beck back to her.
Sunday, she cries. She finds all of the things in her room that resemble Beck and piles them onto her bed, one by one, and falls into them, his scent enclosing her, and cries for hours, until her eyes dry out and her throat feels like it's on fire and her chest is heaving and her stomach feels so hollow that she wants to throw up.
Monday is probably the worst. She skips school against her parents' wishes and throws Beck's things against the walls, stupidly hoping they'll all shatter into dust. She punches her pillow, rips up the clothes he's left at her house, crumples up the pictures of them together. She throws all of it away, but later that night she finds the garbage bag and drags it back into her room, smoothes out the pictures, lays the clothes out on the floor and wonders if there could be a way to get them repaired. Then she realizes what she's doing and throws them all away again, this time in the trashcan outside, so if she changes her mind it will likely be too late to salvage anything.
On Tuesday, she forces herself out of bed at six thirty and stares at herself in the mirror. Says something that becomes that week's mantra: "You will live."
Amazingly, she does.
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Sinjin tries to ask her out on a Wednesday. She punches him in the nose.
She's not as "over it" as she lets on, probably.
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"That wasn't very nice." Jade can't decide if Beck's voice is a form of relief or a form of discomfort. Either way, she doesn't stop him from sitting next to her outside of Lane's office, where he is currently finishing up a guidance appointment and is probably trying to figure out the best way to get through his session with an angry girl who just lost the love of her life and punched a poor kid in the face for having feelings for her.
"You know me," Jade says, clicking her tongue, "I'm not nice."
"If you're mad – "
"Not mad," Jade insists, "…Lonely, I guess." She sees no point in trying to lie to him.
"Oh."
Beck leans back against his seat, running a hand through his hair; he's cut it recently. It's shorter, but it still nearly reaches his shoulders. Jade resists running her fingers through it like she would have when they were still dating a week ago.
A week. That's all it's been, and Jade's cheeks almost flush as she recalls last week's antics, of smelling his things. That's probably actually genuinely creepy, now that she thinks about it, and definitely too embarrassing to ever own up to.
"Did you get a haircut?" She finally blurts, pretending as though she hadn't immediately noticed it, like, three days ago.
"A few days ago, yeah." Beck grins and it eases some of the pain and enhances some of it.
"Looks…the same, actually."
Beck laughs, "Yeah, well, I'd put some colored highlights in it, but I don't think they'd suit me as well." He fingers the blue in her hair and then he's standing up, walking down the hallway with one hand in his pocket and the other holding his bag steady.
The normalcy is strange, but not unwelcome, and Jade thinks that maybe this "just friends" thing is going to work.
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"This is a little weird," Jade admits, fingering the sleeve of her shirt.
"Why?"
Beck is sitting across from her at their favorite coffee shop, hot chocolate in hand. He's leaning back in his chair, lifting the front two legs off the floor and balancing on the back.
"It feels like it should be a date," Jade admits, eyebrow cocked slightly as she lifts her drink to her lips and takes a sip, "Obviously it isn't." She adds, giving him a pointed look as discomfort flashes across his face. "And I'm not expecting it to be." She says this last part as an afterthought, quickly and quietly and realizes afterwards that it probably makes things more awkward and makes her a lot less believable.
She's relieved when he chuckles, shifting his weight so that the chair legs land on the ground with a thwack.
"Why did you force me out here, anyways?" Jade finally asks, looking at her chipping black fingernails. To torture me, probably, a voice in her head answers.
Beck suddenly gets serious. "Because we're friends, Jade." Her breath catches in her throat, "At least, I really want us to be. You can't just break up with someone you've been with for three years and not ever talk to them again. It's immature."
Then she must be very immature, because Jade was perfectly fine with closing him out of her life for good and continuing on. Him wanting to be friends just makes it harder on her. But, if this is what Beck truly wants, why should she refuse? Being friends with him even leaves the door slightly cracked for a second chance at a relationship.
"You're right," Jade says, "We should stay friends. Definitely."
"You're so agreeable now," Beck notes, beaming, "It's kind of nice."
The old her probably would have scowled. But now, she just shrugs her shoulders and finishes her coffee before she has the audacity to pour it on him.
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Things are uneventful for a couple of weeks. Then a month.
It's a Thursday when things start feeling normal. When Jade can finally breathe again and not worry about getting Beck back, because it is utterly clear he wants to stay friends, when she truly and honestly feels okay with the "just friends" situation.
On Friday, he asks Tori Vega out.
On Friday, Tori says yes and smiles her perfect little smile and throws herself into his arms.
On Friday, Jade West falls apart all over again, and the anger and jealously and bitterness rises up to her throat like vomit.
On Friday, Jade West kills Tori Vega.
Just in her head, of course. About a thousand times over.
But still.
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"Why, aren't you just the happy couple?" Jade asks, adopting a southern accent – the voice she uses to mock Tori in – as she sits down across from them. Tori gives her a look but Beck ignores her, lacing his fingers with his new girlfriend's and taking a huge bite of his burger. Jade might have found it repulsive if she had been sitting beside him, but Tori isn't paying much attention to his horrible eating habits, opting instead to pick through her salad and remove any olives.
This bothers Jade, and she isn't sure why, but she lifts the plate where Tori is discarding the olives and pours them all back into the leaves of her salad.
"Jade!" Tori cries, furrowing her brow and glaring.
Jade smirks, but then Beck is rolling his eyes, "If you're going to be immature about this, you shouldn't be here."
Her smirk falters until there is nothing left of it. Jade lowers her gaze to the table.
"We're friends, Jade," Beck reminds her, standing up with his lunch in one hand and Tori in the other, "Just friends. And friends don't act like this."
They leave her then, alone to pick at her own lunch in solitude.
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Sorry, she texts him later. She doesn't get a reply.
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"Hey."
Jade looks up, expecting Beck even though she knows it's not his voice, and finds Tori wringing her hands together as though she's anxious or nervous or something.
"What?" Jade asks this harshly, and she can see something akin to annoyance flicker in Tori's eyes, but the girl sucks it up and stays there, anyways, holding Jade's gaze.
"I'm not mad about the olives," Tori says, sitting down in the desk next to Jade's, "In fact, I was kind of shocked Beck was so annoyed by it, because it wasn't a big deal to anything you normally…to anything you've done in the past," Tori says, rectifying her statement before it goes wrong, "And, look, I know that you're still hurting because of the break-up…"
"Like you would know something like that," Jade spits, eyes narrowing, "I don't need your pity, Vega. And I don't care what you do with Beck. We broke up. It's not my problem."
"I know," Tori says, brows furrowing, "I mean – I know that – uh – I…Look, I'm not saying that you don't have a right to be upset or anything, and I don't judge you or anything. Everyone hurts over having their heart broken, you know? It's not like you're immune because you put on a strong front."
Jade raises a brow, debating between hitting Tori as hard as she can, ignoring her, or running out of the room in tears.
Instead, she gives out a defeated sigh. "What is the point you're trying make, exactly?"
"We're friends," Tori says with a simple raise of her shoulders, "And I'm not going to break up with Beck, because…Well, because I really like him." A faint blush accompanies her cheeks as she says this, and Jade might find this cute if Tori wasn't talking about Beck, and if it wasn't Tori, and if Jade wasn't Jade, "But I don't…I don't want to hurt you, and I guess – well, I guess I'm just trying to say that I'm sorry things didn't work out, and I know that he'll always be your first love, and…" She trails off and Jade stares at her.
"All I'm saying," Tori finally says after a deep breath, "Is that I don't want to see you hurt. That's it. And I'm willing to talk to you about it if you need to talk."
"You pity me, basically." Jade cocks a brow and Tori lets out a sound of frustration.
"No, I just – "
"Vega," Jade finally says, cutting her off, "I'm fine."
And it actually surprises her that she halfway means it, kind of.
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"Tori told me that you two talked the other day," Beck says, sitting down next to Jade in their history class.
"Well, she talked, that's for sure," Jade answers, not lifting her gaze from the homework that she is hell-bent on finishing before class ends, "I mostly just sat there and nodded accordingly."
"Jade," Beck says in a tone that reminds her of her parents when they are trying to coax the truth out of a fabricated lie.
"It's hard to hate that you two are dating when she's so determined to be nice about it all," Jade admits, finally lifting her gaze to meet his. She lets out a breath, "I want to be friends, Beck. Honestly. It's just hard for me to get used to this no-relationship thing. I still…" She drops her voice to a whisper, "I still sometimes think that we're going to hang out after school, or that you'll be outside to walk me to class, and you're not," Jade says, but she thinks that she might be missing these things because of habit, not because she truly wants him back.
"We can still hang out after school, Jade. And I can walk you to class." Beck grins and Jade melts, but it's different; less lovesick and more warm, like he's prying the ice off her shoulders and she's being reborn again into springtime.
"Beck," Jade whispers, the bell ringing overhead, "Go walk Tori to class."
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It only takes two more weeks to fully get used to Tori&Beck. They're different than Beck&Jade. They don't fight as much – or at all, Jade isn't sure because she hasn't seen any arguments – but the same in some ways, like the way that swings his arm around her shoulders and she's the only one that makes him smile the same way he used to smile at Jade.
She isn't that bitter. Not really. At least, not as much as she expected she'd be. She still kind of hates that Beck chose Tori in the end, but her heart is mending, and she likes being around Beck as a friend instead of as a girlfriend. She actually feels more open to him, like she isn't trying to impress him, like she isn't worried that one of her quirks will drive them apart.
She and Beck hang out in his RV on a Saturday when Tori is spending the night at Cat's, and they spend a lot of time eating chips and watching his Full House DVDs on his tiny, slightly fuzzy television screen.
Jade is comfortably at the foot of Beck's bed when Beck reaches down and touches her arm, a gesture that used to mean that he wanted a kiss, but now probably means something else entirely. Jade glances up and catches him smiling at her. When she frowns, he laughs a little and turns his eyes back to the television.
"What was that all about?" Jade asks, waiting for her heart to beat really fast or do back flips or something.
"You're amazing," Beck tells her, crawling headfirst out of the bed like he's some sort of slithering animal. He rights himself and sits beside her putting his head on her shoulder, "You're just awesome."
Beck has never done something like this before, and Jade almost expects to be more unnerved than she actually is. In fact, she finds it strangely comfortable despite it being new. Something reassuring, in a way. Something that tells her that they really are meant to be friends.
"How will Tori feel about you saying that?"
Beck laughs, sitting up and grinning, "I hope she gets jealous. It's cute when she's mad at me; her nose wrinkles."
"I do not care about your love life, Beck," Jade says, but she's hiding a smile because, in this weird, cosmic way she'd never expected, she finds it somewhat endearing that Beck can talk about Tori like this to her, that he trusts her, that he's glad that she's his friend.
Jade links their arms together and puts her head on his shoulder.
"I love you," she says, and she means it, and there are implications behind it but not the romantic kind. Not the kind their used to be. And she loves it; she loves being able to tell Beck that she loves him, as a friend, as a person, not as a boyfriend.
"I love you, too," he says, and he lays his head on top of hers, and they stay there until they've gone through all eight seasons of Full House, until he sun comes up the next morning; two lovers turned best friends.
In their own little way, they're still unpredictable.
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a/n: I am actually very fond of this story. I like the idea of a BeckJade friendship and this pretty well satisfied my needs. Thanks for reading! Please review with more than "cute!" or "i liked it!" or the ever pleasant "EW BORI?"