How've you been?
Can I come in?
Just came to get my things and then I guess I'm leaving.
If I could say what you'd like to hear,
I'd whisper in your ear it's only temporary.
By Now by Marianas Trench
Two days after he and Jade broke up, Beck came home to find his RV door off its hinges.
It was a familiar sight. Whenever people asked him if she had a key to the RV, he would always reply "No, she has a foot." Jade had kicked it in enough times that it now had multiple discernible nicks and dents. His father had (sadly only half-jokingly) offered to have it remade in reinforced steel so that the next time it happened, she'd have to wear a two-month cast and suffer a broken foot. Beck never took him up on that offer. He hadn't expected it to happen again for a while, but there his door was, leaning against its frame, leaving his RV wide open.
He walked in to find Jade standing in the middle of the room, a large box tucked under her arm.
She didn't even bat an eyelash when she saw him come in. "Your timing is terrible," she told him, obviously irritated. She leaned over to yank a drawer open. She grabbed a bunch of loose pages in there, crumpled them up, and tossed them into her box.
"I'd say my timing's pretty good, considering I just walked in on you breaking and entering," he deadpanned. His brown eyes took in the rest of the place. For the most part, it looked like it always did. She didn't cut up any of his stuff – not yet, anyway. There was a pile of plaid shirts strewn across his bed – stuff he left at her place, probably, or stuff she borrowed from him and was returning, quite angrily, right now. Otherwise, nothing seemed out of place. He heaved a sigh of relief. Jade had made it clear she wasn't above trashing his place or keying his car if he ever stepped out of line, but it was good to know her bark was worse than her bite.
She wheeled around to look at him, brandishing a pair of scissors in his direction. He took a step backward at that, but she ignored him. "No, the plan was to sneak into your RV, grab all my stuff, dump all of yours, and be gone by the time you got back," she said heatedly as she tossed the pair of scissors into her box.
So that's what this was about.
Beck sighed. "You could've just called, so I could've gotten your stuff together myself," he pointed out as he let his backpack slip to the floor. "… And I could've kept my door," he added as an afterthought. He walked over to his closet and opened it. Jade always kept a couple sets of clothes in there in case she spent the night, and he reached for the little pile he cleared out for her there. His hand hovered over her stuff hesitantly. Cleaning out his RV and her room of everything that was each other's… it just made it all feel so final. It felt like it was all over this time, and they had no one to blame but themselves.
She was taking you for granted, he assured himself; it was the right thing to do, not opening that door. It was like a mantra with the way he repeated those words over and over. He was no closer to believing it than he was two days ago the moment she left, but he wasn't about to be the one to say so.
He shook his head and grabbed her clothes, and then turned to hand the pile over to her. She examined the pile, before she pulled one plaid flannel shirt out and handed it back to him. "That's yours," she told him, "Just because I wore it more often doesn't make it mine." He took it from her, then, unable to say anything in response. Just a short time ago, she felt so at home here in his RV, in his clothes, in his bed. It was different now, and it was taking a while for it to sink in.
Jade's gaze travelled the room before it fixed on a strip of a photobooth session they had on their first real date more than two years ago. They looked a lot happier then; there had still been fights, there always had been, but he didn't remember how long ago it was that they stopped bothering to resolve them. Jade finally broke the silence. "You should really get rid of that," she said quietly.
"Yeah," was all he could bring himself to say.
She paused for a beat and then said, "On second thought, can I have it?"
He didn't argue with her. He reached up and took the pictures from the shelf to hand to her. Jade took it from him, walked over to the edge of the bed, and sat down there. She was silent, and he couldn't read her expression until she reached into her boot and pulled out a pair of scissors.
He wanted to stop her, but he didn't.
Jade took a few tentative snips of the photograph. As her hands sped up with the scissors, her breath became more erratic as she struggled to bite back the tears. Her shoulders shook, but she kept her head down, as if she refused to let him see her face. Through some feat of pure will she managed to keep the tears at bay, but it was breaking his heart all the same.
All he wanted to do at that moment was to come closer, wrap his arms around her, and tell her what she wanted to hear, like he always did. He wanted to take her face in his hands and tell her she shouldn't cry, because it messed up her makeup and she was always more beautiful when she was smiling. But he didn't have the nerve to step in, to tell her he loved her without her asking, and his heart was now a hundred tiny little cut-up pieces at her feet. That was always the way it was, his heart at her mercy, but he didn't think she ever knew.
She put the scissors back in her boot. She was silent, but the question "What happened to us?" hung in the air between them, the words they were both unable to say. She reached into her pocket and pulled something out to hand to him. "Take this, too," she muttered as she put whatever it was into the palm of his hand.
It was the gold circle hanging from a black cord, just like the one he had. The ones they used to wear together.
"I can't take this, Jade, it's yours," he said quietly. It was, he knew, the nail on the coffin of Beck-and-Jade, and although he couldn't bring himself to admit it, he didn't want it to be so final.
"It's yours now. Again. Like it's supposed to be," she snapped, a little too hastily, so that it sounded almost bitter.
He wanted to say something, but he couldn't find the words. "Then," he said finally, taking the necklace that was sitting on his shelf – the one that matched hers – he put that one in her hand. "Take this."
She looked up at him, her mouth open for a moment as if to say something in protest. He knew what she was going to say: that didn't solve anything. That didn't end all of this. Truthfully, he wasn't sure if that's what he intended when he gave his necklace to her, but he couldn't deny that there was a part of him that felt that way. He was surprised when Jade didn't fight it. She closed her mouth, bit down on her lip, and nodded. Her fingers closed around his necklace before she put it in her box. "That's everything, then," she said.
"That's everything," he echoed.
He couldn't help but wonder if her taking it meant that she was going to kick his door in again someday.
"Bye, Beck." She took one long last look at him: his hair, his eyes, his lips, the way she did when she wanted to kiss him. Then, she brushed past him to walk out the door.
His door might have been off its hinges, but he felt as if all its locks had suddenly snapped shut.
Author's Note: So this was actually done a long time ago (like two or three weeks?) but I just didn't get around to making tweaks and changes. I'm not 100% sure about this, but I hope it's okay. Actually prompted by Wi-Fi In The Sky. Beta'd by the super-awesome xXFireRoseXx.
Disclaimer: Allie owns nothing.