Disclaimer: I don't own Victorious or any of the character or anything else.
A/N: In honor of Victorious I'm posting this one-shot. I've had so many feelings about Victorious tonight I can't even begin to explain, but I do know that I'm going to miss it. So here's to us.
P.S. This is not my last Victorious story. I'm going to keep writing and updating. :) Oh, and follow me on twitter. Just search madkin18.
"But.."
Beck shrugged as he glanced over his shoulder and met the pointed gaze of his impatient girlfriend. "Sorry." He turned his sympathetic eyes towards the brunette in front of him before intertwining his fingers with Jade's waiting hand.
Tori huffed as she watched Hollywood Art's IT couple walk off. She had just been curious. She hadn't meant to offend anyone. What was so bad about asking Jade why she hated being touched anyway? It wasn't like she had voiced her suspicions, which had grown 200% based off Beck's reaction. She knew from her psychology class freshmen year before she'd joined Hollywood Arts that people who were…abused had a tendency to hate being touched later in life. And that was Jade to a 'T'. Except for Beck. He could touch Jade whenever he wanted and she would just sink into him. But they had been dating for years, so obviously they had worked through the touching thing.
Beck sighed as he plopped down on the blue bench beside Jade. He had been counting the minutes until lunch.
"Babe?"
"Hmm?" He blindly reached out his hand and found her knee as he looked into her curious blue eyes.
"Are you all right?" Jade did a quick glance over making sure he didn't have any physical tell-tale signs.
He stared at her in silence before whispering, "Come here," rocking her knee a little. Jade allowed a small smile to claim her lips as she arranged her legs to rest in-between his. "I missed you," he breathed against her lips right before he closed the short distance.
Jade broke away breathing heavily. "What's wrong with you?"
"What? I can't miss my girlfriend?" Jade narrowed her eyes accusingly. "I'm just appreciating you."
"Uh-huh. What happened?" Jade's eyes flashed down to her leg where Beck was carefully drawing a design. "Is it Tori?" Beck's movement's faltered for less than a second. "I knew it! She's asking you about me again, isn't she?"
"No. I mean, yeah. But she doesn't mean anything by it." Beck eyes flitted behind Jade's shoulder as he caught sight of Tori watching them. She wasn't exactly good at being subtle.
"No. She's just being a busy-body like always." Jade rolled her eyes. Freaking-perfect-Tori-Vega just had to meddle in everything.
Beck stopped his design to grasp Jade's twitching hand. "She cares." He watched her expression. Her eyes never left their hands.
Beck's hand became feather-light as he responded to her open palm. "She's nosey." Her voice lacked it's usual bite.
"Fine." Beck continued to trace the lines marking her palm.
Jade jerked her head up. "Fine?"
"You're right. Tori can be nosey." Beck slowed his movements before stopping altogether. He gave her hand a quick squeeze before announcing, "I'm gonna get us lunch, okay?" Jade nodded distracted as she took her legs back.
"Beck!" He sighed as he swung his locker door shut.
"I can't help you, Tori." He slid his bag strap further onto his shoulder.
She whined, "But you must know something. Anything." She was sure that if Jade had ever gone through anything horrible that she would have told Beck. He was Beck after all.
"Even if I did, it's not my business and it's not yours either." He reenforced his statement with a stern expression he'd perfected once Jade started to test people's boundaries.
"But, I just want to help!" Why was everyone so against her helping?
"There's nothing to help, all right?" Beck ran his fingers through his hair as he jerked his head behind Tori. "Look, there's Jade. I gotta go."
"Alright." Tori watched hopelessly as he greeted his goth girlfriend at her locker with a kiss on the cheek.
"And then she saw her reflection in the window and shattered the entire window with her fist, her fist, so I had to drive her to the…Tori, are you listening?" Andre looked behind him cautiously.
"Huh?" Tori ripped her eyes from the couple across the hall.
"What are you starin' at chica?" He took another sweeping look behind him. His eyes focused in on two of their friends.
"Beck and Jade." She mumbled absently.
"That's…creepy." Andre shifted his gaze from the couple back to his crazy friend.
"I just don't understand why they don't want my help. I mean isn't it weird that if anyone besides Beck puts a hand on Jade she gets all tense and crabby?"
"She doesn't like to be touched." Andre knew this fact well. Jade West could touch you, but if you touched Jade West, well, you lost a hand.
"But why?" Tori switched her weight to her right hip as she studied her friends. Jade was backed against her locker -ow scissors- and Beck had both arms on either side of her. Every once in a while when Jade would hide her head in Beck's chest, he would laugh and bring his mouth to her ear where he proceeded to do things Tori wished she had never seen. If Tori didn't know better she could have sworn they were flirting, but that's something new couples did. What did you call it when old couples did it?
Andre shrugged. "I don't know. She just doesn't."
Tori looked at her best friend exasperated. "Ugh, you're no help." Tori huffed and stormed off.
"Cat!"
"Hiya Tori." Cat looked up from her coloring. Jadey had given her a coloring book and crayons to stay by Beck's locker.
"Do you know why Jade hates being touched?" Tori watched Cat's face carefully. Cat could keep a secret, if she had to, but she would give away if there was a secret to begin with.
Cat shrugged and returned to her coloring. "She's always hated being touched." Small strokes would keep all the pretty colors in the lines.
Tori straightened as an idea came to her. "Hey, Cat. Do you wanna help me?"
"With what?" Cat looked up from her pink giraffe with an innocent face.
"Go over there and see if Beck or Jade will tell you why Jade hates being touched. But! Don't tell them I told you to!"
"Kay, kay." Cat jumped up to run over to her best friends, but Tori grabbed her arm in a steel grip.
"What did I just say?" She wasn't going to be fooled by Cat again. The party bus time was bad enough.
"To go ask Jadey and Beck…" Cat started bouncing on her toes.
"After that." Tori loosened her grip a little.
"You did not send me over there." Cat repeated with a smile.
Tori released the redhead's wrist. "Right. Okay, go." Tori took Cat's place and studied the scene unfolding in front of her.
"You guys are so cute!" The couple looked up from their place on the ground in front of Jade's locker. While Cat could be the most random person they knew, she was more than used to their constant displays of affection.
Jade cocked her eyebrow and looked at Beck. "Thanks," she said dryly.
"You guys are like always touching and..stuff." She wasn't wrong. They were always attached somewhere, except during a fight, but even then they kept a close proximity. Obviously, they had separation issues.
"Really?" Beck narrowed his eyes and glanced at his girlfriend to see her sharing his suspicions. This wasn't seeming so random anymore.
"Jadey, how come I can't hug you like Beck does?" Cat twisted her hands together as she began to twist from side to side.
"Cat…" Jade lowered her voice and tightened her grip on Beck's hand, which was thrown over her shoulder.
"Whaty?"
Beck tried to get a glance behind Cat, but her swaying dress was obscuring his view. However, he was almost sure he could see a brunette sitting by his locker watching them. "Did Tori send you over here?"
"No. She made it very clear that she did not send me over here to ask you guys why Jadey hates to be touched." Jade growled and Cat gave a high squeal, but stayed put. Beck automatically brought his hand to his girlfriend's raven hair, so he could twirl it between strokes. Petting seemed to work in the early stages of Jade's rage.
"That little…" Beck's eyes snapped back to his seething girlfriend as a snarl sounded beside him.
Beck moved his arm more securely around Jade and then tightened his hold. "Jade…"
"What?!" The ends of her hair slapped his face as she whipped her head to face him.
"Relax." Beck made sure that Jade's eyes never left his. If her gaze wandered in this state she would snap. "Do you wanna go home? We can blow off the gang. " Jade's breathing slowed until it was even again.
"I want to go scissoring shopping." Usually Beck resisted scissor shopping as a normal activity. Not because he disapproved of his girlfriends love for the sharp objects, but because she already had so many.
"Okay. Do you wanna go to that place up north?" Beck let go of Jade as he stood up making sure that Jade's back would be to his locker.
Beck reached his hand out for Jade to use as leverage. "The other place is having a sale." Jade took her hands from Beck to fix her hair.
"Alright, we'll go there." Beck laced his fingers with hers once she was satisfied with her appearance. "Bye, Cat." He called over his shoulder to the pouting redhead.
"Come on!" Tori was tempted to stomp her foot like she used to when she was a child, but she restrained. She was an adult. Sort of.
Beck ran his fingers through his hair as he sighed. "She just doesn't like to be touched."
"But why?" Her hand twitched as she watched her friend's face for any clues.
"I don't know." Tori could be a really great friend. She could also be nosey and stubborn. Not Jade stubborn either.
"You have to!" Tori threw her hands in the air. Why was everyone so frustrating? It was like the bird scene all over again.
"Why?" He was her boyfriend. Not her dairy.
"Because you get to touch her."
Beck paused as he thought her logic through. It was true. He and Jade were big on affection, but it was nothing he did. "So?"
"So why do you get to touch her?" Tori repeated with an eye roll.
"I don't know." Beck threw a glance around the deserted hallway hoping someone would save him from Tori's interrogation. "Look, she came up to me one day, pushed my ex into a pond, told me she liked me and then kissed me. We've been dating, give or take a few breakups, ever since."
"So you've always been able to touch her?"
Beck thought back to his first few months with his goth girlfriend. "No. She used to flinch away from my touch."
"Then what changed?" Tori asked greedily. This could be it. The Big Secret.
Beck shrugged. He'd never analyzed Jade's disdain for touching. "I don't know." Tori continued to stare at him with a determined expression. "She, uh, used to touch me first. Yeah," Beck nodded along. "If she initiated the touching then I knew it was okay to reciprocate."
"Is it still that way?" Tori took her eyes from Beck's face as she tried to remember any PDA between the coupe that she had witnessed.
"It doesn't matter who initiates it anymore." Beck took his pearphone out. He tapped the screen a few times before slipping it back into his pocket.
"I don't understand how it doesn't matter anymore."
"It just doesn't." Beck sighed. "One day she just stopped wincing when I touched her." Beck put a comforting hand on Tori's arm. "That's it. End story. There's no big secret."
"I guess." Tori murmured. Maybe he was right. Maybe Jade just didn't like being touched because she just didn't.
"Beck?"
Tori sought out the new voice as she tried to decide which way she should run. She looked at Beck for help, but he just shrugged. "Over here, babe." Tori rolled her eyes as she prepared to meet her fate. Hopefully Jade didn't have scissors.
Jade stopped in her tracks as she saw her not-friend and boyfriend beside his locker. "What's going on?" Beck walked over to Jade and wrapped his arms around her waist. She rested her hands on top of his, out of habit more than anything else.
"Tori wanted to say something to you." Beck looked over to the brunette in question expectantly.
"Did she now?" Jade smirked. Her black nails trailed up and down Beck's forearms.
"Um…" Tori looked around hopelessly. "I'm sorry," she spit out.
Jade held a hand to her ear. "What was that?" Beck hid a smile in Jade's neck.
"I'm sorry. Happy?" Tori snapped defensively.
Jade laughed with a smirk playing on her lips. She turned her head towards her boyfriend's ear and in a soft, mesmerizing voice she whispered, "Best boyfriend ever."