A/N: A fluffy one-shot about Trina and Robbie, with extra Andre/Tori and Beck/Jade goodness.
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It's three-thirty-A.M. on Monday morning and Trina's stretched out on the couch, fully dressed except for a pair of high heels waiting patiently on the floor. She always wakes up ultra early on Mondays, so she can start out the week looking her absolute best-not like she looks bad at the end of the week or anything, she always looks excellent, but Trina has found through her years of experience that one can always improve perfection.
She flicks absentmindedly through a gossip magazine she's read over a hundred times, or at least so much that she's memorized all the small articles and half the major ones. She's getting bored, and Trina hates being bored, so she decides to text Robbie. He's always a good conversationalist, interested to the point of obsession in Trina, behaving exactly how all guys should behave around her.
hey! u awake?
To her surprise, she gets a text back almost instantly. ya i get up early on mondays cuz its when i clean rex.
i get up so i cn look xtra perfect!
but you're so pretty as it is. Trina smiles at this one, almost dropping her phone on her face, as she's lying on her back and holding her phone above her face to text.
we dnt hang out enuf :( She responds. This is very true, they don't hang out nearly enough. Partially because of conflicting schedules, but mostly because their friendship is relatively recent. Whatever. Robbie's a good friend and she wants to see more of him.
She never gets a text back, which makes her quite mad. She reminds herself to yell at Robbie for this tomorrow, which she never does get around to as she unknowingly sent Robbie on a journey of epic proportions.
.
Beck wants to know how he became the advice-giver of their group, because once again it's four o'clock in the morning and somebody's pounding on his R.V. door. Expecting Cat or Tori because Jade's already in his bed, he opens the door to his R.V. to find Robbie cradling Rex, his cheeks flushed and his eyes frantic.
"Beck! Beck! Beck!" he screeches, storming up the stairs very fast.
"Shh," Beck responds, holding a finger to his mouth and then using the same finger to point at Jade. "She's a light sleeper. Outside, please." He shoves Robbie backwards and Robbie stumbles down the stairs, struggling to find some leverage or footing or balance or something. He lands shakily on the ground and Beck hops down after him, closing the door gently.
"So, what's up?" Beck asks, stifling a yawn with the palm of his hand.
"Beck, I think Trina's in love with me." Robbie just looks so eager, his lips stretched into his cartoonish smile and his eyes lit behind his glasses, it kind of makes Beck's heart break.
"Robbie, the stage kiss happened around five months ago. Get over it, please."
Beck buries his face in his hands and prays to a God he doesn't believe in for Robbie to please, please get a clue. The poor boy doesn't know a hello from a please marry me and let me give birth to your children.
"Oh, that's just like you, Beck, saying something mean so nicely. But no! She's in love with me! She texts me all the time!" He's practically hopping up and down with excitement.
"You're probably her only friend."
Robbie ignores him and pulls out his phone with one hand, hugging Rex close to him with the other. Beck notices that while Robbie's fully dressed, if not looking a bit messy, Rex is clad in dark blue silk pajamas. Robbie eagerly searches through his text message until he finds the one he clearly wants to show Beck.
It reads, we dnt hang out enuf :( and is indeed from Trina.
Beck steals the phone from Robbie's hands and goes into the sent box. He outreaches his arm and says ah when he finds what he's looking for, making a Hallelujah! type gesture.. "You compliment her a lot. Of course Trina, the most self-centered girl in the world, wants to hang out with you. You feed her ego like old women feed birds at a park."
Robbie glares at him and snatches his phone back with one hand, still cradling Rex like a baby. "Beck! That is so rude!"
"Rude, but true," Beck smirks. "Which is my style."
"I know," Robbie frowns. "But I do think she's in love with me. I mean, her eyes light up whenever I enter a room, we eat lunch together. . ." He slides his phone into his pocket and then returns to cradling Rex with both hands.
"Are you certain you're not looking in a mirror?" Beck sighs. All the sleepiness has left his eyes, and now he's wide awake in a world that's coated in darkness. The sky is pitch black with no stars in sight, streetlight fog making sure of that. Robbie's rambling on and on about why, exactly, he thinks Trina's in love with him. Jade is sleeping in his R.V., if she hasn't woken up and gotten furious by now, and that seems to be the only normal thing about this night. Beck really should've gotten adjusted to the fact that his life is not normal, but sometimes he can fool himself. Especially at nights, when the world is quiet and it's just him and Jade being in love in his R.V. Which he would like to return to, sleeping with her in his arms. But he's stuck comforting Robbie. Beck still doesn't know why everyone comes to him, comes to his R.V., when they're full of problems.
"No, I don't!" Robbie says, defensively. "And if Rex was awake, he would tell you that it's true."
"He's . . . sleeping?" This explains so much.
"Yes, idiot!" Robbie whisper-shouts. He leans looks around him and then leans forward, into Beck. "Maybe you're right. I am . . . I'm kind of in love with Trina, so maybe I'm just hoping she loves me back?" Now he's just whispering.
"Everything you described," Beck says, agreeing with him, "just sounds like she values your friendship. But I'm not an expert on girls. I have Jade. Jade is not like most girls. I am an expert on Jade. Therefore, I am not an expert on most girls. So, why'd you come to me?" He figures that now is as good as time as any to figure out why, exactly, everybody just loves coming to Beck at ungodly hours and asking him for relationship advice.
Robbie shrugs. "Because you're the only one that's ever been in a relationship longer than eleven months in our circle of friends!"
"This is because," Beck says slowly, suddenly coming to this revelation, "Jade and I are both very complex people. We fit together just so, but we don't fit together so much that we're boring. It's complicated."
Robbie straightens and shifts his weight, then pushes his glasses up his nose with his hand that's not cradling Rex. "Me and Trina are complicated people and we're good friends, so why can't we be more?"
"Figure it out by yourself," Beck sighs. He's had enough. "I'm done. And tired again. Jade's going to get mad at me, so thanks, by the way. See you later, Robbie." He descends up the stairs to his R.V. while Robbie's still sputtering and searching his brain for a response he can vocalize. Robbie lunges after Beck, but Beck just slams the door in his face.
.
André is sitting on the steps in the main hallway of Hollywood Arts and fiddling around with Tori's newest musical obsession: the flute. He's playing an excellent rendition of Tori's favorite Katy Perry song just to make her smile, and he's loving the bliss, but then Robbie's hand is on his shoulder and the flute is knocked out of his hand and Tori's reaching for it because the flute cost three hundred dollars. A feeling of irritation is starting to come on, but the pleading look in Robbie's eyes softens André's heart.
"What's up, Robbie?" He asks, as Robbie slowly sits down on the stairs next to André, using his shoulder for balance. He removes his hand from André's shoulder and sets Rex next to him. Robbie's quiet.
"Yeah, Robbie, what's so important that it interrupts a flute rendition of Last Friday Night?"
Robbie sighs and fidgets, and luckily, Rex does the speaking for him. "This fool thinks Trina Vega's in love with him!"
Tori groans. "God, not this again. The stage kiss was five months ago, get over it!" She closes her eyes and lays her head on André's shoulder. André wraps an arm around her, squeezes, and smiles at her before turning his head back to Robbie.
"Oh, come on! That's what Beck said!" Robbie shouts, impatiently. "Our-and by 'our', I mean Trina and mine's-relationship is like yours and André's! We're great friends, and now I love her. Now she just needs to love me, and I think she does! Please help me!"
André shrugs. "Sorry 'bout your luck, but I don't know how to help her. Why don't you just try talking to her?"
"'Cause he's a spineless wimp," Rex offers helpfully.
"Rex, that's redundant!"
"No, I'm reinforcing the fact that you are spineless, that's not redundant!"
"That's the definition of redundant!"
"Oh, so now you're a dictionary?"
André whispers in Tori's ear, "If we slowly walk away, maybe they won't notice."
They rise slowly, André never removing his arm from Tori's shoulders. They amble away. Unsurprisingly, Robbie and Rex don't notice; they sit there, arguing until the first bell rings. André just rolls his eyes at his friend when he's two minutes late to class.
.
Robbie spends the first few minutes of Sikowitz's class whispering in Cat's ear. "Cat, how do you know when a girl likes you?"
"Oh, Robbie, I don't like you . . ." Cat replies, her forehead creasing. She remembers when she tried to tell him she didn't like him, five months ago, and oh, she doesn't want to live through that again. Oh no, no, no, no, that would be bad, that would be very, very bad.
"Oh, no, not you. Trina." So much relief, Cat's muscles unwind and her face softens.
"Oh, okay!" She is inhumanly chipper. "Um, does she touch you a lot?"
"Trina touches people a lot in general," Robbie replies, chewing on his lip. "So I don't know."
"Oh. . . okay, well, then does she compliment you for no reason?"
"Trina doesn't compliment anybody, unless it'll help her somehow." Robbie says this in a loving sort of way.
Cat sighs. "Robbie, I just don't know!" She, cries out in the middle of Sikowitz's lecture on the history of coconuts in the theater. She bursts from her seat and points at Robbie, to emphasize her not-knowingness, but Sikowitz appears to think that she's blaming Robbie. It earns her a "Is there something you would like to share with the class, Ms. Valentine? Oh, wait, it looks like you already did!" and a ball thrown at the head. Cat shrieks and goes running out of the room, crying, with Tori sighing and asking if she may go comfort Cat and bring her back to the classroom. Sikowitz grants her permission, but Cat barely hears the last of the exchange because she's cowering against some lockers. Her knees are drawn to her chest, her arms wrapped around her knees, and tears are pouring from her eyes. Cat just . . . Cat doesn't know what to do.
Tori tries to help her, asks her what she can do to make Cat feel better.
Cat says Cat doesn't know how to make herself feel better. That is very true, and one of the several reasons why her family pays three-hundred-dollars an hour for a man with a scraggly beard and a very comfortable couch in his office to examine her psyche two nights a week.
Tori sighs and helps Cat up. They reenter the classroom and Cat says down, calmly, as if nothing has happened. Sikowitz too goes on as if nothing has happened. Cat leans to her left and whispers sorry to Robbie and nobody ever speaks of the incident again.
.
Robbie tries to speak to Jade at lunch, but she picks up Tori's salad and throws it at Robbie's face as soon as he mentions love, Trina, and advice in the same sentence. She chuckles while he wipes lettuce down his face, ranch dressing gluing stubborn pieces to his pale skin and strips of carrot tangled in his hair. She cracks up when she sees his glasses are completely covered by ranch, and there's cheese streaming down his face like tears. She ignores Beck's warnings to stop laughing because it is mean, but hey. Even Jade needs laughter every once in a while, and people have seen to have forgotten about that.
"Jade, that was very mean," Beck whispers in her ear after Robbie takes off running.
Jade shrugs. "He deserved it."
"Really? How?" Tori asks, looking appropriately annoying, with her crinkled forehead and André's arm draped around her.
"Well, he need to realize that every girl who shows him the slightest sign of affection is not only an idiot, but also probably not in love with him."
Tori sighs. "You're right, but throwing a salad in his face was not the best way to show him that!"
"Yeah, you could've used your words," André suggests, moving the hand on the arm that's wrapped around Tori as he speaks to emphasize his points. "You know they taught you that in the first grade."
"Oh, whatever! So, I threw a salad at his face. What's the big deal?"
The table collectively groans.
.
Because of the salad incident, Robbie is confined to the bathroom for the rest of the day. No matter how much water he splashes on his face, he still smells like ranch syrup. All the lettuce is off, the shredded and cheese and the onion ringing his nose are gone. He even switches his shirt, as he keeps an extra in his locker for situations just like this. But he can't muster up the courage to get out of the bathroom until ten minutes after the final bell rings, and the voices outside practically stop.
As he slides out of the bathroom, which was eerily silent because he never talks to Rex when he's alone, Robbie spots Trina turning a corner down the hall. He sprints to catch up to her, breathing hard, and puts a hand on her shoulder. She turns around and sniffs, her nose crinkling.
"Do I smell ranch dressing?" She asks, her nose so scrunched it's causing her eyes to squint.
"Um. Yeah. Long story. I got a salad thrown at my face." He stands there looking like an idiot, in his ugly shirt that's a size too small and cradling Rex.
Trina laughs.
Robbie forces a chuckle through his teeth. His glasses feel like they're askew, or feel like they should be, so he would at least have some visual representation beside his smile of how awkward and nervous he's feeling. Like how he used to feel at the beginning of their friendship.
Moments pass by and Trina's laughter escalates until Robbie can finally ask the question he wants to ask. "Um. Hey. Trina. How do you when a girl, um, loves you?"
"Oh, Robbie," Trina says, her laughter stopping and her face slowly returning to normal.
Robbie half-smiles pathetically, a corner of his lip barely turning up, but Trina gets the signal to go on.
"I do love you! You didn't know? You get sick off of Pooka fish and don't complain, you get me coffee and massage my feet, and you're just adorable enough to make me feel happy looking at you but you're just undesirable enough to keep other girls' hands off of you! You didn't know?" She looks confused.
"Um . . . no?" Robbie tries eagerly.
Silence passes between them and Robbie spends the whole time yelling at himself in his head about how stupid, stupid, stupid he is.
"This is pathetic," Rex announces, finally speaking up.
"I agree with your puppet! Are you going to ask me out or not?" Trina sticks a foot out, places a hand on her hip and rocks her weight so that her elbow juts out extremely so.
"Um, what about that Karaoke place? This, um, Friday night? I hear they have great buffalo nuggets. And karaoke!"
Rex groans. "This is even worse! Robbie has no skills when it comes to the ladies. Now, Trina, I could definitely show you a better time."
"Wonderful! I can sing and you can clap really loud and tell everyone how good I am!" Trina exclaims, clapping her hands and ignoring Rex.
Robbie smiles for real, and for a few moments all the pressure that was ever placed on his shoulder just floats away. Then it comes crashing down onto his shoulders once more, because now he has to figure out what to wear and how to conduct an official date with Trina Vega. He would groan, but he just feels kind of sort of too happy walking down the hallway and talking about Trina's new liquid eyeliner that, apparently, really sucks but is a totally attractive shade, so what is she going to do? And Robbie's throwing suggestions at her like Sikowitz throws balls at Cat's face, and Robbie's shifting his position with Rex so that he can hold him with one hand when Trina grabs at the other.
It feels beautiful.
