Disclaimer: I own none of the characters associated with That 70s Show nor the locations, etc. This is just a harmless excercise and I am in no way profiting from this. Don't sue.

A/N: I've been trying to get back in the habit of writing again. Seeing as I have yet to come up with a good enough idea to spawn an entire story, it's been short stories and one shots for me. I'm trying to build on things I've alread written. Please let me know what you think of the story! Review!

The cheerleader had been queen bee for as long as she could remember. She was the center of attention at home, at school and everywhere she went. In the world of the cheerleader, the biggest issues she faced were flat hair and someone wearing the same dress to prom. In the world of the cheerleader, the focus was on perfecting her splits, on keeping on top of the rest of the squad so she wasn't ousted as captain. The cheerleader world was fluffy; it was rainbows and glitter, short skirts and pom poms. It was perfectly set curls. It was competing for boys. It was passive aggressive bitchiness. It was fake. But it was all the cheerleader knew.

That all changed in a dingy, dirty basement. The cheerleader hated the basement. The couch was peeling and yellow and decorated with mysterious stains. The air was pungent and sticky sweet. It made the cheerleader cough. It wasn't until she was allowed to sit in on a "circle" that she understood why. Her boyfriend dragged her into the basement with the nerd and the lumberjack and the foreigner.

And he was there. She suffered his company because her boyfriend was his friend, though God only knew why. They were nothing alike. Well, except for the fact that they both loved circle times and burns. But her boyfriend was perfect. He was the only boy in school who wasn't a jock and still considered appropriate for a cheerleader to date. He wasn't just man pretty. He was man-beautiful. And he loved her and she loved him. Or at least, that was how it was supposed to be.

But she hated him. A dirty burnout, poor, mean, callous. He called her simply the "cheerleader" and she called him any insult she could think of. Except her insults seemed to never affect him. The nerd's lumberjack girlfriend had told the cheerleader the burnout had Zen. The cheerleader didn't understand Zen. Her boyfriend certainly didn't have Zen. But he was almost as pretty as she was, so it didn't matter much.

Months turned to years in that dirty basement and the cheerleader began to experience some changes. Perhaps they had something to do with the fumes that were down there, but the cheerleader began seeing things she never noticed before. Things that she never saw in the cheerleader world.

Observation 1: Her boyfriend was not perfect. His hair was perfect yes, his tan was perfect, his smile was perfect and he was the perfect height. But he was also a perfect idiot. He couldn't dance at all. And the cheerleader wasn't enough to keep his attention. He cheated, with a lesser cheerleader, and then with the sluttly sister of the nerd. And even after they broke up and got back together, the cheerleader knew that his attention wandered. And the cheerleader, queen of all she laid her eyes on, didn't know what to do about it.

Observation 2: The cheerleader was really starting to like the lumberjack. Sure she had red hair and abnormally large hands and feet and was more manly than the foreigner. But she was really a good person. And she was a better friend than any she found in cheerleader world.

Observation 3 was possibly the biggest shake up the cheerleader had ever experienced. It began the day that he had all but told the cheerleader that her boyfriend was cheating on her. Not even the lumberjack had done that for her. Observation 3 continued when she convinced him to take her to the prom. And then something funny happened. Suddenly, a poor, dirty, mean burnout didn't seem like such a bad thing to the cheerleader. Suddenly he was calling her "the cheerleader" a lot less, and her name a lot more. And she was calling him "Hyde".

And Hyde taught her the wonders of Zen. And the cheerleader realized that Zen was a lot like cheerleader bitchiness. And she started to wonder, if maybe he and she had more in common then everyone thought. And slowly, the cheerleader began to think less about cheerleading, and less about unicorns and Donnie Osmond. And then she began to think less about her boyfriend, Michael. And then Michael wasn't her boyfriend anymore. And then the lumberjack became Donna and turned into her best friend. And the nerd was actually less of a nerd and more of a scrawny dork and actually a pretty nice guy. And the foreigner was creepy and perverted, but he was a good person too. And so the cheerleader spent more time in the dirty, sticky basement than she did in cheerleader world.

And years later, after dancing around him and chasing him and rejecting him and teasing him, she kissed him. And he kissed her back. And all the years of pretending she hated being in the basement and pretending that she hated him and pretending that Donna and Eric and Fez and even Michael didn't mean that much to her, the cheerleader admitted to herself that she needed these people. And she needed him more than the rest of them. But the cheerleader in her still knew it was a bad idea. Cheerleaders didn't make out with guys with beards and they certainly didn't date them. But then again, cheerleaders didn't spend all their time in basements. And they didn't hang out with girls who weren't cheerleaders. And they didn't look forward to sitting in the circle laughing with dorks and foreigners. And they certainly didn't enjoy the way it felt when a dirty, mean, burnout ran his fingers through their hair and pulled them closer.

And suddenly she realized that the cheerleader world meant a lot less to her than the world she was in right now.

The cheerleader knew that come August, the other cheerleaders would be scandalized by her summer hook up that had turned into something much more.

But as Jackie Burkhart kissed Steven Hyde, she realized that she couldn't care less.

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