Okay, this is basically exactly what the summary says, although I'm just re-writing the ending, not the whole episode. I've warned it in the summary, but I'm warning it here too, this story is slash, so if you don't like it, don't read it. If you're a flamer with nothing better to do, then I feel sorry for you. I get that slash may not be everyone's cup of tea, but that doesn't give people the right to flame someone for branching out across the fandom. I hate Kick, but do I flame every story I see? No, I don't.

Alright, that's over. :D Some reviews would be nice, this is my first (and possibly last) attempt at this pairing, and I'd love to know what you thought.


Jack grinned when he saw the paparazzi crowding Ricky, snapping pictures of him covered in guacamole. It was pleasing to see and strangely satisfying; nobody messed with a Wasabi Warrior and got away with it - just ask Arthur who was still experiencing his first grounding - so why did he feel sympathy for a boy who was about to break Kim's heart? Especially when he was getting what he deserved.

He had never much liked paparazzi when they had lurked around the national karate competions he used to compete, and win, in back in San Diego, but he could cope. He hadn't an idea how Ricky felt. Every move he made was followed and every thing he said was documented.

Just like now. Covered in guacamole and writhing helplessly...

This had to stop.

"Hey," Jack said, walking over to the crowd of paparazzi - people who he had called over - attempting to push the large cluster apart with his hands while Ricky was covering his face with his hands, protecting himself from the flash of the cameras. "C'mon, joke's over." Jack pushed several away and they took the message, grumbling before erasing the photos. One however, was being stubborn, hovering over Ricky with a leering glare, cackling madly while his camera clicked and flashed furiously.

Jack frowned and walked towards the man. What was so special about a picture of Ricky covered in guacamole? and why did they need so many? He pulled the man away from Ricky, turning him to face him. "Leave him alone," he ordered, motioning for Ricky to get up while the camera wasn't on him.

"Didn't you call us over here?" the man - Jack recognised him as the one that had shoved him earlier today - asked in bewilderment, turning around with his camera up, only Ricky was stood up, trying to clean himself.

"Yeah," Jack forcibly pulled the man back to stop him from getting any more pictures, "and now I'm telling you that the joke's over and to go home." The man's nostrils flared angrily whilst Jack stared him down.

"I remember you," the man said, looking him up and down, and Jack smirked at him. "You're that little punk that took my crew out and broke my camera," he hissed in annoyance.

"You were violating his privacy," he pointed out, folding his arms. All Ricky had been doing was walking out of a Dojo and talking to him - talk about being rude - and they swarmed him like bees to honey. Jack had been happy to pose as bug control, and was more than happy to do it again.

"I'm about to violate your face!" the man growled, allowing his camera to drop onto his chest, while the rest of his lackey's scurried out of the building. He threw a punch that Jack caught with ease, tightening his grip with surprising strength. If he had anything to do with it, this man wouldn't be bothering Ricky ever again.

"One, think of a better comeback, and two, you probably shouldn't have done that," he said, smiling with faux sweetness before he jerked his hand to the right, yanking the man with him. He kicked him hard in the midsection once it spun around into his view. The man fell back into the broken remains of the table where Ricky had been.

Two pairs of brown eyes connected, one hardened from the fight, and one desperate and pleading. Jack lifted the man up by his scruff, feeling his muscles straining, and pushed him towards the door, giving him a rough side-kick so he literally stumbled through the door. When it became apparent he wasn't coming back, Ricky peeled himself away from the wall.

"Some people never learn do they?" he chuckled, attempting to break the awkward silence. Jack didn't return the laughter, or look at him. He may have just saved him from potential public humiliation, but it didn't make up for what Ricky had done - or was going to do - to Kim. No-one hurt his friends and got off lightly. "Jack-"

"Don't," he cut him off coldly. His voice wasn't his own, but he didn't care. If he was even going to try and get back on good terms with Ricky, he had to know the consequences of his actions. Something told Jack he didn't know much about them.

"Come on, man," Ricky pleaded, reaching out to touch his shoulder. Jack briefly let his fingers brush against his shoulder before he pulled away. He wouldn't admit this to him, but he missed it when Ricky touched him, missed that small sense of sparks jolting through his fingertips.

"No, you messed with my friend." Jack held firm, refusing to give in and melt to Ricky's charms like so many others did. It was extremely hard to do and he didn't know how long he would last before he crumbled.

"Is there something going on between you two?" Ricky asked for the second time that day. Why does everyone ask me that? Jack thought, I'm closer to Jerry than I am to Kim, but nobody asks me if I'm gay for him. People were strange like that, he decided.

"No, she's just my friend and I would have done the same for any of them," Jack said. He didn't feel anything more than a friendship for Kim, and even though she could take care of herself, she was still a girl. And girls often got upset over broken hearts. No matter how tough she looked, Jack knew Kim still cried. "I just didn't wanna see her get hurt by you," he said venomously.

"She threw me into a table!" Ricky exclaimed, gesturing rapidly to the guacamole stains on his suit and face. "We're even," he decided then and there. Jack couldn't really argue, it was fair. He tried to kiss Kim and then break her heart, she threw him into a table and broke it with him.

"But what about you?" he asked, pointing a finger in his direction and stepping closer.

"What about me?" Jack responded lightly, putting his hands in his pockets.

"The papparazzi could have exposed my whole 'essay contest' with a few photos of me looking like this, and you got rid of them," he explained. There were several reasons why Jack did it, some of which he would have done if it were any celebrity, but there was one that applied only to Ricky.

"Everyone deserves privacy," Jack shrugged his shoulders. He hated it when he used to get crowded - although he was actually in a position to do something about it while many didn't - and seeing Ricky like that triggered some sympathy in him, sympathy that had Jack thinking of hunting down all the magazine agencies in Seaford to make sure those photos never got out. "Even people like you," he added with slight disdain.

"People like me?" Ricky repeated incredulously.

"You got girls to send in essay's with their photos so you could choose the prettiest one to kiss," Jack pointed out, shaking his head.

Ricky made a face at him. "It was my manager's idea," he said quickly. Jack could believe that, his Dad used to come up with all sorts of crazy stunts of him to do at tournaments. "And how else was I supposed to get a relationship?" he asked in a softer tone, breaking away from his 'pretty, pop-star' image where no eyes but Jack's could see it. "All the girls want me because I'm famous, so I might as well play on that-"

"You mean their hearts?" Jack cut in snidely. He was pretty sure his manager didn't tell him to break every girl's heart that he saw, he could have kissed them in a friendly, not-romantic way. That part was all Ricky's doing.

"Only after the first one broke mine," Ricky said softly, looking down, and Jack caught a split-second glimpse of a real teenager underneath Ricky's perfect - seemingly too perfect - image. It was almost refreshing; the man behind the mask. "Why are we having this conversation?" he asked in exasperation, a broken heart clearly not a subject that was up for discussion.

"Because I don't see anyone else in the vicinity coming to help you," Jack walked closer to him and laid a hand on his shoulder, ignoring the guacamole - that stuff really stuck everywhere - there.

"Kim's lucky to have you as a friend," Ricky murmured, looking him in the eyes. Jack licked his lips nervously as the sensation he had been getting every time Ricky had done that today was back. "They all are," he smiled, then he looked off, seemingly in thought. "Must be nice having friends that like you for you and not the stuff you've got," he mused.

"I... kind of like you," Jack began awkwardly, having to repeat it over and over so it didn't seem like such a bad taste in his mouth. It was probably just his subconsciousness telling him he had to hate Ricky because it was what he always said. "You're funny and-"

"I've got a private jet?" Ricky finished for him in a bored sounding voice. Jack looked at him with indignation. He wasn't going to say that at all, yes, he would be the first to admit it was hands down the coolest thing he had ever seen, but it wasn't why he liked Ricky. Jack refused to be realistic like that. "Come on, admit it, you liked it," Ricky added, seemingly trying to persuade him into saying it.

"Yeah I liked the jet, but you too," Jack said sincerely, smiling at him. It was sad to think Ricky couldn't enter a new friendship without automatically having the suspicion that people don't like him for him.

"Seriously? You just-"

"Why did you invite me up there?" Jack asked with a smirk. Ricky wouldn't have invited him up there just to say thank you, there was something else, and it had been bugging Jack all day since they had gotten back from San Francisco.

"Why did you get rid of the paparazzi?" Ricky countered smartly.

"Because... maybe I think you're pretty," Jack said quickly, frustrated with himself for not being able to say it earlier, but glad he could break down the façade that he didn't like him. "Maybe I like you even though I say to everyone I don't and I think you're an over-gelled pretty boy with a doll's head and a huge ego!" he exploded like a firework, breathing heavily once everything was out into the open.

"Well," Ricky began in a flustered sounding voice, flushing a light pink, "maybe I like you too and I wished I could have opened the contest to guys too when I saw you," he finished.

"Really?" Jack asked sarcastically, practically squaring up to the taller boy. He grabbed him roughly by the waist before Jack could figure out what was going on.

"Really," Ricky replied. There was a split second of silence, then their lips were clashing, hot and rough, the exact opposite of what a first kiss should have been, but it felt right nevertheless; Jack's knees were weak, his heart was pounding in his chest, and he was extremely dizzy while the butterflies swirled in a tornado in his stomach.

"What are we doing?" he asked Ricky in a daze once the blond boy pulled away from him, their lips still hot and sticky and their rapid breaths in synch with one another's. Ricky smiled tenderly at him and stroked his fringe out of his eyes, it suddenly sticking to his forehead.

"Something my record label will probably fire me for and all my fangirls will chase me with pitchforks for," he murmured, chuckling before sealing their lips together once more, this time the kiss was much more softer and Jack had to wrap his arms around Ricky's back to steady himself before he fell over from the sheer passion.

"Hey," Jack broke away, breathing heavily, deciding that they needed to do this in a much more glamorous place than his high-school council room. "Beyoncé out of the hot-tub yet?" he asked in a nonchalant tone, although the glimmer in his eyes said that his insinuation was anything but that.

"I think so," Ricky said.

"Perfect," Jack grinned devilishly.