AN: Hello, my lovely readers! It has been SO long since I've written any fanfiction. Seeing as of late I have been rewatching That 70's Show (and still hardcore shipping Hyde and Jackie) I thought I'd jump back in with this fandom.

Chapter One

It was 1968 when Steven Hyde first met Jackie Burkhart.

All throughout the town there was talk about the Burkharts. A new family moving to Point Place was like announcing the Queen of England was knighting people on Mount Hump, inviting the town's residents to come and watch. The adult men muttered about Jack Burkhart, a prestigious lawyer, business man, and impending member of the town council; women gossiped about Pam Burkhart, an attractive, young thing who was a realtor for the stars; and the children prepared themselves for their only daughter's transfer from a New York private school to their dingy public educational system.

Unfortunately for Hyde, he was sucked into the excitement of the new transfer by Kelso. It was as if the idiot had never seen a girl in his life before. Well, with that headgear of his, Hyde knew every girl steered clear from him (so, really, he couldn't blame him). Still, Kelso making them patrol the halls for any sign of the new girl annoyed Hyde to no end.

"She's just a girl, Kelso," a ten year-old Donna sighed, leaning against the locker.

"Yeah, but she might be really pretty," said Kelso in return, too busy scanning the passing students to even glance at Donna, "and maybe I can convince her to hang out with us. We need a girl in the group."

Hyde laughed and Eric stepped away from the danger zone. Donna approached Kelso, aiming a strong punch on his back that made him turn around. "I'm a girl and I'm in the group, dillhole!"

Kelso was cringing from the hit. "I meant a real girl!"

Donna was about to strike again when murmurs of the new girl invaded the hall. In that moment, as she walked among the same boring people in her clean, expensive clothes, her wide, mismatched eyes shining, Hyde understood the commotion. He was a victim of it. Jackie Burkhart was pretty, really pretty, and it made his heart skip a beat. Hyde was sure he lost his breath. Like cold water dripping down his back, Hyde understood danger. The universe started flashing warning signs all around him. It was by divine chance that Jackie opened her mouth to show her bratty personality that saved Hyde. He eagerly strut off with the gang after Donna had chucked a ball at the new girl.

The rest of the day Hyde tried to keep his mind off of Jackie Burkhart, but everyone else around him was buzzing with her name. Everyone was so intrigued by the glittering new thing and her porcelain skin and mean attitude. That did not seem to throw anyone off, not yet at least. They would give her a few days before the novelty wore off before some grew annoyed by her high class attitude. Hyde awaited for that day, then he could forget all about her and her sharp eyes playing over and over again in the back of his mind.

As it was a usual for Hyde, Friday strolled around and he found himself in detention. He was busted for stealing a cigarette from his teacher's desk. Of course, Hyde claimed to be innocent until proven guilty (even though his clothes smelled like smoke and his shoes had evidence of ash on them). But crying wolf no longer worked for him, it hadn't since Kindergarden. The adults knew Hyde's tricks well enough to just hand him a pink slip and send him off to detention after his last class. As a regular in the classroom for troubled kids, Hyde sat at the back desk, right beside the window. He enjoyed the scenery before dozing off for an hour. This time around, however, there was a short brunette invading his view of the window. Jackie was standing underneath a tree, clutching her books, and all alone. For an hour Hyde watched the winter wind blow her curls in different directions.

When it was time to leave, Hyde did something stupid. His brain was not thinking straight (clearly because he had skipped his afternoon nap) when it ordered his feet to that tree at the end of the school's courtyard. Jackie was now sitting, unconsciously rolling snow into a ball with her shaking fist. If Hyde had acted like himself, he would have kicked the mixture of snow and dirt at her, chuckling evilly and satisfied before heading home, but the thought never occurred to him. Instead, he cleared his throat, nudging her foot with his boot. On the days that Edna was hopped up on love (and other things) Hyde always heard the same sappy songs playing on their radio; they usually annoyed him, making him seek refuge in classic rock and roll, but the second that Jackie's eyes pierced his blue ones, he could hear those stupid love melodies playing in his head.

He wanted to run for it, run from her. He wanted to put miles between them—why the hell were his knees shaking, man? Why couldn't he form a coherent thought? She was like the painkillers he stole from Edna's cocktail of prescriptions; she made him hazy, she made him forget about everything else in the world with just one look.

He expected those eyes to narrow at him in disgust, but instead they were warm despite all the snow around them. "Do you know what time it is?" she asked him in a quieter voice he had heard from her all week.

Hyde opened his mouth, but closed it right away. Shamefully so, it took him a few seconds to remember how to form words. "Don't have a watch, man," he said as neutral as possible. "Are you waiting on someone?"

She sighed, nodding once. "My dad was supposed to get me after school today. We were going to go to dinner and a movie. They're having a rerun of Mary Poppins, and he knows much I like rich British people."

As Jackie fisted the snow in her palm more roughly, Hyde thought back to the year he beat Forman up for singing tunes from that pansy movie. Again, he should have made fun of her, but he refrained from doing so.

"Does he do that a lot? Leave you waiting?" he asked.

She nodded again. "He's busy and important," she said immediately when her eyes began to tear, "more than anyone else's dad, you know. I understand that he runs late."

In the future, Hyde would later realize that he bonded with someone for the first time in his life. It was not like his friendship with Forman was not real from the beginning, but there was always a wall that separated the two in terms of understanding what disappointment was. Forman had doting parents (no matter how much of a hardass Red was). Not once had he ever experienced the shame of explaining a parent's absence, the anger of knowing you are not the top priority, or the sadness of once again being forgotten. In that exact fragment of time, underneath that tree with a nine year-old Jackie, did Hyde know of someone who knew exactly how he felt without having to explain the complications of his life.

"Need company?" Hyde had asked the question, but was already sitting himself beside Jackie before she could even respond.

The glimmer in her eyes was as if she had never experienced kindness before. And she probably never had, Hyde had guessed. Yeah, she was rich; she got everything with a snap of her fingers, but that was by default. He wondered if once in her short life did someone extend a hand of honest friendship the way Forman had done to him.

"Don't you have better things to do?" Jackie asked. "I know you hang around with that headgear kid, the skinny boy and his lumberjack girlfriend."

Hyde smirked at her accurate descriptions of his friends (and at the burn) as he chucked his books near a puddle. "It'll be fine."

"Why?"

"Because," he murmured with a clearing of his throat, trying not to stumble on his words when her amazed gaze was on him, never leaving, "I know what it's like to wait for your dad."

It was close to six in the evening when someone came to pick Jackie up at school. A sleek black car pulled up at the sidewalk before them, interrupting their making of the world's crappiest snowman. Jackie was not thrilled to see the car as Hyde had assumed she would be. If Bud had ever shown up when he said he would (despite how late he had been), he would have been thrilled despite the frustration that came with wasting hours hoping the next car turning into the street was his. But Jackie knew more about her own family than Hyde did, of course. When the driver's door opened it was not Mister Burkhart, it was their chauffeur. Wilson moved straight to the back passenger side, opening the door for the young girl.

"Do you want a ride, Steven?"

Hyde dropped his books in the puddle as he had been picking them up. He knew her name because of the parade Point Place practically threw to welcome the Burkhart family to town, but he had not even assumed she knew who he was (other than someone who hung out with headgear, skinny, and lumberjack). Once recovering from that moment of uneasiness, Hyde thought about her shiny car pulling up to his rundown, dirty house. No matter their three hours of laughter and conversation, Jackie was still Hyde's opposite. She was a spoiled princess and he was destined to be the town's dirtbag. And Hyde had accepted his impending future as such long before she moved to Wisconsin.

"Nah, I'll walk, man," he told her.

"Oh," she had frowned at him, "okay, then. I'll just see you later."

Maybe Jackie had believed that she would see Hyde Monday morning and they could ease into what they had just shared under the tree, but he knew better. Although he wanted to believe it himself, there was just no meshing for the two. So when she pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek, sending his heart into overdrive, and his face burning pink, Hyde walked off, determined to forget all about her.

And proven right by Lady Fate, Monday morning came and Kelso, now headgear free, had a mission to woo Jackie off her tiny feet.