a/n: so i've never written jackie/hyde before but i've been rewatching the show lately and have become SO obsessed that i just had to give it a shot! this fic will basically be rewriting episodes as if jackie and hyde had begun to date in season 2, as the summary explains. but they won't be full episode rewrites or scripts or anything - the whole story will focus on the jackie/hyde relationship developing, and while there will be a chapter per episode, some chapters will have very little to do with the episode itself and will focus more on 'missing moment' type scenes. other chapters will take lines/scenes from the episode and be closer to a proper rewrite. anyway, i guess i should probably just let you guys read and figure it out for yourselves!

oh, and here kelso is dating barbara vansen, who is the girl hyde suggested he date instead of jackie in s1. but he's not as serious about her as he sometimes claimed to be about jackie, and he's still cheating with laurie.

the title is from the jethro tull song.


Vanstock was everything Hyde had dreamed it would be. It was muddy, smoky, loud, and within twelve minutes of arriving he'd already been offered drugs by three separate guys, two of whom were wearing Led Zeppelin t-shirts. This place was practically his mothership. There was also the fact that Kelso had managed to bring both his girlfriend Barbara and the girl he was cheating on her with, Laurie, which was just plain excellent entertainment. And that was before he even got to the mud-covered chick who was wandering around shirtless, looking for her lost clothes.

Yeah, this place was awesome.

"Hey man, whaddya say we help that chick find her top?" he said to Kelso once the rest of their friends had quickly wandered off. He punctuated his words with a slap to the shoulder.

"Nah," Kelso said, though he joined Hyde in watching the mud-splattered girls walk away. "I gotta stay here with the old balls and chains."

He glanced over to where Barbara and Laurie were sat in the back of the van, chatting to each other happily. Hyde followed his gaze, kind of annoyed. He'd been half heartedly trying to get Kelso caught for a while now, mostly because it was fun, but also because he really didn't like guys who cheated. He'd seen enough assholes step out on his ma, and even though he hated her most of the time too, it still hadn't been fun to watch. But he also thought Barbara was the most annoying chick on the planet, so he hadn't really been making as much of an effort to save her feelings as he probably could have. Still, Hyde decided it might be time to step up his game on ruining Kelso's fun.

"Y'know, Kelso, did you ever think about being honest with them?" he suggested, trying to keep his face straight. "Maybe they won't be mad. Maybe they'll like the idea of sharing you."

"Man, that'd be great, huh? You think they'd go for that, cus -" He paused, realisation dawning, as usual, very slowly on his face. "Aw, no, you're trying to set me up, Hyde!"

"You never know if you don't try, man," Hyde insisted.

"Are you serious? Be serious, 'cus this is serious, this's been a dream of mine since I was a kid and saw the parent trap."

"There you go!" Hyde said, but was interrupted from saying anything else when Barbara and Laurie cheerfully stomped past, announcing they were going to the restroom. Personally Hyde would have paid money to see Barbara's face when she realised the 'restroom' here was about three port-a-potties surrounded by barfing drunk people, but right then, his annoyance at Kelso was taking precedence over his hatred of Barb. "Whoa, man, they're going to the restroom. You know what girls do in the restroom, right?"

"Uh," Kelso said, his face dropping into a vacant look. "I like to pretend like they don't do that."

"Not that, man, they talk."

"So?"

"To each other!"

It took a few more seconds, and then Kelso's face turned horrified.

"Oh my god." He flailed his limbs and took off after them in a sprint. "Girls, wait up!"

Hyde just shook his head. What a maroon.


With Kelso off trying to keep his girlfriends from talking to each other, Fez scouring the festival for candy, and Donna and Eric absorbed in their fight of the week, Hyde was pretty much left alone. He'd found this was the case quite often when it came to his friends. Basically, they were all morons, and he liked to think he wasn't as much of a moron as the rest of them.

So ignoring all of their drama, he set off to find his slutty topless princess a top - which she would hopefully not be too eager to put back on. Of course, it was slow going since he stopped first to smoke up with a couple of guys the next van over, and then got some popcorn from an extremely dubious looking vendor, and then went looking for somewhere to eat his popcorn where he had a good view of the girls of Vanstock and their scantily clad bodies. This seat came in the form of a log he found at the edge of the woods, which looked right out over the muddiest part of the field. Still a little buzzed from his joint, the combination of junk food and mud-splattered women was pretty much the best thing he'd ever experienced in his life

So of course, because when it came to him the world giveth and then immediately taketh awayeth, five seconds after he'd sat down, someone plopped onto the log next to him. And not just anyone. A chick who had her face buried in her hands and was crying, high pitched whiny little sobs which made his brain hurt.

This was supposed to be his log. Hyde glared, but she couldn't see, so it was useless.

Hyde finally leaned over in annoyance and muttered, "Hey, you okay?" He paused, then added, "I only ask 'cus the incessant crying is kind of detracting from the fun of watching half naked drunk chicks run through mud."

The girl didn't lift her head, but let out another loud wail. Hyde watched uncomfortably for a few more seconds as she sobbed into her hands, before she finally stomped her feet and screeched, "My boyfriend is the biggest jerk in the world!"

Hyde's annoyed frown quirked into the beginnings of a grin as possibility suddenly called to him. He liked to think of himself as the master of the revenge fling. Usually it was girls looking to get back at their parents by slumming it with the closest thing Point Place had to a hardcore criminal, but he'd hopped on the mad at my boyfriend train once or twice as well. He hadn't seen this girl's face yet but the rest of her was hot, and if she was hanging around a place like Vanstock, it probably meant she was easy. Maybe she wasn't gonna ruin his night after all.

Hyde put his hand comfortingly on her shoulder, opening his mouth to say something that would hopefully both make her feel better and send her into his arms. Only then the girl raised her head, and with one horrifying glimpse, he saw who it was.

"Jackie Burkhart?" he asked, shock filling his voice. "What the hell are you doing here? I thought muddy fields full of burnouts were cheerleader kryptonite. That's like, half the reason I came."

He couldn't believe the girl he'd just been thinking was hot was actually the most annoying cheerleader in school. He only really knew her name because Kelso had tried to ask her out last year and she'd turned him down in such an epic way that Hyde had been forced to have a little admiration for her, but that didn't change the fact that every time her shrill voice could be heard coming down the corridor he seemed to break out in an instant migraine.

She looked back at him, seeming just as horrified as he was.

"Oh great!" she cried. "Not only do I break up with my moron boyfriend and get abandoned at a stupid stinky festival that I never wanted to come to in the first place, but now the only person I know here is Steven Hyde! I thought you went to Juvie, anyway?"

Hyde pulled his hand off her back and scowled, but didn't actually move away from her on the log they were perched on, instead just glaring from behind his sunglasses.

"I did not go to juvie," he informed her, before pausing and grudgingly adding, "Well, not this month."

He wanted to leave now that he'd realised it was actually the devil sat there in a tiny floral dress, but something stopped him - something buried way, way deep inside him, which managed to break through his usual shell of emotionlessness and inspire some modicum of pity for the ball of pure evil which was sobbing next to him.

He gritted his teeth and managed to say - "Uh, you say I'm the only person you know here? You come up with your boyfriend?"

He kind of expected Jackie to break into a fresh wave of sobs, as she had every other time he'd spoken, but instead that seemed to dry her eyes up. She gritted her jaw and stared into the distance with the scariest expression he'd ever seen on a ninety five pound pink-ribbon-adorned sophomore.

"Ex-boyfriend," she corrected him quickly. "I never even wanted to come here, yanno! Chip talked me into it. He said it would be super romantic, but instead it's dirty and everyone looks high and the only reason he even asked me is because he wanted to do it in the back of his van! So I told him I'm a virgin and then he said that if I wasn't gonna sleep with him there were plenty of slutty girls around who would, so I broke up with him! I mean, I'm Jackie Burkhart. I don't make it with guys I've only been dating three weeks, and especially not in the back of some stinky van where a bunch of hippies are probably watching us."

Oh god, there it was again. Despite how annoying ninety nine percent of her words were, there was that little twinge in the pit of his stomach which could so easily be indigestion but which Hyde knew was really pity. He knew he was far from an angel with the ladies, but he at least tried to be respectful of what they wanted - and then he respectfully only dated the ones who wanted it all.

Almost of its own accord, his hand moved back to the space between Jackie's shoulder blades, patting her a little. He'd never been the comforting type, but he thought she might kind of need it right then.

"Uh, look, man, I'm sure it'll be alright," he said awkwardly, clearing his throat and pushing his glasses further up his nose. "He, uh, he sounds like an ass. There's gotta be some pea brained football player out there who'll treat you right, anyway."

Jackie sniffled and looked over at him a little hopefully.

"You think?" she asked, before her face fell again a moment later. "Oh, whatever, it's not like it matters now. I mean, I don't even have a way to get home! And I don't know anyone else here."

Still staring at Hyde, she suddenly widened her eyes, and her lips slipped into a trembling pout which should have in no way been as cute as it was. Hyde opened his mouth to tell her tough cookies and then take off to find his topless chick, he really did, only somehow, different words started coming out without him asking them to.

"Me and my friends can give you a ride back to Point Place tomorrow, if you want." He was immediately horrified at himself, trying to snatch the words back out of the air with no success. He didn't want a two hour car ride with Jackie Burkhart! She probably wouldn't stop talking the entire time and then he'd go insane from her shrill voice and end up killing her. But at the same time - he couldn't exactly leave her stranded here when she didn't know anyone and where any number of creepy guys could be hanging around. Not that he cared, but she was just so little.

Maybe he did have a bit of one of those conscience things everyone was always going on about.

"Oh, Steven!" she said, her pout changing into a wide smile which once again looked far cuter than it should have. "Thank you. Y'know, for a poor person, you're not so bad."

Okay, yeah. That was the bitch he knew.

Yet somehow, Hyde found himself smiling.

"You want some popcorn?" he offered, holding the box out to her as he went back to watching the dancing girls in the field. His other hand didn't move from where it was still resting on her shoulderblades.


"- so then Linda said that just because Bobby broke both his legs was no excuse for me to show up to Homecoming alone, because obviously I should have had a back-up date because all the most popular girls did so if I didn't have a date that obviously meant I wasn't popular and if I wasn't popular there was no way I could be on the cheerleading squad anymore, which is totally fair but she was still such a bitch about it that of course I told her I had a date, but I didn't so I had to go and find one with only two days notice! Well, Chip had been after me for a while and I kept saying no 'cus, y'know, he has those yucky sideburns - no offence - but I didn't exactly have a whole lot of options and he is in a band which I guess makes up for the sideburns so I finally agreed to go out with him and he took me to homecoming and I got to stay on the cheer squad and he was a pretty good dancer so I guess we just kept dating after that, which was fine I guess except his band plays really lame music so we didn't have much to talk about and all he ever wanted to do was feel me up - which like, hello, I get it, I'm sexy, but he wasn't even good at it! So I guess I'm probably better off without him anyway, in the long run, but the long run doesn't change the fact that he was a total jerk and I'm totally gonna tell everyone at school that he has a micropenis because nobody is a jerk to Jackie Burkhart and -"

Hyde had lost track of time, but he was pretty sure it was safe to say Jackie had been talking for around three million years. He was suddenly regretting his first foray into having a conscience, because it had gotten him stuck here, listening to the devil. Surely she'd be fine if he left her on her own. He'd been worried about what would happen if some creep out there tried to get a hold of her, but he was now thinking she had the power to kill a man with only a single high pitched squeal of her voice. He certainly felt on the brink of death.

"Jackie," he finally interrupted, pinching the bridge of his nose to try and stop the headache. It was dark now, and there were no more chicks dancing around in the mud in front of him, but they were still sat on that damn log, and she was still talking. "For the love of god, please stop talking."

Jackie glared at him, pausing for a moment -

And then launched right back into her never ending speech.

"So the furthest we ever got was second base this one time in his van parked behind the bleachers after cheer practice but I swear, I just felt like I was being pawed by a big dumb animal or something! Well, I told him that and it did not go over well, but he still -"

"Jackie," Hyde interrupted again, more forcefully this time. Clearly telling her to shut up had no effect, but another, more innovative idea came to mind. If nothing else, he was pretty sure it'd get rid of his headache. "Hey, Jackie - you ever smoke weed?"


She'd turned him down at first, with some whole big speech about how she was a cheerleader and rich and a nice girl and other stupid crap like that, but clearly she was a little bit curious, because it hadn't taken much effort to convince her. And so they found themselves laying on the floor in front of their log, Jackie mindlessly giggling her head off as Hyde took another drag off the half-finished joint.

So it had gotten her to stop talking, but she was still filling his ears with endless high pitched sounds. Luckily, Hyde was no longer as bothered by that as he had been before.

Ah, there was a reason this was his favourite hobby.


The sky was so rich in its darkness and the stars so brightly distinct in each of their million places that it seemed they hung a little too heavy in the air, too tangible to such a small creature down on such a small planet who never should have even been able to know them, let alone feel them so close that it seemed at any moment they could tumbling straight down out of the sky. Jackie had never really looked at the stars before - or, she'd looked, but she hadn't seen. She hadn't felt. She hadn't had nothing at all separating her from the heavens, and in that moment, it almost seemed like too much. She didn't usually think about the night sky unless it was bedazzled on a designer handbag.

She'd bet Hyde thought about stuff like that, though. Not that she really knew him all that well, or had ever even spoken to him before that night, but he had that kind of look like he was clever, and plus he apparently did a lot of drugs which must lend itself to contemplation. She thought. (Jackie had not done a lot of drugs, so she wouldn't really know.)

"So do you, like, think about the stars?" she decided to ask him, feeling a little dizzy as she shuffled about on her back on the leafy ground. She somehow didn't care that she was getting dirt all over her cute new dress.

Hyde shot her this look like she was being weird, but he shuffled down so he was still lying next to her and passed the joint back over. It was nearly burnt down to embers now but Jackie took another drag off it, coughing a little.

"Stars as in mysteries of the cosmos, or stars as in capitalist Hollywood brainwashers?"

Jackie didn't understand most of that sentence. So she didn't respond, choosing instead to just keep staring up at the sky and spluttering her way through a final puff of the joint.

Hyde didn't seem to mind her lack of response. Somehow she kind of liked him in that moment. It was weird. But she turned her head on the forest floor to stare over at him, examining his profile in the starlight as he keeps on staring up, and with his glasses off and his mouth quirked into a smirky sort of half-smile, she almost thought he looked cute.

"So, do you have a sleeping bag I can borrow?" she said next, forgetting what they'd been talking about a moment ago. She was having fun lying out with Steven, but the weed was making her foggy and tired and it was getting cold out too. Hyde turned his head and glared at her, but she just stared right back, eyes wide.

"No. I have my sleeping bag, which I'm gonna sleep in myself, seeing as I brought it and it's mine."

Jackie pouted, and after a few short seconds of eye contact and lip quivering, Hyde's irritated frown turned to plain old angry resignation.

"Whatever, I guess we could share," he gritted out. "It's a double, so."

Jackie beamed, and Hyde rolled his eyes at her, and she was really high and he'd been really nice and the whole night hardly even felt real and for some reason all that added up and Jackie couldn't help herself - she leant over and kissed him. Just a peck which didn't even land square on his lips, was closer to the corner of his mouth, and it was over after three seconds anyway. And Jackie really hardly even knew him.

But a little zing of electricity shot through her anyway. Maybe it was the drugs - she told herself it was the drugs, and rolled back over, not looking at him.

He didn't say anything, so she didn't either. But it was pretty nice.


The next morning Hyde turned up at Kelso's van with Jackie by his side, and got some of the most confused looks he'd ever seen on his friends' faces.

"You guys all know Jackie from school, right?" he said, ignoring them all as he climbed into the back with Jackie following close behind him. "She needs a ride home."

Kelso just kept looking between Hyde and Jackie with his mouth hanging open and his brows furrowed. It was the same expression he got when he tried to watch a movie with subtitles, which Hyde couldn't help but grin at. But then Laurie and Barbara started giggling about something and Kelso's attention was immediately back on them again, the efforts of cheating taking up all his extremely limited mental power with none left over to wonder what Hyde was up to. The others seemed more interested, but Hyde just shrugged their looks off and settled down to sleep a bit more as Jackie climbed up front to chat with Barbara.

Hyde dozed for most of the two hour drive back home, but every time he swayed back into semi-consciousness it seemed to be to the loud soundtrack of Jackie's voice. Somehow in his half-asleep state it wasn't as annoying as usual. Or maybe he was just desensitised after a whole night of listening to her. She'd even talked in her sleep. (Which maybe explained why Hyde was so eager for a two hour nap. They'd been back to back in a sleeping bag all night, after all.)

Hyde didn't jerk awake completely until the van suddenly stopped, sending him lurching into the wall courtesy of Kelso's stellar driving skills. It took him a moment, but he realised they'd stopped because they were outside Jackie's huge house on the edge of town. He sat up, rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses and yawning a little, as she grabbed at her luggage and then climbed over him to get out of the back of the van.

"Thanks for the ride," she called towards the front of the van, seemingly to nobody in particular. Then it seemed like she was going to close the doors and finally, finally leave - only, she didn't. Not quite. First, she said, "And thanks for hanging out with me all night, Steven," and then she leaned back in lightning quick and dropped a kiss onto his cheek.

And then she really was gone, and Hyde was left with just his moron friends again.

"Okay, what the hell was that?" Eric squeaked, as Donna gawped, her opened mouthed expression almost a grin but not quite, something more accusatory than that. There was silence from the front but Hyde knew Barbara and Kelso were staring at him too. Hyde scowled.

"Oh, get bent," he said, turning away from them all. "She got totally ditched there and she's just grateful I got her high, that's all."

But he couldn't help but notice that where Jackie's lips had touched him, his cheek felt awfully, awfully warm.


a/n: i know this fandom isn't as big as it used to be since the show's pretty old so it'd mean the world to me if you've read this far if you'd leave a review! even if it's just a couple words or something - i'd just love to know i have anyone other than me interested. i'll try to get the next chapter up soon!