Mad threatened to kick me off the Bade ship because I wanted to write a Badoose fic. Then she made me write this. I apologize for typos and grammar and stuff, it's 3 AM OTL
When Jade West found herself stuck in one of LA's many shopping centers on a sunny Saturday afternoon with her bubbly friend Cat, she didn't think that things could get any worse than her current situation. The redhead had vanished behind a thick, purple curtain to try on a whole pile of clothes (all of them in annoyingly bright and happy colors), and after almost half an hour, Jade was still sitting in one of the admittedly comfortable chairs in front of the fitting rooms, with no sign of Cat apart from the occasional squeal when the girl found one of the pieces to look particularly cute on herself. But as usual, Jade was wrong.
She was focused on her PearPhone, checking TheSlap for updates for the umpteenth time, when an all too familiar voice caught her attention. "Hey." Slowly, Jade lifted her head, her expression unfazed. It wasn't like she didn't know what – or rather who – she would find behind her, though it was surely an unusual place for her ex-boyfriend Beck Oliver to casually pop up at.
She propped up her head on the backrest of the chair she was sitting on and was facing him upside down. "Oliver," she said, acknowledging his presence. "Why am I not surprised to find you in the women's section?"
Beck tilted his head to the side in one of his signature moves, giving her a weird kind of smirk. "Very funny."
"Let me guess," Jade sat up, turning halfway around in the direction of where her ex-boyfriend was standing. "You're shopping with your new cute girlfriend?"
"Actually," he replied. "I was here with Andre. But then he saw some 'hot chick' and started hitting on her and, well, long story short, he's on a date now and I'm on my own."
"How fascinating," Jade retorted in a flat tone and let her eyes wander back to her phone's screen. Still no new updates. Was everyone else too busy doing more interesting stuff than her? She sighed.
Beck awkwardly glanced around, his hands buried deep in his pockets, before he spoke again. "So... what are you doing here? This is not the kind of store you usually go to."
"I'm waiting for my boyfriend," she told him casually, with her eyes still fixed on her phone. She could just as well use this opportunity to mess with him a bit, when she was stuck here anyway. There was a long pause, before Beck replied with a simple 'oh'. This was when Jade decided to look up from the screen, and gave him an evil smirk. "Jealous?"
Before he could answer, though, a cheery squeal sounded through the room. "Jadey! This skirt is so cute, you should get one too!"
Now it was Beck who broke out into a grin. "Your boyfriend, huh?"
She rolled her eyes. "Shut up." He let out a small chuckle before walking over to the chair next to hers and plopping down onto it. Jade arched an eyebrow at him. "What do you think you're doing?"
"What? It's not like I have anything better to do right now, so I might as well join you," he explained, a little too confident for the thin ice any boy, who was bold enough to do so much as talk to Jade West, was walking on. But he wasn't just any boy, and he couldn't remember a time that he had been actually afraid of her like most other people.
"Beck," she said in a tone that was usually reserved for her little brother when he was doing something undeniably stupid, but all Beck noticed was that she had used his first name for the first time in a long while. "Please tell me what part of the fact that I'm sitting in between pink dresses and fluffy skirts, bored out of my mind, on a Saturday afternoon, looked like an invitation to 'join me' to you?"
"I thought maybe I could un-bore you," he grinned, earning a groan from Jade, before she buried her face in her hands to rub her temples. They sat in silence for the following minutes, and not even Cat could be heard for a while. Eventually, Beck spoke again. "Do you wanna go on a walk? It seems like Cat won't be done anytime soon."
Jade eyed him suspiciously for a moment, narrowing her eyes as if she was contemplating whether he had ulterior motives or not. "Are you serious?" she then asked.
He shrugged. "Yeah, I mean, it would kill some time."
"Wouldn't that be weird?" she murmured, twirling a purple streak around her finger, a signature habit of hers that he couldn't help but find adorable, whether they were broken up or not.
"Why would it be weird?"
"Ugh!" she groaned. "You know exactly why. You, me,... us. We're not together anymore. We can't just go and... and make it look like we're on a date or something."
"It wouldn't be a date," he assured her. "Just us, hanging out. You know, as friends. Weren't you the one who said we could hang out with whoever we want to?"
Again, Jade rolled her eyes, but said nothing. In that moment, another squeal from Cat sounded through the fitting room. "Oh my gosh, Jade, you have to try on these boots."
Without wasting any more time, Jade shot up, quickly stuffing her phone in her pocket. "Let's go," she told Beck before stomping out of the store. He followed suit, chuckling.
. . .
"I really don't get how people can think this looks good."
After Beck and Jade had spent a good fifteen minutes waiting in line at Jet Brew's to get some coffee that Jade insisted on, the two were now standing in front of a manicure salon, faced with a poster of giant hands with painted nails, of which the ring finger was a different color than the rest. Beck briefly remembered seeing manicures like that on Tori and Cat before, but he had never given much thought to it. But if Tori and Cat (and the majority of girls, really) liked it, then it was no surprise that Jade didn't. "It's just like, did you run out of color or why did you have to use a different one on only two nails out of ten? Couldn't you tell pink from blue? Is it really that hard?" she kept on rambling, getting worked up over things that most people didn't give a second thought to, and Beck found himself painfully reminded of the old times. In fact, it almost felt like it. Like as if they were still Beck&Jade and not Beck and Jade.
He quickly shook off those thoughts, though, and nudged Jade's arm. "Let's just keep walking if it bothers you so much."
"Don't tell me what to do," she snapped, but began to move anyway, sipping on her coffee. Black with two sugars. Eventually, she came to a halt in front of a Walmart store, and just gazed at it for a few moments, deep in thought. "Let's go in there," she said after a while.
"Why?" he questioned. He wasn't sure what his ex-girlfriend could possibly want in a department store.
Jade rolled her eyes for what must have been the hundredth time that day. "I'm obviously not going to shop clothes at Forever 21 with you, plus, Walmarts are fun, duh," she explained matter-of-factly and was already on her way into the store, so that Beck didn't have a chance to to anything but follow. Not that he minded much, though.
They strolled through different aisles, while Jade kept herself busy with pointing out anything she hated. Which was, in a store the size of Walmart, a lot. "Just look at those folders. Who would even want ducks on their folder?" She held up a particularly ugly green folder, that was covered in yellow birds. "I hate ducks," she murmured while carelessly tossing it back in the shelf.
"I know," he chuckled, while he watched Jade going through various birthday cards placed on the corner of the aisle they were in right now.
"'Your birthday is one big party day'," she read aloud. "I would slap the person who got me a card like this. Seriously, why throw a party for being closer to death? I don't even like parties," she pointed out before she lost interest in the cards, too, and walked to the next section without thinking. Beck, of course, just followed her like he had been doing all day.
Suddenly, Jade came to a halt, causing Beck to bump into her. "What the- why did you stop?"
"Let's go another way," she muttered and turned around, trying to shove him out of the aisle with her. He furrowed his eyebrows, watching as Jade's face turned a shade redder (hardly noticeable on her pale skin, but he knew her features too well). It was then that he realized where they were standing. All around them, in colorful packagings that came in all sizes, he found the shelves full of condoms and other contraceptives, as well as pregnancy tests.
He snorted. "Don't tell me you're embarrassed, Jade," he smirked. "It's not liked we haven't seen this stuff before."
"Oh god...," she groaned, pushing harder against his chest in an attempt to move him anywhere but where they were.
He, on the other hand, found the situation more than amusing. "I don't remember you being such a puritan," he teased.
"I can't believe we're having this conversation right now," she murmured, more to herself than to Beck. Finally, he gave in and left the aisle with her. She impatiently grabbed his arm as soon as they were out of the danger zone and dragged him towards the exit. "We're leaving," she explained briefly.
She didn't notice that their arms were still linked until they stepped out of Walmart and ran straight into Sinjin van Cleef, who was accompanied by his even weirder (or was he?) friend Burf. "Hi Jade," Sinjin beamed at her, a corn dog tightly clutched in his spindly hands. "I didn't know you and Beck were back together."
Immediately, Jade became aware of her mistake, and quickly shoved Beck away from her. "We're not," she hissed through gritted teeth, making the two boys flinch.
"Oh, so you're just on a date for fun?"
"It's not a date!" Jade snapped, then turned to Beck. "Let's go, Oliver," she urged. Sinjin didn't even have time to tell her goodbye, as the black-haired girl stalked away. When they were far enough away from the two, Jade sighed. "I told you this would give people the wrong impression."
"Since when do you care about what people think?" he asked and shrugged. Jade had almost forgotten that barely anything could faze Beck.
"Whatever, let's get more coffee."
. . .
The line at Jet Brew's was still not any less busy than a bare hour ago, and Beck and Jade found themselves squeezed between strangers from either side. Jade groaned when an elbow landed in her lower back for the third time that day, causing her to stumble even closer to her ex-boyfriend. This was not how she had planned her Saturday.
Beck grinned down at her, not even hiding that he was thoroughly enjoying the situation. "Can I help you?"
She rolled her eyes, and used her hands that were currently placed on his chest (not her fault) to push herself a few inches away from him again, as much as the tiny space would allow. She wasn't sure what Beck was playing at. The mixed signals he had been sending her over the few months were already confusing enough, but this day was just the icing on the cake. And to crown it all, she couldn't help the tingly feeling in her stomach, either.
When they eventually elbowed their way out of the tiny coffee shop, two steaming cups in their hands, Jade couldn't deny that, despite all, she still enjoyed spending time with Beck a little too much. The pair were making their way back to the shop where they assumed Cat still was (hopefully. They hadn't spent a single thought on the perky redhead all day), as suddenly Beck stopped. Jade shot him a questioning glance. "What?"
He gazed at her for a few moments, it seemed like he was thinking, before, without a warning, he pulled her closer to him and quickly pressed his lips onto hers. Jade barely had time to gasp in surprise, but as soon as she felt Beck's warm lips on hers, she responded to his kiss. It only lasted for a mere five seconds, before Beck pulled back, smirking at her. Slowly coming back to her senses, Jade took a deep breath, about to scold him, he assumed, but he just motioned above them before she could say anything. "Mistletoe," he grinned.
She opened her mouth to say something, but seemingly decided against it. When she opened it again, all she said was, "Idiots, November has barely even started and they're already going all out on Christmas."
. . .
When Jade eventually returned to the store where she had left Cat, she found the red-haired girl sitting in one of the chairs in the middle of the store, obviously waiting for her. In her hands were several bags full of new clothes.
Jade was preparing herself to comfort her friend, expecting her to be upset or scared because she left without a word, but instead, Cat just beamed at her. "So how was your date with Beck?"
"What the– did you plan this?" Jade exclaimed, staring at her in shock.
Cat just giggled and dragged her friend out of the shopping center.
Whoops this sucked.