A/N: This might be my favorite thing that I have ever written. Please read!

Disclaimer: I don't own That 70s Show.

He was a wrinkled pink thing, filled with delight at the simple existence of the world, so enraptured in the wonder, the sudden brilliance, that he emerged stoic, hardly uttering a sound. (He would remain the same, eighteen years later.) Pea-sized hands, a penny nose, and she thought that if she merely placed her hand upon his chest, his fleeting hummingbird heart would falter under the pressure. She nuzzled her head against the fuzz on his scalp, gazed deep into a limpid summer sky, and murmured his name- a soft 'Steven Hyde.'

Some may later comment of his deplorable childhood, but, despite all, no one could argue that he was born to the rhythms of love.

And so he grew, freckled skin and thin limbs and a hurricane of brown above his head. He watched as the mother who once whispered to him lullabies like they were fragile secrets, as if the words were only fit to span the air between his ears and her red, red lips, roared into a bitter monster. He listened through all the parties and boyfriends and mocking rages. He stood underneath the metal of her words, felt the grip of her granite eyes, and he didn't understand. It wasn't because of him that her ageless skin cracked in lines of ridicule- it was for him. She had thrown herself against the sphere of the world, a breathless blue, arms shielding a precious son. But one woman alone cannot carry the earth upon her weary shoulders.

And so, gradually, his bright eyes weren't so luminous.

He was always small, but with pride so expansive they swore he thought himself six feet. Yet, it was quite rarely experienced as he cocooned himself in privacy, determined to keep the viscous despair of his household tightly contained within, lest the steamy poison drift out of his ragged clothes, his toe-less shoes, his listless hands, and pry its needling fingers to infect someone else.

But then he saw a skinny boy being dragged underneath a slide and –oh God- were they beating him? Was that blood?

Fists thrown.

Clothes ripped.

It was desperate, four against one. But Steven Hyde had obtained his first victory, tucked securely under his belt. That- and his first friend.

More were to come, for sure- Donna, with her hair like millions of apple trees and her hips swaying sturdy; Kelso and his feathered beauty, his warmth only surpassed by his lovely idiocy; Fez, all coffee skin and innocence, accent sprinkling hilarity like magic over any situation.

But, for now, Eric Forman would do. (He would more than do.)

Yes, he was always small, until one day, he wasn't. The honey disaster above his head morphed into beckoning curls, the wiry arms into authentic muscle. His wary features hardened into one of detachment, jawline garnished with stubble, and a pair of shades had suddenly become a permanent fixture upon his face. He wasn't a boy anymore. (This he would repeat to himself nights upon nights after Edna finally disappeared, the sky collapsing onto him, now his burden to bear.) He was a man.

The girls came, and he let them. It was no harm, he decided, to entertain the fantasies of those teenage creatures who desired no more than one night. One night flirting with danger, with mystery. But genuine feelings had never snuck upon him, in the rich darkness, deep in a hotel room, for the shell he cultivated not only withheld his pain, his melancholy, his joy, but also prevented others' from entering.

When Kelso brought along his new girlfriend to the basement- a pretty thing she was, he must admit, with all that cascading raven hair and creamy smooth legs- he only needed one glance to label her as representative of all the things he hated. Somehow, his mother's cynical brows and his father's continuous absence were all the more garish and despicable, made putrid next to her pristine, white, flawless life.

(His mother left, and, somewhere along the way, a room underneath the ground in his best friend's house became his sanctuary.)

He confessed, it was delightful to direct all his acrid resentment, transfer the umbrage into the tiny body of a fourteen-year old Jackie Burkhart. Only when she winced, as though slapped from the sting of his burns, did laughter come to him. He ignored the hurt in her wide brown eyes, the slouch that he brought to her shoulders, the droop of her head, as he focused on the only means of revenge he could, reprisal for his dysfunctional family, vengeance against the world channeled through her.

But it was hard not to notice, hard to ignore, how, when he executed these little abuses, Kelso laughed with him. And Kelso, pulling other girls behind closed doors while she was at cheer, Kelso, making seductive faces and exaggerated winks when she turned the other way, Kelso, kissing Pam Macy against the gym before prom.

Hyde wanted to punch him. But, really, for no reason at all.

A crying girl was in his lap and, suddenly, unexpectedly, he was putting all his effort into not exploring her purple lace-encased body with his fingertips, not pulling her close and huskily inhaling her scent, not burying his head into the nape of her neck. He went home that night, the texture of her lips ingrained upon his cheek.

He promised it would never happen again. He would shy far from the vixen encased in a 90-pound cheerleader.

But one Laurie Forman, one pair of boots, and one kiss disastrously close to the lips later, he knew. Perhaps not clearly, but he understood that his days of laying girls back into soft mattresses, of committing unmentionable acts cloaked in night's armor, of slipping away before the salutation of the sun, had finally reached him, and he was powerless to elude.

He began to observe her, stealthily, clandestine acts, and it soon became difficult to pretend that Jackie didn't become empty when she thought no one was looking, didn't deflate into the couch as if searching for an escape route. He saw a piece of himself, that provoked, frightened boy, glinting within her, and it scared him more than anything had before.

He leaned in, letting his eyes fall shut, as the delicate firmness of her mouth pressed against his, softly, slowly. Unable to hold still, he grasped the back of her head, letting his fingers twine into the thick, smooth strands of satin, pressing in, urging for more. He could taste the faint tinge of strawberry upon her lips and then she was tugging at his hair too, her delicate hands caressing his skull, and he resisted the flood of thoughts at what he wanted to do to her, right there, on top of her daddy's Lincoln. But then, she retreated, and uttered four simple words.

"I didn't feel anything."

He would have to wait two years, two long, torturous years of Kelso fiddling with her heart, of Jackie constantly springing back, until he could revel in the miracle of her body against his once more.

Steven Hyde doesn't believe in the meddling institution of religion. But, that summer, it was truly heaven.

It was a tangle of arms and legs as the heat of their passion mingled with the heat of the sun. He finally held a monopoly on those berry lips and luscious waves, and he swore he was not about to let it go anytime soon.

And, after everything was over, after ultimatums given and strippers married, after fake husbands and Fez, he still longed for her, her palm at the small of his back, her cheek against his bare chest, her small frame wrapped tight against his own. He wanted to melt into her once more, to feel the plushness of her lips on his, the taunting sweetness of her mouth, to lose himself in the blackness of her hair and the suppleness of her skin.

He wanted a kiss, if only a kiss goodbye.

A/N: A review would make my day ;)