Disclaimer: That '70s Show copyright The Carsey-Werner Company, LLC and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC. Degenerate Matter, their albums Vagabondage, Ultrarelativistic, WIMPs and MACHOs, Frozen Stars, and all the lyrics contained therein copyright to the author of this story (username: MistyMountainHop, maker of Those '70s Comics).

CHAPTER 27
SELF-INFLICTED VIOLENCE

October 31, 1994

Foster City, California

Jackie's House
 …

Jackie and Rod sat on opposite ends of her sofa, watching The Princess Bride in her living room. They each had a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, and the lights were off. The brief glimpse she'd taken of him with her house lights on had revealed a face less handsome than it was in dim light. Less familiar, but tonight was about getting to know him.

Halfway through the movie, they were on their second glass of wine. She scooted next to him. His arm slid around her shoulders, and tiny shivers wracked her body. They weren't from nerves, although he probably thought they were. Prolonged physical contact, with anyone, incited a battle to remain present.

Two-thirds into the movie, she glided her hand over Rod's knee. His fingertips brushed over her arm, raising gooseflesh beneath her short-sleeve cuff. On the TV, Inigo, Fezzik, and Westley were trying to storm Prince Humperdink's castle. Desire had the same mission for her body. Her blood was a battering ram, pounding against her drawbridge, but her heart was buried deep underground. Rod wouldn't be able to reach it.

Soon, the movie's credits rolled, and her VCR automatically rewound the tape afterward. Its loud whirring broke through the wine and lust inside her, but she was busy grinding into Rod's lap and kissing him.

"Thought you said tonight wouldn't go the way our first date did," he said between kisses.

"It won't. There's subtext in what I said."

"Subtext?"

She sat up straighter on his lap and held onto his shoulders. "Whatever. How do you want it?"

"You're letting me choose again?"

"As long as the lights stay off."

He laughed and stroked the back of her hair. "God, you're something else … but here's what I want: you choose, and we turn the lights on."

In the blue light of the TV, she searched his face for any hint of emotional connection. She found none.

"Come on, Jackie. You've got to give me some visuals."

Her grip tightened on his shoulders. "Do you want a relationship with me?"

"Hey..." His hand withdrew from the back of her head. "Thought we were both in this for a good time."

"So having a relationship with me wouldn't be a good time."

He laughed again, nervously. "I don't know. We barely know each other."

"Yet you fucked me against the wall during our first date."

"Wait a sec. You were into that as much as I was—at first, right? What's going on here?"

She climbed off his lap and stood a few feet away, arms crossed over her chest. "I'm asking you lights-on questions. If you want this to be about sex, we keep the lights off."

"Okay, I think I'm catching on. You're manipulating me."

"It's what I do."

He shut off the TV and became little more than a silhouette. Faint light came in through the windows, from her neighbors' houses, but it was barely enough to see by. Her hearing, however, seemed enhanced. The zip! of his fly opening scraped her ears.

"Doggy-style," he said. "On the sofa."

Blood pulsed between her thighs, as insistently as it did in her chest. But even if he couldn't reach her heart—or refused to try—he might jump-start her capacity to enjoy sex. She used to revel in making love, even after Michael had forced himself on her. Dale Fischer was the one who'd turned that joy into shit.

"I can always turn on the lights," she said. "We can get to know each other."

Rod was standing now. "You're a great girl, Jackie. Crazy, but I like crazy." He pushed down his jeans and boxers, revealing the silhouette of his erection. "And, honestly..." The crinkle of a condom ended his sentence.

"You'd rather fuck."

"That's what you're after, too, right? Unless I've been reading you wrong."

Her arms dropped to her sides. He'd said he paid a thousand dollars to attend the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation charity event to see her, but it could've been a line. Had to be a line, and she'd fallen for it. She truly was a horrible judge of men, but she removed her shirt. Tonight could still be a positive experience. He might yet give her a gift he'd never understand.

"If we do this," she said, "don't expect to see me again."

"So I should expect to see you again. Is that the subtext?"

"No." She took off her bra, and his hand were on her before she could unzip her slacks. His thumbs swept over her breasts pleasantly enough, but his aggressiveness stilted her breath. "One damn second," she said. "Give me a second. I'm still half-dressed."

He backed away. "Right, right. Yeah. I'll put this on, too." He sounded buzzed from the wine, and the condom wrapper crinkled some more.

Once her slacks were off, he wrapped his arms around her bare waist. His condom-covered erection pressed against her leg, and he kissed her neck.

"Your choice is get to know the real me," she said as his lips pushed into her skin, "with the lights on, without a guarantee of ever having sex with me again. Or fucking me now for the last time."

"Kinky game."

One of his hands slipped into her panties and cupped her butt. Her stomach contracted at his touch, but she grabbed onto his shirt and pulled it off. He obviously took that as a good sign and scooped her into his arms. She didn't like it, but he put her down on the sofa before she could tell him so.

"How about we put the lights on?" he said.

Her heart beat faster, and it began to feel like panic. But ever since Dale's assault, she had trouble distinguishing fear from excitement. "So you don't want to fuck me?"

"I want to see you."

"Then give me my clothes—"

"That would kind of defeat the purpose."

She grasped her forehead and shut her eyes. He wasn't all that bright, but she wasn't thinking clearly either. Her therapist would likely say she was sabotaging herself, or even punishing herself, but she hoped that wasn't true. She needed to have sex, to like having sex. Rod had respected her command to stop before, and she was attracted to him. That made him the safest, most viable option.

"No lights." She knelt on the sofa and clutched the armrest for support, getting into the position he wanted. "Doggy-style, on the sofa."

"Fair exchange." The cushions sank beneath his weight as he eased himself behind her. He patted her butt playfully then gripped her thighs, and he groaned as he entered her.

Her body quivered at his first thrust. She hugged the armrest tightly, but his second thrust brought no pleasure. He wasn't angled well inside her, and she said, "What's your favorite food to eat?"

"What?" he said and thrust a third time.

"Do you have any siblings?"

"Hold on." He rose higher on his knees, held onto her hips instead of her thighs. "Does that feel better?

It did, but she said, "Why?"

"You're talking a lot, which means I'm not doing my job." He sunk himself inside her deeply, and she gasped as her nerves lit up. "There we go," he said.

His strokes became fast and smooth, and they sent electric pleasure through her body. Her fingers and toes twitched. Her breaths shortened, and her eyes closed, but a memory rose in her mind.

"Who am I to you?"

"Someone I can't stop loving."

Her eyes snapped open, but the newborn smile on her lips didn't fade. He loved her. Steven. The man who said he couldn't love her anymore. He'd never stopped.

"Jackie, you come already?"

"Huh?" She glanced over her shoulder. Rod was behind her, moving slower than before. "No."

His fingers slipped between her legs, but they might as well not have been there. Numbness was spreading through her like a cold fire. She couldn't say for certain if she loved Steven anymore. That was an emotion she hadn't felt for anyone since her dad's death. Her access to it had been cut off.

The most accurate emotion she could identify for Steven was gratitude. She was grateful for his kindness, his patience. But love … if any existed inside her for him, she wasn't connected to it.

"Hey," Rod said, and a shudder passed through her. She'd forgotten he was here, that he was pushing himself into her. "Tell me you're close."

The numbness was ebbing like a wave, exposing the fault in her thinking. Sex alone wouldn't restore who she used to be. That person was gone, and putting pressure on herself to perform caused only more problems. Her therapist, had told her that a dozen times, and finally she listened. "We have to stop," she said.

"Don't play with me, Jackie. Not now. I'm about to blow."

"Pull out. Do it on my sofa, my floor, wherev—"

"Shit—!" His grip sharpened on her hips, and he buried all of himself inside her. A low moan issued from his throat. He was coming, and she cursed herself for allowing it to happen.

The next five minutes, or maybe it was ten, occurred in a haze. Rod left her to clean himself up, and she collapsed on the sofa, face-down. He returned, offering to get her off. "Turn on some Degenerate Matter," he said. It was the only sentence she remembered hearing distinctly, but she pushed herself up and told him no. He might've also apologized for not puling out in time, for leaving her in this state, and she might've said not to worry about it. Then the front door of her house clicked open and slammed shut.

The wine glasses on her coffee table were empty. She stared at them, and answers about tonight swirled in their red-streaked bowls. She'd pushed her brainwaves into booze. That was how the Degenerate Matter song went, how Steven's song about her went. Bruises were already forming from what Rod did. He'd gone at her hard, trying to break her silence, to make her feel good.

On the sofa, she bent over her knees and laced her fingers behind her neck. Her heart had rebelled tonight, declaring that love was as important as sexual attraction. But love wasn't hers to have. She couldn't earn it, couldn't steal it, and if it fell into her lap, she wouldn't be able to hold onto it.

November 1, 1994

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Hyde and Ro's House
 …

Burning pain seared the underside of Hyde's left forearm. Ro had cut a two-inch line, starting near the pit of his elbow, with a sterilized razor blade. Blood dribbled from the wound; then it flowed over his skin like slow-moving lava.

"Do you like how it looks?" Ro said. "How it feels?" She was leaning back against the sink of their primary bathroom. The supplies she'd bought were stacked behind her, including the razor she'd used to slice him.

"Can't say I do." He was sitting on the toilet with the lid down, per her instructions. She hadn't yet shared the purpose of this exercise. He assumed it had to do with her past, that she was bringing him deeper into her experiences—so he could understand her more viscerally. Her methods were freaky. But she locked so much of her history away from him, and he was desperate for entry, even if it meant bleeding.

"Hmm." She was wearing white latex gloves. She placed her thumbs on either side of his wound and pulled the skin apart, increasing his pain threefold.

"Fuck—!"

"Keep your eyes at the center," she said. "You can see right into your flesh."

His stomach lurched at the sight of his skin being pried apart. "Shit, okay, okay," he said, but she didn't let go. "What do you want me to say?"

"Wrong question, love." She adjusted her left hand so it held apart his wound on its own. Her right hand grabbed the razor blade from the sink and brought it toward his arm. "Time for another—"

He got off the toilet seat and moved away from her.

"Oh," she said, "so you don't want to be cut?"

"Ro, if you're tryin' to initiate me into some kind of S-and-M shit, it ain't gonna happen."

"That's not what this is about." She put the razor blade back on the sink. "It's about you realizing how important you are."

"What?"

"Look at your wound," she said, and he hesitantly obliged her. Blood was streaking down his arm. "That's not how you should be: cut up, bleeding, hurt. It's not natural."

"I don't get what you want from me here."

Years go, when she'd first begun to haul him into the present, she'd showed him the scars on her arm, the ones tattooed musical notes mostly hid. "My frustration, my self-hatred, my hopelessness—" she'd said, "I knew no other way to release it. No one was listening to me, least of all myself. You use the people you love as razor blades."

"Do you like what's been done to you?" she said now.

"You keep asking that."

"So if I were to take the blade and hack into myself … ?"

A shadow crossed over his heart, and his throat grew thick. "Don't. Not to prove a damn point." He glanced over her shoulder at the sink. He couldn't get to the blade before she did, not without the risk of hurting her.

"Okay," she said, not making a move. "Now take that protectiveness you feel for me and apply it to yourself."

"For fuck's sake." He pressed his back against the bathroom wall. It was cold and hard, like Ro's "lesson," despite the fire in his carved-up, bleeding arm.

"You know how to use butterfly bandages." She tore off the latex gloves and tossed them into the wastebasket. "Clean that wound as if it were mine. Bandage it and cover the whole thing in gauze."

She washed her hands in the sink, careful not to knock over any supplies. "You did well, stopping me from cutting you again. Time to stop your past from doing the same." She dried her hands on a towel hooked on the bathroom door before stepping into the hallway. "Try to feel some grief at the current state of your arm. The story of how it got cut doesn't matter, only that it was cut."

She closed the door, shutting him in the bathroom alone. He looked at his stinging, throbbing wound, but it was barely distinguishable from the rest of his arm. All of it was covered in red.

He washed his hands first and put on a pair of latex gloves. Then, as he kept the wound under running water, Kelso's face emerged in the blood spiraling down the drain. It was a memory, his past, and it inspired self-revulsion, not grief.

He sat back on the toilet with a square of gauze pressed to his wound. He had a good fifteen minutes to wait, with his arm elevated above his head. It would've been easier with Ro supporting him, but that wasn't how she operated.

Jackie used to. The teenage her, with brown hair and determination in her eyes instead of terror. She would've helped him and held him until the pain faded. That Jackie, though—and the present one—had no clue he'd lost control of his rage. Choosing not to bear it and stay with her, to help her and hold her until her pain healed ultimately led to the terror she carried. It fucking had, and he owed her his silence on this one thing. Unloading that truth would force her into a brutal position: keep his near-murder of Kelso to herself or deprive Betsy of having any kind of dad.

But his past was irrelevant to Ro. She took him for who he was today, and she was fighting for him to do the same: to have a life that wasn't twisted by and trapped in what he'd done fifteen years ago. Yet her blade sometimes cut into him instead of cutting him free.

He left the bathroom once his wound was bandaged up. Ro was lying on top of their bed, reading Bad Radio Magazine. She'd taken off her leather pants, but her shirt was still on, and he sat next to her. "You would've wanted to be left alone," he said, "had our positions been reversed."

She closed the magazine and looked at him. "Yes."

He indicated his bandaged arm. "This is some screwed-up tough love."

"You can handle it."

"It's never happening again."

She yawned and ran her fingers through her short black hair. She seemed entirely too relaxed on the bed, lounging in her shirt and panties. "You could have said no."

"Thought you wanted me to feel how you did when you were younger."

"You guessed wrong."

He sucked in a breath, held it for seven seconds, then let it out. "I needed you in there. I needed you to stay."

Ro sat up on her knees, chewing the inside of her cheek. She had to be craving a cigarette, and her discomfort was reassuring. "I'm right here, love." She grasped his hands and pulled them to her breasts, but he withdrew from her. "You should have asked me to stay."

"You'd closed the door before I could."

"Nothing kept you from reopening it."

"Had too many people walk out on me—"

She raised a silencing finger at him. "You don't want me to walk out, then you tell me. Doesn't matter why."

He rubbed his jaw, mentally trying to piece together her words and actions, to make them fit together. Tonight had wreaked further havoc with his concept of her, of them. "What the hell about me do you feel so connected to?"

"Lie back, and I'll tell you."

"Don't want to lie the fuck back."

"Ooh, you're pissed," she said, grinning." I've hit some bedrock."

He inhaled another grounding breath. "Just tell me."

"It's something better felt than described." She placed two fingers to her mouth, and he removed a pack of American Spirits from his nightstand. In moments, they both had lit cigarettes between their lips. "For one," she said, "you give me smokes when I need them. And I do need one for this next bit."

She dragged in a lungful of smoke and blew it through her nostrils. "You word my emotions better than I do and let me share them with millions of people. … We're stars burning in the same sky, and having you beside me brightens the world below that much more." She patted the top of his leg. "And that's all the poetry you're getting."

Her next drag caused the cigarette to burn away quickly, and he caught the falling ash in his ashtray. He'd barely finished half his first cigarette before she stuck another in her mouth.

"You and music are my greatest passions," she said. "I no longer have to seek purpose through darkness. Is that enough explanation for you?" She waved her cigarette at him before he could speak. "No, it's not. I've never had anyone in my life who'd do for me what you have. You read my cues and let me be. You accept me for what I can give and what I can't."

She mashed her cigarette in the ashtray, plucked his cigarette from his mouth, and kissed him. She tasted like his own breath, full of tobacco, but he kissed her back. "I'm waiting for you to claim your freedom—" she whispered against his lips—"even from me. I'm no hypocrite. If I cross a line, say it. "

"You crossed a line."

She returned his cigarette but held his left hand. "I hoped you wouldn't let me cut you..." She stroked the skin above his bandage. "It was a sick move."

"No shit," he said, but her gentleness was lulling him into a relaxed state. "Got to process all this, Spark." He nodded at the bandage on his left arm, but slicing him hadn't been the first line she'd crossed. Six weeks ago, in New York City, she'd crossed half a dozen. That night, his past had held him hostage. This night was the same. "But I think I'm startin' to get it."

"That's good." She pushed his hair from his shoulders and pressed a long kiss into his neck. "'Cause we're not finished yet."