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, the song "Singularity," and all the lyrics contained therein copyright to the author of this story (username: MistyMountainHop, maker of Those '70s Comics).

CHAPTER 28
DERMATOGRAPHIA

November 1, 1994

Foster City, California

Jackie's House
…

Jackie had showered, long and hot, after she'd found the will to get off her sofa. But she'd have to wash herself again, maybe in the morning. Her naked body was covered in red ink, all of which she could see clearly in the light of her bedroom. All her lamps were turned to their fullest brightness, and one of her markers had been used up. She couldn't stop reading what she'd written on herself, as if the words would somehow transform her.

OUT OF CONTROL was scrawled over left thigh in huge, thick letters. WANT TO BE IN CONTROL was written on her left calf, and the word control filled the remaining space on her leg: control, control, control, control, control.

SAFE marked her right leg, along with stop making bad choices lining her foot and ankle.

On her lower stomach, weaving between her pink stretch marks, she'd written, "You're too old to act this way. Grow up or give up."

Her arms had no words. She'd held the marker in her fist and slashed her arms red. Those marks were embarrassing. They were useless, and she curled up on her bed.

Pain jabbed her ribs. Her markers were stuck underneath her side, but she didn't remove them. Instead, she stared at her too-bright room. It was sparsely decorated, mostly because she'd never given it much attention. After her divorce, she'd moved her office into the primary bedroom and vice versa. Sleeping where she'd shared a bed with her ex-husband would've been intolerable.

Her gaze drifted from the curtained windows to the phone on her nightstand. "Don't isolate yourself," her therapist told her, but she had no one to talk to at this hour. Calling Donna at three o'clock in the morning, Wisconsin-time, was a friendship-breaker.

She rolled onto her back and snatched one of the markers from the bed. Its tip wasn't dry, and she wrote one letter each on her left fingers and thumb. They spelled out the fate God must've planned for her since her birth: ALONE.

"You don't have to disappear with me," Ro said into Hyde's ear. She was riding his dick hard on their bed, rocking on top of him. He held onto her with only his right hand. She was moving too fast for his left. Her hip kept bashing into his wound, so he let his left arm lay at his side as he thrust up into her. "Your sun can rise above the horizon."

He answered with a sustained groan. All his nerve endings were sparking with an intensity that felt too good to be possible.

Her hands slid damply from his shoulders and pressed into his chest, and she sat up straight on his hips. "Do you want my past or my present?"

"Wh..." His question vanished into a thoughtless fog as she continued fucking him. The pressure in his body was reaching critical mass.

"Let's try this again." She shocked him back into coherence by becoming still as stone, leaving him throbbing inside her. "My past or present, which would you prefer?"

His left hand swept over her thigh. "You're not feelin' anything?"

"Oh, I'm building up to my third, love. Answer the question."

"P—" he began, but the phone on his nightstand rang. He'd never despised a sound more. "Who the crap is callin' now? It's—" he angled his head to his alarm clock, its bright red display glowing in the night—"after three in the goddamn morning."

"It's Halloween. A prank call, maybe."

"Maybe."

The answering machine picked up after the fourth ring, and the outgoing message played through the speaker: "Steven Hyde. Leave a message."

"Steven?" Jackie's voice said after the beep. "I didn't think you'd be there … but that's good. At least I didn't wake you up."

"Holy hell—" he said, and his left arm reached awkwardly for the phone. He intended to turn down the answering machine's volume, but Ro gently grasped his left wrist.

"You'll aggravate the wound," she said and resumed moving on top of him, slowly. It eased some of the agonized pounding in his dick, but Jackie's voice had his attention.

"—trying to do things differently." Jackie let out a crackling sigh. "And this message won't make any sense to you, so I better just go."

"Ro, I gotta pick it up."

"Do what you have to do." Ro climbed off him, and he scrambled to get the phone.

"Jackie?" he said into the receiver. Ro, meanwhile, grabbed a pack of cigarettes, a matchbook, and her ashtray.

"Oh, my God—Steven?" Jackie sounded both horrified and relieved. "I'm sorry it's so late, but—"

"It's okay. I was awake."

"You were?"

He glanced down at his hard-on. It was pressing up against his stomach. "There's, uh … no way I could call you back in ten?"

"You have my number?"

"Yup. Call you in ten."

"Sure. 'Bye."

He hung up the phone and gestured at Ro. She approached him from the bedroom door. "Your present," he said. "That's what I want."

She put down the cigarettes, matchbook, and ashtray on his nightstand. "And which would you rather I have of you," she said, pulling him inside her, "your present or your past?"

Both, his mind answered, but he shoved it down. "The present, all right?"

"Stories belong in books and songs." She cupped his cheek and looked into his eyes, and he tried to channel all the love he felt for her through them. "That's only for me," she said.

She'd initiated their reconnection ritual, what they did after weeks or months apart, and he glided the back of his right hand between her breasts. "Only for you," he said, and her heart beat steadily into his knuckles.

WIMPs and MACHOs played on Jackie's bedroom stereo, but only silence came out. She'd put on the last listed track, "End State," as soon as she and Steven had hung up—and skipped to the end. Ten minutes stretched between it and "Spark," the hidden song Steven sang. If he didn't call her back like he'd said, she'd have some version of him providing comfort.

Then again, his voice could deepen the despair she already felt.

She was lying flat on her carpet and staring at the ceiling. A pair of pajamas covered her marked-up skin, and her hands rested on her stomach. Remaining tethered to the present was hard. Her thoughts kept flying from memory to memory, but she she focused on her breathing like her therapist taught her.

Steven probably wouldn't call. His voice was more than a bit hoarse, and he'd been out of breath. Both were signs he'd been having intense sex. His voice used to get scratchy after he and Jackie made love, and his current smoking habit likely increased the effect.

"Of course," she said with a laugh that sent shivers through her. The way he'd looked at her last month at Donna's house, as if he were completely present with her—and only her—had made her forget Donna's warning: "He's pulled in a lot of different directions. Don't expect to become best friends with him."

"False sense of security," Jackie said to the ceiling. Foolish assumptions, but her therapist would praise her progress. She hadn't reached out like to anyone like this since her father's death, except for her therapist. Dad was the only person she believed ever actually loved her. Her mom sure as hell didn't, but Steven...

"I'm not in love with you," he'd told her last month, "but I do love you, Jackie."

"What does that mean?" she said now and scraped her nails against the carpet.

"I want you in my life, all right?" her memory of him said back.

"How? Tell me how—"

Her phone rang, and she pushed herself to her feet. Her heart pounded as she dashed to the nightstand. Her hip banged into the wood, jostling the lamp, and she picked up the phone without checking the caller ID. "Hello?"

"Hey," Steven said through the receiver.

"You called me back." Her legs wobbled, and she sank onto her bed.

"With two minutes to spare. What's up?"

"You just had sex," she said, and her back stiffened at her bluntness. "I'm sorry. It's late. I'm tired, and I'm..." out of control. "That was inappropriate. I'm sorry."

He chuckled hoarsely. "We don't talk for a month, but you already figured out what I was doin'."

"I'm sorry," she repeated. "None of my business." She pressed her forehead into the top of the receiver. She'd sabotaged herself again. "I'll let you go—"

"Jackie, don't worry about it. What's goin' on?"

She shut her eyes, and the first tears of the night pushed through her lashes. "I had a rough day."

"Makes two of us. What happened?"

"You had a rough day, too?"

"Could've gone better," he said, "but I'm fine. What happened?"

She read the word inscribed on her fingers. "The long and short of it, the gist..." Her voice cracked, and her throat hurt. Her body was fighting against her speaking, but she said, "I feel very, very alone right now."

"Can't fly out to you tonight, but Thursday should work—"

"No, Steven. That's not what—you'd actually fly out here?"

"If you needed me to, yeah."

Tears burned her eyes, and she held her breath. He'd called her back, offered to fly out to her. "You're … you're actually my friend," she whispered.

"Jackie," he spoke her name with more compassion than she was worth, "I don't know what you're goin' through, and you don't have to tell me. But if you do, I promise, man, it won't go anywhere. It'll be classified."

Her fist twisted in the fabric of her pajama pants. All of the day's events threatened to burst from her mouth—Deborah's lie, the haunted house, Rod—but Steven's voice sang gently from her speakers. "Spark" had begun to play.

"Is that me?" he said through the phone.

"I'll turn it off. Hold on." She put down the phone, although it was a cordless, and darted to her stereo. It was ensconced on a shelf of her bookcase, and she pushed the stop button..

"Kind of freaky, huh?" he said when she returned to the phone. "You hearing me sing."

"Not to me." She swept a lock of hair from her face. It had fallen over her forehead in her sprint to the stereo. "Okay, at first it was, once I realized it was you, but now it's … nice."

"'Nice,'" he said, as if he were unsure what she meant.

"When we dated, I constantly pestered you to write me a song—and now you have." She laughed at herself and wiped her eyes. "It is kind of freaky."

He cleared his throat. "Never thought you'd hear it, if that's any consolation."

It wasn't. "Is that why you reacted weirdly when I told you 'Singularity' was my gateway-song into the band?"

"What's weird about choking on a cigarette?" Amusement was in his voice, and it coaxed a smile from her. Their time on Brooke's roof must've been as surreal for him as it had been for her.

"If you tell me one thing that made your day rough," she said, despite the alarm bell of false sense of security! ringing through her skull, "I'll tell you one thing that made mine the same."

"I let myself get cut, which burns a shitload less than why I let myself get cut."

He'd spoken without hesitation, but she couldn't have heard him right. "You what?"

"It was a test. I failed."

"What the hell kind of Halloween party did you go to?"

"No party. Just me bein' dense."

She planted her hand on her damp, warm cheek. "So you 'let' yourself be cut? How? With what? Why?"

"To learn a few things. A razor blade—"

"What could you have possibly learned from that?"

"For one, not to look into my gaping wounds."

She covered her mouth but spoke through her fingers. "Oh—ew!" Why he'd chosen that particular detail to share, she wasn't certain. Maybe as a gesture of trust, or permission, to discuss the personal, intimate parts of their lives with each other.

"Shit," he said. "Should've started with a less wacko … damn it! I'm sorry. That was fuckin' creepy."

"Steven, it is creepy, but I know you're not a creep."

"Don't want to scare you off."

"You didn't." He'd made telling her own creepy story easier. "I took in a vagabond tonight." She was referencing his lyric in "Singularity," and she hoped he understood.

"You're lettin' someone sleep over?" he said, and a rush of air crackled through her receiver.

"No, I put myself in a situation that wasn't safe for me..." Her gaze drifted to the marks she'd drawn on her left arm. "Actually, a friend lied to me so I'd go to a place I didn't feel safe."

"What kind of place?"

"Let's just say if a person trips into a pit of vipers and almost dies of poison, that person won't enjoy being tossed into a pool of rubber facsimiles of snakes."

"Man, you've got a good friend."

"She's a bitch," Jackie said, and her body jumped as if electrocuted. She always kept such thoughts to herself. Doing otherwise brought more trouble than it was worth. "I mean, what she did was bitchy. But it was for a good cause, and she knew I wouldn't have shown up without being deceived, so—"

"Think you got it right the first time," he said. "You've got to be able to call your friends out on their crap. Otherwise, they're crappy friends."

She stood from her bed and paced the room. The carpet was soft beneath her feet, but the bare white walls were hard on her eyes. "God, she pissed me off so much, Steven. I tried to tell her. I really did, but she said she'd done it for my own good. That I didn't know what was best for me."

"Sounds familiar."

"Right?" She squeezed the receiver in her hand. He was referring to her mom, had to be. "So I managed to make the situation safer for me, but I still felt trapped. Then this guy I sort of know shows up, and he was really sweet—or acting sweet—and I was so fucking down, and I just wanted to feel better."

"The vagabond?" he said.

"Yes. He's—I shouldn't have. But I..." She stopped pacing at her bookcase, at the stereo sitting on its shelf. Her fingers glided over the left speaker, but no dust was on it. Her housekeeper did a thorough job. "I hoped it would move me forward, but it did more damage."

Steven didn't respond, and she pushed her ear into the phone receiver to hear if he was still on the other end, but then he said, "Done that myself more times than I can count. Tonight might even qualify. … That guy hurt you? 'Cause I—"

"Not intentionally." She clenched her pelvic muscles. Bruises were definitely forming. "There are things I just shouldn't be doing, but I do them anyway. And I'm being vague, and I'm talking a lot. But, as hard as it is to believe, I don't usually say this much."

"I believe it," he said, and the phone crackled with another rush of air. He was smoking. He must've been doing it for most of their conversation. "And you're not talking 'a lot'. Just a normally, okay? I also get that you tellin' me this is a big deal. It won't go anywhere."

"I appreciate it." She strode toward her bed. The clock on her nightstand revealed they'd been speaking for nine minutes. "I don't want to keep you up any longer."

"You feel any less alone?"

"A little."

"Honest answer," he said. "Here's one from me: I wish I could do more for you."

She smoothed the comforter on her bed, rearranged the pillows. "You can do only what I'll let you. If I wasn't afraid of burning through your good graces, I'd probably talk you to sleep … like I used to."

"You mean this?" Throaty snoring came through the phone. "I was fakin'. Heard every word you said back then."

"You did?"

"Even the story about you braiding your first horse's mane."

"Wow." Her legs became weak again, and she dropped onto the bed. "Your memory should be like a sieve with all the pot you smoked."

A coughing laugh rose to her ear then faded away. "One of the cosmos's little mysteries, I guess."

"Steven..." She lay back on the comforter and hugged a pillow to her chest. "I don't want to scare you off."

"Would take a lot to do that.."

"Is this okay? The fact I called you so late at night? That I'm—I'm—" Panic clogged her throat. She was trying to gauge her safety level with him but couldn't. "I won't do it again."

"It's cool, man. We all need someone sometimes, even at three in the morning. I'm glad you called me."

She hugged her pillow tighter "You are?"

"Wouldn't have said it otherwise. I'll let you know if a topic's off-limits. And even then, I'm not goin' anywhere. Not unless you tell me to, all right?"

She held her breath and hid her face in the pillow. This incredibly loving part of him existed when they were dating, but she'd had to cut through layers of defenses to reach it. Now, though, the shining, golden core of him seemed to fill his body and was radiating outward.

"Do you have a few more minutes?" she said, but surely he had some defenses left. She'd discover them safely if they were clearly marked, but they could be minefields, waiting to eviscerate her.

"Yup."

"Would you sing for me?"

"My voice ain't exactly at its best right now."

"Can you stay on pitch?"

"Probably. And I am in the jam room, so what the hell. Give me a sec." He left the phone and returned shortly. "I've got my acoustic. What do you want to hear?"

A thrill saturated her blood. After she'd slept with Rod the first time, Steven's recorded voice had kept her company, given her a modicum of hope. Tonight she had the real deal. "Singularity," she said.

"Sure," he said, followed by the rustling paper. "Putting you on speaker. Easier to play that way." The phone clicked. He strummed a cord, and it reverberated like he was in a small cavern. "Never thought I'd be singin' this to you."

The song's somber riff floated into her ear. His voice was soft but melodic, and when he came to the end of the second verse, he sang, "Please, doll, ain't worth dyin' ev'ry night. Ain't worth dyin' ev'ry night."

The lyric change ripped through her stomach. The word was supposed to be love, not doll, one of his old pet names for her. It had to be the original lyric that he or Ro revised for the album.

The riff changed, but the song had no true chorus, only an increase in emotional intensity. "I push down and push down my brain waves into booze," he sang. "I push down and push down that life's worse than a bruise..."

She began to cry again. It was a strange sensation, doing it in front of someone else, let alone at all. That ability was still so new to her, but Steven's music had given her access to it. Tears slid into her mouth. Snot built up in her nose, but she mouthed the song's next part with him: "I push down and push down the whole truth when I choose. I push down and push down the one loss I can't lose..."

He strummed the last chord after near-whispering the coda, and he picked up the phone. "Jackie?"

"Thank you," she said, not caring if he heard the tears her voice. For the first time since her dad died, she didn't feel alone.