Disclaimer: That '70s Show copyright The Carsey-Werner Company, LLC and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC. The fictional band 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 59
AGAINST

April 8, 1995

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Hyde and Ro's House
…

Hyde held Ro for a good three minutes after he stepped inside their house. Her body was stiff at first, but she relaxed into him and knotted her hands at the small of his back. Her hair smelled clean, like shampoo, and not like cigarettes. The house had no fresh smoke in it, either. She was gearing up for recording the next Degenerate Matter album, letting her throat heal.

"Man, I missed you," he said before releasing her. In her black L7 tee and low-slung jeans, she fit their living room perfectly. She was all rock n' roll, like the record albums packing the bookshelves and concert posters on the walls. "You have any trouble while I was gone?"

"No," she said and gave him a once-over. "Did you have trouble getting back?"

He didn't flinch from her gaze. "Some."

"But you are back." She scraped her nails over the stubble of his jawline. "I feel it."

"Yeah." He grasped her hand and brought it to his lips. He kissed the back of her knuckles, like she'd done to him before he'd left.

She pulled him toward the sofa, and they sat down. His luggage remained by the front door, including the duffel containing Edna's personal items, but he'd take care of it later. He shrugged off his denim jacket and leaned back on the cushions. He smelled like sweat. A shower and a shave were on the agenda, but Ro glided her arms around him and snuggled in.

"You sure you want to do that?" he said. "I stink."

"You smell like you."

"Don't know if that's a compliment."

She inhaled deeply. "It is. What happened in Vegas?"

He put his arm around her waist. They hadn't sat together like this in months. She hadn't been this soft with him in longer than that. "You really are damn intuitive."

"Your spirit's been heavy for so long. Not hard to spot the difference. What happened?"

"A story that doesn't need telling right now."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm good." He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. The CONDEMNED sign on their relationship had been pried off. He was no longer dependent on her light. His core had reignited, and he'd risen above the horizon. "What happened is the kind of thing you hate hearin' about."

"I'm true to my word, love. We had a compromise. You've got one story on credit, and I'm willing to listen."

He patted her hips. Her integrity was what had first drawn him to her music and then to her. "Later," he said, and his fingertips slipped under her shirt and over her stomach.

She answered his cue by cupping his neck. Her nails scratched the skin at his nape, and her mouth pushed against his. Her other hand clawed at his fly, and soon he was inside her, and her body was rocking on top of him. She'd gone full-throttle in six seconds.

He grasped her waist, tried to get a moment to breathe. "Can't do it this way," he said, even as his dick ached for her to go faster. The rest of him, though, was an emotional bruise. "We've got to slow down."

"Oh, are you tired?" she said, smirking, and squeezed him deep within her. He cursed at the sensation. It had made him both harder and nauseated. "Hyde?" Her heat disappeared from him, and her fingertips swept over his sweating forehead.

He'd shut his eyes. His heart was jackhammering against his ribs, and his breath came out in short bursts. He was with Ro and no one else, but his body reacted differently. This had to be the am-I-insane? mental-emotional state Jackie warned him about.

"Hyde, talk to me," Ro said, panic rising in her voice. "Is it food poisoning? Did you eat fish on the plane?"

"Not sick." His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, but he opened his eyes. Ro was standing over him with only her shirt on. "We can't fuck this way anymore."

"What way?"

His underwear and jeans were in a pile together on the floor. He leaned down and pulled them both back onto his legs. "Where you screw me or blow me before I know what the hell's happening."

"Second time would've been slower." She clasped his shoulders and straddled his lap. He'd had no time to button his fly. "It's this tabloid nonsense, isn't it? What Come On said about you being a homewrecker. That's when this started, why you're so skittish."

"No, man. It's..." nothing he could explain, not without her losing her shit. "I don't know." He tapped her back, signaling he was about to stand. She didn't weigh enough to make him uncomfortable, but her presence on his lap was like Mack Truck. It was crushing him, and he needed to pace, to be unencumbered by anyone else's body.

"I don't know," he repeated and got to his feet. He buttoned his fly and wandered the living room aimlessly. "It just has to be different."

"Because of Jackie."

His eyes flicked toward her. He tried to sharpen his gaze, but her face was a blur. "She's got nothin' to do with it." He rubbed the nape of his neck, and it stung. His skin had broken where she'd scratched it. "I don't like bleeding when I screw."

"You always bleed when we screw." She hadn't put her underwear back on, and she approached him somewhere near the kitchen door. "On the inside, love. It's how you release whatever's clotted in your veins. People have all sorts of coping mechanisms, usually destructive." She showed him her forearm with its galaxy of musical note tattoos. "But we can transform how we cope into something constructive. Music became my razor. Rough sex became your alcohol—"

Her fingers curled around his wrist. She dragged his hand between her thighs and said, "I've never had a problem with it."

"You fuckin' encouraged it."

"What if I have?" She took control of his fingers, and his stomach hollowed out. He needed a break from touching, from being touched, but withdrawing would send the wrong message. "You've given as good as you've gotten," she said.

His body jerked, as if a thousand white-hot needles pricked his skin. He rubbed his back against the kitchen door at his sudden itchiness, but she wasn't wrong. "I need something different."

She shoved his hand away from her legs. "Something or someone?"

"Damn it, Spark!" He pushed past her but didn't go far. He stopped at the edge of the sofa. "Does every tough conversation between us have to turn into a freakin' brawl?"

She glanced at the ceiling, and her chest rose with a deep breath. "So you want to fuck differently."

"Yeah."

"Show me."

He dug his hands into his hair and pushed it off his face. Cooking them dinner, watching bad TV, having a few laughs—that was what he needed. Then tomorrow or next week, after he'd processed his experiences in Vegas, he'd show Ro how sex between them had to evolve.

"Show me," she repeated. The threat in her voice was obvious, the fear. If he didn't screw her now, she'd kick him out of the house or leave herself.

He gestured for her to come to him. She approached, and he wrapped his arm around her waist. His lips brushed softly against her mouth, and she responded like they'd never kissed before. Her movements were tentative, and one of their most exhilarating moments blazed in his memory: bungee jumping off Kawarau Bridge in New Zealand. As adventurous as she was climbing the lighting truss during concerts, she'd hesitated before taking that leap with him.

The bungee operator lashed the bungee harness around their waists and legs. She clutched Hyde's body as if she were drowning, and she screamed into his neck while they plunged toward the Kawarau River.

She was clutching him now, much the same way, on the sofa. As their bare skin slid over each other, he sensed her desire for control in every touch, but she acted like an equal partner instead. He anticipated a thrilling payoff, just like on that bridge in New Zealand. But the further they went, the more he struggled against his own desire to hole up in the garage. To tinker with his Camaro, to find a distraction from the disgust raging through his blood.

She gasped by his neck as he entered her. He'd positioned himself the way she liked, so that each thrust would rub against her most sensitive parts. Her pleasure was vital to this experience, to teach her the value of sex to him beyond releasing his emotional wounds.

Her wordless voice indicated he was doing a decent job. She met his strokes with every tilt of her hips, but she wouldn't meet his gaze.

"Where are you?" he said.

Her feet hooked around the back of his calves. "Don't … talk!"

"Ro—"

Her features twisted like she was being tortured. She'd become lost somewhere inside her mind, and he felt like a machine, all pistons and circuitry.

Their disconnection was worse than his flashbacks. He strengthened the power of his strokes until his nerve endings burned, and she finally opened her eyes. The corners of her mouth lifted into a smile. She'd come back. She was with him, and she caressed the back of his head before gripping his hair.

He grunted at the pain in his scalp, at the bruises he was slamming into life. They'd both be black and blue after this, but the needles jabbing his body grew scorching hot. The more he gave her, the deeper the needles went. Electricity flashed through their shafts, shorting him out, making him numb.

"You're soft, love. You can stop. You can stop."

His awareness reemerged in a haze. His arms shook with the effort of supporting his weight, and his whole body was a throb. He must have come, but he couldn't remember.

"I can live with this," Ro said once he pulled out of her. Her normally pale skin was flushed, and she pushed her damp hair from her eyes. "That was—" she laughed and swirled her finger on his sweaty chest—"unexpected."

He scooted away from her. He sat on the armrest of the sofa and covered his face with both hands.

She kicked at his ribs with her feet. "Why do you look defeated?"

"Exhausted." He grabbed her ankles, and she laughed again. "You've got to let me initiate," leave him be, give him time to integrate what he'd opened up in Vegas. "For a while—couple of weeks, maybe—I've got to call the shots."

"Like I said, I can live with that." She crawled to where he sat on the sofa's armrest. Her forearm draped over his lap, and she leaned her cheek on wrist. She wasn't usually physically affectionate after sex. Any other day, he would've devoured every second of it, but being touched felt like being whipped.

"Might mean days without foolin' around," he said.

Her nails scratched patterns into his leg. "What we just did is worth waiting for."

"You'd be cool with that?"

She sat up straight, but her forearm remained on his lap. "You came back for me. You saw that I was falling, suffering, and you dove after me with a rope." Her finger skimmed along the top of his thigh. "I can wait … but until then, I've got other ways to get off."

He turned toward her and quirked up an eyebrow. "I've seen your drawer."

"I can be inventive."

"Don't I know it."

He cradled her face in his hands as anxiety slithered through his circulatory system. She'd promised patience, but the rope he'd saved her with was his noose.

April 18, 1995

Foster City, California

PriceMart
…

Jackie scoured the magazine racks at PriceMart. The store had a large selection of classy titles to choose from, but her only interest was the tabloids. She pulled one rag after another from the rack, just as she'd done last Tuesday. That was the day new issues were put on sale, with their sensationalist headlines and unflattering pictures of celebrities on the cover.

She brought the tabloids to a remote corner of the store and sat on a short stepladder. Rulers, protractors, and compasses surrounded her, but the school supplies aisle was free of people. Yesterday had been Tax Day, and a most of Foster City's residents were busy at work, making up for their day off.

Not her, though. She had no job, and she'd taken care of her taxes early anyway, like she always did. As her dad had taught her to do.

She flipped through the tabloid pages carefully, and her breath staggered whenever Steven's name or Degenerate Matter was mentioned. The band had begun recording its fourth album. Paparazzi were stationed across the street from Steven's recording studio in Minneapolis, and the latest rumor had him sleeping with Sherry Chambers, the band's bassist. A photo in Celebritude Magazine showed him putting his headphones on Sherry's head, as if that indicated afterglow.

"Whatever," Jackie whispered, but the tabloids' lies were less damaging than publicizing the truth would be. Steven was practicing temporary celibacy. He told her about it a week ago, after he'd read one of the books she recommended. Flashbacks were hitting him hard, but time off from sex would help his body and mind recover. That was his private business, and she prayed it stayed that way.

Just like continuing therapy was her private business. After a session over the phone, she decided going in person was worth the risk of exposure. Releasing the pain of Dale Fischer's violations was a long-avoided necessity. But it also helped lower the intensity of the paparazzi's affect on her. No panic attacks so far. Only anxiety, although Valium was another tool she was using, under the specific guidelines of her psychiatrist.

She put Celebritude aside and opened Come On Magazine. It had no Degenerate Matter stories this week. Perhaps it was treading cautiously, thanks to Steven and the Formans' lawsuit against it.

Only one more tabloid was left to search through, The Weekly Meddler. She used to read it on a semi-regular basis. The writing had a sarcastic sense of humor about it, reminiscent of gossiping in high school. Now those memories sickened her.

She scanned the magazine but thoroughly, checking all the sidebars and collage pages. No familiar names were mentioned until three-quarters through. A two-page spread featured celebrity wives and ex-wives who "used to be fat." Two pictures of Jackie occupied the right page, somewhere near the crease.

The left-most photo showed her at her heaviest, when she'd weighed a little over two-hundred pounds. It was out of focus, as if had been snapped in secret. Next to it was a headshot of her ex-husband, Ralph. He was in full Wildebeest mode, with long teased hair and feminine makeup.

Completing the sandwich of humiliation was a more recent photo of Jackie, taken before she'd dyed her hair back to brunette. The caption read, "JACKIE BURKHART, SCOTTY ROXX'S EX-WIFE." At least it didn't say, "AND STEVEN HYDE'S CURRENT MISTRESS," but only two people could've supplied The Weekly Meddler with those photos: her mom or her stepfather, Anders.

"Excuse me, miss." A PriceMart employee, likely in her forties, stood nearby. She had on a variation of the red smock Eric used to wear, back when he'd worked at the Point Place store. "Do you plan on paying for those magazines? This isn't a library."

Jackie got off the stepladder with her pile of tabloids, making sure The Weekly Meddler was on top. "Oh, I already paid for them. With my privacy." She opened The Meddler to the two-page photo spread. "See?" She pointed to her pictures. "That's me."

The PriceMart employee took a closer look at the magazine. "'Famous Former Fatties' ..." She glanced at Jackie then back down at the magazine. "Wow, you lost a ton of weight."

"The title of the spread is a misnomer," Jackie said. "I'm not famous. I was married to someone famous. These tabloids make up so much bullshit they should strive to be as correct as possible about every other detail." She passed the magazines into the PriceMart employee's hands. "And, no, I'm not buying them. Why would I fund the invasion of my privacy?"

She walked away from the employee but waved at her before leaving the aisle. "See you next week!"

Sheila, Jackie's bodyguard, was waiting outside PriceMart. Her six-foot-two frame was packed with both muscle and fat. She had tanned white skin, brown hair lightened by the sun, and ten years experience in security. Her company was all women and based in San Mateo. Jackie would've used a male company if necessary. She had before, but Steven was the only man she trusted with her body. Maybe that would change someday, but for now she had to respect her limits.

Sheila accompanied Jackie back to her house on Flying Mist Isle, where the rest of her security team was waiting. It had kept her property clear of paparazzi for over a week. She slept better at night because of it, and neighbors stopped leaving nasty messages on her answering machine.

Or they'd simply taken an intermission. In the living room, the machine's red light was blinking. She pressed play, and Steven's voice came through the speaker: "Hey, Jackie. Don't got to call me back. Just wondering if you've worked more on those lyrics. We're savin' that song for last, so no rush."

He laughed, and the sound caressed her skin like cashmere. "Actually, I'd like you to get on it. Otherwise, I'm gonna have to write it all myself. I've already got twenty songs I'm buried in—and the number's goin' up. Freakin' double concept album.

"Anyway, no rush, man. Have it done by tomorrow."

He laughed again before hanging up, and she laughed with him. He was joking, but she had been working on the song. Mostly she had a few images, but a fuller idea was forming.

The next message was from a paparazzo, asking for inside information about Steven. The frequency of those messages had decreased, but changing her phone number was on her to-do list.

"Jackie, this is Anders," the third message began. "I understand your mistrust, but please reconsider meeting with me. We were both hurt by your mother, and I believe we can help each other."

He left the number for his office like last time, but she still had no intention of seeing him, especially after the "Famous Former Fatties" spread in The Weekly Meddler. Ever since Dale Fischer, she had a strict no-photograph policy. Her mom knew that. Anders knew that, and yet two candid photos of her surfaced in that tabloid.

She slumped to the carpet and hunched over her knees. She'd been deliberately targeted, maybe for being her mom's daughter and not her sister. If her mom and Anders planned on making this a war, using Jackie's past as a weapon, they could wipe out her present and any hopes for her future.