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

CHAPTER 66
VAGABONDAGE

May 27, 1995

Foster City, California

Jackie's House
…

"You're still here," Jackie said. Steven had read through half the articles she'd been sent in the mail, learning what she tried to forget about herself, but he remained on the sofa.

"Should've been there." He jerked his head at her TV. Its blue screen cast an icy glow over her living room, but the TV remote had gone missing. She could shut off the VCR without the remote, but that would attack them with a late-night infomercial. Turning off the TV manually wasn't an option either. She was too afraid to leave Steven's side. Every second she had with him was precious and might be her last.

She twisted her fingers together. "You don't think I'm some kind of bondage-loving submissive, do you?"

"No more than I am."

"During the trial, I had to admit I liked rough sex," she said. "I was under oath, and 'friends' of mine already testified what I'd shared with them. But..." Her knuckles cracked. She was pulling on her fingers too hard. She'd need X-rays like Steven if she didn't stop. "Dale was the third person I'd had sex with after what Michael did. I was the one who'd initiated us doing it roughly—"

"You don't have to explain yourself. I get it."

"No, I need you to hear me." She quit tormenting her fingers and shoved her hands beneath her butt. "I'd developed an aversion to intimacy. That's what Sarah—my therapist—calls it. But I actually loved Dale and wanted to feel something with him while we had sex. I didn't know it then, but I was punishing myself through him. I was punishing myself for not stopping Michael in Chicago. Sarah helped me realize that, and..."

The nape of her neck prickled, and the sensation spread to her face. "I hadn't come with Michael the night he raped me, but I had with Dale in Oceanside. I kept punishing myself for that, too, long after it happened."

Steven nodded silently. She searched his gaze, fearing what she'd find, and discovered an understanding that went deeper than it should have.

"I'd traded intimacy for intensity," she said. "My body was used to associating Dale's pounding with pleasure by the time he made that tape. It responded automatically, despite that I hated what he was doing. Despite that I wanted him to stop." She rubbed her tingling cheeks. "What he did to me on that tape wasn't what we did together alone. It made me never want to be touched again … and it was humiliating! Coming in front of his friends. Being helpless in every way imaginable—"

"That fucker.… that fucking fucker tried to dehumanize you." Steven's leg was bouncing up and down, but his anger didn't frighten her. It was comforting. It was on her behalf.

She laughed coldly. "And my humiliation's on tape forever. The original is held by the California state prosecution's office. All copies made for the trial were destroyed, except for the one my dad called in a favor to get."

"How'd you get the original to give to the cops?"

"I played the most important game of pretend in my life." She patted the articles Steven hadn't yet read. They were piled on the cushion beside her, and one had a short summary of what she'd done. She could've let him read it, but it wasn't entirely accurate. "After filming, Dale brought me and his crew back to the house to 'celebrate,' and Dale made everyone—including me—his favorite cocktail: Satan's Handshake. I waited until they were all passed-out drunk, and I stole the tape."

"You should've set the house on fire."

"I considered it, but I had to get out of there."

"You've got huge balls, man," he said but shook his head like he'd gotten an ice cream headache. "What's the female equivalent of that expression?"

"There's isn't any."

"There should be."

She cupped his knee appreciatively. "If you don't run out of here after reading the rest of these articles, then we can get together with Donna and Ro sometime and come up with an expression."

"Sounds like a plan." A fragile smile graced his lips before he lowered his head. He began to read the top article from the pile, and she laid her cheek on his shoulder. It was an indulgence, but she needed as many solid memories as possible, to comfort her when the darkness fell.

Hyde's body was shaking. Jackie had dashed to the kitchen to make him more chamomile tea, but his stomach felt fine. This pain was deeper. Dale Fischer's lawyers had painted Jackie as a kink-loving attention-seeker. They'd tried to discredit her, arguing that she'd signed up to be part of Dale's film, that she'd been acting. The blood on her neck was makeup. None of the weapons had been real except for Dale's folding knife. But the knife was used only to free her from the ropes before Dale passed it off to Brenda, who'd stood many feet away from Jackie during Dale and Jackie's "sexual encounter".

Hyde paused before finishing the last article. It rested flat on his lap, but the words had burrowed so far into his brain that he needed a break. His gaze roved Jackie's sparsely-decorated walls. Despite living here for over five years, she clearly hadn't made the place a home. The sofas were comfortable, but they also could've belonged to anyone.

A talk with Sherry would change that. She wasn't just a killer bassist; she could decorate a turd of a room into a pearl.

"Shit..." His attempt at self-distraction was laughable. Thinking about the mundane didn't seem appropriate, but it was a grounding technique. He'd be no good to Jackie if he couldn't calm the hell down. "So calm the hell down," he said out loud, but berating himself wouldn't do her any good either.

His legs grew itchy with their stillness. He shifted their position and picked up the last article. Only three paragraphs were left to read, but they contained what he'd been waiting to see: the verdict and sentencing. Brenda, Paul and Vince pleaded no contest to false imprisonment and felony assault. The charges for accessory to felony sexual battery had been dropped—in exchange for testifying against Dale. That meant their sentences were minimal. They all got one year in prison, a year of probation, and a thousand-dollar fine.

Not enough. Not even close, but Dale's sentencing wasn't better. The jury had found him guilty of sexual battery, felony assault, and false imprisonment. The prosecution had recommended the maximum, a six-year prison sentence, but the judge gave him only three years in prison plus three years probation.

"Sip, don't guzzle," Jackie said when she brought him the tea. She removed the article from his hand. He'd unconsciously crushed part of it.

"Judges tell juries to be fuckin' objective." The tea was hot, and his hands weren't in any shape to hold anything, but he ignored that fact and raised the mug to his lips. "This hypocrite bought the defense's crap about you."

"That's what my dad said, too." She took the mug from him after he drank a small sip. "I don't like this. You're really shaking, Steven. Let me take you to the hospital."

"Not yet." His busted knuckles weren't the cause of the shakes. His soul was quaking. Her injuries, the relentless bombardment of injustice she'd endured ... "Any idea where Dale ended up after prison?"

"I know exactly what state he's in."

His eyebrows rose. When that didn't elicit a response, he said, "Where?"

"Do you want more tea?" She lifted the mug, but he declined. "Dale's … dead."

"Dead." The word weighed down his tongue. "Dead?"

Her eyes widened, and she planted a hand on his arm. "Oh, God—it wasn't me."

He blew out a breath, not that he believed she'd kill anyone.

"At least, not directly." She drank some of his tea. "A month after he got out of prison, he was found dead at some film-industry party. Details were never released to the public, but my dad..."

"You think he had something to do with it."

She nodded. "It might've been what killed him, the stress of that secret. His heart attack happened only a few months later." She blotted her wet eyes with her wrist. "It's like the universe had to balance things out. Someone I hated was dead, maybe killed, so someone I loved had to die. It's always like that." She swallowed more of his tea. "That's one reason I'm so nuts."

"Hey, you're not nuts, and the cosmos isn't out to get you." He passed her the tissue box. He'd emptied half of it himself already, but he wouldn't need it again. His emotions were finally settling. Hearing that Dale was sucking dirt had relaxed him. His shakes were subsiding.

"Steven..." She blew her nose and wrapped the used tissue in two clean ones. It was an old habit of hers, and he moved the trash bin to her side. "Michael hurts me. He's almost killed by a mugger, but I lose you—what?"

Hyde had clenched his fists and winced at the searing throb it caused. The truth was rising in this throat, being ejected by his soul, but he re-caged it by force of will. That he'd pulverized Kelso into a coma and left Jackie because of it was unforgivable. His choice, his betrayal, led to what happened to her on that tape, to her father's death. To all her losses. His presence in her life now was helping heal that damage.

And his own. Caging that one truth eternally was where selfishness and selflessness intersected. The agony it caused him served both as an apt sentence for his crime and trade-off for his friendship with Jackie.

"Keep goin'," he said. "I'm cool."

She inhaled deeply through her nose and scrubbed her hand over her mouth. "This is a pattern, no matter what's behind it. Ralph hurts me. His career's ruined—twice!—and I've become trapped in my own house, being sent articles about Dale."

"Wait a sec." He glanced at the heap of articles. "Those aren't—you mean, you didn't xerox those yourself?"

"No. I've been getting them for weeks."

"I'm assuming there's no return address."

"You assume correctly," she said. "But they're postmarked Oceanside, California."

He dug a hand painfully into his hair. Someone was screwing with Jackie's head. "You've got to get out of here and hire a P.I."

"And where would I go? My mom's?" She blew her nose again and hurled the tissue at the trash bin It missed. Hyde picked it up for her, ignoring his burning knuckles, and put it in the bin. "I want nothing to do with her," she continued, "and she's not talking to me, remember?. Anyway, she'd say I was sending the articles to myself to get attention."

"She doesn't believe Dale assaulted you."

"Because of the tape. She accepted the defense's interpretation of it. Of me."

He sagged against the back of the sofa. Exhaustion had leached into every part of him, but sleeping was at the bottom of his to-do list. "Some assholes are gonna believe the worst," he said. "no matter what you do. If a person's agenda is to see you as X, even if you're Y, they'll make up a rationale for Y fitting X."

Her nose wrinkled. "Algebra?"

"Delusion. Come On's retraction's coming out this week, but it won't make a damn difference to some people. They want to see me as a homewrecking demon child, so that's what I'll always be to 'em. Out of misplaced jealousy or some kind of fear." He rolled his shoulders, stretching out their last remaining knots. "Who the hell cares? As long as it doesn't interfere with my life."

"But what Dale did," she said, "how his lawyers discredited me did interfere with mine."

She pushed herself off the sofa and began to pace. "Does my 'lost week' make sense to you after all this? Why I withdrew from everything and everyone?" She shut off the VCR and TV set. Without the blue glaring at them, the present seemed more solid. "Missing Donna and Eric's wedding was horrible for me," she said, "but going would have been worse. I'd already gained so much weight by then, and I didn't know what Donna's snooping nose had dug up."

"Nothing," he said. "What happened in Oceanside wasn't national news," or Dale would've been dead before anyone else but Hyde got to him. Then Hyde wouldn't be sitting here with Jackie but on death row.

"My dad made sure of that. He protected me with his money, with his life." She circled behind the TV to the broken coffee table. She grasped one of the bent, splintered legs and snapped it off. "He was a genius with investments, regardless of his one huge misstep. He knew exactly what businesses to put money into, and he turned the little he had saved after prison into a lot. If he were still alive—" she slapped the broken leg against her palm—"if he were alive, those articles wouldn't be an issue."

Hyde went to her and gestured for the splintered leg. She gave it to him, and he placed it on the busted, upside-down table. "See what you just did there?" he said.

"I handed you the leg."

"You trusted me. You've been trustin' me the whole night, even though I demolished your table." And her life. "I'll find you a P.I. and a place to stay."

"I'm as safe here as I would be anywhere. Sheila won't let anyone get past her." She slid her fingertips over his wrist and grasped it gently. "But you can find me a P.I.—if you let me take you to the hospital."

"Deal."

Her grip tightened on his wrist. She pulled his arm around her waist but backed off before he could fully hold her. "I didn't ask," she said, and horror stared at him from her eyes. "I forced you—"

"Not a capital offense."

"I won't do that again."

"Appreciate that, but—" he patted his chest—"I've been waitin' to hug you for hours."

She approached him hesitantly. "You have?"

"Yup," he said, and she glided her arms around his back. He tucked her head beneath his chin as he held her. "This good?"

"I can't believe you haven't left." Her breaths moved against his chest and stomach. Their regularity gave him solace. She was alive and strong. Dale was dead, but someone was using his ghost to weaken her. "I just … I can't believe it."

"I get why, but start." Because her struggles were his now, as they always should have been.