Hello!
I wondered if I should finish this story first and upload all of it at once - as a long one shot - but I decided to devide it into chapters instead, to already be able to upload some of it. It will have... three to four parts all in all. We'll see how it devides itself as I'll write more and more of it.
I'll try upload once a week, around the weekend.
Enjoy!
They know each other for roughly two months now, ever since they both started their Freshman Year at Hollywood Arts.
Jade became quick friends with Cat (though she isn't sure herself how that happened), while Beck did with Andre and Robbie. As Cat and Robbie also quickly started to become friends, they kind of all spend time together. At least lunch. Jade isn't too keen on spending every break with someone, but she somehow enjoys being around Cat and why not eat lunch with the others too? She still barely knows them though.
She finds Beck attractive but she knows, nothing will ever happen between them. For one, because Beck will never want to. He would never go for a girl like her. But she also doesn't want to date him. He appears to be sickenly perfect and she finds it unnerving. Well, the only thing that doesn't seem perfect is how... he just doesn't seem to be able to say no. How weak he is.
Every time she sees him, there seems to be another girl close and flirting with him or being all over him in any other way. She doesn't think he likes it. He flirts back at first and enjoys it. He seems flattered every now and then but at some point he starts getting irritated by it as far as she can tell. She always had a knack for reading people and Beck's face and body language make her believe that he would like to have time alone or just with his friends at school too and that the girls often go overboard for him when he just wants to have a quick flirt (or even just smalltalk with a stupid smile that will make you believe he flirts with you). But he never says anything to any girl about it. Because he just isn't able to say what he wants.
It doesn't matter to her. She doesn't care what he feels like or what he wants. It's not like they are friends or anything.
But his weakness crosses over into her life when they eat lunch together with Cat, Robbie and Andre and there are always some other girls present too, to talk to Beck.
She sits at another table a few times and Cat mostly sits with her then but for Cat's sake, she tries to sit with everyone else too, as Cat wants that – and she is friends with Cat somehow.
It's going on her nerves. It's going on everyone's nerves, she assumes. But nobody says anything and she isn't having any of it anymore.
She's getting a headache as there are two girls around Beck once more, giggling at some off-hand comment he made about Andre's story about his last class.
"Stop," Jade suddenly cuts through.
She knows she could just as well walk away but Cat wouldn't like it and she honestly also enjoyed how Andre told his story just now and knows something to say to that herself. If that stupid giggling wouldn't give her a headache.
Everyone at the table looks at her in confusion and okay, she also doesn't like those girls looking at her with those dumb faces, so she easily tells them: "Piss off, you stupid idiots!"
"Excuse you?" one of them says.
"Are you talking to us?" the other one checks.
Both of them are absolutely shocked.
"Yes," she says. "Leave! You're annoying as hell."
The girls open their mouthes and close them again as they share a look, then they stand up and one of them says: "We don't have to allow you to talk to us like this!"
The other one turns to Beck. "Beck? Will you come with us?"
Beck almost looks like a deer caught in headlight which is sort of funny. For a moment, she wants to wait and see what'll happen. She's sure he will stand his ground now. He wants to stay and eat lunch with his friends, so he won't go with those girls. Which will finally require him to say no.
She does want to see that but she knows the girls will start arguing then, trying to convince him to go with them. She'll end that before it can start, so her headache can't worsen: "No, he's staying! You're leaving!"
"You don't own Beck," one of them says.
She doesn't. She doesn't want to. Still, if that's what they need to hear to go away: "And what if I do?"
Her tone is aggressive and decicive enough that they share another look, before all they leave without another word.
"Okay," Andre makes, looking unsure between Jade and Beck.
He's not actually thinking that Jade meant that she did own Beck because they are a couple or something, right?
"They were annoying," Robbie makes Rex say which probably means Robbie thinks so as well but doesn't dare say so.
That's the only prompt Cat needs to say: "My brother once got called annoying by some guy. He bit into his hand because of it."
Well, that sounds much more interesting than talking about the girls that just left. "Was there blood?" Jade asks.
"Lots," Cat answers beaming as she notices that Jade likes that.
Their lunch is much more relaxed after that, at least Jade thinks so. They end up all laughing together.
.
.
He has found Jade attractive as soon as he saw her for the first time. But he knows they will never be together. For one, she would never go for a guy like him. And he also doesn't want to date her. She's just so grumpy and untalkitive and... he needs someone to talk to, to share opinions with. He isn't sure why Cat likes her, honestly, but he also finds Cat weird and while Jade seems too grumpy, Cat seems too happy in a way.
But just because he might find Jade somewhat strange, doesn't mean he can't appreciate what she just did. She actually got those girls away from him at least for lunch period, which is amazing. It's not like he has constantly been surrounded by girls but it has been a lot since he arrived at Hollywood Arts and finally got settled enough to find all his classes. It's going on his nerves but he has never been good at telling people off.
His parents taught him to always be polite. That's how he was raised. It's difficult for him to find the right words to turn girls away politely. Not to mention that he also enjoys the light flirting and there are a few girls he wants to flirt with more as well. It's just that at some point it becomes too much for him and he never knows when to draw the line and how to tell anyone when it's too much for him.
And then there are girls he could very well imagine to befriend but nothing more and they talk to him as if they want to be friends too but some time into them talking, he gets this inkling that they try to get closer. They start touching his arm or alike, playfully and... how do you turn a person away when they never outright say they want to date you? If he's misreading the signals and they're just being nice, he would look like an idiot, saying he doesn't want to date them.
He knows he has to say something sooner or later. Though maybe he doesn't.
After lunch, he walks up to Jade at her locker.
"Hey, Jade."
She turns to him with a cocked eyebrow and for some reason she knows what topic is on his mind: "Don't tell me that you can't stand up for yourself in front of those girls but will confront me for telling them off."
Wait. Does Jade know that he doesn't feel able to stand up for himself in a situation like earlier at lunch?
"No," he slowly answers. "The opposite." He doesn't want to confront her at all.
"Huh?" she makes, not understanding.
How can she? He explains: "I... I don't know when and how to tell them that it's too much for me. We had such a great lunch just now, without anyone around. So, you know... I wondered if you could do that again?"
He doesn't know why she would do it, but it doesn't hurt to ask, right? It didn't seem like she felt uncomfortable at all, doing that.
"What? Be your bodyguard?" she asks.
"Sort of," he responds. Though obviously, there is a very easy way to get all those girls away from him. At least for a while, until everyone knows each other and are more used to each other and then it all should go back to like it was at middle school, right? Where he might've been popular, also among girls, but flirting wasn't such a big topic. "If you're fine with it, maybe we can just pretend to be a couple for a while, so they stop with all of that."
If she pretended to be his girlfriend, with her reaction just now and her whole attitude all around, there barely would be any flirting anymore, right? They would stay away from him. And then, they can pretend to break up at one point. He doesn't think it will get back to how it is now then. Not when they all know each other better and are settled into the new school year.
Jade looks at him for a long moment, a cocked eyebrow again. Then she says: "If I was your girlfriend, I would draw the line much sooner than just now."
"Even better," he honestly says.
Jade looks at him for another moment, bevor she closes her locker and walks away, leaving him standing there.
.
.
Why shouldn't she do it? She likes scaring people away. And she would be more than happy to never have any other girls sit with them for lunch. That way she might actually enjoy eating lunch with Cat, Beck, Andre and Robbie.
She isn't sure that Beck actually knows what this means. She knows he likes a little bit of all the flirting. But she wouldn't even allow that. And how can she believingly chase them away at some point into the flirting, if she wouldn't allow any of it as his actual girlfriend?
Beck probably can't comprehend all that. But he'll see.
She gets her first chance to show him how it'll be when she walks into school the next morning. He's at his locker. He also just must have arrived there. There's already a girl there. Jade thinks she's from their year. Lauren or something.
Beck seems to enjoy the conversation, even when Lauren touches his arm while laughing. Yeah, no, Jade wouldn't allow that if she was Beck's girlfriend.
That's why she promptly walks up to Beck and Lauren. "What's going on?"
Beck looks at her in surprise. He can't have noticed her before. Lauren meanwhile already seems kind of intimidated.
"What do you mean?" she asks carefully.
"Leave him alone!" Jade tells her, glaring at her.
Lauren takes a step back but doesn't take flight directly.
Jade steps even closer to Beck, putting her hand on his shoulder, leaning into him. "I'm his girlfriend, so get your hands off of him," she tells Lauren.
Lauren's eyes widen, before she says a quick 'sorry' and then leaves.
Jade waits until she's around the corner, before she lets go of Beck and turns to him with a cocked eyebrow. "Is that what you want?"
Beck actually smiles. "Yes, thank you."
.
.
Even though Beck likes some of the flirting, it relieves him a whole lot to have Jade chasing every girl away now, as soon as they are even slightly flirting. He somehow has much more time to spend with his new friends and he enjoys that a whole lot.
When Jade also makes a girl go away for lunch, saying she's with Beck, also sitting right next to him, their friends look at them slightly confused.
"Oh. You're a couple now?" Andre asks.
Beck exchanges a look with Jade. She doesn't seem to care what he tells his friends. He considers telling them the truth. That would be the decent thing to do. But even if he don't know Andre and Robbie that well... He guesses they could spill the beans if they knew. Not on purpose, but accidentely.
"Yeah," he therefore says.
Cat beams. "I knew it! I thought right away that you would be perfect together."
"Right", Jade only makes, before: "What happened with your math homwork you whined about yesterday?"
That's that. They don't question it anymore. Beck feels as if Robbie is watching them for another long moment but nobody says anything more about it. And Beck's just left confused that Cat thought them perfect together. Well... Cat is weird.