Big thanks as always to the loverly Tania, and I hope you enjoy. Let me know if you do!
Three: Drinking 'Til You Just Can't Drink No More….
Jackie moaned deep in her throat, her back arching as Hyde's mouth latched onto her pulse point. Her hands slid restlessly up and down his back as she tried to pull his weight further down onto her. It didn't matter how the summer kept dragging on because Jackie's new hobby was keeping her more than occupied enough.
Hyde's mouth slid up her neck and to her earlobe, licking across the patch of skin just below it. Jackie shivered in his arms and tilted her head to the right to nuzzle her cheek against his. His beard rasped against her skin, the sensation of it so new and foreign.
His hands were resting along the arm of the couch just behind her head, his fingers tangled in the silky strands of her hair as his body hovered over hers. His weight was solid and real as it surrounded her, but unlike the stifling heat of summer, his warmth felt delicious. Her fingers trailed along his sides, and then down around his ribcage, soaking in that heat as she learned the contours of his body.
It had been just over a week, and she was finally becoming resigned to the fact that this little fling was not necessarily a bad thing. She came over to the Forman's all of the time anyway, and it was definitely helping to pass the slow summer months without dwelling on all of the crap that had happened recently.
Plus, damn if Steven wasn't a good kisser.
But, as it was a fling, and still a little creepy to think about the fact that they were fooling around, it was a silent mutual agreement that they keep these little rendezvous a secret. And that meant being very careful when it came to about mid-morning as that was right about the time that the other two would crawl out of their holes and end up in the basement.
"Steven."
The word came out as a soft groan. Hyde ignored her, shifting his weight and dragging his lips down the curve of her jaw.
"Steven," Jackie said again. Her hands slipped up his torso and pushed lightly on his chest. "Eric… he's going to be down any minute."
Again Hyde ignored her, moving his mouth back to hers. His tongue darted out to trace the line of her lips and urge them open.
Jackie persisted, however, kissing him back once before returning to the matter at hand. "Steven, we have to stop." She pushed at his shoulders again.
Hyde pulled up then. His hands gripped the back of the couch as he supported his weight off of her, tugging accidentally at her hair. He looked at her blankly for a second before speaking. "Jackie. There's a time and a place for you to be talking, but it isn't around me."
She rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to protest, but Hyde saw this as his perfect opportunity and returned to her parted lips. His tongue delved inside, and it didn't take Jackie very long to lose her train of thought as he scraped lightly along the bottom of her teeth and then rolled across the roof of her mouth. Her tongue reached out to meet his, and then guided it back into her mouth. Jackie's fingers twisted on his shirt as her head canted and her lips opened wider.
All ideas about how dangerous it was for them to keep going melted away as the kiss deepened. Jackie's hands smoothed around under his arms to return to his back and her legs wrapped around his thighs, trapping him to her body. She arched up again as their lips and tongues danced along with each other.
Hyde smiled against her mouth and inched back just a bit. "That's much better," he said, dropping one kiss on her chin before going back to her mouth. This time, however, they didn't get the chance to get much further as the sound of the basement door slamming open echoed against the walls.
"Crap." Hyde jerked away from Jackie to sit up, but his fingers were still tangled in her hair.
"Ouch!" she whined, one hand pushing against his chest and the other going up to smooth out her silky locks.
"Shut up," he ordered back. He shoved himself off of her, forgetting that her legs were still wrapped around his. "Crap!" The curse came much louder this time as Hyde lost his balance and tipped over the side of the couch.
Jackie's eyes grew round and her hand slapped over her mouth to cover her eruption of giggles. She straightened up to a sitting position on the couch and folded her legs beneath her. Laughter danced in her eyes as she stared down at him.
Hyde pulled himself off of the ground to kneel in front of the couch, and he couldn't help but glance up at Eric as he hopped down the stairs. The embarrassment written on his features was quickly hardened down to that famous Hyde scowl.
Eric paused on the steps. "What're you guys doing?"
Hyde stood up quickly and brushed off his jeans. He opened his mouth to respond, but Jackie beat him to the punch.
"Steven was just declaring his deep and unending love for me." Her arm stretched along the back of the couch as she twisted to see Eric. "But, sadly, I'm going to have to turn him down." She turned back to Hyde, a sympathetic smile curving her lips. "It's the beard… and the ratty t-shirts. They do absolutely nothing for me."
Both guys rolled their eyes. "I dropped my sunglasses." Hyde picked said sunglasses off of the table before heading back to his seat. "Jackie was just getting in my way. Like she's always getting in my way."
"Really, Hyde?" Eric took the last step and walked over to his friend, placing a hand on his shoulder. He cocked his head at Jackie. "Cause I know how you've always had a little bit of a thing for the bossy and shallow. I think it has something to do with the whiny pitch in their voices. I mean, who wouldn't fall in love with that?"
Jackie raised one eyebrow haughtily. "Actually, Eric. I think it has a little bit more to do with the fact that I'm hot." She held up her hands, palm up, and smiled prettily. Her gaze slid over to Hyde as he looked at her impassively. "And I am not shallow!"
"Whatever." Eric slumped down on the couch beside her. "Is it 'The Price is Right' time?" His voice was even flatter than normal as he focused on the TV. "Because, you know, 'The Price is Right' time is the high-light of my every summer day."
"Well, then, Mr. Lazy Guy." Eric winced at the chipperness in Jackie's voice. "You probably should have been down here over an hour ago. We've moved on to 'The Family Feud.'"
"Aw." Eric slumped down into his seat and kicked his feet up onto the table.
"I'm glad that you weren't up here for 'The Price is Right,' though. You're such a drag to watch game shows with." Jackie nodded matter-of-factly.
"I am not!"
"I'm sorry, man, because you know how much I hate to agree with Jackie." Hyde ignored the glare that she shot him. "But you suck even more than usual this summer."
Eric sighed heavily. That little boy pout settled over his features, pulling at the edges of his lips and dragging down his eyebrows. "I'm sorry. It's just that, you know. She's been gone almost a month – " Eric was cut off by the collective groans of the other two.
"Not this again," Hyde moaned.
Jackie opened her mouth to speak, but stopped when Fez swung open the door and glided through.
"Good morning, my dearest friends." He grinned at them and dropped down into the lawn chair. "Is it not just a beautiful day? The sun is shining; the birds are singing their wonderful tunes…" He paused when his gaze landed on Eric. "And Eric is crying like a little girl once again."
"I'm not crying," Eric protested, crossing his arms over his chest. "I'm just… I'm just…"
"Crying," Hyde finished for him matter-of-factly.
Eric shot him a defeated look. "Crying."
"Seriously, Eric." Jackie poked him in the arm. "Are you really going to just sit there and mope about Donna all summer long?"
"Yes."
Hyde and Fez both groaned again, turning their attention to the television, intent on the idea that they would ignore Eric for the rest of the morning. But Jackie wasn't finished with him just yet.
"Come on," she told him, poking him in the arm again to get his attention. "You just need to be more like me. I mean, Michael left me, but you don't hear me complaining about it all of the time, do you?"
This was enough to pull Hyde back into the conversation. "Yes, we do. Everyday. You're worse than Fez," he said, gesturing across the room.
Fez glanced away from the T.V., chagrined, but then, his face broke like he was going to cry. "Kelso is my friend!"
"Crap, man," Hyde groused, dismissing them all with a wave of his hand. "I really need to find some less girly friends. Donna was the biggest man in this bunch."
"Okay, look, you guys." Jackie waved her hands in the air to quiet them down. She stopped for a second before turning to Hyde in agreement. "You know, she really was… Anyway, as I was saying. We have all let Donna and Michael ruin too much of our summer, and I for one, am tired of how lame these past few weeks have been. We need to do something fun."
Eric looked at her blankly. "I'm not letting you paint my fingernails."
Jackie rolled her eyes. "Please, like I'd go near those cuticles." She shifted on the couch to turn more toward Eric and Hyde. "No, okay, here's the plan. My parents are out of town, so how about you boys come over and we'll have one night, just one night, to bitch and complain and get Michael and Donna out of our systems. Then, it will be over and behind us, and we can start having some fun with our summer!" Her smile was wide and excited as she clapped her hands eagerly.
"No, thank you."
"Uh, no."
"Are you still here?"
Jackie slapped Eric's arm, refusing to let them put a damper on her great idea. "Come on, guys. It'll be fun."
Eric didn't even look at her when he batted her hand away. "Jackie, I hear you complain enough when you come over to my basement everyday against my will. Why would I knowingly walk into a situation where I know you'll be talking?"
She was quiet for a moment as she regarded the three losers that she was, for some unknown reason, wasting her summer away with. She really wanted to do this party. It would be good for all of them. "Well," she replied. "You've all seen my parent's liquor cabinet, right?" She smiled satisfactorily.
"Oh, goodie."
"Alrighty then."
"I'll see you tonight."
*********************************************
"It's just…" Eric took a giant swig of his beer and gestured wildly with his free hand. "Why did she have to leave, you know? Everybody knows that I'm all stupid at first, but I generally come around. I mean, I usually pull it together in the end, right?"
Jackie shook her head, not sparing him a glance. "Can you believe that his solution to solving all of our problems was to kiss another girl? How horrible is that? I'm mad that you cheated on me, so we'll be even if I get to cheat on you. In what world does that solve any problems?"
It was well past mid-night and the two were sitting side by side on the floor in front of the couch in the Burkhart living room. The floor around them was littered with beer cans, empty bottles, and overturned glasses. The other two had long since dropped out of their bitchfest in favor of sleep. Fez now snored quietly, all curled up in an armchair, while Hyde lay stretched out on the sofa behind them.
Eric wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "I always have to let my stupid pride get in the way of things, and it's like Red said. What do I have to be so proud about? I mean, how often does a guy like me get a girl like Donna? I was the luckiest man on Earth!"
"No, you know who the luckiest man on Earth was? Michael." Jackie pointed her almost empty beer in Eric's direction. "Seriously, he cheats on me like a billion times with sluts like Pam Macy and your sister, and I still take him back! Then, he tells me he's not sorry that he broke my heart into a million pieces because I was mad he couldn't buy me tater tots? I deserve tater tots! And he deserves… he deserves… well, he deserves something bad like syphilis or balding, that's for sure."
Eric swallowed down the last of his beer and set it down on the ground in the pile of other empty beer cans beside him. He rubbed a hand tiredly over his forehead. "It was supposed to be true love." His words slurred together as he glanced over at Jackie. "I've known her my whole life, and she's been like this great friend, and she's so beautiful, and I would do anything for her." He paused. "I can't believe that I screwed this up again! How can one guy be so idiotic?"
Jackie threw up her hands in agreement, a drop of beer swishing over the side of the can at the sudden movement. "I know. How many times did Michael have to screw me over before I realized what a stupid idiot he was?" She tapped Eric on the arm and looked at him in all seriousness. "I'm generally much better at reading people."
Eric looked at her, cocking his head in confusion as if it were the first time that evening that he was seeing her. He realized that she hadn't been listening to a word he had been saying, and the only thing this whole get-drunk-get-over-Donna thing was going to give him was a raging headache in the morning. He gestured toward the two beers left sitting on the table and looked away from her, his sullen gaze landing on his outstretched legs.
Jackie reached forward, grabbed the beer, and handed it off to him. They had been at their complaining so long that the alcohol had mellowed down more toward room temperature so she wiped the condensation off on Eric's pants. She looked over at him, his figure a little blurry as her eyelids drooped sleepily, and she realized that she hadn't listened to a word he'd said all night. Now, that really wasn't all that out of the ordinary because she usually made a conscious effort not to listen to anything Eric said, but tonight was about letting him get over Donna a bit. As much fun as hangovers were, she was pretty sure that he was going to need a little bit more than that.
So, the silence dropped around them, both lost in thought. Eric let his head drop back against the cushions of the couch and his eyes fell shut. He blindly popped open the top of his beer, but didn't take a drink. He ran the edge of the can over his parched lips before setting it down on the ground beside him.
Jackie watched his movements, and for the first time that summer, she felt a pang of pity shoot across her stomach for him. In the last year, with all that had happened with Michael and with the exciting prospect of being able to baby shop with her best friend, she had forgotten how much Eric and Donna had been in love.
Their love had not been something that she had ever understood, what with Donna being such an amazon and Eric being such a skinny dork and everything, but for the most part, they had been happy together. Jackie watched Eric's Adam's apple bob as he swallowed, trying to bring moisture into his dry throat. Despite the hours of drowning their sorrows in alcohol, she could still see that sadness written across his sleepy features.
Jackie cleared her throat, not sure if she really wanted to have this conversation with him, but when he cracked open one eye to look at her, she decided to push on.
"Eric?"
His head came up off of the couch and he opened the other eye to look at her.
Her lips twisted in a small grimace as she tried to piece together the right words. "Have you ever considered the idea that maybe Donna just isn't the one for you?"
"No."
Her eyebrows rose at how quickly and matter of factly he had spoken. "Never?"
Jackie couldn't say that she had ever really seen Eric mad, so she was taken aback by the sudden anger that flashed across his features. She held up her hands to stop him before he could speak. "I'm not trying to be mean here, Eric. I really want to know. I mean, sure. You guys were in love, but not everybody that falls in love ends up together. Look at Sonny and Cher."
Eric rolled his eyes at her last statement, but the resentment at her question quickly faded. He was quiet for another moment, his stare settling on his blue sneakers. Jackie was beginning to think that he wasn't going to answer her at all when he cleared his throat.
"No." He cleared his throat again, and looked up at her. "No. Donna is the one."
Jackie's eyes searched his face, seeing his calm determination through her haze of alcohol. She tried to come up with something to say to that, but for once, she couldn't come up with anything.
"Even when we broke, after she started dating Casey and everything, I never considered anyone else," he said, his voice clear and steady, despite his inebriated state. "I think that I convinced myself that I was okay without her, that maybe I didn't love her anymore… but when I looked into my future, there was never anyone else."
Eric's gaze broke from hers and landed on the can in his hand. He started rotating his wrist, twirling the can and swishing the luke warm liquid inside. "You know, she's a writer, and I'm… I don't know, a jazz guitarist –"
Jackie tried to swallow her laughter. "A jazz guitarist?"
Eric didn't even spare her a glance. "Or maybe a teacher or something. And we're together." The words seemed to get caught in his throat. "But, you know. I threw that all away. And now, she may never want me back."
The tears formed in Jackie's eyes, and she couldn't believe that she was crying over Eric and Donna's break-up. But she couldn't help it. It was like Gone With The Wind, except, being that Donna was such a man, she was Rhett Butler and Eric was Scarlet O' Hara. Eric had screwed up so many times that now Donna wasn't going to give a damn, and he was going to have to go back to his home all alone. It was so sad.
She opened her mouth to tell him that when a low groan broke into their conversation.
"God," Hyde said groggily. "Are you two still going at it? Shut up already." He stretched his legs out and rolled over so that his back was facing them.
Jackie looked over her shoulder at him, her eyes trailing along the expanse of his back. She turned toward Eric again and the vacant look on his face, and decided that he probably didn't care all that much about her Gone With The Wind analogy.
Reaching forward to grab the last beer off of the table, Jackie let the silence settle back over them. She popped the top and leaned back to take a drink. The warm liquid burned a path down her throat, and she grimaced at the taste. Setting the can back down, she glanced at Eric out of the corner of her eye.
Poor guy, she told herself. Maybe she really wasn't the only person who had had their heart broken that summer.
"So," Eric started. Jackie looked up at him. "What about you?"
She cocked her head in confusion. "What about me?"
He shrugged, glancing away from her. "Was there ever a time when you thought Kelso wasn't the one?"
Jackie stayed quiet for a moment, rolling the question around in her mind. "Yes," she said finally.
Eric nodded, but didn't say anything as he waited for her to continue.
"I wanted him to be the one." Jackie's eyes locked with his, and she could see a sort of caring in his expression. That wasn't something she was used to from him. "I had this whole future planned out for us starting from our first date." She laughed, a hollow sadness echoing in the sound. "Do you know that I already have the plans for our wedding all set up?"
"It was purple plates with pink unicorns, right?" Eric asked.
"Actually, it was pink and purple plates that had unicorns on them, but close enough." She waved a hand through the air. "And Michael was going to be a rich and famous doctor, and I was going to be his wife. And we were going to have the most beautiful babies." She turned to him, placing a hand on his arm. "And they would be beautiful, too, with Michael's bone structure and my naturally beautiful coloring."
"Of course." He shrugged his shoulders.
"But sometimes." She paused, crossing one leg over the other. "Sometimes, I would look at him, and he would be playing with his superball or running off to play on the Henderson's new jungle gym, and I would realize that that wasn't who he was. That wasn't who we were… Because he's stupid."
He chuckled. "You guys did have your good moments, though," Eric said. He smiled at her encouragingly.
"Yeah, we did." Jackie brushed her hair behind her ears. She thought back to that day only a month ago when she had vowed to clean Michael out of her life. She remembered how much it hurt to think about all of the amazing memories they had in that room, how much it had hurt to say good-bye to them. "And that's what kept me hanging on so long. I tried so hard to keep a hold of that dream of our perfect life, and look how many times it's broken my heart."
When Jackie finished speaking, her voice was barely a whisper. She closed her eyes against the tears that were forming again because she'd promised herself that she was through crying over him.
And for the most part, she'd kept that promise this summer. She was moving on, and her relationship with Michael would probably always cause her some pain, but she was getting over it. She was being strong this time.
She glanced over her shoulder at Hyde. All she could see of him was that curly brown fro, but it made her smile slightly, nonetheless.
He was different. They were different. And that felt so good.
Because Jackie knew herself well enough to know that she was controlled by her emotions… and her pretty things, but mostly her emotions. Everything about her time with Michael had been about the feeling of their passionate, fiery love affair. And that fire had burned her and wrecked her more times than she could count.
And now there was Steven, and the great thing about Steven was that there were no emotions involved. They kissed, they made out, and when it was over, they just went back to being Jackie and Hyde. It wasn't awkward and it wasn't hard. It was just a fun way to pass the time.
So, when they were finished, and others were in the room, it didn't hurt. It didn't wreck her. And that's what she needed most of all: to not be wrecked.
Jackie was brought back into the now by Eric nudging her shoulder. "So, do you think you'll ever get back with Kelso?"
She shook her head, but she could see a bit of disbelief in his eyes. She knew that she had been here before, and she had said these words before, but there was no going back this time. For some reason, she felt it was important that Eric understand that.
"I'm not going to go back with Michael again," she told him firmly. "This is the end of the line for us because, for the first time, I can look at him and see him for him. I don't hate him for who he is. I just can't be with him anymore."
Eric nodded at her. A few seconds past, and then he shifted over, lifting an arm to place it along the couch behind her shoulders.
Jackie smiled at him in surprise, and let her head fall onto his shoulder. "Eric?"
"Hmmm?"
"You're going to get that forever with Donna." She said the words as though they were fact. "Because you two, well, you two were really good together."
"Thank you, Jackie." He didn't even try to hide his surprise.
"Yup. You're one of the good guys, Eric. Even if you do only weight eighty pounds." She could feel his shoulder shake in laughter. "But you deserve a girl like Donna, and if she can't see that, well, then it's her loss."
"Thank you."
Jackie nodded at the sincerity in his voice, her head rolling back along his arm so that she could smile up at him.
"Hey," Eric said after a short silence. "When did you start being all nice to me?"
"Oh, I'm drunk."
He laughed at her bluntness.
"Yeah." Her giggles mixed with his. "I don't usually drink this much. Just wait for my hangover to pass and we'll be all back to normal."