Disclaimer: Nooooope. Not mine. Dan owns this show. I own this story. And a tube of Burt's Bees. That stuff is the bomb!
Chapter 10
Beck awakes the next morning feeling exponentially better than he did yesterday. He spent all last night freaking out over the non-date he had with Tori today. He smiles at the thought. He dresses for school, taking his time. He didn't want to look like a complete slob, right? Then she'd never date him.
What? Date him? No. The point of this … non-date is to hang out. Talk over the weirdness. You're not trying to like, ask for her hand in marriage. He mentally preps himself. Like a loser. He still has about seven hours to go and he's already making a fool of himself. He's not even around her yet.
He's smiling like a damn fool the whole way to school, listening to some lame pop song that he would be super embarrassed about if anyone found out. Normally he wouldn't even listen to this, but somehow, all of his radio pre-sets are mysteriously changed around (he suspects Robbie did it) and he can't even bring himself to care. It was seriously like the beginning of a terrible romantic comedy, before everything goes to shit. Yeah, wonder when that'll be.
He's still in a good mood as he locks up his car and makes his way inside, sipping his coffee with plenty of time. He says hey to everyone who greets him and smiles at people he doesn't know. He's just strolling along, happy-go-lucky, when someone grabs his arm and shoves him in the janitor's closet. They flip the switch and light floods the closet and he sees his crazy ex-girlfriend with her judge-y face on.
"Do you ever leave me alone?" He laughs.
"So, tell me. What exactly did you decide to smoke before school today? Because I didn't know you were in to that." She mocks.
"Shut up Jade. I'm just happy. Am I not allowed to be happy?" He moves past her to open the door.
"I'm just saying… don't get caught up in this too soon." She warned.
Beck rolls his eyes. Classic Jade, the perpetual pessimist. "I won't get caught up if you tell me what gives with you and Cat." He challenges, sipping his coffee.
The warning bell rings and she glares.
"Thought so. Gotta get to class." He smirks and strides toward his first period.
The rest of the day passes by without incident. Sikowitz taught almost the whole time so no one did any scenes in his class. When the bell for lunch chimed, Beck smiled. He was excited, as much as he would prefer not to admit. He stood up and saw Tori at the front of the class. Maybe I'll walk with her today.
But then he sees Andre pop up behind her and quickly decides that that plan is out. He makes eye contact with him for just a brief moment before he turns and makes his way to lunch. Jesus, Beck, you guys aren't married now.
He turns the corner into the hallway and begins walking amongst the sea of hungry teenagers. He looks around at all of the faces of people he sees everyday but never really took the time to get to know any of them well enough and sighs. He has his group of six and he's fine with that, none of them were his very best closest friend, but he didn't hate any of them. Well…
He doesn't dwell. He hears his name being called vaguely from far away and turns around to see Cat chasing him. He politely steps out of the sea of traffic and waits for her to catch up.
"Hey!" She says, catching her breath as they stand there against some lockers waiting for everyone to pass by to get to the Asphalt Café.
"Hey, Cat." He says coolly.
"How are you today, Becky?" He says with a smile, tilting her head and twisting a lock of her hair.
Her dimples make him smile back. "I'm great." And he means it. The tingling sensation he's had in the pit of his stomach hasn't subsided as the day progressed on like he expected it to. In fact, it seemed the longer he was at school, the more the strange tingles of… excitement…? became severe. Nonetheless, he's been in a good mood all day long looking forward to the time he got to spend with Tori after school. His tingles kick into overdrive. Peculiar, this feeling was.
She gives him a little smirk and giggles, touching her hand to his arm for a second, and if he didn't know any better, it seemed like Cat was almost…flirting? No. He shakes his head. All of this feelings shit must be messing with his head. Cat would never flirt with him. They were friends. Not to mention, something fishy was going on between her and a certain ex-girlfriend of his…
He decides to bring it up. "Cat… what's up with you and Jade? And don't say nothing. Because I know it's not nothing." He fixes her with a stare.
Her smile diminishes and she settles for crossing her arms over her chest and leaning against a locker, biting her lip. "Me and Jade?" She asks the question aloud, more to herself. "Honestly, I don't even know." She looks him in the eye. "But, you should probably drop it. She wouldn't be very happy if she knew you were asking about it." She says.
"She already knows. I've been asking her about it since yesterday. And she pretty much confirmed that something was up with you two by saying that nothing was up with you two, if you know what I mean." He sighs, looking around. The crowd thinned out, just a few loiterers.
"You talked to her about it?" She widens her eyes, but then shakes her head. "No. You know what, nevermind. If Jade says nothing is going on then there's your answer, Becky. Nothing is going on." Cat says and he can't quite make out what her voice was tinged with. Sadness? No. Anger? Not really. Resignation? Yeah. That was it.
"What about you and Tori?" She smirks as he's caught off guard and stutters.
"Uhhhh…." He clams up and fumbles for reply, but not before the brunette in question showed up with Andre at her flanks, the latter looking less than thrilled to be there.
"What about Tori?" She asks brightly and smiles at him and Cat and he can't help but melt and smile back. Andre clears his throat and they look away shyly.
"Oh, nothing." Cat giggles. "Me and Becky were just having girl talk." She grins over at him using the same line on Tori that she used on Beck the previous day during lunch and he laughs once, shaking his head in disbelief.
"You could say that." The left side of his mouth turns up in a half-smile.
"What are you guys just doing, standing here?" Andre asks, a little stiffly and Tori shoots him a look.
Beck fights the urge to roll his eyes. Shooting a porno. What the hell does it look like? He takes a breath and replies in a neutral tone of voice for Tori's sake. "Well, we were waiting out the crowd…" He trails off looking around again at the nearly empty hallway.
"But we got caught up in our girl talk." Cat finishes for him and smirks, giving an obvious wink towards Beck.
He's disarmed for a second. What was with her today? Being sort of… flirty? It was strange. When she was the one who made it a point to tell Andre at lunch in front of everyone yesterday that they were just friends and she was the one being all weird and evasive about the weird friendship or whatever it was she had with Jade and yet here she was now, winking and giggling and batting her eyelashes at him and he just doesn't know what to think because a) It's Cat, and b) Tori is standing like right in front of him and damn, she looks good today in that white sweater thing and those dark jeans…
He realizes he's staring at Tori when Cat throws an elbow at his ribs and unceremoniously says "Becky, quit staring at Tor-Tor. There'll be plenty of time for that later." She laughs and grabs Andre and Tori's hands and skips toward the Asphalt Café, calling "C'mon, Becky!" Over her shoulder as she went.
So then Beck is just standing there, in the middle of the empty hallway, blinking like an idiot and rubbing his sore ribs. That girl… He shakes his head and starts to catch up with them. He would never understand Cat.
He sits down at the same time as everyone else, taking a spot between Cat and Tori. Jade is already sitting down across the table, fixing the four of them with her blank stare. Robbie is a safe distance away from her on her left. Andre, predictably, settles down next to Tori and Robbie.
"So that took you a while." Jade states. "I was stuck here listening to this," She points to Robbie who is currently in an argument with Rex over whether or not the striped shirt he wore that day made him look like a girl.
Beck laughs.
"Well, Beck and I just got to talking in the hall, he is so funny, by the way! And then Andre and Tori came over, and we came right here." Cat chimes looking at Jade with a tight smile.
Beck looked around, and no one was watching, thankfully. He feels like their exchange is kind of private or something. Andre and Tori got up to go order their food, involved in a fierce whisper-yell match, whereas Robbie was still being insulted and ran after the pair of them. So, Beck didn't miss the tightening of Jade's eyes as she looked between them two.
He looked at Cat with a questioning gaze. She was making it sound so much different than it really was. He starts to shake his head and open his mouth to set the record straight, and maybe find out what Cat thought she was doing, but he notices the intense staring match the two girls had acquired. Jade had a straight up menacing face, jaw taut and eyes narrowed, whereas the shorter redhead had a smile on her face, eyes wide and if one looked hard enough they could see how sarcastic those expressions on her face were. Cat radiated faux-innocence and goodwill, when clearly something darker and more foul was brewing just beneath the surface for these girls and suddenly Beck didn't feel like he had any right to be there at all, let alone meddle and pry his way into figuring out what the hell happened exactly between these two, even though he's hella curious now, and he resolves then and there that he was to meddle no more. If Cat wanted to tell him on her own time, cool. Even Jade. If one of them felt the need to share the story with him then, he'd gladly listen but as of right now it was none of his business and quite frankly, not in his top priorities at this moment in time.
His main concern right now was on the beautiful brunette still talking heatedly with her best friend over by the Grub Truck and Beck could see even from here how said best friend was staring at her, a mixture of worry, disappointment, and a hint of longing tinting his features. Eventually, Robbie came back to the table with a Wahoo! Punch and Tori and Andre eventually followed suit, food in hand. Tori was trying to act normal, but as Beck studied her he saw she was clearly torn up about something. He didn't care what Andre looked like, because honestly, he didn't really care. He wonders if Andre was trying to talk her out of their plans.
Jade and Cat had terminated their staring contest and he could feel the tension emitting from the all four of them in waves, save for Robbie, who seemed blissfully unaware of the situations going on around him, seemingly content to be ignorant to all of the drama. Maybe he could follow his example one of these days. Keeping up with all of this was just simply tiring.
The rest of lunch passed by in a tense silence. Whereas yesterdays lunch was awkward, this one was cold and unfriendly, each person, save for Robbie and himself, clearly rigidly upset about something. No one would make eye contact with each other. Beck tried to talk to Robbie a bit, but eventually he just gave up and focused on his food like everyone else.
When the bell rang, everyone could not get up fast enough. He catches Tori by the arm when the table is vacant. Andre saw Beck and walked off, albeit waiting by the doors for her.
"Hey, are you alright?" He asks, hand resting on her arm.
She smiles and nods but he can see right through it. "Seriously, Tori, what's wrong? Is it Andre?"
She winces. So he guesses he hit the nail right on the head.
"What did he say about me." He deadpans, fed up with all this bullshit.
"He… He asked me to help him with this new song he was writing today after school after we left Sikowitz's but I told him I couldn't because I already had plans and then he kind of guessed it was with you and then he got upset and at the grub truck he was telling me why I shouldn't go and I just don't understand why he hates you so much and I just don't know…" She finishes, looking rattled. He wants to hug her. So he does. He just wraps his arms around her and almost immediately her warm arms go up around his middle.
He closes his eyes and breathes her in. He's only hugged her once before. And it gets better every time. After a while the bell rings and they let go eventually and just stare at each other. She's biting her lip, and while that leads to wonderful other thoughts, she's upset and he doesn't like that.
"I actually wanted to make sure we were still on for today. I figured he'd be planting seeds in your mind about why I'm such a bad influence." He rolls his eyes.
She smiles. "We're still on…"
A grin spreads across his face as he realizes that despite how incessantly Andre warned her about spending time with him, she still wanted to. She chose him over Andre…
As they eventually separate and go their respective ways to class only after a promise to meet up in the parking lot after school lets out, another thought hits Beck. Maybe there could be a Beck and Tori in the future…
The end of the day could not come fast enough. As soon as the last bell rang, Beck all but sprinted to the student parking lot to wait by his car for Tori. He caught himself randomly smiling at times, but had managed to get a handle on that before anyone thought he was off his rocker.
He's so deep in his newfound thoughts that he doesn't hear him approach until he speaks.
"What are you guys going to do today?"
Beck snaps out of his reverie and looks up at the intruder. He leans against the driver's side and sighs.
"I don't know, Andre. Grab a bite or something. Hang out. Talk." He says. "Like it's any of your business…" He mumbles.
"It is my damn business, Beck! She's my best friend!" Andre cries. Some people look over, interested in the spectacle.
"Really? Is that all she is to you? You know I didn't forget that shit you pulled during the scene yesterday." He says.
Andre's quiet for a moment before speaking low enough to where no one could overhear. "So obviously you can see it. She's more than a friend to me, and to you I guess now, too. And I'll be her friend no matter what happens. But I do know trouble when I see it and her being with you, that, is trouble. You're just gonna hurt her. You may not mean it, but it'll happen eventually. I don't even think you know how to be in a normal relationship anymore. You'll get bored of her and cast her aside. And you a damn fool if you think I'm gonna let that happen to her." Andre finishes staring at him.
Beck takes all of this in before he says in a tired voice, "I'm not going to screw this one up." Maybe it was more to assure himself rather then Andre, but whatever... Tori chooses that precise moment to walk up to them and look between the two exasperated boys.
"What's going on?" She asks cautiously.
"Just… talking." Beck says and unlocks the car, sitting inside and cranking the AC.
Tori looks at him and back at Andre who looks like he wants to say something. Beck sighs, shuts the door and gives them their privacy.
They exchange a few sentences, but Beck doesn't pay any mind to it as he fumbles around for something decent to listen to and within minutes the passenger door is opening and she's sitting inside, staring forward.
He looks at her in question, but she shakes her head, shuts the door, buckles up, and mutters a single word. "Drive."
Your wish, my command, he thinks as he peels out of the lot, looks in the rearview mirror, and leaves a very sad faced Andre behind.
A/N: Poor Andre... he lubs Tori. Oh well. I promise the Cat/Jade thing will be revealed soon, although I have yet to figure out how I'm going to reveal it exactly.
Chapter 11: Tori and Beck's non-date. Yep. A whole chapter of just Bori. And trust me... very exciting things happen :D
Questions? PM me.
**OH! And I'm going to be working on a few victorious one-shots... Any ideas for pairings? If so I'd love to hear your suggestions. And if you haven't already done so, feel free to check out my one shot I just put out. Love to hear what you think.
As always a million hugs and kisses for every review.