Ambiance

AU

Chapter Four

Andre laughs. "You think that Beck attempted to befriend you becausehe wanted revenge on you?" He laughs again, a harsh sort of laugh that she hasn't really heard on him before. It makes her tense up.

"Well, yeah," she replies in annoyance. "I believe that people are guilty until proven innocent. Also, I've never been anything but mean to him. Why would he randomly be nice to me? It doesn't work that way!" She stares at him, her eyes wide. It is impossible that he would be nice to her, absolutely impossible. This all has to be part of some sort of complex revenge plot.

"Maybe you could be nice to him back," Andre suggests, grinning from ear to ear.

"NO!" she roars, sighing and falling back onto her bed. "Look, why are you even here?"

"Because Beck was freaking out," Andre responded, raising an eyebrow at her. "Contrary to popular belief, he does really wanna be friends with you, girl. Even though I can't really see why..." When she raises a threatening eyebrow at him, he hastily finishes with a quick, "Kidding, kidding. But seriously, you could stand to be nicer to the dude."

"And he could stand to get a haircut, but that's obviously not happening," she retorts scathingly.

"Jade," Andre reprimands, crossing his arms across his chest. "Seriously."

"Fine," she says with a scowl. "I'm serious."

"Okay, so I'll just go get Beck and we'll straighten out this whole mess..." Andre tells her brightly, edging slowly toward the doorway. Probably he doesn't want to deal with her alone.

"NO!" Jade roars again, moving quickly toward him. "No, way too embarrassing. Just... let me work this out."

"How?" Andre asks, leaning against the wall.

"Does he like coffee?" Jade inquires.

"Well, yeah, but I don't see how..." Andre trails off, blinking in confusion.

She sighs impatiently. Like most intelligent people, she doesn't have time for the impudence of 'normal people', so Andre is a bit of a setback. "Just get Beck to meet me here tomorrow. No more questions. See you then."

–

Jade West is handing him coffee. Jade West is handing him coffee. Of all the things that had run through his head when Andre said, "Dude, Jade wants to try to make it up to you, so meet her at her trailer before filming", this had not even crossed his mind. First, he actually likes coffee, and second, this is sort of nice, and he has never known Jade West to be nice. To be honest, he'd expected the worst after their little rendezvous two days previous.

With a small smile, he walks over and takes the coffee from her. "Thanks," he says brightly.

"Yeah, whatever," Jade says darkly, staring at him. "Now do you forgive me or whatever?" It's her extremely odd way of asking for forgiveness, but he can tell that she's actually trying and that's worth something, in a strange sort of way.

"Are you going to try anything else?" he inquires, crossing his arms across his chest.

She squirms, which makes him slightly suspicious. After all, when Jade West squirms and looks guilty, you'd best fear for your life, because it most likely means that she's done something unspeakably bad. "How about you forgive me tomorrow?"

"Jade," he says in a threatening tone, but fear is already crippling him. She's the only one who can invoke this sort of fear in him – after all, he is chill, brave Beck Oliver, not scaredy-cat Beck Oliver. It's fairly scary how easily she can toss that aside.

"It's nothing that bad," she tells him in an innocent tone, which only fuels his fear, because Jade West is not innocent in the least. "Seriously. Um, just come see me tomorrow and we'll talk things out, all right?"

"Jade!" he calls, but she's already walking away with this evil sort of smile on her face. Groaning, he dials a number quickly on his phone and waits for someone to pick up on the other end.

"Jamie," he says gratefully as soon as she picks up. "This is sort of a heavy request, but – "

"Look, Beck honey, I'm sorry, but I'm currently in a very important meeting with the film producers," Jamie informs him apologetically. "I'll call you back later, all right? All right."

She hangs up then, and Beck groans. Frowning, he dials the number to his trailer and hopes someone will pick up.

"Hey!" comes a voice. "Yo, Beck's not here right now, so maybe you could call back – "

"Andre!" Beck yelps gratefully. "Dude, why are you in my RV?"

"I left my jacket in here the other day and it's cold," Andre tells him, giving a shivering sound as if to emphasize his jacket. "What do you want, bro?"

"Has Jade been in there recently?" Beck questions cautiously. He highly doubts it – after all, Jade had seemed awfully guilty when they were talking, which he supposes means that she had set up whatever it was beforehand.

"Nah, man." Andre doesn't seem to think the question is weird at all, which does nothing to qualm Beck's fears. "Nobody's been in here but me. Oh, by the way, I ate your chocolate eggs. Why, though?"

Beck groans – those chocolate eggs were his favorites. Then he frowns and says, "I dunno; she seemed pretty suspicious to me. So no booby traps went off when you walked in or anything?"

"No," Andre says lightly. "I just walked in, chillaxed, ate some of your chocolate eggs, and looked for my jacket. Nothing bad has happened to me yet."

"All right," Beck replies dubiously. "Listen, don't leave just yet. I don't want to be alone in that RV in case Jade decides to kill me or whatever."

"Look, she's not a murderer," Andre tells him with a serious expression. "She may be a jerk of sorts, and kind of – I don't know, mysterious and creepy – but she's not a murderer."

"I was kidding," Beck tells him. "But seriously, don't leave."

–

Jade wakes up in the morning to the sound of someone pounding on her door.

A smirk making its way across her face, she wanders sleepily over to the door and pulls it open for a very angry-looking Beck Oliver. Beck storms in, a towel on his head, looking like some sort of odd woman from a different century. A shockingly green piece of hair sticks out from the top of his head, and Jade has to resist the urge to giggle. Never has she seen the completely composed actor looking so completely unraveled, and in a strange sort of way, she enjoys it.

"Why hello there, Oliver," she greets him, her blasé tone proving her to be unconcerned. "Is something wrong?"

"Why don't you tell me?" Beck spits, fingering the piece of bright green hair. "You slipped green dye into my shampoo. That is not – and I repeat, not – okay."

"Would you chill?" Jade replies, rolling her eyes and pressing her head back into her pillow.

"No!" Beck roars. "I will not chill. I've been nothing but civil to you since you arrived, and you've been nothing but horrible to me! Even before, I could tell through the interviews that you were nothing but a brat, thinking you're entitled to everything when you're not and thinking that you're better than everyone else when you're honestly not that great of an actress. You're just a spoiled brat, Jade West."

She just stares at him. Of course, everything he'd said was true, every single bit of it, but she doesn't want to admit that, so she just stares at the ground. The weirdo doesn't show any sign of leaving, though, much to her dismay. It's as if he's waiting for her to stick up for herself, to show him that he's not as bad as he thought she was, and the truth is that she's every bit as bad as he thinks, so there's no way that she can prove that. No way whatsoever.

At last, after quite a bit of internal turmoil, she glances up at him and says, "Cold water."

"Huh?" Beck has relaxed his stiff stance a bit, slipping back into his normal, relaxed way of standing. She takes that as a good sign.

Closing her eyes, she repeats, "Cold water. The green hair dye comes out with cold water, you idiot. I knew we had filming today, so I wasn't going to use anything permanent." Her voice has an edge to it, as if he should already know this, or at the very least stop assuming the worst of her.

She has no idea why she cares what he thinks of her. After all, she doesn't really care about what anyone else thinks of her. But for some reason, she wants him to know that she's not all bad, that she can be considerate on some occasions if she likes the person.

Beck stares at her. Then he gives a slow nod. "Well, thanks for that."

He doesn't seem to have entirely forgiven her, though, because he makes a show of stomping at the door and slamming it behind him – typical actor, Jade thinks. Once he's gone, though, she buries her head under her blankets and tries to remind herself of why she hates Beck Oliver.

The reasons, she realizes, are starting to become few and far between.

–

Beck Oliver is confused.

This, contrary to popular opinion, is not something that happens all that often. Of course, he occasionally becomes confused, but usually it's over something trivial, like math or girl problems. And while, of course, Jade West is a girl, she's most assuredly not the typical girl that he deals with.

And therefore, this is an entirely new situation.

Of course, he had meant every word that he'd said. He'd always thought her to be a brat, and was therefore predisposed to dislike her the first time that they'd met. And she had done little to disprove his theory of her being spoiled and unlikable. But a completely horrible person would not tell him how to get the bright green hair dye out of his hair, so he supposes that this is more in support of Andre's theory – that Jade West actually does have a soft side, buried deep inside of her.

He doesn't really know how to handle this new information. After weeks of thinking that she's a horrible person, that maybe he could help her or something cheesy like that, it's sort of a shocker to discover that maybe she's not completely horrible. Though at the same time, she still dyed his hair in the first place, which makes him angry. He doesn't know how to deal with this onslaught of new information, or the fact that he's not as angry as he should be about the dyeing incident.

During filming, he feels slightly awkward. After all, it's the last scene they shoot before the big kiss, and though he has stage kissed a million girls before, this one seems different somehow. Perhaps because Jade is not the typical girl, but maybe because there's some kind of tension between them that he can't quite place and he doesn't want to know what will happen when that tension collides in their kiss. Maybe he's scared he'll actually like kissing Jade.

The day of filming ends quickly, thankfully enough. Jade looks awkward during most of it, like she doesn't quite know how to act around him, and he imagines that he probably looks the same way. After all, they're not exactly the typical stage couple. They hate each other – or do they?

Despite it all, he finds himself thinking back to when he'd asked Jade to be his friend and she'd simply ran away, not even considering his valuable offer. After all, he really does think they could be friends if they tried. (Or maybe more. But he doesn't want to think about that, because it would be weird to think about Jade like that. Right?)

After filming ends, he decides to try to forget about her. He holes up in his trailer with Andre and a bunch of movies, much to Jamie's dismay – apparently, Jamie thinks that he and Jade should start hanging out in order to make their on-screen romance more 'believable', but if she actually believes that will happen, then she's got another thing coming.

(Though oddly enough, he would kind of like to hang out with Jade. Just to see what it's like.)

It's during the scariest part of one of the scary movies that Jade West walks in.

–

Jade West is actually feeling kind of guilty. This is definitely a new one – after all, she does bad stuff all the time and never feels bad about it. She has no idea why Beck Oliver is different, but for whatever reason, he is.

She feels kind of embarrassed when she realizes that Andre is at his trailer too, but she barges in anyway. "Beck," she says eloquently. "Um... this is for you."

"More coffee?" Beck raises an eyebrow at her.

"What else do you even like?" she demands in a huffy tone, throwing up her hands. "I mean, seriously. You're such a weirdo. All you like is coffee."

Beck laughs. He actually laughs. And of course, that just gets her more riled up. Placing her hands on her hips, she tells him in a serious tone, "I am trying to apologize."

"I see," Beck tells her, a grin spreading over his face. Andre is just staring at the two of them, as if to ask what is even going on. Jade can't say that she knows herself, but she does wish that Beck would say something of substance instead of staring at her with that dorky grin.

"Look, I know I'm a brat," Jade begins, setting down the cup of coffee, "but I don't know, I don't really try to be. And I put that in your shampoo a while ago – it was only just before I decided to apologize that I exchanged the bottles. I guess I could have told you, but I don't know. I thought you might look hot with green hair."

"You think I'm hot?" Beck repeats, obviously only hearing what he wants to hear, which makes her flush a little bit, much to her dismay. It seems he's breaking all of her stupid little rules tonight with his stupid face and stupid implications.

"I didn't say that," she says stubbornly, but the damage is already done. Beck is smirking and Andre is laughing into his hand, which just makes her feel even more embarrassed. After all, Beck is good-looking, but she doesn't quite know if she'd call him hot, especially since that would make things awkward between the two of them – even more awkward than they already are.

"You implied it," Beck reminds her, the stupid smirk still on his face. "Anyway, where's that apology? I've been waiting for a nice apology, Jade West."

She stares at him, and of course, her stare quickly changes into a glare. The last thing she wants to do is apologize to him, but obviously if they're going to be doing a kissing scene tomorrow, the last thing they need is to be on bad terms. So at last, she takes a step forward and tries to soften her glare into something that looks kind of like a smile.

His hand is suddenly on the side of her face, burning heat into her skin and forcing her to look at him. She winces. It's not exactly something she'd expected, touching him, and the thing is that it's not entirely unpleasant either. She sort of likes the way his hand feels against her face, heat against ice. It's kind of like he's melting her.

Andre clears his throat, which makes her feel even more uncomfortable. Beck just laughs. "Apologize, Jade West."

She glares at him, trying to make herself more threatening than she feels. Then, at last, in a clipped tone, she says, "I'm terribly sorry for dying your hair green, Beck Oliver."

"Good." He releases her face, much to her dismay (and she hates the fact that she wants him to touch her, ugh).

"Look," Jade says sharply, crossing her arms back across her chest. "We've got a kissing scene to do tomorrow, in case you've forgotten. I doubt it, though, because no one could forget that they're going to kiss me." She smirks and flips her hair over her shoulder. Then she continues, "It's going to be awkward, but it might be considerably less awkward if we were –" She chokes a little bit. "Friends."

"Aww," Beck coos. "Is Jade West asking if she can be my friend?"

If glares could kill, Jade thinks, Beck Oliver would be a dead man from the heat of the glares she's sending his way. She takes a threatening step toward him, and he laughs.

"Sure, we can be friends," he says in a teasing voice, grinning at her and grabbing her hand. "You should stay here and watch movies with Andre and I tonight."

"Andre and me," she corrects.

"What?" Beck's brow creases, and she takes pleasure in knowing something he doesn't.

"Watch movies with Andre and me," she repeats, looking smug. "You wouldn't say 'watch movies with I', would you? So you say watch movies with Andre and me."

"Oh." He gives her a look that clearly asks if she's crazy. "Are you gonna stay or not?"

"Sure, why not?" She settles down beside Andre, who gives her an approving grin.

While Beck gets up to hunt around for the remote, which he has lost for what Andre describes as the 'fifteen millionth time', Andre whispers to her, "Hey, if you want a way to get on his nerves, his name is Beckett. You know, like his whole name. Full name. Whatever."

"Beckett, huh?" she repeats, a smug grin making its way onto her face. "Interesting. Very interesting."

For the rest of the night, she calls him Beckett, and she just smiles innocently when he glares at her. But they don't fight, not really, and by the time Jade is ready to call it a night, she counts it as an accomplishment. Really, the boy's not as bad as she thought.

Or maybe he is, but she's just becoming more tolerant.

Either way, maybe kissing him won't be so bad.

–

He wakes up in the morning, memories of the previous night flooding his head, and then he realizes that he has to kiss Jade today. He has to act like he's completely in love with her. And all right, he's an actor, so this sort of stuff should come naturally to him. Again, though, this is different. For whatever reason, she is different. It's going to be a lot harder than he had originally thought.

"Someone's excited," Andre observes as he grabs his jacket off of Beck's table.

"Are you ever going to stop forgetting that jacket?" Beck asks scornfully.

Andre just grins and shakes his head. "Seriously, though, you and Jade would be cute together."

"Andre!" Beck scolds. "Don't say stuff like that!" But it's too late, Andre's already gone with a small laugh, as if to show how much he is enjoying all of this.

He can feel himself sweating as he walks outside. Just a stage kiss, he repeats mentally, doesn't matter. But there's something unique this time – the girl he's kissing is not a blonde bimbo, a girl who giggles at everything and is completely open to new things. The girl he's kissing is Jade West, the girl who is made of fire and ice and rage, the girl who thinks she rules the universe. The beautiful girl who has somehow managed to tear his life apart.

Yeah, he would wager to say it matters.

Reminding himself to breathe, he steps outside of his trailer and prepares himself, because after all, he's Beck Oliver. Beck Oliver is brave and emotionless and finds things like this so freaking easy.

He breathes slowly and then walks over to the set. Leaning against the wall, he asks Jade, "Ready to film?"

She smirks. "You know it."

Then she walks away, being sure to flip her long, streaked hair back over her pale shoulder, and he wonders once again what he's gotten himself into.

–

A/N: Sorry for the long wait, guys, my muse just got back! I know this chapter was a bit crappy, but it'll get better. We're just starting to see the attraction, after all ;)

Please leave a review; reviews mean faster chapters! And thank you all for reviewing, really. :)