A/N: Don't expect an update this fast again. I took the "Write for twenty minutes" to mean plan for twenty minutes, which I did. I find second chapters to be more awkward than first chapters. Beck is a bit OOC, but I swear that has a purpose. There is literally no Trina/Robbie in this chapter-you can ctrl-f Trina, take your time, I won't mind-but there is delicious, dramatic subplot. I can assure you that this is a Tribbie story, but for now I'm classyfying this as a CatJadeBeckToriAndre. (Cajackridre?) In that order.

chapter two

write for twenty minutes. a male character. betrayal - been there, done that.

When Robbie got home that night, he quickly changed from work clothes into his regular clothes: his favorite cardigan, jeans, and t-shirt. It was a Saturday night, hovering around 7:30, and he had gotten dinner at his favorite organic restaurant's drive-thru on the way home. He sat down at his dining room table and began his meal by himself. A note by the door told him that his mother had gone out, and his father was still at work.

He needed to call Beck once he finished eating, he thought. He lifted a forkful of salad to his mouth. He was a dainty eater, wiping his lips with a napkin if he felt even the slightest of mess on or around his mouth. Admittedly, this was more out of self-awareness than manners; in his brief experience, he had concluded that girls did not like boys who had lettuce hanging from their lips and salad dressing dripping down their chins. The salad was small and did not take long to eat. Once he finished, he tossed the plastic container in the trash and propped himself up on a counter, pulling his cell phone from his pocket to call Beck.

Beck picked up on the fourth ring. "What?" He groaned, traces of sleep still in his voice.

"I just wanted to call to see how you were doing," Robbie said, picking at a piece of lint on his cardigan. "Since you were hungover. At 2 in the afternoon on a Sunday."

"Fuck, Mom," Beck laughed. Robbie could hear him roll over in his bed. "I was out late last night, okay? I have some problems."

"Oh," Robbie breathed. When Beck had problems, they were usually serious. "That explains why you texted me at seven in the morning and didn't pick up when I called you. Five times." All of this was true; he received a text saying cover forr me at 7:21 a.m. in the morning.

"Yeah."

"What's wrong?"

Beck sighed on the other line. This was alarming. Beck was, mostly, smirks, sarcasm, and no emotion. "Some Jade stuff, some Cat stuff, some Tori stuff, some André stuff. Just stuff. Just shit, really, but I know how naughty words hurt your ears."

"Beck, you listed all our friends as problems." Robbie finally freed the piece of lint and flicked it off his fingers. He felt very naked without Rex and nothing to do, but he wouldn't dare wake Rex while Robbie was on the phone. He didn't want to hear the comments Rex would make.

"Yeah, I guess I did. Like I said, problems."

"Want to meet up and talk about them? We could go for coffee," he laughed.

"Robbie, you're such a girl."

Beck said it jokingly, but it still hurt. Robbie's grip on his phone loosened and he lowered his head, looking at the patterns in his kitchen title. Robbie was the type of skinny that made his hips tilt in a feminine fashion and that made other, more masculine men call him a faggot. Robbie had thought Beck was above that.

"Come on, you know I'm just joking. I have this huge headache. I should be more appreciative of you. You're the only one talking to me. What was this about hanging out?"

The idea of drama piqued Robbie's interest, and the apology definitely soothed him. "Okay. My parents are out, my mom would get mad if I had somebody over-" Beck groaned again- "so I think that we should go to the park." The park had different connotations for people than it did for Beck and Robbie. Robbie knew Beck knew that. Anybody could guess, by the way Robbie's voice quivered at the words.

"Yeah, I'd like that," Beck said, softly. He sounded defeated.

"Okay, I'm leaving now." With these words, Robbie took the phone from his ear and pressed the End button, watching Beck's smiling face slide off of his screen. He hopped from the counter, grabbed his keys from the rung by his door, and exited his house.

The drive wasn't long, and anticipation made it even shorter. He parked in the parking lot of a drugstore across the street, took the crosswalk over, and entered the playground with slightly shaking hands.

Robbie wandered over towards the swing set and sat on the swing. His hands wrapped around slightly rusted chains and he hung his head low. He rocked himself back and forth with his foot slowly, thinking too much about how when he was seven this swing scared him because it was so high. He also remembered that when he was eleven, he pushed Cat on this swing. Cat had brown hair then, and she laughed even more, if that was possible. But mostly he thinks about that time that he was seven and Beck was fearless and dared Robbie to swing and Robbie was so very scared. (He didn't have Rex to stand up for him, then.)

It was dark outside, but the park is on a corner and there are streetlamps all around. When they were fourteen they would sneak out of their house and come here. When they were fifteen they would sit underneath the slide and get drunk, because Jade lived like two streets down and her parents didn't give a fuck about unexpected visitors. When they were sixteen they did the same thing, except now they could drive and Beck would take Robbie home then go over Jade's alone.

Robbie pushed off suddenly, fiercely. He soared backwards, and kept pushing his legs in and out. His glasses teetered on his nose but he was afraid if he took them off he would slip, fall, and die. He did, however, shed his cardigan, which fell onto the mulch gently. The gray t-shirt he was wearing flapped around his stomach, exposing stretches of pale white skin and the tiniest, faintest trail of hair he had ever laid his eyes on. Soon, on each swing, he was even with the top of the swing set.

"You're going to wrap yourself around it." And thus stood Beck, cool, laid-back Beck, leaning against the slide with his arms folded.

On the next downward swing, Robbie jumped. He felt his heart fly off and come back again, and his leg gave out underneath him.

"Very cool," Beck said.

The swing came back around and hit Robbie in the head. Robbie cried out; Beck laughed. Robbie rubbed his head and looked downwards. Beck stopped laughing.

Deciding that where he was, having fallen from the jump, was good enough, Robbie looked at Beck and then nodded towards the mulch. Beck walked over and sat in front of him, running a hand through his hair. Though his face was emotionless, Robbie could tell something was wrong by the way Beck stopped at the base of his neck to finger his hair, than rubbed the edge of his shirt. Simple movements, but worrisome.

"What's wrong?" Robbie asked, his hands folded neatly in his lap. He furrowed his brow and tilted his head.

These gestures made Beck smile. "Well, okay. It's a long story. Do you think you're prepared? It gets pretty gruesome, you know. Since Jade's involved."

"What-"

"So were all at the Karaoke place with those buffalo nuggets, right? And Jade convinced Sikowitz to buy us all drinks."

"When was this?"

"Saturday, yesterday. We would've invited you, Robbie, but you had to go your grandmother's, remember?"

Robbie nodded.

"Jade got Sikowitz drunk by spiking his drinks with our drinks. I know, Jade's evil. But you know that Sikowitz goes into his peace, love, and drugs for everyone mood when he's drunk."

Robbie nodded again.

"Cat is very emotional when drunk. Jade is a violent drunk. Cat told Jade she loved her. Jade kind of punched her. In the face."

"Kind of?"

"Well, she loosened her blow when she realized what she was doing. Jade's fond of Cat like that."

"That's not like Jade at all," Robbie muttered. He liked to think that he knew Jade fairly well, because she was his best friend's girlfriend, and he'd known her since they were freshmen. "She doesn't really punch people she loves."

Beck shrugged. "She doesn't like declarations of love. Jade is a violent, sloppy drunk. Me? I'm a talkative drunk. I told Tori I liked her cheekbones. Jade punched me. She didn't hold back, though." Beck pointed to a previously unnoticed bruise on his own (rather nice) cheekbone, smiling fondly as if it was a hickey. "Didn't bother me. Tori was so upset she turned to André for comforts of a more carnal kind."

"I don't understand why everybody's not talking to you," Robbie said. "It sounds like … a normal outing to me."

Beck sighed and closed his eyes, placing his hands behind him. "Then I, ah, I did some regrettable things."

"Like what?" Robbie's eyes widened.

"It was just a night full of making out and punching people in their face, I guess," Beck sighed. He kept his eye closed. "Pulled Tori from André kissed Tori punched André." The words came out very fast.

"There was a lot of punching and kissing," Robbie noted.

"We got kicked out and Sikowitz told us we should loosen our views on monogamy." Beck laughed. "Cool guy, Sikowitz."

Robbie said nothing. Really, all he could think about was you had to go to your grandmother's instead, remember? It was silly, it was stupid, but he felt as if they hadn't gotten drunk and angry with each other, leaving Robbie to sort it all out, Robbie wouldn't have found out about their excursion. Actually, Robbie was sure of that. That hurt, too. There wasn't even a we missed you.

"Robbie?" Beck's voice, cool and calm as usual, bought Robbie back down. Beck had opened his eyes.

"Yeah, cool guy, Sikowitz," Robbie said, absentmindedly.

"Yes, of course," Beck said, leaning forward. "But aren't you going to call me a whore and tell me that I deserved what I got?"

"Why would I do that?" Robbie blinked a few times. Whore was not really in his vocabulary, and he never thought Beck was a whore, after all. His only serious-his only ever-girlfriend was Jade. As far as Robbie knew, Jade was Beck's first everything. That isn't very whorish, not at all.

"Because it's true," Beck said, "and you don't lie."

"I would be lying if I told you I thought you were a whore."

"I kissed Tori." Beck winced, as if the memory pained him, though that may have been bought on by the fact that he was rubbing his eyes and his knuckles grazed the bruise on his cheekbone.

"You were drunk!" Robbie stood up very suddenly. "If I were drunk, I would kiss somebody that I loved, too! I would do that even if I wasn't drunk!" He didn't know where this was coming from, really. "But I'm not drunk and nobody loves me. Not even my friends."

Beck stood up now. He dusted off the front of his jeans, even though they weren't dirty, and stared at Robbie. "What the fuck? We love you-"

"Were you going to tell me about your night out if you hadn't gotten drunk and fucked everything up?"

"It's not like that," Beck said, softly. He seemed sobered by Robbie's use of the word fuck, which was a privilege in their friendship usually reserved for Beck. "I didn't want to go. I hate karaoke. Cat likes it, and you know how Cat and Jade are-"

"Don't explain yourself to me," Robbie spat. And with these words, he turned on his heels, ignoring the Robbie, stop!'s, Stop being such a little bitch!'s, the singular I didn't even tell you the whole story, and Come on, Robbie, come back's Beck threw his way.

He was halfway home when he remembered that his favorite cardigan was still at the park. He began to cry, very thankful that Rex was not there to comment on his girly tears.