Based on the season 1 episode "Cat's New Boyfriend". :) For anyone who wants the story for "The Diddly-Bops" episode, which came between the last chapter and this one, I ended up posting it as it's own story. It ended up being more about Cat's home life than about Beck and Jade's relationship with her (although there was a bit of it). That story is "Maybe It's About More Than Diddly-Bops" if you want to check it out. :)
I'm having lots of fun with my different Victorious fics. :) I think I have three going at the moment. It's exciting! I'm doing work on a thesis project this week and need to write a fairytale adaption for a present, but I will try to do an update at some point soon. I do find this relaxing. :)
Thanks to Boris Yeltsin and Imagine sus for their comments on the last chapter. I really appreciate it!
Enjoy!
...
It was all fun and teasing games (on Jade's side at least) until Cat and Daniel were splattered in hot cheese sauce.
Jade had been teasing Tori about her ex, Daniel, now dating Cat. In all her remarks and sneers, Jade had not foreseen that Tori may end up taking it out on the new couple. About two minutes after Jade's latest dig at Tori about the situation, Tori reacted in a rather spectacular fashion. She hijacked the cheese fountain and let it spatter Cat and Daniel (Tori's "Danny") with melted cheese. As Cat spluttered with shock and then sadness over the fact that her friend had just splattered her in fondue goo, Tori had the decency to look ashamed. What annoyed Jade was that Tori then turned and ran away without giving a good explanation for her actions.
She was going to apologize to Cat if Jade had anything to do with it.
But first Jade needed to check on Cat who was dangerously close to crying in front of the large crowd that was staring at her cheddar-ized figurres. As Sikowitz's disjointedly declared that "this is what happens when you mix teenagers with hot cheese!", a jolt of protectiveness hit in to Jade as she finally processed what she had just seen. She instinctively turned to Beck and was surprised to see protectiveness in his eyes as well.
"Let's go," he murmured to her. They were fully united on this.
They caught up with the cheesy duo just outside of the bathrooms.
"Do you need anything to help you clean up? I have some extra make up wipes in my locker," Jade offered quietly as she walked up behind their little friend. Cat whirled around, with teary eyes and an expression of relief that her other friends were checking in on her.
"Why did she do that?" Cat squeaked sadly, shaking cheese off of the tips of her fingers. Daniel was standing next to her, stunned by Tori's behaviour too.
"I'm going to find out," Jade assured her. "You get cleaned up and I'll find her and make her apologize." She turned to Beck seriously. "Let's go."
"I think she headed to the Black Box Theater," Beck said, leading the way.
"Tori! Yo! Tori!" Beck called into the empty room.
"We saw you run in here," Jade added. Maybe she had not fully seen Tori disappear into this doorway, but she had a good sense that there was someone hiding in the dark corners of the room.
Beck leaned against the door as Jade kept surveying the room. He motioned to the camping gear set up at the front of the room. "What's with all that stuff?"
"Sinjin and his friends are doing some play about a camping trip gone wrong," Jade answered dismissively.
"Gone wrong?"
"They end up eating each other. I don't know," Jade said, a little irritated. She wanted to find Tori and demand justice, not worry about what that little creep Sinjin was doing as a performance.
Beck started walking around again, getting back to their mission. He yelled again, "Tori! Tori? Yo, Tori!"
Just then Jade saw the tent move a little. Either there was a very large rat or a Tori hiding inside. Either way, her plan was going to work. She grabbed an abandoned broom from the back of the room and threw it like a javelin at the tent door. From inside came a very angry and surprised "OWWWW!" that Jade would have had a hard time equaling. But then, making exclamations of pain was not really her "thing".
Beck turned on the lights at the sound, looking a little exasperated that she had not answered his many calls. Jade smirked. She had found the turncoat "friend" of the group. It was not that Jade could not forgive something like this - if anything, she liked people better when she got a chance to see a "fallen angel" side - but first she had to get in a bit of emotional torture. This was going to be fun! Plus, she had justification. This was not just for her amusement - this was for Cat's sake.
"Toriiiiiiii," Jade sing-songed creepily, "Come out to plaaa-aaaay!"
Tori unzipped the tent door and appeared with her sausage on a stick. "Leave me alone."
"What up with the hot cheese attack on Cat?" Beck said succinctly, not looking amused. Jade was though - not by the attack, but by the fact that for once Tori was completely in the wrong and she was completely in the right (forgetting all goading of the situation that may have had her name attached to it).
"And on her boyfriend, Daniel," Jade added, self-satisfied.
Tori tried to explain, but she was mostly as confused as everyone else seemed. Jade probably understood her better at that moment than she did herself. At least Jade had a storied history of acting possessively publicly. Neither Jade nor Beck were impressed by her explanation, although Jade could understand a little of what Tori was saying. She had experienced similar jealousy when Beck was kissed by another girl ... but then, that girl had been Tori so her empathy levels remained at rock bottom. Still, Jade refrained from more comments and it ended in Tori saying she would go apologize.
With that crisis supposedly being fixed, Jade and Beck went back to trying to figure out the process that some of their friends had been using to get smooth feet, so they missed witnessing the next bit of trauma - although they heard all about it an hour later when they headed back to Beck's RV to watch some movies after the kickback. Sitting on his step was a crying Cat with a woeful story of coming out of the bathroom to see Tori and Daniel kissing right in front of her while they thought they were doing it behind her back!
Jade felt a rush of rage and would have marched over to the Vega house and egged it immediately had Beck not reminded her that a.) Tori's dad was a police officer; b.) there were better ways to get back at Tori; and c.) Cat needed her more at that moment. Jade groaned at his reasoning - it was too well founded to be easily argued against - and settled into a comforting role with Cat. It took two of Beck's amazing grilled cheese sandwiches, a painful number of hugs, a quarter box of tissues, three hours, and the promise of a sleepover with Jade for the rest of the night to quell Cat's sorrows. A can or two of Mountain Dew and the ensuing caffeine high might have affected her as well. It took Jade until 2:30 am to get Cat to quiet down for the night in her sleeping bag that she had hidden at Jade' house for surprise sleepovers.
The next day, Beck and Jade visited the Vega house to try Trina's secret foot treatment (non-painful to Jade's disappointment and Beck's subsequent confusion). They had hoped that Tori would be absent when they arrived, but when she later appeared from her room with laments of how Cat was ignoring her, they did not offer any answers from the previous night about Cat's devastation. When Tori had the audacity to ask the group why Cat was ignoring her calls, Andre and Robbie answered with the hot cheese incident and the contraband kiss, and Jade only added "Those things upset some girls." Beck wisely chose to stay quiet, knowing that Jade was speaking from her own experience and he did not need to get between Tori and Jade over this issue. Jade was finally calming down in the frequency that she brought up their stage kiss fiasco, and he did not want to poke the bear on it again.
"I'll get revenge on her for you," Jade offered Cat later that day when she and Beck took her and Robbie for slushies (Robbie coming along for extra moral support for the disillusioned, kind-hearted girl). Cat had wisely decided that Daniel needed to be history, but she thought that maybe her relationship with Tori was redeemable. Jade had been a little disappointed - after all, she thought that they could easily exclude Tori from the group without anyone suffering too much - but Cat had insisted that Jade hold back.
"And she will," Beck had assured her while giving Jade his signature warning look that communicated "please don't make me a liar on this one".
"Fine. You can try to handle it on your own, but if you don't make her pay for it, then I will. No one gets away with treating you like that," Jade stated forebodingly before taking a slurp from her drink.
...
To say that Jade was proud of Cat for taking her chance to punch Tori's nose would be an understatement. Unfortunately, she was so sick with fish toxins (thanks, Trina's illegal foot-softening method!) that she could not properly enjoy it for several hours. It took that long for her own agony to subside enough to hear the whole story. She smiled all through the telling despite residual aches and grogginess. Maybe that would teach Tori to stop kissing other girls' guys!
"I kind of did it for you too," Cat whispered quietly, climbing onto Jade's bed and snuggling against her recuperating friend. "She said that I could punch her and I did, 'cause I was upset about her kissing Daniel, but it also reminded me of when she kissed Beck to hurt your feelings. And it all made me so sad and upset and ... and maybe I shouldn't have punched her, but she said that I could and ..."
Cat squealed with joy as Jade interrupted her wandering explanation by pulling her into a fierce hug and whispering "thank you" into her ear. Because sometimes it was not just about Jade and Beck protecting Cat. Sometimes Cat offered protection too. And Jade was grateful that she could finally feel that justice was served.
Although she would enjoy it a lot more once the rest of the nausea from the pukka fish was out of her system!
...
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