Work Text:
When I felt that I should leave
We'll call it midnight or so
I found myself annoyed
By a syndrome of sorts in her bones
That girl who's next to me
She don't know her worth in this town
'Cause her face starts to shine when that meathead behind me
Is grinning as he's checking her out (oh, come on!)
I said, "All I can hope for is for you to get better
'Cause all I can take is no more”
-Modern Baseball, Tears Over Beers
Play practice gets out late tonight, and this is about the point at which Jade West realizes that she’s fucked.
Because see, the thing is that tonight’s play is for one of the only classes she doesn’t have with most of her friends, since it’s usually more of a theater history class than a proper drama class, more focused on Shakespeare and Greek tragedies when they actually put in the “experiential” requirement that all Hollywood Arts classes have, and Oedipus and Medea and the like aren’t exactly up her friends’ alleys as they are Jade’s, considering how much she loves a sad ending or two.
So she’s alone after school, everyone else in her class quickly driving home themselves or getting picked up by parents who work normal weekday hours, unlike her mother and her evening shifts, and the sun is setting and all Jade has is her leather jacket and she needs to get home and get some sleep or she might actually shank a bitch tomorrow.
Normally, she’d be one of those kids driving home herself, but right now, her car’s broken down and she is not calling her mom and her dad is, y’know, on some fucking business trip.
Jade could call up her stepmom, but the woman irritates her. Jade knows it’s not the woman’s fault that Jade’s dad cheated on her mom, but when you find out that the man that you’re dating was married to another woman, well, maybe some part of you should go that guy's a dick. God, Jade doesn’t even like her mom much, considering how distant she is, but loyalty is a thing, no matter how much it itches beneath your skin, and she will always take her mom's side of things, especially this thing.
Jade and Beck are currently on the rocks—when are they not—and more likely than not, Beck is going to show up with a gaggle of girls in his car. Jade might actually punch someone—or stab them with her scissors—if she has to sit in a car with the girls that Beck has said more than once are nicer than she is.
(Why are you dating me if you don’t think that I’m too much? Jade has almost asked Beck so many times, but some questions aren't meant to be asked, she has found, not unless you want to see what happens when the universe ends.)
There is no way in hell Jade's going to call up Tori, Jade doesn’t trust Cat to drive and like hell is she going to deal with Cat’s brother who might end up in the car as well, and Andre is an option, of course, and probably the best one, but there’s always the chance that his grandmother will be in the car, and with the way that Jade’s headache is going, that might also end in someone coming to blows, and Jade doesn't want to be the person that gets arrested for fighting an old woman.
So there’s only one option left in her friend group, isn’t there, if she wants to make it home without having to navigate the bus system after dark?
Jade sighs, flips open her phone as she lights up a cigarette, and she calls up her last option.
---
Robbie Shapiro rolls up right as the sun is finally settling beneath the horizon, just enough light thrown up in the air for the first stars to be in the sky but still a certain saturated blue to the sky, not yet true ink spilling over the sky, and thankfully it looks like she threatened him enough to not have Rex sitting in the passenger seat.
Jade snuffs out her cigarette beneath the toe of her boot, the flame disappearing beneath the rubber as surely as her own desires have snuffed themselves out over the past four years.
Robbie is grinning from ear-to-ear, nothing but that blisteringly bright optimism that he always wears across his teeth like a sun that she can’t look away from, no matter how much it will blind her.
Usually, Jade would be immediately be ready with an insult, especially since he’s about ten minutes later than he was supposed to be, especially when Robbie beams as he rolls down his window and says, “Your chariot awaits, milady,” irritatingly jolly, that sort of dorkishness that grates at Jade’s senses. “And don’t worry, I also have brought dinner!”
But it’s hard to have an insult ready to sling when he pops open the passenger door of his clunker for her and sure enough, there is a bag of food ready for her.
Jade grimaces when she sees the label—Big Banta, a play on the Big Bang, vegan Indian food, of course, because that particular secret’s out of the box, when it comes to both Cat and Robbie being vegan—but there is something in her that feels…strange when he, awkward but earnest, says, “I know you prefer meat, but I thought that you might be hungry after play practice, and so I stopped at my favorite place!"
And there’s something about it that gives Jade hives.
Yes, being vegan is insane. Yes, the food that Robbie’s offering up would taste way better if it was made of red meat, the sort of thing that she would need to dig her teeth into, but it’s still a gift. Something that she didn’t demand or even ask for.
Something that Robbie Shapiro brought just because he could. Just because that’s the sort of thing that a friend does. The sort of thing that someone who cares does.
And Jade can't remember the last time that someone did that for her.
Beck hasn’t done something like this since—
Jade frowns as she slides into the passenger seat, messenger bag going on the floor, bag of food going into her lap. She doesn’t think that Beck has ever done something like this. Sure, they’ve gone out on dates where he sometimes pays, sometimes she does, and sometimes they’ll order takeout to his trailer, but when it comes to just surprising her with food because she’s been busy and she’s likely to be hungry?
Jade can’t remember the last time that he did something thoughtful like this.
(Then again—she can’t remember the last time that she did something thoughtful like this, either. They've never had the sort of relationship where they think of things like this for each other.)
So Jade sighs. She doesn’t normally do the whole ‘gratitude’ thing, especially not with Robbie Shapiro of all people, but she knows that her mother would expect it of her. (Not that Jade normally seeks to make her mother proud, that is, but there is something about this that feels a bit different.)
“Not bad, Shapiro,” Jade says, digging out a wrap from inside of the bag and unwrapping it. The smell wafts over to her—Indian, which she does have a certain fondness for, even if she’d never admit it to Robbie, but he must have paid enough attention to notice what she liked over the years.
Creep, she wants to call him, but there is something in her that is cranky and tired and hungry enough to appreciate the attention, even if it grates on her that it’s more than her own boyfriend pays to her.
Robbie grins. “Awesomesauce,” he says, “I was hoping that you’d like it.”
It’s not fair, really, that that sort of enthusiastic earnestness digs at something inside of her chest, some part of her that has spent years wondering if she’ll be able to feel something more with Beck than a general numbness only broken up by the occasional spark of fights and breaks and screaming matches.
Jade rolls her eyes. "Don't overstate it, Shapiro," she says as she tucks a strand of dyed hair behind her ear and takes a bite, sinking her teeth into tortilla and some interesting mix of curry and other spices that she loves so much.
It's hard, really, to stop herself from smiling when she does enjoy this. When this is the first meal she's had in ages that isn't her eating home alone, either making herself something in the microwave or warming up leftovers that her mother left behind for her in order to go to work.
“Y'know, you’ve got that really intimidating-beautiful thing going on,” Robbie says, casual as anything, as if there is anything casual about it, and then winces as if he spoke without thinking, as if he thinks that she’s going to slap him for the compliment—
And yeah, normally, Jade would. She would slap any guy that cat-called her, if not use her scissors to teach them a lesson. You don’t grow up a girl with a giant age difference with your closest sibling, with parents that are distant or busy all the time, and not learn how to take care of yourself.
But something in her thinks I can’t remember the last time that Beck called me pretty, much less beautiful.
That’s the difference, really. Plenty of guys are creeps. Plenty of guys make comments that make Jade want to take a shower, and she long ago learned how to take care of those dickheads.
But the words that Robbie uses specifically—they feel different.
They open something inside of Jade’s chest that she doesn’t want to look at. Something in her chest that yearns to hear something similar again.
Because god, Jade is someone that is independent. Someone who is proud of being alone, of having no close friends, of being harsh before she is kind, of being sharp before she softens.
But it is fucking lonely here, with the only person she lets in close being a boyfriend who regularly prefers to spend time with other girls.
Why doesn’t he just fucking break up with me? Jade wants to ask, needs to ask for the answer to her ache, but she told herself a long, long time ago, when she watched her mother’s reactions to her father’s indiscretions, that she wouldn’t beg. That she wouldn’t stay in a relationship where someone cheated on her.
But Beck hasn’t quite cheated, has he, and they’ve been dating since they were fourteen, and she doesn’t know who she is when she’s not walking through Hollywood Arts with Beck’s arm around her waist.
But right now, Robbie is looking at her, and there is a tenderness in his eyes that makes her feel tender as a bruise, like something that will crumble if just poked the right way, and she hates it, because Jade West is not fragile. She is not someone who is brittle.
She is not someone who lets Robbie fucking Shapiro get under her skin.
Jade knows what she herself went through when her father cheated. She knows what her mother went through when her father cheated. She knows that she is someone that is loyal above all else, because she refuses to follow in her father’s footsteps.
The thing about Robbie Shapiro is that he isn’t classically handsome, drop-dead gorgeous, like Beck is. But there is something about the way that the moonlight hits his glasses, the earnest curve of his smile, the pitter-patter pace of the enthusiasm in his voice, that makes some part of her find him just a bit captivating.
Jade West is exhausted and aching and she’s so fucking tired of Beck’s half-cheating and flirting with every girl he meets without having the decency to just do the damn thing and give her the hard out that she could use as hard justification to dump him now and forever.
And so why not let recklessness wreck her against the edge of the universe?
Jade leans forward, grabs Robbie Shapiro by his collar, and yanks him in across the center console.
Jade kisses Robbie and he tastes of vegan fast food and a bit of the smoke lingering on her own lips and a fucking chance at something that isn’t the stale nature of Beck’s kisses, those perfunctory things that haven’t made Jade feel anything in so long, because her relationship with Beck is more fact than feeling.
Robbie’s fingers fumble for a moment, unsure where to place themselves, scrabbling against arm and side and jacket, but they settle into her back, digging into the leather, and he tilts up his jaw, allowing her to lead the kiss, and his mouth opens up to her smoke-laced lips.
He’s awkward, because Jade doesn’t know if Robbie Shapiro has kissed anyone before, but he is eager, he is aching, he is wanting, and there is something about it that splits her open. That undoes her from the inside, the riptide of the beach threatening to pull her under, the dusk threatening to drown her in the midnight dark.
Because Robbie is almost throwing himself into this, all lips, all teeth, all enthusiasm, as if he has been starving his entire life and has never felt full until he met her, until he tasted Jade’s mouth, and it feels like a supernova going off beneath her skin, the fact that someone could want her like this.
Jade can’t bring herself to care about how his glasses dig into her skin, because she can’t remember the last time that Beck ever showed any sort of true want for her. She can’t remember the last time that someone starved for her.
Eventually, though, she needs to breathe, and so she pulls back. Robbie looks half-drunk on her kiss, eyes half-lidded behind those dorky glasses, and he is looking at her in utter awe, like she’s some sort of masterpiece in a museum somewhere, like she’s some sort of miracle that answers all of his prayers.
And something in Jade smirks, because even if Beck barely reacts when she kisses him anymore, she still has it.
It’s an almost intoxicating possibility, a boy who looks at her like that, where ink dark eyes aren’t dismissive as they roll their eyes at the force of her affection but rather embrace her.
But then Robbie mutters, “Holy janking shit, that was amazing,” an ecstatic rumble of enthusiasm, like the river running down to crash over the edge of the waterfall into the sea, “No, scratch that—you’re amazing. Beck’s the luckiest guy in the world,” and something cracks right down Jade West’s heart.
That’s not—
This isn’t supposed to—
There’s no way that Robbie Shapiro is supposed to make her feel more than Beck has in ages.
Beck is every girl’s dream guy. Pretty as can be, the star of every show, the perfect guy. Clearly he has every girl in school flocking to him, and some part of Jade has always lived in some sticky place between jealous and proud that she was the one that locked that down.
But Beck doesn’t often seem to be happy that they’re together, more bored than anything, more irritated than anything most days when she shows him that she likes him, and maybe Jade West has always been guilty of being jealous, of wrapping her hand too tight around the things that matter to her, of digging in her nails so that people don’t leave her, so that the same thing that happened to her mother won’t happen to her, but it still shaves away a little layer of her heart every time that Beck looks at her like that, when he barely blinks when she kisses him, when she holds his hand and he seems more annoyed than in love.
And yet Robbie Shapiro is acting like Jade is a catch.
Years ago, she’d thought the same. Years ago, when Beck had kissed her for the first time, Jade had thought: I need to hold onto this with everything that I have, because it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I’m gonna make sure that Beck knows that he has the best girl in the world.
But at some point in the last few years, that has fallen apart. That has turned out to be a lie that Jade told herself, and she won’t admit it aloud, but she’s become used to the idea that if Beck couldn’t want her, couldn’t like her, then no one ever would.
Right now, though, Robbie is looking at her with reddened lips and a shine in his eyes and Jade feels dizzier than any time that Beck has spun her around at a school dance because she’s a senior in high school, practically an adult, and yet even though they’ve literally had sex dozens of times Beck has never made her feel like how this single kiss from Robbie Shapiro undoes her.
And that’s a fucking problem.
Because how can Jade pretend as if she’s the person in the right when she’s finally done the very thing that she has cursed her father for for so long? How can she accept herself if she was the one that finally broke down and stepped over that line?
Jade can’t handle that. She can’t handle becoming George West instead of Jocelyn Rammetta, can’t handle becoming the man whose name she bears on her birth certificate instead of the mother who is distant, yeah, but never deserved what her husband did to her.
“Shut the fuck up, Andy Samberg,” Jade snaps, her sneer harsh, her dismissal sharp. “You have not a fucking clue what you’re talking about. You’ve never even been with a girl, how could you even know?”
Robbie rears back, hurt cracking across his face, and it’s cruel, she knows, but some part of her heart is leaking out from underneath of its crustacean shell, and she can’t bear to know what might happen if she lets it out into the sea.
(And who likes sand, anyway? There’s a reason why Jade doesn’t go to the beach. It’s coarse and it’s annoying and it gets everywhere and god, does she regret letting Cat convince her to come to watch Star Wars with her and Robbie, because there’s no world in which Jade should be thinking in the sort of references that Robbie Shapiro would make.)
Robbie frowns. His eyes gleam with unshed tears.
And something in Jade thinks—
You terrify me, because you actually seem to want me, and I have no idea what to do with that, because I’ve never been wanted and if I get a taste of hunger, then I don’t know how I’m ever going to stop craving more.
Jade settles back in her chair and orders Robbie, “Take me home, Shapiro,” each word shrapnel-sharp on her tongue.
Out of the corner of her eye, Robbie flinches. “I’m sorry,” he says, tone absolutely miserable, “I didn’t mean-”
Of course you didn’t fucking mean, Jade wants to scream at him, but if she opens her mouth, she has the feeling she’s going to start crying and never fucking stop.
Instead, as he swallows hard and pulls out of the parking lot—not even buckling up his seatbelt, because he never undid it, rule-follower that he is—Jade looks out the window the entire time, backs of her eyes burning, but the tears don’t fall, because she refuses to cry in front of Robbie fucking Shapiro, because she thinks that if she did cry, she’d never stop.
---
They drive home in silence. Robbie drops her off. She gets out of the car and slams the door behind her, though she winces as she does so, because her insides might be on fire but that doesn’t mean that she should damage his car.
And yet, he waits for her to enter the lightless house before he drives off.
And she stands there and stares out the window into the dusk-darkened sky for longer than she’ll ever admit to.
---
There is something so final about Beck and Jade being a couple. It always has been, and it always will be.
Hollywood Arts’ science curriculum is laughable at best. You’ve only got to have two science credits to graduate, which might even be below California standard requirements, Jade isn’t sure.
But she remembers taking Earth & Space Science freshman year in order to get it off of her plate. She remembers hearing about the two theories for how the universe began: the Big Bang, the theory that the universe burst into being one day in a giant burst of light and matter, or the Steady State, the theory that universe always has been and always will be.
She remembers leaning back in her chair and yawning before passing a note to Beck about where they were going to make out after school, before play practices kicked in for both of them, because that was her priority: art and Beck and nothing else.
But now, she thinks about the question again. There was a time when she wasn’t with Beck, right?
But he was her first kiss. Her first boyfriend. Her first everything.
What sort of universe could have existed before him? What sort of relationship could exist after him?
Jade can’t be sure.
---
When her parents got divorced, Jade and her brother both knew why it was happening. His dad literally showed up with his girlfriend to Jade’s brother’s high school graduation and rubbed his affair right in her mother’s face.
Jade wanted to tell her mother to stand up for herself. To leave his ass. To seek out a relationship of her own to shove it in his face. To tell him to lick it up in his loneliness and be done with him.
But when she saw her mother that night—all she felt was pity, because her father clearly had no respect for her, and sometimes, Jade wondered if her mother had respect for herself.
When Jade gets home tonight, her mother is at work, because she did divorce him, eventually, she did take that step, and now she’s providing for the one child still at home, because Jade’s brother left and is never coming back, and all that’s left is Jade and Jocelyn and their aches.
---
Jade West doesn’t do things that she regrets. She charges forward, says what she means, and lets the consequences wash over her, because nothing will ever stick. She and Beck will get back together, Tori Vega will continue being an annoying thorn in her side, Andre will continue making good music, and Cat will continue being an idiot.
Except—
Jade goes to sleep tonight, and she stares at the ceiling, unable to get her body to relax into sleep, because Robbie frowned after they kissed and looked like she broke his heart and she hates the fact that it made her heart curdle to see him upset like that.
---
The next day, it’s pouring down rain as Jade makes her way to school.
See, her mother works the evening shift, but Jade could ask her to get up and take her to school. She could also call up Beck and ask for a ride, or any of the friends she could have called up last night.
But she doesn’t. She doesn’t ask, because her mother needs her sleep, because Jade did what she always swore she wouldn’t do last night, because some part of Jade aches for the woman who wasted nearly two decades of her life on a man who didn’t deserve her.
Jade also doesn’t call her friends for the same reasons she didn’t last night to help her with a ride, and she doesn’t call Robbie because—
Jade doesn’t know if she’ll be able to face him any time soon. If she’ll be able to look him in the eyes after last night, after what she said, after what she did.
So instead, Jade carefully opens up the door to her mother’s room and pads in to kiss her on the temple, making sure not to wake her up, and then she heads for the bus stop nearest to her house. She takes the bus to school, and she’s bedraggled and damp by the time that she arrives to the entrance.
Jade doesn't want to be here. She doesn't want to talk to anyone. She doesn't really want to be at school, not after her terrible time sleeping last night, not after being drowned in the rain like a rat, and she is ready to shove her beloved scissors into anyone that talks to her.
But she supposes that after last night, after being the one to actually break and kiss someone for the first time, Jade should do something to make things right. Be a decent girlfriend for once.
She should go up to Beck and kiss him deep and pretend that everything that she did last night never happened.
It’d be so easy to do. At this point, she’s pretty sure that while Beck might not have actively made out with another girl, he’s done everything but. Their relationship has been built on shaky grounds for so long, no solid foundation to fall back on, but that’s the sort of relationship that Jade is used to. The sort of thing that she has to look up to. The way that boys and girls hold onto something long past the breaking point, because it’s closer to stability than anything else and they are comfortable enough that they can’t imagine being with someone else.
But the problem is that now she has seen what it's like to be with someone else. What it's like to kiss someone who actually wants her, someone who sees her as more than just a fact.
And when she enters the school building, she sees Robbie standing off to the side talking to Cat, and that's nothing different from normal. Jade shouldn't even notice anything about it.
But she does.
Jade notices Robbie Shapiro in a way that she never did before, notices that there are dark shadows under his eyes that Jade is intuitive enough to know that she put there, notices the way that his gaze flickers to her, eyes widening just slightly before jerking back to Cat, the way that he nibbles on the lips that she made mincemeat out of last night, the way that he cared enough to show up last night and to bring her food.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the lobby of Hollywood Arts, over by their lockers, is Beck. The rain doesn’t seem to have touched him at all, though Jade does have the suspicion that one of the girls who rides in his car every morning would likely sacrifice their own backpacks in order to protect his perfect head of hair. He's hanging out with Tori, another girl hanging off of him, and he's done the exact same thing a million times before but he doesn't even look at her as she comes in, doesn't even register her, doesn't even care—
And something in Jade snaps, cut completely through by her beloved scissors.
Jade looks between both of them. Between Robbie and Beck. Between the person who called her beautiful, the person who brought her a snack just because she might be hungry, and the boy who has broken her heart more times than she can count.
And she thinks that for all of her and Beck’s ups and downs, all of their explosions and implosions and the like, they’re the steadiest thing she’s ever known. Steady state universe, and all that.
And Jade thinks about the riptide. About what it feels like to be drowning on dry land.
And Jade thinks: Big fucking Bang.
Something settles deep into the marrow of her bones, anchoring itself deep, and she takes a deep breath and strides straight up to her boyfriend.
They’re not good for each other. He deserves more than her and she deserves more than him, and she’s done trying to hold on.
She’s letting go. She’s cutting the knot that has held them together for so long, that has kept them bouncing back to each other over and over even after “breaks” and “pauses,” just because they've been together since they were kids and neither of them know how to cut the string.
Well, Jade isn't enduring two decades. She's not going to become her mother. She’s not going to beg, and she’s not going to take him back. Not this time.
“I’m fucking done with all this bullshit,” Jade says, no prologue, and Beck finally looks up at her. Finally looks directly at her, meeting her eyes, seeing how serious she is. “This bouncing back and forth. These breaks and these girls and this anchor that we both are to each other. I’m done with you, and you’re clearly done with me.”
“So you’re saying that this is just…it?” Beck says, and he almost seems confused, because every “break” they’ve taken before, he’s initiated.
Sure, Jade has thrown her fair share of tantrums. (And maybe more than her fair share.) She’s thrown pillows. She’s initiated arguments. She’s screamed.
But she’s never let go, not really, because she didn’t know how to.
Right now knows that everyone in the hallways are staring at the two of them, but she can’t bring herself to care.
Because she just nods. "Kiss who you want to. Fuck who you want to. I'm done." And this, she knows, is the most confusing part of all, because Jade West is the most notoriously jealous person in school, because she watched her father stick his dick in anything that wasn't the vows that he'd made, and no one here knows what to do with the idea that Jade might be ready to give Beck up—
But Jade West isn't her mother. She isn't Medea. She isn't letting herself get buried in a tragedy, in the end of the universe, if she can find the way to carve a different path who she wants to.
And sure enough, she turns on her heel, turns her back on Beck's arched eyebrow, on the entire school's dropped jaws, and she marches up to Robbie.
Jade yanks him into a kiss, pulls him down into her, and takes him under like the riptide.
And this time, his hands know exactly where to go, splaying across her back, warm through her corset, holding her up with a surprising amount of strength (from carrying that puppet, she supposes), and she doesn’t care what the hit takes to her reputation to be kissing the school's biggest dork, because if her heart is going to be bruised, she’d rather it be with someone that treats it tenderly, someone who makes the universe burst past a supernova in her veins, birthing itself from the wreckage into something entirely new.
When she pulls back, Robbie is grinning from ear-to-ear, an utter dork, especially as he squeaks, “Mazel tov!” without missing a beat, and she knows that she shouldn’t be attracted to such a thing and yet some part of her goes—
I’d rather have a dork who cares than a drop-dead deadbeat who doesn't. I'd rather have someone that wants me, someone that makes me want, rather than someone who makes me ache.
"So," Jade says, "You and I. Big Bang," and it doesn't make sense to anyone other than her, but Robbie grins from ear to ear, and Jade's universe finally gets to begin again.
She's a girl with a bag full of hearts and a devil's eye
Shotgun for a tongue but says just what she likes
Oh girl you're the devil
Oh girl you've got the devil inside
And I said follow me
Whoever you want to be
As long as you stay with me
-Mika, Oh Girl You're The Devil