WIP: Telling the Squad (1/?)
Title: Telling the Squad
Fandom: That '70s Show
Summary: Jackie wonders how she’s going to explain her relationship with Hyde to her cheerleading friends, while the cheerleaders wonder just has gotten into Jackie lately.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Jackie/Hyde
A/N: Dedicated to my friends and fellow-posters at Fan Forum. It’s great posting with you guys! This story was also partially inspired by Misty Flores’ wonderful story, “Jekyll and Hyde,” whose hilariously gossipy cheerleaders got me thinking.
Chapter One
For all intents and purposes, Jackie never thought she would actually have to explain to her cheerleading squad this thing between her and Steven, because in the beginning, it was just supposed to be a summer fling. But it wasn’t, because now it was fall and they had never stopped. Somehow flirtation and making-out had become something more intense. Something they couldn’t stop; something neither one of them wanted to stop.
No one was supposed to know because it should have ended before the school year started. But a few stolen kisses in the basement had turned into making-out on the couch, which in turn became nuzzling in front of the fridge, which morphed into groping in Steven’s bedroom, and occasionally, necking in the el Camino.
Jackie knew the moment of no return when it happened. After Eric and Donna had caught them together that one day, breathless with kissing, she realized that she was actually relieved. Relieved that they didn’t have to hide it anymore, at least from two people. She didn’t have to be alone with Steven anymore in order to kiss each him or touch him.
And when Michael had found out-it had been difficult-but Jackie had felt an even greater weight lift. Yet to tell Leslie and Jamie and Shelly and Mandy and Heather and so on . . . why did it feel like it was going to be so hard? She could imagine their faces now, their perfectly curled hair and flawlessly applied make-up. . . they would stare at her like, well, like they did when they found out that Michael had proposed to her and then proceeded to ditch her, driving as far away from Wisconsin as it was humanly possible just so he could avoid her. Jackie felt her cheeks burn, glad that she didn’t have to spend all of her time with the squad, glad to have the comfort of the Foreman’s basement which was now like a second home to her.
A niggling feeling in the back of her mind wondered though, if a little part of her wasn’t ashamed of Steven, of her being with Steven. He definitely was not the kind of guy that Jackie Burkhart associated with, no less dated. He was super scruffy, yes, and it totally felt like making out with carpet (not that she knew how that felt from first hand experience-she had always practiced on pillows or stuffed animals-and then of course, there had been Michael…), but it was also super sexy. Where Michael was pretty, Steven was handsome and manly. Thinking about now, Jackie could barely fight to urge to run and find him so she could pin him to a wall and kiss him silly.
For years, the only reason no one had given her any lip about hanging around with Steven Hyde was because he hung out with Michael and she had been with him so the contact was unavoidable. Now though, Michael was the last person she’d want to spend time with and Steven was the only person she wanted to be around. She didn’t think the cheerleading squad would understand that kind of thing. They were experts at flips and cheers and the structure of human pyramids, but when it came clique hopping and dating between social groups, they were as clueless as if someone had given them a book on quantum physics and told them to give a report on subatomic particles (she and Steven had watched a special on this over the summer, but she only remembered bits of it for obvious reasons).
Jackie mulled this over a bit, then finally gave up. She walked across her room and turned off her ABBA album, for a moment considering giving Donna a call. But Donna, as good of a friend as she was, wouldn’t understand how it was like to be under the pressure that only rich, beautiful, and popular people experienced. If she wanted to know how to chop some wood, she’d call Donna, but this was something she would have to handle by herself, and by herself alone.
*~*~*~*
Something was going on with Jackie Burkhart. Leslie told this to Heather who whispered this to Ashley during second period English, who eventually told Maria who told the rest of the squad (with the exception of Jackie herself) because Maria was never good at keeping secrets. That everyone would know about this was inevitable as ugly people never getting dates, Jamie had said. Everyone on the squad would know, had to know, because the Point Place Vikings Cheer Squad was like a single giant entity that could not exist apart, and could only thrive as a collective unit. How could they cheer together if they kept secrets from one another? That was the big question Mandy always asked new potential cheerleaders. It was often the question that would make or break the chances of aspiring cheerleaders all through Point Place.
Mandy had posed this question initially in the third floor bathroom during lunch while she was reapplying her angel dust lip gloss. This year, Mandy’s senior year, she had made team captain. Excited as she was about that, Mandy had been surprised because almost from the day Jackie had joined the squad, dazzling them all with her high kick, it had been assumed that Jackie would ascend the ladder to team leader when Muffy Sinclair graduated. Yet when squad tryouts began in August, Jackie hadn’t even tried out for captain. Half the time she arrived late to practices, face flushed and hair uncharacteristically out of place.
This kind of stuff had been going on for a while too. One of the main reasons Jackie hadn’t made captain had to do with her dedication over the summer. While the girls on the squad, and Lance and Billy, their male cheerleaders, had devoted hours upon hours at summer practice and cheerleader camp, Jackie had slacked. The squad had been very understanding at first, telling her that it was okay if she couldn’t make it to all the summer practices. They had heard all about this latest break-up with Kelso, and if the past break-ups with him were any indication, Jackie would be distracted and in and out of practice for a while. But she wasn’t. The first few weeks of summer practices Jackie had always been the first one there, stretching and spreading peppiness like sunshine.
“Poor girl,” Shelly, who had always been jealous of Jackie, had whispered, “trying to mend her broken heart by being the ultimate cheerleader. She’s so brave.”
But then, a few weeks later, Jackie suddenly stopped coming. At first it was just leaving practice early (“errands,” she said, or, “great sale at the mall”), but Maria had checked. There wasn’t any great sale at the mall. Just some stupid sales on towels and blenders.
Ashley was convinced that Jackie was involved in something so terrible that she couldn’t tell anyone else, lest their lives be in danger as well. This was because once when Jackie had rushed away from practice, Ashley had been convinced that she had seen her slip into a black car with a man with dark glasses. “He looked mysterious, like an assassin or something.”
“Don’t be a nerd,” Lance had snorted, flipping up Ashley’s skirt so that the little boys in the daycare that played next to their practice field could get a full shot of her green bloomers. After that, Ashley had quieted down about the conspiracy theories.
Then Jackie simply stopped coming. Jamie even called her house looking for her, but the housekeeper told her that Miss Jackie was out and no, she didn’t know where she had gone. Jamie tried calling at all times of the day. Early morning, mid-afternoon, only reaching Jackie in the evenings, where Jackie always sidestepped questions about her whereabouts.
“Whatever, Jamie,” she had said. “It’s none of your business.” Jamie had cried for half an hour afterwards before tuning in to Charlie’s Angels, which always inspired her and put her in a good mood. Seeing great hair on television always reassured her that there was, indeed, some sense to the universe.
Heather was convinced it was drugs.
“I’ve heard stuff about what goes on at the Foreman house,” she said knowingly, “it’s a virtual den of sin. Sex, drugs…rock and roll.” Secretly, Heather was jealous and wondered how she could breach the subject with Jackie, maybe get an in and a secret invite to join them in the basement, but was too afraid. Regardless of her behavior of late, Jackie was a powerful member of the squad and one wrong step could spell the end for Heather, and she didn’t know how she could survive being downgraded to merely being just another beautiful face without a uniform and school spirit to accompany it.
Whatever the case though, the whole squad was concerned. Something was up with Jackie Burkhart, and they were damned if they weren’t going to find out what it was.
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