Chapter Text
Late 1976
Steven Hyde had never expected colour to bloom in his world. As far as he knew, most people spent their entire lives as Colour-Blinds, surrounded by white, greys and black, and he thought they were all better off for it. He put as much stock into the idea of soulmates as he did Santa Claus. Who was to say they were even real? Yeah, everyone grew up hearing of the phenomenon; it was a huge trope in films, music and books, after all, and you most likely knew someone who claimed to have found their soulmate, but what proof was there? Not only was there no way to scientifically prove people were really meant for each other, but the idea of colours, on top of everything else, was just fucking weird. He couldn’t possibly imagine something he had never seen before, had no frame of reference for, and nobody could explain to him, so how the hell was he expected to believe in it? ‘Green’ was as real to him as aliens. Actually, he was confident aliens existed, so they had that on ‘green’ and ‘magenta’ or ‘amber’. People could tell him they saw ‘colour’ til kingdom come, and he wouldn’t know what that even meant. The closest thing to proof – and he was using that term loosely – he had for soulmates being real were Donna and Forman. According to them, they couldn’t even remember a time when they hadn’t been able to see colour, because they met as toddlers. A one in a fucking million chance, that. It wasn’t even clear if everyone on earth really had a soulmate, but finding yours that young and right next door? If they weren’t his closest childhood friends, he would have outright dismissed their story as bullshit. But he did grow up with them, and if they were lying about it, it was one hell of a long con... Forman’s parents were soulmates as well, according to him, but Donna’s were Colour-Blinds, i.e. they didn’t have a soulmate or hadn’t met theirs. If it was all true, all that told him was that Bob and Midge Pinciotti had told the universe to fuck off, and lived their lives the way they wanted to, and good for them.
Then there was his mother. She was the main reason he always oscillated between outright disbelief and the fervent hope that it was all a lie. Edna Hyde had been a miserable drunk for as long as he could remember. Left to his own devices most of the time, it was a miracle he hadn’t turned out completely feral, like those stories about kids raised by wolves. Well, those kids most likely still experienced more nurturing than he ever had. When he was a little kid, he sometimes wondered why his mother was so different from others, especially Mrs. Forman. He often went without food and baths, craved love and attention, but eventually learned to suppress most of his needs and wants. Looking back, the day his mother had mentioned her soulmate for the first time was the day he realised she was fucked up beyond help.
“Had a soulmate once,” Edna slurred. She was on her stomach, on the beat-up sofa in their even more beat-up living room. Eight-year-old Steven Hyde was sitting cross-legged on the floor, waiting for her to fall asleep. He knew the drill already. She had thrown up ten minutes ago and would soon fall asleep. Now he had to make sure she stayed on her stomach with her face turned sideways or slept on her side so she wouldn’t choke... again. It wasn’t unusual for her to talk to herself when she was like this. Sometimes, she even seemed to be talking to someone only she could see. But she had never talked about soulmates before, so her words caught him completely off guard.
She… smiled? “I keep dreamin’ ‘bout it… Colours are beautiful, Steven…”
So, she was talking to him this time, or at least aware that he was listening, but he had no idea what to say. He never did.
“He had light green eyes...”
He frowned and, against his better judgement, asked, “Dad?”
Her face immediately transformed, serenity giving way to anger. She tried to sit up but fell back down on her stomach. “Tha… That fuckin’ asshole’s nobody’s soul… soulmate!”
He wasn’t fazed by the harsh language; he heard it every day. Her hatred for Bud Hyde, who was currently locked up again, also wasn’t new. But who else could she be talking about? If she had a soulmate, where was he? Weren’t soulmates supposed to stay together?
“His name was… his name…”
He was both scared and fascinated as tears began to fall, running down her cheeks and nose and dripping onto the sofa cushion. He was used to his mother being either angry or completely detached, always those two extremes, but he couldn’t remember ever seeing her truly sad. And a moment ago, she had even smiled. Whatever was going on, he didn’t like it. As mean and uncaring as his mother could be, he could usually anticipate her actions and reactions, and he relied on that. He didn’t understand why, but even at this young age, he was certain that the usual predictability of her mood swings was integral to his survival in this house.
“Doesn’t matter… ’s dead… Took all the colour away…”
So, yeah, no matter what anybody said, to him the whole concept of ‘soulmates’ was tainted. She had been at an especially low point back then, he knew now, and ever since that day, she had brought this so-called soulmate up many times. Usually when raging about his dad or any of his ‘uncles’, spewing how useless they all were and cursing the universe for, in her words, giving her the world’s biggest gift and then snatching it away again. Oh, and him? Her only child? According to her, he was just as useless as his dad, and if the universe had even an ounce of good in it, it wouldn’t inflict him on another person.
If Edna Hyde was what having and losing a soulmate looked like, he needed it to be a lie. Something people made up about themselves to feel special, to make others believe their love story was superior. Pluralistic ignorance.
He couldn’t avoid the topic completely, considering how prevalent it was in the media, but he stayed away from it as much as he could and shut down any conversations veering in that direction. Mercifully, Donna and Forman weren’t talking about it a lot anymore. It was considered impolite for Seers to openly talk about their ‘blessing’ around Colour-Blinds, and they were now old enough to understand that. They were also extremely awkward around each other these days. Forman had told the guys that they hadn’t even kissed yet, and that their love being a foregone conclusion somehow made it more difficult to ask her out. As if he had needed another reason to believe, hope, that none of this was real. Foregone conclusion? Fuck that. What about free will? And if finding your soulmate didn’t even guarantee things going smoothly, what was even the point?
By the time he was 16, he had made up his mind: If they were real, soulmates were a curse.
Then, on a boring Wednesday afternoon in late May, his friend Michael Kelso came barrelling into the Formans’ basement, closely followed by someone else. The new girlfriend, Hyde guessed. Kelso had mentioned her about fifty million times already and had only stopped when Hyde threatened to cut his hair the next time he fell asleep around them. He barely looked away from the TV when he heard Kelso say,
“Guys, this is Jackie. Jackie, those are the guys!”
The new girl huffed, “That’s how you introduce me to your friends, Michael? Really, Michael?!”
He grimaced at her shrill voice and the way she spat out the ‘Michael’s’. Of course, Kelso just had to choose some loud, nagging harpy as his girlfriend and force them all to put up with her, too.
“Yes, Michael,” he said, mockingly, “how dare you, Michael?”
Turning his head, he was fully prepared to be bitched at by this Jackie girl, but the moment his eyes met her narrowed gaze, it felt like someone had punched him in the chest. His head felt weird, and suddenly his vision turned white. He blinked quickly, once, twice, and… everything looked different.
“…Fez, and that’s Hyde.”
The sound of Kelso’s voice made him flinch. He realised that whatever had just happened – he knew exactly what had happened, but didn’t want to think about it right here, right now – had only lasted a couple of seconds and nobody had paid any real attention to him. Or the new girl. His friends started to talk about whatever, and Kelso went past him towards the deep freeze. The girl was standing ramrod straight between the sofa and the camping chair, staring at him. He was staring, too, but he didn’t take in many details of her face at this point. There was so much… colour. How was he supposed to… What was he even looking at?
“I’ll see you guys later,” he said and jumped up, just as she said, “I forgot I have a test tomorrow morning!”
He didn’t even spare her a second glance as he forced himself to calmly walk up the stairs towards the kitchen. Halfway up, he heard the basement door slam shut, but he was so overwhelmed by everything he saw around him that all he could think about was getting to the library. He needed to look at a book on colours. And he needed to find a mirror. But before that, he definitely needed to throw up.
***
Three weeks. That’s how long Jackie had been seeing colour and hiding it rather than shouting it from the rooftops. She had been dreaming about finding her soulmate ever since the first time she had learned about them as a little girl. Her parents were soulmates, after all, so why shouldn’t she be destined to find hers as well? Her mother often told her how magical it had been when she had first laid eyes on Jack Burkhart and her world burst into colour. The instant feeling of knowing who you were destined to be with, of belonging. It was said that soulmates were made specifically for each other, and that nothing else could compare. Being Jackie Burkhart, she naturally strived for nothing else but the best, so she decided finding her soulmate would be her life’s mission.
She always hoped it would happen before she was 20. She definitely wanted her soulmate to see her in her prime.
Elementary school, junior high, summer camps, riding lessons, youth orchestra, all kinds of group activities… Every time she went somewhere where she would meet a new group of people, she started out hopeful, only to be disappointed. Then came Point Place High, and she threw herself into extracurricular activities that would put her in contact with students from all year groups, including dance and cheerleading. Wouldn’t it be just dreamy if her soulmate turned out to be the star quarterback? But again, no luck. After a couple of months, she decided to ease off the search. She wasn’t giving up by a long shot, but she thought she had met most of the eligible guys in Point Place by then. She would definitely find him once she went off to college… or maybe next year? If her soulmate turned out to be one year younger than her, she could just about live with it. Or maybe a mid-year transfer? Either way, she was stuck in this small town; her soulmate seemingly wasn’t.
When Michael Kelso approached her one morning between classes to ask her out, she was surprised and wanted to say no. They weren’t soulmates after all, so what was the point? But people were dating around all the time, weren’t they? Colour-Blinds even got married to each other. Sure, most of them would never find their soulmate anyway, unlike her, but why shouldn’t she get to enjoy herself a little bit in the meantime? She was young and exceptionally pretty, after all, and so was he. They’d look great together in photos. So, she went out with him. And she went out with him again. And again. And then she became his official girlfriend. Yeah, they weren’t destined to be together or specifically made for each other, but kissing him was nice and made her feel all giddy. She could have done a lot worse as far as stand-in boyfriends went. Then he took her to the basement for the first time. Honestly, sitting around in a cluttered basement with a bunch of people who had neither high social standing nor ambitions sounded like a huge waste of her time and potential. However, she didn’t do anything by half-measures, and being a girlfriend wouldn’t be any different. She believed she and Michael could be together for a while, so she had to meet his friends at some point and decide whether she needed to get him away from them for his own good.
And that’s when all her dreams came crashing down around her. In colour.
She had seen his friends before, of course, but from a distance. They had never been introduced or even close enough to each other to make eye contact, deliberate or not. Her first impression of them and the basement wasn’t great. She was just as underwhelmed as she had expected, and Michael’s careless introduction of her was the mouldy cherry on top of a crap cake. When one of his friends, a curly-haired guy who hadn’t even bothered to look over when she had been introduced, immediately made fun of her admonishment of Michael, she got ready to let that loser have it. What did he think? Because he was older, he didn’t need to show her common decency? What followed would forever remain the strangest moment of her entire life: It felt like her chest was suddenly in a vice grip, the feeling shot up to her head and her eyes, everything exploded in white and then… everything looked different. In her dreams, the moment she locked eyes with her soulmate was nothing short of miraculous. They’d immediately know they were perfect for each other, that they’d never be alone again a day in their lives. The world would be dipped in beautiful colours, and everything would somehow just make sense.
Reality was very different. As much as she had read about colours, there was no way her brain could have been prepared for this. Having your entire vision change within seconds was disorientating to say the least, and she absolutely hated it. Her first thought upon seeing her soulmate and gaining full-colour vision was ‘This is awful!’
What was wrong with her?! The world should look beautiful to her! Instead, she was confronted with an array of shades she had no names for or a frame of reference for, and everything looked off. And scary. Was she even on the same planet anymore? And how could he be meant for her? He looked nothing like the boys she daydreamed about, and he had been mean to her before she had even said a word to him. He was scowling at her instead of smiling, and nothing made sense. They were both out of the basement within seconds, but not together like in a romance novel, where they would have found a private spot to declare their undying love to each other. They left in different directions and didn’t really see each other again for a while.
She pretended to be sick the next day so she could stay at home and look at the books on colour theory and swatches her mother kept in their small library, without anyone noticing. She still wasn’t convinced she liked colours all that much, but once the initial shock had worn off, she at least wasn’t scared anymore. Looking at the books and giving names to the hues and shades around her helped. She was happy to see that their mansion was impeccably decorated. Everything matched perfectly, as expected, given her mother’s superior tastes. She soon realised that focusing solely on getting used to her new vision made it easy to ignore the reason behind it. She’d have to confront the whole soulmate issue at some point, but she didn’t feel ready for that yet. She spent her first full day in colour roaming the house and garden, taking in all the details she had missed before… like the little rays of colour that appeared on the wall when the sun hit the half-empty whiskey and scotch decanters in her father’s study just right! That moment would stick with her forever: the first time she looked at colours and thought ‘how pretty’.
Once she warmed to her new reality, it became more difficult to hide. She really wanted to tell someone – anyone! – about all these new impressions, but she knew she couldn’t. Ideally, she would have been able to discuss it with her soulmate, but that was out of the question. She didn’t know much about this Hyde boy, not even his first name. Or was Hyde his first name? He looked rough and cruel, and when she was back at school, he ignored her completely when they passed in the hallway. Yes, she ignored him, too, but he was supposed to be a gentleman and check whether she was okay! It was a given that she knew herself better than anybody else, but now it also seemed like she knew herself better than the universe did. She was made for someone nice, fun and pretty. Like Michael! Or Donny Osmond!
When she stayed home from school again the day after that, she wasn’t even pretending anymore; the whole situation made her feel sick to her stomach. Her mother wasn’t working that morning, and when she came into Jackie’s room to check on her, she took one glance at her daughter in bed, eyes puffy from crying, and gave her a concerned look.
“Oh, my poor girl, you look awful. Do we need to take you to the doctor?”
“No…” she said, trying to smile. “I just need to sleep some more.”
She had read before that stress and sadness could manifest physically, but she had never experienced it first-hand. Wanting to vomit over her soulmate had definitely not been part of her romantic dreams. Her mother came over to her, leaned down and stroked her forehead, moving a strand of hair out of the way. Her lips, adorned with beautiful red lipstick, smiled down at her.
“Rest your beautiful brown eyes, my love. I’ll see you later.”
Jackie froze, stiff in bed, staring up at the ceiling long after her mother had left the room. How hadn’t she thought of this before? Her eyes weren’t brown, as her parents had always told her. One of her eyes was a light green! Was that considered a flaw? Her parents both had brown eyes. They had told her that before, and she had now confirmed it for herself. She searched her mind but couldn’t remember her cheer friends' eyes. Truth be told, she was still so overwhelmed by her new vision and by her sadness over her imperfect soulmate that she hadn’t been paying attention on the one day she had been back at school.
It wasn’t until later that night that she realised what was going on. After mulling it over, she was 99% sure that her parents, who still thought she was a Colour-Blind, wanted to spare her by not telling her about her mismatched eyes. Watching TV and looking through magazines had confirmed that her eyes were unusual, and as much as she hated to even think it, maybe Seers considered them ugly?
But there was this 1%...
There was an open notebook on her desk. She had bought it before that day in the basement, but she had known it was yellow even then. Most of the population couldn’t see colour, but corporate America still managed to sell it to the masses. Things in stores usually came with both colour and price labels as well as suggestions for matches. Colour-Blinds could learn about colours in theory after all. It didn’t matter if you knew what they looked like as long as you knew which ones did and didn’t go together. Many Colour-Blinds still stuck with whites, greys and blacks, or just bought whatever was cheapest, but as advertisements often said, you never knew who could be a Seer, so you better make sure your clothes and home always looked nice and followed current trends. There were also those who simply liked to show off their theoretical knowledge, keeping colour labels on furniture and other things. Or those who liked to pretend.
It was that 1% that made her grab the notebook on her way down to dinner. And it was that 1% that made her innocently ask her parents what colour it was, claiming she had taken the label off and forgotten. And then Pam Burkhart looked at her from across the table, smiled indulgently, and said,
“How silly of you. It’s pink, of course, like your school bag.”
Her bag, the one she had used all school year, was green to match her cheer uniform. The one before that had been blue to match her uniform for Point Place Junior High.
Her father laughed good-naturedly. “One day you’ll meet your soulmate, and then you won’t need us to tell you these little things.”
She excused herself and went to throw up.
***
It had been three weeks since Hyde’s world had been turned upside down. He had grown used to his new vision and had spent a good deal of time looking around wherever he went, trying to identify colours and shades. It hadn’t taken him long to realise he really didn’t care about the difference between ‘verdigris’ and ‘sea green’ and other fine details like that. Truth be told, he wasn’t even sure what his favourite colour was yet. He did know he didn’t like oranges and pinks. He had quickly developed a general preference for blonde chicks, and it had taken a lot of effort not to comment on Donna’s seemingly unusual red hair. He was especially thankful for his Zen these days, because he wasn’t sure he would have been able to keep his new vision a secret otherwise. It had taken a lot of effort in the first couple of weeks not to openly stare at people. There was just so much variety in them. Hair, eyes, skin – freckles! – lips, they all had their own shades, and then there were the girls who wore makeup. Some of them were either Seers themselves, though he couldn’t ask, or they had studied colour theory very well. Others… Well. He wasn’t an expert, but going off what he saw in magazines, a few of them were just hoping for the best when they picked up their makeup brushes. He had never understood why so many people bothered to buy makeup or pay extra for clothes in a specific colour when it shouldn’t even matter to them. His wardrobe consisted largely of jeans and band T-shirts, lots of them second-hand. Even if he had all the money in the world, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t care about colour-coordinating his wardrobe. But that was capitalism, selling you things you couldn’t even see.
As for his supposed soulmate, he had managed to largely avoid her. According to Forman, she had been to the basement once or twice, but as luck would have it, Hyde hadn’t been around then. Kelso had mentioned that she didn’t like any of them, which suited him just fine, since it meant she wouldn’t be intruding on his life too much, if at all. He had done some more reading about his situation, but had quickly slammed the offending book shut when he came to a passage that explained separating from your soulmate for long stretches of time was ‘inadvisable’. He had no idea why – hadn’t read any further – but that was bullshit! He wouldn’t give up his free will. And he wouldn’t end up like Edna, who had probably already been off her rocker before her soulmate had died and that had given her the rest. He had come to terms with the fact that she probably hadn’t lied about her soulmate, but realising the truth of it had just confirmed what he had already thought: it was a curse, not a blessing. He wouldn’t give someone else control over his future and sanity like that, least of all some airheaded cheerleader. There must be a way to exist without her. For starters, he didn’t even find her attractive. What was that about? Maybe platonic soulmates existed? But he also didn’t want to be friends with her. Whatever ‘bond’ there was between them, it certainly didn’t make her seem appealing to him.
Resolved to ignore her for as long as possible, he didn’t even acknowledge her, even when he saw her in the school corridors or when Kelso walked up to him with her in tow. She never tried to speak to him or even make eye contact, either, which was about the only thing he liked about her. That is, until the day she creepily followed him after school and nearly gave him a heart attack when she appeared beside him, seemingly out of thin air.
“What the hell, man!” He yelled, coming to an abrupt stop to glare down at her.
“You’re poor then,” she said matter-of-factly. All he could do was stare at her in bewilderment, causing her to roll her eyes, “You’re walking towards the neighbourhood where all the bums live.”
God, he hated her. “Yeah, I’m poor. I might even have lice,” he said in mock horror, “Better stay away from me.”
He began walking again, but she grabbed his jacket sleeve, stopping him in his tracks. He could have wrenched his arm away and kept walking, of course. She wasn’t even touching his arm in the jacket; just a bit of the fabric was clasped between her fingers. But he wasn’t stupid enough to think she’d give up just because he ignored her. If she followed him all the way home, she might run into Edna, which wouldn’t be good for anyone. She let go of his jacket when he turned around and looked at her with a deliberately bored expression on his face.
She crossed her arms in front of her chest and scowled at him, “You’re not much of a gentleman, are you?”
“What do you want?” he asked bluntly.
“We’re soulmates.”
“Are you crazy?! Don’t just say that!” he spat, looking around to make sure they were alone on the sidewalk. Luckily, he couldn’t see anyone, and the doors to all the houses were closed. Of course she had a big mouth; she was an insipid, spoilt cheerleader after all. Just great.
She gasped, “Wait a minute. Are you embarrassed? Of me?! I’m the one who got cheated by the universe, not you!”
He must have been a dictator or serial killer in his previous life, because what else could explain this kind of cosmic punishment?
“What. Do. You. Want?” he repeated, overenunciating each word as if she were stupid, which he definitely thought she was.
He could tell she was dying to fling some more insults at his head, but she just took a deep breath and said, “I did some reading.”
“Good for you.”
She angrily stomped her foot like a toddler, “Just let me talk so we can get this over with!”
Not wanting to admit she had a point, he simply stared at her. She waited a few more seconds, and when he didn’t say anything, she continued. “I don’t know what you know about sou— about this, but we sort of need to be together.”
The revulsion he felt must have been clear as day on his face, because she wrinkled her nose, “Not like that! Ew! But we need to sort of be in each other’s lives, or there could be consequences.” She said the last word with so much severity that it would have made him laugh if she were anybody else.
“Like what?” he asked.
“Oh, my… Do you really know nothing about this?”
“I know that when you die, my vision changes back,” he said in a cheerful tone.
“Why would I die before you? You’re poor! You can’t afford to grow old!”
Now he did laugh, but it wasn’t a happy sound, “What the fuck,” she flinched at the profanity, but he didn’t care about her sensibilities, “do you want me to do or say? We don’t like each other. The universe made some weird mistake, but that doesn’t mean we have to change our lives.”
“But we do!” she insisted, “A bit, at least.” She opened her green cross-body bag and pulled out a book, pushing it against his chest to make him take it. He looked down at the cover, which read ‘Soulmate Guide for the New Seer’.
“At least take a look at chapter 2, subsection B. If we keep ignoring each other and completely go our separate ways, especially once you graduate… Well, if you graduate…” she sneered, “bad things could happen. We might just feel like we’ve got a cold all the time, but we could also fall into a deep depression or go completely blind. We have to find out how often we have to see each other. Or just be in the same room. Like the basement. I’ll have to come over more often with Michael.”
He was relieved to hear she wasn’t planning to break up with his friend. He would have pecked her as the romantic type who had dreamt all her life of riding off into the sunset with her soulmate. If she found him so revolting that she had decided to settle for a ‘normal’ relationship (however normal a relationship with Kelso could be), he was deeply grateful to be a badly behaved bum.
“We can try to be friends… acquaintances,” she amended, “or whatever. I haven’t read anything about soulmates who can’t stand each other yet, but we can’t be the first ones.”
Knowing his luck, they just might be, and she would probably get a weird kick out of it. Anything to feel special, he guessed, was her motto.
“Whatever. I’ll take a look. Don’t follow me anymore, and don’t approach me again. If there’s anything in here that doesn’t sound like bullshit, I’ll come talk to you.”
With that, he turned around and kept walking. He didn’t hear her follow, which was good. His victory was short-lived, though. Just before he turned a corner, he heard her yell after him:
“I hate you!”
“Makes two of us,” he muttered.
When he finally arrived home, Edna was nowhere to be seen, which meant he would get some peace and quiet, something he rarely got at night. He would usually have tried to take a nap and then gone over to Forman’s, but he decided to get it over with and flick through the book instead.
It didn’t take long for him to know he was fucked.
One of the first things he checked was the references at the back, which were full of academic publications and case studies. Considering that nobody had found a scientific explanation for soulmates yet, he had sort of hoped for a book full of guesswork by dillholes and fairy-tale crap. He could have gone to the library and checked some of the references, of course, and he might still do that at some other point, but for now he accepted that whatever was in this book had some merit. Jackie had been right when she had said that there didn’t seem to be anything about soulmates who didn’t like each other. Even the section about the consequences of breaking off any contact with your soulmate talked only about cases where external factors had played a role in the separation. There was a long list of physical and mental ailments that could befall them if they didn’t keep in semi-regular contact at least. His eyes caught on a section that talked about mental breakdowns and psychosis. An unbidden image of his mother in a drunken rage forced its way into his mind, and he quickly pushed it aside, deliberately avoiding the chapter about soulmate deaths.
He kept reading longer than he had intended, growing increasingly frustrated. This book only talked about romantic soulmates. It didn’t outright say that you couldn’t just be friends or reluctant acquaintances, but – much like Forman had said – the idea that soulmates would fall in love was treated as a foregone conclusion. Nothing he saw mentioned cases of people not liking their soulmate, even at first. It just talked about how soulmates were made for each other, and people described it as two puzzle pieces coming together. The thought of someone like Jackie being his ‘greatest comfort and joy’ and ‘the one thing in life that made sense’ was laughable. And the idea of him being any of that to someone else was downright ridiculous. There was even mention of an emotional connection, though that didn’t seem to manifest to the same degree in every case. It looked like they had been spared that part, or their supposed connection was so weak it didn’t even register.
It looked like they needed to be in some kind of contact. The section on separation described situations such as living far apart and not seeing each other at all, or at least not talking on the phone for longer than a couple of months before symptoms set in. So seeing her in the basement would suffice for now. He was still pissed off about having to put up with her, but it seemed like a small sacrifice. And once he finally got out of Point Place… He’d cross that bridge when he came to it. If talking on the phone was enough, he’d just call her once a month to tell her she sucked.
He sure as hell would do a lot more reading until then, though.
***
Jackie went to Forman’s basement the following Saturday, ignoring Eric’s groan and his question about what she wanted, and pretending Donna’s greeting didn’t sound quite so reluctant. The redhead was definitely not the sort of girl she usually hung out with, but in a basement full of idiots she was all she had.
“Has Michael been here yet? He said he’d be here this afternoon,” she said, sitting down on the ratty old sofa next to Donna.
“No,” Eric answered, leaning against the deep freeze, “You'd better go wait for him outside so you can be the first to see him.”
She just glared at him and took it as a small victory when Donna said, “Just let her wait here.”
“Yes, Eric,” the weird foreigner who was sitting on a camping chair said, “when a beautiful girl graces your dusty old basement with her presence, you must be nice to her.”
Okay, maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.
“Thank you,” she said with a flip of her hair. She also wanted to ask where Hyde was, but there was no way to do so without it seeming suspicious. She had no idea if he had actually read the book she had given him or used it to start a fire in a trash can to stay warm in whatever ramshackle hut he lived in. Either way, she didn’t know if talking a few days ago had been enough to avoid getting sick or anything else bad happening. The book had mentioned cases where soulmates hadn’t seen each other for months, but those people had spent a lot more time together before then, and she didn’t want to take any chances. If she had to allow Michael to keep his stupid friends and sit in this stupid basement with stupid Hyde for a few hours a week, she’d do it. As an added bonus, she wouldn’t be home as much. Her parents both worked a lot and didn’t pay as much attention to her as she would have liked, but right now she wanted to see as little of them as possible. She still couldn’t believe that they had lied to everyone – lied to her! – about being soulmates. It had always made her feel so special: the perfect product of a perfect soulmate bond. It had been the whole reason why she had been so convinced she’d find hers! Now it turned out she was the (still perfect) product of lying Colour-Blinds, and her soulmate was just as appealing as her disgusting pet rat had been. Even less. At least the rat hadn’t talked.
“So… Do you guys have any plans for today?” she asked when the others remained silent.
“No,” Eric said just as Fez replied, “We’re going to the water tower later.”
She furrowed her brows in confusion, “The water tower? Why? Wait, do you guys have to clean it because you got sentenced to community service or something?”
Now Donna looked just as annoyed as Eric, but Jackie thought it was a valid question.
“What’s community service?” the foreigner asked. Did they not make exchange students take classes on American culture and the justice system? They really should.
“No. For your information, nobody in our group has ever been sentenced to anything,” Donna said and added, “Even Hyde.”
Well, that was a surprise, and she hoped it stayed that way. If he ended up in prison at some point, she would have to visit him, and if there was one thing she liked less than bums and Canada, it was felons.
“If you’re not doing community service, what are you doing at the water tower, then?”
“Graffiti,” the other three chorused.
“You get all offended when I ask if you have been sentenced to community service, but you’re going to go vandalise the water tower? How does that make sense?”
Eric went to sit on the back of the sofa between her and Donna, his feet on the cushions. She would have liked to push him off, but conceded that wouldn’t be a very polite thing to do, and unlike them, she had been brought up to be a decent person.
“You’re implying we got caught,” Eric said, making Donna chuckle.
She was glad when she heard the door open. Talking to these people was so different from talking to her cheer friends that she felt like she had made contact with some badly dressed alien species.
Michael basically jumped into the room, holding up two spray cans, “Got the paint!”
She immediately shot up from the sofa and pointed an accusing finger at her boyfriend, “You’re planning on going with them!”
Instead of Michael answering her, a new voice joined the conversation, and she was torn between relief and irritation when Hyde joined them, arms full of spray cans.
“You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes, aren’t you?” he asked in a deriding tone.
Okay, definitely irritation. Did he want to get arrested? Or fall off the water tower and die? Did Michael want to get arrested or fall off the water tower and die? How were both her soulmate and her boyfriend such good-for-nothing idiots?!
“You can’t do that, Michael! You could fall and die, or you could get arrested, and then I’d have to visit you in prison, because I have to see you, and I’m too pretty for that!” The words were directed at Michael, and while she meant them, she meant them even more when it came to Hyde, and she hoped he wasn’t too dumb to pick up on that. He wasn’t even looking at her, though, so as far as she knew, he had completely tuned her out. Rude.
“It’s okay, Jackie,” Michael said, with a smile she guessed was supposed to be placating, walked over to her, and gave her a kiss. She would usually have happily kissed him back, no matter who was around, but she was so angry at him that she pulled away after a quick peck.
“I’ve fallen off the water tower before,” he went on, “and I didn’t even break anything. I’m indestructible. I’m like a cockroach, baby!”
“You’re the embodiment of dumb luck,” Donna laughed.
“Emphasis on dumb,” Eric added.
She looked over her shoulder and glared at both of them, “He’s not dumb!”
Well, he was a bit, but they had no right to say that!
“Guys, let’s go, we don’t have all day… Well, we do, but I want to get going,” Hyde interjected, and the others all agreed. She really didn’t want to go, and she was sure they didn’t want her to either, but if her boyfriend and her soulmate insisted on being reckless, she had to keep an eye on both of them. Never mind the fact that she had to spend at least some time with Hyde.
“I’m coming, too,” she announced.
Michael looked doubtful, “Are you sure, babe? It’s dirty up there. And there are bugs.”
Ugh. How had her life come to this?
“Let’s just go!” she shouted, marching out of the basement and up the stairs.
She hated every minute of the drive in Eric’s ugly car. She was wedged in between Michael and Hyde after losing rock, paper, scissors to Fez, who was sitting up front, squeezed in next to Donna. How was this thing as big as a boat, and they still had to cram in like it was a clown car? If she had less dignity, she would have climbed into the trunk area. She and Hyde both had their arms crossed in front of them, and she was staring straight ahead while he kept his head turned away, looking out of the window next to him. Michael had put the arm that was closest to her over the backrest. He had tried playing with her hair, but she had told him to cut it out or lose a finger. First of all, she was still angry at him; second of all, she wouldn’t let him ruin her perfectly curled hair. And speaking of curls, the side of hers that was pressed up against Hyde felt tingly. She couldn’t tell whether it was out of revulsion or because of their stupid bond, and she wasn’t going to try to find out by initiating more contact, but either way, it didn’t help her mood at all.
“So, what are we drawing, guys? A dick?” Michael asked, and she flinched slightly, face turning red. She wanted to admonish him for using such a rude word in her presence, but when the others laughed, she pressed her lips together. She would also have liked to admonish him for wearing clothes that clashed horribly, but couldn’t for obvious reasons. He had told her before that he didn’t really pay attention to colour labels. He said he didn’t see the point because he was a Colour-Blind, which had annoyed her even before she had gained her new vision. The point wasn’t what he could see; the point was what potential Seers thought of him. God. If he weren’t so pretty, such a good kisser and gave her status amongst the cheerleaders, she would have walked away from him already. If her soulmate had been anybody else, she thought bitterly, she wouldn’t have to be with Michael at all. Now she was forced to build a relationship with basically anybody but her soulmate.
She all but pushed Michael out of the car when Eric parked up, wanting to get out as quickly as possible. Walking up to the water tower, she toyed with the idea of just staying down here and shouting up if she thought Hyde or Michael were being stupid, but no. She obviously had to keep a close eye on both of them, considering their lack of common sense.
***
Hyde did his best to ignore Jackie’s presence, but her grating voice and the fact that she rarely shut up for more than 30 seconds made it very difficult. He knew they had to spend some time together, yes, but he had thought their conversation when she gave him the book would have been enough for a while. So why was she about to climb a rusty water tower with them instead of hanging out at the mall or whatever? If she was so worried about Kelso, she could have just bullied him into not going. His friend was already talking about breaking up with her ‘soon’, but it was obvious he had no backbone when it came to the short brunette. That pretty much confirmed that her earlier words had been aimed at him as much as at Kelso. He hated the idea of her trying to babysit him, and he would make sure to tell her at the first opportunity.
He was halfway up the ladder when he heard her annoying voice screech from down below.
“Let me go in front of you, Michael! What if I slip on the way up?!”
He rolled his eyes and kept climbing without bothering to look down. If she wanted a gentleman, Kelso fit the bill as much as he did – not at all. The only difference was that Hyde didn’t care to be polite or courteous towards her, even though he could. Kelso couldn’t act like a gentleman if his life depended on it, because it didn’t even occur to him to do so in the first place. When he stepped up on the platform, Donna had already opened her backpack and taken out the spray bottles of green paint. At least the colour was clearly written on the label, so he wouldn’t have to worry about slipping up if he mentioned it.
Not long after, they set to work on the cannabis leaf he and Forman had already decided on before coming here. Even if they hadn’t, though, he sure as hell wouldn’t have spent his afternoon drawing a huge dick as Kelso had suggested. The only problem was that his idiot friend had fucked up the top part, and now it looked like a hand giving the finger. As he instructed him on how to fix it, Kelso was balancing on the railing.
“Be careful!” Jackie, who was wringing her hands like a mother hen, shouted.
“Don’t worry, babe,” Kelso reassured her… and lost his balance a few seconds later. Hyde saw Jackie jump forward to grab her boyfriend, and he had barely enough time to think, ‘IS SHE FUCKING STUPID?’ before rushing up to them as well. Kelso was over the railing and on the way down, but Jackie somehow managed to grab him by the T-shirt and was pulled forward, nearly toppling over the railing as well. He grabbed her around the middle and pulled her back. They heard Kelso fall through the tree canopies below and hit the ground.
“Kelso!” Donna shouted and began descending the ladder, quickly followed by Eric and Fez.
“Are you insane?!” Hyde whispered between gritted teeth and stepped around her to go to the ladder as well. “You could have broken your neck, and fucked me over in the process!”
She narrowed her eyes at him, “That’s what you’re worried about? Your friend could be dead!”
They could hear Kelso groaning below, so he was clearly still alive.
“God, you’re an idiot!” he spat, just before he began to descend the ladder as well. She wasn’t far behind him, and once they were on the ground again, she ran over to Kelso, who was flat on his back.
“I think he’s fine,” Donna said when Jackie rushed over to Kelso, “but we still need to get him to the hospital.”
Great, he thought, and the cannabis leaf still isn’t fixed.
***
Donna, Eric, Fez, and he left Kelso‘s hospital room a few hours later. The idiot was fine, just as they had told Jackie fifty times on the way over, and would be able to go home as soon as his mother picked him up. They were about to turn a corner when he felt someone grab his elbow from behind, and his skin began to tingle. He immediately recognised the feeling as the same one he had had when he and Jackie had sat next to each other in the car, but it was stronger. The others were out of sight now and had evidently not noticed that he had fallen behind. He turned around just as Jackie pulled her hand back.
“Please tell me this tingling is an early sign of a stroke and has nothing to do with… you know,” he said with a frown.
She didn’t look happy either when she replied, “I don’t know. I read about physical… signs, but—”
He rolled his eyes, “It’s all very individual.”
“You did read the book. Good.”
“What is it?” he asked, wanting her to get to the point. “If you’re here to yell at me about Kelso—”
“I should tell him not to be friends with you anymore! He wouldn’t have fallen if you hadn’t insisted that he fix that stupid leaf. But I can’t do that, can I?”
He would usually have been pissed at the fact that she acted like this accident was his fault, but that paled in comparison to the accusatory tone in which she said the last bit.
“You make it sound like I’m the one who caused this thing. I’m having a worse time with it than you, I promise.”
“Not possible.”
“Yeah, well, if you think I’m going to apologise to Kelso or you, don’t hold your breath. I’m out of here.”
“No, wait!” she grabbed his arm again, but quickly pulled back as if burnt. Good. “Just tell me whether you agree with what I said the other day, and you’ll cooperate.”
“Cooperate?”
She huffed in annoyance, “Spend time in the same place as me.”
As if he had a choice.
“If that place is the basement or The Hub with the others, then sure.”
“Oh, please. Like I want to spend time alone with you. And you will apologise to Michael.”
She didn’t give him any time to answer, whirled around, and stalked off. If she thought he was the kind to apologise for shit that wasn’t his fault, she was in for a world of disappointment.