Chapter Text
Hyde knew the minute Jackie stepped back into the Formans’ kitchen, something was terribly wrong. A cloud of fear was surrounding her. Jackie’s face was white. She was visibly shaking. Hyde pushed back so forcefully he knocked the chair over. Hyde didn’t know if he grabbed Jackie into his arms or she jumped into them, but she was only a step inside before he had a hold of her.
Jackie pressed her face to his chest. It was nearly identical to what she did when she came to his apartment the night of the attack. Just like he knew then, he knew now she wouldn’t say a word until she was calm. Hyde had a feeling there wasn’t time for that, so he looked at Kitty and demanded
“What the hell happened?”
It was Donna who answered, “Jake has been to her apartment. Her purse was sitting inside. He must have used the keys she left when she ran out.”
Hyde experienced fury curling up his body. This time it was him trembling. It wasn’t from fear. It was from the truth that he didn’t give two fucks what the law said. He would make Jake pay. His control was waning. The black blaze that took over the night Jake had attacked Jackie was like a brush fire in his system. Hyde could actually feel himself detaching from rational thought. He was just at the tip of losing jurisdiction over his temper when Jackie’s worn out whisper tore through.
“Steven, please calm down. I can’t handle you trying to hurt him. It is bad enough I will have to talk to the police again. Please don’t make me repeat the experience of you in a cell. I can’t do it.”
Hyde forced himself to master the need to end Jake. It would have to wait. Everything was second to making sure Jackie was safe. He cupped her face, and skimmed her lips.
“Okay, baby. Let’s go into the living room for a minute.”
Hyde led Jackie out of the kitchen. Before he was all the way out, he shot a look over his shoulder at his two friends. Kelso and Eric understood Hyde’s message to them.
This was far from over.
Kelso paced behind the Formans’ faded yellow couch. His gut was in knots. Observing Jackie curled up in Hyde’s lap wasn’t a new sight. It was one he had been treated to since the moment he found out they were a couple. He told no one how that act of intimacy bothered him more than any kiss he witnessed. It was the simplicity of it. The utter trust he would hold her in place was the twist. The nail in the coffin was the peace that graced his friend’s face when Jackie was tucked into his body. It tore at him, because he knew that true calm was something that was near impossible for Hyde to achieve. All that was ingrained on his heart. There was no escaping it. However, he would rip his heart out of his chest to erase this version of Jackie sitting on Hyde’s lap. She looked so small. So sad. So fucking scared. The cherry on the fucked up sundae that had become their lives was the animalistic predator gleam in Hyde’s eyes. There was no peace. Just pain and destruction. He hated it. Kelso balled his hands into fists. He wanted to pound something to release the injustice of it all. He had no outlet. It was eating at him. Just when he thought he would explode, there was a firm knock on the Formans’ front door. He hesitated to open it. He knew who was on the other side. He very much wanted to ignore the right thing to do. Hyde wasn’t alone in wanting to stop playing the game and just Jake take out. Once again, he was filled with regret. He should have just let Hyde kill Jake and be done with it. Instead, he was going to have to watch Jackie once again spill her horror. Even worse, this time Hyde was going to hear Jackie recount it in front of a cop. Which would piss him off on a fundamental level. Kelso sighed. He didn’t know when he became the responsible one in this nightmare, but it seemed to be his role. With that in mind, he squared his shoulders and pulled open the door to the next chapter in their story of terror.
Ryan Murphy caught sight of his partner’s fury the minute the door swung wide. He had already known nothing good was coming his way, when Kelso called him to tell him he needed him. He assumed Jake had struck back by the tone of Kelso's voice. The glare on his partner’s face only cemented that his day was about to take a shitty turn.
“What happened?”
Kelso didn’t hesitate to fill him in. “Jackie went to pick up her stuff at her apartment. When she went in, her purse was sitting on her end table. She left it behind when she ran from Jake’s apartment. Which means he used her keys to get in. The bastard is terrorizing her.”
Murphy swore softly, “That motherfucker.”
His mind quickly did the math on how Jake could have done it. Jake must have left the precinct and gone straight to Jackie’s apartment. The bastard wasted no time in making sure Jackie knew he could get to her. The fact that he was blatantly risking getting arrested again told him that Jake didn’t give a damn about staying on the straight an arrow. Murphy briefly wondered if the piece of shit had a death wish. He had no desire to force Jackie to have relive another bit of pain, but this was the job. Murphy gave Kelso a stilted nod of the head.
“Let’s get this over with. I am sure she has no desire to talk to me.”
Kelso stepped back and let his partner in. His stomach rolled with sick. He couldn’t help but wonder if they would ever have good days again.
As soon as Jackie locked eyes with Kelso’s partner, hysteria crept up her throat. The desire to bolt nearly overcame her. She was positive she would have succumbed to the urge if Steven hadn’t placed his hand on her thigh and gave it a firm squeeze. She tucked her head into his shoulder, and cried into him,
“I don’t think I can do this.”
Hyde squeezed his eyes tightly. He wanted to sweep her up and take her home where he could keep her safe, but he knew that wish was in vain. Hyde gently pushed her up and replied to her plea.
“We will get this over quick, but you have to do it. We can’t let anything Jake does go without reporting it.”
Jackie gave a panicked shake of her head.
“I can’t.”
Hyde inserted steel into his voice, “Jackie, you either tell the cops or I take care of it. Which one do you want?”
Murphy heard Hyde demand Jackie make her choice. He decided it was best to make the choice for her. He sat down on the table in front of the couch and reached for Jackie’s hand. Before he could make contact, daggers spitting out of Hyde’s gaze had him drawing back. Murphy feared very little. In fact, his parents would tell you that he seemed to have a death wish when he was a kid, always jumping off stuff. He had always been willing to take a dare if it bordered on insane, but Steven Hyde’s eyes when he had tried to take Jackie’s hand gave him pause for the first time in a long time. Almost as if he was facing a dangerous wild animal, he slowly pulled his hand back. It seemed touching Jackie was a hard pass. He cleared his throat nervously,
“I’m sorry we have to meet again, Miss Burkhart. Kelso tells me Jake broke into your apartment.”
Jackie clenched Steven’s hand to the point of pain. “Yes, when I went to pick up somethings to stay with Steven, my purse was sitting on the table. I left it behind when I escaped. It had my keys, wallet, some makeup, my card key…” Jackie gasped. “He could have my keycard for work.”
Before a full blown panic attack could erupt, Hyde took Jackie’s face into his hands. “Doll, breathe. We will call your work. We will make sure that any place he could have access to you is changed. I won’t let anything else happen to you.” Hyde with lethal calm stared the cop down. “We are done here. There isn’t anything else she can tell.”
Murphy started to interrupt, but Hyde was having none of it. “We are done. There is nothing left to say. Go do your fucking job and arrested the bastard.” He pulled Jackie up off the couch, and quietly whispered into her air,
“Go into the kitchen, I will be there in just a second.”
Hyde’s eyes tracked Jackie until she disappeared into the kitchen. He didn’t say a word until the door separating the two rooms swung shut. As soon as he knew Jackie couldn’t hear him, he turned and any mask of calm was gone. He wanted to make something crystal clear to Murphy and Kelso.
“You either get Jake off the street and put in a cage, or I will take care of it. I told that bastard if he did anything else, I would kill him. Keep that in mind before you take your time rounding up that piece of shit.”
Murphy believed in justice. He believed in wrongs being righted, but he didn’t tolerate vigilante bullshit. Hyde wasn’t the only one who wanted to ensure there were consequences about to roll down hill.
“You don’t want to make threats. They could get you in a lot of trouble. You need to let the law do its job.”
Hyde felt the fire in his blood heat back up. “This isn’t a threat. It’s a heads up. Do your job or I will do it for you.”
Hyde turned on his heel to make eye contact with Kelso. “I am going to get Jackie’s shit. I will be back in an hour. Don’t let her out of your sight.”
Hyde knew better than to go out through the kitchen. He didn’t want to have a conversation with Jackie about what was next. As far as he was concerned, Jackie’s part in the shit show was done. He just needed to clean it up. He pushed out the front door into the cool night. A grin sprawled across his face. He had one other stop to make. Jake was going to get a taste of retribution. He better hope the cops got to him first.
Jackie pushed into the kitchen hoping to find it empty. She needed a second.For the first time in her life, she was tired of talking. She never understood Steven’s need for silence, but she got it now. All she wanted was quiet. Most of all, she wanted to lay in the hush of Steven’s arm, so she could try to make sense of the last few days. Despite her desire to be alone, she felt a sense of relief when her eyes rested on Eric. It was crazy to think,but she was sure she needed him.Because she knew Steven better than he knew himself, she knew he would say something to Kelso’s partner that would upset her. Something dangerous. Something that would put the possibility of peace at risk. She nibbled her lip, and threw out the only lifeline she had to keep Steven from doing something stupid.
“Eric, go in there and stop him from saying something he shouldn’t.”
Eric and Jackie hadn’t said much since they had left the police station, but he knew it was time to tell her at least the bare minimum of what had gone down. Hyde would kill him, but Jackie had to know that he was no longer Hyde’s conscience. He knew she thought it was him that kept Hyde from going fully over the edge. He knew she thought he was the rational voice in their personal hell loop. He knew she thought he was the answer to stopping Hyde. Eric waved his hand at the kitchen chair next to him,
“Sit down Jackie.”
Jackie picked out the tension in Eric’s voice immediately. It wasn’t like they didn’t have ample reasons to be wound up, but there was a strange quality to it she couldn't pin point. She lowered herself with caution into what was historically Steven’s seat. They had never been overly close growing up, but the last year had changed that. She didn’t wait for Eric to explain, instead she asked what had been screaming in her head, since Kelso arrested Steven.
“How bad was it Eric?”
This was it. Eric either had to betray Hyde and tell her everything, or piss Jackie off by telling her nothing. He swallowed heavily, and picked trying to make both the warring parties happy.
“It was bad Jackie, as bad as it could get.”
The statement hung in the air, waiting for Jackie to make sense of it. Jackie wasn’t stupid. Eric knew she could connect the dots, so he waited for her next question.
“Did you stop him?”
Jackie was sure she knew the answer. In fact, she would have bet the house in Vegas she was so confident. It was a good thing she didn’t have to back up that gamble, because Eric’s response knocked her back.
“No, it was Kelso. Well, it was really you. Kelso told him that if he kept going, it would hurt you. That is the only reason we aren’t having a totally different conversation.”
A million things were whirling around her mind, but all she could get out was a sputtered “Kelso?”
Eric gave a light laugh, “Shocking right? Yet, it was him that kept his cool.”
Jackie tucked that away to think about for later. She wanted to know one more thing, before she left Eric alone.
“Would he have killed him Eric?”
Eric stood up and decided he was done for the day. He wasn’t willing to flat out tell Jackie everything. He had already said more than he should. He turned the question back on her.
“What do you think?”
Jackie felt the heaviness of the question. She didn't need to think about it. She knew the answer. Jake Bradly was lucky to be alive.