Work Text:
Beth crosses one leg over the other, perched on the ledge by the ice cream shop. She holds out a butterscotch cone for Rick. He stuffs his keys into his pocket.
“So why are we here?” he asks, hauling himself up next to her. Don’t get him wrong, it’s a hot and scorching day in September. It’s only the third day of school but it feels more like Summer school than it did when Rick was actually in Summer school now that they’ve defeated Eclipso. And Rick loves ice cream as much as the next person. Maybe not butterscotch, but Beth picked it out for him so he was going to eat it. It’s just that Beth said she had something she wanted to talk about so Rick was curious why it warranted sweets and a sit-down.
Beth wrinkles her nose. She doesn’t wear shorts like Courtney does, opting for super airy cotton pants with slits. They blow in the warm breeze as she shifts around. “Yolanda said I should break the news to you slowly.”
Rick stops eating his cone. That sounds very vague, and with the girls, vague is not good. He lifts a brow. “What news?”
“Okay, don’t be mad but…” Beth holds out her cone for Rick to take from her. Now Rick has two melting butterscotch ice creams melting onto his hands. She reaches into her school bag and shakes out pom poms. “Surprise! I joined the cheer squad!”
Rick stares at her. “What?”
“I know, I know. I tried out two times already and they never recruited me, but now Cindy is gone and they want to make their squad more inclusive and I always really wanted to learn some cheer moves.” She drops the pom-poms back in her bag.
“Cheerleading, ” Rick repeats. “You?”
He cannot help the vivid flashbacks of Beth’s last pop and lock attempt in front of Bobbi Burman. He thought she was joking. Maybe he has a heat stroke. Maybe she has a heat stroke.
“Yolanda said the training would be good practice for developing my offence skills too so it’s a win-win!”
Beth reads his incredulous face and deflates. “You really think it’s that stupid?”
“The airheads are on that squad. Your childhood bullies are on that squad,” he reminds her. “Artemis’s mom coaches that squad!”
“All true.” She takes her cone back and gives it a small lick. “But I feel so much more confident in myself. After facing Eclipso I don’t believe the cheer squad girls could ever get to me bad enough to ruin my experience. And Cindy not being team captain makes a huge difference.”
“Beth. C’mon.” He likes her the way she is and that has never been flexible. “You have a fear of heights.”
“And it is important to face my fears, Rick."
"Does Pat know about this?"
"Why does Pat need to know?" She finished the rest of her ice cream, munching on the crunchy cone. "He's not my dad."
"...And your dad...?"
"...Is fine with it?" she finishes, giving him a weird look. "My mom thinks it's exciting."
"So nobody sees the problem?"
"There is no problem. My decision is already made,” she told him. “I’m not changing my mind.”
She hops down from the ledge and walks over to the water cooler, grabbing a wad of napkins. She returns and wipes off the sticky mess that is the rest of his ice cream that has melted all over his hand. Rick stares at the soupy cone glumly and tosses it into the trash. He pulls his hand away when she dabs on it, her fingers curling open his fist. Licking on his fingers instead to clean them, Beth watches him and then turns away, a bit flustered. Rick lowers his hand from his mouth, embarrassed.
“Well.” He clears his throat. “Good luck.”
“Thanks. I’m picking up my uniform tomorrow. Practice starts on Friday.” She sighs. “I’d really like your support, Rick. Court and Yolanda will be there.”
“I don’t even care about the team sports at this school. You’ll be cheering on assholes.”
“Does it have to do with the school spirit?” Beth shrugs. “It’s exercise. You don’t have to become the Prairie Dogs' number one fan. Just keep your eyes on me.” Her gaze flits around. “Or other girls, I’m sure there’ll be a lot for you to look at.”
Rick frowns at her insinuation. He doesn’t know how to explain to Beth how much he is not into cheerleaders like that. “Uh…”
“Thought you were my best friend,” she mutters under her breath. She crosses her arms and doesn’t look at him, walking away from the ice cream shop to wait by his car.
Rick follows her, wracking his brain for something to say so she will no longer be mad at him. They rarely fight like this and the awful pit in his stomach makes him remember why. "I am your best friend."
“I need my bike from your trunk,” she says impatiently.
“I can drive you home.” He thought they were going to spend the rest of the day together.
“I want my bike back.”
Rick steps in front of her, hands loosely on her bare arms. “Beth,” he pleads. “Bee, c’mon.”
“Do you think I don’t fit the natural look of being a cheerleader?”
Rick reels back, stunned. “That is not it! I don’t care about girls in short skirts doing flips and shit. I care about… you! That the coach is Tigress! And that Artemis tried to kill you!”
“Artemis isn’t on the squad.”
“No, you’d be cheering her on the football team. That’s so backwards!”
“Is this really about our,” she puts up air quotes around her next word with an eye roll, “rivalry with Artemis? Because she’s Courtney’s new neighbour, if she was going to attack us again she would’ve done it by now.”
“It’s just…Cheerleaders always had their own rules, their own table,” Rick tries to explain. “I thought we were always going to be just us.”
Her face softens. “You think I’m replacing you?”
A blush crawls up his neck. Why does she have such a talent for making him sound so silly? “No…?”
She simply looks at him.
“I mean, I don’t know!” he backtracks. It feels like she’s chasing after an acceptance somewhere doomed to upset her. He’s seen the toxic culture dominated by Cindy, the gossip and serial dating disasters. Half of those girls used to be Yolanda’s friends and now they won’t even talk to her. And how is Beth ever going to commit to cheering practices and game nights when they have an unpredictable secret JSA agenda? Is Rick just supposed to yank her out of a pyramid in the middle of a half-time show? “…Maybe?”
“It’s just an extracurricular activity.” She reaches for his hand and squeezes it. “We’re still Hourman and Dr. Mid-Nite. Nothing replaces the JSA.”
“I just hate those damn cheerleaders.”
“I get it, Rick, but you hurt my feelings.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to.” He truly means it. If only he schooled his initial reaction and faked excitement for her, maybe it wouldn’t have gone this far. He still doesn’t understand why she’s so pissed. He’s pointing out legitimate concerns. If they were at a different high school in a different town, it wouldn’t be such a big deal.
Beth exhales longly, closing her eyes shut for a moment. In the simple gesture alone, Rick can tell being mad at each other is just as exhausting for her as it is for him. “Forgiven. Can we agree to disagree?”
“Yeah.” He glances at the trunk. “Do you still want to bike home now?”
“No,” she says, her voice small. “I still want to hang out with you.”
Rick smiles, relieved. “Me too. Want to redo those ice cream cones?” He pokes her slightly and she giggles at him. The giggle re-energizes him more in this heat than any freshwater could. “Maybe a flavour more interesting than butterscotch?”
“Yes, but it’s your treat this time.” Beth lets go of his hand, rushing back to the long line at the shop.
Rick wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans. “Deal.”
It’s so much worse than Rick thought.
The next day at lunch, Beth excuses herself from their table to receive her new folded blue and white cheer uniform. The girls abandon Rick to accompany her to the bathroom as she tries it on. After twenty minutes, Rick pushes his tray away to see what’s taking so long. Leaning against the lockers, there was nothing he could do to prepare for how Beth steps out of the washrooms.
She brightens up when she spots him, hands on her hips. Too warm for their long-sleeve cardigans, she’s sporting the BV initials in a tight-fitting short-sleeved shirt and the blue and white pleat skirt with long socks and white tennis shoes. “What do you think?”
He has to eat his words about not caring about cheerleaders in short skirts because it has never occurred to him that Beth + Cheer Squad = Beth Chapel in a short skirt.
Rick has seen the same outfit on at least thirty different girls and he truly never gave a fuck until now. “Uhh…” His brain scrambles for coherent words, any word, as his gaze sweeps up and down her. “Wow.”
“You look so good!” Courtney gushes, taking 234567 pictures on her phone. Yolanda nods, laughing at the way Beth playfully poses. “Doesn’t she look so good?”
The girls swivel their heads around for his confirmation. Beth starts to look anxious, tugging at her top. “Rick?”
“Yeah.” Rick looks away, sticking his hands into his pockets, pretty sure if Beth meets his eyes she’ll see right through him. “She looks really good.” It’s such a huge understatement it feels like a lie.
Beth beams.
“Are you coming to her practice tomorrow?” Yolanda asks Rick.
Oh, absolutely not. If he didn’t want to before purely based on his anti-cheer convictions, forget it now. Beth told him to keep his eyes on her but that was going to be so literal there was no way it wouldn’t come across as creepy if he wasn’t her boyfriend. “I’m not sure.”
Court pouts. “What? No. That’s so lame.” She tucks her phone into her pocket. “You don’t have anything better to do.”
Beth shakes her head. “It’s okay. We talked. It’s not his thing.”
“Right.” He shoots her a grateful smile, ignoring Yolanda’s dirty look. “Thanks.”
It turns out Rick doesn’t have much of a choice.
Friday after school, Yolanda and Courtney forcefully bully Rick out of his car, yanking him like a stubborn mule kicking and screaming across the student parking lot to the football field. They preach the importance of standing by Beth during her first cheer practise instead of letting him go home to suffer alone in peace via Courtney’s Instagram stories.
“I don’t want to go,” he whines, skidding his heels in the gravel. Rick cannot actually be dragged by both Yolanda and Courtney if he doesn’t want to be moved, but he also doesn’t want to rip their arm sockets when they tug so hard.
“Let go!” he hisses. He needs to leave before Beth sees him. “Stop! Stop! Courtney, I’ll bite you—”
“Rick! You came!”
Too late.
Rick groans. The three spin around innocently as Beth skips down the steps from the school in her uniform with a thick blue bow clip-on serving as a part in her hair.
He plasters a smile on his face and refuses to thirstily check her out all over again.
“Of course, he came,” Yolanda says pointedly. At that moment he knew that Yolanda knew.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” he lies, mustering up as much enthusiasm as he can. Beth grins at him though, which triggers a real smile back.
“Thank you!” She launches towards him for a squeezing hug. “This means so much to me.”
Rick looks down at her. She’s jittery and excited and looks like a freaking bombshell.
“Just be careful,” he murmurs, patting her back. “Don’t overdo yourself on your first day.”
Court nods solemnly. “That’s good advice.”
Mrs. Crock blares her megaphone.
“Oh!” Beth giggles, bouncing on her shoes. “That’s my cue!”
“She’s lucky she’s so cute,” Yolanda mutters once Beth is out of earshot. She points sternly at Rick once they sit on the bleachers. “If I can suck it up to watch my fake ass ex-friends be out there while ignoring me then you can suck it up to watch Beth do stretches.”
“Whoa. Whoa. Whoa,” Courtney exclaims, sitting in the middle of them. She looks between Yolanda and Rick five times, sticking out both hands. “Rick knows he has a crush on Beth? Like, that’s a thing now?”
Rick slouches further into the hot metal bleachers, wondering if the sun could melt him so he could slip through the steps and avoid everybody.
Yolanda pins her frizzy braids into a bun. “Yup.”
“For how long?” she demands.
“A while,” Rick mumbles uncomfortably. He raises his hand over his eyes, shielding the harsh glare. He really needs to buy some sunglasses one of these days. “It’s the damn cheer uniform.”
Courtney snorts out a laugh. “That’s why you were so weird yesterday?”
Yolanda scoffs. “You’re such a guy.”
“I am a guy!” Rick takes offence. “I am very much a guy who doesn’t want to be….” He waves a hand at the field, “Subjected to this! By force! I’m trying to look respectfully but this is torture!”
“Oh come on, we hardly forced you,” says Court.
“You kicked me out of my car,” Rick deadpans. “With your Vans high tops.”
“Ooo.” Court sticks her leg out. “They’re new. You like ‘em?”
A shrill whistle cuts through the air, interrupting the teens. “High V formation!”
They watch the new team assemble from disorganization to organization as Artemis’s mom yells out stretches for them to do.
“She’s not so bad.” Yolanda leans forward, elbows on her knees, watching the girls like a hawk. She threatened to whip out her wildcat suit if the cheerleaders pulled any funny business. “I think she’ll be fine.”
Every mount, aerial and jump that the more experienced cheerleaders demonstrate to the new recruits get brutally roasted by Courtney.
“I know why I hate cheerleaders,” Rick starts, “And I know why Yolanda hates cheerleaders, but why do you hate cheerleading?”
Court rolls her eyes. “It’s gymnastics lite. But gets way more funding in public schools. So freakin’ annoying.”
“So, you agree?” Rick presses. “You agree that this is ridiculous?”
“Shhh.” Yolanda leans her head against Courtney’s shoulder, tired of the two of them ranting for so long. “Just roll with it.”
Out on the field Beth waves at them. The three wave back.
Rick does a double-take when Beth slides into the passenger seat of the Mustang on Monday after school. It was another stupidly humid day, everyone was busy with the sudden upswing of homework assignments and last-minute college information session sign-ups. It felt like nobody even had time to stop for lunch. “Bee?”
She drops her school bag and blasts the air-con, fanning a hand over her face to cool off. She still has her nails painted all glittery with school colours but she’s wearing the mismatched ankle socks with owl patterns Barb got for her birthday last year. There’s no skirt, no hair bow.
“What happened to cheer practice?”
“Oh. I quit. I hated it.” Beth shudders. “Those girls are still so mean.”
Rick gapes at her nonchalance.
“Besides, I’m the shortest so they wanted me at the top of the pyramid. I’d have to do all the flying. All the time.” She shakes her head. “No siree bob. That’s a no, thank you.”
“You’re kidding.”
Beth turns her head to look at him closely. “You were right, Rick. I get now you were just trying to look out for me.”
Funny enough, even though Rick is getting what he wants, now he feels bad.
“No, I was being selfish.” Rick clenches his steering wheel. “I don’t have the right to tell you what to do.”
“You don’t,” she agrees. “But I still care about what you think, it bothered me that you were so bothered. You could barely look at me on Friday. It made me think hard about who I was cheering for.”
“….Yeah.” Rick squirms in his seat.
He snaps in his seatbelt and fixes his mirrors. His reflection stares back at him, demanding the truth. Rick sits back and sighs. “Look. About that.”
Her brows furrow together adorably. “What?”
“Remember when you suggested last week I could watch cheer practice not for the principles of it but for like, I don’t know, eye candy or some shit?”
Beth bites her lip, embarrassed. “Rick, I was mad, I didn’t mean—”
“You’re the eye candy.”
“What?”
“I could barely look at you because I couldn’t stop looking at you.”
She blinks. If she could visibly blush, she’d be covered in it. “You thought I looked…”
“Hot?” Rick supplies. “Beth, you were confident as shit. It was hot.”
“But like, just that once?” she asks meekly. “Because of the uniform?” She ponders on that and becomes even more confused. “But you said…”
“I know what I said!” Rick knocks his forehead against the steering wheel. Why is this so fucking hard?
Making himself twist around, he unbuckles his seatbelt. “Eye candy is the wrong word. It’s you , okay? It’s you in the uniform. Not the uniform on you. And not just that once!” Rick rants. “A lot of times. You’re very pretty, okay? Like, more than that. I can’t help it sometimes, I like to look at you.”
“Only me?” she clarifies in question, lifting herself off the aircon vents. “Not also Court and Yolanda?”
“It’s only you that I’m attracted to,” he reassures. He replays that sentence in his head and realizes how fucking weird it sounds. How the entire last five minutes sounds. He’s supposed to be her best friend. Not…Whatever this is. “I know that’s kind of a lot to take in at once, I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” Beth retorts, eyes wide. “You’re sorry?”
Rick frowns at her. “Uh. Yeah?”
“I’ve had a crush on you since eighth grade!”
Rick just sits there. He’s so dumbfounded he starts to laugh. “I think the heat got to your head.”
“I’m serious! Why do you think I was so happy to sit next to you for so many years?”
“There was nowhere else to sit!” he argues, rummaging through Beth’s bag for her goggles. Beth rolls her eyes, put out, but allows him to perch Chuck over her head. They light up and activate right away.
“My vitals are fine, Rick,” she monotones. “I just like you.” She shrugs the goggles off and tosses it aside. “I could’ve eaten lunch with my favourite teachers, or in an empty classroom, but no. I always wanted to sit next to Rick Harris because I thought his sulking was cute.” She grins and pokes him. “Still do.”
“...Okay,” he responds. If Rick could call that a response. Whether it's the brainfuck or the humidity, Rick is comprehending very little, very slow. “When were you going to tell me this?”
“When were you going to tell me that? ” she throws back.
“I just did!”
“So did I!”
Rick’s chest is heaving, and he’s sweating in his t-shirt. He stares at her helplessly, still burning up in the sunspot parking space. He tries to speak a dozen times, but he can’t come up with anything. Beth’s expression is equally exasperated, but surely the corners of her lips raise and he can’t stop staring at that, either, until he’s leaning over and kissing the hell out of her.
Beth’s arms snake around his neck, her hands pulling at the sticky shirt from his back, which relieves some of the heat as she kisses him back. They slow down a few minutes later when some of the desperation slips away.
A breath away, their eyes lock, hers shining bright like the sun. “Cheerleading was on my bucket list.”
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” he whispers, his voice is dry and he realizes he’s parched.
"Don't be." She cups his face with her hand and plants another chaste kiss on his mouth. “Because so was this.”
Rick’s heart flips in his chest like one of those stupid aerials, and for the first time, he drinks her in unabashedly, so relieved that Beth seems to like him the same way he can’t get enough of her. Not just that, she’s always liked him. It’s such a foreign rush of happiness it’s like being drunk.
He shoots her another smile. A part of him wants to push her against the car seat to kiss her all over again. The other part reasons they should probably try that sometime else when they’re less gross. “You want to go get some ice cream?"
Beth settles back in her seat. "That sounds perfect." She reaches for her school bag and slips on her cute sunglasses.
"So," he checks with her, just to be sure. "It's okay to hate on the cheerleaders now?"
"Oh yes." She scrunched up her nose and hitches her breath excitedly the way Rick learnt meant she's about to start a story that might never end. "Let me tell you all about that messed up team."