Ever since I started shipping Beck and Jade, I've wanted to write a break-up fic. I don't know why, but I think when you split the two of them apart, you realize just how interconnected their lives are. So that's what I'm writing about.

Also, in case (pun intended) you were wondering where the title comes from - it's a song on Demi Lovato's new album. Give it a listen.

He sits in his truck for just over five hours.

The clouds that loom over the Los Angeles sky have been pouring rain on the city for days now, and if Beck weren't so detached from everything he might actually notice the bolts of lightening that shake the ground outside of the truck. He sits in silence, refusing to walk into the apartment that will only scream at him with all things Jade. It's only when it starts to get dark that he realizes he should check the phone he's abandoned for too long. He reaches into his back pocket to pull out the device, finding that—surprise?—people are actually concerned with his whereabouts.

Though he knows it's unrealistic, the first name he searches (unsuccessfully) for is hers. Her plane has most definitely landed by now; that he's sure of. What he's not so sure of is how he's going to get used to having her vanished from his life. Since none of them are from her, Beck ignores the fact that he has six missed calls and a few text messages. He's sure Andre will come looking for him soon enough, and he can explain his reasons for missing the family dinner planned for tonight to his mother later on.

The thought of his parents brings him the sickening thought of having to tell people about the split. How would his mother—his sweet, kind-hearted mother, whom Beck is certain loves Jade even more than her own son—react to the news that, no, the girl she's grown so fond of will not be the recipient of her grandmother's engagement ring? How will he show up at the next dinner, which his parents host on the first Friday evening of every month, without the girl who's accompanied him to every single one? Without the girl who fixes his tie and tousles his hair and ensures that they're on time for his parents each time?

Brushing the depressing thoughts aside for the time being, Beck shoves his phone back into his jeans and pushes his truck door open. He pays no attention to the heavy rain, but instead shuffles into the apartment complex and hastily makes his way up to #408.

.

One Month Earlier

It's nearly two in the morning when Jade thrusts open the door of the home she shares with her boyfriend of seven years. She's certain he's asleep, but that thought is disproven when she sees his bedside lamp is turned on from inside their room.

"Hi," she whispers upon entering the bedroom. "What are you doing up so late?" As she speaks, she throws her leather jacket to the floor and begins to take off her earrings.

"Waiting up for you," Beck replies, his tone suggesting that there couldn't be any other possible reason. Jade knows him well enough to notice that he seems upset, but she's seemingly clueless as to why. She doesn't speak again, instead continuing to undress herself—but he has no intent of simply going back to sleep. "Where've you been?"

"I went out with Sienna and Tori after work. We just grabbed drinks at the Roosevelt, nothing big," she explains, moving to the bathroom to start her nightly routine.

"You didn't think to text me?"

Jade, surprised by his sudden irritation, furrows her dark eyebrows as she finishes washing her face. "I didn't know you'd be this bothered by it," she answers honestly. "Besides, I knew you'd probably be exhausted from school and want to get to bed early anyways." Beck is silent for the entire time she brushes her teeth and finishes applying all of her facial and lip crèmes. He watches as she turns off the light and begins settling into their bed. He's quiet for a few more minutes, until,

"It's not just about tonight." He's staring at her clear blue eyes, and she gets a nervous feeling in her stomach from the eerie tone he's speaking in.

"Beck," she says, turning her body fully towards him. "What are you talking about?"

He shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders, contemplating how best to deliver the words that seem so jumbled in his mind. "I think you take our relationship for granted." Jade looks confused—and certainly offended—by his claim. When she doesn't reply, he decides to give her the explanation he knows she deserves.

"I know we've been together for forever. You were my first girlfriend; I was your first boyfriend—I get it. I just feel like you don't really see us going anywhere…like you're just with me because you always have been and because it's easy."

If Jade thought Beck would be tired—physically and emotionally—after a full day of classes and work, she's definitely gone back on that thought now. He looks ready and eager as ever to talk this out, whereas she feels like she's just been suddenly hit with a ton of bricks. It doesn't help that she's still a little tipsy from the bar, either.

"That's not true," is her first argument. "I also don't understand where all of this is coming from. It's two o'clock in the morning on a Wednesday, and this feels very arbitrary."

"Tell me something," he says. "Where do you see us in five years?"

"Beck, I—"

"Come on," he interrupts. "Come on, Jade. We've been dating since we were fourteen; we've got a little over a year before we graduate college; it's a perfectly normal question. Where do you see us?"

She's at a loss for words. Her mouth falls slightly open, but forms nothing for him. If she's being perfectly honest, she hasn't given it much thought. She knows, though, that that answer won't satisfy him. "I guess, maybe…in a nicer apartment. We'll be getting jobs as guest stars or minor roles in movies. I hope my career has at least somewhat taken off by then."

Beck sighs. "Exactly. That's exactly what I thought you'd say."

"Um," she mutters, "and what's wrong with that? What's wrong with wanting us to make progress in the industry we're busting our asses to break into?"

"I didn't ask you about your job ambitions, Jade. That's the problem. I asked you about us. About you and me, and where you saw our relationship in five years." She's stunned to silence, giving him the opportunity to continue. "Have you even thought about the possibility of marriage? Or maybe, God forbid," he furthers, sarcasm dripping from his biting words, "having a family?"

Jade tries to swallow past the lump that's formed in her throat. She doesn't know whether she's more frustrated, afraid, or angry—and she hates the dissonance that's beginning to consume her. "I don't know, Beck. I don't think about those things. I'm comfortable with the way things are between us right now. I don't see any reason to change anything about our relationship."

"How can you even say that?" He sputters, raising his voice in a just-noticeable-enough manner. "How can you be okay with having no shared path that we have to look forward to?"

"What do you mean? You think that going to a courtroom and signing a piece of paper together is going to somehow make things different in our relationship than they already are? That's ridiculous."

At this point, Beck rises so he can begin pacing back and forth beside the bed. "I don't understand," he muses. "We're not in high school, Jade. We're adults in a committed relationship; we should be talking about normal things—things like marriage and kids and—"

"Since when do you want normal?" She retorts. "Since when have you ever wanted a white picket fence with two point five kids and a dog? You and I both know that that has never been the life we planned for."

She barely finishes her sentence before his words come rushing again out of his mouth. "When we were young and stupid! We planned those things when we were naïve enough to believe that things could always stay the same—and so would we." He crawls back onto the bed and sits facing her. He takes her hands in his and looks right into her eyes. "I'm not asking for a completely regular, boring life. I want to be an actor as badly as you do, Jade. I want to have a career in this business, as tough as it may be. But more than that—more than I want anything—I want a life with you. I want to know that, one day in the future, I can ask you to be my wife and you'll say yes. And that, one day after that, we can have a child together."

Jade wonders if the complete panic she feels inside is showing on her face. She wishes she knew the words to ease his mind, but she's also completely positive that those words won't be coming to her—especially not tonight. It's silent for an uncomfortable several minutes, until,

"Can we just go to sleep?" Her voice is timid and desperate—much different than he's ever used to hearing it. As flustered as Beck is, he lets out a long breath and nods his head.

"Yeah. Yeah, let's just go to sleep."

Jade is thankful for his compliance and, after slipping underneath the covers, curls up next to him and allows him to pull her into his arms. It's something she can't help—something neither one of them can fall asleep without doing. Even in their worst fights (excluding the two times in high school they'd decided to "break up"), they can't go to sleep unless he's holding her. They've been furious with each other—they've broken things and had yelling matches—but they always end up in the same spot every night without fail.

It just doesn't feel right, Beck has reasoned with himself, if she's not sleeping right where he can protect her. As for Jade, she'd given up on her unwillingness to be dependent on another person long ago—around the time she realized she couldn't sleep unless his arms were wrapped around her body. They fit together perfectly, and within several short minutes they've both fallen asleep.

.

Once Beck approaches the door, he silently enters his own apartment. The one-bedroom—no thanks to Beck and all thanks to Jade—has a chic, bohemian decor. It's a style that fits the couple perfectly, and one that is complimented by nearly everyone who has entered their home.

The first thing that appears in Beck's line of vision when he drops his keys on the kitchen table is an empty wine glass. Though he knows he'd been the one to drain the cup, he can't help but be reminded of her and the nightly glass (or two) she always loved to have. Without registering the action beforehand, Beck impulsively grabs it and throws it across the room. The glass hits the wall head-on, which effectively shatters it to pieces.

Instead of bothering to pick it up, he pulls a beer out of the refrigerator and plops himself on the couch. He turns on the television to create a white noise that he hopes can distract him from his thoughts, but it doesn't prevail. As he starts to let his mind wander, he forces himself to quit doing what he's been doing for the last five hours. Replaying the last month of arguments, Beck reminds himself, will do nothing but make him angrier.

Unfortunately for him, it seems to be the only thing occupying his entire conscious.

.

Two Weeks Earlier

"What are you going to do, Jade? Huh? What—you just want to leave? You want to break up and throw all of this away?"

She can't tell if Beck is being serious or sarcastic, and frankly she's not sure it really matters. He's extremely frustrated with her, and—due to his desire to over-talk everything combined with her avoidance of discussing the future—their communication has never been so strained. "Why are you acting like this?" She stares at him, her blue eyes wide and arms folded against her chest. "I love you, Beck. I don't want to break up; I want things to stay how they are."

"Just stay how they are," he repeats, his tone remaining harsh. "You're fine if we never get past this stage of our relationship—committed, but not married. No kids. No family."

"Why do we have to talk about this?" She asks, clearly begging him to drop the subject. "It only causes problems. We've both been on edge for almost two weeks now, and I'm sick of it! This stupid fighting isn't necessary!"

"It is necessary!" He argues. "This is our future we're talking about—and you're telling me that you are completely fine if we never have a family together!"

Finally, she bursts. "I've never said I wanted a family! You're trying to act shocked—as if you just learned two weeks ago that I don't want to be a mother. You've known me since I was a freshman in high school, and never once in the last seven years have I ever agreed with you about having kids. You bring it up every once in a while, and I always shut down the idea. Always."

"But why?!" He exclaims. "Why don't you want that someday for us? I'm not asking you to get pregnant tomorrow, Jade; I just want to know that that's in our future! I've always assumed that you'd change your mind about the topic as we got older and more mature," he mutters, the words coming off to her as nothing but condescending.

"Oh, so because I don't want kids I'm less mature than you?" She retorts, setting down the dish she'd just dried for fear that she'll throw it at him if she keeps it in her hand. "Is that how you see it, Beck? Tell me, please, how you make sense of that!"

"I didn't say that—"

"But you implied it! You think less of me because I want to spend my life with a job as an actress and a singer instead of changing diapers and breastfeeding. That's not fair to me!"

"Well I'm sorry that you're too busy planning your life to consider the part of it that includes me. Or does your plan for the future even include me?"

"Beck, stop it!"

"No, really! You go on ahead and plan away! If we're not going to have a family together one day, then I guess we can just be free and chill out. What does giving life a meaning matter, anyways?"

"Do you even hear yourself?" She cries. "You're being fucking insane! What the hell has gotten into you?"

"Maybe the realization that this is all a mistake!"

"That what's a mistake?!" She shouts before she can convince herself not to.

"Us!" He yells back, his eyes darkening. "You and me! We're never going to make each other happy enough! It's not going to work!"

Putting aside the fact that she feels like someone has just put a knife through her chest, Jade wants to reply. She wants to cry and scream at him and tell him how disappointed in him she is. She wants to tell him how afraid she is of losing him, and beg him to stop acting like such an asshole. Instead, though, she lets him taste his words. She says nothing, rather choosing to grab her purse and make a hasty exit from the apartment. She slams the door, feeling the need to take some anger out on something other than him, and dials Tori's number on the walk to the elevator.

Beck, still standing at the same spot in which the malicious words had come flying out in a fit of rage, can't decide whether he hates her or himself more. He hates the way he loves her so much it scares even him. He hates the pit he feels in his stomach without her there. He hates the fact that his brain is constantly—whether it's consumed with the past, present or future—filled with nothing but Jade. More than anything, he hates that it'd just been him that had caused her tears.

He sits on the couch to wait up for her, refusing to go to their bedroom and accept what he knows—she's not coming home tonight. Neither one of them gets any sleep.

Thirteen days later, her bags are packed.

If you'd want me to write a second part, let me know.