Chapter 1

"Damn," Jackie muttered as she tapped her hair dryer sharply with the palm of her hand. "Work, you hair appliance from hell!"

"What's ruffling your tail feathers, doll?" Hyde yawned as he kicked the covers back from Jackie's bed. Since their reconciliation last month, a reconciliation that was ostensibly based on the "hotness" of their attraction, they rarely spent a night apart. Jackie's bedroom saw the most action as her mother's self-absorption made her the least vigilant parental figure.

"This stupid hair dryer has cut out again – now my hair is half straight and half curly! Steven, can you fix it for me?" she finished plaintively.

Hyde took the hair dryer from her with a serious face. He sniffed it, dabbed a wet finger onto it and tasted it then laid it onto the bed, cocked his fingers into a gun and finished it off with an imaginary bullet sound – fffshhh! He then laid a towel over it as a sign of respect for the deceased appliance.

"Thanks a lot, Mr Fix-it. Remind me never to get stranded on a desert island with you."

"If we were on a desert island, you couldn't use your hair dryer even if I could fix it," Hyde pointed out logically.

"Yeah, I know, no electricity," Jackie replied, rolling her eyes.

"No, because I'd keep you too busy "doing it" for you to have time to mess around with your hair," Steven said, tackling her to the bed and making Jackie shriek with laughter as his clever fingers found her ticklish places. Hyde stilled over Jackie's body as his eyes drank in her lovely flushed face and his body reacted to the warm skin their tumbling had uncovered from her robe.

"What are you thinking," Jackie said demurely, knowing full well what the gleam in his eyes foreshadowed.

"Just wondering how much the circus would pay me for my freakish girlfriend – step right up, folks, and take a gander at the half curly half straight haired girl!" Jackie smacked his bicep in mock outrage. "No, it looks good – it goes with your eyes. Ow! Abusive wench!" Hyde attempted to pin Jackie down but she rolled out from underneath him, knowing removal of her body would be a much greater punishment than her slaps.

"Enough of that," she said sternly. "I have to get ready for work."

Hyde groaned. "Babe, what have I told you about using the "w" word! Even though I'm all for dirty talk in the bedroom, there are limits."

"Steven, you really need to get over this work-hating-laziness thing. I mean, its kind of cute in a teenage rebel, but we're growing up now and we need to start taking our careers seriously."

"Hey, who said anything about growing up? So long as my age ends in teen I'm going to milk it for all I've got – in fact, I should be able to get away with it until at least my 21st," Hyde responded with a smirk.

Jackie hid her disappointment at this remark behind a curtain of hair but her smile was reinstated as she flipped it over her shoulder. Their break-up was still too fresh for her to bring up the issues that had prompted it.

"I guess make-up can fix my hair for me down at the station," she said, changing the subject. "But I need to find someone to repair my hair-dryer. And I don't know anyone who is good with electrical stuff… except maybe Michael."

"Kelso?" Hyde said incredulously. "That moron can't even fix a ticket – I know, he stopped me speeding last week."

"Actually, Michael used to be very good with electronics. Remember when he rigged that Pong video game so it had shorter paddles? If he can do that, how hard can a hair dryer be?"

"How hard can staying unglued to major appliances be? Not hard at all, unless you're Kelso."

"I don't think you give Michael enough credit. I'm going to ask him to fix this for me and I bet he'll surprise you," Jackie said as she finished dressing.

"A bet, hey? OK then – the loser has to be the winner's love slave for a week."

Jackie huffed impatiently. "Why do all the bets you try to finesse me into involve love slaving?"

Hyde grabbed her and kissed her with painstaking sexual intent, giving her something to think about until they would next be in each other's arms. "Because I'm no fool."