It's a Saturday afternoon in mid-January.

"So, won't the real Slim Shady please stand up, please stand up, please stand up?!"

Jade sighs and leans her head against the cool window of Beck's car as Cat continues to sing along to the radio, bouncing up and down in her seat and doing a butt-shuffle dance as well as she can with the restrictions of her seatbelt. Next to Jade, from his position in the driver's seat, Beck grins as Cat breathlessly tries to keep up with Eminem's fast vocals.

"Will Smith don't gotta cuss in his raps to sell records, well I do, so beep! him and beep! you tooooooooooooo."

Of course, despite being seventeen years old and legally allowed to do a lot of adult things - most of which she likes to tell Jade about at sleepovers, as if she actually wants to hear it right before she goes to bed - Cat still finds it necessary to not swear. Jade groans into the glass.

"Cat?" she growls, rubbing her forehead, because this has been going on for nearly ten minutes with every song that came up on Beck's hip-hop playlist. No reply - the redhead only continues to sing. Beck turns down the music slightly as Jade turns around and tries to attract the attention of her friend. "Cat? Cat? Cat!" Still no reply. "Caterina Valentine, you better shut your mouth right now before I take that red hair dye you insist on continually using and shove it down your brother's pants!"

Cat goes quiet, and pouts as Eminem continues without her.

"Thank you!" Jade sighs, spinning back around in her seat and slumping into it. Beck looks over his shoulder at the redhead, and gives a reassuring smile.

"Don't worry. I think Jade's a little.." Beck mouths the word hormonal at the end of the sentence. Jade sees this and shoots her boyfriend a filthy look.

"No, I'm not!" she protests, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring.

"Yes, you are." Cat chimes in innocently. "You borrowed a pad from me in PE yesterday!"

"And you had an aspirin at lunch." Beck adds.

"And you made that substitute teacher cry when you yelled at him for asking directions!"

Jade scowls and curls her hands into fists as he smiles in fond amusement over at her and Cat hums Five Fingaz To The Face and does some strange hand gesture/dance in the background.

"Are we done discussing my menstrual cycle?" she asks angrily, crossing her arms across her chest.

"Ooh, ooh, my brother had a bicycle once!" Cat exclaims. "He got it for Christmas."

"And?" Jade says sharply, because she knows this story is going to end strangely.

"Santa Claus sat on it." she giggles. "He broke it."

Jade rolls her eyes, and looks over at her still-smirking boyfriend - who seems to enjoy Cat and Jade's dysfunctional friendship a little too much - with annoyance.

"Are we nearly there?"

"Patience, Miss West." Beck states simply. Then, when Jade gives him an annoyed look; "Right around the corner."

Jade crosses her arms more tightly around her body, and Cat begins to sing once again, though more quietly this time. When Jade had agreed to take her friend to the beach - because Cat still couldn't drive, and her mother refused to let her ride the bus after an incident involving a night spent in San Jose after Cat mixed up the bus timetables - she had imagined a sunny day with blue skies and a blazing sun, like the kind they showed on the crappy tourist ads for California, despite the fact that she already lived there. What she hadn't imagined, however, was for the clouds to release a full month's worth of rain the day before their trip, with the sky left a miserable shade of grey and everything outside still pretty wet. Jade had agreed to take her, though, and Cat had still wanted to go ahead with the trip, which she apparently had been looking forward to for months. Right now, however, Jade was sure that the real reason was to see how annoyed she could make Jade - with the help of Beck, who took every opportunity to irritate his girlfriend - before she lashed out and Cat went home with red hand marks around her neck.

"We're here!" Beck announces as he pulls the car into a space. There's only one other car in the whole parking lot - a small, dingy-looking thing with rusted edges and various bumper stickers stuck over the back window. Jade can already imagine the occupant; some stupid hippy who hasn't washed their hair in months and likes to smoke marijuana in the park during the summer when Jade's trying to get her homework done in the sunshine to stop looking so pale in a bikini.

"Yayayayayay!" Cat exclaims in one breath, jumping out of the car as soon as it stops moving. Jade, however, doesn't budge from her seat.

"You coming?" Beck asks. Jade shakes her head, and he runs a hand through his hair and sighs. "We weren't making fun of you, Jade. Don't worry about it."

She rolls her eyes.

"It's not that. Can't we just stay in the car and look at the beach? It's freezing outside!"

"You promised Cat you'd take her to the beach, and that includes actually going onto the beach." he tells her. Jade sighs.

"Seriously? You're seriously going to go?" she asks after a moment's silence, looking over at him with her arms still tight around her chest.

"Yes."

Jade groans.

"Fine." she murmurs, unravelling her arms. Beck smiles, then unbuckles his seatbelt and moves over to kiss her on the forehead.

"C'mon, then. Cat's already out there." he chuckles at the faint image of their friend through the foggy windows. "Don't want to let her have all the fun."

Jade unbuckles her own seatbelt, and opens the door. Within seconds she's hit by a cold blast of air that makes her regret even thinking about leaving the warmth. Still, she forces herself to shut the door and walk over to where Beck and Cat are stood, right at the edge of the beach. Cat must be crazy - she's removed the warm sweater she had been wearing, and is now clad only in her shorts, tank top and a pair of Beck's old boots.

"Jadey!" she shrieks as Jade approaches them, her voice only just audible above the roar of the wind. "Yay, you're coming!"

"I promised I would." Jade says, her eyes on Beck, who's already turning a shade of blue and looking longingly at his car. Cat's cold hands grab Beck's right and Jade's left and holds onto them tightly, so they look like very young parents with a synthetically redheaded teenaged daughter.

"Can we go in the sea?" she asks Beck, looking up at him with her big brown eyes in a way that no one - not even Jade - can say no too. Beck nods stiffly.

"S-sure." he mumbles, and Cat gives a shriek of delight as she drags them down to the ocean.

It's even colder walking down the beach - despite her boots, damp sand somehow manages to get to Jade's feet and the wind bites at any exposed skin, leaving her hands - and, most likely, her nose - red. By the time they reach the waves' edge, her hair has been tangled and restyled by the wind, and her whole body is freezing. Beck looks even worse - the only reason, it seems, he is not running back to the comfort of his truck is Cat's firm grip on his hand.

"Yay!" Cat grins, in a good mood as always. She lets go of her friend's hands, pulls off her boots, then runs headfirst into the sea.

"Oh my God." Jade says in awe, because Cat is officially bonkers now. What other reason would any normal person have for running into water that's surely below freezing?

"She.. is.. insane." Beck gets out between his teeth chattering. Jade smirks at him.

"We made a promise to her." she mocks in her Beck voice, which isn't quite as good as her Tori voice, but she's getting there.

"Y-you did. I.. didn't promise her anything. I-I'm.. doing this.. because I'm a good.. p-person."

He's shivering so much that he honestly looks like he's going to faint, which is odd because he's Canadian, and Jade was under the impression - from the many crappy 'Visit Canada' adverts that play from November to March when people in Cali want to experience a 'proper' winter - that Canada was buried under snow for most of the year. Still, she takes pity on him, and doesn't stretch the subject any further.

"A little.. h-help?" Beck asks, gesturing for her to wrap her arms around him. Jade rolls her eyes, but lets herself move closer to him and transfer a little body heat onto him. Cat's splashing in the sea, now, her hair and clothes soaking wet, but she's obviously having a great time - far more so than her friends.

"C'mon, guys!" she yells from a few metres out. They stay curled up together, but Jade lifts her head off Beck's chest a little so as to hear her. "Come in! It's not that cold!"

"N-no, t-thanks, Cat." Beck stammers. "We're fine here."

From her position in the ocean, with high waves crashing onto her legs and wet hair dripping onto her face, Cat pouts.

"Ple-e-e-a-a-se?" she calls, and Jade knows that Cat's going to get her own way whether she and Beck like it or not. Sighing, she uncurls herself from Beck's grip and pulls her sweater over her head.

"What are you-" Beck tries to say as Jade strips off her jeans and boots. She raises an eyebrow at him as his sentence falters off at the sight of her bare legs.

"You know she's going to force you into it, anyway. It's easier to just go in now and get it over with." she states simply, laying the clothes down on the sand. When he doesn't move, Jade rolls her eyes. "Come on. It'll be over in five seconds, Cat'll be happy, and then we can go home."

Beck shakes his head, muttering something about crazy girls, but unbuttons his coat and drops it next to Jade's clothes.

"Fine. I'm keeping the shoes on, though. I like warm feet."

"I bet you do." Jade murmurs, as they walk, hands linked, over to the waves edge. Cat, seeing them, immediately bounces over.

"It's more fun in here!" she grins excitedly. Waves lap at Jade's bare feet, turning them white and making her grit her teeth. Somehow, stripping off everything aside from her t-shirt and her underwear seems to be a bad idea now. She doesn't want to let Cat down - and neither does Beck - but neither of them want to risk hypothermia by stepping into the freezing water. Cat's smile falters. She bends down, and Beck seems to realise she's going to do something.

"Cat, we really don't want to-"

But it's too late; she's already splashing water all over them, making goosebumps appear on goosebumps and giving them a new appreciation for heating.

"C-Cat!" Jade stutters. It's freezing cold, but Cat's just laughing. She grabs each of their hands for the second time, and pulls them up the beach. Every bit of skin, it seems, is now soaking wet and so, so cold. Jade's numb fingers pull on her sweater and jeans again, but it doesn't make much of a difference to her overall body heat. Now the wool is damp, and that only makes it worse. Beck, however, is having a worse time; his own jeans, shoes and shirt were soaked by Cat's wave, so pulling on his coat doesn't make any difference at all.

"L-let's get back to the car. Please." he adds the last part as Cat looks like she's about to protest. The three of them run up the beach, arms wrapped around their bodies to preserve the heat, and jump into the warmth of the car as quickly as possible.

"Oh, my God." Jade moans as they sink down in their seats. "I am never doing that again. Ever."

"Me neither." Beck says, fumbling with the key to get the car started. From the back seat, however, a soaking wet Cat is grinning and looking as though she's had the time of her life.

"At least someone's happy." Jade mutters.

Later, they're curled up in Beck's RV, with hot chocolate made by his mom who took once glance at their soaking wet clothes and insisted they never go to the beach during winter again. Cat's humming My Name Is now, but Jade doesn't have the energy to yell at her again.

"Hey, guys?" Cat asks, and Beck and Jade turn to look at her.

"What?" Beck says.

"Today was fun! Can we do it again next week?"

Beck and Jade exchange a glance.

"No!"

Yeah, so, I have a random headcanon that Cat is a huge Eminem fan and has all his albums. :)

Reviews are appreciated!