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It’s not the first time a case had made them stay in an unfortunate hotel overnight, but like all the times before, there’s that certain air of excitement.
“Do you think they’ll let all of us stay in the same room?” Fred asks.
Daphne hopes not—he’d keep them up all night going over theories, each more wild than the one before.
“Do ya think they’ll let Scooby-Doo stay with us?” Shaggy asks.
Daphne hopes so—otherwise Shaggy would definitely go out to check on Scooby, and they’d run into the monster. Like magnets. No sleep for anyone.
“Do you think a ghost will steal all the blankets?” Velma jokes.
“Hey, that actually happened!” Daphne complains.
“Of course,” she teases.
Daphne pouts, but only a little. She’d climbed into bed with Velma that night to stay warm, and she’d do it again tonight if she needed to. Then Velma wouldn’t be laughing!
They park the car and clamor out. They’ve graduated from college now, but it still feels exciting to stay somewhere new together—like the ultimate sleepover. Not for the first time, Daphne is grateful she never let her parents coerce her into leaving her truest friends behind. No matter how many dates (both friendly and romantic) they sent her on, she’d always been drawn back to her friends and, obviously, the mysteries.
“Who wants to bet the owner is behind all of this?” Fred asks.
No one answers that. Of course it’s a possibility, but. Well. Never count your chickens before the mystery is solved.
Fred goes in first, hurrying to the front desk. Daphne links arms with Velma and follows Shaggy and Scooby.
“Stop!” Someone tells as they cross over the threshold. All five of them freeze, although the woman behind the desk is staring at Daphne and Velma.
“Um,” Daphne says. “Hello?”
The woman (old, unassuming, but still a suspect) lifts her arm and points above Daphne’s head. “Mistletoe!”
Sure enough, there it is, and Daphne feels a strange thrill at the sight. She’d forgotten mistletoe was something people did. Sure, her parents hadn’t pulled it out when she wasn’t young and hey we’re were throwing lavish parties, but after her mother had been on the receiving end of a particularly disgusting kiss, they’d decried the tradition as unhygienic. Daphne had never been caught underneath it before. Certainly not with Velma.
“Oh,” she says. She doesn’t examine her thrilled feeling, even though it’s a mystery and she should really solve it.
The old woman claps, apparently delighted. She’d probably been staring at it all day, waiting for a pair to walk under it. “Kiss!” she insists.
Shaggy looks bored. Fred looks like he’s two seconds shy of laughing.
Daphne is nervous. She wants to protest—she understands why her mother did away with mistletoe all those years ago. There’s something distinctly unsexy about kissing underneath a plant, no matter how romantic every movie has made it out to be.
She doesn’t argue, though, knowing that she’d lose. Instead, she leans down the few inches between them, and kisses Velma as quickly as possible.
It’s surprisingly nice. Daphne can’t imagine why it’s a surprise, because Velma uses chapstick almost constantly in the winter. Of course she has soft, smooth lips. Not dry, either—the perfect amount of moisture, for a quick close-mouthed kiss.
Velma blinks up at her, and she realizes it’s the first time she’s looked at her since the incident started. The look on her face is inscrutable, but it makes Daphne want to retreat.
Suddenly, it’s not so exciting that she’ll probably be sleeping alone with her.
Daphne tunes out as Fred books a pair of rooms and the five of them (thank god, Scooby-Doo was allowed to stay) walk up the stairs to the rooms. She stays silent as Fred, Shaggy, and Scooby split off and go to their room. She stares at the door of their own room nervously as Velma unlocks it.
She doesn’t want to go in.
The two of them get ready for bed without their usual conversation, and Daphne can’t help but feel responsible. She should have protested. She shouldn’t have kissed one of her oldest friends.
She shouldn’t have liked it.
Velma, ever observant, had probably noticed. Maybe she’d only just realized that Daphne is a lesbian. Maybe she’d known for a longer time than Daphne herself had known.
Maybe she and Daphne had had the same realization during that kiss—that Daphne doesn’t like her as a friend, or not only as a friend.
How did she miss this for so long? It’s obvious now that it’s laid out in front of her. They’ve held hands and shared beds and solved hundreds of mysteries, and Daphne has been in love all along, none the wiser.
They lie in two beds, silent, but obviously awake in the dark.
Daphne has never been able to sleep lying on her back, but she can’t roll onto her side for fear that she'll see Velma glaring at her. She stares at the ceiling, caught in a horrified loop.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Velma says, breaking the silence. Her voice has taken the steely tone it does when she’s about to cry angrily.
Daphne shrinks into the bed. “I’m sorry.”
Velma takes a shuddering gasp of air. “It’s just—you know how I feel about you, and it wasn’t really—it wasn’t mean to tease me like that.”
Her words draw Daphne up short. “What are you talking about?” she asks, but she’s connecting the dots even as she speaks. She might be the dumb one in the group, but she’s as much of a sleuth as any of them are. “Oh, Velma.” She gets out of bed and crosses the short distance to her. She climbs into the bed and Velma squeaks. “I didn’t know,” she tells her, soft, and then kisses her again.
Velma squeaks again, but kisses her back after a second.
She pulls back. “I like you, too. I’m sorry I didn’t realize before now.” She kisses Velma again, and the other girl seems to be getting the idea.
“It’s not just because you feel bad, right?” she asks.
“Jeepers, Velma, I’d never!” She kisses her again, and Velma seems to be done talking now.
Daphne can work with that
(There’s no ghost stealing covers, but they still end up sharing a bed that night.
At least until Shaggy and Scooby run into the room yelling about the monster.)