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Veronica hated the Midwest with a passion. And the Midwest seemed to hate her right back.
“Fucking tornado season.” She muttered, hugging her knees and pressing herself further into the gym wall. Tornado drills were nothing new, and actual weather emergencies happened at least once a year, but none had ever been like this.
They’d been stuck in the gym, unable to go home, for hours. The students of Westerburg were starting to get restless, and that could only lead to chaos, and possibly a small amount of bloodshed knowing the guys at this school. Teachers were beginning to pass out blankets, either for the cold or because they were about to announce that they would be sleeping here, Veronica didn’t know.
Veronica was never going to forgive Betty for having the nerve to be sick on the day of the longest weather emergency in Sherwood’s history. Her Lilapsophobia was getting the better of her, and she was completely alone.
Or, maybe not completely. The new kid she’d seen around a couple times had just settled down a few feet away from her. She caught him glancing at her huddled, shaking form and looked quickly away.
She sensed him moving closer, but very carefully didn’t look up at him. She’d seen him fighting Kurt and Ram and doubted he was that much nicer than they were.
“Hey, are you okay?” His voice was surprisingly quiet, a low, soothing hum amid the mayhem in the gym.
She eyed him suspiciously, but answered because she had nothing better to do. “I don’t like storms.”
He nodded, “Yeah, the midwest sucks this time of year. I was in Kansas for tornado season last year, and that was some serious shit.”
“Please don’t tell me about it.” She muttered, looking away from him and pulling her knees even closer to her chest.
For whatever reason, he chose to move closer to her. They were only inches apart now. “Jason Dean, JD for short.”
“Veronica Sawyer.” She reluctantly shook his outstretched hand.
JD held on for just a beat too long as concern filled his eyes. “You’re shaking. Here, take my blanket.” He held out one of the scratchy boiled wool emergency blankets the teachers had been handing out. When she made no move to take it from him, he took the liberty of wrapping it around her shoulders.
Despite everything, she did feel a little bit better with it there. They sat in silence for a little while, watching their classmates. If her quietness bothered him, he didn’t say anything.
Finally, because she felt she owed him an explanation for her unusual behavior, Veronica spoke up. “A tornado took out my garage when I was a kid while I was inside the house. It must have missed us by inches.”
He nodded, “I understand that.” When she looked at him to express her skepticism about that, she noticed a sadness in his eyes that she hadn’t seen before. It suddenly seemed possible that he did understand.
“You said you were in Kansas last year, is that where you moved from?” She asked, changing the topic abruptly.
He shook his head, “No, we moved up from West Virginia. We usually don’t stay more than a couple months.”
Veronica had only had to move once in her life- shortly after the aforementioned garage incident- and she wrinkled her nose in distaste. “That must suck.”
“Everyone’s life has got static.” JD shrugged and pulled a cigarette from the pocked of his coat. He quickly put it back when a teacher glanced their way. “Is your life perfect?”
That surprised a laugh out of Veronica, “No, my life’s not perfect. I’m trapped in a school gym for the foreseeable future. This isn’t high school anymore, it’s the fucking Thunderdome.”
JD laughed, “If it all goes to shit, I promise I’ll help you get out.” His smile was clandestine, and Veronica felt like she was being let in on a joke that made them a team somehow.
Principal Gowan was waving his arms on the opposite side of the gym, calling everyone’s attention before he broke out the megaphone. “Students, we regret to inform you that we will not be able to release you tonight. Weather reports indicate that this area won’t be safe until tomorrow morning. Your parents have been informed.”
It was complete and utter chaos as students stormed the teachers and administrators, demanding to be let out, begging to go home. Kurt Kelly picked a fight with the gym teacher.
Veronica cowered into JD, and he wrapped his arms protectively around her. They kept themselves pressed into the wall until things finally began to calm down.
She looked up at him, suddenly embarrassed about their rather… intimate position. JD smiled down at her, “Promise you’ll stay close?” He asked, teasing her. “I might need backup.”
Veronica laughed and rested her head on his shoulder, it was going to be a long night.
But she wasn’t going to be alone. “I promise.”
“Students, come up to collect your mats! Remember, two students per mat, no exceptions. No, not even you Miss Chandler, put your hand down.”
The riots that had started when Gowan had informed them that they would all be spending the night in the gym due to the tornado watch had finally calmed down, leaving a sort of frenzied chaos. Veronica stood in the center of it all, holding the blanket JD had given her and watching it happen. He’d been with her earlier, but the crowd had pulled them apart. Now that she was alone, her anxiety was back in full force, and she was more than a little convinced that a tornado was about to sweep in and kill them all.
Logically, she knew that she had to find someone nice enough to share a mat with her for the night, but she felt a little lost without Betty Finn, who’d been sick that day and was thus missing the excitement. Around her, students were pairing off with whoever they could find. Heather Chandler appeared to be holding court with the other two Heathers, deciding which one would be the chosen one to share her mat. Veronica felt a little bad for Duke, who would undoubtedly be left out. She considered approaching her to ask her to share, but thought better of it. She didn’t know any of the Heathers well enough for that.
Her attention was pulled away when Kurt Kelly sidled up next to her. “Hey, Veronica,” He gestured to a mat on the ground behind him with a lecherous smirk. “Nobody to sleep with? I’m happy to help you out.”
Gross. “No, actually I was going to…” Veronica’s normally quick brain short-circuited and she completely failed to come up with a way out of this situation. She clutched her blanked to her chest and tried to stutter out something intelligible.
Kurt took a step closer and Veronica backed away, hitting the wall in the process. She was cornered.
A mat slammed on the ground between them, pulling Kurt’s attention up towards the person who’d thrown it. Veronica couldn’t help but smile. JD stood in between them, glaring at Kurt, but his words were directed at Veronica. “I got us a mat.”
Kurt blanched and stepped back. “Whatever, I’m not into virgin prude girls anyway.” He walked away, even dragging his matt several feet further away from them.
JD looked awkward, now that he didn’t have anyone to stare down. “Sorry, I was just trying to get him to go away. If you want to find someone else to sleep with, I get it. We just met.”
Veronica scanned the cafeteria, and didn’t see a single unpaired student. “I don’t have anyone else, if that’s okay with you?”
“Fine by me.” He smirked at her, looking her up and down. “Actually, I think I got a pretty good deal out of it.”
Forgetting her fear for a second, Veronica smiled at his playful flirting. “I’m not sure about my deal yet, but I’ll let you know.”
JD was easy to talk to, which made settling down on the mat with him easier. She noticed that he kept a polite distance between them as he attempted to curl up under his coat on the opposite side of the mat.
“We could share,” She offered boldly, seeing him struggle to fit his long body under the coat, “This is technically yours.”
He’d offered her the blanket earlier, when her panic had been worse. Now she wondered if he regretted it, so she held up the edge of it so he could join her.
“Why Miss Sawyer, what are you suggesting?” He wiggled his eyebrows at her suggestively.
Veronica blushed furiously but didn’t back down. “Are you saying you don’t want to sleep with me? In that case-”
He stopped her before she could finish, sliding under the blanket and settling close enough to whisper right into her ear. “That’s not what I said.” There was a new intensity in his voice, and his warm breath tickled her ear, making her heart race. “You know half the guys in this gym would kill to be where I am right now?”
She rolled over to face him. “That’s not true.” She wasn’t popular, boys rarely noticed her. He was new, so he probably didn’t know that. “Kurt pulls shit like that with every girl with a pulse. I’m not… Well, let’s just say he wasn’t exactly wrong about me.”
JD turned a little red, and she wondered what had crossed his mind. As though trying to distract himself, he turned away and grabbed his coat. Balling it up into a long pillow, he set it down between them. “We’re probably the most comfortable people in here.”
A little thrown by the change in topic, Veronica just nodded and turned away from him. The wind was picking up and she no longer felt like flirting. She was too nervous to have said anything clever anyway.
The lights went off a few minutes later, which caused a new stir of conversation in the gym. Veronica tensed, sure that it meant the storms were getting worse. Sure enough, Gowan stood up, raising his megaphone. “Students, please remain calm and remain on your mats. We don’t need power.”
“Then I guess it’s good you don’t have any,” JD muttered in Veronica’s ear.
She tried to laugh, but the sudden darkness hadn’t done anything to help her racing heart. JD must have noticed, because he moved a little closer to her. “You’re shaking, are you okay?”
“I told you, I hate storms.”
He nodded and moved closer, wrapping his arms around her. “Is this okay?”
It did help a little, and she wiggled closer to him, getting comfortable and trying to absorb some of his warmth.
After a little while of this, JD let out a little cough. “Um, Veronica? I’m trying really hard to be a gentlemen about this, but there are some reactions I can’t exactly control… So, if you could maybe… not do that, I’d really appreciate it.”
Veronica froze, her face unbelievably hot. “Sorry.”
He cleared his throat again. “It’s fine.”
They were both silent for a while longer, but Veronica found it a little harder to be terrified when he was holding her. There was no logic to it, if a tornado tore through the gym his arms would hardly provide any protection, but there was something safe about him.
“You know, I’ve never done this before.”
“Done what?” She knew he’d probably seen and done a lot at his various schools, but she thought it was pretty easy to assume that he’d never been trapped in a gym overnight because of a weather emergency.
He paused thoughtfully. “I’ve never slept with someone like this, just holding each other, nothing more.” He sounded sad, and she brought her hand up to hold onto his hands, which were resting near her stomach.
Deciding to break the tension brought on by his confession, Veronica turned her head to smile at him. “It’s so much pressure to be someone’s first.”
She liked the sound of his laugh. Strange that she’d only known him a couple of hours, and yet she trusted him enough to lay down in his arms. She didn’t even mind the whispers she occasionally caught, featuring her name and “that crazy kid with the coat”. Regardless of what happened after the storm warning was over, all of Westerburg thought they were together.
JD fell asleep, revealing an impressive ability to pass out absolutely anywhere. Veronica admired and envied him for it. She was lying awake, staring at the ceiling and listening to the wind.
She was probably the first to hear it.
At first, it was the silence. The wind had been so strong for so long that it’s absence echoed, putting all of Veronica’s senses on high alert. Her heart started to pound and her dark, storm-related thoughts came back with a vengeance. Any relaxation she’d found in JD’s arms evaporated.
Next came the low rumble, so quiet at first she thought she was imagining it. Other kids started to sit up, murmurs spread through the gym. JD woke up, grumbling something about “kids making too much damn noise.”
“JD, something’s coming,” She tried to tell him, but the words were lost as the rumble began to turn into a roar. Veronica knew exactly what it was, had heard the same sound once before, when she was much younger. But nothing could have prepared her to hear it like this. Trapped the school gym, nowhere safe to run or hide.
Tears were leaking from her eyes, and her heart was pounding so loud and fast that she was sure it would simply stop from the stress. She hoped it would. JD had finally woken up enough to realize what was going on and his arms tightened around her. She could only barely make out his words over the sound of the tornado that was getting closer with each second. “It’s going to be okay, Veronica, you’re going to be alright!”
The words meant nothing. Her brain was a fog of horrible thoughts and sheer terror. Even if she had wanted to reply to him, there was no way to put this into words. The building started to shake with the force of the coming cyclone, and Veronica could hear her classmates screaming around them. She was silent. No scream could have expressed her fear. They were all going to die.
JD rolled over, trapping her underneath him. She looked up, startled at how close they were and saw tears in his eyes. His lips were moving as if in prayer, but she caught the words “Don’t want to die,” and something about being buried in rubble.
Veronica cowered underneath him. Finally she managed to make words, but they were hardly intelligent. “We’re all going to die! We’re all going to die! I’m going to die here. The ceiling will collapse-” She had to stop speaking to breathe.
Shifting so he was covering even more of her body, JD leaned down, “Dammit Veronica, if the ceiling collapses, it’s going to hit me first!” He spoke with a strange, intense conviction that cut through her scattered thoughts, clarifying things in her mind slightly. That didn’t help much, but at least she could almost think clearly.
She reached up and gripped his t-shirt in her fists. He was solid and warm, and it felt like she couldn’t be blown away while she was holding onto him. He stayed braced over her, his forehead resting against hers.
The noise outside got louder and closer.
The cries from the other students got more desperate.
And then, it was over.
Just like that, all the noise stopped. Everyone was frozen. Veronica’s heart was still trying to pound its way out of her chest, but with the storm gone, her panic evaporated into an entirely different kind of adrenaline.
JD looked down at her as relief swept across his face. He opened his mouth to say something, but she didn’t let him. The sheer joy of surviving made her bold and she grabbed the back of his head and pulled him into a kiss.
He sat up and brought her with him, matching her enthusiasm perfectly. They broke apart breathless and joyful. A beat of awkwardness occurred when neither of them had anything to say, but he ignored it and kissed her again.
Gowan was yelling at all the students to calm down, so JD and Veronica broke apart before someone came to separate them by force.
“We’re alive,” JD whispered, hugging her tightly.
She smiled and kissed his shoulder. “I can’t believe it.”
At the shouted behest of the faculty, everyone settled back onto their mats. This time as they laid down, there was no discussion of how they’d be sleeping. JD wrapped his arms around her and she rested her head on his coat, with him pressed against the curve of her back.
It took a long time for sleep to claim her, but eventually she couldn’t keep her eyes open for another second, and she drifted off.
Morning light speared through the gym windows and woke her up. Several other students were beginning to stir, so she nudged JD. “Hey, wake up, I think they’re letting us out soon.”
“Mrhmrmh?” JD held her tighter and didn’t open his eyes.
Veronica shook him again. “JD, wake up! We can go home!”
“What state am I in?” Finally, his eyes blinked open so he could look at her.
Confused, Veronica replied, “You’re in Ohio. We had to spend the night in the gym.”
He sat up and rubbed his eyes, “Right, shit sorry. Waking up in different places all the time gets confusing. Are you okay?”
Accepting this change in topic, Veronica nodded. “I’m great, just a little hungry.”
JD smiled, “Me too.” He paused and rubbed the back of his neck. “Veronica, can I ask you a question?” He waited for her to nod before speaking again. “Did we… last night… Did you kiss me?”
It was tempting to be coy, but she decided to spare him. “Yes, I did.”
A wide smile split his face, “Thank god, I was scared I dreamed it.”
“Nope.” She was about to go on, before JD leaned forward and kissed her.
He smiled as they broke apart and began gathering the blanket and his coat. “I’ll be right back, I’m going to take the mat back.”
“I’ll wait for you.”
JD returned a couple minutes later, looking thoughtful. “I guess I have a girlfriend.”
“Excuse me?” Veronica raised one eyebrow, “Who is this tramp?”
“Don’t talk about her like that, she’s amazing.” He bit back a smile, “The whole school is talking about how good little Veronica Sawyer is slumming it with psycho trench coat kid.”
Veronica laughed, “Maybe I’m not good.”
“I hope not, or you and I won’t get along too well.” He smirked and leaned in to kiss her, brushing her hair out of her face. “Do you mind? What they’re saying, I mean.”
She pretended to think it over for a minute before laughing. “No, I don’t mind. Though I would appreciate being taken on a proper date at some point.”
He glanced down at his watch, “How does breakfast sound? I hear they only close Waffle House when the world is ending.”
“How very.” She took his hand as they walked out of the gym and into the sunlight.