Chapter Text
Veronica ducked her head against the cold, cursing existence and everything that had brought her to this point.
Her fury at the moment was mostly directed at her parents and their stupid cruise tickets.
“Honey, you don’t mind spending Christmas with your friends, do you?”
She had, of course, told them that she didn’t mind, except that-- due to a recent move and a new job-- Veronica didn’t have any friends.
Columbus wasn’t exactly a hostile city, but she’d been looking forward to going home where someone else would take care of her for a little while.
Deep down, she knew this was selfish, but she couldn’t help it. She was lonely, still somewhat unhappy about a breakup from three months ago, and now-- worst of all-- she was cold. Though not all of this was her parents’ fault, she still blamed them to some degree.
She was, of course, welcome at the Sawyer family Christmas, but without her parents, she didn’t think she could face her extended family after what had happened last time she’d seen them. Spending the holidays alone was preferable, but it still kind of sucked.
It sucked worse on days like today when she was walking home past all sorts of warm, inviting stores and advertisements, each trying to sell her something that would make the holiday season perfect.
She glanced briefly at one such storefront, an antique shop with a display of vintage toys clustered around a tree in its window. This quaint little image distracted her for a moment, and she plowed directly into a man walking the opposite direction.
The instinctive anger flared up, but she quashed it sharply; this wasn’t a time for confrontations.
His large hands had caught her shoulders, steadying her, and she carefully stepped back before lifting her head to meet his eyes.
His very familiar and still disarmingly green eyes.
“Oh my god.”
He was staring at her, shocked, his cheeks flushed with cold and his eyes bright. “Veronica?”
“JD. Oh my god, I can’t believe it.” On an impulse, she stepped forward and hugged him.
He was frozen for exactly as long as it took her to wonder how badly she’d violated his boundaries before he reached up to hug her back. “I’m so happy to see you,” He whispered into her hair.
Veronica was at a loss for words. Too many emotions swirled through her head and her heart to keep track of anything she might have said to him.
The slow, back-burner sadness she’d felt for so long after they’d lost touch bubbled to the surface. It shouldn’t be a shock to see him. Four and a half years wasn’t so long; she should have known he was in the city at least.
“It’s--”
“Do you want to grab coffee?” He said the words so fast she almost missed them.
Shifting slightly to avoid the crowd that was pressing past them, Veronica nodded. “Sure.”
Minutes later, they were settled in a booth at Starbucks, cradling overpriced drinks and awkwardly avoiding eye contact.
“How long have you been in Columbus?” JD asked finally.
“A couple months. I tried to make it in Chicago but everything is so goddamn expensive. Things are cheaper here while I get on my feet.”
JD nodded. “Heather and I have been here since graduation. We never thought we’d end up in Ohio but we took the jobs we got.”
“Heather… Duke?” Another person Veronica had lost touch with. Another regret she tried not to think about.
“Yeah,” JD laughed awkwardly. “We lived together for all four years of school and we still do.”
“Are you… together?” It seemed impossible; Heather had identified as a lesbian when they’d been in high school, but living together for nearly five years meant it had to be something more, right?
He snorted, choking slightly on his coffee. “No, Heather’s very gay, but we suit each other. When we’re both single Heather calls us queerplatonic life partners.”
“Oh.” A sharp, uncharitable stab of jealousy shot through Veronica; she didn’t have anyone like that in her life.
I was her friend first, She wanted to snap.
I was her friend better, JD replied in her head.
She doubted he would say that, but she didn’t test it. Instead she smiled. “I’m glad she’s doing well.”
“She’s amazing. She got a job in sales immediately after graduation and now she pays most of our rent.”
“Sounds like Heather. What are you doing?”
He shrugged. “Interning at a radio station while I figure shit out.” It was the first time he’d been remotely evasive, so she noticed immediately.
Before she could ask, he cut in. “You?”
It was her turn to shrug. “I’m working at a children’s book publishing company.” It was just okay, and not really where she wanted to be, but given how many of her English and Creative Writing major friends were working in bars and cafes, she had to admit she was lucky.
They lapsed into silence, and Veronica’s eyes darted around like she might find a topic of conversation on the walls or out the window next to her.
She took a sip of her coffee-- a black Americano with enough sugar so as to be disrespectful to coffee snobs everywhere-- and shuddered at the burnt-toast aftertaste that lingered under all the sweetener.
“Do you have plans for the holidays?” JD asked.
Veronica let out a breath, relieved to have something to say, even if it wasn’t a good answer. “Not really. My parents won a cruise, so I’ll just be here. I can’t really deal with the rest of my family without my parents.”
He smiled softly. “Yeah, they’re a lot to handle.”
That little acknowledgement of their shared history made her smile, though it was a sad one. Why had she let them fall out of touch?
Shaking away her sadness, she adjusted her smile into something moderately cheerful. “What about you?”
“I spend Christmas with Heather. Her parents are in Europe and my dad’s place is too small for guests so it’ll just be us.”
“That sounds really nice,” Veronica said, secretly envious.
“You should join us.”
Veronica was sure they both looked a little surprised that he’d said it, but the words were out there, and now she had to answer him.
“I… I couldn’t. I don’t want to impose.” But she wanted to go.
JD shook his head. “You wouldn’t be. We don’t really do anything fancy, but it’s nice. You can stay over Christmas eve and we’ll spend the morning together.”
“I don’t know…” It had been so many years since she’d spent any time with them. Could she really do this?
“Look, you don’t have to, but here’s my number if you change your mind. We’d love to have you.” He grabbed a napkin off the table and scrawled his number on it. “I should get going, but feel free to use that.”
With that, he stood up, put his coat on, and walked out, leaving Veronica to stare at the numbers scrawled in his even, narrow handwriting.
“You did WHAT?” Heather said, leaping to her feet and nearly knocking her chair over. “Jason Dean, what the hell were you thinking? It’s--”
“It’s Veronica, Heather, come on.”
“Yes, the girl who happens to be the one that got away from both of us! You can’t just invite her to Christmas without asking!”
“Heath, you didn’t see her. She looked so lonely, I just--”
“God, you are such a sucker.” Heather shook her head, but the beginnings of a fond smile were starting to curl around her lips, fighting past her obvious exasperation.
He smiled, feeling like he’d won. “I had to offer. I mean, she did the same thing for me once upon a time.”
“I can’t believe you still feel that way about her after all these years.” Heather shook her head.
JD shrugged evasively, not really wanting to get into this with Heather. Yesterday, he would have said that his feelings for her were long buried, but looking at her once had been emotional necromancy. “It’s not like that.”
“So what’s it like?” Heather sat back down and propped her elbows on the table, resting her chin in her hands.
Rolling his eyes at her over-eager expression, JD shrugged. “I wanted to help her. She seemed lonely, and she helped me out of that once. I guess I feel like I owe her a favor. After all, if it wasn’t for her, we wouldn’t be friends.”
“Ah, yes,” Heather said, “The most successful friendship ever born out of loving the same girl.”
“Besides,” JD continued. “She probably won’t call.”
“But what if she does?” Heather met his eyes, her expression uncharacteristically serious. “Is she fair game?”
“What?”
“To flirt with. We’re both single JD, and as I mentioned, she’s our one that got away. I don’t buy that you haven’t thought about this too.”
JD glanced away, raking a hand through his hair. The truth was, he had thought about it. Veronica was as beautiful as ever, and JD’s last relationship had ended three months earlier. If she called him, there really wasn’t anything stopping him from trying to rekindle what they’d had in high school.
But there wasn’t anything stopping Heather, either.
I had my chance, He thought. Maybe I should give Heather hers.
“I don’t… I don’t want to fight over a girl with you, Heather.”
“She’s not just a girl, JD. She’s Veronica.”
“Good point, but I still mean it.” Though it would have been awkward to say it, he valued his relationship with Heather far too highly to risk it over anything; even a second chance with Veronica.
Heather chewed her lip. “Maybe… Maybe we should just let her deal with it. If she comes, we both flirt with her, and if she responds to someone, the other backs off; no hard feelings.”
“Right,” JD said. “No hard feelings. Except…”
“What?”
“What if she responds to both of us? That’s not exactly out of the question, is it?”
Heather smiled wryly. “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”
JD shrugged and let the subject drop. She wasn’t going to call.
“Anyway,” Heather said, standing. “We have a tree to decorate and a bad Christmas movie to mock.”
“Did you pick another Merry Het-mas movie?” JD groaned. He was all for making fun of bad Christmas movies, but Heather’s obsession with terrible holiday romances was starting to drive him insane.
“You’ll love this one, it’s--”
“Exactly like all the others? Can’t we watch… Anything else?”
“Nope. It’s my turn to pick the movie.”
“You’re a pest.”
Heather grabbed a pillow off the couch and hurled it at him. Catching it easily, he tossed it back at her and it glanced off her shoulder.
Rather than reusing the ammunition, Heather leaned over and ran full tilt at JD, knocking him squarely on his ass with her on top of him.
Still catching his breath, JD shoved Heather off, groaning but laughing.
They lay side by side, for a moment.
“I don’t want her to change this,” JD said.
Heather shrugged. “But isn’t there a part of you that wants to go back to it? Remember everything we did back then. I want to live like a folk hero again.”
“Those were the days,” JD agreed, remembering the semester they’d spent locked in a prank war to undermine Heather Chandler’s authority.
“Not that I miss Westerburg!” Heather said.
JD nodded. “High school was hell.”
“But we had fun, didn’t we?”
“Oh, hell yeah.”
They both sighed, lapsing into a reminiscent silence. JD thought they were both probably focusing their memories on one specific person, be he didn’t bring her up again.
After a minute, Heather said, “So… Beer?”
“I’ll get them; you start the movie.”
Beaming, Heather launched herself onto their secondhand couch,settling into the most comfortable spot while JD dragged some weird hipster beer out of the back of their fridge.
“What even is this? Why is there a zombie santa on the front?” He handed Heather her bottle, sniffing his apprehensively.
“Leftover from when I was seeing Skye. She was super into weird local brews. This is their speciality Christmas one.”
He took a sip and coughed. “Jesus it tastes like fucking mint. That’s horrible.”
Heather nodded. “Yep.” She took a long sip from hers, making a face.
“We’re still going to drink this, aren’t we?”
“Yep.”
“We need standards.”
“You first.”
He rolled his eyes and took another sip while the movie started.
“This movie matches the beer,” JD said after it had played for a few minutes.
Heather snorted. “Vaguely holiday inspired but otherwise boring and terrible?”
Laughing, he put his arm around her shoulders. “You stole my joke.”
“That’s because I’ve heard all your jokes, asshole.” She laughed, poking him in the kidney before leaning back into him.
This is exactly what you want, Heather thought to herself harshly. Why would you fuck up the only really successful relationship you’ve had?
Possibly because the only successful relationship she’d had was with a guy, and it wasn’t even remotely romantic.
And the person in question, the one who might be able to mess this up, was Veronica. Though Heather had been claiming for years that she’d gotten over her, there was a part of her that always knew it was a lie.
Veronica Sawyer had not been the first girl Heather had been attracted to, or the first girl she wanted to date in high school, but she had been the best. Of all the other silly, self-destructive crushes Heather had had, Veronica was the one she’d stuck with. Possibly because she had remained friends with the guy who’d ultimately gotten with her, and not with Veronica.
He was being just as pensive as she was, which put a damper on their usually jovial holiday movie night.
Why aren’t we making jokes about heteronormativity? Heather wanted to ask.
Instead, she said, “You know, he kinda looks like that guy you went out with for a little while this summer.
“Cade?” JD asked, cracking a smile.
“God what a dumb name. What happened to him?”
“Moved to Chattanooga with his band. It wasn’t going to work out.”
Heather knew that, but joking about characters resembling their exes was a running joke they had, and she was desperate for any conversation. She bumped her beer against his in solidarity.
“Hey what happened with that girl you went out with last week? She was cool, right?” JD turned his attention away from the couple on-screen, who had just nearly kissed before a side character awkwardly interrupted them.
She groaned. “It was terrible. Not that she was bad or anything but it was just… so awkward. I asked if she liked to read, she said no, she asked if I listened to some podcast, I said no. She asked if I was vegan; no. It was just… no.”
“Damn.”
“Are we unlovable?” Heather asked, keeping her tone light.
JD scoffed. “Of course not, we love each other.”
Heather smiled and rested her head on his shoulder. “Not exactly what I meant. I mean… you’re great but I’m a lesbian.”
He pretended to be shocked. “What? But all this time I thought we were playing a slow game with delicate push and pull, waiting for one of us to give in to the obvious tension between us.”
“Stop now or I hurt you,” Heather said, grabbing a pillow.
“I can’t believe you’re friendzoning me, I mean have you ever been with--”
She swung the pillow at his face, and he was so caught up in his monologue that he didn’t notice until it had met its mark.
“Fuck you,” He shouted gleefully, grabbing his own ammunition.
Heather moved the beers out of the way and just in time to block his throw and grab the pillow from his hands.
Their apartment was nice, but not as well decorated as Heather would have liked. The only advantage was that the couch didn’t have enough pillows for him to reload, leaving her with both of them, and all the power.
She came at him swinging, smacking him on each shoulder a few times before he managed to wrestle the pillows out of her hands and toss them across the room.
Their laughter slowly expired into breathlessness and then silence as they returned their attention to the movie, where the couple had just had some kind of misunderstanding.
“It’s too bad they don’t just talk to each other,” Heather said.
JD nodded, watching them with a curiously sad expression.
The rest of the film went by predictably. Heather watched as an old woman talked some sense into the leading man, and he rushed off to stop the girl from making some mistake, catching her just in time to make a dramatic, poorly written speech while snow fell around them.
The characters hugged; the credits rolled, and somehow watching two people in love made Heather lonelier than ever.
“Hey, JD?”
“Mhm?” He shifted, and Heather bit back a smile at his sleepy, confused eyes.
“Why didn’t we keep talking to Veronica?”
He sighed. “I stopped talking to her when she broke up with me. I wanted to be friends but… It hurt.”
Heather remembered the rather dramatic depression JD had sunk into in the beginning of their freshman year after Veronica had broken up with him.
For the first couple days, he’d only managed to drag himself out of his room for the mandated freshmen orientation activities, and the first time he’d gone out, Heather had practically had to drag him by his collar.
“I was always surprised that you didn’t keep in touch though,” JD continued.
She shrugged, not sure how to articulate her reasoning. It had been hard to see him miserable, and a part of her had been angry still that Veronica had never given her a chance. The distance and the busyness of college had provided Heather with a good excuse to move the fuck on from high school bullshit.
And yet here was high school bullshit barrelling back into her life.
Merry fucking Christmas.