## Preface

i am damaged
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at https://archiveofourown.org/works/84212561.

Rating:
  Explicit
Archive Warning:
  Rape/Non-Con
Category:
  F/M
Fandoms:
  Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe, Heathers (1988)
Relationship:
  Jason "J. D." Dean/Veronica Sawyer
Characters:
  Jason "J. D." Dean, Veronica Sawyer
Additional Tags:
  Past Rape/Non-con, Angst, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Language:
  English
Stats:
  Published: 2026-05-03 Words: 1,680 Chapters: 1/1

# i am damaged

by madgesundersee

Summary

> when j.d. notices veronica is acting strange, he listens to her tell about her experience with kurt and ram. this unfortunately prompts his own memory from when he was twelve years old.

> heavy trigger warning for child sexual assault and everything of the sort

> idk why i wrote this.

Notes

> hi! thank you for clicking on this fic! again, trigger warning for rape/noncon/whatever you wanna call it

> i hope you enjoy your read

See the end of the work for more notes

## i am damaged

I walk up to her front door and knock three times so she’ll know it’s me. She hasn’t told her parents about our relationship yet, so when her mother opens the door and asks what I need, I tell her we’re just working on a school project. She hesitates, probably because I’m a guy that showed up to her house to hang out with her daughter on a Saturday, but she does let me in eventually.

“She’s in the living room, I’ll take you there.”

We walk along the hallway—I pretend not to already know where the living room is, since I’ve been here before, obviously, just without her parents present.

Veronica’s sitting on a lounge chair reading a book when I enter. She looks up, smiles, says “oh right, the project!”, and brings me up to her room. Her parents definitely know what’s going on, but they just exchange a ‘teenagers will be teenagers’ look and allow me to go upstairs with her without interrogating me about my intentions with their daughter.

When we reach her room, she kisses me immediately and shuts the door. After we’ve finished with our first long kiss, she even goes to lock it.

“You sure you won’t get grounded over that?” I ask, slightly concerned.

“No, why would I? Privacy’s pretty important, and I’m sure they’d rather see a locked door than what we’re about to do!” She giggles, and finishes what she was doing.

Right. I need to stop forgetting Veronica has a way better relationship with her parents.

“Do you think they suspect anything?” she asks me while she tidies up her room—which is honestly already way tidier than mine.

“Yeah, I think they just don’t want to interfere. Why are you cleaning your room?”

“Because you’re here, dummy. I’d just forgotten the time, otherwise I would’ve done it before you came here.”

The way she says it makes me laugh—she should probably know I don’t care about how clean her room is, especially since she’s seen my room.

When she’s done, she kisses me again, and I kiss her right back. She grabs the neck of my shirt and I stumble towards her as she pushes me to her bed. I laugh, a little out of breath already—god, she’s feisty, I love it—and I pull her closer to me.

“Damn, you’re bold today,” I say as she’s already unbuckling my belt. I sit up, cup her face in my hands and kiss her again.

“I just—shut up, okay?” She sounds hurried.

“Ronnie?” She snaps back to attention. “Are you alright?”

She goes quiet now, gets off my lap and sits on her bed instead. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I did that.”

“Did something happen?”

She nods. “Uh, yesterday, but it wasn’t that bad, I think.”

I don’t know if I’m supposed to say something in response, so I just wait for her to continue. She looks at me, and then averts her eyes.

“I had to go to, uh, Lehmann’s farm yesterday to pick up Heather, Heather and Heather, but when I got there, Kurt and Ram—you know, the guys you fought in the cafeteria—were also there, and apparently they’d made a deal with Heather and Heather that if they got me to come, they would get their car keys back or something like that, and then they tried to uh—well, they tried to do weird things, tried to touch me and stuff, but I got away, so I guess it could’ve been worse, you know?”

I look at her, but she’s looking away. I feel rage building up inside of me, but I know I have to hide it. Veronica’s fragile now, I can’t let any type of anger show, even if it’s not aimed at her at all. I gently place a hand on her shoulder, and she lets herself fall backwards into my arms. I hold her close while I see a tear run down her cheek.

“Ronnie, you don’t have to lie to me… I know what it’s like, okay? I know how it feels, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to lie about how it feels.” My lips touch her hair and she looks up at me.

“Thank you,” she says, and she turns towards me to kiss me. I play with her hair as we stay like that for a few minutes. Her tears have now dried, and I’m very content just comforting her like this.

Eventually, she pulls away from me. “What did you mean when you said you know what it’s like?” she asks, and that’s when I realize I already said too much.

“That’s not important right now. Okay, darling?” I want to kiss her cheek, but she’s persistent.

“J.D., don’t lie to me.”

I stay silent, and she gives me a worried look. “You—you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to…”

But I’m still silent, because now I’m thinking about it. Fuck. I haven’t thought about it in so long—I don’t want to think about it. I completely zone out, and don’t even think about how I might look now. I don’t think about the real world anymore, because the past feels too real.

I was twelve. My dad had to go away for a week—I still don’t know for what. So he got a friend to take ‘care’ of me in that week. His friend was old, like fifty years old. He kept calling me uncomfortable things, too. I guess it wasn’t that bad, until he came into my room one night and... I begged for him to stop all the while he was doing it. It hurt, it hurt so fucking much. But he didn’t stop. He didn’t stop until he was done, and then he just walked away.

I snap back to reality when I realize—oh fuck, I just said all those things out loud. Veronica’s staring at me, she’s shocked. I want to tell her I’m fine now, but I’m really not. All I can do is fall into her arms and sob. She holds me, and I’m lying on her lap in fetal position for a while. It probably looks pathetic, but it’s so comforting I don’t ever want her to let go.

She doesn’t even tell me everything will be alright, which I appreciate. Because that’s just not true. It won’t be alright, what happened won’t ever change. And I know that.

She kisses my hair, just like I kissed hers a few minutes ago. I’m still crying, but it’s a bit less now.

“I love you, okay?” she whispers lovingly.

And that’s when I realize.

“No, you don’t understand, Veronica,” I say, sharply. I sit up straight immediately.

She looks at me with that worried look again. “What do you mean, J.D.? I’m trying to understand, do you want to explain?”

I’m stuttering again like an idiot, I’m getting panicked. When she tries to touch my face, I push her away on instinct. She flinches. Shit.

“Veronica, I didn’t mean to—I’m so sorry, shit,” I stutter.

“J.D., talk to me, okay? What’s wrong?”

“You don’t wanna know, Ronnie, just, no, I—”

“It’s okay, just tell me.”

“I fucking killed him!” I gasp. Oh no. Why did I say that? I shouldn’t have said that. Why would I ever admit that? She definitely doesn’t wanna talk to me anymore after this. I fucked up so bad.

But she doesn’t force me to leave, or even step away from me. I look at her. She looks at me.

I slowly begin to explain.

That morning, the morning after he did that to me, I refused to look at him. It was like just his eyes caused me physical pain. So I snapped. While he was taking a nap on my favorite couch spot, I ran to where I knew my dad stored his guns. He always had multiple, ‘for safety’. I even wrote a fake suicide note—something I knew how to do, as someone who has written multiple for myself in the past. After I got a gun—dear old dad was not good at keeping them away from children—I walked up to the couch, shook him awake and proceeded to watch the fear in his eyes right before I shot him in the head. I placed the note next to him and told the cops I’d been out, having a playdate with one of my friends. I didn’t have any friends, but they believed me. I was just twelve years old, after all.

I start to breathe heavily. I haven’t told anyone this before, and it does the opposite of taking a weight off my shoulders. I think Veronica notices, because she tries to touch my face again. This time I don’t respond to her touch at all. I still feel it, I feel everything so fucking much right now.

I panic. I begin to shake, and I slap Veronica’s hand away. I throw myself onto the bed, face down, and I dig into my wrists. It hurts, but it needs to distract me. It needs to. Please, it needs to distract me. Why isn’t it distracting me? I can’t even think about anything. My mind is all kinds of places now. I don’t know what I’m feeling. I just wish I didn’t have to feel anymore. Fuck.

Fuck.

“J.D.!”

Veronica’s voice takes me back to the real world for a second, but I still can’t properly focus. She does her best to try and help me. Except I just push her away any time she even comes remotely near me. I don’t want to push her away. Why am I pushing her away?

I just lay there, shaking, until I finally calm down after multiple minutes of freaking out.

Veronica gathers me into her arms, and I allow her to now. I sob quietly, but I am safe. I’m so fucking glad I’m safe.

## Afterword

End Notes

> kudos & comments greatly appreciated! :3

> you might've noticed that veronica named three heathers... this was on purpose to make it more unexpected when jd confessed to the murder! i love small details in my stories

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