There are certain things that an abundance of confidence can help you get away with.
Walking past the security gates designed to keep students away from the classrooms after hours? Claim a lost backpack. The guards will let you through.
Ducking under the bleachers as the crowd for the pep rally pours in? No one’s watching for him, precisely, but the few students who do look his way know his reputation. If they think on him at all, they’ll think that he’s smoking or that Veronica might soon have her arms wrapped around his neck.
(And Veronica, a white sheet wrapped around her neck; Veronica, who’s chest doesn’t rise and fall with breath, Veronica –)
J.D. heaves a steadying breath, then goes back to work. Duct tape holds the charges in place well enough; it’s not like he’s going to let them go unused for long. He tears some of the more stubborn threads off with his teeth, then tucks the roll back into his backpack.
The only obstacle that the anger boiling in his belly doesn’t get him past is Ms. Fleming. She spots him making his way towards the locker rooms and pulls him aside, concern written into her fine wrinkles. “Jason Dean, are you okay? You look like you’ve been crying.”
(Does he? J.D. doesn’t reach up to touch his cheeks, but – yeah, okay, the world’s been blurry since he leapt from the Sawyer’s second-story window, but that’s because God’s been split in two; because half of his heart’s stopped beating.)
He breathes. It’s a shaky sound. “Veronica – she’s dead.”
Ms. Fleming’s eyes go wide. “What? What do you mean? Do her parents know?”
J.D. shakes his head, yes. “They called me. Told me.” Now he raises a hand to his face, wipes salt tracks up towards his hair. “Can I – a bathroom, please; I just need a minute.”
“Of course.” Ms. Fleming steps aside, letting him slip down the staircase towards the locker rooms. He bypasses them entirely, ignoring the tender pulsing of his heart. His throat’s going dry, but there’s no time to linger on it.
The boiler room awaits.
It’s a tight space. He has to weave through a labyrinth of pipes to find the best spot to place the detonator. By the time he reaches it, there’s a thin layer of swear plastering his jacket to his back, and his hair is lying flat against his head. The duct tape, when he first takes it out, won’t stick to the wall. He swears, presses his forehead against the concrete brick, and forces himself to breathe.
Veronica. Veronica. Veronica.
Above his head, he can hear the stamping of feet against the bleachers; the drum line is setting the mood. J.D. grits his teeth and shrugs off his jacket, wiping the wall clean of condensation as best as he can.
He’s too distracted to hear the door on the far side of the room open. By the time he’s got the detonator up against the wall, though, he can hear the approaching footsteps.
“Don’t do this.”
That voice –
J.D. doesn’t check the tape on the detonator. He doesn’t think. Instead, he turns, shock running through his system like a slushie in the middle of the night.
And maybe he fucked up somehow. Maybe the bomb’s already gone off. Because there, weaving her way out of the mess of pipes with a broom over one shoulder is –
Is –
Veronica.
There are no white wings streaming down her back, no noose around her throat. No, just Veronica, blue miniskirt, smeared eyeliner, and just a hint of laughter lingering in the corners of her mouth – but fury, fury, fury raging in those dark eyes.
He backs up without meaning to. The harsh lines of the detonator dig into his back, but the pain grounds him, shakes him out of that first, unbelieving wave of shock.
"I thought you'd lost your taste for faking suicides," he manages, but his voice is shaking. He's looking – and maybe she's breathing, maybe, but his mind is somewhere even the angels won't go anymore.
Or maybe they will. She's here, after all.
“Step away from the bomb.”
There’s so much determination to her – like Heaven’s sent down an avenging angel to put him in his place. J.D. feels himself starting to smile; he can taste the salt from his tears on his lips, but the expression makes that stoic mask of hers twitch.
“This little thing?” He motions back towards the detonator. “Sweetheart, I’d hardly call this a bomb.” He tries to meet her eye, then fails. He focuses on the wisps of her hair, instead – she looks wild, out of breath, as though she’d come running to find him. She breathing more heavily than she should be, too – and is that a trick? Can it be a trick?
“This is just meant to set off the packs of thermals upstairs,” he tells her, keeping his voice gentle. “Those are bombs – at least, according to my father. He’d always like to get a good distance away before setting the things off, but that’s OSHA safety prerogative bullshit. I figured I’d stick around, see some of the flames up close.”
Another crack in the mask – and, okay, maybe this is her. J.D. watches her tighten her grip on her borrowed broom, but there’s a shock of panic behind her eyes, a shock of worry. He’s seen that look before, standing over two dead bodies in a cemetery, but he can’t pinpoint what it is, precisely, that she’s worried about.
“Why are you doing this?” she whispers. One hand comes off of the broom handle and reaches out in his direction.
J.D. stares at those paint-chipped nails and feels something sick welling up in his throat. “Couple of reasons,” he says, before forcing himself to turn his back to her. When he’s staring at the detonator, it feels like he can actually think; like he can ignore the way his hands want to reach for her. “For starters, Veronica, the only place that bitch Heathers and Martha can ever get along is in Heaven – so why not send them on their way? Martha already tried to head that way herself; really, I’m just doing her a favor.”
He hears a broken noise from behind him, but no footsteps. She’s not coming any closer.
“But you know me better than that,” he adds, glancing over his shoulder. He doesn’t look at her, not really, but he catches enough of a memory of her outline to send his world off-balance. “You asked me to choose you, Veronica – like I haven’t chosen you every damn day. This is me choosing you again, sweetheart, just in a way that’s a little more permanent.”
One of the wires slips from its clay; J.D. frowns, then goes down on one knee. He keeps his back to his avenging angel.
“...you know, most guys follow that up with a marriage proposal, not mass murder.”
J.D. shrugs. “I’m not all that traditional.”
The wire slips back into its appropriate slot. Above their heads, the marching band files out of the school, their instruments up and just slightly flat.
Footsteps. He rises, but he’s not quite quick enough. Veronica or not, she’s less than a foot away from him now, one hand still clutching her broom like a lifeline. He stares at it, then tries to hold her gaze.
Her expression – fuck. She’s beautiful under most circumstances, but here, sweaty and a little broken and...disappointed? Hurt? It’s almost painful to look at her.
(He doesn’t dare call that expression fondness; he doesn’t deserve that.)
He flinches when her free hand comes out to brush against his cheek. There’s skin on skin – and he gasps, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing a hand over his mouth. If this is his imagination, then he’s got a damn traitor for a brain.
“Leave the bomb,” she whispers. “If you’re choosing me, J.D., then choose me. Come with me.”
(Every day, every damn day – he would and should and does, again and again and again. The proper words may stick in the back of his throat, but he loves – loves – loves –.)
He presses against the trigger before he can lose his nerve. His eyes flicker open in time to catch the devastation racing across Veronica’s face, but it’s there and gone in a second.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he says – and even he doesn’t know if he means it; his voice is a broken thing. “But it’s not just the Marthas and Heathers I’m worried about.”
He reaches out, a mirror of her, and tucks some of her loose hair behind her ear. “If you’re in Heaven and I’m down here, this is the only way to see you again.”
Behind him, the clock is ticking. Two minutes and thirty seconds to go for him and the whole of Westerberg High. Above his head, he hears the first few notes of the National Anthem.
He’s too busy looking at the ceiling to see the determination return to Veronica’s eyes. Only the sound of her broom falling to the ground draws him back to her – that, and the sudden touch of her hands on his waist.
At first, he thinks she’s reaching for his gun. Considering the circumstances, he wouldn’t exactly blame her. His father’s Colt Python is tucked into the small of his back, though; Veronica – ghost, angel, whatever she is – contents herself with the hem of his jeans. She looks up at him as she goes down on her knees, that unbeatable cocktail of fury and bullheaded stubbornness burns its way into his mind.
She brings his jeans with her.
J.D.’s brain shorts out.
“Uh.”
That wins him a smile – a toothy thing, a coy thing, an “I’m going to eat you alive” thing.
And this – he never wanted this. Well, that’s not true; he wanted this, the feeling of her palming his thighs through his boxer briefs, puffs of hot breath against his skin. But her on her knees, no. The last time he’d seen her here, she’d been bowing down to Heather Chandler; her voice had shook.
God should never kneel. And yet, J.D.’s stomach curls with hot, sticky pleasure as she dirties her knees in front of him, dragging down his boxer briefs to join his jeans around his calves.
He’s hard.
He hates himself.
“You want Heaven?” Veronica snaps at him (and God, why does it turn him on so much to have her teeth so close to his cock?). “I’ll give you that and more if you just shut off the detonator.”
He opens his mouth to answer her, but she fits her lips around him before he can. Those improvised speeches that first got her attention; those pithy quotes; that clever tongue – all of it disappears into a grunt, a gasp, a quiet sigh.
And the thing is – he’s never gotten a blowjob before. There were interested girls before Veronica, sure, but there weren’t any that fucked him; that fit their hands around his neck and made him feel safe. She was his first; is his first. That’s not what makes her holy, though.
What makes Veronica holy is the way she tightens her cheeks. It’s the way he can feel her starting to drool. It’s the scrape of her teeth against his cock, the blinding evidence that she’s never done this before, either, but that she’s going to give it her all.
He doesn’t deserve her. He doesn’t deserve this. But the moment he tries to say something, she pulls off of him, and he’s left whining for her to come back to him.
“Shut off the detonator,” she orders.
What little blood is left in J.D.’s brain understands the command, but still, he shakes his head.
Veronica scowls and goes back to work.
J.D. shouts as her mouth comes back to him again. She spends precious seconds teasing the head of his cock, her tongue exploring the underside and the veins there. He’s always known her to be a quick study, though. One hand braces against his hip as she takes him deeper.
J.D. whimpers as she gags around him, but she never pulls away. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands; one clenches into a fist and smacks against the wall, while the other hovers over her shoulder, desperate to play with her unkempt hair. She hollows out her cheeks again, and there’s nothing left in his head but her name; he gasps it into the hot air of the boiler room, his hips bucking without his permission.
He is embarrassing close.
The timer on the detonator ticks over. One minute left.
He doesn’t know how she can tell how close he is to coming. Two pumps off, though, she pulls away, wiping the drool off of her chin. She stares up at him like a lioness examining her prey, and he feels – so small, so on fire, so in love.
“Shut off the detonator,” she says again. She lingers close to his cock, close enough that every breath sends a shiver running up and down his spine. J.D. looks at her, tears leaking out of his eyes. He tries to say something – anything – but the words won’t come.
Veronica smirks at him. “Turn off the detonator,” she says, in endless rhythm – but she presses a kiss to the head of his cock, too. “If you do, I’ll let you cum.”
Forty-five seconds.
When he doesn’t answer, she teases him, one hand straying upward to stroke his thighs. J.D. slams his head back against the wall as she strokes his balls, but the pain never comes. It’s lost in a wave of endless pleasure, of Veronica, Veronica, Veronica.
“J.D.,” she demands-begs-sings, kissing the crook of his hip. “I’m here. I’m right here. Choose me. Turn off the bomb.”
The war in his head distills down to two perfect points; ragged, just like his breathing. He looks at her, instead – at those familiar eyes, at that smug expression, at the way her mouth shines with spit and pre-cum.
“I don’t want to disappoint you,” he says, slurring half the words as he does.
The look in her eyes, so furious, so in control, softens. Just a little.
Thirty seconds.
Veronica takes him into her mouth again.
It feels like the world’s ending, the way his orgasm builds on him. J.D. brings a hand up to his mouth and bites, desperate not to let the sounds out as she licks, licks, licks. It’s not enough, though. He can tell by the way she smiles around his cock that she can hear him; can feel her pleasure as her grip tightens on his hips.
He shifts. The hand he’s not transformed into a makeshift gag slams back against the detonator once – then again, and again.
Veronica tips him over the edge as the wiring falls apart. J.D. sobs into his hand and spills his cum into her mouth, over her face, into every soft and welcoming part of her.
The detonator’s fractured screen stops ticking at twelve seconds.
J.D. falls to his knees as Veronica spits some of his cum from her mouth. Before he can stop himself, his head is on her shoulder; his arms are reaching up to circle around her, to pull her close. She doesn’t stop him. Instead, he feels her own arms rise to meet him.
(God, reunited. It’s as though she’s died and brought back holiness to spread across his skin; light to fill the hole she left in his heart.)
He can’t say whether he starts to cry again or if he ever stopped.
It’s hard to say how long the two of them stay there. The sounds of the pep rally come and go, like the tide easing out after a storm. Eventually, though, he lets Veronica lead him back out of the labyrinth of pipes. They climb up the stairs, past the gate to the locker rooms, and out to the main drive, hand in hand. It’s his motorbike that’s parked in the school lot, but she takes the front seat and glares at him until he clambers on behind her.
That night, she cradles him against her stomach, and he watches her while she sleeps. He doesn’t dare close his eyes for more than a second; half-mad with the belief that if he does, he’ll open them to find her gone again.
And the thoughts in his head – they don’t go away. The Marthas, the Heathers, the Westerberg that is society; it’s all still there, dancing in between thermal packs that, to his knowledge, have not been removed from the grounds. He knows those thoughts won’t disappear, that the urge to taste ash on his tongue is a semi-permanent thing. For now, though – there is Veronica’s sweat overtaking it; the smell of his cum on her skin. There are mere weeks left in this bitch of an Ohio town, and she’s alive to live through it with him.
It isn’t everything. It isn’t perfect. He wakes her in the middle of the night with kisses against her clit, though, and begs to feel her thighs against his skull – and her consent; her swearing; the feeling of her shaking around him – that is just about enough.