Chapter Text
Cheryl knows that she isn't entirely right in the head.
If you were to ask her — and not many people would, for she isn't exactly liked by many people these days — she'd say that her sanity is another one of those things that Sweetwater River stole from her, the hypoxia scrambling her brain and leaving her wrong after her dip in the winter-chilled river and being trapped beneath the ice for too long.
She doesn't ever call it what it is, her plunge in the icy river, because Betty and Veronica and Archie and fuck, even Jughead knowing the truth is one thing, but for the entire town to know?
She'd look like even more of a psychopath than she already is, would be locked away by the Sisters of Quiet Mercy the same way Polly was and everyone would think it to be necessary.
And the truth is — and Cheryl does so hate saying this, even if only in her innermost monologues when she feels particularly broken and longing — she doesn't think she's ever been right in the head, not truly.
It's like she's a jigsaw puzzle sprawled upon the card table in the sitting room, no more than three hundred pieces and the poster spread between her and JayJay both, entirely completed by the four hands between them — completed by fingers that were a bit pudgy and still clinging to the baby fat of elementary school, before football and the River Vixens and life got in the way — after a full afternoon of working save for a singular piece that could be god knows where within the mansion that is Thornhill.
Cheryl has a puzzle on the desk in her bedroom now, all these years later, and she chips away at it when she wakes up in the middle of the night feeling bereft — when she wakes feeling like there's a white hot knife stoking at the place where her twin bond with Jason was ripped from her so cruelly when he passed — and when she finally slides her last piece home, she realizes the puzzle is missing a singular piece in the dead center.
She swipes it from her desk with her forearm in one fell swoop.
It's Cheryl's birthday, and it's the first one she's ever had to celebrate alone.
She ignores it — because who wants to celebrate anything after the year they've had, really? — and she doesn't tell anyone at school because it isn't a big deal, but she does spend most of her day biting people's heads off for looking at her the wrong way. Everyone has big, pitiful eyes full of guilt, I'm sorry on the tips of their tongues like it'll ease her pain.
She trips Reggie Mantle in the hallway for calling her Big Red.
It does little to assuage the ache of loneliness that swirls deep in the pit of her stomach.
And she tries not to think about it much at all, for she fears she would start crying and not be able to quit — and while she denounces her family for what they did to JayJay, she's still a Blossom to her core and she'd never cry in front of anyone from school — but lunch comes and it's a glaring reminder of how utterly alone she is.
"You doin' okay, Cherry?" Moose says as he passes her table in the cafeteria, and she kind of hates how she has no one to sit with.
She hates even more that she's so cold and callous that no one even tries to sit at her table — a four top in the center of the room where she can see everything, where she used to sit with Jason and Polly because if she had no one else, at least she had them.
"Fuck you, Moose." She says, and there's significantly less bite than she'd like for there to be.
Despite having only pushed her salad around her lunch tray, her stomach feels like lead — like there's a bowling ball of dread and guilt and regret and anguish deep in the pit of her stomach and weighing her down, down, down into the depths of Sweetwater River — so she stands and dumps her entire tray into the large, circular trash can in the middle of the cafeteria before walking to the only place that feels somewhat like she belongs these days.
And if that feeling of belonging only settles over her like a warm blanket in the student lounge with Betty and her ragtag group of friends?
Then that's entirely Cheryl's business, she supposes.
But they don't ask questions when she stalks in, a mess of anger and fire and quivering red painted lips, and they don't really roll their eyes either, so that has to count for something, however small it may be.
"Rough day?" Archie says, because all boys are rather oafish and lack social graces.
Betty glares at him over her sandwich, and Kevin punches Archie's bicep — it gives a full sounding thwack where his fist meets firm muscle, and it probably hurts Kevin more than it does Archie, but it still makes Cheryl smile the barest little uptick of her lips — and it would all be quite comical if Cheryl didn't feel so goddamned hollow.
She wants to scream, to bite and kick and holler, to rip into each and every one of them with her words all sharp toothed and bloody.
She wants them to hurt just a fraction of how badly she aches.
But then Veronica turns — was she always standing there, Cheryl wonders, though Veronica has a knack for sneaking up on them because she's quiet as a dormouse and gentle like one, too — and she smiles so brightly that Cheryl feels all of the fight and anger and hurt swirling in her chest fizzle into nothing more than a dull ache.
Veronica Lodge has a knack for that too, for stubbing out all of Cheryl's fire into a smolder.
"Happy birthday." Veronica says, voice low and gentle and sweet, and there isn't a hint of sympathy on her tongue.
It feels good even though it shouldn't — even though she thinks she should spend the day aching and crying and mourning all over again — and she wonders if Jason is looking down on her proud that she's happy, even the littlest bit, or if he's angry that he's the one dead and she somehow lived.
She'd like to think it's the former.
"How did you know?" Cheryl says in response, because thank you seems too tender.
Veronica's pretty, easy smile falters for the barest second — she's a lot like Cheryl in this way, perhaps, the way she can paint her smile on — her face pulling the smallest grimace, and if Cheryl were to have blinked, she'd have missed it. But that easy smile slips back into place, even if her eyes are wide and a bit uneasy. It dawns on Cheryl then, how Veronica knows that it's her birthday.
Jason's obituary.
The program at JayJay's funeral.
"I had a hunch." Veronica says, and she doesn't falter. Her voice doesn't even shake. "And your birthday is on Facebook, by the way."
It makes Cheryl choke on an inhale, her hand coming up to cover her mouth demurely as she laughs — big peals of laughter from what feels like the bottom of her stomach, laughing so hard that her sides ache and her face is undoubtedly pink — and Veronica just smiles that soft, sweet thing.
"Guys." Veronica says, a bit louder to catch everyone's attention. "We need to sing to Cheryl so we can cut the cake before lunch is over."
And Cheryl notices it now, the white square box in the center of the little coffee table where someone — Betty, maybe, but it could be Veronica too because she thinks ahead like that — has laid a newspaper over the clear window so no one could see into the box.
Cheryl's throat burns, a lump lodging itself there and she's certain that she couldn't speak even if she wanted to.
Veronica lifts the top off the box and she throws a cautionary glance out the door to the hallway before she pulls a lighter from her pocket, and Cheryl uses the minute that everybody is crowding around Veronica to take a deep, steadying breath.
She isn't going to fucking cry in front of these losers.
But then they're all singing — Archie and cousin Betty and Kevin and fuck, even Jughead Jones — and Veronica is smiling at her so gently that it hurts, her hands holding steady to the flimsy white box. And there's a pretty red cake, simple and elegant and decorated with Happy Birthday Cheryl (& Jason!) on it.
It feels strange, the way everything hurts like it did the day Jason died and how it dulls to a throb at the inclusion of his name on the cake and, after they finish singing to her and are looking at her expectantly, dulls again until it barely aches and joy blooms in her chest for the first time in what has to have been ages.
"Make a wish, birthday girl." Veronica says, and Cheryl can fucking hear the smile in her voice.
She wants to savor every second of this feeling — the happiness, the belonging, the warmth.
"Can you hurry the fuck up?" Jughead says, and Betty thwaps him in the chest with her fist. "What? I want cake."
But Veronica doesn't rush her, just stands there kind of hunched with the cake balanced on her two hands and smiling so gently while Cheryl thinks about what she'll wish for. She has to get it right, and it makes her think of JayJay and how he would rush into blowing out his candles while Cheryl thought her wishes over until the candles were burnt down into the cake.
I want to feel like this forever, she thinks as she blows out the elegant looking skinny candles, and she thinks it's a rather good wish after all.
Cheryl has a panic attack at her first tennis match of the year.
How kismet.
The rain is unrelenting and their coach won't call it and give the Southside Vipers the win over them, so Cheryl is soaked to the bone and playing doubles with Veronica Lodge of all people because Josie fell ill with whichever affliction of the week that would allow for her to sneak off to Archie's house.
"You've got this." Veronica says, and she has to yell over the rain for how hard it's beating down on them.
The Southside duo they're playing seem unfazed entirely by the downpour, and Cheryl holds the rain-slicked tennis ball in her hand and gets ready to serve. She leans towards Veronica so she can holler back at her across the half court and her face inadvertently tilts upwards as she inhales, droplets of rain pulling into her lungs and burning her throat.
It's only a small bit of water, but it feels like a fucking lake.
Coach Clayton yells something at them that Cheryl can't quite discern for the way it sounds like little more than a burble as her world narrows to the burn in her throat and the panic of not being able to breathe. And isn't it funny, she thinks, the way she wanted so desperately to drown that day, back when she was clouded in naïveté and didn't know how frightening it would be?
She doesn't know how long she coughs and sputters, but it is long enough for Veronica to cross the half court with her brows knit together in concern.
Veronica's hands are on her in an instant, patting at her back until she quits coughing and rubbing soothing circles as she gasps for air. Even through the thin polo of her uniform top, Cheryl can feel the warmth radiating from Veronica's hand despite the end of March chill that hangs in the air and is only exacerbated by the rain that falls heavy and hard.
"Serve the damn ball, Blossom." Coach Clayton growls from his spot to the right of the court.
If Cheryl were in her right mind — and is she ever, really? — she'd have a scathing remark about how easy it is to bark commands from under a golf sized umbrella, safe from the bite of the wind or the onslaught of rain that pours down.
But she isn't in her right mind — not now, not when she feels like she can't suck enough air in and she sees ghastly images of her JayJay floating beneath the water with a gunshot wound in his head — so she doesn't say anything at all, just lets Veronica take the cherry red racket from her hand and wrap an arm around her.
"We're done here, Clayton." Veronica says, and she has the sort of sharpness to her tone that dares someone to argue with her.
Cheryl shivers, and she isn't quite sure if it's from the whipping chill in the air or if it's from Veronica pressing hot and steady against her. Irregardless, Cheryl's skin fucking burns at every point of contact — her left side where Veronica is firmly pressed, her upper back and right shoulder where Veronica is holding tight to her like she might float away — and it's so much that she nearly has to pull away.
She doesn't, because burning is better than feeling the numbing chill of Sweetwater River.
"You're not in the river, Cheryl." Veronica says quietly, voice barely above a murmur as she attempts to dry Cheryl's face with a tiny hand towel out of her locker. "You're not in the river and we're never letting that happen to you ever again."
Her voice is soothing, like Nana Rose's would be when she tripped and scraped all of the skin off her knee as a child, and Cheryl lets her eyes flutter shut.
She wants to give herself permission to just feel.
"I'm so cold." She says, a hoarse whisper broken by the strain in her vocal chords from all of the coughing, and she doesn't even know what she means when she says it.
She's cold from the rain, yes, but she feels like a frigid shell of a human inside, too.
There's a part of her — a part that's still lively, however concerningly small — that wonders if she'll ever feel whole again, that wonders if most of her died in the basement of the White Wyrm alongside her beloved JayJay or sunk in the July sun warmed river with his cold, dead body.
"I know." Veronica coos, and she dabs gently at her face with the soaked hand towel like it's more for comfort than it is for functionality. "I know, honey."
Veronica drops the towel, and Cheryl's eyes snap open when her warmth withdraws. Nana Rose used to talk a lot about auras, especially to her and Jason when they were little and impressionable and not particularly good judges of character, and Cheryl thinks that Veronica exudes so much bright light that she's inherently warm for it.
Veronica is white glow.
Veronica is warmth.
Veronica is digging in her locker for a folded pair of black sweatpants and a matching hoodie.
She pushes the little bundle of clothing into her hands, and where her tanned fingers brush Cheryl's pale, milky forearms feels white hot — like hovering your hand a few inches above a candle until the pleasant warmth becomes so unbearable that you snap your hand away.
"These should work for you." She says gently, and there's a ghost of a smile creeping across her lips that contrasts the way her brows knit together in concern. "No promises on the pants, though. You're tall."
Veronica has the decency to turn around and busy herself with packing her bag inside of her locker while Cheryl changes — it's a bit silly, Cheryl thinks, because Veronica's bags are always immaculately packed and she never leaves a mess anywhere, but she appreciates the sweetness of the gesture nonetheless — and Cheryl is delighted to realize that the hoodie especially smells like Veronica.
It's a mix of her perfume and something else — a lotion or body wash, perhaps — but it's comforting, Cheryl thinks, and her skin tingles with warmth as the numbness works its way out of her bloodstream.
"I look ridiculous." Cheryl murmurs, stuffing her numb, winter-chilled fingers into the pocket of the oversized hoodie and balking at the way the sweatpants are a bit too short.
Her tennis shoes squeak across the vinyl tile floor of the locker room, and they both giggle.
"I think you look warm."
There's a beat of silence between them, and Cheryl doesn't want to grab her bag off the bench just yet, if only to keep Veronica's soft, imploring eyes trained on her for a moment longer, so she lets go of the barest shred of her inhibitions and lets the first thing on her mind tumble from her lips and out into the air between them.
"What if Archie hadn't been there that day?" Cheryl says, and it rolls across her tongue like she's wanted to ask it for ages. "What if it had been just you?"
Veronica's brow knits together again and her lips purse into a thin little line almost like she's in pain thinking of it, and Cheryl wishes she could take it back in an instant.
It didn't occur to her to think that day may have been traumatizing for Veronica — hell, for all of them, even Hobo Jones — and the ache of it licks at a Jason-sized wound in Cheryl's chest. She may be cloaked in indifference and spitting out scathing hatred, but she would never want to be the reason someone else were gasping for air in the middle of the night.
"I would've gone after you just the same." Veronica says, like she doesn't even have to think of it. "I wouldn't have left until you were safe."
It warms something inside of Cheryl, like one of those hot packs they use on the sidelines when they're cheering in the late fall is pressing into her stomach and providing momentary warmth.
She quite likes the feeling.
"You can breathe, Cheryl." Veronica says, her voice so low and so close as they walk out of the locker room that it feels like it rumbles deep inside of Cheryl's chest. "You're okay."
And for the first time in a very long while, Cheryl actually believes that she might be.
The thing about trauma and grief is that it hits so randomly, out of nowhere and with little to no warning.
It's an ordinary morning at Riverdale High — and they're all quite glad to experience a little bit of normalcy, Cheryl thinks — and she's seated in the lounge with Betty and her ragtag group of friends because she doesn't exactly have many friends of her own these days. Rolling her eyes at them beats pretending to be interested in a poorly written teen fiction novel in the stairwell, anyways.
Betty is wrapped up in Jughead on one side of the little loveseat — she's stopped calling him Forsythe after he helped pull her from the river, because she always has shown appreciation in her own little ways — and Archie is strumming his guitar on the armchair, and Veronica saunters in with a paper bakery bag and a tray full of styrofoam coffee cups.
Cheryl almost hates the way that she looks so effortless.
"I'll help Vee." Cheryl bites, reaches a hand out to steady the flimsy paper tray and the cups balancing on it. "Seeing as none of you neanderthals could be bothered."
But then Veronica smiles at her — at her and not at the whole grouping of them — and Cheryl is certain her heart really, truly stutters.
"And that's why you're my favorite." Veronica says, a smile tugging upwards at the corners of her pretty painted lips, and Cheryl's heart nearly fucking stops.
The air whooshes from her lungs — not like it did in the river and not like it did when she saw JayJay's body cold and dead in the morgue, but like something else entirely — and her entire world narrows to the half smile on Veronica's lips and her thin, manicured fingers brushing Cheryl's own. It's like warmth washes over her entire body, licking at all of the places inside of her that feel especially painful when she aches of loneliness and inadequacy.
She's never been anyone's favorite before.
She wasn't even Jason's favorite, not once he was old enough to make friends of his own at school, for he had all of his popular football friends and Polly and their parents and all she had — all she thought she'd ever have — was him.
"I am?" She says because she's been quiet for far too long, and her voice pitches a little higher than usual and the mask of indifference is a bit harder to find.
If anyone picks up on it, they don't make comment on it.
The half smile stays on Veronica's lips as she opens the box of pastries — something flown in from France, Cheryl is sure of it, because that's what people with new money do — giggles shy and secretly to herself as she passes a coffee to their entire friend group, even Kevin who has seemingly materialized out of thin air, and she saves Cheryl's for last.
"Of course you are." Veronica says, and she perches herself on the arm of the loveseat directly beside Cheryl despite there being plenty of open seating. "Why wouldn't you be?"
And Cheryl can think of a million little reasons that she shouldn't be anyone's favorite, really — she's hateful and crass and she's like, fully incapable of showing a genuine human emotion that isn't indifference at best — but it all feels a bit too heavy for a random Wednesday in the student lounge, so she smiles a wary little thing that doesn't quite reach her eyes and kicks her feet up onto the coffee table.
Veronica's eyes are drawn to her shoes, and Cheryl feels a little swell of displaced pride at that.
She pushes a styrofoam cup into her hand, and Cheryl can't tell if the zap of warmth that settles over her is the heat from the cup or the way Veronica's fingers linger on the inside of her wrist. It's almost as though she's searching for a pulse — and Cheryl is thankful for her full coverage foundation, really, for a blush creeps across her cheeks at the way her heart thumps just a bit faster at the contact — and Cheryl tries to quell the desperate little beast inside of herself, tries to tell herself that Veronica is just touchy-feely like that.
It does little to stop her thudding heart, however.
"Vanilla latte with almond milk." Veronica says quietly, so low that only Cheryl can hear it. "Sugar free, extra hot."
Cheryl has always had a complicated coffee order, but Veronica remembers it like she doesn't mind.
And maybe it's the warmth spreading through her body slow and syrupy starting at her hands — both wrapped around the flimsy cup, fingertips going pink from the heat returning to her winter-chilled icy fingers — or maybe it's the way she can feel the gentle puff of Veronica's breath across her cheek, but Cheryl feels herself soften around the edges, if only a little bit.
"Thank you, Vee." She murmurs into the white plastic lid of her cup.
She doesn't even know what she's saying thank you for, really, looks at the red lip print she's left on her cup because she doesn't think she can look up into Veronica's big brown eyes without crumbling.
And Veronica is soft — softer than Cheryl could ever hope to be — so she smiles a secret little thing into the lid of her own cup.
"Anytime, babe."
Cheryl wakes with a start, a scream trapped in her throat that can't quite claw its way out for how hard her heart is beating.
Her breath comes out in ragged pants, skin slick with sweat as moonlight streams in through the picture window that she forgot to tug the curtains into place over. She lays there for a moment and tries to calm herself down — to remind herself that Mummy and Daddy and Uncle Claudius are gone and she's safe and okay — and she tries to sort through the muddled feeling in her brain to remember what she was dreaming about.
The only thing that comes to mind is JayJay, all gunshot wound and river bloat and pale.
Cheryl thinks she might throw up.
These sorts of nightmares come less now that she lives essentially by herself, but there's a sort of regularity to them that Cheryl wishes she could shake. They're crippling — painfully so — and it takes more than a few deep breaths to right herself again, but her bedroom is too light and her heart is thudding too fast and she reaches blindly for her phone because sleep isn't going to come easily to her.
3:46am.
Lovely.
There's a bit of a chill to the air in her room, partly because Thistlehouse doesn't have the best insulation and in part because the air outside is just that cold, and Cheryl shrugs on one of Jason's massive football hoodies as she crosses the room to sit in the windowsill. It's her favorite thing about her bedroom — the only thing that makes her keep this as hers and not take the master bedroom — how she can sit and look out at the duck pond and the road and the lights that seem to go on for miles.
She cracks the window just a bit and the stagnant middle of the night air rushes in — cold but not crisp nor fresh — and it does little to calm her racing heart, so she fumbles with the box of cigarettes that sits on her stack of books and pulls one from the box.
A nasty habit, nightmare child, her mother used to say when she would watch her father smoke cigars as a child, you mustn't ever do that.
Cheryl started smoking during freshman year just to spite her mother.
She crushes the little ball in the filter and lights the end, inhales deeply while she thumbs open her phone and idly watches through her friends' Snapchat stories, more to distract herself than anything else. She taps past Jughead sharing a redacted laptop screen — boring — cousin Betty promoting the Blue and Gold, Josie rehearsing with the Pussycats, and Veronica's shaky video of the sunset while she drives.
Cheryl watches it twice just to hear Veronica's breathy rendition of whatever song is playing on the radio, some pop thing she vaguely recognizes but couldn't name if she were asked.
And like she has a sixth sense — Cheryl is really starting to think she does at this point — Veronica is typing a message to her like she's up at this time every day.
wyd up??
Cheryl hates abbreviations and text slang, but she rolls her eyes almost fondly when it's coming from Veronica because it just fits.
omg are you stalking me?
why are *you* up?
Veronica is typing as soon as Cheryl presses send, and she's almost thankful for it — a welcome distraction to the way her throat still feels a bit tight and her lungs burn like she just sprinted for miles. Cheryl runs often, when she needs to clear her head more than for exercise at this point, but she prefers distance running over sprints.
Anything to fill the time, really.
Anything to fill the void.
no. but im glad someone is up
feels less alone
couldn't sleep. u?
And that's the thing about Veronica Lodge — this strange, perplexing thing about her — the way she opens up like it's effortless and the way that, in turn, Cheryl wants to spill her guts and tell Veronica everything she's ever thought, even the secret bits that rest deep in her chest.
It's a dangerous thing, Cheryl thinks.
nightmares of the jason variety
so i also can't sleep
The truth is a bit too harsh to say in the daylight, but it's neither said aloud — semantics, really, but texting is different — nor is it daylight out, so it feels okay to admit.
:( u poor thing
u ok?
Cheryl sucks in a sharp inhale at Veronica's messages, and she's too sleep addled and exhausted and anxious to dig deep in herself and psychoanalyze the why of it all, so she opts to not think about it at all and let the buzzing warmth spread through her body.
Veronica is right.
It does feel less alone, even if her presence is little more than a gentle vibration in Cheryl's palm.
truthfully? no. but i will be.
are *you* okay?
And Cheryl doesn't do this — this being vulnerability, letting people see that she does care beneath her carefully crafted mask of indifference — but with Veronica? God, she'd give Veronica so much of herself without even thinking.
u wanna call?
There's an ache that settles in her chest, different from the ache of a nightmare or the sear of loss and pain and hurt, and Cheryl wonders if this is how it feels to be cared about — is it always so painful? Does it always feel so raw?
And perhaps it's the exhaustion that melts slowly into her bones all syrupy and slow — like molasses, Cheryl muses to herself, or maybe like Blossom maple syrup — or perhaps it's the fact that Veronica is so nice to her, but Cheryl finds her finger hovering above the call button before she can even really consider it.
Fuck it.
She takes a drag of her cigarette, lets the minty taste wash over her as she exhales out the window — she may only smoke to spite her mother and give her mouth something to do, but she isn't disgusting enough to want her room to reek — and she puts her phone on speakerphone because god, there's no one around but Nana Rose and her night nurse anyways.
"Cher." Veronica breathes out, answers on the first ring.
She almost wants to crumble at how soft Veronica is with her — and she wants to ask her why, why, why but it dies on her tongue every time, sour and acrid in the back of her throat like bile — so she takes a long draw from her cigarette and flicks the ash out the window instead.
"Hey." She says, and she hates how she sounds dumb and insecure and fragile. "I didn't know you have trouble sleeping too."
Too, Cheryl says, like this is some common interest between them that can draw them closer — like it's a television show and not years of trauma — and she feels a bit stupid for it.
"Tell me." Veronica says, and Cheryl can hear her smile in her voice. "Do you picture me to be the type of girl who needs a full eight hours of beauty rest?"
And truth be told, Cheryl hasn't exactly pictured how she thinks Veronica sleeps or doesn't sleep, but now she can almost see some contrived image in her mind's eye. Veronica in a matching little set — maybe a button up top and shorts like Cheryl herself wears, silky and beautiful for no reason other than feeling pretty — and probably an eye mask because she seems the type to have one.
Cheryl wonders if Veronica keeps water on her bedside table too.
Is it iced or room temperature?
"I picture you to be the type who wears a matching set, I think." Cheryl says, and her voice is barely above a whisper despite there being no one in her home that would wake up. "Maybe one of those silly eye masks too."
Veronica exhales through her nose, a tiny little ghost of a laugh.
"Sometimes." She says, and Cheryl can hear her rustling the bedclothes. "But I'm wearing a big fuzzy robe tonight. I do like an eye mask, though."
Nailed it.
She thinks of sweet Veronica Lodge across town, wrapped up in a fuzzy robe with her phone pressed to her ear and whispering into it, not because the Pembrooke is small enough for her voice to reach her parents' room — Cheryl knows from experience just how large it is, knows it rivals Thornhill in size — but because this little slice of nighttime where it's just them feels almost sacred.
"I'd like to say I have a cute little set on." Cheryl says, and she takes a draw off her cigarette more to draw her words out than anything. "I did. But it's cold and I'm wearing one of JayJay's football sweaters."
Veronica hums appreciatively, like she's conjuring up a mental image.
"Is it blue or yellow? The hoodie, I mean." Veronica says, the words rushing out like she's just saying the first thing that comes to mind, unfiltered and raw. "Well, both look pretty with your hair, I think. You should wear blue more often, though. You always look so pretty in your uniform."
It strikes her straight in the chest, the way Veronica speaks so unbidden. She rambles sometimes — Cheryl is always delighted to hear it, even from across the room — and Cheryl wonders what it must be like to not feel the need to filter all of your words.
"Blue." She says, and she takes the last draw off her cigarette before she flicks it out the open window. "I think I'd die if I didn't wear red or black to school. Other than my uniform, of course."
Her mind wanders — as it often does in the dead of night when exhaustion has worked its way into her limbs and then, slow and almost without warning, that fuzziness creeps into her head too — but instead of gunshots and blood and river bloat, she thinks of Veronica's tanned legs in her Vixens uniform.
She presses her nails, all sharp almond and long, into the meaty part of her thigh to stop her mind from going there.
It doesn't necessarily have the desired effect — the pain is sharp and concentrated for only a moment, but it dulls and spreads until her entire body throbs with the weight of it — but she does get to focus her eyes on the little crescent welts that bloom on her pale skin.
Her skin has always marked up so easily.
"Sometimes I want to play dress up with you, see how your hair looks with different colors. Wait." Veronica breathes out, sudden and sort of awestruck. "Cheryl Marjorie Blossom, are you fucking smoking?"
Cheryl laughs — not too loud, for a noise like that would be jarring in the dead of night, but a soft thing that's gentle and easy — and that's another one of those things about Veronica Lodge that perplexes her, really, how easy it is to let herself feel. Perhaps it's because Veronica has never really expected anything of her — has never expected for her to be prim and proper or hold herself with dignity when her whole world fell apart.
"Was." Cheryl says, a breathy little sigh. "I was smoking."
She pulls her knees up and tucks them into the extra fabric of her hoodie, lays her cheek on her knee and holds her phone up by her face so that it feels like Veronica is right there, and she feels a wave of calm wash over her as she gazes out at the lights in town. If she has her contacts in or her glasses on, she can almost make out Pop's in the distance.
She squints, but she can't quite make out the towering form of the Pembrooke.
Even still, it brings her a little shred of comfort to know that just across town, Veronica Lodge is sitting awake just like her. And maybe her window is open too — cracked just an inch like Cheryl's is, perhaps, or maybe she's out on that balcony that makes Cheryl dizzy with how high up it is — and maybe they're both breathing the same night air.
In through her nose, out through her mouth.
She wonders if Veronica is doing the same.
"Cigarettes or…?" Veronica trails off, and her breathing is starting to get tired and slow.
And isn't that something, Cheryl thinks, the way Veronica goes quiet so she can answer. It feels borderline suffocating when Veronica talks to only her at school — when she locks their eyes, leans forward and softens her voice just a bit and murmurs out little yeahs when Cheryl responds — but this is something else entirely. It's softer, a little sweeter, a little more sacred.
"Cigarettes tonight. Sometimes something stronger." She says, and it takes a bit of effort for her tongue to form the words. "Camel Crush. Have you ever tried one?"
Veronica always asks her so many questions — always makes her feel so fucking special — and Cheryl makes a mental note to ask Veronica more things, to make her feel just as important.
"Mm, haven't." Veronica slurs out, and it sounds like she's fighting sleep. "They good?"
Talking to Veronica sometimes feels a lot like talking to Jason, not for any particular reason but the easy back and forth is the sort of thing that only people who are comfortable with each other can do and Cheryl isn't ever truly comfortable with anyone. But Veronica forces her way past those walls she has built for herself, prods and pries so gently that Cheryl doesn't even realize she's being unraveled.
Sometimes it aches to be seen like that, but not tonight.
"Yeah. Come outside with me one day at lunch, I'll let you bum one." She says, and Veronica murmurs out a little mhmm. "Are you tired?"
Veronica is quiet for a beat, and Cheryl wonders if she's fallen asleep. Her finger hovers over the red button on her screen, and she almost presses it when Veronica sucks in a sleepy little breath.
"Yeah, kinda." She says, and she sounds so soft and sweet that Cheryl could cry. "But I can stay up a little longer if you're not."
And Cheryl could fall asleep right now, really, with her cheek pressed to her hoodie-covered knees — she has a time or two, stayed up late reading until she's too tired to do much more than tug a blanket over her lap and close her eyes — and she tells Veronica as much. Veronica — sweet Ronnie — tells her to close the window and get into bed and Cheryl listens to her not because she's supposed to, but because she wants to.
It's an unfamiliar thing, but it isn't bad.
She keeps JayJay's hoodie on despite burrowing under a pile of blankets — the chill has settled into her bones and she doesn't feel like she'll ever warm up — and she lays her phone on the pillow beside her as Veronica rustles and returns to her own bed. It makes Cheryl feel a bit weak, the way she indulges in the comfort Veronica so easily gives her, but that's a problem for morning Cheryl to sort out.
She'll think of it while she runs, maybe.
"Thank you for talking to me tonight, Cheryl." Veronica says, her voice soft and sweet.
It feels a bit loaded — is Veronica thanking her for calling or is she thanking her for letting her walls down the barest bit? — so Cheryl just hums in response, pulls her blankets tighter around her. She feels warmer than she has in a long time, and her limbs don't jitter and shake.
"Thank you." She whispers around a yawn, one that's particularly big and makes her eyes water. "Good night, Ronnie."
Veronica makes a pleased little humming sound, and it comes out of Cheryl's phone speaker a bit tinny. She thinks about Veronica across town laying down just like she is, wonders if she lays on her side like Cheryl does or if she's a stomach sleeper.
Does she use one pillow or two?
Does she pile blankets atop herself to feel the gentle crush against her ribcage?
"Sweet dreams, Cher." Veronica whispers, barely a murmur for how gentle and soft it is, before the line goes dead and the call ends.
And for the first time in what feels like a very long time — since before Jason even faked his drowning before his real death, even — Cheryl simply closes her eyes and lets herself drift. Her heart doesn't thud awfully in her chest and her mind doesn't race and her sleep, when it does claim her just a few moments after she closes her eyes, is dreamless.
Middle of the night phone calls happen with a bit more regularity after that first night.
Cheryl doesn't always wake up in a panic — she prefers not to sleep at all if she can help it, but it is necessary to catch a few hours to keep the bags under her eyes from being too bad to cover with makeup — and she often spends a good portion of her night curled up on her windowsill with a novel. On nights when Veronica doesn't want to call — and Cheryl doesn't fault her for it, because their friendship is somewhat of a trepidatious thing — she still checks if Cheryl is active on social media before she goes to bed, and she always sends her a text to the tune of 'don't stay up too late, bombshell' and while Cheryl doesn't listen, she does appreciate it, and she thinks that has to count for something.
Sometimes she looks out at the sunset and the lights that follow — she still can't pick the Pembrooke out among the faraway buildings, even if she squints — and sometimes she reads late into the night, either a classic novel or a bodice ripper that would leave her mother absolutely scandalized.
Tonight she's reading a novel that Betty was engrossed in for the past week — she peeked at the cover, sue her — and Cheryl has to turn the book three times over in her hand to really check if she has the right novel.
Cousin Betty reading lesbian age gap literotica, how salacious.
She tucks the information into her back pocket so she can use it to tease Betty if ever she needs to — not that she does tease Betty and Jughead much anymore, really, not since Veronica sort of melded their friend group together, but it's better than analyzing why the scene between the two women is making her a little hot under the collar.
She can't fucking put it down.
It's infuriating.
She gets sucked into the plot of it all — or that's what she tells herself at least, but she does read over the more… graphic scenes at least three times over just to make sure she knows which character has their hands where, that's all — so lost in the characters that it makes her jump when her phone buzzes against the bare skin of her thigh. It's Veronica, Cheryl knows it, because it's rare that anyone even texts her but much less this late.
u up?
Cheryl snorts to herself. Veronica is so predictable, and if it weren't so endearing Cheryl thinks she would find it maddening.
But nothing Veronica Lodge does is ever truly maddening, she can't even bring herself to get annoyed with her.
oh my god you're *such* a fuck boy
but yes, i'm up
Veronica starts typing immediately, and Cheryl smiles slow and lazy as she basks in the undivided attention. And she doesn't like feeling needy — she isn't needy, and she won't start being that way for Veronica Lodge — but she does enjoy the way her body fills with a sticky sweet warmth when Veronica is paying attention to her and only her.
what r u wearing?
like rn not to school tmrw
And Cheryl is in a particularly good mood tonight — school was good, Nana Rose was in good spirits before bed, and she's a little hot under the collar from her novel — so she decides to indulge Veronica's playfulness just a little bit.
omg v you dirty dirty dog
why? do you want a pic?
It's a little more forward than Cheryl would be under normal circumstances, but there's something about Veronica that makes her almost giddy. She likes to sink into it, likes to feel the way it makes her entire body throb and ache in the good sort of way — the feeling is akin to the throb of contentment and delight when she presses her fingertips into an old bruise, if she were to compare it to something tangible, but it's more. Better, in a way.
Sometimes she likes to hurt, especially the good hurt.
yes. show me.
And it's so easy to listen to Veronica, really — easy to go to bed when she says 'get some sleep, Cher' and easy to actually eat when she steers Cheryl towards the cafeteria and it's easy to calm down when Veronica murmurs 'take a big breath for me' — and so Cheryl does, leans back against the frame of her window seat and wraps her arm around her drawn up legs until she's showing the camera more thigh and arm than her black pajama set adorned with little red cherries.
She leaves her book open in her lap.
She sort of hopes Veronica notices it.
this good?
Veronica screenshots the picture, and Cheryl feels a thrum of pride spill down her spine and spread out all sticky sweet until her arms and legs tingle with it and her head fucking swims.
yes. fuck yes.
you're all leg jesus christ
Cheryl fucking throbs with Veronica's approval, feels the gentle heat work its way from her stomach to her lower abdomen into her thighs and — finally, blissfully — all the way down to her toes. She feels unsettled, just the barest bit, but in a good way.
It's not like when she used to send pictures to Reggie Mantle or Chuck Clayton when they'd beg her for so long that she just wanted it to end. No, Veronica is something else entirely — good and sweet and so gentle that Cheryl never has to wonder if she has an ulterior motive.
oh yeah i was gonna say slip smth comfy on
u distracted me
b there in 15
And Cheryl doesn't have to be afraid with Veronica, either. She doesn't have to sit and wonder if she's going to be on the receiving end of some sort of mockery, doesn't have to be afraid of where Veronica may be taking her. She trusts her.
Trust is a huge thing for a Blossom.
She wonders if it's as big a deal to a Lodge.
where are you taking me?
She slips her bookmark into the tight space where the pages are bound together — a folded up ticket from the last time she went to Pop's with JayJay, slipped into her pocket and forgotten about until laundry day a few weeks back — and pads across the room to survey her options.
She knows that Veronica truly means comfortable and not an oh, let me slip into something a little more comfortable little black dress with red bottoms because they've done this before, twice now — a midnight escape for greasy fast food once and the grassy hill that overlooks the whole town another time — and Veronica laughed in her face and made her change the first time she tried to get into her car in heels.
They ended up at McDonald's that night, mostly because Veronica had never tried a Big Mac and she saw an ad for them on Instagram.
not telling u
just wear comfy clothes please
And Cheryl will do anything for Veronica Lodge — isn't that a frightening thought? — would crawl across concrete on her hands and knees if that were what Veronica had asked of her, so she rummages through her dresser and finds the most presentable comfortable outfit that she has clean.
She desperately needs to do laundry, and her mind flicks to asking Veronica to come over and watch her fold it all.
She settles on a Riverdale High hoodie, a worn thing that is so large it swallows her in a way that's more comforting than suffocating, and a pair of tight black shorts. Veronica never outright states a preference for what Cheryl wears, but she does try to wear blue a little more often outside of school, if only because Veronica said it looks pretty with her hair.
Cheryl is tugging her hair into a messy bun when Veronica pulls up the driveway, and she blows the horn twice despite knowing that Thistlehouse is so quiet that Cheryl can hear everything.
"Shut the fuck up, I'm coming." She hisses out the window, and Veronica throws her head back and cackles with glee.
She does opt for sensible shoes — not quite the ones she wears to run, but her white converse that are more dingy gray than anything else that'll serve her just fine and not ruin nor hurt if they walk anywhere — and she sticks her phone into her back pocket before she leaves, takes a cursory glance into Nana Rose's room.
"I'm going out for a little bit." She tells the night nurse, her voice low because Nana Rose is sleeping for once. As a child Cheryl used to think that Nana Rose never slept, used to be up creaking the floorboards of Thornhill into the wee hours of the morning. "But you'll call if you need anything, right?"
Nana Rose has a good rotation of nurses, a team of kindly middle aged women who sit and read novels while she sleeps or help entertain her with soap operas or dusting the fine china when she tires of the rather Gregorian storylines.
"We'll be okay." The night nurse says — Cheryl thinks her name is Barbara, but she isn't quite sure — and she smiles more at Nana Rose's sleeping form than she does Cheryl. "Have a good evening, Miss. Blossom."
Veronica is waiting for her with the radio humming low — it's a nice night, not a cloud in sight nor rain on the forecast, so she has the top of her convertible down — and she watches Cheryl lock up with a twinkle in her eyes.
"Sorry." She breathes as she gets in the passenger seat, drops her purse over the center console to the back floorboard. "I had to check on Nana Rose before I left."
And it hits her in the chest then, just how much she resents her parents. Mommy and Daddy should be the ones caring for Nana Rose and not her — not seventeen year old Cheryl who just wants to feel normal — but her mother is certifiably insane and Daddy was hanging from a noose in the barn after wielding the gun that killed her brother.
Cheryl slumps in the passenger seat, kicks her feet up on the dash because she can — can let herself be a little unguarded in front of Veronica.
"Fuck, did I…?" Veronica trails off, and her eyes are a bit wide, a bit apologetic.
"Oh, no. You didn't." Cheryl says, and she fights the urge to tuck her knees up into her hoodie. "Nana Rose sleeps through anything if she doesn't have her hearing aids in."
Veronica nods, and she hands Cheryl her phone with Spotify pulled up as she backs out of the winding driveway. And Cheryl doesn't overthink it — not with Veronica — doesn't think about if the song she picks is potentially embarrassing or if Veronica would laugh — she wouldn't, doesn't ever laugh at her — and she thumbs through Veronica's playlists before she settles on some random upbeat pop music.
They can't really hear it for the wind anyways, but the gesture is nice and Cheryl soaks it up like a sponge.
Veronica is effusive, but she's especially so towards Cheryl.
"Are you going to tell me where you're taking me?" Cheryl says, but she doesn't truly care.
She's safe with Veronica — maybe safer than she's ever been, if she thinks about it particularly hard — so she closes her eyes and leans her head back and lets the chilly evening wind whip through her hair. It feels fresh outside, a rarity as spring fades to summer, and the air tastes crisp on her tongue.
"You'll find out eventually." Veronica says, and Cheryl can hear the smile in her voice. "Does it scare you? That I'm whisking you away without telling you where?"
Cheryl doesn't have to think before she answers.
"No." She says, and her fingers hook around the seatbelt where it digs into the soft skin of her neck. "I trust you."
Veronica hums, and Cheryl cracks one eye open enough to see her smile softly to herself. She looks pretty tonight, and Veronica always looks pretty —even in her dresses and pearls at school that make her look a bit like a First Lady — but she's especially so in her silky pink pajama set with a chunky knit cardigan shrugged over it.
"Good." She says finally, and Cheryl lets her eyes slip shut again. "I'm glad."
They drive in comfortable silence for a few minutes — not long enough to go much of anywhere, not that Cheryl is paying attention — until Veronica pulls in at Pop's and tells her to wait in the car and that she'll only be a moment. And Cheryl doesn't argue, mostly because she's not dressed to accidentally run into any of their classmates, so she leans her cheek on the door of the car and is content to just watch Veronica.
She's sweet — sweeter than the lot of them and sweeter than any of them ought to be after what they've experienced as a collective — throws her hand up into a crinkly-nosed smiling wave at Pop Tate when she walks in and ruffles Jughead's hair as she leans down and peers curiously at what he's typing on his laptop.
An exposé or his novel, no doubt, though Cheryl couldn't tell you the first thing about anything he writes. But Veronica knows. She knows everything, collects tidbits of information about their entire friend group like artifacts.
And when she pushes out the front door of Pop's and the bell on the door jangles with her exit, she smiles that same crinkly-nosed smile at Cheryl and her world narrows to little more than Veronica Lodge in her pajamas and pearls.
"Hold this." Veronica hands Cheryl the greasy takeout bag as she climbs into the car and starts it again. She disperses the four drinks in the flimsy paper tray into the cup holders between the front and back seats. "On your lap."
Veronica is like this sometimes, will ask Cheryl to do nonsensical things in a particular way like she's testing her — like she's trying to see just how much Cheryl will do for her. It feels like a trick question sometimes, because she'd do anything for Veronica Lodge.
The bag radiates heat onto her bare thighs, starting right under the thin paper and spreading out and out and out until it makes her shiver with how lovely it feels. It's not hot enough to burn, per se, but it's warm enough that her thighs might be a delightful pink color when she lifts the bag.
Cheryl wonders if it'll sting when she presses down on it.
She hopes it does.
"Is it too hot?" Veronica says, and her voice is soft. With the wind whipping as they drive, Cheryl barely hears her. "The bag. Is it too hot on your legs?"
Cheryl contemplates lying, if only for a moment. But she doesn't lie to Veronica — she lies to so many people, not in ways that are mean spirited or harmful but for self preservation — because Veronica makes her feel so safe, makes her feel like it's okay not to be okay or to tell the truth sometimes.
"It's warm." She says, and she makes no motion to move the bag. "But I like it. The heat, I mean."
It feels like something she shouldn't say, and she feels a hot flush creep up her neck and bloom across her face. Cheryl has always been somewhat of a full body blusher — she blames her fair complexion, for her mother is a bit more tanned and never seems to flush even when she's ill with a fever — reddens from the middle of her chest all the way to her ears.
She wishes she had worn foundation.
"But it isn't hurting you?" Veronica says, and her voice oozes concern.
Sometimes it feels raw being with Veronica like this, when her attention is just Cheryl and the empty road ahead of them and Veronica can read her better than anyone else ever has. It feels like the emotional equivalent of a hangnail that's been pulled a bit too hard, all sore and throbbing and dull all at once.
"No." Cheryl says, and her fingers tighten around the paper bag until it crinkles under the pressure. "But I'd still hold onto it if it was boiling me alive. For you."
It spills from her mouth unbidden before she can stop it.
And Cheryl wishes she could shove it back in, wishes she could pluck the words hanging awkwardly in the air between them and tamp them back down in her chest where they belong, but they're out and they're there like an exposed nerve, and Cheryl wonders if Veronica will press on her metaphorical raw nerve endings until they make her cry or if she'll stroke them until the throbbing ache subsides.
Sometimes she likes to cry.
"Would you do anything for me?" Veronica murmurs, and she parks her convertible in the spot that overlooks that spot of Sweetwater River. "Would you do it even if it hurt?"
It scares her sometimes, the way she would do anything for Veronica Lodge.
But Veronica has never been cruel to her — has never been unkind, either, not even when Cheryl is at her worst and deserves it most — and Cheryl thinks that if anyone were a safe bet for her to place all of her trust in, Veronica is the one.
"I'd do most anything you asked of me."
And Veronica smiles to herself, like Cheryl has said the right thing — she wonders if Veronica wants to make her hurt sometimes, wonders if Veronica would find her disgusting when she's red faced with tears clumping her eyelashes — motions for the bag so she can disperse the food and drinks between them.
A cherry cola and a strawberry milkshake for Cheryl, a chocolate shake and a Coke for Veronica, a basket of fries between them and a greasy burger each.
"Jesus, Ronnie." Cheryl laughs out, plucks a fry from the basket on the center console. "I swear I gain ten pounds just looking at Pop's burgers."
Veronica rolls her eyes — Cheryl wonders if she's as self conscious as she is, wonders if Veronica feels like she looks wrong no matter what she does — and she leans over, plucks the straw for Cheryl's milkshake from the paper wrapping with her teeth and makes a deliberate show of sinking the part her lips touched down into her drink.
Something about it makes a chill run down Cheryl's spine.
She blames it on how hot under the collar she was earlier.
"Oh, please. You're waifish." Veronica says, and her tone is a bit hardened like she means it. "You could stand to eat a full meal, you know?"
Cheryl takes a long sip from her milkshake, and she finds herself wishing Veronica had left the part of the straw that her lips had touched facing up. And sometimes she feels this way towards Veronica — and not often, but she's a hormonal teenaged virgin and she can't exactly control it — finds herself wondering what Veronica tastes like or what she sounds like.
Veronica is pretty, but especially so in the moonlight.
"You say it like it's easy." Cheryl says, and it's one of those vulnerable, raw things she can only say when it's just them in the middle of the night, like the clouds and the stars and the dark are a blanket of comfort that makes it a little easier.
"It could be." Veronica murmurs around the straw of her own milkshake. "Easy, I mean. But if I told you to eat… would you do it? Would you eat for me?"
And sometimes sitting with Veronica is like this, like pressing on the sore spot of a bruise. It's like letting it ache and ache and ache until it gives way to that sweeter, softer sort of pain. It feels forbidden, in a way, to let herself cling to Veronica like this — to let Veronica's calm wash over her in waves, like the gentle ebb and flow of warm ocean water licking at her ankles at the beach in the summer.
"Yes." Cheryl breathes out, and she pokes at the bun of her own burger. "I would."
Veronica smiles, extra soft and extra sweet with her teeth showing all unabashed and unfiltered, and Cheryl finds that she really, really wants to kiss her. It thuds in her chest, reverberates around the empty space where all her ache is stored, and she presses her lips together in a tight little line to tamp the urge down.
She wonders how Veronica's lips feel.
She wonders how she tastes.
"Okay." Veronica says, just barely above a whisper. "Okay."
It's delicate, this thing that they have.
Neither of them put a name to it — and do they have to, Cheryl asks herself, do they have to define everything and put it in a box? — but it's theirs and it's sacred and it exists just as much at school as it does in the quietest moments in the middle of the night.
They're laying on their backs in the garden at Thistlehouse tonight — a Friday night, and the entire fucking school is at one of Reggie Mantle's parties except for them — a poorly rolled joint passing between them back and forth and pressed together so closely that Cheryl doesn't quite know where her own body ends and Veronica's begins.
"Gimme." Veronica says, though she makes no motion to grab it.
She invades Cheryl's senses, laying like this — or maybe it's the weed that's invading their senses, making everything a little slower and a little more intense — and Cheryl feels like she can't fucking breathe with Veronica's soft skin pressed against hers and the smell of her vanilla body lotion in her nose.
"Take it, then." Cheryl says, and she rolls onto her side so her cheek can rest against the soft skin of Veronica's shoulder.
Veronica's fingers brush Cheryl's when she grabs for the joint — it's almost burnt down to the filter now, and Cheryl feels like her entire body is sluggish and heavy — and she closes her eyes when she inhales.
She's so fucking beautiful that it hurts.
"You think so loudly." Veronica says on an exhale, and Cheryl watches the way her lips purse just a little bit.
Sometimes Cheryl wonders why Veronica hangs out with her — wonders what it is about her that makes Veronica content to miss out on parties with her friends — and sometimes, when her mind wanders particularly far, she wonders if Veronica Lodge could ever love someone like her. Sometimes she thinks she might love Veronica, and sometimes Cheryl thinks she doesn't even know what love is.
It's all a bit too existential, really.
"Forgive me." She deadpans, and Veronica laughs a melodic thing. "Let me think a little quieter for you. Is that better?"
Veronica's smile is so wide that her eyes crinkle. It's the middle of summer and the humidity hangs in the air even this late into the night — is it past midnight already? Cheryl doesn't know — and Veronica's skin shines with a thin layer of sweat. The apples of her cheeks are a pretty pink — so pink that Cheryl would think she were wearing blush if they hadn't been swimming just a few hours ago — and Cheryl wants more than anything to know if Veronica makes little gasping sounds when she kisses.
Cheryl has only ever pecked other girls on the lips — nothing more than a gentle, timid press during spin the bottle or seven minutes in heaven — but she's curious, sue her.
She doesn't even think she likes girls like that, anyways.
"What're you thinking about?" Veronica says, more slurred out than anything.
And it spills from Cheryl's lips before she can stop herself, all heady with desire and thick with intoxication.
"I want to kiss you." Cheryl says, and she nearly whines with how badly she wants. "I want to know what you taste like. I want… I want so much with you that it scares me."
A beat of silence passes between them, and Cheryl counts the time that elapses in her heartbeat. It thuds hard and fast and heavy, but it doesn't feel wrong or uncomfortable.
Veronica shifts just a bit, rolls to her side until they're pressed front against front. Cheryl can taste the smoke on her breath mixed with the fruitiness of the gummy snakes they were sharing, can practically feel Veronica's heart thudding.
"Why does it scare you?" She says, and her eyelashes flutter prettily when she blinks.
You'll leave me, she wants to say, you'll hurt me just as badly as everyone else has.
And it seems foolish, really, to think that Veronica Lodge was capable of such a thing — sweet Ronnie who is so gentle with her, so caring that it aches — but the voice in the back of her mind screams out of self preservation, yells out for Cheryl to build her emotional walls back up and protect herself and never, ever let herself be in a position where someone could hurt her again.
"I could get hurt." Cheryl says, and she hates how pathetic she sounds, all weak and thready. "You could decide in six months that I'm not worth the trouble."
Veronica's face twitches the barest bit in response, and Cheryl knows her well enough to know that she is an expert in schooling her expressions and remaining neutral. And she knows what Veronica is going to say, too, knows that Veronica wants to say she won't hurt her and that she'd never feel that way, but Cheryl also knows that Veronica isn't the sort of person to make promises she isn't sure she can keep.
"But even though you're afraid." Veronica says, and she brings the joint to Cheryl's lips and holds it there for her to take a drag. "Do you still want to kiss me?"
She says it like she's giving Cheryl a choice — a chance to back out, perhaps, or a chance to say no — but Cheryl's eyes flick from Veronica's pretty, pretty lips up to her eyes and she's a little taken aback by the desire she finds there. Veronica Lodge, all weed-reddened whites and blown pupils, looking at her like she wants her.
Her smile is so wide that her lips pull across her teeth.
Cheryl looks at the sharp points of her canines and wonders what they'd feel like sunken into her neck.
"Yes." Cheryl says on an inhale, and she exhales the smoke into Veronica's mouth. They're so close that it feels like Veronica is sucking the breath right from her lungs. "God, yes."
Veronica inhales a sharp thing, so full of desire that it's palpable, and Cheryl feels her eyelids flutter shut with how badly she aches for it. She's never kissed anyone this important to her before — has never cared so deeply for someone like she does Veronica, has never had more than a schoolgirl crush — and she finds that she isn't scared, not with Veronica.
Never with Veronica.
"Cheryl." She says, and her voice is thick with the smoke and lust. "Can I kiss you?"
And Cheryl has never wanted anything more. It's terrifying, in a way, how much she wants and wants and wants. It's gluttonous, the way her stomach burns with desire that she's so close to reaching out and letting herself have.
She's never let herself want like this before.
Is it such a rotten thing to do?
She nods because she doesn't trust herself to speak — doesn't trust herself not to make herself into somewhat of a fool — and her fingers wind in the soft material of Veronica's shirt, her chin tipping up just the barest bit.
If Veronica were to shift just a breath, their lips would brush.
Cheryl's entire body tightens in anticipation.
"I'm afraid too." Veronica murmurs, and Cheryl thinks she could melt at how soft she sounds. "I'm afraid because I've never cared so much before. And I'm afraid… I'm afraid that if I kiss you now I may never want to stop."
Is that so bad, Cheryl wants to say, but her heart thuds in her chest and her stomach seizes like a vice and she tips her chin up, up, up and she hopes — though she knows that hope is a fickle thing and no higher power ever listens to nor cares for a Blossom, even if she's denounced them all but her Nana Rose and her beloved JayJay — that Veronica feels even a fraction of how strongly she feels.
"Please, Ronnie." She breathes out, gentle and delicate.
And it's like the stars align, like some cosmic thing falls into place just so when Veronica tosses the joint — it's burnt down to a roach at this point, though neither of them care — somewhere off to the side and cups her cheek so delicately that it aches and god, she brings her face down just as much as she tugs Cheryl up into her and when their lips meet, all sticky lip gloss and summer sweat, it's not the fireworks Cheryl expected in the very best way possible.
It feels like something is finally right.
It feels like coming home.
They stay wrapped in each other for what feels like both hours and no time at all, trading kisses and gentle touches like they've been waiting for this their whole lives — Cheryl has, she knows it, has waited her entire life to feel as adored as she does in this moment — and it doesn't deepen past gentle pecks or a brush of tongue against teeth, but it's somehow the most erotic thing Cheryl has ever experienced in her seventeen years.
She wants Veronica so badly that it hurts, though she'd never dare ask for fear of losing her entirely.
She voices it when they're in Cheryl's bed some hours later, when the high has dulled to a slow pull at the edges of their consciousness and Cheryl has her head on Veronica's chest and her fingers looped delicately around the string of pearls that never leave her neck, and she thinks she should feel embarrassed about it if it weren't for the fact that this is Veronica — her sweet Ronnie — and she'd never be made to feel like a fool.
"What do you want from me?" She says, and she hates how she sounds like an insecure kid. "Sex? Dating? Just friends who had a lapse in judgment? I'd… Ron, I'd do whatever you want as long as I don't lose you."
And Veronica is a saint — a certifiable one in Cheryl's books, at least — for she doesn't laugh or balk or demand that Cheryl undress for her. She cards her hand through her hair gently, careful not to snag on any tangles, and she presses her lips to Cheryl's forehead so gently that it feels like little more than a wisp of air.
"You, my dear, aren't ready for any of that." Veronica murmurs, and she doesn't say it in a way that makes Cheryl feel broken or wrong. "So what I want… I want for you to decide what you want, as slowly as you need to. Because god, I want it all with you, Cher. You're not losing me."
And Cheryl isn't typically the type to wait around or play things by ear — she's a Blossom to her core in this way, in fact, everything calculated and a direct result of careful planning — but there's something in Veronica's eyes that makes her feel safe — makes her feel like, for the first time in her seventeen years, she doesn't have to have it all figured out.
So she loops her fingers around Veronica's chain of pearls just a little tighter, brushes her fingertips across the skin of her throat so delicately that it burns, and she presses a soft kiss to the skin of her shoulder where her head rests.
"Okay." She says, and her voice is only a bit thready and weak. "Okay, Ronnie. I'll… we'll figure it out. What I want."
She says it like she doesn't know but she does. She knows that, without a doubt, she wants nothing more than to be in Veronica's orbit forever — wants to occupy any space that Veronica will give her, wants to be the reason she flashes a toothy smile across the room and the reason that Veronica steels her voice when Archie or Jughead say something stupid — but she also knows that Blossoms are cursed to a lifetime of unhappiness, and wanting goes hand in hand with being happy for once.
Cheryl is impulsive and gluttonous in nature, but she's also afraid.
"We'll figure it out." Veronica says, and her bony fingers massage gently at Cheryl's scalp. "Together."
And despite being scared — despite the fear winding its way around her heart and lungs until she feels like she could lurch — Cheryl feels her limbs sink impossibly lower into the mattress and her heart rate slow. And maybe it's okay to want — and maybe it's okay to want with Veronica, even — and maybe she could be the one to evade the Blossom curse, even.
But it's late and the sun is starting to peek from its resting place behind the clouds, and her mind is fuzzy with intoxication and the kiss and Veronica, and Cheryl decides that it can be a problem for tomorrow, maybe.
"Yeah." She says, her lips pressed to the skin of Veronica's shoulder. "Together."