Fic: Falling Is Like This (Weevil/Veronica, PG-13)
Title: Falling Is Like This
Author: mandilyn
Pairing/Character: Weevil/Veronica
Word Count: 1935
Rating: PG-13
Summary: This is fairly AU. Weevil and Veronica go to the prom.
Spoilers: None really.
Warnings: There are a couple of swear words...and teenagers drinking beer.
A/N: Title shamelessly ganked from Ani DiFranco. Thanks to shealynn88 for early encouragement and general awesomeness.
...you can't fight gravity on a planet that insists that love is like falling and falling is like this...
He grabs her in the hallway and pulls her into the bathroom. A petite girl, a freshman, looks up from the sink as they burst through the door.
“Out,” Veronica tells her gesturing towards the door. “It’s a wonder I have a reputation,” she tells him as the door closes and she pushes the doorstop into place. “Subtle much?”
He smirks and produces an envelope from inside his jacket. “Prom tickets. You can thank me later. You should have seen Madison’s face when I bought them. What a bitch.”
She smirks and shakes her head. “Weevil, we are not going to the prom.”
“Veronica, I’m hurt,” he deadpans.
“I thought you were joking.”
“Well, I wasn’t,” he says with a smile, turning on his heels and leaving her standing there, her mouth open in shock. “Get a dress,” he calls out as the door closes behind him.
#
It had been a joke.
He’s joking she’d thought as they talked about it and then they hadn’t said anything else about it and she’d been sure it was a joke. Because seriously. Why would he ask her to prom?
They had been standing in line for Viper at Magic Mountain, quietly enjoying disdainful looks from their classmates. It gave Veronica a secret joy to know that she was hanging out with the boy who had single-handedly lampooned Madison Sinclair’s Catalina Island fantasies.
They had spent the day running from roller coaster to roller coaster, eating too much and talking about nothing. They’d stood in line for Viper mocking people and laughing too hard at their own jokes. She can’t even remember now how prom had come up or who’d mentioned it first.
“We should go together,” he’d said as they stepped into the coaster and she started to laugh and then she’d tried to look at him but they were locking their shoulder harnesses in place and she couldn’t see his face anymore so she kind of reached around and poked him.
“Are you serious?” she’d asked him but he didn’t answer so she’d said it again. “Are you serious?” But then the coaster had taken off and that had been the end of it.
#
She is plodding around her bedroom in bare feet straightening things in her bedroom when her phone rings.
“V, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“What? No, I’m reorganizing my CDs,” she jokes, but only sort of because she still isn’t so sure about this entire plan…this prom plan.
“Sounds important.”
Silence.
“Look, I’ll be there in ten minutes, Veronica.”
“I’m already in my pajamas,” she whines reluctantly.
“By pajamas, you better mean short black dress.”
She exhales heavily and gives up. “It’s blue.”
“That’s more like it. I’ll be there in ten.”
There is a dial tone in her ear before she can say anything else.
She takes one last look in the mirror, at the baby blue strapless dress and strappy heels she is sliding her feet into, at the way her hair falls in curls around her shoulders and thinks that maybe the night will be okay.
Once upon a time, Veronica went to a dance with a boy that she loved and her very best friend and the boy that she loved and it was all about I Never and champagne in the back of the limo, staying out all night and laughing about it later even though they all got in trouble when they rolled in at 8 o’clock the next morning. She looks at the pictures now, the dried corsage and the ticket stub that she saved and they are like artifacts from a forgotten era; it’s all ancient history now.
She’s lost touch with the girl in those photographs, but sometimes she remembers what it was like and she would never say it out loud, not to Weevil…not to anyone…but she wants to go to Prom; wants to grab some memories that won’t break her heart.
She wants to wear this short blue dress and eat dinner out and dance with a boy.
#
Weevil gives her a piggyback ride to his car after the dance. She is holding her shoes in her hands and laughing as he bounces and runs and stops too fast. “I’ve got you,” he says and she jokes that she is afraid that he will drop her but she’s not really. He lets her into the car and shuts the door and she thinks that the whole night was a little surreal and odd but she’s glad that he asked.
So much like the bits and pieces of Homecoming that Veronica can still effortlessly recall, she will remember the way that Weevil arrived at her door with a bouquet of flowers AND a corsage and the way that he seemed very gentlemanly and serious about the entire Prom situation. He kissed her on the cheek at the door, holding her hand lightly in his own and then stood back from her and whistled…not a cat-call-on-the-street whistle but a low, nearly breathless, what-have-I-gotten-myself-into sort of whistle that made her feel very girly before she though better of it and rolled her eyes.
“You too,” she’d said with a smile and when her father had snapped a couple of pictures and made appropriately father-like intimations about all the ways he might make Weevil’s life miserable if Veronica was returned in less than perfect condition (“One piece, sir,” he’d promised), she’d tugged him toward the door by the hand still holding hers.
Dinner was enchiladas in his backyard, a meal he’d sworn he cooked, at a table with a tablecloth and candles and his two nieces peering through the blinds in the window over the kitchen sink, giggling and running away when Veronica noticed them and waved.
She’d asked him why he’d asked her.
“I wanted to go to Prom.”
“But why did you ask me?”
“Because I knew you didn’t have a date. Because I figured you’d say yes. Because I knew it would piss everyone off and that’s just your style.”
She’d laughed and nodded and kind of felt like he wasn’t telling her everything.
Weevil was funny and relaxed and sweet. He’d opened her door when they got to the hotel where the dance was held and held her hand as they walked into the ballroom and when they got looks from the their classmates, people who wondered what made the outcast and the washed-out gang member think they could show their faces, he’d pulled her closer to his side.
She will always smile when she looks at their pictures, because right as the photographer snapped their picture, Weevil had leaned in and whispered something she would never repeat to anyone, not for cash or ponies and she burst out laughing as the flash blinded her.
They’d danced almost every dance. He’d insisted. (The tickets weren’t cheap, he whispered to her.) He’d brought her punch and made jokes about their classmates and somewhere near the end of the night, he’d slipped the DJ some cash, he wouldn’t tell her how much, to play one of his favorite songs, a Spanish song she didn’t understand that cleared the dance floor.
Madison Sinclair looked like she might strangle them both but no one interrupted their dance and the look on Madison’s face alone was worth all the stares.
“Everyone’s looking at us,” she’d whispered as they danced but he’d shaken his head.
“I’m pretty sure they are looking at you.”
#
Weevil has a big bed in his bedroom, with soft sheets like a t-shirt and more pillows than Veronica thought boys slept with.
They’d come back to his place after the dance and sat cross-legged on the floor of his room drinking Coronas and listening to music and talking.
Veronica is lying on her back in the middle of his bed staring at the ceiling fan now, laughing nervously and holding the sheets to keep from falling as the room spins. It turns out that she cannot drink as many Coronas as Weevil can without feeling so buzzed she thinks maybe she shouldn’t move.
He’d kept warning her to stop but she was determined.
“Do not throw up in my bed, Veronica,” he says now. He is laughing. He is not drunk. He thinks that she is funny.
“I’m not sick. I’m just being careful.”
“Is the room still spinning?” he whispers and she nods and then she tries to roll over to face him. He is lying near the edge of the bed and she rolls into him, her hands suddenly on his chest and she is just buzzed enough to ignore the rational part of her brain that is pointing out in big loud letters that her hands are on Weevil’s chest, sort of playing with the cotton of his pajama-wifebeater that is black and tight and very flattering like she’s never really noticed before.
Veronica suddenly wants to know why he asked her to prom...and she doesn’t want to hear about pissing off the 09er’s or knowing for sure that Veronica didn’t have a date…she wants to know the reason that he kept secret at dinner, and the reason that he spent the whole day with her at Magic Mountain and the reason that he held her hand all night, even in the car on the ride home when no one was watching anymore.
She wants to kiss him.
She knows that she wants to kiss him, that it isn’t the Coronas talking, but she also knows that she will have a hard time making that argument to him.
This is the degree to which she is buzzed.
She knows her mind but when she starts talking, it will be slow and slurred, the kind of speech people don’t take seriously.
She is wearing an old sweatshirt of his and it smells like laundry detergent and him, this Weevil smell that she associates with riding on the back of his bike and in his car and with leather and now with lying very close to him on his bed, surrounded by his sea of pillows.
She starts to laugh.
“Do you really sleep with all of these pillows?” she asks. “I didn’t know boys slept with all these pillows.”
He looks at her kind of confusedamused, the way people look at girls who are drunker than they will admit, and she thinks that this moment, while he is perplexed by her odd question, is when she should test out the kiss and she does.
His lips are as soft as they look and she keeps her eyes open and laughs into his mouth when his eyes widen and now he is kissing her back and the room is spinning and she’s floating and that she is willing to admit is probably the Coronas, but she’d give him the credit if anyone asked.
He pulls away after a couple of kisses, just when she is discovering that his tongue is soft and still tastes like lime. She makes a pouty face and then laughs.
He kisses her nose. “Scoot back a little,” he says, “Or we’re both going to fall,” and when he says this, her hands find his arms and she holds on.
“I think I might fall anyway,” she whispers. “You’ll catch me, right?” A look flashes in his eye, the one she saw at the table, the spark of fear and the line that creased his lips when he told a lie, but it disintegrates in a second.
He nods and whispers close to her ear. “I’ll be right there.”
Author: mandilyn
Pairing/Character: Weevil/Veronica
Word Count: 1935
Rating: PG-13
Summary: This is fairly AU. Weevil and Veronica go to the prom.
Spoilers: None really.
Warnings: There are a couple of swear words...and teenagers drinking beer.
A/N: Title shamelessly ganked from Ani DiFranco. Thanks to shealynn88 for early encouragement and general awesomeness.
...you can't fight gravity on a planet that insists that love is like falling and falling is like this...
He grabs her in the hallway and pulls her into the bathroom. A petite girl, a freshman, looks up from the sink as they burst through the door.
“Out,” Veronica tells her gesturing towards the door. “It’s a wonder I have a reputation,” she tells him as the door closes and she pushes the doorstop into place. “Subtle much?”
He smirks and produces an envelope from inside his jacket. “Prom tickets. You can thank me later. You should have seen Madison’s face when I bought them. What a bitch.”
She smirks and shakes her head. “Weevil, we are not going to the prom.”
“Veronica, I’m hurt,” he deadpans.
“I thought you were joking.”
“Well, I wasn’t,” he says with a smile, turning on his heels and leaving her standing there, her mouth open in shock. “Get a dress,” he calls out as the door closes behind him.
#
It had been a joke.
He’s joking she’d thought as they talked about it and then they hadn’t said anything else about it and she’d been sure it was a joke. Because seriously. Why would he ask her to prom?
They had been standing in line for Viper at Magic Mountain, quietly enjoying disdainful looks from their classmates. It gave Veronica a secret joy to know that she was hanging out with the boy who had single-handedly lampooned Madison Sinclair’s Catalina Island fantasies.
They had spent the day running from roller coaster to roller coaster, eating too much and talking about nothing. They’d stood in line for Viper mocking people and laughing too hard at their own jokes. She can’t even remember now how prom had come up or who’d mentioned it first.
“We should go together,” he’d said as they stepped into the coaster and she started to laugh and then she’d tried to look at him but they were locking their shoulder harnesses in place and she couldn’t see his face anymore so she kind of reached around and poked him.
“Are you serious?” she’d asked him but he didn’t answer so she’d said it again. “Are you serious?” But then the coaster had taken off and that had been the end of it.
#
She is plodding around her bedroom in bare feet straightening things in her bedroom when her phone rings.
“V, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“What? No, I’m reorganizing my CDs,” she jokes, but only sort of because she still isn’t so sure about this entire plan…this prom plan.
“Sounds important.”
Silence.
“Look, I’ll be there in ten minutes, Veronica.”
“I’m already in my pajamas,” she whines reluctantly.
“By pajamas, you better mean short black dress.”
She exhales heavily and gives up. “It’s blue.”
“That’s more like it. I’ll be there in ten.”
There is a dial tone in her ear before she can say anything else.
She takes one last look in the mirror, at the baby blue strapless dress and strappy heels she is sliding her feet into, at the way her hair falls in curls around her shoulders and thinks that maybe the night will be okay.
Once upon a time, Veronica went to a dance with a boy that she loved and her very best friend and the boy that she loved and it was all about I Never and champagne in the back of the limo, staying out all night and laughing about it later even though they all got in trouble when they rolled in at 8 o’clock the next morning. She looks at the pictures now, the dried corsage and the ticket stub that she saved and they are like artifacts from a forgotten era; it’s all ancient history now.
She’s lost touch with the girl in those photographs, but sometimes she remembers what it was like and she would never say it out loud, not to Weevil…not to anyone…but she wants to go to Prom; wants to grab some memories that won’t break her heart.
She wants to wear this short blue dress and eat dinner out and dance with a boy.
#
Weevil gives her a piggyback ride to his car after the dance. She is holding her shoes in her hands and laughing as he bounces and runs and stops too fast. “I’ve got you,” he says and she jokes that she is afraid that he will drop her but she’s not really. He lets her into the car and shuts the door and she thinks that the whole night was a little surreal and odd but she’s glad that he asked.
So much like the bits and pieces of Homecoming that Veronica can still effortlessly recall, she will remember the way that Weevil arrived at her door with a bouquet of flowers AND a corsage and the way that he seemed very gentlemanly and serious about the entire Prom situation. He kissed her on the cheek at the door, holding her hand lightly in his own and then stood back from her and whistled…not a cat-call-on-the-street whistle but a low, nearly breathless, what-have-I-gotten-myself-into sort of whistle that made her feel very girly before she though better of it and rolled her eyes.
“You too,” she’d said with a smile and when her father had snapped a couple of pictures and made appropriately father-like intimations about all the ways he might make Weevil’s life miserable if Veronica was returned in less than perfect condition (“One piece, sir,” he’d promised), she’d tugged him toward the door by the hand still holding hers.
Dinner was enchiladas in his backyard, a meal he’d sworn he cooked, at a table with a tablecloth and candles and his two nieces peering through the blinds in the window over the kitchen sink, giggling and running away when Veronica noticed them and waved.
She’d asked him why he’d asked her.
“I wanted to go to Prom.”
“But why did you ask me?”
“Because I knew you didn’t have a date. Because I figured you’d say yes. Because I knew it would piss everyone off and that’s just your style.”
She’d laughed and nodded and kind of felt like he wasn’t telling her everything.
Weevil was funny and relaxed and sweet. He’d opened her door when they got to the hotel where the dance was held and held her hand as they walked into the ballroom and when they got looks from the their classmates, people who wondered what made the outcast and the washed-out gang member think they could show their faces, he’d pulled her closer to his side.
She will always smile when she looks at their pictures, because right as the photographer snapped their picture, Weevil had leaned in and whispered something she would never repeat to anyone, not for cash or ponies and she burst out laughing as the flash blinded her.
They’d danced almost every dance. He’d insisted. (The tickets weren’t cheap, he whispered to her.) He’d brought her punch and made jokes about their classmates and somewhere near the end of the night, he’d slipped the DJ some cash, he wouldn’t tell her how much, to play one of his favorite songs, a Spanish song she didn’t understand that cleared the dance floor.
Madison Sinclair looked like she might strangle them both but no one interrupted their dance and the look on Madison’s face alone was worth all the stares.
“Everyone’s looking at us,” she’d whispered as they danced but he’d shaken his head.
“I’m pretty sure they are looking at you.”
#
Weevil has a big bed in his bedroom, with soft sheets like a t-shirt and more pillows than Veronica thought boys slept with.
They’d come back to his place after the dance and sat cross-legged on the floor of his room drinking Coronas and listening to music and talking.
Veronica is lying on her back in the middle of his bed staring at the ceiling fan now, laughing nervously and holding the sheets to keep from falling as the room spins. It turns out that she cannot drink as many Coronas as Weevil can without feeling so buzzed she thinks maybe she shouldn’t move.
He’d kept warning her to stop but she was determined.
“Do not throw up in my bed, Veronica,” he says now. He is laughing. He is not drunk. He thinks that she is funny.
“I’m not sick. I’m just being careful.”
“Is the room still spinning?” he whispers and she nods and then she tries to roll over to face him. He is lying near the edge of the bed and she rolls into him, her hands suddenly on his chest and she is just buzzed enough to ignore the rational part of her brain that is pointing out in big loud letters that her hands are on Weevil’s chest, sort of playing with the cotton of his pajama-wifebeater that is black and tight and very flattering like she’s never really noticed before.
Veronica suddenly wants to know why he asked her to prom...and she doesn’t want to hear about pissing off the 09er’s or knowing for sure that Veronica didn’t have a date…she wants to know the reason that he kept secret at dinner, and the reason that he spent the whole day with her at Magic Mountain and the reason that he held her hand all night, even in the car on the ride home when no one was watching anymore.
She wants to kiss him.
She knows that she wants to kiss him, that it isn’t the Coronas talking, but she also knows that she will have a hard time making that argument to him.
This is the degree to which she is buzzed.
She knows her mind but when she starts talking, it will be slow and slurred, the kind of speech people don’t take seriously.
She is wearing an old sweatshirt of his and it smells like laundry detergent and him, this Weevil smell that she associates with riding on the back of his bike and in his car and with leather and now with lying very close to him on his bed, surrounded by his sea of pillows.
She starts to laugh.
“Do you really sleep with all of these pillows?” she asks. “I didn’t know boys slept with all these pillows.”
He looks at her kind of confusedamused, the way people look at girls who are drunker than they will admit, and she thinks that this moment, while he is perplexed by her odd question, is when she should test out the kiss and she does.
His lips are as soft as they look and she keeps her eyes open and laughs into his mouth when his eyes widen and now he is kissing her back and the room is spinning and she’s floating and that she is willing to admit is probably the Coronas, but she’d give him the credit if anyone asked.
He pulls away after a couple of kisses, just when she is discovering that his tongue is soft and still tastes like lime. She makes a pouty face and then laughs.
He kisses her nose. “Scoot back a little,” he says, “Or we’re both going to fall,” and when he says this, her hands find his arms and she holds on.
“I think I might fall anyway,” she whispers. “You’ll catch me, right?” A look flashes in his eye, the one she saw at the table, the spark of fear and the line that creased his lips when he told a lie, but it disintegrates in a second.
He nods and whispers close to her ear. “I’ll be right there.”