"Nothing like the sea air to remind you that the imminent smell of fresh fish is going to want to make me turn around and go straight back to Yale, y'know?"
Angie Dinkley, a wry smile playing across her lips, looked across to her daughter in the passenger seat, whose face was turned out of the window, looking towards the port of the cove in the near distance, the dipping sun casting shadows across the coastline. "You could do that, if you were driving Velma. But as I'm the one in the seat behind the wheel, we're heading straight back to home."
"I'm not sure that makes any grammatical sense, Mom," came the reply as the younger woman twisted away and settled back further into the seat. Dressed in a chunky orange sweater with the sleeves rolled up, and burgundy skinny jeans, Velma Dinkley looked every part the modern bookish techy-savvy nerd that she was. To her friends' amusement, and her own chagrin, she hadn't gained much in height either over the past five years since Mystery Incorporated had headed out of town to meet up with Professor Harlan Ellison. In fact, she'd gained about an inch, though she'd gained a couple more round her waistline that she was not keen to focus on too frequently. Comfort eating was something Shaggy did, not her, or so it had seemed before they'd split their separate ways and headed off elsewhere.
It had been an amicable parting of the team, aware that they had to all grow up some time. After their mystery-solving stint at Miskatonic under the new Mr. E, different career interests had seen a natural gravitation away to other parts of the world. Velma had headed out of North Carolina for the Department of Physics at Yale to complete a Masters, whilst Fred had opted for Gatorsburg on a scholarship to play college-level football; he had just been picked a few months prior in the fifth round of the Draft for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and would be arriving back in Crystal Cove in a few days for their biannual meet-up.
Daphne had followed Fred south to Florida, to complete a law extension, having discovered a knack for legal representation at Miskatonic after one too many brushes with a jail cell, a throwback to the old dimension before Janet Nettles had ascended to the position of mayor and tamed the bullheadedness of Sheriff Bronson Stone. She and Fred were still engaged too, with the marriage finally set for winter, after much discussion between their parents (the two had privately said over a Skype chat that they'd have got married at Miskatonic had Daphne's parents and Judy not held a desire to micro-manage everything. Brad, as a pragmatist, had kept his head out of the way and spent his spare time escaping to Crystal Cove High to exchange misty-eyed reminiscences about football with Fred Jones, formerly adoptive father of Fred).
Multiple timelines were confusing in the back of her head.
The only members of the gang who were back permanently in Crystal Cove were Shaggy and Scooby. The pair had taken a gap year following Miskatonic and had embarked on a road trip across the states, sampling the many varieties of food available at an incredulous speed. They had returned to their hometown after crisscrossing every part of the country they could, where, with a start-up loan from his parents, Shaggy was now running his own diner. A strange hybrid of bike-stop bar and high-end restaurant, local food critics had been salivating over it ever since it opened six months ago, raving about just how good the burgers were, and just how many of the nonsensical varieties of toppings actually tasted great.
(She would reserve judgement on trying the much-trumpeted deep fried chicken fillet with grated avocado and dubious secret sauce, if only because the secret sauce was suspiciously green and radioactive in looking, but as one of his closest friends, she was sure it wouldn't be too lethal.)
They all still kept in fairly regular contact online and over the phone – she'd embarked on a two hour Skype chat with Scooby the other night, covering mainly quantum physics and how he was able to run in mid-air for about five seconds before gravity decided to work – but it would be good for them all to meet up again for some time. They rarely got to do it after Miskatonic, perhaps about three times a year. Fred would return for training after only three weeks and Daphne would accompany him; Shaggy was flying out shortly after to central America on a fact-finding, food-filching mission accompanied by Scooby, and with none of her friends left, she'd probably depart back to Yale and do additional research over the summer there.
Well, Marcie was possibly home for the summer from Washington, but their relationship had come to a rather ugly end which she still felt some guilt over (they were both equally to blame) and she'd rather not spend too much time dwelling on her ex-girlfriend.
There was a cough from the seat next to her, and she jerked, turning to her mom who was glancing out the corner of her eye at her.
"You alright, Velma honey? You keep going into these deep long trances. I know I prattle on but still…"
"Sorry Mom, I just got lost in thought," she replied, twiddling her thumbs into the hem of her sweater. "Just thinking how good it'll be to see the guys, if only for a few days."
"Ah, right." They lapsed into silence again for a few minutes before Angie spoke again. "I went to your friend Norville's restaurant the other night with your father. He said he was looking forward to seeing you again these next few weeks."
Velma raised her head from where she'd been navel-gazing. "Huh? I didn't think you and dad would be in for Shaggy's kind of food, to be honest. Isn't it all a bit… slacker food with embellishments?"
"Well, the diner part is, yes honey, but he's got a few private rooms round the back where there isn't as much of a racket. I guess that's where the critics eat. Anyway, we dropped by on the way back from work and he said he could fit us in at the back if we fancied it. Made a mean eggplant parmigiana for us."
"Huh." That was surprisingly vegetarian for Shaggy. Lost in her thoughts about the time she'd attempted to beat him and Scooby at consuming an entire rack of BBQ ribs (she'd lost, even with help from Fred), she missed the next few lines, and asked her mom to repeat it.
"Well, he was asking after you. Said that you'd seemed a bit down in the dumps last time the two of you had spoken one-on-one."
Velma shrugged a little, and racked her brains to try and remember the last time her and Shaggy had spoken without any of the other three. "Hmmm. I think it was just after a few deadlines and I kept going on about which bits I could have done infinitely better on."
"You passed with flying colours, honey."
"Which is exactly what he told me would happen," Velma responded, a small smile tugging at our lips. "He's always been pretty good at lifting spirits, I guess. But yeah, think that was the last time. Did he say anything else about it?"
"Nothing other than telling me to make sure you feed yourself properly. Says you're looking too thin. Frankly, I think he has a point."
"He thinks I'm too thin? Hell, he doesn't exactly have a leg to stand on, he's a beanpole!" she responded with a snort. There was a part of her that warmed up though at the mention of Shaggy looking out for her though. She'd gotten over her romantic attachment to the younger Shaggy years ago, after he plumped for Scooby, and he seemed to have also left their teenage semblance of a relationship behind him shortly after. But the three years they'd spent together at Miskatonic had brought the whole gang even closer together, if possible, after the old dimension escapades. In the case of her long haired slacker ex, the trust issues that had once frontloaded her interactions with him were receding; a tight-knit bond was forming, built upon the old foundations. Old feelings, it turned out, did not go away easily, and despite the fact she'd been in a relationship with Marcie at the time, there had been a part of her that noted her growing attraction to Shaggy was starting to eclipse that of her younger self's infatuation.
She'd ruthlessly tried to stomp it down, as experience from observing Shaggy's own failed relationships at university taught her that getting back together with any old flame was a recipe for disaster, possibly with explosions and squirrels caught up in it too (that had been a strange science experiment to say the least, and Mr. E had immediately written it into a novel). But it still lingered there, in the recess of her mind.
Part of her wondered if it was purely one-way, if Shaggy had managed to pull off the moving-on trick more successfully; after all, this was the man who chose a dog over her five years ago. But the last time they'd been together, just before Easter, when they had all travelled down to Miskatonic for a graduation reunion, Daphne had taken her aside and enquired if she'd noticed that Shaggy was giving her some funny looks.
"Funny?" she'd repeated, slightly tipsy and oblivious to Shaggy's general demeanour. Daphne had levelled an are-you-kidding-me? look at her, before pointing out that his eyes hadn't left her all night, particularly when she'd got a bit close to a former classmate who had been known to harbour a crush towards her (too tanned for her type, and too muscular for a woman full stop). Velma had waved off Daphne's insinuations, and her only other particular memory of the night was Shaggy guiding her back to her hotel room on unsteady feet. He'd patiently put her to bed, and left, grumbling good-naturedly about lightweights.
When she'd woken up with those few precious memories, she'd apologised profusely to him, blushing like a schoolgirl all the while, but he'd waved it off with an easy smile and a small tint of red to his own cheeks. Since then, over the past few months, every time she'd thought of Shaggy had been tinged with something more than warm friendship, a feeling that she couldn't help but enjoy no matter how much it irked her scientific pragmatism.
There was the sound of the car engine dying down, and with a blink, she realised that they'd pulled up outside her home. Her mom was already out of the car door, heading to the trunk to fetch one of her suitcases. Shaking herself slightly, she made suit to follow.
"You got any plans tonight, Mom?" she enquired as she helped haul the largest case out of the back. Her mum shrugged.
"Not in particular, honey. If you want to go down to see your friend, you're perfectly welcome to. You are twenty-three now, remember."
"Hmmm. Maybe." She glanced towards the front door. Angie caught her eyesight and chuckled.
"As long as you say hello to your father first, we're not gonna be bothered if you head off to see friends, Velma. Besides, we'd probably just be watching Law and Order tonight if you didn't want to watch anything special."
Velma checked her watch, seeing that it was half past eight. "I'll walk down in an hour or so then. I should get there for just after ten. I think he'll be close to closing up by then."
"Sounds good honey." Her mother had reached the front door as she fished her last bag out of the trunk and closed the lid. "Now, come on inside – I want you to look at my latest scrapbook on UFO sightings. Your father and I think we've found a dual rotator vessel never seen in the States before!"
Velma rolled her eyes and suppressed a smirk. Some things never changed at least.
000
It ended up being closer to half ten when she found herself at the entrance of a building that appeared to have received combined blueprints for an all-American diner and City Hall. A white marble front gave a surprising degree of elegance on the outside, whilst the inside showed a culture clash of magnificent proportions; a big, neon café-diner structure, garnished in shades of muted red and blue alongside polished mahogany and brass. A large island bar dominated the centre of the diner itself, though bar one member of staff behind it fiddling with a cloth (he appeared to resemble someone who had been several years behind them at school), it was unoccupied. Likewise, the tables were empty, though they appeared to be all made up for potential customers. To the back, there were three pairs of double doors leading off to the kitchens, as well as several smaller doors that she presumed lead to the bathrooms and the private back rooms that her mom had spoken of.
She pushed through the glass front of the building, and a small bell chimed, almost minutely above her head as it was brushed. The young man behind the bar glanced up immediately, pushing his overlarge glasses up his news and straightened himself up.
"I'm sorry, miss," he said with a distinct Carolina drawl to his voice, glancing at her apologetically as she strolled up to the chrome-rimmed bar. Behind him, across the mirrored surface, hung several optics with various spirits, a few nearly empty and a couple brimming with an amber liquid. The youth continued. "We're about to close up for the evening. Last orders were at –"
"It's OK Nils, she's, like, an old friend," came a familiar voice. Velma turned to the source of it and blinked twice at the visage she was presented with. From the kitchens had arrived Shaggy, albeit in a manner she'd not expect. In hindsight, it had been foolish to expect him to cook up a gourmet feast in burgundy slacks and a light olive shirt, but that was the image that had been built up in her mind over years of little wardrobe variation (of which she was equally culpable, she'd freely admit). Instead, he had his shoulder length hair pulled back into a low ponytail at the nape of his neck, with a collared white shirt and black work trousers, an apron slung casually over his shoulder. Velma thought it made him look strangely professional, like a man with purpose and focus outside of watching movie marathons in the small hours with his dog. "Go on, you can head off. I'll lock up."
"Ah, cheers Shaggy," came the response from his barman. He tossed the cloth in the direction of his employer who plucked it out of the air as it sailed towards him and stuffed it into a trouser pocket. "Be seeing you tomorrow evening man."
"Alison's not clocking off 'til six tomorrow, so if you can just get in for twenty to, dude?"
"Yeah, cool. Thanks Shaggy, man."
Nils flipped up a panel on the bar to slip through and with a jaunty little wave behind him, headed out, leaving Velma alone with Shaggy in the restaurant. As soon as the door swung shut behind him, she turned back to face one of her, if not, best friend who was unabashedly smiling at her.
"Hey Velm," he spoke, and was it just her, or did his voice seem a little smoother all of a sudden? Damn feelings. "Didn't think you'd be coming down straight away."
"Well my mother gave me a stirring recommendation about your wares," she replied, a grin tugging itself across her expression. They both moved at once and met for a tight hug. She could feel the bristles of his stubble brushing against her as he perched his chin against her head, and the scent of fried tomatoes, something that hung in an oddly fruity manner. It was strangely intoxicating.
Damnit, she thought to herself, she had it even worse than she did as a teenager.
They separated and Shaggy raised an eyebrow. "You OK there? Like, you're looking a little peaky."
She was blushing then. Fantastic.
"Yeah, just a bit tired Shag. Long journey back from Yale."
He chewed his lower lip. "You didn't have to come downtown to visit me tonight, y'know. Lucky you got here now rather than, like, ten minutes."
"I wanted to see you," she responded with a shrug. "Now, isn't there an old college rule about drinks being on the house at a fellow freshman's bar?"
A chuckle in response as Shaggy headed past her and edged through the panel gap to behind the bar. "I'm not sure there is. But there's definitely a rule about it being gentlemanly conduct to buy the lady one."
There was a little red touch to his cheeks, she noted absently, as he turned to the spirits behind him, though it was nothing to the heat heading there in her own. She could see pink tinging her face in the mirror opposite. Smooth bastard, she thought to herself. Probably flirting without realising again.
She watched as he poured out two measures of whiskey each into separate glasses, then rummaging in the fridge underneath for two cans of Coke. He knew how she liked it – a double with no ice, topped up in a highball with a full can of sugar. It was one of her many vices, and one of the few she actively enjoyed. He stirred it clockwise twice with a straw and back the other way, before passing it to her with a crooked smile.
"Hey," he said with a faked tone of surprise. "I remembered this time."
"You usually do," she noted dryly. "You're pretty good at remembering things about me."
"Well, you're, like, a pretty memorable person Velm."
Damn, but if she wasn't a sucker. He'd been kooky and sweet in high school; college had shaped those edges into a more natural charisma. He'd always been quite heart-on-sleeve in his emotions, but his charm had been in his awkwardness. Now it was balanced somewhere between that and the confidence he'd gained in the previous year running his own ship.
"No Scooby tonight?" she enquired, shifting the topic on before any silence became awkward. Shaggy hadn't seemed to notice, but he could still be notoriously dense all these years later.
"Nah, he's back at our flat," came the reply as he idly spun his straw around, clinking the ice in his glass. He took a sip and she followed suit. "He stayed up all night yesterday helping with prep, we had a pretty important booking this morning. Mayor Nettles wanted to bring some visiting dignitary in."
She smirked at him. "Shaggy Rogers, mingling with the politicians. You'll be leaving the rest of us mere mortals behind."
He waved a hand as if to brush away the statement. "Eh, they were, like, stuffy. I mean, Mayor Nettles is lovely, but some of the highbrow she has to deal with… eh, I'm glad I'm running a restaurant for ordinary folk."
She snorted a little. "Yeah, I can sympathise with that. Some of the people at Yale just have a chip on their shoulder about having to share classes with anyone else. Like it's an insult to have someone with a similar level intellect."
"Bet they don't take you being top of the class all that well," he observed wryly as he took another drink. Her smirk edged into a slightly larger grin.
"No, they don't I guess," she replied idly, lifting her eyes from the rim of her glass to Shaggy's face. He was leaning back against the counter, his drink set down beside him, his left arm raised to scratch the back of his neck. His shirt cuffs were undone and he had tossed the apron to the side.
"It's good to see you Velma," he spoke softly. "I've missed you."
"Missed the witty comments or the frustrating snarkiness?" she joked.
He shrugged. "Both, I guess. I don't think I realised how much I'd miss everybody the older we got."
Sobering, she mirrored his gesture. "Yeah, but we couldn't just spend our entire life buzzing around the East Coast and Deep South in a psychedelic fan."
"Yes we could have," he countered with a little smile, pushing off the bar and setting himself down opposite on a hidden stool. "Though I'll agree it could, like, harm our career prospects."
She settled onto one of the high-risers opposite so they were eye-level with each other and leaned her elbows on the bar, resting her chin on her folded hands. "Well, I missed you guys too. I'm glad I went to Yale, but it's a long way out from the rest of you here in Crystal Cove."
He chuckled. "Me and Scooby are the only ones really here in Crystal Cove now, y'know. Maybe someday, we'll all end up back together for one more mystery."
"I don't think I'd be satisfied with just one more mystery," she responded, tilting her head a little as she took in the little features on his face. The three-day old blonde stubble coated his jaw, except for a small area on the left of his chin were a faint jagged scar ran an inch down his neck. Dark green – almost black – irises filled with a compassion and comfort that felt as familiar as an old blanket. The bob of his Adam's apple, pronounced in the shadow of his throat, a lump that was mirrored her own oesophagus.
Shaggy blinked and she shook herself out of her observations, realising that she had been leaning forwards towards him. "There's nothing to stop you solving mysteries for yourselves," she continued. "You're not thick exactly."
He grinned boyishly. "Coming from you, I'll take that as a compliment of the highest order." He drummed his fingertips on his cheek. "Do you want anything to eat? I mean, I can do you a little something on the house if you want."
"I ate before I came down here, but thanks anyway," she replied, tapping the rim of her spectacles. "I definitely will come down and try out your finest fayre though later this week."
"I'd recommend my chili meatball ciabatta if you're going for something lighter but you probably shouldn't go on chef recommendations all the time," he chuckled.
Velma smirked again. "You know chili meatballs are one of my favourites."
He grinned again. "Well, like, I do know you pretty well."
She hummed in response and took a large gulp of her drink to hide the rising blush again.
"Do you know where you're gonna go after you finish Yale next year then?" he asked after a few moments of comfortable silence. His posture had shifted ever so slightly to something more rigid. "I remember you talking about wanting to go abroad years ago, back in the old Crystal Cove."
She honestly had forgotten she'd said that to him. It had been a spur-of-the-moment thing one night, in the back of the van when Scooby had professed a desire to travel to Italy to learn the ultimate secrets of the thin crust pizza from its masters. She'd added that she wouldn't mind travelling to Australia or Europe to continue scientific research.
"I don't really know anymore," she replied, her brow furrowing. "I'm probably going to try and stay in the States but I think I'll wait and see if any offers come in around Christmas."
"You mean what offers, not if," Shaggy chided. "Come on, I mean Velma Dinkley! Every research lab in the country's gonna want a piece of your mind! In a good sense, to clarify."
She laughed at that. "It'd be a nice dream Shag. But I'll have to see how my CV stacks up. A lot of others will already have the experience. It's a hyper-competitive market out there."
He stared at her directly, an earnest expression on his face. "I have absolute faith in that you can do this, Velm. You're not one to let your dreams get away from you. You never were when we were teenagers."
"Except one," she responded automatically, before glaring at her drink as heat blossomed across her cheeks again. Damn Dutch courage, she thought idly, and suddenly she found herself wondering if she'd subconsciously planned a confession of some kind as soon as she'd stepped through the door. Well, if he hasn't seen all the blushing tonight, or over the past five years, he's probably a lost cause.
"Are you, like, referring to me there?" he asked after a beat, an eyebrow raised. There was a touch of confusion to his expression, but also an innate understanding. "Because I don't think I, like, got away." He gave a dry chuckle and scratched the back of his neck nervously.
"I had to let the dream of you get away," Velma responded after a moment, diverting her eyes back down to her drink and taking her spectacles off to jerkily clean them on the hem of her jumper. "You remember when we had to deal with the Headless Horror?"
"You mean the one who turned out to be Rick Spartan's wife?"
"Yeah. You remember… us around the time?" She was blushing consistently now, but she didn't dare look up, instead resting her glasses on the bar and continuing to stare half-blind into the depths of her tumbler.
"Yeah… I was interesting in, like, pursuing something again and you weren't." His voice sounded a bit twitchy, as if he was silently deciding to continue, a suspicion confirmed a moment later when he added, "I totally got that after Scooby. In hindsight, I wasn't mature enough to balance both, particularly, like, after you gave me that ultimatum. So yeah, I remember. You were over me."
"I wasn't though," Velma responded quietly, finally lifting her gaze to Shaggy's face. Though it was blurred in her vision, his expression remained stoically contemplative, with a touch of confusion. He didn't seem overly surprised by her confession but nor did he seem to have given the idea that she was still head over heels for him much thought.
"I wasn't though," she repeated, lowering her gaze to her half-empty drink again. "I think subconsciously, I've never been over you. I mean, we were together, what –"
"Seven months," he added after a moment when she seemed to be fumbling for the date and she grasped on it thankfully.
"Seven months, but it's not just the seven months there, it was the twelve years we were friends before that. And it was a wonderful friendship – my first friendship, my best friendship. And I really put it through the wringer after we broke up."
"You could argue I deserved that for leaving you for a dog," Shaggy offered as a response, but Velma snorted and hiccupped and realised with a dawning horror that was water gathering in the corners of her eyes. She clenched her hand around her glass, her knuckles whitening.
"I shouldn't have made you choose in the first place," she replied, still focusing downwards, aware that her speech was a little mumbled. She cleared her throat. "Don't try to defend me Shaggy, I was a selfish bitch. I still am, just no longer in denial about it. What kind of friend does that?"
She paused for a breath, realising her voice, normally a level instrument, was sounding strained and emotionally taut.
"When you continued showing interest in me, I realised that I didn't trust you anymore, in a romantic sense. I shot you down, because if we'd gone back to being in a relationship and there was all this… this paranoia towards you, it would have crippled our friendship, a friendship I'd already come close to fucking up. So I tucked the part of me that wanted you to be my boyfriend away in a corner and left it there in the hope that it'd never bother me again. You moved on, I moved on, that should've been it."
Shaggy was uncharacteristically silent, but he hadn't started quaking, or ran for the nearest exit as he was often did when scared. Then again, he had always been more emotionally receptive that others perceived him to be, always been an understanding, if unassuming, and supportive friend. It was not the first time she'd broken down near tears, gabbling confessions about herself at him – but it was the first time it involved their brief relationship and her still-cherished feelings.
"Except it wasn't," he gently spoke after the silence had stretched on into palpable tension, and Velma's half sob cut through it before she got her emotions under control. Absently, she realised at some point he had unclasped her hand from her glass and was resting his own on top. She resolutely did not look at him and continued.
"Yeah," she almost whispered. "it never did go away. And then we saved Crystal Cove, and then we went to Miskatonic, and we just got closer and closer, and it was there in the back of my mind that if our friendship ever reached such a strong point again, maybe you'd be interested, because I still was. And then when the gang split and I went off to Yale, it made me realise just how much I missed you – you, as opposed to Daphne, or Scooby, or Fred. I miss all those guys loads too, more than words – but there was always something deeper in our friendship I guess, if you get what I mean."
A pause.
"Yeah," came the response after the silence and she felt the slight pressure as he squeezed her hand. "I totally get that too. Like, that unspoken deepness and trust that we had as teenagers just got even more, like, entwined."
Velma half-nodded, her gaze dropping lower. "So like I said. I had to let the dream of you get away. Except I didn't want you to go away in the end, and every time I've seen you since, there's this warmth you bring to me that part of me hates because it's something I can't have, and part of me relishes it, because it's so freakin' wonderful."
She rubbed her free palm furiously across her eyes and stopped the tears from shedding, keeping her gaze downwards. Her view was suddenly cast into shadow and thin calloused fingers gently grasped her chin, lifting it upwards. Before she'd fully processed the gesture, there was a feather-light soft touch to her lips with just a brush of pressure, that lingered there for an all-too short second before withdrawing.
The blurred outline of Shaggy was leaning back on his stool when she re-focused. "Velma, like, I never got away in the first place."
She felt his grip tighten on their hands resting together on the table, as her mind screeched to a sudden halt at his words and actions and she fumbled with her spare hand for a moment to find her glasses before thinking better of it.
"I guess I thought you would've done," she half-choked out. Across from her, she could make out the outline of Shaggy's expression softening again.
"This entwinement, it, like, goes both ways Velm," he spoke quietly, leaning forward again but not as presumptuous to cradle her face with his fingers again. "I thought you were the one who got away, to be honest, not me. I was just glad after the first time we became friends again that I don't think it ever occurred there was anything there from you after you turned me down at the hospital. But when Daphne said at Miskatonic that I still looked at you like a lovesick puppy sometimes… well, I figured out that returning old feelings was too much to hope for."
There was a prolonged silence as the two of them sat opposite sides of the bar, joined by a single linked hand each. Shaggy's gaze had dropped to his own near-full drink whilst Velma has switched from staring at the depths of her glass to gazing at her blurred best friend opposite, her spectacles lying momentarily forgotten to the side.
"You were in a relationship most of Miskatonic anyway," Shaggy eventually spoke, breaking the stillness and returning his eyes to her. "So when I twigged it was still there… well, like, there was nothing to be done."
"And now?" she asked, her voice wavering with an uncertain emotion bubbling in her stomach. "Is it still there?"
"I kissed you a moment ago, Velm," he answered after a beat. "You know I'm not exactly an overtly affectionate guy too." Another beat. "But, like, yes. Totally. Still there like my desire for a five-cheese meat feast pizza. Is.
That made her give a watery chuckle and she dropped her head again. "Only you, Shaggy Rogers, could compare your feelings for a woman to your feelings for a pizza."
"I guess it's part of my roguish charm," he said with a small grin. They lapsed into another silence, and Velma took the opportunity to find her glasses and slip with on lopsidedly. Shaggy reached over wordlessly and tweaked them back to a level position which caused heat to rush to her head again.
"So what now?" she asked, her voice still wobbly. "Where do we go from here?"
Shaggy leaned back and swivelled off the stool he was perched on, tucking it back under a hidden alcove on his side of the bar. He straightened up, then leaned forward on his elbows again. "Well, I think, like, you should come back to mine tonight. Not for, like, anything heavy!" He quickly added when she went to open her mouth to enquire on presumption. "Just I don't really, like, want you going back to yours feeling all, y'know, emotional. Also, your mom would hunt me down if she suspected me of hurting you again."
She chuckled again and it lifted her spirits. "That's not exactly what I meant," she elaborated, rubbing her sleeve across her cheeks where a solitary tear had leaked out.
"Yeah, I guessed." He lowered a hand to rest on top of hers again. "If you wanna try again…"
He trailed off, but Velma swallowed and smiled, catching his eyes with her own.
"Yeah," she spoke, soft tremors running through her words. "I think I wanna try again. Slowly, though. If that's OK."
"Hey, it's totally cool with me," he replied, voice steady with a slight upwards intonation to it. "Take it slow, see how it goes. That's how we should have done it years ago," he added wryly, earning a small grin from Velma.
"You can't change the past," she replied, then her lips quirked. "Except once, and that was a strange case anyway."
"We just seem to, like, find strange cases lying around all the time," Shaggy quipped. He straightened himself up again and collected the two empty glasses, dropping them into a sink near the rows of spirits behind him without so much as a backwards glance. "You mind if we leave? If we're gonna have any more deep emotional conversations, I think I'd rather be sat on my own sofa."
She smiled at him, and suddenly felt inexplicably shy, like an emotional boundary between them had been crossed from friendship to something more again. "Yeah, that's good for me. I don't think I'll be doing anything else too emotional tonight, or I'll be drained."
"Being drained means you get to, like, relax sometimes," he pointed out as he closed the bar hatch behind him and gestured towards the glass doors. She followed and allowed him to hold them open for her before he flicked off the final lights, plunging the building into the darkness. He set the alarm and pulled it shut behind him, locking it in a swift motion before turning back to her. "Relaxing is something you could do with doing, Velm."
After a beat, he held out his right hand to her, and with the briefest of hesitations, she grasped it gently with her left, smiling up at him underneath the neon-orange bathe of the streetlight. "Well, it's just as well you're around to show me how to do it, Rogers."
They both chuckled as they walked off into the night towards Shaggy's apartment, their fingers lightly entwined in a pattern of intricate emotion and warmth. As Velma cast a glance behind her, she subconsciously realised she was leaving the restaurant lighter than she'd been in years. A feeling of tranquillity settled over her as she headed towards a different future than the one she'd been on hours prior.
One step at a time, Velma. One step at a time.