Not mine.
I
Velma clutched the mystery book to herself, wishing her life was like the detectives in the novels. Why couldn't she go on adventures and solve paranormal mysteries like that? She bet that if one of those bedsheet-wearing fake ghosts showed up, she'd solve it - just like that, with a snap of her fingers. Snap. Just like that. She pushed her glasses further up her nose, and sighed.
It wasn't as if she could afford to go on trips like that; she had her studies to concentrate on. Although roving around the countryside solving mysteries was nice and all, she had to be practical; it wouldn't give her much money to live on, and if one of those criminals pulled a gun she'd be down for the count.
She would've asked Fred and Daphne along; they were just as interested in crime fiction as she was - but she had absolutely no desire to be a third wheel, over and over and over again. They were so heavily involved with each other that they were almost painful to be around. Velma sighed, remembering the Famous Five that Enid Blyton had written about. Fred and Daphne and her had been like them when they were younger, everyone all so excited and happy. But times change, and they got older, and she supposed that Fred and Daphne had moved away from those days.
They never had another boy though - and no dog. It was like a hole in her adventures, wanting a Timmy to lead them to clues.
Velma sighed again, watching her breath puff out in the cold Boston sunshine.
"Hey! Pretty lady! Wanna have a good time?"
"Nice socks, sweetheart!"
"Ooh, hot glasses...you wanna play naughty librarian with me?"
Velma grit her teeth and huffed, hurrying past all of the hecklers.
As she rounded the corner, a dog barked.
Startled, Velma twitched her head toward the source of the sound, meeting a homeless man's gaze. He was lean, but shaggy all over, his hair growing unkempt; he looked up at her with bleary eyes, stubble growing unevenly across his face. A brown great dane lay in his lap with its head pressed against the man's stomach. The man scratched its ears.
He looked so lost, but he had to be only about her age. For a moment Velma thought about how lucky she was, before she wrenched her gaze away. She tried to ignore how warm she was. On a closer examination, the man was shivering.
"Bit of money for food?" the man said, his voice cracking. He was so lean - like he was hungry all the time. "For my Scooby, if not for me?"
Velma bit her lip. It wasn't wise to get close to a homeless man, especially since she wasn't poor by any means. But she was a sucker for dogs...
Velma dug in her pocket, pulling out a fiver of loose change. "Here. Feed your dog."
His entire face lit up, and his eyes seemed to clear. Velma looked back at him and had to catch her breath.
"Thank you," the man said, touching only the money and not her hand. He was so grubby, and dirty, but somehow disappointment slammed into Velma as though a van had hit her.
She stared down at him awkwardly.
"...Is that, like, Candle In The Dark, by John Barnes? The one about the floating candle who's actually two thieves?"
"You read crime fiction?" Velma asked, slightly stupefied. She'd forgotten entirely about the book she had been holding.
"Occasionally. Not when I'm without a house, of course," the man said, smiling wryly. "But I read that, like, before I was kicked out. It was pretty good - but I'd be running far, far away from anything like that if it happened in real life."
Velma thought about it. For all of her bravado..."Yeah, me too."
They looked at each other a little longer, until the man's stomach growled in unison with his dog.
Both of the them jumped. The homeless man looked down at his dog for a second, looked at Velma's fiver, and put it carefully into a pocket.
"I'd, like, better go get Scooby and me something to eat."
"A-alright," Velma said. "I-I'd...I'd better get to class."
"I'd ask you what you studied, but I think Scooby'd mangle me if I stayed any longer."
The man got up, rolling the dog off his lap. The dog itself rolled to its feet, whuffing a little. He waved, smiled a smile that poured itself into her heart, and began to walk off, whistling Frank Sinatra's "Strangers In The Night".
"Forensics," Velma called after him.
The man paused, and laughed. "I, like, should've known."
II
"Hey, pretty lady..." one of the hecklers drew closer, and Velma looked around for a way to escape. There wasn't really a way out. The man gripped her shoulder tightly, and leaned in. He smelt like beer and rotten fruit, and Velma wanted to gag.
"Wanna...wanna have a good time?"
Velma closed her eyes tightly and slammed her elbow into his gut, running away as fast as she could.
"Hey! Ohhh, now I'm mad. When I catch up with you, I'm going to have a real good time! But you're not going to enjoy it at all, hohoho."
Velma ran, her breath beginning to come in thick puffs of hot air. Without looking where she was going, she tripped over a curb, and her glasses went flying.
Oh, shit.
She couldn't see at all where she was going - everything was a complete blur to her.
A dog barked.
Scooby - !
She oriented herself towards the sound, the familiar sound, the sound present in her dreams and her daily visits to the corner. She ran desperately on the snow-slick ground, her shoes slipping and sliding every way. The man's heavy breathing sounded behind her, and she almost sobbed. This wasn't how she'd intended to spend a day off college!
"Slow down, little lady, and you and I can have some fun..."
The dog began to bark, louder, and Velma ran towards the sound, the image of the shaggy man crystal clear in her mind, if not in her sight. The man who, after visits numbering somewhere above ten, was more than an acquaintance. Someone reliable.
She ducked into an alley, dodging the trash cans that became evident moments before she would have crashed into them. The man behind her stumbled straight into them, falling in a crash.
Scooby barked in front of her, a brown outline that was right there, and Velma could have shed tears of joy if she wasn't already crying. The olive-green of the shaggy man's shirt stood out against the gray snowy buildings behind them.
"Scooby! Shaggy! ...Ulp," she said.
"Shaggy, huh? Like, that's still one of the best names anyone's ever called me," the man said. Velma's breath caught. She rarely used that name around him, saying hello to Scooby every time she came, and simply talking directly at him. He did her the courtesy of not asking her name, either. Crime fiction was mostly what they'd talk about. It got pretty long, and rather heated on occasion, too.
The crashing behind her intensified.
"Oh, god," she gasped, "Please, help me. There's a man after me. And I can't see. I can't see to run away - I can't see without my glasses."
"Huh, I thought you looked different."
"Please!"
"Luckily for you, me and Scooby are expert runners." The blur extended two blurs. "Hop on. I've carried Scooby often enough; you're much lighter than he is." Scooby whined, and Velma managed a nervous laugh.
She paused, trying to understand how she'd gotten into this situation.
"Hey, little lady..."
Velma rushed forward, not totally sure how to maneuver herself. Shaggy picked her up without even thinking, cradling her to himself.
"I can see why you ran. He's pretty scary. Let's skedaddle, Scooby!"
Velma buried her head into his shoulder as he took off. From the wind blowing through her hair, he must have been some kind of star athlete.
"Hey, you, come back here!" the drunken man slurred.
"Nope!" Shaggy said, "I, like, refuse!" Scooby ruffed.
He smelt like biscuits; like crackers and sweet pastries. Velma rested her head on his shoulder, and clung even tighter to him. The world around them was a bit of a blur, but Shaggy headed around down an alleyway, nodding to its inhabitants as he went by. He opened a door and entered a worn, run-down building.
"I'm lucky, you know, like," Shaggy said, putting her down. Part of Velma wanted to cling to him tighter and not let go, but she did, eventually. "I've got this building to sleep in, when it gets cold. Like, when the first time you visited me was. And the guys outside, like, they get access to some beer every now and then - when they share with me, I use to it to make a fire. I don't drink, like." He smiled at her, and walked over to a pile of...stuff. There was really no other word to describe it. Flattering word, at least. 'Junk' could have been used. So could 'garbage'. And other, potentially even more derogatory, terms.
"There's got to be at least one pair of glasses in here. Look around...me and Scooby'll try to find you something. At least to get you by until you can get another pair of glasses."
"Thanks, Shaggy," Velma said. "You didn't have to do anything like that."
"How could I not? You've given me more money than I've seen in my-" a shadow passed over his face, "-few years, of begging."
Velma bit her lip. "I..."
The building was a blur to her, a dark blur, until Shaggy approached. He knelt down in front of her, and placed something over her eyes.
His features suddenly went blurry, but she could see everything else, too.
"Found one, like, over at 42nd and Main. Can you see?"
"Y-yeah," she said. "I can. Thank you...um...?" She was hoping to get his real name.
"You can still call me Shaggy, if you'd like."
Velma blushed, and Scooby barked in the corner, as though he were laughing.
"Wait! H-here," Velma said, stumbling over her words and fumbling in her pocket. "Here."
She held out a twenty.
"I'm not accepting payment for what I did," Shaggy said. Even through the blur, he seemed sad. He moved away from her, and Velma grimaced, hunching up around herself.
"I'm...buying the glasses from you?"
"They're not worth that much, like."
"Then...call it a donation."
He shook his head. "All I want for 'payment' is your name." The shadow passed, again. "At least, I want to put a name to someone that I..." he trailed off.
Velma took a breath. Something had seemed to be stuck in her throat, for a moment. "I'm not telling you my name until you take the money." It was a bribe. But bribes worked, didn't they? In greasing officials...
He hesitated, looking away for a second. Velma hesitated, herself, her arm beginning to tremble. Shaggy was no official. And he'd saved her. And...she was shocked to realise, she trusted him. And he wouldn't take the money. And yet, he needed -
Shaggy looked back at her, and took the twenty.
All those second-guesses and book thoughts, all for naught. Velma had never been so content. She beamed.
"I'm Velma, pleased to meet you. Forensics student at the Boston University."
"And I'm Shaggy," Shaggy said, his lips twitching up into a smile. "Expert coward, from the streets of Boston themselves."
"We make a fine pair."
"We do."
Velma paused. "...So...while you were re-reading Candles in the Dark, what did you think about Pink Bolt?"
Scooby whined in the corner.
"Scooby hates that name. I might have mentioned it, like, a hundred times or so to him while I was reading it? It was that good..."
III
Velma had switched to wearing an orange shirt in deference to the heat. The daily visits to Scooby and Shaggy were so much a part of her life that even on her off days from the college, she took the shortcut simply to be able to talk to him. It was a routine between them now, to meet up just before ha' past four, and just talk and...hang out, for about an hour before she walked home. Seeing Sha-Scooby, was the highlight of her days, honestly; a little bit of unconditional love did her self-esteem and mood wonders.
Oh, who was she kidding? A little bit of unconditional contentment from Scooby's owner didn't exactly go amiss, either.
Velma rounded the corner.
There was no one there.
Something hit her solidly in the chest, even though nothing actually had hit her there. She couldn't breathe all of a sudden.
Normally when she came to visit Shaggy, if he'd gone away for a moment or two, Scooby'd be there. And he was always there; the nights were warm enough for him to sleep on that street, and he'd told her that the prospect of seeing her had more or less bound him to that corner.
Nothing there.
No Scooby. No Shaggy. Just a quiet street corner.
Velma pinched herself. Maybe it was a dream?
No dream.
No Scooby, no Shaggy. Just a quiet street corner.
Velma walked home, wondering why everything seemed so much more distant, now.
IV
"For your next assignment," Velma read out loud, "You should find four different signs of habitation and label them with evidence."
She sighed, and brushed her hands along the trees in the park. Some kind of fresh air would do her good. All the days seemed to blend into each other, a bland mass - mess? - of things that led into nothing in general. Remembering Shaggy, though, was like looking into a photograph. Sharp lines, and vivid colors, everywhere. She shook her head. Shaggy, for all that she'd learned about him, was just a homeless man. She didn't even know his real name.
Even Fred had seemed concerned, when he'd dropped by. And Fred was a real knucklehead, someone who didn't get feelings - or at least, would never mention anything. He'd worried that she was falling sick, and recommended some kind of medicine.
Daphne'd come by two days later with a bowl of chicken soup. They'd sat and talked a little. That'd been nice.
Velma took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes.
"Velma," a voice said.
Velma whirled around so fast she almost gave herself whiplash. "Shaggy?" she breathed.
The blur in front of her seemed to be a bit sheepish. The brown blur at his side collapsed onto the ground. "Ruh-roh," the dog said.
Velma put her glasses back on and flew to hug him. Moments before she would have touched him, she drew back. "Where have you been?"
Shaggy shrugged. Now that she was looking at him, he seemed to be much cleaner. His olive-green shirt was patched up in places and looked much cleaner, and his stubble had mostly been shaved off until it was a couple of strands on his chin. Scooby rolled on the ground; around his neck, there was a brand-new collar.
Shaggy looked away. "Thing is, Velma, after a bit a homeless shelter opened up, and I managed to get inside."
"So?" Velma said. "And what stopped you from coming to the street corner to find me? You know I keep to a schedule. You could have found me, and told me where you were."
"Yeah," Shaggy said, the corner of his lips rising. "I didn't need a watch after I met you, like."
Velma glared at him and tapped her foot, putting her hands on her hips.
Shaggy looked down, then away. "Thing is, Velma...like, I'm an expert coward, you know? I'm good at running away from things. And looking like I do now, I know you would have expected me to do things that I don't want to do, like, I don't know - study, or something."
"So why'd you talk to me here, if you're so good at running away?"
Shaggy stepped closer, taking a deep breath. He released it. "I may be an expert coward, Velma, but I don't want to run away from you."
He lowered his head, and kissed her.
And then he lifted his head, tilted it to the side, smiled, and said, "I will, like, say one thing: you clearly don't read romances."
"Shut up," Velma said, went bright red, and hit him in the side. "I haven't had much experience."
"That's no mystery," Shaggy said, and cackled.
Velma hit him in the side again.
THE END