Shaggy sat up, yawned, and scratched himself lazily. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he grabbed a pair of trousers off the floor and pulled them on.
"Up already?" Velma said, stifling a yawn of her own. She turned over under the covers, inadvertently rolling herself up in them. With mounting concern, she began to realize she'd trapped herself in the covers.
"You know," Shaggy mused as he watched her try to escape her predicament, "that reminds me - I could go for a breakfast burrito. How about you?"
"I just woke up," she moaned. "How are you already hungry?"
"Suit yourself," he said with a shrug. He tossed on a shirt (he decided to go with green today) and walked out to the kitchen. Velma mumbled something and pulled the covers back over her head. Shaggy was pretty sure it went something like "sbive mfore minfutes…"
By the time Velma arrived in the kitchen, Shaggy was just putting the finishing touches on his meal. Velma gave him a quick hug from behind, nearly knocking the plate out of Shaggy's hand.
"Like, come on, man, I nearly dropped the parsley on the stove!" he said in faux anger.
Velma giggled.
"Do you always put such care into how your breakfast looks?" she asked, an innocent smile on her face.
"Only when I'm trying to impress someone."
He set two plates down, each one with a steaming breakfast burrito on it, covered in hot sauce and with a small ramekin of sour cream on the side. Velma looked them over quizically then cocked an eyebrow at Shaggy.
"I will assume the big one is yours?"
"Like, you know it," he said with a grin, and pulled his plate over to his side of the table. His burrito was roughly the size of a newborn child and the heat coming off of it was enough to raise the temperature of the room.
Velma looked down at her own sensibly-portioned food.
"Shag, has anyone ever told you that you're considerate in strange ways?"
"Nope," he answered, mouth half-full of food. "They usually just tell me I'm strange. Besides, I just figured you'd want a smaller portion."
She smiled, and dug into her food. She was amazed to see that Shaggy had almost finished his by the time she was only halfway through. Shaggy couldn't help notice her staring.
"Want some of mine?" he asked, dabbing at his cheek with a napkin.
"No, but I was wondering, how on earth do you pack so much away?"
Shaggy laughed.
"Practice," he said. "Now if you want to be really impressed, watch this-!"
Velma would later recall this moment as the day she realized that the Geneva Convention should have had a section dedicated to the prevention of culinary war crimes.
When he'd finished licking the plate clean, Shaggy set it back down on the table with a contented sigh.
"Not bad, right?" he asked. He took out a stopwatch. "You know, if you're willing to wait around, I can make another one and we can go for a record."
Velma felt a little ill and pushed her own plate away. She couldn't help interpret some details of her time with Shaggy last night in a slightly different light. It did… explain a lot.
"No, thank you," she said politely.
"Suit yourself," he said, sounding a little disappointed. "Anyway, you ready to hit the road? I want to get back on site and really dig in to our good friend Lillard. Like, get to the bottom of all this, you know?"
"Actually, I was hoping to talk to you, first," she said. "I just… I don't want to have any miscommunications."
Shaggy gulped. "Miscommunications?" he asked.
"Right. About… last night."
Shaggy forced a grin and did his best to lean back in his chair casually.
"What about last night?" he asked, innocently.
"Well…" Velma's face flushed bright red. "I don't really know where to start."
"A change, for you," Shaggy pointed out, snickering.
"Hush. Shaggy, what are we, exactly? Friends? Lovers?"
Shaggy's mind raced. His eyes darted to the clock on the wall, ticking with a slowness that seemed to taunt him.
"I haven't really thought about it," he said. Better to err on the side of honesty than try to scheme his way out of this conversation, he decided. "Last night was just… a lot. And you were there for me. It felt right."
"It did," she conceded, face still very red indeed. She looked at him, a sudden ferocity in her eyes. "Two years ago, we parted as friends. Maybe even as something more. And then… and then you just disappeared on me. The calls stopped, the letters dried up, and you were just… out of my life for a long, long time."
Shaggy shook his head.
"Like, from my perspective, you stopped calling me, Velma. I used to write you once a week, but your replies came in slower and slower. Eventually, it was just…" he trailed off, searching for a way to express his feelings without hurting hers.
"Too much effort?" she supplied.
"Yeah."
They sat in silence for a good while, neither one daring to look the other in the eye. Shaggy began nervously tapping his foot under the table, and Velma cleaned each lens of her glasses five times in a row.
Shaggy broke first.
"It was a real dick move of Fred to go dying on us right as we got together," he said, trying to lighten the tension. Velma shot him a look that could have cut diamonds, but let out a long sigh and leaned back in her chair.
"Bad timing, that's what it was," she said. "Do you remember how hard Daphne tried to keep everyone together afterwards?"
"I sure do," he said. "Like, she wanted in on everything we did together. We couldn't see a movie without her asking if she could come along."
"And she always ended up crying."
"Every time," he said, nodding. "It was like she had to be around us but couldn't stand the sight of us. It was part of the reason we…"
"Yeah. The reason we split up." Velma crossed her arms and threw her head back, staring at the ceiling.
"I don't know anything about psychology," she admitted. "I wish I did. I wish I could have helped her."
"I'm not sure there was a therapist on earth that could have helped her." He slouched down in his seat. "What happened to her, anyway? Last I heard, she went back with her parents back in Coolsville."
"That's the last I heard, too," she said. "I think she went off the radar after that."
"Hmm," Shaggy concluded.
The pair sat there, staring at the ceiling for a while. The smell of burrito did a marvelous job at slowly lessening the tension in the air.
"So, what changed?" Velma asked, breaking the silence.
"What do you mean?"
"Shaggy, you've never been a particularly forward person."
"And you always played hard to get," he said, flashing a smile.
"Dodging the question," she said, rolling her eyes.
Shaggy made a face.
"Well, I don't know, really," he said. "Maybe I just… wanted to make a change. We've been dancing this whole will-they-won't-they dance for, like, as long as I can remember. It's our status quo. It's just… the thing we've always done. But I'm tired of being pushed along by the past, by not being able to move on and make changes. I've always done things the way that I, well, always did things."
He rubbed at his face, struggling with his words a little.
"It's… exhausting to be trapped in the past," he said, finally. "I feel like I'm stuck in a loop, trapped doing the same things over and over again. Like one of those dreams where a monster is chasing you and you try to run away, but the hallway just repeats itself forever and ever. You go in one door only to come out somewhere else in the same place."
"That's… oddly specific," Velma said, her head cocked to one side, "but I know what you mean. I think."
"I just… I don't want to be dragged along by what I used to be. I'm not even sure I want to be a private eye, but it's what I know, and that's comforting. But it's not, like, comforting in a good way, like a BLT or a cup of hot coffee. It's comforting like a drug. It puts you to sleep. It makes you feel too tired to change, too tired to shake things up. Know what I mean?"
Velma blinked, her eyes surprisingly watery. She dabbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater and nodded.
"Yes, I do."
Shaggy took a deep breath. "Well, maybe it's time for change. Maybe it's time to stop clinging to the past. Make a break with tradition."
Velma put her hand on the table, invitingly. Shaggy placed his on top of hers.
"Maybe you're right," she said.
"Maybe I am."