Chapter Text
“Hey, we’re having a movie marathon tomorrow,” Owen says as she’s picking her things up after a Friday afternoon lecture she definitely attended, judging by the carefully written notes scrawled on the page in front of her, but that she retains absolutely no memory of writing.
Yay for mandatory courses.
“Just saying,” he adds when she doesn’t immediately reply, in that careful way he uses when he’s making completely sure that she knows there’s absolutely no pressure on her to accept.
She loves him, but she’d love him a little more if it didn’t sometimes feel like he was trying to gently domesticate a feral kitten with her.
Of course, that’d be easier to argue if she’d managed to assemble a friend group of her own in the first year she’d been here. If she could shake the feeling that she’d only be a disappointment, a burden, to anyone who did get to know her. Not that knowing that makes her hackles raise any less at his tone.
“I don’t know,” she says, unwilling to give in that easily. “Is Rich going to be there?”
Owen shrugs. “I’ll poke him if he starts going on about your epic love affair if it helps.” He laughs, dancing back out of the way of a poke of his own.
Ugh. What more is it going to take for Rich to get through his head that they are not going to happen again? Even the once had been a mistake. Sure he’s not ugly, nice enough — honestly, way too nice for her, at least before they’d slept together — and clearly into her, and she’d been horny enough one evening after a study group that she had figured what would the harm be in indulging him just the once?
In retrospect, the answer to that’s a little too obvious.
Still, what else is she going to do tomorrow? She’s keeping up with all her courses at the moment, and it might be nice to have some actual human contact this weekend — her roommate definitely not counting for these purposes. And she genuinely likes most of Owen’s friends and tolerates, well, Rich these days.
“Has Becca started stress baking yet?”
He smirks triumphantly, like he’s won the argument. “I’ll put in a request for her flapjacks, just for you.”
“I’ll think about it,” she says, unwilling to give him more than that.
“Okay — same Bat time, same Bat place,” he says before briefly looking off into the distance. “Actually, maybe make that a couple of hours later than usual. We’re planning on hitting a party tonight, so it’s probably going to take that long for most of us to be up to anything.”
It’s obvious why he isn’t asking her — it’s not like her reticence around parties is a secret or anything — but it still stings, a little. Another part of the college experience that she’s being denied.
All of a sudden, it’s like a switch flips within her. Fuck it. It’s not like she’s at Westerberg anymore. If there’s even anyone from there attending here, she doesn’t know them. And she refuses to let those assholes control her any longer.
“Where’s it at?” she asks impulsively. “Maybe I’ll join you there.”
He stops, looks at her. “Really?” His surprise is far too obvious, cutting into her like a blade.
She glowers at him. “Don’t make me regret this.”
He holds up his hands in surrender. “Not another word,” he says, and gives her the location. She really is getting the authentic college experience — it’s a frat house and everything. Maybe there’ll even be a keg stand. “We’ll be getting there around nine, but if you want to walk there with us, we’ll be gathering at my place around eight.”
“No promises,” she says and walks away before she can say anything else she can regret.
Her palms are a little damp by the time she gets back to the dorm. What had she been thinking? It’s not like parties have been anything other than trouble, or if she’s really full of nostalgia for some mythical experience. If she really wants to get drunk and make mistakes, it’ll probably be less effort — less embarrassing, too — to just steal some of Owen’s scotch and sleep with Rich again.
She doesn’t need to prove anything, especially not to some people she’s never going to see again.
But.
There’s still that seed of stubbornness within her that says they don’t get to rule her any longer. And maybe she can find some of that fun that everyone else seems to find in such gatherings.
It’s only when she’s back in her room that her mind moves onto the inevitable next step — what is she going to wear to this thing?
She guesses she could just wear what she’s currently got on. But…
Please, Veronica. With a little effort, you could be almost… very.
She hates the fact that she can still hear her voice in her head. It’s not like she’d even known her for that long. Worse, she knows the voice is correct, has seen the miracles effort could produce.
Not to mention how much of a target it could make her.
But not now. Not here, with no malign demiurge to rain destruction down on her for a moment’s indiscretion. And it isn’t as though she’d thrown those gifts away, even if she had stored them in a box in the back of the wardrobe where she couldn’t see them.
Fuck it. For one night only, the Heathers’ version of Veronica is going to ride again.
The end result is… well, not perfect. It’s all too easy to see the flaws that two years of neglect have left in her technique, not that she ever had that much practice to begin with. But the wolf whistle Owen gives her when she turns up at his place makes her feel like it was worth the effort.
“Wow, Sawyer. I didn’t know that you had anything in your wardrobe apart from jeans and t-shirts.”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh, do fuck off.” She resists the urge to ask him if he thinks it’s too high school, if she looks like the kid trying too hard she couldn’t help seeing in the mirror before she left; looks around the living room for reassurance instead. Asha is rolling her eyes, but she’s an asshole, anyway. It’s what Veronica — mostly — likes about her. Pretty much everyone else seems at least mildly impressed. And Rich…
Rich is standing there, looking at her, mouth slightly open.
Okay, there may be a downside to turning up looking like this. Also, figures he’d be into this fantasy version of her.
“Come on, then,” she says, in an effort to change the subject to literally anything else. “Isn’t there a party we’re supposed to be getting to?”
Nerves set in as they approach the frat house, as the pounding music starts to vibrate her bones and the first whiffs of alcohol and cigarette smoke begin to fill her nostrils. Just for a moment, she’s back there, the night she torched what was left of her high school experience.
Then Rich uses her distraction to finally move up next to her. “Want to grab a dance once we get there?”
He’s so not her high school experience — not popular enough to even think of approaching her when she had ridden with the Heathers, too preppy for her at any other time — that she can’t help but laugh with relief.
He draws back, hurt. “Sorry,” he says shortly as he turns away, and that’s so not what Veronica meant that she can’t help but catch his sleeve before he can fully retreat.
“Sure,” she says. Encouraging him is… not what she’d been planning, but she wants to be seen as a bitch even less. Doesn’t want to cause Owen drama when she’s still not sure why he even bothers with her in the first place.
The relieved and slightly besotted smile Rich gives her in return doesn’t exactly help, though, and she makes a mental note not to drink too much tonight. The last thing she needs is bad decisions Veronica to make an appearance.
Thankfully, she manages to lose him after the promised dance — darting into the kitchen to grab a drink, then using the crowds of people to break line of sight. It’s not too hard to get involved with people she doesn’t know after that — she might be a little overdressed by the standards of this party, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t people, mostly boys, who’ll appreciate her nonetheless. By the time she next catches sight of Rich, she’s in a group of people discussing music. Well, more accurately, a couple of guys having very loud opinions that everyone else is supposed to take a side on. She catches one of the other girls rolling her eyes at a particularly egregious bad opinion and shares a smirk with her.
But the important thing is that she can do this. She can actually move in these waters without being laughed at. She wasn’t broken by high school after all.
It’s in this vague sense of euphoria that she notices that there’s been a shift to the atmosphere of the party. It’s still loud, raucous, everything it was before, but now the gravity in the room has shifted slightly, like the passage of an unseen planet in the outer solar system that’s pulled everyone’s attention to a point Veronica can’t quite see.
Then she comes into view, and it all makes sense.
It’s unfair, is Veronica’s first thought. Because it is. Veronica might wear jeans and t-shirts every day, but this woman has somehow managed to elevate them into an art form. The battered leather jacket probably helps. Where the clothes hug her curves, it’s to show them off to best effect. Where they’re baggy, it’s almost worse, the whisper of what might be more tantalising than the display. And the holes, rather than seemingly merely being the result of normal wear and tear…
And her makeup game, striking and bold without being garish, showing off her short blonde hair without washing it out…
Ugh.
Veronica looks away, focussing on the cup in her hand instead, draining the last of the dregs. Paying any more attention to the woman seems dangerous, like staring into the sun too long. Even looking away, it’s like there’s an afterimage burned into her retinas.
Definitely time to get another drink instead.
And it’s in this state of distraction that she makes her next mistake. She’s so wrapped up in choosing which drink she’s going to fill her cup with next — and absolutely, positively nothing else — that…
“Hey,” Rich slurs from behind her, obviously a fair bit drunker than when she’d seen him last. “Fancy running into you here.”
She freezes, then pastes a polite smile onto her face before turning around. “Hey,” she says as she’s greeted by an alcoholic blast to the face.
Rich is right there, in her face, way too close, swaying slightly in a non-existent breeze. “I was just thinking… People make out at parties all the time, right?” He raises a hand to her face. “You’re reaally pretty, ‘Ronica.” He sways towards her, and there’s literally nowhere for her to go.
She’s fairly sure that he didn’t mean to back her against the counter like this, will probably be mortified if she tells him later, but… That doesn’t change the fact she’s all too aware of the position she’s in, of her lack of options if things go bad, about how much bigger than her he is. Of how nothing’s actually happened yet, and everyone she’s here with are much closer friends with him than her. “Hey,” she says again. “Could you give me a little space here, bud?”
His brow wrinkles in confusion, but he doesn’t move and she’s just about gearing up to take more drastic action, taking careful note of where his instep is, just in case — and fuck the consequences with Owen and his friends — when a voice like a whipcrack slices across the ambient noise. “Fuck off, dipshit. No one wants you here.”
Apparently the tone is sharp enough to slice through Rich’s drunken haze, judging by the hurt look on his face and the shamble away, and Veronica should feel nothing but relief, but instead her stomach knots only tighter even before recognition catches up with her.
It’s the girl she spotted from across the room, but she’s not a friend, not even a disinterested third party…
“Well, well, Veronica Sawyer,” drawls a Heather Chandler who’s very differently dressed to the last time Veronica saw her. She critically looks Veronica up and down, her bloodstained mouth curved in something that is anything but a smile. “Apparently you really are incapable of finding a look that someone doesn’t hand feed you.”
Her chest tightens and she has to force her eyes to meet Heather’s, has to drive her fingernails into her palms to try to remind herself that she’s not at Westerberg, that Heather can’t ruin her life anymore. “Fuck you,” is all she manages.
The curve of Heather’s lips deepens. “Fuck you? Ever the fucking wordsmith. No wonder you never made it out of Ohio.”
The words hit her like a slap across the face. She grasps for something to say, something witty, something to prove that she’s something other than the failure that Heather so clearly thinks she is, but like a nightmare her mind is blank, and the only thing she can think to say is to repeat the words, “Fuck you,” and storm off out of there, leaving Heather the field of battle.
Fucking Heather Chandler. Two years out of Westerberg and she’s still ruining Veronica’s life.
She never liked fucking parties in the first place.
“…and it just feels like a threat, knowing she’s out there, knowing that at any moment I could round a corner and she could be right in my face, all over again, with that stupid smirk of hers, ready to enact senior year all over again,” Veronica complains into the phone.
“Maybe she’s moved on?” Martha suggests softly.
Veronica snorts. “Please. Like that’s any more a part of her dictionary than myriad.”
Martha giggles. “Still, maybe it’s not going to be a problem. After all, if this is the first time you’ve seen her in over a year…”
“Yeah, but now she knows I’m out there…” Veronica trails off darkly.
“Well, don’t let her spoil your life. You’re not at Westerberg anymore. She only has the power over you that you give her.”
That’s very easy for Martha to say from all the way over in New York. “Yeah,” she says dubiously. “Maybe.”
“Anyway,” Martha says in a more upbeat tone. “It’s been a while, so let me fill you in on what’s been happening in my life…”
It’s been three days since Veronica ran into Heather again and she hasn’t been able to get her out of her head, and there’s literally no one here who’d understand where she was coming from, exactly how much of a heinous bitch Heather Chandler is, so she’d resorted to calling Martha to rant.
She only half listens to Martha’s tale of tribulations and triumphs, all told with an underlying easiness she hasn’t heard in Martha’s voice since pretty much kindergarten. It’s not that she resents Martha for getting out, it’s just… difficult.
She still remembers the day she’d sat down with all her acceptance letters from colleges up and down the east coast, riffling through them as she gloried in the fact that they all wanted her, Veronica Sawyer, that soon she’d be free of this place and never have to come back…
Remembers her parents shuffling into her room, apologetic looks on their faces. Her mom telling her that the factory her dad worked at had just laid off half its staff, that, sure, her dad still had his job for now, but…
A helpless shrug.
Remembers them pushing the OSU acceptance letter towards her, saying that it’s a great college and much more affordable. Practically a full ride, really.
Remembers having to smile through the feeling of ashes in her mouth, having to reassure them that of course it was fine, that she was more than happy to go there.
Fuck, it feels like even more of a joke now than it did then.
Sometimes she still thinks that if she’d really fought, then maybe she could’ve found a way to make it work, maybe found a combination of grants and loans and sheer gumption to make it out of Ohio, but with everything else going on in her life, the sure bet had seemed the safest.
It wasn’t as though she’d had the energy for anything much back then.
“It’s been good to hear from you again,” Martha says after she finishes. “Good luck with avoiding Heather.”
“Thanks.”
“Still, it’s good to know that she landed on her feet after, you know, everything.”
Veronica rolls her eyes. “Please. Like she ever wouldn’t.”
And that’s the problem with bitching to Martha. She’s far too good hearted for her own good.
Still, maybe it’s nice as well.
“Miss you,” she adds before hanging up.
“Hey, stranger,” Owen says as he drops down into the seat next to her, making her jump. “Long time, no see.”
She gives him a flat look, doing her best to still her suddenly racing heart and resisting the ridiculous urge to glance around to see who might be looking. “I literally saw you in class on Tuesday.”
He claps one hand over his chest. “Yes, but you ignored the empty space next to me and hence broke my fragile heart.”
She attempts to maintain her composure, but can feel the edges of her lips twitching. “Maybe I just wanted to get away from your smell for one lecture.”
He gasps dramatically. “Well, maybe I should just take my smelly self away.”
She gives into impulse and rolls her eyes. “I guess you can stay.”
He relaxes properly into the seat. “Seriously, are you alright? You took off pretty quickly on Friday without saying anything, and didn’t make it to the marathon on Saturday.”
“Sorry,” she says. “I guess I haven’t been to a party in a while, and needed Saturday to recover.” Not technically a lie. “I should have called to let you know.”
“You were fine, though, right? There weren’t any… difficult conversations?”
She looks around so quickly she almost gets whiplash to see him watching her carefully. “It’s fine,” she snaps.
There is no world in which she wants to explain anything about Heather Chandler. ’She was my high school bully’ just sounds so… childish. And the fact that said bully can still get to her like this, even more so.
“You sure? Asha has threatened to beat Rich up for, quote, being an annoying dick.”
Oh. Rich. Right. Suddenly it feels like she can breathe again.
“Oh, no. Don’t worry about it. He was just drunk. He didn’t do anything.”
He tilts his head assessingly, then shrugs. “Sure, whatever. I think she’s going to be disappointed not to have the excuse to inflict violence though.”
She huffs out a laugh. “Sorry to be a disappointment, I guess.”
She does her best to bury Heather’s words, Heather’s disdain, Heather’s very presence in a world she thought she’d escaped from her and everyone else at Westerberg, but she can’t quite manage it. Can’t help herself from obsessing over her late at night when she should be going to sleep. Heather’s like a splinter of glass buried under her skin, only awaiting the one careless movement to dig in further and bring blood welling to the surface all over again.
Finally, she decides fuck it. It’s not as though constantly looking over her shoulder just in case Heather chooses that moment to pounce and ruin her life all over again is improving it. More than that, she refuses to concede one solitary room of space on this campus to her. The shadows of Westerberg have kept her from parties for too long.
It’s time to start attending them again, and if she happens to encounter Heather again… Well, this time she’ll be prepared.
Of course, first of all she needs new clothes, never mind the state of her bank account. There’s no way in hell that the next time Heather sees her, Veronica’ll be wearing cast-offs that Heather helped her get. She has even less intention of wearing her day to day clothes — they’re far too close to what Heather was wearing when she saw her, only way less flattering.
She needs… She needs a new look.
It takes time. She spends weeks haunting the mall because she finally caves and begs Asha and Becca for help. Thankfully it doesn’t take too much grovelling — and only a moderate amount of bribery by offering to pay for lunch — to get them to agree.
Still, even with all that, it takes a while.
Becca gives a loud enthusiastic wolf whistle as Veronica comes out of the cubicle, but she’s done that for pretty much everything Veronica’s tried, so she looks at Asha instead.
A careless shrug. “It’s alright, I guess.” Which is pretty much as glowing as Asha gets.
Veronica turns to look at herself in the mirror again. She… doesn’t hate what she sees. The black mini-dress hugs her curves without showing too much, and it certainly doesn’t have the straight lines of the clothes the Heathers had chosen for her. She feels sexy and confident in a way that — for the first time in years — doesn’t remind her of high school.
“Okay,” she says. “I’ll take it.”
Becca claps her hands excitedly. “Now to accessorise!”
Right.
In the end, she gets loaded down with various articles of chunky jewellery — ‘You need options, Veronica,’ and even some black cat eye glasses which she absolutely doesn’t need but that Asha assures her that ‘don’t completely make you look like a dork.’
It’s weird, being the focus of other people’s — other girls’ — attention like this again, kind of pleased and shivery in a way Veronica doesn’t quite know what to do with. It’s definitely not like being with the Heathers again, which felt more like she was a product being shaped for display, and certainly neither Asha nor Becca are anywhere near as handsy as Heather Chandler ever was, but…
Yeah, Veronica doesn’t entirely hate it.
And then she’s ready and waiting for the OSU party scene and, in specific, for Heather Chandler.