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Kurt and Ram, those assholes think they can just do anything. JD knows kids like them. It was always easy enough to pick on the new kid, the weird kid – the sad kid, in the beginning – He learned quickly enough to scare them off, to bare his teeth first and not let them get to the beating up part. The extreme always seems to make an impression.
As entitled as those kids were, as convinced they deserved everything the world had to offer, none of them tried anything with JD after his first “demonstration.” And he never tried anything with them. Just let them asshole it away somewhere else, to someone that wasn’t him.
It never really bothered him. He never stayed long enough to meet any of the people they found to fuck with.
But now, these fucking shitheads had tried something with Veronica .
Veronica, the only good thing left in the entire fucking world, and the fucking leftover Heathers had volunteered her for date rape and the previously mentioned fucking shitheads had tried to distribute said date rape.
I’m going to kill them, he thinks and the thought has come to him before but for the first time, he actually considers it.
Heather Chandler. A bitch of mythic proportions, whose death had united the school and brought a healthier, happier and more open student body. It was tried and tested. Get rid of the bad to preserve the good. Cut away the rotten flesh to save the human.
– He remembers his mom, digging in her garden. He would help her with the planting sometimes. It was technically a chore but he would have done it anyway, watch her pull out flowers and help her press them into the soil. “Pull out the weeds,” she’d say. “They’re bad. And if you don’t take them out, they'll strangle the flowers and the good plants will die too.” It’s an apt metaphor, he supposes –
And suddenly, he’s convinced. It would do nothing but help to get rid of Kurt and Ram. How many other girls have they tried this with? How many other girls who weren’t able to get away? They’d probably thank him for getting rid of those monsters. Heather McNamara, fuck her, but she only called Veronica because it was the only way for her to escape unscathed.
Heather Chandler was an accident and he can tell himself it was an accident, believe it was an accident – oh, just got the cups mixed up, did I really know which mug had what, I didn’t know it would actually kill her – the action of murder an inaction, a failure to save. This would be different.
And yet he finds himself loading the gun far too easily – ich lüge bullets Veronica (it’s both a joke and a cry for help. Haha I’m lying, ich lüge means I’m lying, I’m lying to you Veronica please stop me before it’s too late) – and the plan is set, then in motion and he is behind a tree in a graveyard and he can’t stop now.
Motionless, silent, waiting for the count of three. His finger on the trigger – he learned how to shoot when he was nine, his dad adamant that “a boy needs to know how to use a gun!” his mom certain that this would end badly, “he’s going to hurt himself! Or someone else!” well look fucking here Mom I’m about to hurt someone else. Come fucking stop me – as he stands stock-still. Waiting.
Ram and Kurt are all giggly and stupid (and slightly too comfortable stripping in front of each other, maybe the secret gay lovers theory had some weight to it after all).
Veronica grins. “On the count of three.”
“One,” they all say together, all smiling, though, unbeknownst to them, for different reasons.
“Two.” He prepares himself.
“Three,” he announces as he steps out from behind the tree, already firing his gun.
Bang.
Bang.
– the noise is just as loud as he remembers and he thinks of too-young hands cradling a too-big pistol. “ Easy there son, you want to hold it higher than that. Look through here. Line up the shot. Then pull the trigger. ” He wonders what his dad would say to him killing kids (because as Ram falls, he realizes that’s all they are now. Dead teenagers found in the woods, another statistic for the papers) –
His aim is true – he knew it would be – but Veronica misses, fucking misses, and she doesn’t even care. She’s laughing because Kurt and Ram had a good scare, had a fright, and now it’s over. It doesn’t matter to her if she ends the witnesses because she doesn’t know she needs to.
It’s Heather Chandler all over again.
JD has done something bad and dragged Veronica into it. He needs to solve this, to save her another time and he takes off into the woods after Kurt. Veronica has stopped laughing. He hears her near Ram’s body now (“Ram? Ram? You’re just unconscious, right, Ram?”) and he knows she’ll figure it out soon. He needs to get to Kurt before she does. He needs to do this one right thing.
He understands now. She’s too pure for it. She’ll never be able to kill the way he does, slightly too easily and far too accepting. He is broken but he can build his shattered pieces into something to protect her.
Kurt has made it to the bordering chain-link fence but he can’t quite get over it. He doesn’t understand, still scrambling to make sense of his dead best friend, his attempted date fuck coming back for revenge, her fucking boyfriend who he has already fucked with this year and will not survive to fuck with again.
Our love killed the dinosaurs to make room for us. It will kill you too if it needs to.
JD bares his teeth into something almost like a smile.
Bang.
Veronica finds him there, gun still smoking, standing next to Kurt's body, fallen off the fence.
“What the fuck have you done?” she chokes out and he turns to her, desperate for her understanding.
“I worship you,” he breathes and it’s not enough, it’ll never be enough to explain how much he would give if she just asked. How she is the one good thing left in this entire fucked up world. “I’d trade my life for yours. I’ll cleanse this whole world to make it pure enough for you.” He moves towards her, gathering her up in an embrace.
“Our love is god,” he whispers and for the first time, he actually feels it. Their love is divine power and he’s ready to get drunk on it, to bathe in its glorious purpose.
There is a thin thread of fear in him, a need for her to agree, to understand. “Our love is god,” he repeats, holding her close, cradling her close – just like he did a too-big gun so many years ago. Is she just another excuse for your own choices? – as he says it again, firmer. “Our love is god.”
She finally says it with him, matched desperation in her voice as she croaks out “our love is god” and he imagines, for a second, it is for the same reason.
He hugs her and he pretends he cannot feel the blood dripping off of his hands and onto hers.