DOES THIS MEAN THE KIDS HAVE AN UNCLE SHAGGY??? HAS CLINT RIDDEN IN THE MYSTERY MACHINE?? I AM SO DOwN FOR ALL OF THIS
It’s been years since Laura helped solve mysteries with her friends Fred, Daphne, Shaggy and his dog, Scooby Doo, but sometimes when Lila runs into the kitchen and collides with the open cabinet door, Clint will hear her exclaim ‘jinkies!’ before asking if Lila is okay.
It had all started with him going undercover in a little burger joint in Coolsville – he’d scoffed at the name, but Agent May had insisted there was something off about the construction project, near the old children’s playground. The locals said it was haunted, and, as much as Clint entertained the idea of ghosts, he knew it was all mumbo jumbo, and if it could move objects, it meant he could hit it with an arrow.
It’s the third night, and this lovely girl has come in every night since he started, to have the same ridiculously over-sugarred coffee he’s ever had to make, but she sits at the counter, and does what he thinks is homework. The first night, she’d been studying ancient Icelandic Runes, so he’d thought she was majoring in the Old Norse degree at University, but the second night she had brought along an electrical grid blueprint she had spent three hours studying.
Tonight, she’s mumbling about inconsistencies in tax deductions. He’s about to serve her the third coffee with whipped cream, milk and sugar of the evening, when she looks up at him through those square glasses.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” she asks, and he shrugs. He’s got a whole backstory to go with his undercover alias, so he doesn’t bother too much with the bravado. He does struggle with the slight blush he feels – she’s cute, and intriguing.
So, as he puts the oversized mug next to the ledger she’s going through, he smiles at her. “Nah, I’m just staying a couple of months. Looking for a way to get out west, to California, but my car broke down some miles out of here, so now I’m here, serving you coffee.”
She looks at him, measures him up and down once or twice, then looks down at her papers again, as she exclaims a “Liar, liar, pants on fire,” before promptly resuming analyzing the data on the sheets in front of her.
Clint frowns.
“You don’t believe me?”
She smiles, pushing the glasses up to the brim of her nose and looks over at him. “Please, I’ve helped figure out at least twice as many tax evasion and construction hazard cases as what you’ve bench pressed this morning, your little cover story won’t fly.”
Clint decides three things in the second that follows: that she’s the prettiest girl he’s ever seen, that he wants to get to know her, and that she’s absolutely, and completely bonkers, because the second that follows, a blue and green van stops outside the diner. A weird guy with shaggy pants, followed by an oversized grand danois walks in, and the girl adjusts her orange sweater, trying to look as if she was working hard.
“Hey, Velma, you wanna like, go find that guy by the playground? Fred says we’re going tonight,” the guy says, and Clint swears the dog says something too, but he doesn’t understand it.
The girl – Velma – looks over at him, a glint in her eye. “Looking forward to hearing your real story next time, cowboy,” she says, getting off the stool and folding the ledger, placing it under her arm.
Fast forward a couple of years, and Clint is watching in dismay as the dog – Scooby Doo – and his friend – Shaggy – have eaten the wedding cake, spreading frosting all over the place.
Kate is standing to the side, holding Lucky’s leash, while Laura – Well, Velma, but she liked her middle name better – tried to reassure her parents that no, she wasn’t sad about the wedding cake.
“Dad, whose idea was it to leave these two alone in the presence of a cake anyway?!” she’d said, before Clint had suppressed a laugh. Barney had laughed then too, and as Fred and Daphne began laughing too, soon everybody was giggling at the sight of a Great Dane covered in purple frosting, trying to hide behind a table it was decidedly too big for.
(When Cooper was born, Clint picked Nick as Godfather, and Laura picked Daphne as Godmother. When Lila was born, Clint picked Melinda as Godmother, and almost had an aneurysm when Laura picked Shaggy as Godfather.)
(Turns out, the kids love it when that too-dangerous-to-be-safe van comes up the driveway.)
(Scoob still goes out to the tree where they buried Lucky, after he had to be put down because of old age. Strangely, Scoob never seemed to age, so when it was time to invite a Lucky #2 into the family, he came with Laura and Clint (and Lila and Cooper and Shaggy) to pick the perfect Golden Retriever puppy from the neighbors who’d just gotten a litter.)
The first time Clint had said ‘jinkies’ on a mission though, Natasha had smacked him so hard across the face, he’d had a black eye for three weeks afterwards.