White Lies and Rationalizations (3/3)
Title: White Lies and Rationalizations (3/3)
Author: Evie (jenedorspas)
Pairing/Character: Veronica, Lamb, Veronica/Lamb
Word Count: 8,555 (21,495 total)
Rating: R
Summary: The summer after Veronica graduates from high school, she finds herself dealing with memories-and Lamb.
Spoilers: To be safe, through 3x09 (“Spit & Eggs”)
Warnings: Language, Angst, Sexual Situations
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of Veronica Mars. No copyright infringement is intended; I just miss Veronica Mars!
Author’s Notes: I’m eternally grateful for the comments I received on the first two parts of this. A bit of a disclaimer, though: I’m posting part three even though it veered off in a weird direction and no matter how much I fiddle with it, it still doesn’t feel quite right; however, if I keep messing around with it, I’m going to drive myself crazy. So…here you go. Comments & constructive criticism, please, because I’d like to try writing more Veronica/Lamb!
Part One
Part Two
Lamb drove home a week later to find the silver Saturn sitting outside his apartment and Veronica sitting, leaned up against his front door.
“Are you lost, little girl?” he asked, approaching her with a sigh. He’d had a particularly annoying day, was particularly tired, and was particularly looking forward to being done wearing polyester and dealing with bullshit for the day. Veronica Mars was not going to help.
“I need to talk to you,” she said, standing up.
“Jesus. What now?” He asked, moving her aside to unlock the door. “I thought I told you, Mars. I don’t want a subscription to your issues.”
“That’s funny,” she said, with a sarcastic smile. “Did you read it on a t-shirt at Hot Topic?”
“Enough, Mars,” he said, turning to face her. He stood against the doorjamb, blocking her from just inviting herself on in.
“There’s something you should know,” she said, in that overly serious, fucking cryptic way she was so fond of.
“No thanks,” he said. “I’m out of patience. Why don’t you go pull this little routine on Logan Echolls instead?”
He shut the door and locked it, left her standing there, went to change out of his uniform. She waited a good five minutes before she knocked again.
“Tell me, and then leave,” he snapped, almost before he’d opened the door.
“Can I come in?” she asked coldly.
“No,” he said.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
Lamb blinked a few times. God, it really was a fucking soap opera. “Excellent, Mars. Maybe the kid will have the best of your mother’s and Logan’s father’s genes.”
“It’s not Logan’s,” she said, and her lips were starting to set into a thin line. That was when he realized why she was there.
“Oh, please, Veronica,” he said, and then laughed. “Maybe you should think about the evidence before you run around making accusations. We used condoms, every time.”
“Not,” she said, and then paused and swallowed, and he noticed that her eyes were getting glassy. “Not the first time at the beach.”
It took him a few seconds to process.
Oh, fuck.
He let her in.
“Are you even sure?” he asked. It came out in a hissed whisper, even once they were safely behind closed doors.
“I thought you might say that,” she said, with one of her forced little smiles, and then she reached into her bag and brandished a bouquet of different pregnancy tests.
“Jesus-Mars-gross, get those things out of my face,” he said, taking a step back and holding out a hand to keep her at arm’s length. She complied, and he sighed with momentary relief.
“Fuck,” he said, dropping his arm. She didn’t say anything. “I don’t fucking-I just-I need to think.”
He left her standing there, went straight to the bathroom and locked himself in, and threw up until he was dry heaving.
She knocked on the door while he was brushing his teeth, trying to get the taste of the whole thing out of his mouth. He opened the door but kept brushing, and she just came in and sat on the edge of the bathtub, watching him.
Lamb tried to concentrate-concentrate on the situation at hand, instead of running through all of the different ways Keith was going to kill him, bring him back to life, and then kill him again. He sat down next to her, and she didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at him, just stared at the floor.
“Veronica,” he said awkwardly, stopping to clear his throat. “I…what do you want to do? What do you want me to do? Because, I just-just tell me.” She didn’t say anything, and was starting to make him nauseous and dizzy all over again. He reached out and put his hand over hers, where it was resting on the side of the tub, but she just jerked her hand away, as if his was on fire.
“Nothing,” she said, sounding defeated at first. But then she looked up and said it again, a little stronger. “Nothing. Just like always: I’ll tell you the facts, and you can do absolutely nothing.”
“I don’t-” he started, but she wouldn’t let him finish. Not that he would have quite known what to say anyway, but that was beside the point.
“This can just be one of those things you pretend not to remember,” she said, coldly, standing up. “In fact, I suddenly don’t even know why I’m here.”
* * *
He tried calling her, but she never answered, so he gave it a couple days and then tried finding her at the coffee shop instead, but she was never there. He went in the last time wearing his uniform and told the manager he was looking for her, that it was a police matter, and the manager said she’d asked for some time off and suggested he try her home.
Yeah, right. Home. Where Keith would answer the door and want to know why he was there. Or, worse, he’d already know, and he’d be waiting for Lamb with a shotgun. No, that wouldn’t help anything. And it’s not like he really knew what the fuck to say to her, anyway. Talking, he thought, wasn’t really their thing.
He tried tracking her phone again, but there wasn’t a signal. That was when he figured she must really not want to talk to him. He called and left one last voice mail, telling her to call him back or he’d come up with a reason to have her arrested, and left it at that.
She replied to his voice mail with a voice mail, must’ve just hit reply because his phone didn’t even ring, and all it said was that she’d “take care of it,” and he assumed he knew what that meant. He replied back with a voice mail telling her to call him, and a week went by and she didn’t, so he figured that was that.
But it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. And of course, when she finally called back, it was in the middle of the night. It was like the universe’s way of torturing him, using Veronica Mars to deprive him of sleep.
“Can you come over?” she asked, her voice small and edgy on the other end of the phone.
He rubbed his eyes, trying to wake up enough to understand what was going on.
“Veronica? What, right now? It’s-” he paused to look at the alarm clock. “It’s fucking two in the morning.”
“Lamb. Please.”
“Is this like, you’re luring me there so your dad can kill me and dispose of my body under the cover of darkness?” he asked, sitting up in bed and blinking. He wasn’t ready to let on that he was going to actually do it, that he was actually already reaching for the jeans he’d left in a pile on the floor.
“My dad isn’t home,” she said.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Just…come over,” she said. “Please?”
She was crying when he got there, didn’t even try to hide it, just opened the door with red eyes and wet cheeks.
“Jesus, Veronica,” he said. “What-”
“I think I’m losing the baby,” she said.
“Okay,” he said, and blinked a few times. “But, I thought you were going to-I thought you wanted to-”
“I hadn’t…decided what…” she said, trailing off. “I know. It’s stupid. I didn’t want this anyway. I don’t know, it just-I just…”
Lamb didn’t really know what to say, wasn’t really prepared to be someone’s fucking therapist. Bracket that, he thought, and tried to stick with thinking about what he could do.
“Do you-do you want to go to the hospital or something?”
“I don’t-I don’t know, I talked to a nurse who said I probably just have to…let it…”
“Fuck,” he said. He sighed and rubbed a hand across his eyes, his face. She let him in, and they sat on the couch, quietly, not looking at each other. Out of the corner of his eye, he could tell that she was hunched over with her arms crossed across her stomach. “When is Keith getting home?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and her voice sounded strangely strained. “Maybe in the morning. Maybe tomorrow. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Lamb thought about it for a minute, and then stood up.
“Get your shit,” he said. She looked up at him, all confusion and tears. “I’m taking you back to my place.”
“I don’t want-”
“And I don’t care,” he said. “I’m not staying here and risking your dad coming home and proceeding to murder me. And I’m sure as hell not leaving you here alone and risking you dying of some freakish complication. Mostly because that just brings us right back to your dad murdering me. So that doesn’t really leave many other options.”
Veronica was still for a minute, and then she got up wordlessly and disappeared off into what Lamb imagined was something like her evil lair. She returned with a bag over her shoulder and just nodded at him, so he took the bag from her and led her outside, put her in the cruiser and drove her back to his place. She hugged her knees to her chest and stared out the window silently the whole way.
She announced that she wanted to shower when they got back to his place, and he sat and waited, listening to the water running for a good half hour, listened to the water shut off followed by a good fifteen minutes of silence, before pounding on the bathroom door.
“Mars!” he yelled. “I’m coming in.”
“I’m fine,” she said, and he was pretty sure it was the worst lie she’d ever told him.
“You have three seconds to make sure you’re decent,” he responded, and when she didn’t say anything, he opened the door, cautiously, not quite sure what he was going to find.
She was wrapped in a towel and sitting on the bathroom floor, grimacing and biting her lip.
“Jesus, what the fuck,” he said, kneeling down next to her. “Are you going into shock?”
“No. Dumbass,” she said, adding the insult almost as an afterthought. “It just…hurts.”
Lamb looked at her for a minute, assessed the situation, and then stood back up.
“Get dressed. I’m taking you to the Urgent Care center.”
“I don’t need-”
“I don’t give a shit, Mars,” he said. “I’m not taking any chances that you’ll die some tragic death on my bathroom floor and then I’ll have to dispose of your body.”
“I can’t go to the urgent care clinic,” she said. “Especially not with you. What if someone sees-”
“Oh, right,” he said, flatly, to show just how very unconcerned he really was. “Because you’ve never had experience crafting elaborate lies to hide what you’re really up to? You can tell them I found you drunk in a gutter on the side of the road. Or I’ll tell them I picked you up for prostitution. You can have the whole car ride over to think up your cover story. So get dressed and let’s go.”
Lamb left her there, and she emerged, five minutes later, walking like she was still in pain. Veronica didn’t say anything, so Lamb didn’t either; he just picked her up, put her in the cruiser, and drove over to the urgent care center. He liked to know that he could be a nice guy, when he wanted to be. But mostly he didn’t want to deal with any other Veronica Mars shit on his conscience, because he really didn’t want to go back to not being able to sleep. Fuck that.
But he did drive the extra few miles over to the urgent care center on the wrong side of Neptune, the one where no one of any consequence was likely to be. Because she did kind of have a point; he couldn’t really think of any good way to explain away why he was driving her to the urgent care center at three in the fucking morning.
“I don’t need to go to the urgent care clinic,” she said when they were already halfway there, as if she’d suddenly remembered that she wasn’t in the business of just doing what he told her to. “I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t be difficult,” he snapped. “This is already shitty enough.”
When they got to the urgent care center, Lamb dropped Veronica off at the door so she didn’t have to walk and went to park the car. He sat next to her while she gave him her shoulder and focused on filling in her paperwork. He sat alone in the waiting room and read all of the battered copies of People and Good Housekeeping and Golf Digest that were littered around the room. And if anyone recognized Lamb, well, they didn’t say anything.
Veronica reappeared in a wheelchair pushed by a doctor, clutching a prescription for pain pills.
“The wheelchair is just a standard precaution,” the doctor assured Lamb as they walked outside.
“Okay,” Lamb said. It wasn’t like he had asked.
The doctor helped Veronica out of the wheelchair and into the passenger seat. And then she leaned down to Veronica and said, “Take care, Miss Reynolds,” and Lamb had to clench his jaw to suppress a laugh. God only knew what Veronica had told that doctor.
“Thanks for bringing her in, Sheriff,” the doctor said then, and Lamb realized that this was directed at him, and the doctor was holding out a hand to shake his. Jesus, what the fuck had Veronica told her?
“No problem,” he said, plastering on his best Serious Sheriff look and standing up a little straighter.
“And, of course, we keep our patients’ information completely confidential,” the doctor continued. “Just make sure she gets those pills. Goodnight.”
Lamb watched her go for a good ten seconds before walking around to the driver’s side of the cruiser and getting in, dumbfounded. He started the car and got halfway back to his place before he could even find the words to talk to Veronica.
“Do I even want to know what the fuck you told her?” he asked, and then added, “Miss Reynolds?”
“My mom’s maiden name,” she said, and she just kept staring out the window, didn’t even turn her head to look at him.
“Yeah, whatever,” he said, “I meant about why the good doctor was thanking me for bringing you in and talking about confidentiality.”
Veronica didn’t answer at first. Lamb was starting to think she had fucking sold him out after all when she turned to look at him with a strange, rough laugh that sounded like it was being dragged over shards of glass in the back of her throat.
“They asked about the father, if he was with me,” she said. “So I told them that I got roofied and raped and never knew who the father was.”
She continued explaining that she’d told them it was still an ongoing police investigation, that her family lived in Texas and she was here all on her own for college, that the police were taking care of her while they worked on the case. And Lamb might have cared, might have listened and been impressed by her ability to conjure up completely absurd stories and get people to believe them, if he hadn’t suddenly felt vaguely like crying for no fucking reason.
But he didn’t fucking cry, hasn’t for a long time, and certainly wasn’t going to start on account of Veronica Mars, and definitely not in front of her. So he just clenched his jaw and stared straight ahead and tried to tune her whole fucking presence out. And he was so busy doing that that he almost forgot about the fucking pharmacy and had to brake hard and make a screeching turn into the parking lot. He saw Veronica wince as her body was thrown forward, straining against the seatbelt.
“Sorry,” he muttered, pulling the car into a parking space by the door. “Give me your prescription.”
“No. I’ll go,” she said. And she did, leaving him sitting there in the car, alone. Lamb sighed, and looked up at the sky. It was six in the morning; the darkness was starting to lift, and the sun would be up again soon. And now that he could be reasonably sure she wasn’t going to up and die or some crazy shit, he really just wanted to go the fuck back to sleep.
It was like some sick fucking joke, he thought, leaning his head back against the headrest and closing his eyes. The whole fucking thing had started because he kept having those fucking nightmares and couldn’t sleep. Because she had come in talking about being raped, and it turned out it maybe wasn’t a big fucking lie like Lamb had thought. And now it was ending in an even worse nightmare while he was awake, coming around in some fucked up, ironic circle to Veronica saying she’d been raped and Lamb being the only one who knew it really was a lie this time-a lie that was told at least half for his benefit.
The only thing that was still true, he thought, was that he was totally, utterly fucked. Veronica Mars really was going to be the death of him. And so Lamb just closed his eyes and laughed, because he really didn’t know what the fuck else to do.
He jumped when Veronica got back into the car, giving him a suspicious look. The kind of look like she thought maybe he was losing it, which was maybe true.
“How did you fill a prescription for narcotics that was written to Veronica Reynolds, anyway?” he asked, snatching the bag away from her to take a closer look at the prescription slip. She gave him a look that was half-smile, half-cringe, and he rolled his eyes. “You have separate fake IDs for your pseudonym? Jesus. You are one seriously abnormal nineteen-year-old girl.”
“I made it when I was working on-”
“I don’t want to know the details of your illegal activities, Mars,” he told her, holding up a hand to emphasize his point. Not to mention she’d just gotten the sheriff of Balboa County to drive her to the store to use that fake ID.
Yes. The death of him. Definitely.
* * *
Veronica was curled up in a ball at the far edge of his bed with her back to him. Her hair was damp, and she was wearing one of his t-shirts even though he was pretty sure she’d brought her own. She was also wearing boxer shorts that had penguins or some shit on them, and those were definitely her own.
Lamb had gotten her into bed, gotten her a glass of water and doled out a dose of the pain meds, and had then gone to call the station to tell Inga he wasn’t coming in because he had shit to take care of. Now, he walked around to the other side of the bed to look at her, to evaluate whether or not she really was asleep. He figured she must be, because she was all quiet and her face finally looked relaxed and almost peaceful. He made a mental note to tell her, next time she was getting all angry and twisting her face into one of those evil glares-which would probably be as soon as she woke up, knowing her-that she’d better be careful or her face would stay that way. He sighed, took of his pants and shirt, and got into bed, trying not to disturb her. She didn’t stir, so he figured the painkillers were kicking in.
He slept until the phone rang, and it took him a sleepy, confused minute to realize that it wasn’t his phone; it was Veronica’s. He sighed and fell back into bed as he listened to her answer it. It was Keith; he could hear the voice, tinny through the phone. She told him she was studying with Wallace, that everything was fine, that she’d see him when he got home. Then she called someone and asked whoever it was to take Backup out.
“How do you do that?” he asked when she’d hung up the phone, rubbing his eyes. It was two in the afternoon; the room was still mostly dark, but he could tell from the slivers of light at the edges of the blinds that it was another sunny, beautiful day outside.
“Do what?” she asked, rolling over to face him and then curling her body back up into a ball.
“Go from asleep to crafting false alibis in less than five seconds?”
“You want me to tell my dad where I really am?” she asked. Lamb figured she was still half asleep, or maybe still doped up on the narcotics, because she said it with more of a sleepy, small smile than the glare or general derision he would have expected.
“No,” he said. “But one day, Mars? You’re going to get caught in your own little web of lies.”
She smiled, and shook her head to indicate that she didn’t believe him.
* * *
Lamb stayed at home with her for the better part of three days, going in to work for a couple hours at a time and then heading back home to make sure she wasn’t either unconscious or burning his house down. When he left the station at one in the afternoon on the second day, Sacks asked him if he was okay, and Lamb snapped that they weren’t teenage girls and they didn’t need to talk about their bad days or their feelings or their menstrual cramps. It kind of wasn’t fair, but it kept Sacks, and all of the other deputies, out of his way for the next week, so it was worth it.
As for Veronica, he was amazed that they hadn’t killed each other yet, but it was probably because she slept most of the day. Usually right in the fucking middle of his bed, no less. He thought it was maybe time to start weaning her off the narcotics, but at the same time, Veronica? Coming off narcotics? That did not sound like something he wanted to witness.
“I think you need to stop taking the pain meds,” he told her during one of her few waking hours, while they were sitting on the couch eating pizza and watching reruns of some bad detective show.
“I already did,” she said, around a mouthful of pizza. “I haven’t been taking them.”
He eyed her suspiciously, and she nodded her head in the direction of the kitchen, where the little orange canister of pills was. “See for yourself.”
“If you’re not taking them, why the fuck are you sleeping all the time?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she shrugged, looking way more interested in examining her piece of pizza than his questions. “Because you don’t have Skinemax so I get bored? Hey, here’s a better question: why do you care?”
“Still just trying to keep you alive so you don’t come back to haunt me as some sort of supernatural being,” he said.
“As much fun as it would be to annoy you with the aid of supernatural powers, I’m not really in danger,” she said. “The doctor said I probably didn’t even need to go in.”
“Well, you never know,” he said. “And it’s still not an easy thing to go through.”
“You speak from experience?” she asked, with an eyebrow raised. Then she plastered one of her patented fake smiles across her face and said, “Oh, you! Here I was thinking I was special, but it turns out you get all the girls knocked up!”
“Uh, no,” he said. “Definitely not.” She was still waiting, so he rolled his eyes and added, “It was my sister. I was, like, fourteen. I don’t know.”
Veronica narrowed her eyes at him like she was trying to suck the whole story out of his brain with some kind of mind-reading vacuum power.
“Stop it,” he snapped. “Psychoanalyze something else.”
“The coffee table probably does have more brain activity,” she responded in mock musing.
“I guess you’re feeling better,” he muttered, turning his attention to the pizza and taking a swig of beer. “Hey, here’s a thought: are you ready to stop haunting my house with your human presence and go home?”
Veronica frowned. “As tired as I am of the accommodations at Casa de Bachelor, I’m not really ready for Dad’s House of Interrogation.”
“Your dad’s home?” Lamb asked.
“No,” she said. “Tomorrow night, I think.”
“Well, you should be back by then,” Lamb said. “We don’t want Keith getting all suspicious.”
“Yeah,” she said, after a while. “Yeah, I guess I should get back.”
* * *
“Come on, Mars,” he called, standing by the door impatiently. “Your taxi back to the wrong side of town is waiting.”
She emerged from the bathroom, holding her toothbrush, and gave him one of those fake smiles.
“Well, well well,” she said. “Someone’s in a hurry to get back to doing a mediocre job serving the public!”
“I’m in a hurry to get to the deli for a sandwich before my two o’clock meeting,” he said. “And if you make me miss lunch, I’m going to do an excellent job citing you for every time you jaywalk or roll through a stop sign for the next three weeks. So move your ass.”
Lamb drove over to her apartment the old-fashioned civilian way: no siren, no lights, no speeding through intersections. Nice and slow. It might have given them time to talk, if he’d had anything to say. Instead he just chewed his gum and stared straight ahead, at the car in front of the cruiser that was doing the excruciating oh-shit-a-cop’s-behind-me routine of driving at exactly the speed limit. Veronica was silent, too, and it was funny to think that a month or two ago, Veronica Mars just shutting the hell up for once would have sounded perfect. Now the silence just gave him room to feel awkward and wonder if there was anything he should do to make sure she was okay. He wondered if the whole thing was going to send her off the deep end, if once she’d gotten over excessive sleeping, he’d be picking her up off of sidewalks outside of tequila joints like her buddy Dick Casablancas.
He carried her bag to the apartment for her, even though she looked at him like he was some kind of moron for doing it, and then he had to stand in the Mars’ living room like an idiot while Veronica cooed at Backup about how she’d missed him. He thought about just leaving, but he felt like there should be some sort of…something. Like maybe they could agree to pretend that the whole thing had never happened and shake on it to seal the deal.
“Well,” he said, squaring his shoulders and hooking his thumbs around his belt buckle, “If you need anything, Mars…”
“I’ll be sure to call someone else,” she responded breezily.
“I’m serious,” he snapped, but it came out sounding almost sarcastic.
“Seriously fucked up, maybe,” she said, with a smirk. Lamb rolled his eyes.
“Well, that makes two of us, Mars,” he said lamely, because he couldn’t really disagree.
Veronica just smiled, and she had her hands jammed down into her pockets and her shoulders raised as she stood there, looking at him. Lamb wondered what the fuck he was supposed to do-was there etiquette for this situation? Had he ever fucking cared about etiquette? No, and no, but that didn’t make it any less awkward.
“Come here,” he said, gruffly, and put his arms around her because somehow it seemed like the right thing to do when saying goodbye to the woman who had, at least for a few weeks, been carrying his bastard child. He was surprised when she acquiesced, relaxed her shoulders and put an arm around him, letting her cheek rest against his chest.
It was strange, because he hadn’t really touched her at all for the last few days. He definitely hadn’t hugged her. Hell, he wasn’t sure he’d ever hugged her, if you excluded certain sexual positions.
He thought about telling her he was sorry, because he was, sorry that she’d had to go through the whole thing. But not sorry like it was his fault, because she was the one that put the moves on him on the beach, anyway. So Lamb smoothed her hair and kissed the top of her head, because he couldn’t think of any words to say, and talking had never really been their thing, anyway.
Veronica was the one who pulled back, tilted her head up, and let him kiss her forehead. She was the one who pulled him, ever so slightly, down to kiss her lips. Lamb didn’t really know what the hell this was, because kissing had never really been their thing, either, if you excluded foreplay. And this definitely wasn’t foreplay, because Keith fucking Mars could walk through the door at any minute. Not to mention Veronica would probably never let him fuck her ever again.
Not that he wanted to. Well, not that he’d admit to it.
She pulled back and looked up at him, but didn’t say anything. Her gaze was almost completely blank and expressionless, and he might have asked what the hell was going on in that crazy head of hers if he’d actually cared. And if he’d thought she’d actually tell him the truth.
“Stay out of trouble, Mars,” Lamb said, finally, even though he knew she never would. And then he got the hell out of there, before Keith could come home early and get suspicious. He drove over to the Deli and got his sandwich and went to the meeting and did paperwork and went home. She didn’t show up at the station, drunk in an alley, or anywhere else. Life went on without Veronica, and Lamb didn’t really mind it that way.
He had a hunch she wasn’t going to be able to stay out of trouble for very long, anyway.
* * *
It wasn’t until Halloween that he saw her again, which is a longer stretch of staying out of trouble than he would have predicted from Veronica. The call came in about a robbery at Hearst, and Lamb found himself in a dorm room boasting petty crime and Veronica, peering out from under a black wig and Logan Echolls’ embrace.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here? An illegal gambling establishment,” he said, standing in the doorway and surveying the scene.
“Underage drinking,” he commented, walking into the room. Then he turned his attention to Veronica and Logan. “Public displays of affection,” he said, with disgust punctuated an exaggerated shudder, just for effect, before turning his back on them. “It’s like Sodom and Gomorrah in here. Barker, start collecting IDs from everyone in the room.”
“Uh,” Veronica said, “We had our wallets stolen.” She gave him that look, the one that meant catch up, you total fucking idiot, and he didn’t know what would be worse: blaming it on sheer stupidity, or on being slightly thrown by walking in to Veronica all cuddly with Logan Echolls. Jesus. Veronica being cuddly, period, was strange enough on its own. He didn’t really give a fuck who her boy toy of the moment was.
He didn’t have to come up with a comeback, though, because the Rent-a-Cop on the other side of the room called over to Lamb about the student running the casino.
“Good work, J.V.,” Lamb snapped. “Varsity’s taking the field now. We’ve got it from here.” Perfect. Veronica Mars could get the best of him, maybe, but Rent-a-Cops would always be a few steps down the food chain.
The case was easy-he arrested Weevil, just like old times. And, if past routines held, putting Navarro in jail meant that Veronica probably wouldn’t be far behind. He had to laugh, just slightly, as he drove back to the station with Weevil, because the only thing more common than Veronica getting herself into trouble was one of the men in her life being the center of a police investigation-and calling her to fix the mess.
Sure enough, it was less than 24 hours before Sacks came into his office and said Veronica was there to see Weevil. Lamb smirked.
“Sacks tells me you’re here to see Weevil,” he said, striding out toward her. “Planning on helping him beat another rap?”
Veronica smiled, but said she was just there to get her necklace back.
Well, this was a first. One of her boys was in jail, and she was down at the station, but not to accuse Lamb of arresting the wrong person?
“I don’t understand,” he said. “You actually believe that the bad guy did it?” Before Veronica could go all squinty-eyed and come up with some scathing retort to turn this little encounter into a fight, Lamb launched into the robot and announced: “Does. not. compute.”
It worked, because she smiled. Not a genuine smile, but not one of those forced, not-really-a-smile-at-all smiles she was so fond of.
“You must have been fun in the 80s,” she said. He straightened up and smiled. He was still plenty of fun, and he considered reminding her just how fun he could be, multiple times in one evening, but she launched into questioning him about Weevil’s arrest.
It was a few days later-after a run-in with Keith over some LAPD investigation of a missing man and the usual Mars investigative techniques of questionable legality-before she showed up again, suddenly appearing in the doorway to his office at the end of the day.
“Did you get to the next level of Minesweeper, Deputy?” she asked, smirking at him.
“Mars,” he said, tossing his pen down on the desk. “Go ahead. Barge right in.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” she said, sitting down across from him and pulling a file folder out of her bag. “So-and brace yourself, this is going to be something you’ve never heard before-you’ve arrested the wrong guy.”
Lamb smirked. “And you are going to help Weevil beat another rap after all!”
“It’s just this silly thing I have,” she said, “You know, raindrops and roses, noses on kittens, and arresting the actual criminal responsible for the crime. Just a few of my favorite things.”
“Interesting,” Lamb said, putting a finger to his lip and pretending to take a moment to ponder such a strange suggestion.
“But mostly, I still want my necklace back,” she said.
“A necklace?” he scoffed. “Why don’t you just go put another quarter in the vending machine outside the Sac-n-Pac and get a replacement?”
“It has sentimental value,” she said. “That probably doesn’t compute for you either, because it requires, you know, feelings.”
Lamb decided to take it as another excuse to do the robot. Truth be told? He really hadn’t had enough fun in the 80s, and he might as well make up for it now.
“1983 called,” Veronica said, cutting off his fun before it even really got started. “It wants its dance moves back.”
“Fine,” he said, with an exaggerated sigh. “So what d’you got?”
“Remember this guy?” she said, sliding a photo across his desk. “He was one of the campus police officers that were there after the robbery.”
“Yeah, okay, so what?” he said.
“He and his partner were the ones that robbed the casino,” she said. “They pinned it on Weevil because he was an easy mark, and got the masks and prop guns from the film department’s equipment truck-which they recovered after it went missing.”
Veronica laid out the rest of the case for him, and it checked out. He leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, and smirked.
“Very good, Nancy Drew,” he said.
“Hey,” she said, with a fake shrug, “No big deal. I’m just doing your job for you.”
“My job,” Lamb said, sitting back up, “has me too busy to spend time investigating the theft of some rich college kids’ watches at fake-gunpoint at an illegal dorm-room casino.”
“That’s all well and good,” she retorted, “but in case you’ve forgotten, you did manage to take some time out of your busy schedule to arrest an innocent man whose criminal record can’t really stand another conviction.”
“I would hardly call Weevil innocent,” he said. “But isn’t he lucky to have Veronica Mars, Super Sleuth around to investigate and save the day? Hey, did you happen to find anything else out while you were poking around? Maybe stumble across Jimmy Hoffa?”
Veronica smiled, but didn’t respond, and Lamb noticed her eyes glaze over and her expression go a bit hollow, just for a second.
“Oh my God,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper, leaning forward to look at her with wide eyes. “You did find Jimmy Hoffa, didn’t you?”
“No,” she said, her eyes pulling back to focus on him. “My specialty is more with digging up the metaphorical skeletons, Lamb. You know that.”
“Ah yes,” he said, leaning back. “I pity the poor soul whose metaphorical closet you’ve been poking through.”
It took him a few seconds to realize-from the hint of guilt in the eyes and the slight twisting of her lips into a shadow of a cringe-that he was the poor soul she had in her crosshairs.
“What, Mars,” he asked, straightening up again. He didn’t know what she’d gone and done, what the fuck she thought she’d dug up on him. It couldn’t be good, but he doubted it could really be all that bad, either. Veronica Mars couldn’t get to his skeletons with her PI passwords and her tracers and bugs. Not the real ones, anyway.
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing. I just-you should pay a visit to Harrison, his address is on the file.” She averted her eyes, focusing on shoving things back into her bag and standing up to leave.
“Wow,” Lamb said. “It must be bad if you’re not even going to gleefully throw it in my face.” His tone was sarcastic, but the words came out slightly tense, measured, maybe because he knew it was true.
Veronica didn’t say anything, just half-smiled and headed for the door, and she was almost out before he added, “Do you really want to withhold information from a police officer, Mars? Isn’t that what they call…obstruction of justice?”
She turned around, smiling a forced smile like she knew he was fucking with her and she didn’t really have the patience for it. And yet, for some reason, she didn’t just tell him to fuck off and continue on her way out the door.
“I found out that exactly 94 percent of Neptune thinks you’re a jackass,” she said, sweetly. “But I’m pretty sure you already knew that.”
“Veronica,” he said, and pointed to the chair. “And shut the door.”
She sighed, and shut the door, but she didn’t sit. She just stood, inhaled a sharp breath and then exhaled, looking off into the distance like she was trying to find the words.
“I never knew that you had a sister,” she said, finally, and glanced at him briefly, warily, before letting her gaze fall to the floor.
“Well,” Lamb said, “Now you can complete the family tree in your Sheriff Lamb Scrapbook.”
She didn’t take the bait, didn’t slip back into their groove of sarcastic, witty banter.
“Just fucking spit it out, Mars,” he said, because now he was losing patience. Why did she always show up at the end of the day, to stand between him and the evening? Probably, he thought, because he’d been sleeping better, so the universe had to find a new way to torture him using Veronica Mars.
“You have…a younger sister,” she said, slowly.
“Wow,” he gasped, mockingly. “You really are an amazing detective!”
“If you were fourteen when your sister had a miscarriage, then she would have been eleven, maybe twelve,” Veronica said, looking at him again.
Lamb was quiet as he realized where she was going with it; quiet as he waited for the other shoe to drop, to see exactly how far she was going to go. She was silent, though, her eyes shifting from the wall to the window to him to the wall.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “Okay.”
“And when girls that young get pregnant…and then run away from home at age 16…that typically points to abuse,” she said, carefully. And she watched him, warily, as if she thought he might burst into tears or throw a tantrum or spontaneously combust or something, but all Lamb did was sigh. He wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of anything more.
“Mars, I don’t really need this happy little private rendition of This is Your Life,” he said. “Some things are better left alone. In the past. You, of all people, should know that.”
She nodded, just slightly, and didn’t say anything. Lamb was betting that she’d pulled at that thread and found more out, that she could play this little game of let-me-tell-you-what-I-know-about-you all night if he let her. And he could play that game, too; he could bring up all the shit she didn’t want to remember and twist the knife a little, let her see how it felt. But he was tired, and not really in the mood to pick a fight with Veronica that would end in yelling and tears. Not right now. Lamb frowned; maybe he was going soft. He made a mental note to make up for it next time she came around the station to be a pain in the ass.
“Back to the task at hand, Mars,” he told her. “So you want me to go arrest this guy and get your necklace back? Then I’m going to need you to do something for me.”
“Me? Do you a favor?” she asked, her voice dripping with mock surprise.
“No, not a favor,” he said. “If I were going to ask you for a favor, it would be sexual in nature. This is more quid pro quo.”
Veronica smiled, crossing her arms across her chest and leaning against the doorjamb. “What do you have in mind?”
* * *
Lamb looked over and grinned at Sacks when they heard Harrison tell Veronica he’d need a day to get her necklace back over the wire.
“We got him,” Sacks said, as Lamb gunned the motor and flipped the sirens on. Lamb almost laughed as they got closer to the house and he heard Harrison ask her, “What did you do?”
Thing is, Lamb might have asked her the same thing, because he didn’t think she’d ever come to him with the evidence, ever actually worked with him instead of running off and getting herself nearly killed trying to enforce justice on her own. He didn’t know what the fuck had gotten into her, but he wasn’t about to actually ask, because this was exactly the kind of Veronica he liked-the kind that does the investigating and reels in the bad guy for him to arrest in time for the evening news.
They found credit cards and watches in the house, and Harrison was definitely the guy, but he also definitely didn’t have her necklace. So much for quid pro quo. Lamb guessed she’d just have to be satisfied with the prize of Weevil’s freedom.
She was waiting outside of the house when he left the rest of the search to the boys, asking about the necklace, so he broke the news to her.
“Maybe the other one has your necklace,” he suggested. “We have a car on the way over there right now.”
Veronica just sighed, stroking the spot on her collarbone that Lamb guessed the necklace belonged. He thought about offering to take her over to the other house, but then the local news trucks pulled up and it was time to claim his own reward-the glory.
He turned back, though, just for a second, because he couldn’t resist.
“Do you see how well this works when you play by the rules, Veronica?” he said, leaning in to whisper it into her ear. He didn’t give her a chance to respond.
* * *
She’d apparently listened, though, because she turned up in his office not long after to talk about the rapes at Hearst. He was more interested in trading sarcastic comments and insults with her than whatever her little investigation had turned up until she brought up Mercer Hayes.
“The kid who ran the card room that got robbed,” he said, leaning forward. Now this was interesting.
“That’s him,” she said. Then, noticing his expression, she asked, “What?”
“We finally found the stolen cashbox, and…along with all the money, we found something interesting,” he said. “Two vials of GHB…the same date rape drug the rapist used on two of his victims.”
They just looked at each other for a minute, digesting the information. Then Lamb pressed the button on his phone and called for one of the deputies to get a warrant to search Mercer Hayes’ room.
“Hey. Is that the necklace? You found it?” Lamb asked, turning his attention back to her. He might not have noticed if he hadn’t been letting his eyes wander down her neck, across her collarbone, down to-
“Yes,” she said, reaching up to toy with the necklace. It broke the serious expression on her face into a smirk. “Found it around the neck of the brattiest little girl in Neptune, who happens to be Harrison’s daughter.”
“Well, good,” Lamb said, with a smirk. “And now it’s back in its rightful place, around the neck of the biggest pain in the ass in Neptune. Who happens to be you!”
“And with no help from the most incompetent Sheriff in Neptune. Who happens,” she said, pausing to point to the nameplate on his desk and look back up to him as if suddenly making the connection, “to be you!”
“You know, you say that, and yet you still keep coming back here and asking me to investigate things,” Lamb said.
“I come in here to harness the power of the badge on your shirt and the gun on your hip, not so much for you,” she said, with a smile. “And since I was your bait with Harrison and you didn’t get my necklace back for me, I’d say you now owe me a favor.”
“Oh, I’ll do you a favor,” Lamb said, with a lurid smile. Veronica paused for a second, and then just rolled her eyes and laughed, shouldering her bag and walking out the door without a response.
* * *
Lamb hadn’t been working the night the boys got the call from Hearst about the rapist, but Sacks had called to tell him. It was one in the fucking morning and Lamb had just fallen asleep when the phone rang. And he was still half-asleep as Sacks started yammering about how they knew who the rapist was, that Veronica had been attacked and drugged and was now at the station with Keith, and that Keith was pissed about something to do with a bomb threat.
Right. Veronica. Of course.
“I’m on my way in,” he told Sacks. “I want to talk to her.” But by the time he got to the station, Keith had already taken her home.
Lamb left it until the next day, and then he thought about calling her, thought about going over and telling her he needed to personally take her statement or some other bullshit excuse, but he figured it wouldn’t really do much good anyway. Sacks had said she was more or less okay, and Keith had tracked down Mercer and his accomplice and was bringing them in, so it wasn’t like there was much Lamb could really do. But when Logan Echolls was arrested for taking a baseball bat to a police car in broad daylight, Lamb took one look into the kid’s eyes, smiled, and told Barker to put him in Cell B. Lamb gave it a good 20 minutes before he went back and pretended to be shocked to find Mercer in a bloody mess.
It was a few days later when Lamb finally saw her, and he didn’t even have to make up a bullshit excuse or go out of his way. He just answered the knock at his door, around nine that night, to find Veronica standing there.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, frowning, after giving her a once-over to make sure she was generally intact.
“You owe me a favor,” she said, her arms crossed across her chest.
Lamb rolled his eyes and mirrored her posture, crossing his own arms and frowning down at her. Of course she needed something. Of course she was coming over to make demands on his night off.
“I told you, Mars,” he said, with a sigh, “I only trade in sexual favors, especially during non-business hours.”
Veronica was silent for a few seconds, just staring at him. And then her lips just twisted into a small smile.
“I know.”
Oh. Oh.
Lamb leaned against the doorjamb and smirked at her while he considered this little turn of events. Maybe he was going soft, because he’d never had to stand around thinking about a booty call before. Then again, that was before Veronica Mars and her circus of disasters had started coming around.
He thought about the last time she’d shown up unannounced, what a clusterfuck that had been. He thought about how most of the men that came into Veronica’s life ended up jailed or run away, dead or accused of murder. How even when they’d established a little working truce, shared information on the various crimes that seemed to follow Veronica around at Hearst, she was still calling him up and pretending to be that hot newsanchor Vasquez to weasel information out of him. One day she was working with him and the next she was tricking him; she pried into his business and then came to him for help; even when she was fucking him she was probably fucking with him.
He thought that maybe the only time he could ever know for sure that she wasn’t lying to him was when he was inside of her, when her toes were curling and her body was tensing. When her fingernails were digging into his flesh and her breath was warm against his neck. When her eyelids were fluttering and the only sounds she was capable of making weren’t words at all.
And that was exactly why he was completely and totally fucked. Exactly why even though Lamb knew that she was going to be the death of him, he moved to the side and let her in.
* * *