FIC: Carve your name
Title: Carve your name
Fandom: Veronica Mars
Pairing: Veronica/Lilly, some LoVe
Rating: NC-17 for sexual situations
Word Count: ~4000
A/N: Written for the alternative ending smutathon at vm_library. Contains femslash and a certain degree of angst. The title is from the placebo song Every you Every me. The line The world has moved on borrowed from Stephen King's dark tower series. Thanks to Nell kwatchingoverme for the beta. Thanks to Madame Librarian taken_with_you for being fabulous.
August 20th. It’s hot, practically stifling. Hotter than usual. Hotter than it ought to be, even in Neptune. Even on Lilly’s birthday.
Had Lilly still been around, they would have gone out, to the beach, maybe, to the ice-cream parlour then back to laze by the pool in her parents house. Veronica could laze by her own pool, now, if she felt any inclination to do so. Her fiancé - she never thinks the word without adding a slightly ironic mental twist of her mouth - made sure to get one when he chose the house. Veronica had given him a list of acceptable zip codes, and he had chosen the house, one weekend when he didn’t have to work. She had seen it online, and agreed that it was sufficient.
“Go ahead. It’ll do the two of us and won’t clean us out.”
“We can afford better.”
“What would we want with a huge house? This one has well proportioned rooms and four bedrooms plus office space for the both of us.”
“And a pool.”
“Besides which,” she continued, ignoring his interjection, “You chose it, so you must have seen something you liked.”
“Actually, I got bored and decided it was the best of the bunch.”
In some ways she can’t believe they went ahead and got engaged, can’t believe that this is the guy she’s going to spend her life with. With whom she’s going to spend her life. But then, she can’t imagine him being elsewhere, coming home to anyone but him, or indeed, him coming home to anyone but her. They won’t last forever, if they follow the trend in America, but then again they’re used to each other and rely on each other, and there are worse things to build a marriage on. The sex is still good, too, not as mind blowing as she remembers it being back in college when he fucked her in the reference section of the library on a Friday night when even the chess club were having Firefly marathons and Parker was waiting for him at some party, but still fun and enjoyable, if a little stale at times.
Ah, yes. Parker. Now working in a publishing house somewhere as the PA to the manager’s PA. Veronica got a phone call from her last weekend - not that Parker is interested in Veronica’s life, but her boss’ boss is being stalked, hence Veronica is stuck in her car on a day when it’s roasting even at eight in the morning. And Logan’s got the convertible.
Yes, Logan. It’s fair enough, after all it was he that bought her the car as an engagement present. Still, she sort of resents being stuck in his Impala - beautiful though it may be - on a day like this. So she’s driving down the freeway, cursing the fact that vintage cars don’t have air-con, heading for one of the towns near to Neptune.
It’s odd, driving past the familiar places again, seeing the familiar place names and looking over landscapes that just aren’t quite how she remembers them. She finds the place unsettling somehow, like a ghost town, alive in another era with people she not only doesn’t recognise, but doesn’t even see. Children playing in the street who have the faces of her classmates, that guy from the drama club on a billboard. The world has moved on, she thinks, not without a tinge of sadness.
Parking is easy in the huge underground parking lot, which feels icy after the baking heat of the road and the air above ground. The concrete pillars remind her of every other parking lot in the universe, and it’s comforting, in a strange way. She calls Parker on her cell as soon as she has any signal, and Parker answers, sounding sort of relieved.
“Thank God you’re here, someone’s left a dead and frozen rabbit on her desk and she’s flipping out. Come to the fourth floor and keep turning right until you get here. It’s through the glass doors.”
And suddenly she’s back in the routine, filling her spare hours over the summer doing what she knows, while Logan does his internship at a big accountancy firm and she waits for grad school to start up again in September. Working as a PI was easier when she cared genuinely about each case, or when it was her classmates that asked her to do them a favour, rather than picking up the divorce cases and feeling so sordid because she’s young and engaged, but isn’t sure if she’s in love or not. Still, she’s not going to be doing it forever, she’s going to be a lawyer, having pussy-footed around with ideas for five years after college before deciding to go to grad school. Logan went travelling, met up with Mac in some market in Nepal. She was with her husband, who was doing missionary work there. Veronica’s vaguely glad that Mac’s happy, she likes that Mac married a good guy and is helping people somewhere. Educating adult women, according to her last email, back in February.
Working with (for?) her fiancé’s ex girlfriend proves odd. Parker likes her for some reason, or maybe she’s just relieved that she’s getting something done. Veronica spends a fair amount of the time she spends in the office looking out of the window, and then she asks to see a list of all the employees who should be on site at that time. She’s given three pages of them, neatly subdivided into job brackets and areas in which they work. She counts four people working on the gardens and check the list.
“When did the new gardener get hired?” Why do you need a garden anyway?
“What? They’ve all been here years - my father hired them.”
“There are three on the list, look out of the window.”
The manager looks out of the window and nods. Veronica didn’t bother to learn her name. Maybe it starts with an E. The manager takes the elevator to the ground floor. Veronica uses the stairs and gets there first.
In the end it’s one of the easiest cases ever. She picks out the impostor gardener - he’s under the age of seventy, it’s not hard - gets him trapped, he cries and admits everything, the manager calls the police and he’s escorted off the premises, complete with his very own restraining order to come. Her mental query about the garden never gets answered.
Parker’s boss’s boss writes her the check, and she pockets it without a smile.
“I’m glad I could help.” She hands over her card. “If you ever need me again. I’ll find my way out.”
She keeps turning left until she gets to the stairs and heads for the parking lot again, the chill hitting her like a brick wall as she pushes open the fire door. She connects her MP3 player to the cassette player and plays some Guns n’ Roses, Logan’s music. The part of her head that’s still fifteen tells her, Lilly’s music.
Driving out of the parking lot is like driving into hell. If it was hot at eight, now the road is an inferno. She imagines the news, that horrible nasal woman on the radio, “And in Neptune we are having the hottest summer on record…” Yeah, whatever, shut up.
Suddenly Veronica’s mouth is dry, but not for water. She was in college last time she had more than one glass of wine. She’s too wary of her mom to even set one foot on that road. Logan drinks, to a certain extent, but he’s young - free, white and over twenty one. She mixes strong coffee, drunk black and bitter, with a glass of wine, some of the whiskey her Dad gave her on one of her birthdays. There’s that Port she’s never even looked at - Logan hates it for some reason and she hasn’t even tried it. But what she wants is something that’ll burn the backs of her eyeballs, something dark and smooth, with a twist to turn her tongue inside out. It’s almost four in the afternoon, and she’s jonesing for alcohol.
She compares the landmarks around her with her mental map of Neptune. This is the road that Lilly threw up on, on the way back from her twelfth birthday party. Veronica repeated it when she graduated college and moved back home with her Dad over the summer. The road into Neptune. The road out of Neptune. She supposes it’s the same thing. If she takes the next turn off - she does it automatically - and finds herself in the slightly seedy district of Neptune. Lilly’s favourite bar was on this road, not that Logan ever knew about it. Veronica doubts he’s even aware of its existence now, which is just as well, since its name is Purr and it’s actually a lesbian bar.
Lilly liked that lack of pressure, not having guys around except the ones that were technically bio-female. She persuaded Veronica to come with her once, and it was the most relaxed Veronica had ever seen Lilly. She flirted outrageously with the bar maid, got them umbrellas in their drinks. God knows how Lilly got them in, since the two of them had only been sixteen at the time and had hardly looked older.
Twelve years later and the place still smells the same as she walks in the door. Slightly smoky, slightly sweaty, a little sweet like mixed floral perfumes rubbing off onto tanned bare shoulders. There are all of two people there at the moment, other than the bar maid. Two women - girls. Maybe twenty one, just about. Not much older, certainly. Suddenly she feels tired, old, like she doesn’t fit with these two blondes with short, natural fingernails and tight jeans emphasising the curves of their butts, high heels hooked into the bars near the bottom of the bar stools. They’re together, yes, but not together, not like that. She slides onto a stool - well, okay, it’s almost a slide, and would be if her legs were two inches longer - and rests her elbows on the counter top. This bar maid looks vaguely familiar, but honestly Veronica couldn’t say if she’s an ex-classmate or just someone with a familiar face.
She comes over, puts a hand on top of Veronica’s, and smiles reassuringly.
“I know that expression. Trust me, I know what you need.”
Really? Speaking aloud takes effort, and she’s prepared to trust this girl’s judgement. And even if she did just invade Veronica’s personal space, she did it in a very not invasive way. Veronica nods, manages half a smile and only half watches as she mixes something. It looks dark and smooth, and when the bar maid puts it in front of her it smells just right. She digs in a pocket for the money, which the bar maid accepts unsmilingly, before bringing Veronica her change and leaning on the bar near her.
“So I’m thinking I haven’t seen you in here before.”
She seems friendly. Maybe not an ex-classmate, then. Veronica makes non-committal sounds. There’s a bit of silence. “I came in once, in about ‘03,” she volunteers. “I was,” she clears her throat, “I was with my best friend. It’s her birthday today.”
“How old is she?”
“She would have been thirty. She died thirteen years ago this October.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It wasn’t you that killed her,” Veronica points out, a little snarkily. “The thought of turning thirty would have horrified her.” She snorts in a way that’s meant to be amused, but doesn’t quite come off. She looks at the bar maid properly. She has those enormous liquid-y eyes, like black pools of empathy. Small face, wide forehead and narrow chin, cheekbones that you could use to open a bottle of beer. She’s probably in her twenties, maybe she’s at college, but in the right setting she could pass for thirteen.
Veronica tentatively sips the drink. There’s a searing burn that runs up the back of the inside of her spine, throat, head. Hurts like hell for a millisecond and then bliss floods her system.
“This is - yeah, wow.”
The bar-maid smiles, gratified. Veronica contemplates calling Logan, telling him she might be too drunk to drive home, but it can wait. She’s not due at the restaurant for another three and a half hours, and just because it’s the anniversary of their engagement, he’ll forgive her if she needs a drink to get through this evening.
The music begins with the discordant sound of tuning and sound checks, and a local indie band with a heavily body-modded drummer start wandering, seemingly a little aimlessly, around the bar. It’s taken a few steps up from the country and western CDs playing on repeat last time she was in here. The bass guitarist looks like your standard lipstick dyke, the lead singer who seems to play a little of everything looks half out of her head. Veronica would bet that the music would be crappy if she was a betting woman. Maybe she preferred the country and western.
She isn’t sure where the next few hours go, if she’s honest. There’s some chatter around her when more people enter the bar, the country and western plays until half six when the band begin their first set. Wallace texts her at some point, but she doesn’t register what it says. The music isn’t as bad as she feared, somewhat more ethereal than she would have expected from that particular drummer, but they’re an odd ensemble anyway. Good solid beat and some interesting riffs that are borrowed straight from Metallica. It’s all good, so long as she doesn’t have to think about it.
Her phone rings halfway through her fourth (fifth?) drink, nagging against her hip like a small child, and it sounds like Logan when she answers it.
“Hello? Hello? Veronica, can you hear me?”
“What?”
“Veronica, come on, don’t leave me, Ronnie.” He sounds like he’s crying.
“I’m not leaving, I’m just - I’m going to be late, cancel the reservation.”
“What? No, I get it. A-negative. Yeah, it’s fine, just do it.”
“Logan, what are you talking about?”
She’s met with white noise at his end. She hangs up as someone’s smooth, cool fingers run along the back of her shoulders, stroke a frozen path across the nape of her neck and then are gone too soon. Turning slightly and looking over her shoulder she sees the back of a dark blonde head vanishing into the crowd grinding on the dance floor.
It’s a head that looks achingly familiar, although the hair cut is different. The slight slant of the shoulders is the same, the way the hips move as she walks, the shape of her head. Veronica slides off her stool, striding towards the dance floor. She doesn’t feel as drunk as she knows she ought to, but she’s focussed and she puts it down to that. She’s keeping the blonde in sight when she’s accosted by someone exclaiming “Veronica Mars! I didn’t think you were one of our crowd.”
“I’m not gay, I just like the atmosphere.” She pushes past the girl, not bothering to remember her name - something that started with a K, she’s almost sure, but she doesn’t care.
The blonde is nowhere to be seen, but there’s a door that looks like it leads to the backstage facilities, so she must have gone through that. Veronica pushes the door open to find an industrial looking metal staircase. Up, up and away, she thinks to herself, beginning to climb, following the sound of heels on the metal above her head.
The metal handrail has that slightly crusty, rusted texture, as though it’s been slightly damp for just too long, and the white-grey paint is flaking off. Harsh yellow lighting makes her hands look veiny and jaundiced, the weight of this light pressing heavily on the top of her head and her back. She pushes the door at the top of the stairs open with her elbow, glancing up and down the corridor before catching a glimpse of a figure disappearing round the corner.
Stepping onto the carpet, the first thing that occurs to her is how much it gives under her weight. It’s odd after being on the tiled floor of the bar and the metal stairs, but it feels almost like a mattress as she jogs towards the corner. She’s tempted to bend down and feel it, but she doesn’t want to lose this blonde. She’s so near to being sure of who it is, but maybe it’s just her aching imagination that’s so desperate for her to be - and as she rounds the corner, there, watching Veronica in the mirror in the elevator, it is her - “Lilly!”
Lilly stays still - so silent and still - as her beautiful mouth breaks slowly into the smile that’s as familiar to Veronica as breathing, or so it seems. Veronica takes two tentative steps towards her, afraid that now she has Lilly in her sights the world’s going to explode, or something. Her right hand reaches out to Lilly, touching soft skin, feeling the bones in her shoulder, tracing down her arm, her hand. She watches it, feeling oddly detached, before the whole of her just gravitates towards Lilly, who turns into the embrace with open arms.
Their bodies, both changed, still fit together as neatly as always, their torsos flush to each other, their mouths finding each other as Veronica’s hands found their way into Lilly’s hair.
“You had it cut,” she murmurs into Lilly’s mouth.
Lilly pulls back, her hands warm on Veronica’s back. “Of course I had it cut. I haven’t seen you in thirteen years.”
“Where did you go, Lilly? We all thought you were dead.”
“Shh,” she whispers, capturing Veronica’s lips again, her fingers working to unclasp Veronica’s bra through her tee-shirt. Her lips feel soft, and there’s a slide-ish quality to the kiss that Logan somehow always manages to miss completely. The feeling of someone else’s breasts pressed against her own, the smell of girl, all pretty and delicate rather than Logan’s citrus and sandalwood smell, the taste of flavoured lip gloss, it’s all bliss to Veronica and she revels in it, drinking it in.
Veronica lets out a mewling sound of protest as Lilly’s lips move, dragging across her jawline and to her neck, as she sucks and nips at Veronica’s throat. Her slender hands cup Veronica’s breasts through her top, thumbs rubbing over her nipples. Carefully, Lilly walks Veronica into the elevator, pushing her up against the mirror, pausing only to press the close doors button.
As Veronica’s back hit the mirror, Lilly kisses her again on the mouth, her hands working their way under her clothes to stroke Veronica’s breasts. She pauses, pulls back and lifts Veronica’s tee-shirt up over her head, dragging the functional white bra with it, leaving Veronica’s nipples exposed and achingly hard in the slightly cool elevator. Lilly meets Veronica’s eyes before she descends on one, catching it between her teeth and circling it with her tongue. Veronica rests the back of her head against the mirror, revelling in the attention Lilly’s lavishing on her breasts. She strokes Lilly’s hair, her breathing quick and shallow.
Lilly scrapes her fingernails down Veronica’s chest, catching her other nipple in a way that hurt, yes, but that’s also incredibly arousing. Veronica almost laughs when she realised that her underwear is probably soaked through. Lilly, perhaps sensing a near unconscious and almost imperceptible thrust of Veronica’s hips, slips her hand between Veronica’s legs.
“You’re so warm,” she mumbles around Veronica’s breast, her tongue tracing an imaginary line across her pale skin. Veronica rolls her hips, pressing against Lilly’s hand. Her eyelids flutter closed and she takes in a deep, shuddering breath.
Lilly smiles, kneeling down and nuzzling Veronica’s stomach. She licks it before kissing her navel, open mouthed as she runs her tongue into Veronica’s navel. Pulling her hand from between Veronica’s thighs, she unbuttons Veronica’s pants, sliding them down off her hips until they pool on the cold floor around Veronica’s feet, in front of Lilly’s knees.
Veronica arches her back, pushing her pubis towards Lilly, who takes up the challenge, stroking Veronica through her underwear. She begins to laugh breathily, with a lazy sounding tone to it. “Some people would pay good money to be watching this.”
Lilly sits back on her heels. “Mood.”
“No, Lilly, please, don’t say the mood’s gone.” It occurs to her that this was almost exactly how life had been when Lilly was still alive, (is she fucking a dead girl? Is this necrophilia?) Lilly teasing her and her begging for some release. “Come on, Lil, you’re driving me insane.”
Lilly’s only answer is to peel Veronica’s underwear from her damp skin, leaving it with her pants on the ground as she closes her eyes and licks Veronica right along her slit. Veronica breaths “Oh!” sounding surprised, for some reason. It’s been a while since anyone’s tongue has been there, Logan rarely bothers any more and he didn’t have the skill with his tongue that Lilly had always had either.
The next thing she knows, there isn’t any time to think because Lilly’s cold fingers have just invaded her and God it feels like Heaven. As she moves them slowly, Veronica feels her hips moving involuntarily in time to the rhythmic licks and thrusts. She reaches a hand down and strokes Lilly’s hair, her eyes closed and her mouth open as she fights for breath around this pleasure.
It feels like her whole body is coiling around Lilly’s smooth slender fingers, her tongue winding Veronica’s tension up just as Veronica’s hands are wound in Lilly’s hair.
“Oh, god, Lilly, there, it’s there,” she moans, not caring that she sounds like some desperate teenage lesbian having an orgasm for the first time. She laughs with the release as her stomach muscles lock up so hard she thinks she might have cramps for days.
She loses track of where she is for a few seconds as she squeezes her eyes closed, listening to the sound of her own breathing as she covers her eyes with her hands. The soft feeling of lips on hers brings her back into the space, the taste of herself on Lilly’s lips and tongue, and the comfort of having someone holding onto her like this.
When she opens her eyes, Lilly’s looking at her just like she used to when they were twelve and she had bad news to share. “Remember I told you not to forget me?”
“I remember, and I haven’t forgotten you. I could never forget you.”
Lilly nods, looking to the ground. “I know. I’ll never forget you, either. But you have to love him properly, Veronica. Like you both deserve. Don’t hold him up to me, because,” she pauses and looks Veronica in the eyes, “nobody will ever be as fabulous as I am, right?” Veronica nods, dumbfounded. “So learn to live without me. I’ll always love you, Veronica.”
“Where are you going? I just found you again.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” The doors open as bright light shines in. “You are.”
Lilly pushes Veronica out through the door, into what feels like a wall of pain. Her head falls into pieces and she holds it together with her hands as she struggles to make sense through the swimmy sea of white. A face comes into view, staying tantalisingly out of focus. Lilly? she wants to say, but it isn’t. It doesn’t smell right.
Gradually she becomes aware of sound, the regular beeping of some sort of machines and someone calling for assistance. Logan calling for assistance. He returns to her side.
“Good morning, sleepyhead.”
“What?”
“Do you remember anything of last night?” She shakes her head. He smiles wryly. “The impala’s dead, honey.”
She laughs, and it sounds horrible and hoarse. “I’ll get you a car with air-con as a wedding present.”
“I love you,” he tells her.
“I know. I love you, too.” She smiles. She thinks maybe she means it.
Most of my Veronica/Lilly fic can be found here.
Fandom: Veronica Mars
Pairing: Veronica/Lilly, some LoVe
Rating: NC-17 for sexual situations
Word Count: ~4000
A/N: Written for the alternative ending smutathon at vm_library. Contains femslash and a certain degree of angst. The title is from the placebo song Every you Every me. The line The world has moved on borrowed from Stephen King's dark tower series. Thanks to Nell kwatchingoverme for the beta. Thanks to Madame Librarian taken_with_you for being fabulous.
August 20th. It’s hot, practically stifling. Hotter than usual. Hotter than it ought to be, even in Neptune. Even on Lilly’s birthday.
Had Lilly still been around, they would have gone out, to the beach, maybe, to the ice-cream parlour then back to laze by the pool in her parents house. Veronica could laze by her own pool, now, if she felt any inclination to do so. Her fiancé - she never thinks the word without adding a slightly ironic mental twist of her mouth - made sure to get one when he chose the house. Veronica had given him a list of acceptable zip codes, and he had chosen the house, one weekend when he didn’t have to work. She had seen it online, and agreed that it was sufficient.
“Go ahead. It’ll do the two of us and won’t clean us out.”
“We can afford better.”
“What would we want with a huge house? This one has well proportioned rooms and four bedrooms plus office space for the both of us.”
“And a pool.”
“Besides which,” she continued, ignoring his interjection, “You chose it, so you must have seen something you liked.”
“Actually, I got bored and decided it was the best of the bunch.”
In some ways she can’t believe they went ahead and got engaged, can’t believe that this is the guy she’s going to spend her life with. With whom she’s going to spend her life. But then, she can’t imagine him being elsewhere, coming home to anyone but him, or indeed, him coming home to anyone but her. They won’t last forever, if they follow the trend in America, but then again they’re used to each other and rely on each other, and there are worse things to build a marriage on. The sex is still good, too, not as mind blowing as she remembers it being back in college when he fucked her in the reference section of the library on a Friday night when even the chess club were having Firefly marathons and Parker was waiting for him at some party, but still fun and enjoyable, if a little stale at times.
Ah, yes. Parker. Now working in a publishing house somewhere as the PA to the manager’s PA. Veronica got a phone call from her last weekend - not that Parker is interested in Veronica’s life, but her boss’ boss is being stalked, hence Veronica is stuck in her car on a day when it’s roasting even at eight in the morning. And Logan’s got the convertible.
Yes, Logan. It’s fair enough, after all it was he that bought her the car as an engagement present. Still, she sort of resents being stuck in his Impala - beautiful though it may be - on a day like this. So she’s driving down the freeway, cursing the fact that vintage cars don’t have air-con, heading for one of the towns near to Neptune.
It’s odd, driving past the familiar places again, seeing the familiar place names and looking over landscapes that just aren’t quite how she remembers them. She finds the place unsettling somehow, like a ghost town, alive in another era with people she not only doesn’t recognise, but doesn’t even see. Children playing in the street who have the faces of her classmates, that guy from the drama club on a billboard. The world has moved on, she thinks, not without a tinge of sadness.
Parking is easy in the huge underground parking lot, which feels icy after the baking heat of the road and the air above ground. The concrete pillars remind her of every other parking lot in the universe, and it’s comforting, in a strange way. She calls Parker on her cell as soon as she has any signal, and Parker answers, sounding sort of relieved.
“Thank God you’re here, someone’s left a dead and frozen rabbit on her desk and she’s flipping out. Come to the fourth floor and keep turning right until you get here. It’s through the glass doors.”
And suddenly she’s back in the routine, filling her spare hours over the summer doing what she knows, while Logan does his internship at a big accountancy firm and she waits for grad school to start up again in September. Working as a PI was easier when she cared genuinely about each case, or when it was her classmates that asked her to do them a favour, rather than picking up the divorce cases and feeling so sordid because she’s young and engaged, but isn’t sure if she’s in love or not. Still, she’s not going to be doing it forever, she’s going to be a lawyer, having pussy-footed around with ideas for five years after college before deciding to go to grad school. Logan went travelling, met up with Mac in some market in Nepal. She was with her husband, who was doing missionary work there. Veronica’s vaguely glad that Mac’s happy, she likes that Mac married a good guy and is helping people somewhere. Educating adult women, according to her last email, back in February.
Working with (for?) her fiancé’s ex girlfriend proves odd. Parker likes her for some reason, or maybe she’s just relieved that she’s getting something done. Veronica spends a fair amount of the time she spends in the office looking out of the window, and then she asks to see a list of all the employees who should be on site at that time. She’s given three pages of them, neatly subdivided into job brackets and areas in which they work. She counts four people working on the gardens and check the list.
“When did the new gardener get hired?” Why do you need a garden anyway?
“What? They’ve all been here years - my father hired them.”
“There are three on the list, look out of the window.”
The manager looks out of the window and nods. Veronica didn’t bother to learn her name. Maybe it starts with an E. The manager takes the elevator to the ground floor. Veronica uses the stairs and gets there first.
In the end it’s one of the easiest cases ever. She picks out the impostor gardener - he’s under the age of seventy, it’s not hard - gets him trapped, he cries and admits everything, the manager calls the police and he’s escorted off the premises, complete with his very own restraining order to come. Her mental query about the garden never gets answered.
Parker’s boss’s boss writes her the check, and she pockets it without a smile.
“I’m glad I could help.” She hands over her card. “If you ever need me again. I’ll find my way out.”
She keeps turning left until she gets to the stairs and heads for the parking lot again, the chill hitting her like a brick wall as she pushes open the fire door. She connects her MP3 player to the cassette player and plays some Guns n’ Roses, Logan’s music. The part of her head that’s still fifteen tells her, Lilly’s music.
Driving out of the parking lot is like driving into hell. If it was hot at eight, now the road is an inferno. She imagines the news, that horrible nasal woman on the radio, “And in Neptune we are having the hottest summer on record…” Yeah, whatever, shut up.
Suddenly Veronica’s mouth is dry, but not for water. She was in college last time she had more than one glass of wine. She’s too wary of her mom to even set one foot on that road. Logan drinks, to a certain extent, but he’s young - free, white and over twenty one. She mixes strong coffee, drunk black and bitter, with a glass of wine, some of the whiskey her Dad gave her on one of her birthdays. There’s that Port she’s never even looked at - Logan hates it for some reason and she hasn’t even tried it. But what she wants is something that’ll burn the backs of her eyeballs, something dark and smooth, with a twist to turn her tongue inside out. It’s almost four in the afternoon, and she’s jonesing for alcohol.
She compares the landmarks around her with her mental map of Neptune. This is the road that Lilly threw up on, on the way back from her twelfth birthday party. Veronica repeated it when she graduated college and moved back home with her Dad over the summer. The road into Neptune. The road out of Neptune. She supposes it’s the same thing. If she takes the next turn off - she does it automatically - and finds herself in the slightly seedy district of Neptune. Lilly’s favourite bar was on this road, not that Logan ever knew about it. Veronica doubts he’s even aware of its existence now, which is just as well, since its name is Purr and it’s actually a lesbian bar.
Lilly liked that lack of pressure, not having guys around except the ones that were technically bio-female. She persuaded Veronica to come with her once, and it was the most relaxed Veronica had ever seen Lilly. She flirted outrageously with the bar maid, got them umbrellas in their drinks. God knows how Lilly got them in, since the two of them had only been sixteen at the time and had hardly looked older.
Twelve years later and the place still smells the same as she walks in the door. Slightly smoky, slightly sweaty, a little sweet like mixed floral perfumes rubbing off onto tanned bare shoulders. There are all of two people there at the moment, other than the bar maid. Two women - girls. Maybe twenty one, just about. Not much older, certainly. Suddenly she feels tired, old, like she doesn’t fit with these two blondes with short, natural fingernails and tight jeans emphasising the curves of their butts, high heels hooked into the bars near the bottom of the bar stools. They’re together, yes, but not together, not like that. She slides onto a stool - well, okay, it’s almost a slide, and would be if her legs were two inches longer - and rests her elbows on the counter top. This bar maid looks vaguely familiar, but honestly Veronica couldn’t say if she’s an ex-classmate or just someone with a familiar face.
She comes over, puts a hand on top of Veronica’s, and smiles reassuringly.
“I know that expression. Trust me, I know what you need.”
Really? Speaking aloud takes effort, and she’s prepared to trust this girl’s judgement. And even if she did just invade Veronica’s personal space, she did it in a very not invasive way. Veronica nods, manages half a smile and only half watches as she mixes something. It looks dark and smooth, and when the bar maid puts it in front of her it smells just right. She digs in a pocket for the money, which the bar maid accepts unsmilingly, before bringing Veronica her change and leaning on the bar near her.
“So I’m thinking I haven’t seen you in here before.”
She seems friendly. Maybe not an ex-classmate, then. Veronica makes non-committal sounds. There’s a bit of silence. “I came in once, in about ‘03,” she volunteers. “I was,” she clears her throat, “I was with my best friend. It’s her birthday today.”
“How old is she?”
“She would have been thirty. She died thirteen years ago this October.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It wasn’t you that killed her,” Veronica points out, a little snarkily. “The thought of turning thirty would have horrified her.” She snorts in a way that’s meant to be amused, but doesn’t quite come off. She looks at the bar maid properly. She has those enormous liquid-y eyes, like black pools of empathy. Small face, wide forehead and narrow chin, cheekbones that you could use to open a bottle of beer. She’s probably in her twenties, maybe she’s at college, but in the right setting she could pass for thirteen.
Veronica tentatively sips the drink. There’s a searing burn that runs up the back of the inside of her spine, throat, head. Hurts like hell for a millisecond and then bliss floods her system.
“This is - yeah, wow.”
The bar-maid smiles, gratified. Veronica contemplates calling Logan, telling him she might be too drunk to drive home, but it can wait. She’s not due at the restaurant for another three and a half hours, and just because it’s the anniversary of their engagement, he’ll forgive her if she needs a drink to get through this evening.
The music begins with the discordant sound of tuning and sound checks, and a local indie band with a heavily body-modded drummer start wandering, seemingly a little aimlessly, around the bar. It’s taken a few steps up from the country and western CDs playing on repeat last time she was in here. The bass guitarist looks like your standard lipstick dyke, the lead singer who seems to play a little of everything looks half out of her head. Veronica would bet that the music would be crappy if she was a betting woman. Maybe she preferred the country and western.
She isn’t sure where the next few hours go, if she’s honest. There’s some chatter around her when more people enter the bar, the country and western plays until half six when the band begin their first set. Wallace texts her at some point, but she doesn’t register what it says. The music isn’t as bad as she feared, somewhat more ethereal than she would have expected from that particular drummer, but they’re an odd ensemble anyway. Good solid beat and some interesting riffs that are borrowed straight from Metallica. It’s all good, so long as she doesn’t have to think about it.
Her phone rings halfway through her fourth (fifth?) drink, nagging against her hip like a small child, and it sounds like Logan when she answers it.
“Hello? Hello? Veronica, can you hear me?”
“What?”
“Veronica, come on, don’t leave me, Ronnie.” He sounds like he’s crying.
“I’m not leaving, I’m just - I’m going to be late, cancel the reservation.”
“What? No, I get it. A-negative. Yeah, it’s fine, just do it.”
“Logan, what are you talking about?”
She’s met with white noise at his end. She hangs up as someone’s smooth, cool fingers run along the back of her shoulders, stroke a frozen path across the nape of her neck and then are gone too soon. Turning slightly and looking over her shoulder she sees the back of a dark blonde head vanishing into the crowd grinding on the dance floor.
It’s a head that looks achingly familiar, although the hair cut is different. The slight slant of the shoulders is the same, the way the hips move as she walks, the shape of her head. Veronica slides off her stool, striding towards the dance floor. She doesn’t feel as drunk as she knows she ought to, but she’s focussed and she puts it down to that. She’s keeping the blonde in sight when she’s accosted by someone exclaiming “Veronica Mars! I didn’t think you were one of our crowd.”
“I’m not gay, I just like the atmosphere.” She pushes past the girl, not bothering to remember her name - something that started with a K, she’s almost sure, but she doesn’t care.
The blonde is nowhere to be seen, but there’s a door that looks like it leads to the backstage facilities, so she must have gone through that. Veronica pushes the door open to find an industrial looking metal staircase. Up, up and away, she thinks to herself, beginning to climb, following the sound of heels on the metal above her head.
The metal handrail has that slightly crusty, rusted texture, as though it’s been slightly damp for just too long, and the white-grey paint is flaking off. Harsh yellow lighting makes her hands look veiny and jaundiced, the weight of this light pressing heavily on the top of her head and her back. She pushes the door at the top of the stairs open with her elbow, glancing up and down the corridor before catching a glimpse of a figure disappearing round the corner.
Stepping onto the carpet, the first thing that occurs to her is how much it gives under her weight. It’s odd after being on the tiled floor of the bar and the metal stairs, but it feels almost like a mattress as she jogs towards the corner. She’s tempted to bend down and feel it, but she doesn’t want to lose this blonde. She’s so near to being sure of who it is, but maybe it’s just her aching imagination that’s so desperate for her to be - and as she rounds the corner, there, watching Veronica in the mirror in the elevator, it is her - “Lilly!”
Lilly stays still - so silent and still - as her beautiful mouth breaks slowly into the smile that’s as familiar to Veronica as breathing, or so it seems. Veronica takes two tentative steps towards her, afraid that now she has Lilly in her sights the world’s going to explode, or something. Her right hand reaches out to Lilly, touching soft skin, feeling the bones in her shoulder, tracing down her arm, her hand. She watches it, feeling oddly detached, before the whole of her just gravitates towards Lilly, who turns into the embrace with open arms.
Their bodies, both changed, still fit together as neatly as always, their torsos flush to each other, their mouths finding each other as Veronica’s hands found their way into Lilly’s hair.
“You had it cut,” she murmurs into Lilly’s mouth.
Lilly pulls back, her hands warm on Veronica’s back. “Of course I had it cut. I haven’t seen you in thirteen years.”
“Where did you go, Lilly? We all thought you were dead.”
“Shh,” she whispers, capturing Veronica’s lips again, her fingers working to unclasp Veronica’s bra through her tee-shirt. Her lips feel soft, and there’s a slide-ish quality to the kiss that Logan somehow always manages to miss completely. The feeling of someone else’s breasts pressed against her own, the smell of girl, all pretty and delicate rather than Logan’s citrus and sandalwood smell, the taste of flavoured lip gloss, it’s all bliss to Veronica and she revels in it, drinking it in.
Veronica lets out a mewling sound of protest as Lilly’s lips move, dragging across her jawline and to her neck, as she sucks and nips at Veronica’s throat. Her slender hands cup Veronica’s breasts through her top, thumbs rubbing over her nipples. Carefully, Lilly walks Veronica into the elevator, pushing her up against the mirror, pausing only to press the close doors button.
As Veronica’s back hit the mirror, Lilly kisses her again on the mouth, her hands working their way under her clothes to stroke Veronica’s breasts. She pauses, pulls back and lifts Veronica’s tee-shirt up over her head, dragging the functional white bra with it, leaving Veronica’s nipples exposed and achingly hard in the slightly cool elevator. Lilly meets Veronica’s eyes before she descends on one, catching it between her teeth and circling it with her tongue. Veronica rests the back of her head against the mirror, revelling in the attention Lilly’s lavishing on her breasts. She strokes Lilly’s hair, her breathing quick and shallow.
Lilly scrapes her fingernails down Veronica’s chest, catching her other nipple in a way that hurt, yes, but that’s also incredibly arousing. Veronica almost laughs when she realised that her underwear is probably soaked through. Lilly, perhaps sensing a near unconscious and almost imperceptible thrust of Veronica’s hips, slips her hand between Veronica’s legs.
“You’re so warm,” she mumbles around Veronica’s breast, her tongue tracing an imaginary line across her pale skin. Veronica rolls her hips, pressing against Lilly’s hand. Her eyelids flutter closed and she takes in a deep, shuddering breath.
Lilly smiles, kneeling down and nuzzling Veronica’s stomach. She licks it before kissing her navel, open mouthed as she runs her tongue into Veronica’s navel. Pulling her hand from between Veronica’s thighs, she unbuttons Veronica’s pants, sliding them down off her hips until they pool on the cold floor around Veronica’s feet, in front of Lilly’s knees.
Veronica arches her back, pushing her pubis towards Lilly, who takes up the challenge, stroking Veronica through her underwear. She begins to laugh breathily, with a lazy sounding tone to it. “Some people would pay good money to be watching this.”
Lilly sits back on her heels. “Mood.”
“No, Lilly, please, don’t say the mood’s gone.” It occurs to her that this was almost exactly how life had been when Lilly was still alive, (is she fucking a dead girl? Is this necrophilia?) Lilly teasing her and her begging for some release. “Come on, Lil, you’re driving me insane.”
Lilly’s only answer is to peel Veronica’s underwear from her damp skin, leaving it with her pants on the ground as she closes her eyes and licks Veronica right along her slit. Veronica breaths “Oh!” sounding surprised, for some reason. It’s been a while since anyone’s tongue has been there, Logan rarely bothers any more and he didn’t have the skill with his tongue that Lilly had always had either.
The next thing she knows, there isn’t any time to think because Lilly’s cold fingers have just invaded her and God it feels like Heaven. As she moves them slowly, Veronica feels her hips moving involuntarily in time to the rhythmic licks and thrusts. She reaches a hand down and strokes Lilly’s hair, her eyes closed and her mouth open as she fights for breath around this pleasure.
It feels like her whole body is coiling around Lilly’s smooth slender fingers, her tongue winding Veronica’s tension up just as Veronica’s hands are wound in Lilly’s hair.
“Oh, god, Lilly, there, it’s there,” she moans, not caring that she sounds like some desperate teenage lesbian having an orgasm for the first time. She laughs with the release as her stomach muscles lock up so hard she thinks she might have cramps for days.
She loses track of where she is for a few seconds as she squeezes her eyes closed, listening to the sound of her own breathing as she covers her eyes with her hands. The soft feeling of lips on hers brings her back into the space, the taste of herself on Lilly’s lips and tongue, and the comfort of having someone holding onto her like this.
When she opens her eyes, Lilly’s looking at her just like she used to when they were twelve and she had bad news to share. “Remember I told you not to forget me?”
“I remember, and I haven’t forgotten you. I could never forget you.”
Lilly nods, looking to the ground. “I know. I’ll never forget you, either. But you have to love him properly, Veronica. Like you both deserve. Don’t hold him up to me, because,” she pauses and looks Veronica in the eyes, “nobody will ever be as fabulous as I am, right?” Veronica nods, dumbfounded. “So learn to live without me. I’ll always love you, Veronica.”
“Where are you going? I just found you again.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” The doors open as bright light shines in. “You are.”
Lilly pushes Veronica out through the door, into what feels like a wall of pain. Her head falls into pieces and she holds it together with her hands as she struggles to make sense through the swimmy sea of white. A face comes into view, staying tantalisingly out of focus. Lilly? she wants to say, but it isn’t. It doesn’t smell right.
Gradually she becomes aware of sound, the regular beeping of some sort of machines and someone calling for assistance. Logan calling for assistance. He returns to her side.
“Good morning, sleepyhead.”
“What?”
“Do you remember anything of last night?” She shakes her head. He smiles wryly. “The impala’s dead, honey.”
She laughs, and it sounds horrible and hoarse. “I’ll get you a car with air-con as a wedding present.”
“I love you,” he tells her.
“I know. I love you, too.” She smiles. She thinks maybe she means it.
Most of my Veronica/Lilly fic can be found here.