THE RETURN 40-Four 2/2 [Ensemble] NC-17
Title: The Return 40-Four [Pt II]
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 14,162 (both parts)
Characters/Pairings: Lilly I, Weevil, Parker, Piz, Veronica, Mac, Logan, Wallace, Dick, Madison, OMC (mentions: Celeste and Jake Kane, Duncan Kane, Trina Echolls, Aaron Echolls, OFC, Lilly II and Keith Mars)
Spoilers: All episodes (from 1.01: Pilot to 3.20: The Bitch Is Back. Just to be sure) Although this is obviously AU and there are obviously going to be some alterations to events and especially some in the last couple of episodes.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Literally, nothing. So don’t sue me over this, because you won’t get anything. It all belongs to Rob Thomas and if I had owned it when it was still on the last season would have been way different.
1: Awake/ 2: Homecoming/ 3: Forgive/ 4: Arrival/ 5: Reconnect/ 6: Belong/ 7: Bets/ 8: Fight/ 9: Battle/ 10: Retreat/ 11: Push/ 12: Sound/ 13: Potential/ 14: More/ 15: Storytime/ 16: Understanding/ 17: Piggyback/ 18: Sinners/ 19: Drama/ 20: Dinner/ 21: Armor/ 22:Mingle/ 23:Bubbly/ 24:Awkward/ 25:Closing/ 26: Drunks/ 27: Logan/ 28: Wallace/ 29: Mac/ 30: Parker/ 31: Duncan/ 32: Lilly/33: Piz/ 34: Weevil/ 35: Dick/ 36: Veronica/ 37: One/38: Two/39: Three
The Return
40
Four
Hour 3
20 July 2008 - 9:00 am
~Veronica~
The boxes looked heavy. Really heavy. She wondered, briefly, what exactly it was that Piz had acquired in the last year that was so cumbersome. She couldn’t remember anything in their dorm room looking particularly heavy when she had visited it last. Of course that had been months ago and she’d only stayed a minute while Wallace finished getting ready for their BFF night of pizza, talking and surveillance.
It definitely looked heavy and awkward. “What do you think is in there that’s so heavy?” She asked aloud to her couchmates.
“I don’t know, but it looks like it requires two people to carry it.” Mac replied, nodding along with Veronica as they sat and watched as Piz struggled with the large - and apparently heavy - box.
“I hope it’s not breakable.” Lilly added. “If he drops it, and it breaks, I’m not cleaning up the mess. He’s the one that packed it up, he should have known better.”
“I think someone should help him.” Parker’s voice was concerned and she actually leaned forward, her back coming off the couch cushions in a gesture that suggested that she might be the one to get up to help. “He looks like he needs help.”
“You know, I can hear you, right?” Piz asked, his voice strained as he continued to struggle with the large box. “And I could use a little help.”
“Okay.” Veronica said and he looked over at her, hopeful. Silly boy, she hadn’t even moved her own stuff when she’d moved into the room he was claiming. Or when she’d moved out of it six weeks ago. “Logan!”
She heard her boyfriend’s footsteps thunder up the front steps of the house before he appeared in the front doorway. “Yeah?” He asked, looking at Piz, scanning the room and, finally, landing on her… lounging on the couch with her feet up on the coffee table Lilly had stolen from the expertly decorated second living room of the Kane Estate seven months ago. “If you ask me to get you a glass of water I swear to God I will pour it over your head.” He sounded perturbed.
“Piz needs help.” She said it innocently, smiling at him. She bit her lip a little bit, tilted her head and watched as any annoyance he’d had completely melted away. They were in the honeymoon state of living together and he couldn’t stay mad at her for long. She didn’t know when the honeymoon would end and they’d find a balance where they didn’t let each other get away with every single thing, so she was determined to take advantage of this for as long as possible.
“Okay, baby.” He said, giving her one of those secret smiles that she was only just learning. Normally he would have responded with a little of his trademark sarcasm and wit, asking her if her legs were broke. But instead he turned to Piz and took half the weight of the troublesome box. “What the hell is in here?”
“My text books.” Piz responded matter-of-factly.
“And?” Logan prompted, because there was no way that all that was in there was books.
“Some stereo equipment.” Again, Piz’s responded as if it was obvious what was in the box.
“And?” Logan asked again, backing up the stairs.
“Some blankets to pad the stereo stuff from banging too much against my amp.” Piz explained before a look of realization came over his face. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.” There was the sarcasm she loved so much. “Just because it fits doesn’t mean that it should all go in.”
All four of the girls burst out laughing as the two boys slowly made their way up the stairs, bickering all the way.
“You think that we should help?” Parker asked, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth, watching the front door for Wallace even though she knew he was unloading his car at the back and through the kitchen so he could go right into the basement. The basement that Veronica had sort of converted into a dark room at the beginning of spring semester when she’d started her new photography class. Hopefully she’d gotten all her equipment out of there, most of the stuff she had in the dark room at her and Logan’s place was new and already in there when he’d surprised her with it. She had to have the best boyfriend ever, surprising her with a newly built, state-of-the-art dark room a couple days before she moved in.
“Nah. The boys can get it. There’s five of them, in and out of the house, back and forth to the cars. We’d just get in the way, adding four more to the fray.” Veronica said and Parker eased back into the couch between the armrest and Lilly. Didn’t take much to convince her.
“You mean four?” Lilly corrected.
“No, there’s five.” Veronica assured her best friend that was more like a sister than ever before, after having lived together for six months before Veronica finally broke down and agreed to move in with Logan at the end of their second year at Hearst.
“No. Logan, Piz, Wallace and Dick.” Lilly counted each of the boys off on a her right hand before holding out four raised fingers, her thumb tucked into the hollow of her palm. “Four.”
“And Weevil. He came showed up right after us with a carload of stuff. Piz has been storing his dorm stuff in Weevil’s garage while he was up in Beaverton visiting his parents and getting the rest of his stuff.” Veronica explained, seeing a change in Lilly’s posture when she mentioned Weevil.
She had been hoping that Lilly had finally let all the Weevil stuff go. Veronica had honestly thought Lilly had moved on. She was dating a guy she’d met on campus at the end of last year. She and Parker had their new radio show that they were starting next week. She was even taking a couple classes over the summer to try and get a head start on her general courses. When, and why, did she have time to pine for Eli Navarro?
“Weevil’s here?” Lilly’s voice was breathier than normal as she brushed her hair behind her ears and glanced back toward the kitchen where they could hear Wallace and someone coming in with boxes, laughing. They could all tell it was Dick’s laugh, but Lilly still looked hopefully towards the voices. Veronica watched as Lilly bit her lip and leaned back over the couch, arching her back ever so slightly as she tried to see down the hall and into the kitchen. It was impossible. Veronica had tried it about a billion times when she lived here and was always curious about what exactly Logan was doing in the kitchen when he was over.
“Yeah. Probably out front though, since he’s got Piz’s stuff, not Wallace’s. Wallace kept his stuff at his mom’s place while he was, you know, staying there.” Veronica stared sternly at Lilly. She had a boyfriend and had made a promise last year to let this Weevil thing drop. To leave him alone and let him just be over her because they’d decided, together, that she’d already put him through enough.
Lilly’s head whipped back around to look at Veronica, her body falling back into it’s indentation on the couch. Her face was stubbornly blank but Veronica could see the guilt in her eyes. She was still trying not to, but also trying, to get to Weevil. To get him to remember why he’d been with her in the first place, what he felt before and that even though she hadn’t reciprocated his feelings then and had hurt him pretty badly, that she was still here and open to the possibility of revisiting their affair.
“I thought you were through with that.” Veronica tried to soften her voice a little, tried not to sound too stern but at the same time get her message across to Lilly. I thought you weren’t going to try and mess with his head anymore.
“Well, it’s easy to say it.” It’s totally hard and difficult and impossible to actually follow through with what you say. Veronica could hear the rest of the statement, she saw it echoing out of Lilly’s eyes. She could understand it. Hadn’t she made the same kind of statements about Logan? Hadn’t she found it just as impossible to follow though, to give up on him and whatever they had always been to each other? She knew how hard it could be.
“You’ve made steps, come so far.” You’re dating again. You have a well rounded life that doesn’t revolve around your next scandal, around the different ways you can piss Celeste off. She would hate to see Lilly come so far only to fall back into the mess again. To fall back into the bad habits she’d had.
“I’m not going back.” This is just a hiccup, a lingering feeling. I’m not going to let it go any further. Lilly’s eyes pleaded with her to understand this, that the friendship she’d forged with Weevil was just that. Friendship. Veronica had been shocked when they’d started talking again, even going so far as having coffee once in a while to catch up and hang out. It had seemed like a bad idea, at the time, but Lilly had insisted that they could be just friends and nothing more. It was starting to seem like a bad idea again.
“Does it seem like we’re missing something in the conversation.” Mac asked from Veronica’s left, leaning forward so she could look around Veronica and Lilly to see Parker.
“MacKenzie, you’re always missing something.” Lilly joked, her voice tense from the non-conversation she and Veronica had just had.
All four of them laughed at the joke and, thankfully, the tension was gone and they were back to hanging out.
“What- You-” They heard Wallace stutter from behind them and she felt herself, and the other three girls, cringe at his voice and the accusation in it.
He stomped around the couch and Veronica knew that she could head tilt and smile her way out of this because Wallace never did fall for that. He was always stubbornly resistant to her tricks.
Standing before them, hands on his hips and a stern look, he looked amusingly like his mother. Veronica remembered the same stance and the same expression on Alicia’s face as she stood in front of her son and his best friend while they watched movies and made a mess. Her tricks hadn’t worked on Alicia either and she’d always been the one to have to pick popcorn out of the seat cushions while Wallace wielded the vacuum.
“And what, pray tell, do the four of you think you’re doing?” Wallace demanded and Veronica swore that she felt the couch sink a few inches into the ground under his weighty stare.
“Hanging out?” Parker said, her words lilting up at the end to make it sound more like a question than a statement. Veronica glanced over to see Parker’s shoulders up around her ears as she looked guiltily up at Wallace.
“As I recall that wasn’t what we were gathered here for. I thought we were all going to pitch in and get this moving thing out of the way, get all the boxes into the house.” Wallace’s eyes traveled over the four girls and the couch sunk a couple more inches.
“But we’ve all been so busy lately, we just need a minute to catch up.” Parker’s voice wasn’t any stronger than it had been a minute ago. Veronica knew she hated to let people down, and she had been pestering them about getting up and helping.
“If you could give us a couple more minutes Wallace, we would probably be a lot more helpful if we got all the gossip out of the way.” Lilly’s voice was stronger than Parker’s had been, but she was obviously a little thrown by such a stern Wallace.
“If ifs and buts were candy and nuts we’d all have a Merry Christmas.” Wallace repeated his mother’s old saying, completing the effect and Veronica had a hard time keeping the laugh in. She could see the strain around Wallace’s mouth, he was having a hard time keeping this up. He just needed one little push…
“I still don’t get what that means.” Veronica said, looking right in his eyes as she raised an eyebrow and smirked.
That was it. Wallace burst out laughing before cramming himself onto the couch between Mac and Veronica, throwing his arms over both girls. “Me neither.”
Parker looked confused and still a little guilty over her lack of help, her shoulders slowly easing down to their normal position. She was going to give in, Veronica knew it. Parker was going to get off the couch and go help the boys move into the house.
“You know, I always did kind of like this big ole house that you girls moved into. Reminds me of my old house up in Chicago. Although I don’t remember there being this many girls in that house.” Wallace reminisced as he propped his feet up on the coffee table next to Veronica’s.
“Dude, what are you doing?” Dick asked, suddenly standing in front of the couch, glaring at Wallace. He looked sweaty and annoyed, probably didn’t want to spend the day helping his friends move into their rooms. Especially since he and Logan had had to cut their surf short this morning in order to meet up with them.
“I’m trying out the girls’ way of moving, it looked a hell of a lot more fun.” Wallace explained, giving Veronica a look that made her slightly more guilty than the sternness he’d faked earlier. “After all, this is how Veronica got moved in and out of this place.”
“Oh, well then…” Dick said as he flopped back into the lounge chair across from the couch. “Do the boxes just float in by themselves or is there a ghost situation going on?”
Dick’s eyebrows were raised in question and he was looking at her for the answer. Wallace looked at her expectantly as well and Veronica barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes at them. Their jokes weren’t quite as funny as they thought they were.
“I don’t remember, I didn’t pay all that much attention but if memory serves you were both there,” she pointed at her best friend and her boyfriend’s best friend before continuing. “Do you remember any ghosts? Did they help you with the boxes?”
“Oh, that’s right. They don’t move themselves.” Wallace exclaimed like it was a suddenly new concept to him, that it took physical labor to move into a new place.
“Oh, fine then. I’ll help.” Veronica said to the boys indulgently, pushing up off the couch and walking towards the front door.
“Um, V? My stuff is out back.” Wallace informed her, getting off the couch himself. His head jerked in the direction of the kitchen and the backdoor and, what she assumed, the general direction of the car and his stuff.
“I said I’d help, didn’t say I’d help you.” Veronica smirked at him as Logan game barreling down the stairs. He stopped at the bottom, his arm wrapping around her waist as he turned himself to face the rest of the group.
“What’s going on?” He asked her as his other arm wrapped around her, pulling back against him as his chin settled down on her shoulder.
“Wallace is trying to guilt trip and Dick is nagging, you know, the usual.” She said in a light voice. Mac stood and tugged at Dick’s hand until he stood up next to her.
“Is there a reason I’m the only one outside moving stuff?” Weevil’s voice came from behind her and Logan and the entire group of friends seemed to turn towards him simultaneously. He had two boxes, one under each arm, and looked rather annoyed with that fact. “Y’all taking a break? This ain’t a one man Mexican moving company.”
“No, we were just discussing who was all going to help Wallace and who was going to help Piz. We’re coming.” Veronica told him, giving him a reassuring smile. He was being nice enough to give up his morning off to come and help, she didn’t want him to think that it wasn’t appreciated.
Piz chose that moment to come down the stairs, walk over to the couch and flop down between Wallace and Lilly, taking Veronica’s recently vacated spot. “Man, that box was heavy.”
Logan’s arms slipped out from around Veronica and he went back outside to grab a few more boxes. Wallace, Dick and Mac headed towards the back of the house to continue unloading Wallace’s stuff. Parker eased herself off the couch, gave Weevil a tight smile and headed out front too. Lilly remained resolutely on the couch, her feet propped up on her mother’s second favorite coffee table, studying her nails with a nonchalant air of indifference.
“You ain’t helpin’, Kane?” Weevil asked from the doorway, his eyebrows raised in question. It was some new, weird thing he had, calling her Kane instead of her first name. Like it made them more friends than former lovers if he did the guy thing and called her by her last name.
“I don’t think so, Navarro.” Veronica heard the barely contained annoyance in her voice as she said his last name. She did not enjoy being called Kane. “I’m already going to have to live with them, and in Piz’s case work with him, do I really have to move them in too? Am I not sacrificing enough?”
“It wasn’t my idea to let you and Parker on the radio. If it was up to me you’d both be banned from calling in to the station. Instead the manager thinks you’re both so cute and need your own show.” Piz complained, yet again, that his producer and the station manager had decided that the girls needed their own show. Apparently they helped with ratings whenever they were on and the producers were impressed how they could argue with each other without it getting too heated. Lilly would get passionate and Parker would reign her in when necessary. They were able to discuss politics, religion, movies, celebrities and school policy without getting too annoying. They’re show was, conceptually, an hour long talk radio show where they’d play some Top 40 in the middle of the afternoon. The part that Piz was most annoyed with though was the fact that they were combining it with his Wednesday night show. He’d be on air five days a week now, but he had to share the show with two of his new roommates.
“Get over it Piznarski. Or at least save it for the air waves.” Lilly pushed at him with her foot. She would never admit it but she had a soft spot for Piz, no matter how much she denied it. When she, Parker and Mac had agreed to let Wallace and Piz move into the Big House she had told Veronica that it would be just like having a puppy. One that could potentially change the light bulbs, get the stuff off the top shelves in the kitchen and finally fix that annoying leak in the upstairs bathroom. Veronica hadn’t had the heart to tell her that it was more likely that the light bulbs would need changing because neither he nor Wallace ever turned off the lights, the stuff on the top shelf would be gone because they ate like they’d never seen food before and neither boy would go near that leak because the tampons were kept under that particular sink.
Veronica left Lilly and Piz to continue arguing and followed Weevil outside to help with the boxes. She rubbed her hands together in faux anticipation as she reached the car where Logan and Parker stood, pulling boxes out. “What can I do?” Her enthusiasm sounded just as fake as it felt.
“Here.” Logan said as he handed her a pile of pillows.
She hadn’t really been looking forward to lugging boxes up and down the stairs but she was a little insulted by this offering of pillows. “I can take more than that.” She said indignantly, scowling at her boyfriend as he pulled another box out of the back of her car.
Piz had stored a bunch of his stuff in Logan’s garage after his parents had brought a load down right before finals week. Apparently they were moving into a smaller house and there wasn’t any room for most of Piz’s stuff, he’d picked up the rest when he’d gone up to stay for a couple weeks.
“Okay, if you insist.” Logan piled a blanket on top of Veronica’s pile of pillows before he leaned forward, gripped her shoulders and kissed her forehead before turning her towards the house and lightly patting her on the ass. “Off you go.”
Her jaw dropped in shock and indignation, but she could hear Logan chuckling behind her and she knew he was expecting her to turn and yell at him. Instead she marched up the front walk and stairs, pounding her feet and making as much noise as she could. Piz passed her on his way out of the house but he didn’t say a word, merely raised his eyebrows as he tried to avoid running into her.
“Wow, Veronica, way to really strain yourself.” Lilly commented sarcastically from the couch then laughed at Veronica’s answering growl of indignation.
She trudged up the stairs toward the smallest bedroom that had been previously occupied by Mac. When Veronica had moved out the three remaining girls had played a game of musical bedrooms. When they had moved in originally they’d numbered the bedrooms and then pulled numbers out of a hat to see who got which room. Veronica had lucked out with the larger bedroom that had a connecting bathroom. Parker had gotten the second largest, Lilly the third and Mac the smallest. When Veronica had moved out they’d sort of rotated. Parker moved into Veronica’s old room, Lilly into Parker’s and Mac into Lilly’s leaving the tiny upstairs bedroom open for one of the boys. Wallace had claimed the basement and Piz got stuck upstairs in a little room surrounded by girls.
Veronica threw the pillows and blanket onto the bed before turning and running right into Parker and Logan. Parker teetered slightly with her box and Logan dropped his in order to stop Parker from falling. “Hope that wasn’t anything important.” Logan mumbled as he slid his box just inside the bedroom door with his foot. Parker gently set her box on the desk in the corner of the room.
Logan headed back downstairs, glancing at his watch. “Veronica, we better get going if we’re going to pick the Munchkin up by Celeste’s designated time. You know how she gets when we’re late, ranting and raving about how we don’t take it seriously and,” Logan’s voice took on a higher register in what had officially become his Celeste’s-a-bitch voice, “what was Duncan thinking letting two troublemakers like us have access to his baby girl.”
“Okay, let’s just make sure everything is out of the back of my car. We have to run by the house to grab her booster seat or we’ll get an earful about that, too.” Veronica told him as she followed him out of the house, jogging to her car.
Hour 4
22 September 2008 - 7:00pm
~Mac~
He had tried. That’s what counted, right? Dick had tried to make their anniversary as special as possible, no matter how much it hadn’t worked out. Her class had run late so they hadn’t mad their six-thirty reservations and now they couldn’t get into her favorite restaurant until nine and that conflicted with the movie showing he’d already bought tickets for. The earlier showing had sold out and the only other showing that had any tickets available didn’t start until nearly eleven and she had an eight o’clock Tuesday morning.
“So, should we wait to eat at nine or should we eat now and go to the movie at eight?” Dick asked, looking at her with a sad little smile. He’d been so excited to make the one year mark, he’d been planning their night for over a week and she had ruined it with her stupid advanced computer theory class that she hadn’t even really wanted to take because it seemed like such a colossal waste of time. She should have taken it last year but she’d been hoping that she could just skip it even though it was required for her major. Then her professor had lectured on and on and on, as if it was the most important thing you’d ever have to know about computer programming, the theory of it. That class ran consistently late every week and she couldn’t bring herself to get up and leave while the professor was still talking even though it was going on three years of college and she’d seen others do it quite often.
“Well, I’m famished. We can eat there another night, maybe this weekend when we don’t have to worry so much about time.” Mac knots her fingers with his, smiling at him so he won’t feel so bad about the night not going as he’d planned. He didn’t often plan anything more than an early morning surf trip with Logan or when to meet Mac for lunch, it wasn’t his style, so when he’d planned the evening out it’d made it even more special. More important because Dick wasn’t just going to ‘wing it’ like he did most everything else.
“You want to hit the food court then? It’s not the most romantic place to eat, but they have all the vegan stuff and we’ll still be able to make the movie.” Dick suggested. They were still standing, hand in hand, outside the building her computer theory class had been in, right where he’d said he’d meet up with her after his own Intro to Business Law ended at five-thirty. Poor Dick had waited outside, in the dark, for nearly an hour before Mac and the rest of her class came pouring out of one of the side doors.
“Sure.” She liked the eggplant lasagna that they served at the Italian place and the sweet potato fries and garden burgers they served at the vegetarian place across from that. Dick could have all the fried chicken and steak-on-a-stick he wanted also and they’d both be happy. It may not be romantic but they’d both get what they wanted and they’d be able to eat it together. There was probably champagne at home, legally obtained by Dick’s completely legit ID since he’d turned twenty-one a little over two weeks ago. They could be romantic when they got home, right now she just needed food and to vent a little about her stupid class and her stupid professor and his inability to keep track of time.
It wasn’t a long walk to the food court, as easy as walking straight across the lawn and into the side door of the student union. Dick set her down at a table and offered to go get their food - the eggplant lasagna, which seemed better suited t the occasion than a burger and fries - and drinks. She smiled and watched him walk off before she slid out of her chair and walked over to the glass fronted radio booth where Parker and Lilly were sitting, covering for one of the other deejays who apparently was sick this week. Lilly waved her to come in as Parker got up to open the door for her. Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed a Girl’ faded into the Ting Tings ‘Shut up and Let Me Go’ as Mac entered the booth.
“Hey, I thought you guys were eating at some fancy restaurant tonight?” Parker asked at the same time that Lilly said “Don’t tell me Dick is too cheap to take you somewhere other than the food court for your big night.”
“No, my class ran late so we missed our reservations. We can’t get in until nine now and Dick has tickets for that movie we were all going to see on Friday but it was sold out. We can’t see it earlier so we’re going to eat here and then the movie at eight.” Mac explained, leaning against the wall as she watched Dick through the big glass window. He was still waiting for her lasagna and whatever he was getting, holding a tray with just two sodas sitting on it. She glanced over at their book bags sitting at their empty table, keeping their space for only as long as it took for the other tables to fill up.
“That sucks.” Parker and Lilly said at the same time. They were spending way too much time together.
“I better get back to the table before Dick gets back or one of our bags get stolen.” Mac shoved off the wall and headed to the door. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow, kay?”
“Yeah, there’s another song set up after this but we’ll dedicate one to you and Dick after that.” Lilly offered, already scanning a song list for something appropriate and Parker was getting up to walk her to the door.
“Sorry your night isn’t going as planned.” Parker said softly, giving Mac a tight conciliatory smile before giving her a hug goodbye. Mac thought it was funny that after two years among the emotionally retarded Neptune elite, Parker still felt the need to give comfort hugs. It was one of the best things about her, even if she never did get a return hug.
She walked quickly back to the table and slid into her seat just as Dick turned and headed for their table, a tray laden with her lasagna, his pasta, two sodas and what looked like a very large slice of chocolate cake.
“Mmm… cake. Are we going to start with that? Veronica always says that dessert should come before the meal, otherwise you’re too full to enjoy it.” Mac informed her boyfriend as she stabbed the cake with her fork.
“Yeah, Veronica also justifies dessert for dinner by adding a cherry on top of her sundae.” Dick said, giving her a look just a little reminiscent of her father when she tried to use the same logic on him at dinner a few days ago.
“Okay, then I’ll just have this little bite. A kind of teaser to the chocolaty goodness that awaits the end of my lasagna.” Mac said, wrapping her mouth around her fork and sliding it slowly out of her mouth, watching Dick as he watched her.
“Don’t be mean.” He twirled noodles around his fork and a popped the rather large bite into his own mouth as he glared at her. She merely smiled back at him as she began eating her own food, staring back at him and not really looking at what she was doing. What’s an anniversary without a little staring contest? She thought as Dick’s eyebrows jumped a little, trying to get her to look away and break the stare. No way, buddy. She vaguely heard the song morph from the Ting Tings into Britney Spears’ ‘Womanizer’ and she vaguely hoped that this wasn’t the song Lilly thought to dedicate to them.
Dick shoved extra large bites into his mouth, tucking the food into his cheeks as he chewed and she felt herself beginning to crack. He swallowed a little before he spoke around the food in his mouth. “Want seafood?” and she turned her head away quickly before he could open his mouth and show her what was in there.
Mac squeezed her eyes shut and wrinkled her nose and uttered a small “Damn” as she realized his trick a moment too late. Dick swallowed loudly and then laughed.
“And now, a special dedication to Mac and Dick for hitting the one year mark.” Parker announced over the radio.
“May you be as disgustingly cute in the next year as you were in the last. Congrats guys.” Lilly picked up where Parker left off. “Muah.” Mac and Dick both looked over to see Parker and Lilly making kissy faces at them as the subtle strains of The Plain White T’s ‘1 2 3 4’ began.
“Gross, you two are dating?” And a glass of cold water was suddenly dumped over their heads in the form of Madison Sinclair, bitch extraordinaire.
“What’s it to you Madison?” Dick asked, his voice tense and annoyed. He glared up at his ex-girlfriend, but Mac turned to her food and dug in with a little more concentration than was necessary. The last time she’d seen Madison had been rather traumatic. Not that the news that they had been switched at birth was such a big deal to anymore, she’d had years to cope with it, but Madison’s reaction had been a little tough to witness.
Mac had known it was a bad idea for the eight of them to sit down like one big happy family and break the news to them all in one fell swoop. Madison had thought it was a joke and, when it became apparent that it wasn’t, she had shown everyone the side only other students at Neptune High got to witness. The raging and screaming about how it wasn’t fair and she wasn’t going to allow them to tell her that she’s nothing like this other family. She’s not trash and she certainly doesn’t have anything in common with the loser computer freak from high school. She’d gone storming up to her room, screaming about how she wasn’t going to be sharing anything with Mac and Mac could just forget it. Mrs. MacKenzie had tried to smooth it over but the Sinclairs had been too shocked at the fact that the girl they had raised had behaved in such a way when Mac had taken the news so gracefully. Of course Mrs. Sinclair and Mac both knew that she had known for years, but neither had mentioned it since their moment on the street in front of the MacKenzie house almost four years earlier.
“I’d like to know if I’m going to be seeing this around campus now that I go here.” Madison’s voice was just as snotty as it had been at every prearranged dinner since that night when the truth of their parentage had been announced. Madison was never going to get over this, never going to let things equalize into some version of normal.
“You go to Hearst now?” Mac asked, shocked that she hadn’t heard about it until now. The Sinclairs and the MacKenzies had been sharing an awful lot of information with each other over the past several months, trying to get to know each of the daughters they had given up knowing for so long. Mac had assumed she would be kept in the loop of such major changes, how had this happened without her knowing?
“Yes. Apparently my behavior a few weeks ago left a lot to be desired and my parents thought I should be closer to home. I guess they think I’ve done too much partying and not enough studying at my previous college, but I’m sure you’ll be welcome to take my place. After all, you seem completely at ease taking all of my leftovers so far.” Madison’s voice dripped with venom as she looked between Mac and Dick.
A guy behind Madison cleared his voice and Mac realized that Madison was on a date herself. The guy looked a little familiar, like one of the basketball players on Wallace’s team, but she couldn’t place his name.
“Oh, right. This is my boyfriend, Mitchell. I’m not done with him yet though, Mac, so you’ll have to wait for my sloppy seconds.” Madison sneered. Mac wondered when the appropriate time to go from empathetic and forgiving about the whole thing to bitchy and violent. She was thinking now was about the right time, maybe she’d give Veronica a call and plot a little revenge with her friend that was so good at it.
“Actually, Madi, if you think about it, it’s really just an equalizing thing. I was with you for so long but it was because I was supposed to be with Madison Sinclair but you weren’t the right one. Now I’m with who I’m supposed to be with and I’m realizing why everything with you was so bad. Because you’re second rate.” Dick interrupted Madison’s tirade. Mac had asked him to cut her a little slack when she’d explained the situation to him the night after their parents had dropped the switched-at-birth-bomb. He’d agreed but she’d never been so happy that he had ignored her and done what he wanted anyway. “Makes sense right? You were always supposed to be a wannabe and some how there was a mistake and you were given a shot at friends you weren’t supposed to have. It couldn’t last forever, right?”
Madison’s mouth dropped in shock and Mac could see her frantically searching for words to say, to shoot down Dick’s words and what he meant and the truth of it. She hadn’t been meant to be an 09er and, if it weren’t for a little mistake, she would have always been on the outside looking in and wanting so desperately to have the life that Mac would have had. Madison had to know that if it hadn’t been for the grace of their parents and their attachment in those first three years, she could have been back at the MacKenzie house for the seventeen years since they had all found out about the switch, living a mediocre existence. Mac had only made it this far because of superior genes of her birth family and the understanding of the family that raised her. Mac had the talent of a Sinclair but humility of a MacKenzie.
“Come on Mitchell.” Madison ground out, grabbing her boyfriend’s hand and dragging him off towards the other side of the food court, far away from Mac and Dick and everything they represented.
“Sorry about that. I hope you don’t think that I was insulting your family or anything it’s just that-” Dick started, looking down at his empty plate. She could hear the scuffing of his sneaker against the linoleum of the floor.
“I don’t think you were insulting them, not on purpose.” Mac assured him, reaching across the table to hold his hand. “That was kind of awesome though.”
“Yeah? I know you said to cut her some slack, but I couldn’t just sit back and let her say what she was saying, you know?” Dick looked up at her and smiled and suddenly Mac wasn’t hungry anymore. She didn’t want chocolate cake or to rush to a movie or anything but to get Dick alone so she could just kiss him and not have to worry about who was watching or what they would say. “Anyway, I think that with Madison, if you let her get too far she thinks she’s allowed and she’ll never stop.”
“Let’s go.” Mac said suddenly, sliding out of her chair and tugging on his hand for him to follow her.
“You’re not done with your lasagna… and the cake.” He was saying but she looked back to see him grab their book bags and follow, his hand never slipping out of hers.
She pulled him out of the building and halfway across the lawn towards his SUV before he tugged her backwards. She stumbled a bit into his arms and he kissed her, deep and loving his hands coming up to frame her face a moment before she broke away from him and started the pull him towards the parking lot again.
It was even darker by time they reached his car and they stood there in dim yellow glow from the security lights a few rows away from his car. He pressed her against the back passenger door, his mouth on hers, one hand on her breast as the other pulled open the front door to shove the bags inside. She reached out and slammed the door shut and gave him a small shove away from her. He looked at her, confusion in his eyes as he went to open the door for her again, but she moved away from him and the car, opening the door he’d had her pressed against. She bit her bottom lip as she slid backwards into the backseat of his Escalade. She’d teased him mercilessly over the last seven months since he bought the behemoth of a vehicle, but she was grateful for it and the big back seat and what she planned to do him back there.
“What are you doing Ghost World?” His voice was filled with affection and she no longer cringed in annoyance at the nickname. It may have started out as an insult but he hadn’t meant it that way in a long time. Now it was something he teased her with at night when he tugged on a chunk of colored hair before he kissed her.
Dick crawled in after her and pulled the back door shut behind him. She attacked him, pressing him against the inside of the door he’d just closed, her lips fusing to his and her hands running up his chest, his shirt bunching around her wrists. “Did I ever tell you how glad I am that you got the extra dark tinted windows?” She whispered, her voice was husky and lust filled and she blushed at the sound of it.
“No, I don’t think you ever mentioned it.” Dick’s voice was rough and surprised as she pulled his shirt off of him in the backseat of his car. “You know I didn’t get it for this, right?” The last question was said nervously, as her hands dropped to the button on his jeans. He was hard, she could feel that with just the lightest brush of her hand at the front of his crotch. It didn’t take much to get him excited. She unbuttoned his pants but didn’t go any further than that.
Mac backed away from him, sliding across the back seat to press herself against the other door, giving herself enough room to kick off her ballet flats and pull off her own jeans. She left her underwear on and reached out for Dick, meeting him in the middle of the seat. She straddled him and his hands fell to her hips, gripping her as his fingers slid in the waistband of her underwear, just a little. Her own hands slid into his hair as she put her mouth back on his and their tongues met and mated, mimicking the actions that his rocking hips suggested.
Dick’s hands pressed her down against him and she moaned a little, encouraging both that and the path his mouth took down the side of her neck. He quickly rid her of her shirt and tossed it far into the back along with her jeans and his own shirt, his hands quickly returning to her hips. His ass lifted off the seat as he thrust upwards, grinding against her the same moment that his mouth cover her breast, nipping at it through the material of her bra.
Her hands slid down to grip his shoulders at the same moment she felt one of his slide up her back to release the clasp of her bra. She released him for a moment to slid the straps down her arms and then that too joined the rest of their clothing in the back. Her nails, as short as they may be, dug into the cords of muscle of his shoulders as he continued to attend to her breasts. She gasped when he thrust upwards again, straining at the confines of his jeans, and then rolled to the side so she could pull her underwear off. He took the opportunity to push his jeans and boxers down passed his hips, his erection springing almost comically free. He tried to toe off his shoes and kick his pants the rest of the way off as she swung her leg back over him, straddling him once more.
“The movie starts soon.” He mumbled, gripping her hips.
She could hear the hope in his voice and smiled. “Screw the movie.” And with that he thrust upwards sliding in and they both let out long moans of satisfaction.
He pulled out slightly and she thought about how he wasn’t wearing a condom and she couldn’t remember if she’d taken her pill this morning, or yesterday, and they should really have the added protection of the condom either way and she knew there was one somewhere in this massive vehicle and they were in the middle of a parking lot of a college campus and if the car’s a-rockin’ then don’t come knockin’ and… and then he slammed back into her and all her thoughts spun away and everything faded until it was just the two of them there, in the backseat of his mansion on wheels. Together.
41: Five
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 14,162 (both parts)
Characters/Pairings: Lilly I, Weevil, Parker, Piz, Veronica, Mac, Logan, Wallace, Dick, Madison, OMC (mentions: Celeste and Jake Kane, Duncan Kane, Trina Echolls, Aaron Echolls, OFC, Lilly II and Keith Mars)
Spoilers: All episodes (from 1.01: Pilot to 3.20: The Bitch Is Back. Just to be sure) Although this is obviously AU and there are obviously going to be some alterations to events and especially some in the last couple of episodes.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Literally, nothing. So don’t sue me over this, because you won’t get anything. It all belongs to Rob Thomas and if I had owned it when it was still on the last season would have been way different.
1: Awake/ 2: Homecoming/ 3: Forgive/ 4: Arrival/ 5: Reconnect/ 6: Belong/ 7: Bets/ 8: Fight/ 9: Battle/ 10: Retreat/ 11: Push/ 12: Sound/ 13: Potential/ 14: More/ 15: Storytime/ 16: Understanding/ 17: Piggyback/ 18: Sinners/ 19: Drama/ 20: Dinner/ 21: Armor/ 22:Mingle/ 23:Bubbly/ 24:Awkward/ 25:Closing/ 26: Drunks/ 27: Logan/ 28: Wallace/ 29: Mac/ 30: Parker/ 31: Duncan/ 32: Lilly/33: Piz/ 34: Weevil/ 35: Dick/ 36: Veronica/ 37: One/38: Two/39: Three
The Return
40
Four
Hour 3
20 July 2008 - 9:00 am
~Veronica~
The boxes looked heavy. Really heavy. She wondered, briefly, what exactly it was that Piz had acquired in the last year that was so cumbersome. She couldn’t remember anything in their dorm room looking particularly heavy when she had visited it last. Of course that had been months ago and she’d only stayed a minute while Wallace finished getting ready for their BFF night of pizza, talking and surveillance.
It definitely looked heavy and awkward. “What do you think is in there that’s so heavy?” She asked aloud to her couchmates.
“I don’t know, but it looks like it requires two people to carry it.” Mac replied, nodding along with Veronica as they sat and watched as Piz struggled with the large - and apparently heavy - box.
“I hope it’s not breakable.” Lilly added. “If he drops it, and it breaks, I’m not cleaning up the mess. He’s the one that packed it up, he should have known better.”
“I think someone should help him.” Parker’s voice was concerned and she actually leaned forward, her back coming off the couch cushions in a gesture that suggested that she might be the one to get up to help. “He looks like he needs help.”
“You know, I can hear you, right?” Piz asked, his voice strained as he continued to struggle with the large box. “And I could use a little help.”
“Okay.” Veronica said and he looked over at her, hopeful. Silly boy, she hadn’t even moved her own stuff when she’d moved into the room he was claiming. Or when she’d moved out of it six weeks ago. “Logan!”
She heard her boyfriend’s footsteps thunder up the front steps of the house before he appeared in the front doorway. “Yeah?” He asked, looking at Piz, scanning the room and, finally, landing on her… lounging on the couch with her feet up on the coffee table Lilly had stolen from the expertly decorated second living room of the Kane Estate seven months ago. “If you ask me to get you a glass of water I swear to God I will pour it over your head.” He sounded perturbed.
“Piz needs help.” She said it innocently, smiling at him. She bit her lip a little bit, tilted her head and watched as any annoyance he’d had completely melted away. They were in the honeymoon state of living together and he couldn’t stay mad at her for long. She didn’t know when the honeymoon would end and they’d find a balance where they didn’t let each other get away with every single thing, so she was determined to take advantage of this for as long as possible.
“Okay, baby.” He said, giving her one of those secret smiles that she was only just learning. Normally he would have responded with a little of his trademark sarcasm and wit, asking her if her legs were broke. But instead he turned to Piz and took half the weight of the troublesome box. “What the hell is in here?”
“My text books.” Piz responded matter-of-factly.
“And?” Logan prompted, because there was no way that all that was in there was books.
“Some stereo equipment.” Again, Piz’s responded as if it was obvious what was in the box.
“And?” Logan asked again, backing up the stairs.
“Some blankets to pad the stereo stuff from banging too much against my amp.” Piz explained before a look of realization came over his face. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.” There was the sarcasm she loved so much. “Just because it fits doesn’t mean that it should all go in.”
All four of the girls burst out laughing as the two boys slowly made their way up the stairs, bickering all the way.
“You think that we should help?” Parker asked, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth, watching the front door for Wallace even though she knew he was unloading his car at the back and through the kitchen so he could go right into the basement. The basement that Veronica had sort of converted into a dark room at the beginning of spring semester when she’d started her new photography class. Hopefully she’d gotten all her equipment out of there, most of the stuff she had in the dark room at her and Logan’s place was new and already in there when he’d surprised her with it. She had to have the best boyfriend ever, surprising her with a newly built, state-of-the-art dark room a couple days before she moved in.
“Nah. The boys can get it. There’s five of them, in and out of the house, back and forth to the cars. We’d just get in the way, adding four more to the fray.” Veronica said and Parker eased back into the couch between the armrest and Lilly. Didn’t take much to convince her.
“You mean four?” Lilly corrected.
“No, there’s five.” Veronica assured her best friend that was more like a sister than ever before, after having lived together for six months before Veronica finally broke down and agreed to move in with Logan at the end of their second year at Hearst.
“No. Logan, Piz, Wallace and Dick.” Lilly counted each of the boys off on a her right hand before holding out four raised fingers, her thumb tucked into the hollow of her palm. “Four.”
“And Weevil. He came showed up right after us with a carload of stuff. Piz has been storing his dorm stuff in Weevil’s garage while he was up in Beaverton visiting his parents and getting the rest of his stuff.” Veronica explained, seeing a change in Lilly’s posture when she mentioned Weevil.
She had been hoping that Lilly had finally let all the Weevil stuff go. Veronica had honestly thought Lilly had moved on. She was dating a guy she’d met on campus at the end of last year. She and Parker had their new radio show that they were starting next week. She was even taking a couple classes over the summer to try and get a head start on her general courses. When, and why, did she have time to pine for Eli Navarro?
“Weevil’s here?” Lilly’s voice was breathier than normal as she brushed her hair behind her ears and glanced back toward the kitchen where they could hear Wallace and someone coming in with boxes, laughing. They could all tell it was Dick’s laugh, but Lilly still looked hopefully towards the voices. Veronica watched as Lilly bit her lip and leaned back over the couch, arching her back ever so slightly as she tried to see down the hall and into the kitchen. It was impossible. Veronica had tried it about a billion times when she lived here and was always curious about what exactly Logan was doing in the kitchen when he was over.
“Yeah. Probably out front though, since he’s got Piz’s stuff, not Wallace’s. Wallace kept his stuff at his mom’s place while he was, you know, staying there.” Veronica stared sternly at Lilly. She had a boyfriend and had made a promise last year to let this Weevil thing drop. To leave him alone and let him just be over her because they’d decided, together, that she’d already put him through enough.
Lilly’s head whipped back around to look at Veronica, her body falling back into it’s indentation on the couch. Her face was stubbornly blank but Veronica could see the guilt in her eyes. She was still trying not to, but also trying, to get to Weevil. To get him to remember why he’d been with her in the first place, what he felt before and that even though she hadn’t reciprocated his feelings then and had hurt him pretty badly, that she was still here and open to the possibility of revisiting their affair.
“I thought you were through with that.” Veronica tried to soften her voice a little, tried not to sound too stern but at the same time get her message across to Lilly. I thought you weren’t going to try and mess with his head anymore.
“Well, it’s easy to say it.” It’s totally hard and difficult and impossible to actually follow through with what you say. Veronica could hear the rest of the statement, she saw it echoing out of Lilly’s eyes. She could understand it. Hadn’t she made the same kind of statements about Logan? Hadn’t she found it just as impossible to follow though, to give up on him and whatever they had always been to each other? She knew how hard it could be.
“You’ve made steps, come so far.” You’re dating again. You have a well rounded life that doesn’t revolve around your next scandal, around the different ways you can piss Celeste off. She would hate to see Lilly come so far only to fall back into the mess again. To fall back into the bad habits she’d had.
“I’m not going back.” This is just a hiccup, a lingering feeling. I’m not going to let it go any further. Lilly’s eyes pleaded with her to understand this, that the friendship she’d forged with Weevil was just that. Friendship. Veronica had been shocked when they’d started talking again, even going so far as having coffee once in a while to catch up and hang out. It had seemed like a bad idea, at the time, but Lilly had insisted that they could be just friends and nothing more. It was starting to seem like a bad idea again.
“Does it seem like we’re missing something in the conversation.” Mac asked from Veronica’s left, leaning forward so she could look around Veronica and Lilly to see Parker.
“MacKenzie, you’re always missing something.” Lilly joked, her voice tense from the non-conversation she and Veronica had just had.
All four of them laughed at the joke and, thankfully, the tension was gone and they were back to hanging out.
“What- You-” They heard Wallace stutter from behind them and she felt herself, and the other three girls, cringe at his voice and the accusation in it.
He stomped around the couch and Veronica knew that she could head tilt and smile her way out of this because Wallace never did fall for that. He was always stubbornly resistant to her tricks.
Standing before them, hands on his hips and a stern look, he looked amusingly like his mother. Veronica remembered the same stance and the same expression on Alicia’s face as she stood in front of her son and his best friend while they watched movies and made a mess. Her tricks hadn’t worked on Alicia either and she’d always been the one to have to pick popcorn out of the seat cushions while Wallace wielded the vacuum.
“And what, pray tell, do the four of you think you’re doing?” Wallace demanded and Veronica swore that she felt the couch sink a few inches into the ground under his weighty stare.
“Hanging out?” Parker said, her words lilting up at the end to make it sound more like a question than a statement. Veronica glanced over to see Parker’s shoulders up around her ears as she looked guiltily up at Wallace.
“As I recall that wasn’t what we were gathered here for. I thought we were all going to pitch in and get this moving thing out of the way, get all the boxes into the house.” Wallace’s eyes traveled over the four girls and the couch sunk a couple more inches.
“But we’ve all been so busy lately, we just need a minute to catch up.” Parker’s voice wasn’t any stronger than it had been a minute ago. Veronica knew she hated to let people down, and she had been pestering them about getting up and helping.
“If you could give us a couple more minutes Wallace, we would probably be a lot more helpful if we got all the gossip out of the way.” Lilly’s voice was stronger than Parker’s had been, but she was obviously a little thrown by such a stern Wallace.
“If ifs and buts were candy and nuts we’d all have a Merry Christmas.” Wallace repeated his mother’s old saying, completing the effect and Veronica had a hard time keeping the laugh in. She could see the strain around Wallace’s mouth, he was having a hard time keeping this up. He just needed one little push…
“I still don’t get what that means.” Veronica said, looking right in his eyes as she raised an eyebrow and smirked.
That was it. Wallace burst out laughing before cramming himself onto the couch between Mac and Veronica, throwing his arms over both girls. “Me neither.”
Parker looked confused and still a little guilty over her lack of help, her shoulders slowly easing down to their normal position. She was going to give in, Veronica knew it. Parker was going to get off the couch and go help the boys move into the house.
“You know, I always did kind of like this big ole house that you girls moved into. Reminds me of my old house up in Chicago. Although I don’t remember there being this many girls in that house.” Wallace reminisced as he propped his feet up on the coffee table next to Veronica’s.
“Dude, what are you doing?” Dick asked, suddenly standing in front of the couch, glaring at Wallace. He looked sweaty and annoyed, probably didn’t want to spend the day helping his friends move into their rooms. Especially since he and Logan had had to cut their surf short this morning in order to meet up with them.
“I’m trying out the girls’ way of moving, it looked a hell of a lot more fun.” Wallace explained, giving Veronica a look that made her slightly more guilty than the sternness he’d faked earlier. “After all, this is how Veronica got moved in and out of this place.”
“Oh, well then…” Dick said as he flopped back into the lounge chair across from the couch. “Do the boxes just float in by themselves or is there a ghost situation going on?”
Dick’s eyebrows were raised in question and he was looking at her for the answer. Wallace looked at her expectantly as well and Veronica barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes at them. Their jokes weren’t quite as funny as they thought they were.
“I don’t remember, I didn’t pay all that much attention but if memory serves you were both there,” she pointed at her best friend and her boyfriend’s best friend before continuing. “Do you remember any ghosts? Did they help you with the boxes?”
“Oh, that’s right. They don’t move themselves.” Wallace exclaimed like it was a suddenly new concept to him, that it took physical labor to move into a new place.
“Oh, fine then. I’ll help.” Veronica said to the boys indulgently, pushing up off the couch and walking towards the front door.
“Um, V? My stuff is out back.” Wallace informed her, getting off the couch himself. His head jerked in the direction of the kitchen and the backdoor and, what she assumed, the general direction of the car and his stuff.
“I said I’d help, didn’t say I’d help you.” Veronica smirked at him as Logan game barreling down the stairs. He stopped at the bottom, his arm wrapping around her waist as he turned himself to face the rest of the group.
“What’s going on?” He asked her as his other arm wrapped around her, pulling back against him as his chin settled down on her shoulder.
“Wallace is trying to guilt trip and Dick is nagging, you know, the usual.” She said in a light voice. Mac stood and tugged at Dick’s hand until he stood up next to her.
“Is there a reason I’m the only one outside moving stuff?” Weevil’s voice came from behind her and Logan and the entire group of friends seemed to turn towards him simultaneously. He had two boxes, one under each arm, and looked rather annoyed with that fact. “Y’all taking a break? This ain’t a one man Mexican moving company.”
“No, we were just discussing who was all going to help Wallace and who was going to help Piz. We’re coming.” Veronica told him, giving him a reassuring smile. He was being nice enough to give up his morning off to come and help, she didn’t want him to think that it wasn’t appreciated.
Piz chose that moment to come down the stairs, walk over to the couch and flop down between Wallace and Lilly, taking Veronica’s recently vacated spot. “Man, that box was heavy.”
Logan’s arms slipped out from around Veronica and he went back outside to grab a few more boxes. Wallace, Dick and Mac headed towards the back of the house to continue unloading Wallace’s stuff. Parker eased herself off the couch, gave Weevil a tight smile and headed out front too. Lilly remained resolutely on the couch, her feet propped up on her mother’s second favorite coffee table, studying her nails with a nonchalant air of indifference.
“You ain’t helpin’, Kane?” Weevil asked from the doorway, his eyebrows raised in question. It was some new, weird thing he had, calling her Kane instead of her first name. Like it made them more friends than former lovers if he did the guy thing and called her by her last name.
“I don’t think so, Navarro.” Veronica heard the barely contained annoyance in her voice as she said his last name. She did not enjoy being called Kane. “I’m already going to have to live with them, and in Piz’s case work with him, do I really have to move them in too? Am I not sacrificing enough?”
“It wasn’t my idea to let you and Parker on the radio. If it was up to me you’d both be banned from calling in to the station. Instead the manager thinks you’re both so cute and need your own show.” Piz complained, yet again, that his producer and the station manager had decided that the girls needed their own show. Apparently they helped with ratings whenever they were on and the producers were impressed how they could argue with each other without it getting too heated. Lilly would get passionate and Parker would reign her in when necessary. They were able to discuss politics, religion, movies, celebrities and school policy without getting too annoying. They’re show was, conceptually, an hour long talk radio show where they’d play some Top 40 in the middle of the afternoon. The part that Piz was most annoyed with though was the fact that they were combining it with his Wednesday night show. He’d be on air five days a week now, but he had to share the show with two of his new roommates.
“Get over it Piznarski. Or at least save it for the air waves.” Lilly pushed at him with her foot. She would never admit it but she had a soft spot for Piz, no matter how much she denied it. When she, Parker and Mac had agreed to let Wallace and Piz move into the Big House she had told Veronica that it would be just like having a puppy. One that could potentially change the light bulbs, get the stuff off the top shelves in the kitchen and finally fix that annoying leak in the upstairs bathroom. Veronica hadn’t had the heart to tell her that it was more likely that the light bulbs would need changing because neither he nor Wallace ever turned off the lights, the stuff on the top shelf would be gone because they ate like they’d never seen food before and neither boy would go near that leak because the tampons were kept under that particular sink.
Veronica left Lilly and Piz to continue arguing and followed Weevil outside to help with the boxes. She rubbed her hands together in faux anticipation as she reached the car where Logan and Parker stood, pulling boxes out. “What can I do?” Her enthusiasm sounded just as fake as it felt.
“Here.” Logan said as he handed her a pile of pillows.
She hadn’t really been looking forward to lugging boxes up and down the stairs but she was a little insulted by this offering of pillows. “I can take more than that.” She said indignantly, scowling at her boyfriend as he pulled another box out of the back of her car.
Piz had stored a bunch of his stuff in Logan’s garage after his parents had brought a load down right before finals week. Apparently they were moving into a smaller house and there wasn’t any room for most of Piz’s stuff, he’d picked up the rest when he’d gone up to stay for a couple weeks.
“Okay, if you insist.” Logan piled a blanket on top of Veronica’s pile of pillows before he leaned forward, gripped her shoulders and kissed her forehead before turning her towards the house and lightly patting her on the ass. “Off you go.”
Her jaw dropped in shock and indignation, but she could hear Logan chuckling behind her and she knew he was expecting her to turn and yell at him. Instead she marched up the front walk and stairs, pounding her feet and making as much noise as she could. Piz passed her on his way out of the house but he didn’t say a word, merely raised his eyebrows as he tried to avoid running into her.
“Wow, Veronica, way to really strain yourself.” Lilly commented sarcastically from the couch then laughed at Veronica’s answering growl of indignation.
She trudged up the stairs toward the smallest bedroom that had been previously occupied by Mac. When Veronica had moved out the three remaining girls had played a game of musical bedrooms. When they had moved in originally they’d numbered the bedrooms and then pulled numbers out of a hat to see who got which room. Veronica had lucked out with the larger bedroom that had a connecting bathroom. Parker had gotten the second largest, Lilly the third and Mac the smallest. When Veronica had moved out they’d sort of rotated. Parker moved into Veronica’s old room, Lilly into Parker’s and Mac into Lilly’s leaving the tiny upstairs bedroom open for one of the boys. Wallace had claimed the basement and Piz got stuck upstairs in a little room surrounded by girls.
Veronica threw the pillows and blanket onto the bed before turning and running right into Parker and Logan. Parker teetered slightly with her box and Logan dropped his in order to stop Parker from falling. “Hope that wasn’t anything important.” Logan mumbled as he slid his box just inside the bedroom door with his foot. Parker gently set her box on the desk in the corner of the room.
Logan headed back downstairs, glancing at his watch. “Veronica, we better get going if we’re going to pick the Munchkin up by Celeste’s designated time. You know how she gets when we’re late, ranting and raving about how we don’t take it seriously and,” Logan’s voice took on a higher register in what had officially become his Celeste’s-a-bitch voice, “what was Duncan thinking letting two troublemakers like us have access to his baby girl.”
“Okay, let’s just make sure everything is out of the back of my car. We have to run by the house to grab her booster seat or we’ll get an earful about that, too.” Veronica told him as she followed him out of the house, jogging to her car.
Hour 4
22 September 2008 - 7:00pm
~Mac~
He had tried. That’s what counted, right? Dick had tried to make their anniversary as special as possible, no matter how much it hadn’t worked out. Her class had run late so they hadn’t mad their six-thirty reservations and now they couldn’t get into her favorite restaurant until nine and that conflicted with the movie showing he’d already bought tickets for. The earlier showing had sold out and the only other showing that had any tickets available didn’t start until nearly eleven and she had an eight o’clock Tuesday morning.
“So, should we wait to eat at nine or should we eat now and go to the movie at eight?” Dick asked, looking at her with a sad little smile. He’d been so excited to make the one year mark, he’d been planning their night for over a week and she had ruined it with her stupid advanced computer theory class that she hadn’t even really wanted to take because it seemed like such a colossal waste of time. She should have taken it last year but she’d been hoping that she could just skip it even though it was required for her major. Then her professor had lectured on and on and on, as if it was the most important thing you’d ever have to know about computer programming, the theory of it. That class ran consistently late every week and she couldn’t bring herself to get up and leave while the professor was still talking even though it was going on three years of college and she’d seen others do it quite often.
“Well, I’m famished. We can eat there another night, maybe this weekend when we don’t have to worry so much about time.” Mac knots her fingers with his, smiling at him so he won’t feel so bad about the night not going as he’d planned. He didn’t often plan anything more than an early morning surf trip with Logan or when to meet Mac for lunch, it wasn’t his style, so when he’d planned the evening out it’d made it even more special. More important because Dick wasn’t just going to ‘wing it’ like he did most everything else.
“You want to hit the food court then? It’s not the most romantic place to eat, but they have all the vegan stuff and we’ll still be able to make the movie.” Dick suggested. They were still standing, hand in hand, outside the building her computer theory class had been in, right where he’d said he’d meet up with her after his own Intro to Business Law ended at five-thirty. Poor Dick had waited outside, in the dark, for nearly an hour before Mac and the rest of her class came pouring out of one of the side doors.
“Sure.” She liked the eggplant lasagna that they served at the Italian place and the sweet potato fries and garden burgers they served at the vegetarian place across from that. Dick could have all the fried chicken and steak-on-a-stick he wanted also and they’d both be happy. It may not be romantic but they’d both get what they wanted and they’d be able to eat it together. There was probably champagne at home, legally obtained by Dick’s completely legit ID since he’d turned twenty-one a little over two weeks ago. They could be romantic when they got home, right now she just needed food and to vent a little about her stupid class and her stupid professor and his inability to keep track of time.
It wasn’t a long walk to the food court, as easy as walking straight across the lawn and into the side door of the student union. Dick set her down at a table and offered to go get their food - the eggplant lasagna, which seemed better suited t the occasion than a burger and fries - and drinks. She smiled and watched him walk off before she slid out of her chair and walked over to the glass fronted radio booth where Parker and Lilly were sitting, covering for one of the other deejays who apparently was sick this week. Lilly waved her to come in as Parker got up to open the door for her. Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed a Girl’ faded into the Ting Tings ‘Shut up and Let Me Go’ as Mac entered the booth.
“Hey, I thought you guys were eating at some fancy restaurant tonight?” Parker asked at the same time that Lilly said “Don’t tell me Dick is too cheap to take you somewhere other than the food court for your big night.”
“No, my class ran late so we missed our reservations. We can’t get in until nine now and Dick has tickets for that movie we were all going to see on Friday but it was sold out. We can’t see it earlier so we’re going to eat here and then the movie at eight.” Mac explained, leaning against the wall as she watched Dick through the big glass window. He was still waiting for her lasagna and whatever he was getting, holding a tray with just two sodas sitting on it. She glanced over at their book bags sitting at their empty table, keeping their space for only as long as it took for the other tables to fill up.
“That sucks.” Parker and Lilly said at the same time. They were spending way too much time together.
“I better get back to the table before Dick gets back or one of our bags get stolen.” Mac shoved off the wall and headed to the door. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow, kay?”
“Yeah, there’s another song set up after this but we’ll dedicate one to you and Dick after that.” Lilly offered, already scanning a song list for something appropriate and Parker was getting up to walk her to the door.
“Sorry your night isn’t going as planned.” Parker said softly, giving Mac a tight conciliatory smile before giving her a hug goodbye. Mac thought it was funny that after two years among the emotionally retarded Neptune elite, Parker still felt the need to give comfort hugs. It was one of the best things about her, even if she never did get a return hug.
She walked quickly back to the table and slid into her seat just as Dick turned and headed for their table, a tray laden with her lasagna, his pasta, two sodas and what looked like a very large slice of chocolate cake.
“Mmm… cake. Are we going to start with that? Veronica always says that dessert should come before the meal, otherwise you’re too full to enjoy it.” Mac informed her boyfriend as she stabbed the cake with her fork.
“Yeah, Veronica also justifies dessert for dinner by adding a cherry on top of her sundae.” Dick said, giving her a look just a little reminiscent of her father when she tried to use the same logic on him at dinner a few days ago.
“Okay, then I’ll just have this little bite. A kind of teaser to the chocolaty goodness that awaits the end of my lasagna.” Mac said, wrapping her mouth around her fork and sliding it slowly out of her mouth, watching Dick as he watched her.
“Don’t be mean.” He twirled noodles around his fork and a popped the rather large bite into his own mouth as he glared at her. She merely smiled back at him as she began eating her own food, staring back at him and not really looking at what she was doing. What’s an anniversary without a little staring contest? She thought as Dick’s eyebrows jumped a little, trying to get her to look away and break the stare. No way, buddy. She vaguely heard the song morph from the Ting Tings into Britney Spears’ ‘Womanizer’ and she vaguely hoped that this wasn’t the song Lilly thought to dedicate to them.
Dick shoved extra large bites into his mouth, tucking the food into his cheeks as he chewed and she felt herself beginning to crack. He swallowed a little before he spoke around the food in his mouth. “Want seafood?” and she turned her head away quickly before he could open his mouth and show her what was in there.
Mac squeezed her eyes shut and wrinkled her nose and uttered a small “Damn” as she realized his trick a moment too late. Dick swallowed loudly and then laughed.
“And now, a special dedication to Mac and Dick for hitting the one year mark.” Parker announced over the radio.
“May you be as disgustingly cute in the next year as you were in the last. Congrats guys.” Lilly picked up where Parker left off. “Muah.” Mac and Dick both looked over to see Parker and Lilly making kissy faces at them as the subtle strains of The Plain White T’s ‘1 2 3 4’ began.
“Gross, you two are dating?” And a glass of cold water was suddenly dumped over their heads in the form of Madison Sinclair, bitch extraordinaire.
“What’s it to you Madison?” Dick asked, his voice tense and annoyed. He glared up at his ex-girlfriend, but Mac turned to her food and dug in with a little more concentration than was necessary. The last time she’d seen Madison had been rather traumatic. Not that the news that they had been switched at birth was such a big deal to anymore, she’d had years to cope with it, but Madison’s reaction had been a little tough to witness.
Mac had known it was a bad idea for the eight of them to sit down like one big happy family and break the news to them all in one fell swoop. Madison had thought it was a joke and, when it became apparent that it wasn’t, she had shown everyone the side only other students at Neptune High got to witness. The raging and screaming about how it wasn’t fair and she wasn’t going to allow them to tell her that she’s nothing like this other family. She’s not trash and she certainly doesn’t have anything in common with the loser computer freak from high school. She’d gone storming up to her room, screaming about how she wasn’t going to be sharing anything with Mac and Mac could just forget it. Mrs. MacKenzie had tried to smooth it over but the Sinclairs had been too shocked at the fact that the girl they had raised had behaved in such a way when Mac had taken the news so gracefully. Of course Mrs. Sinclair and Mac both knew that she had known for years, but neither had mentioned it since their moment on the street in front of the MacKenzie house almost four years earlier.
“I’d like to know if I’m going to be seeing this around campus now that I go here.” Madison’s voice was just as snotty as it had been at every prearranged dinner since that night when the truth of their parentage had been announced. Madison was never going to get over this, never going to let things equalize into some version of normal.
“You go to Hearst now?” Mac asked, shocked that she hadn’t heard about it until now. The Sinclairs and the MacKenzies had been sharing an awful lot of information with each other over the past several months, trying to get to know each of the daughters they had given up knowing for so long. Mac had assumed she would be kept in the loop of such major changes, how had this happened without her knowing?
“Yes. Apparently my behavior a few weeks ago left a lot to be desired and my parents thought I should be closer to home. I guess they think I’ve done too much partying and not enough studying at my previous college, but I’m sure you’ll be welcome to take my place. After all, you seem completely at ease taking all of my leftovers so far.” Madison’s voice dripped with venom as she looked between Mac and Dick.
A guy behind Madison cleared his voice and Mac realized that Madison was on a date herself. The guy looked a little familiar, like one of the basketball players on Wallace’s team, but she couldn’t place his name.
“Oh, right. This is my boyfriend, Mitchell. I’m not done with him yet though, Mac, so you’ll have to wait for my sloppy seconds.” Madison sneered. Mac wondered when the appropriate time to go from empathetic and forgiving about the whole thing to bitchy and violent. She was thinking now was about the right time, maybe she’d give Veronica a call and plot a little revenge with her friend that was so good at it.
“Actually, Madi, if you think about it, it’s really just an equalizing thing. I was with you for so long but it was because I was supposed to be with Madison Sinclair but you weren’t the right one. Now I’m with who I’m supposed to be with and I’m realizing why everything with you was so bad. Because you’re second rate.” Dick interrupted Madison’s tirade. Mac had asked him to cut her a little slack when she’d explained the situation to him the night after their parents had dropped the switched-at-birth-bomb. He’d agreed but she’d never been so happy that he had ignored her and done what he wanted anyway. “Makes sense right? You were always supposed to be a wannabe and some how there was a mistake and you were given a shot at friends you weren’t supposed to have. It couldn’t last forever, right?”
Madison’s mouth dropped in shock and Mac could see her frantically searching for words to say, to shoot down Dick’s words and what he meant and the truth of it. She hadn’t been meant to be an 09er and, if it weren’t for a little mistake, she would have always been on the outside looking in and wanting so desperately to have the life that Mac would have had. Madison had to know that if it hadn’t been for the grace of their parents and their attachment in those first three years, she could have been back at the MacKenzie house for the seventeen years since they had all found out about the switch, living a mediocre existence. Mac had only made it this far because of superior genes of her birth family and the understanding of the family that raised her. Mac had the talent of a Sinclair but humility of a MacKenzie.
“Come on Mitchell.” Madison ground out, grabbing her boyfriend’s hand and dragging him off towards the other side of the food court, far away from Mac and Dick and everything they represented.
“Sorry about that. I hope you don’t think that I was insulting your family or anything it’s just that-” Dick started, looking down at his empty plate. She could hear the scuffing of his sneaker against the linoleum of the floor.
“I don’t think you were insulting them, not on purpose.” Mac assured him, reaching across the table to hold his hand. “That was kind of awesome though.”
“Yeah? I know you said to cut her some slack, but I couldn’t just sit back and let her say what she was saying, you know?” Dick looked up at her and smiled and suddenly Mac wasn’t hungry anymore. She didn’t want chocolate cake or to rush to a movie or anything but to get Dick alone so she could just kiss him and not have to worry about who was watching or what they would say. “Anyway, I think that with Madison, if you let her get too far she thinks she’s allowed and she’ll never stop.”
“Let’s go.” Mac said suddenly, sliding out of her chair and tugging on his hand for him to follow her.
“You’re not done with your lasagna… and the cake.” He was saying but she looked back to see him grab their book bags and follow, his hand never slipping out of hers.
She pulled him out of the building and halfway across the lawn towards his SUV before he tugged her backwards. She stumbled a bit into his arms and he kissed her, deep and loving his hands coming up to frame her face a moment before she broke away from him and started the pull him towards the parking lot again.
It was even darker by time they reached his car and they stood there in dim yellow glow from the security lights a few rows away from his car. He pressed her against the back passenger door, his mouth on hers, one hand on her breast as the other pulled open the front door to shove the bags inside. She reached out and slammed the door shut and gave him a small shove away from her. He looked at her, confusion in his eyes as he went to open the door for her again, but she moved away from him and the car, opening the door he’d had her pressed against. She bit her bottom lip as she slid backwards into the backseat of his Escalade. She’d teased him mercilessly over the last seven months since he bought the behemoth of a vehicle, but she was grateful for it and the big back seat and what she planned to do him back there.
“What are you doing Ghost World?” His voice was filled with affection and she no longer cringed in annoyance at the nickname. It may have started out as an insult but he hadn’t meant it that way in a long time. Now it was something he teased her with at night when he tugged on a chunk of colored hair before he kissed her.
Dick crawled in after her and pulled the back door shut behind him. She attacked him, pressing him against the inside of the door he’d just closed, her lips fusing to his and her hands running up his chest, his shirt bunching around her wrists. “Did I ever tell you how glad I am that you got the extra dark tinted windows?” She whispered, her voice was husky and lust filled and she blushed at the sound of it.
“No, I don’t think you ever mentioned it.” Dick’s voice was rough and surprised as she pulled his shirt off of him in the backseat of his car. “You know I didn’t get it for this, right?” The last question was said nervously, as her hands dropped to the button on his jeans. He was hard, she could feel that with just the lightest brush of her hand at the front of his crotch. It didn’t take much to get him excited. She unbuttoned his pants but didn’t go any further than that.
Mac backed away from him, sliding across the back seat to press herself against the other door, giving herself enough room to kick off her ballet flats and pull off her own jeans. She left her underwear on and reached out for Dick, meeting him in the middle of the seat. She straddled him and his hands fell to her hips, gripping her as his fingers slid in the waistband of her underwear, just a little. Her own hands slid into his hair as she put her mouth back on his and their tongues met and mated, mimicking the actions that his rocking hips suggested.
Dick’s hands pressed her down against him and she moaned a little, encouraging both that and the path his mouth took down the side of her neck. He quickly rid her of her shirt and tossed it far into the back along with her jeans and his own shirt, his hands quickly returning to her hips. His ass lifted off the seat as he thrust upwards, grinding against her the same moment that his mouth cover her breast, nipping at it through the material of her bra.
Her hands slid down to grip his shoulders at the same moment she felt one of his slide up her back to release the clasp of her bra. She released him for a moment to slid the straps down her arms and then that too joined the rest of their clothing in the back. Her nails, as short as they may be, dug into the cords of muscle of his shoulders as he continued to attend to her breasts. She gasped when he thrust upwards again, straining at the confines of his jeans, and then rolled to the side so she could pull her underwear off. He took the opportunity to push his jeans and boxers down passed his hips, his erection springing almost comically free. He tried to toe off his shoes and kick his pants the rest of the way off as she swung her leg back over him, straddling him once more.
“The movie starts soon.” He mumbled, gripping her hips.
She could hear the hope in his voice and smiled. “Screw the movie.” And with that he thrust upwards sliding in and they both let out long moans of satisfaction.
He pulled out slightly and she thought about how he wasn’t wearing a condom and she couldn’t remember if she’d taken her pill this morning, or yesterday, and they should really have the added protection of the condom either way and she knew there was one somewhere in this massive vehicle and they were in the middle of a parking lot of a college campus and if the car’s a-rockin’ then don’t come knockin’ and… and then he slammed back into her and all her thoughts spun away and everything faded until it was just the two of them there, in the backseat of his mansion on wheels. Together.
41: Five