Someday I Will Treat You Good; Ch 5: So Long, Lonesome
Title: Someday I Will Treat You Good
Ch: 5/??
Ch Title: So Long, Lonesome
Rating: Hard R/NC17 (for the whole story)
P/C: Lamb/Veronica, Mac, Wallace, mentions of Weevil, Logan/Veronica, Sacks and Jeff Ratner
Summary: And then, the most amazing thing happened. Veronica Mars did not slap him or flash her razor colored eyes at him or throw his hand off.
10 months ago
The day she’d been dreading had finally happened. The Coast Guard finally found Logan’s body. He had driven over a cliff in his car two months before and since then there had been endless speculation about what had happened to him. No one had seen him do it, but in a spectacular display of competence from Lamb, they had found the site of the “accident”.
He had shown up at her door that night, begging for forgiveness. Veronica thinks back on that night and almost laughs when she realizes that she can’t remember what it was that she was so furious with him for. Why had it seemed so important? Now all that mattered was that she would have to get up at his funeral and act like it wasn’t her fault, like she wasn’t completely lost now that any hope she might have had was now lying at the bottom of the ocean.
Her head was swimming when she approached the front of the church. She had been thinking the entire service about how Logan had once confided in her that he didn’t believe in God at all. She wondered if he would think that this was incredibly funny or incredibly sad and stupid.
When she had started to talk say the words she had practiced over and over again, she felt her stomach rebel. She ran out the side door into the clergy’s garden, upchucking her choked down meal of bagel and cream cheese all over the rose bushes. She spat out the taste in her mouth. She straightened, expecting to see someone there, someone who had come running to see if she was alright. Then she realized that all those people weren’t there. None of them had come to Logan’s funeral because she had asked them not to. Weevil hadn’t needed telling. He had steered as clear as he possibly could have, going all the way to San Diego to party for the weekend.
She was alone, just like she told herself and everyone else she wanted.
She sat down on the grass hugging her knees to her chest in the black dress she hated and the black ballet flats she had bought for no good reason and sobbed. Since no one was there, she didn’t care if she looked weak, like a little girl who’d lost her ice cream to the dirt and ants at her feet. She felt painfully small and fragile, a way she had only felt twice before in her life.
Look at me. Weak, soul-sucking bitch. Aren’t you glad no one knows that you can still cry?
****
Lamb circled the chapel in his squad car. All he could think about was doing his job. His half-assed work on the Hearst rapist case had almost gotten Veronica killed. Not that that was entirely his fault. But a high-profile funeral like this one was bound to attract trouble, whether from rabid Aaron Echolls fans or the PCHers who had never really given up screwing with Logan.
Logan Echolls. The kid who had everything. The kid who had been able to drunkenly blunder his way through life and somehow manage to get into college and stay there. The kid who was Veronica Mars’ one soft spot. A golden bad-boy. Or something.
It was then, as he was dreaming quietly about the case of beer he would be downing when he got off the job, that he saw her. The side gate to the chapel was open and there she sat, the Girl Wonder herself. He parked the car and got out, swinging his leg like he was in a cowboy movie. He grinned, glad to catch her in a weak moment. He loved seeing her in moments like that and not even because it was like beating down the proverbial old man. It was because he loved catching glimpses of the girl she used to be. The girl he had helped to destroy. He wished desperately that he could bring her back, but at the same time regretted nothing, relishing the new Veronica, the one who would hand him his balls if she wanted to.
The grin died on his lips as well as the quickly forgotten words he was about to say. She was hunched over in the grass, gripping her calves so tightly her knuckles were white. Her entire body was wracked with sobs. And she didn’t even see him coming. He’d never seen her like this. Not once in the entire span of the seven years he’d known her had he ever even imagined this. She was completely defenseless.
He continued to walk toward her, his feet not seeming to register the paralysis of the rest of his body.
He hunkered down next to her and quietly, gently, put a hand on her shoulder. “Veronica?”
And then, the most amazing thing happened. Veronica Mars did not slap him or flash her razor colored eyes at him or throw his hand off. Instead she wove her hands into the sleeves of his shirt and pulled him to her. She hid her face in his shirt, crying silently and shaking all over.
He couldn’t think of anything to do but hold her.
He rarely saw her after that. She didn’t work with her father on cases anymore. He’d seen her only once or twice, snooping around the cliffs and the Neptune Grand, questioning people, according to Sacks who had had to bring her in on charges of harassment once or twice. The guy who had made the calls was a real slimeball, some upstanding fellow named Ratner, who was always smirking and making everything a hell of a lot worse.
On these brief visits to the station, she wouldn’t look at him.
A few weeks after a particularly nasty incident where Ratner tried to have her charged with assault (a charge he dropped quickly after Lamb had called in a favor at the Grand, which would result in the asshole getting fired if he didn’t) the calls had stopped coming. Then he only picked her up on drunk in public and one DUI.
As these progressed, he saw the two girls he loved, the smiling, sweet Veronica and the ball-busting bitch he loved to hate slipping away. He had no idea what had happened between her and Keith, but he was always gone, always making some drug bust or something, off in some foreign country just begging to be killed. Mars Investigations had been dissolved when Keith had gotten his new job. It seemed to everyone on the outside looking in that Veronica had dissolved with it.
But Lamb had somehow gotten on the inside, and he knew that it had nothing to do with that. Mars Investigations had dissolved when Veronica had.
*****
Now….
“Veronica?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the light. Her eyes were sealed together with old mascara. She cuddled into her blankets trying to escape back into the dream she’d been having. The dream where someone had been holding her and saying nothing. Just holding her, because she deserved it. Because she needed it.
But real life called her back. Mac called her back.
“What?”
Mac stood in the doorway. She was dressed up. Veronica glanced at the clock and saw that it was nine. Fuck! I missed Neidermyer’s class again. Her slouched mind began to put two and two together. “You’re going out with Dick?” Mac looked at her new high heeled shoes and shrugged. She wasn’t proud of it, but at least she could admit it. Veronica admired that.
“Veronica, these last few days have been pretty bad. I- I got someone to come and see you.”
Veronica sat up. She had no idea what she was expecting. She was horrified to find herself wishing for Don Lamb. But she knew that Mac would never bring her Lamb. Unless she asked her to, which in Veronica’s mind was out of the question.
All the other options were either dead or far, far away from her. Lily, dead four years, Logan, dead for one. Duncan in Austrailia, Wallace in Atlanta, gone to play basketball for a better team when Hearst had yanked his scholarship for “dealing drugs”, something Veronica could have stopped had she managed to pull herself out of her drunken stupor. She and Wallace had not parted on the best of terms.
And yet when Mac stepped aside, there he was. Her Wallace. Her best friend. The only person who she knew, would accept everything about her, no judgment, no questions. It was now, when she saw his smile and his hair and the lazy way that he stood did she realize that she’d been aching for him.
She stumbled as she got up and ran to him. She threw her arms around him and started to cry, in earnest for the first time in almost a year, she held nothing back.
“Wallace, I’m so sorry! I’m so fucking sorry!”
“I know V. I know. But damn girl, you don’t need to be so eager! You know I’ll stick around if you just ask nicely.”
And she laughed. Veronica actually laughed.
Ch: 5/??
Ch Title: So Long, Lonesome
Rating: Hard R/NC17 (for the whole story)
P/C: Lamb/Veronica, Mac, Wallace, mentions of Weevil, Logan/Veronica, Sacks and Jeff Ratner
Summary: And then, the most amazing thing happened. Veronica Mars did not slap him or flash her razor colored eyes at him or throw his hand off.
10 months ago
The day she’d been dreading had finally happened. The Coast Guard finally found Logan’s body. He had driven over a cliff in his car two months before and since then there had been endless speculation about what had happened to him. No one had seen him do it, but in a spectacular display of competence from Lamb, they had found the site of the “accident”.
He had shown up at her door that night, begging for forgiveness. Veronica thinks back on that night and almost laughs when she realizes that she can’t remember what it was that she was so furious with him for. Why had it seemed so important? Now all that mattered was that she would have to get up at his funeral and act like it wasn’t her fault, like she wasn’t completely lost now that any hope she might have had was now lying at the bottom of the ocean.
Her head was swimming when she approached the front of the church. She had been thinking the entire service about how Logan had once confided in her that he didn’t believe in God at all. She wondered if he would think that this was incredibly funny or incredibly sad and stupid.
When she had started to talk say the words she had practiced over and over again, she felt her stomach rebel. She ran out the side door into the clergy’s garden, upchucking her choked down meal of bagel and cream cheese all over the rose bushes. She spat out the taste in her mouth. She straightened, expecting to see someone there, someone who had come running to see if she was alright. Then she realized that all those people weren’t there. None of them had come to Logan’s funeral because she had asked them not to. Weevil hadn’t needed telling. He had steered as clear as he possibly could have, going all the way to San Diego to party for the weekend.
She was alone, just like she told herself and everyone else she wanted.
She sat down on the grass hugging her knees to her chest in the black dress she hated and the black ballet flats she had bought for no good reason and sobbed. Since no one was there, she didn’t care if she looked weak, like a little girl who’d lost her ice cream to the dirt and ants at her feet. She felt painfully small and fragile, a way she had only felt twice before in her life.
Look at me. Weak, soul-sucking bitch. Aren’t you glad no one knows that you can still cry?
****
Lamb circled the chapel in his squad car. All he could think about was doing his job. His half-assed work on the Hearst rapist case had almost gotten Veronica killed. Not that that was entirely his fault. But a high-profile funeral like this one was bound to attract trouble, whether from rabid Aaron Echolls fans or the PCHers who had never really given up screwing with Logan.
Logan Echolls. The kid who had everything. The kid who had been able to drunkenly blunder his way through life and somehow manage to get into college and stay there. The kid who was Veronica Mars’ one soft spot. A golden bad-boy. Or something.
It was then, as he was dreaming quietly about the case of beer he would be downing when he got off the job, that he saw her. The side gate to the chapel was open and there she sat, the Girl Wonder herself. He parked the car and got out, swinging his leg like he was in a cowboy movie. He grinned, glad to catch her in a weak moment. He loved seeing her in moments like that and not even because it was like beating down the proverbial old man. It was because he loved catching glimpses of the girl she used to be. The girl he had helped to destroy. He wished desperately that he could bring her back, but at the same time regretted nothing, relishing the new Veronica, the one who would hand him his balls if she wanted to.
The grin died on his lips as well as the quickly forgotten words he was about to say. She was hunched over in the grass, gripping her calves so tightly her knuckles were white. Her entire body was wracked with sobs. And she didn’t even see him coming. He’d never seen her like this. Not once in the entire span of the seven years he’d known her had he ever even imagined this. She was completely defenseless.
He continued to walk toward her, his feet not seeming to register the paralysis of the rest of his body.
He hunkered down next to her and quietly, gently, put a hand on her shoulder. “Veronica?”
And then, the most amazing thing happened. Veronica Mars did not slap him or flash her razor colored eyes at him or throw his hand off. Instead she wove her hands into the sleeves of his shirt and pulled him to her. She hid her face in his shirt, crying silently and shaking all over.
He couldn’t think of anything to do but hold her.
He rarely saw her after that. She didn’t work with her father on cases anymore. He’d seen her only once or twice, snooping around the cliffs and the Neptune Grand, questioning people, according to Sacks who had had to bring her in on charges of harassment once or twice. The guy who had made the calls was a real slimeball, some upstanding fellow named Ratner, who was always smirking and making everything a hell of a lot worse.
On these brief visits to the station, she wouldn’t look at him.
A few weeks after a particularly nasty incident where Ratner tried to have her charged with assault (a charge he dropped quickly after Lamb had called in a favor at the Grand, which would result in the asshole getting fired if he didn’t) the calls had stopped coming. Then he only picked her up on drunk in public and one DUI.
As these progressed, he saw the two girls he loved, the smiling, sweet Veronica and the ball-busting bitch he loved to hate slipping away. He had no idea what had happened between her and Keith, but he was always gone, always making some drug bust or something, off in some foreign country just begging to be killed. Mars Investigations had been dissolved when Keith had gotten his new job. It seemed to everyone on the outside looking in that Veronica had dissolved with it.
But Lamb had somehow gotten on the inside, and he knew that it had nothing to do with that. Mars Investigations had dissolved when Veronica had.
*****
Now….
“Veronica?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the light. Her eyes were sealed together with old mascara. She cuddled into her blankets trying to escape back into the dream she’d been having. The dream where someone had been holding her and saying nothing. Just holding her, because she deserved it. Because she needed it.
But real life called her back. Mac called her back.
“What?”
Mac stood in the doorway. She was dressed up. Veronica glanced at the clock and saw that it was nine. Fuck! I missed Neidermyer’s class again. Her slouched mind began to put two and two together. “You’re going out with Dick?” Mac looked at her new high heeled shoes and shrugged. She wasn’t proud of it, but at least she could admit it. Veronica admired that.
“Veronica, these last few days have been pretty bad. I- I got someone to come and see you.”
Veronica sat up. She had no idea what she was expecting. She was horrified to find herself wishing for Don Lamb. But she knew that Mac would never bring her Lamb. Unless she asked her to, which in Veronica’s mind was out of the question.
All the other options were either dead or far, far away from her. Lily, dead four years, Logan, dead for one. Duncan in Austrailia, Wallace in Atlanta, gone to play basketball for a better team when Hearst had yanked his scholarship for “dealing drugs”, something Veronica could have stopped had she managed to pull herself out of her drunken stupor. She and Wallace had not parted on the best of terms.
And yet when Mac stepped aside, there he was. Her Wallace. Her best friend. The only person who she knew, would accept everything about her, no judgment, no questions. It was now, when she saw his smile and his hair and the lazy way that he stood did she realize that she’d been aching for him.
She stumbled as she got up and ran to him. She threw her arms around him and started to cry, in earnest for the first time in almost a year, she held nothing back.
“Wallace, I’m so sorry! I’m so fucking sorry!”
“I know V. I know. But damn girl, you don’t need to be so eager! You know I’ll stick around if you just ask nicely.”
And she laughed. Veronica actually laughed.