Fic: "...To Dream", ch 6/? (Logan/Veronica) PG-13.
Ooooh, a new update! This one is short, but it packs a punch.
Title: "… To Dream", ch6.
Author: Jacqui wily_one24
Pairing/Character: Logan/Veronica.
Word Count:5,000 ish.
Rating: pg-13 (but there is language here).
Summary: If she cries, he’s going to hit something.
Spoilers: Pre-series, but some season one stuff.
Warnings: None, not really.
Disclaimer: Oh, they’re not mine. I just take them out of their boxes, play with them, muss their hair a bit, and put ‘em back when I’m done.
Previous Chapters: found here
*~*~*~*
…TO DREAM, chapter six.
*~*~*~*
Veronica wakes up on Sunday morning with a light sheen of sweat sticking the sheets to her skin.
The heat swarmed in overnight on Friday and took root on the Saturday. It’s not unheard of for California, but unusual for the time of year and people have become silly and stupid, jealously crowding the beaches and surf shops and air conditioned places like they’ve been allocated only one weekend of sun for the year.
Her father was right. The air conditioning in the apartment leaves a lot to be desired, it’s loud and it strains, giving a random splutter every now and again with little to no result. Sometimes she thinks it’s actually heating up the place.
She oozes out of bed and slumps her way into the kitchen, idly looking down to the check the water levels of Backup’s bowl before heading to the fridge to hydrate herself.
He whines at her.
“No walks.” She whines back, already sluggish and stubborn. “All walks are officially cancelled. By order of management.”
That gets her nothing but a humph and she wonders if dogs can really roll their eyes.
“Fine. We’ll go later. Are you happy?”
The thump of a tail is her only answer.
Logically, she knows her reluctance to start the day are hurting noone but her. She can already see the sun beating through the window slats and feel the heat seeping in through the cracks in the doors, another hour or so and the temperature outside will be uncomfortable at best.
Standing just inside the open fridge door, she can’t quite find the energy to care.
Her father has already gone for the day, leaving nothing but a note on the counter. She skims it briefly, taking in only the general sentiment. Have a nice day. Behave. Don’t stand in front of the open refrigerator door all day.
She crinkles the paper inside her fist and drops it into the garbage.
“Man, he’s getting persnickety in his old age.”
Backup thumps heartily in agreement.
Her cell rings and she nearly trips over her own feet trying to round the kitchen bench, close the fridge door, and make it back to her room in time to answer it. And, somewhere, in the back of her mind, she knows who it is.
There’s really only one person who would call her.
“Hey.” Logan’s voice slips through the cell thickly. “What are your plans for the day?”
“Ice fishing.” She replies without pausing to think, falling comfortably on her bed and smiling. “And then building igloos.”
He chuckles.
“Plural?”
“Not for me.” She explains, logically, reasonably, happily. “For the orphans.”
“Ah, I forgot about your kind and noble Eskimo outreach program. In Neptune.”
It feels slightly bizarre, to by lying back on her bed staring up at her ceiling and sharing casual jokes with none other than Logan Echolls. It feels even more off balance to know that they’re both skirting around the bigger issues.
She shakes her head sadly to give authenticity to the disappointment in her tone.
“Nobody cares about the Southern Californian Eskimos. It’s a shame, really.”
“Seriously.” He cuts her off, his tone becoming sharper and interested. “Do you have plans? You could come over here.”
The ease leaves her body.
“We could hang by the pool.” He continues. “Have burgers for lunch. It’s, like, a gagillion degrees cooler over here than it is there. Proven fact.”
There are so many negatives to that suggestion. She’s still uncomfortable around Aaron. She’s not sure she wants to be alone with Logan for any length of time. And, as she’s listing all of these reasons in her head, one very stark reality comes rushing down on her.
She doesn’t have a bathing suit.
Not a proper one, anyway. A blush, heady and thick, rises to her cheeks as she thinks about the tiny little pink string thing tucked away in her drawer. Lilly approved, of course. She’s replaced nearly an entire wardrobe in the months since October of last year, but swim suits weren’t exactly top on her list of priorities.
Suddenly, the thought of parading around in front of Logan in a barely there suit makes her tongue run dry and her skin break out in goose pimples.
“Hello?” He brngs her back to the topic at hand. “Am I speaking to myself now? Veronica, say yes.”
“But…”
She stops herself just in time.
Oh, no, Logan I can’t possibly come for a private swimming session with you, because I have a scandalously indiscreet bikini that covers absolutely nothing and having you ogle me all day will give me those funny feelings that I don’t really want to even think about.
She can just imagine Logan’s reaction to that. The brakes on the Exterra couldn’t possibly hold up under those speeds, she thinks.
“But what?” He insists. “You can’t tell me you want to spend another day stuck in that hotbox? I’m offering you free food, a private pool, all the air conditioning you could possibly want…”
“Logan…”
“And icecream.” He wheedles suddenly; the triumph in his voice suggests he thinks this is the winning argument. “Lots and lots of icecream.”
And, damn him, he’s right.
“Okay, gimme half an hour.”
She scissors her legs up off the bed and heads for the shower.
***
She’s not wrong.
Much as they’ve been nervous, her and Logan have been fairly normal all day. She hasn’t seen hide nor hair of his parents and hasn’t had to deal with that awkwardness. Logan greeted her at the door and they goofed around with video games and her mocking his pitiful DVD collection until Leticia made giant burgers crammed with cheese and ketchup and lettuce.
But now, as she walks out of the pool house, stripped down to a suit that covers less than her underwear, Veronica can see Logan’s instant reaction. He’s quicker than her, stripping off to his boxers and diving straight into the water, he’s swimming in large, lazy, bored strokes waiting for her.
And he stops, mouth open, for just a second.
She can see the twitch of his fingers on the surface of the water and the dilation of his pupils as he tries, and fails, not to check her out completely.
“Hey.” But he covers quickly. “Took long enough. What were you doing in there anyway?”
Trying to stretch the fabric…
His legs and lower body look short and squat, rippling under the water, divided from his shoulders that stream above the surface. And he looks, strangely, like a predatory beast waiting to lure his prey in for the kill.
“Trying to find the rest of my suit, actually…” She gestures nervously behind her to the pool house, her voice high with the effort of explaining. “I think it got lost…”
And Logan swallows, dips his head back into the water and up again.
“Looks fine to me. Come play.”
“Seriously.” She just can’t stop explaining, she has to make him understand. She’s going to be mortified if he thinks she chose this suit just for him. “It’s the only one I had. It’s from months ago… I would have gotten another, but…”
As she speaks, he’s taken a deep breath and launched himself up over the edge of the pool and come to stand next to her. Her brain idly takes in the sight of a leaner, more muscled body than she remembered, shining in the sun with water dripping all the way down.
“Veronica.” He says simply and without fuss, bending down to place his arms under her knees and shouldersbefore she can stop him. “Get in the damned water.”
And then she’s flying; arms stretching out to break her fall, a futile instinctual act before she breaks the surface and the cold water slips across her skin.
***
“Ugh.” Veronica falls onto her back, stretching out on the bed. “Are you trying to fatten me up for the feast?”
The ice cream sits heavy in a pit in the middle of her stomach, thick and sludgy, and it’s not mixing well with the heat that has permeated the room. Her fingers trail soothing patterns, circles and figure eights, across the taut, swollen skin of her belly.
“Hey.” Logan protests somewhere off to the side. “You’re the one who inhaled the bowl and then stole mine as well!”
Waves of heated air waft around her, spurred into lazy movement by the ceiling fan above, tricking her skin into believing that there are cooling currents. Veronica closes her eyes and drifts, sinks into a stupor of sun and chlorine and dairy food.
She feels the bed dip, feels the universe trip on its axis as the mattress creaks, and she keeps her eyes closed, keeps them shut so that she doesn’t follow his movements as he crawls up next to her, stretching out over his own towel.
“See?” Even his voice is warmer, softer, lazier in the heat. “Doesn’t this beat sitting cooped up in your apartment hovering over the open freezer door?”
“Mmmm.”
She smiles her agreement, not bothering to spend the energy on words.
The skin of her eyelids crinkle, forced shut, and she breathes in, silently counting to ten, to twenty, to fifty. It’s not like she can’t feel his eyes, he’s been watching her all day, but if she doesn’t acknowledge it, if she ignores him completely, maybe it won’t mean anything.
Maybe the tense knotting inside her stomach that appears whenever they’re alone will go away.
The left side of her body is alert, overheated; she can feel the heat of his skin inches from her own. Her hand is cushioning the back of her head, her arm stretched up and leaving her inner and under arm bare, straight, vulnerable. Her right hand continues making lazy patterns over her stomach.
He’s not moving and she feels it in the tension that builds steadily.
don’t move, don’t move, don’t do anything, just ignore…
Veronica gasps audibly, inhaling deeply when she feels his finger join hers on the skin of her belly. Patterns, soothing and slow, circles and figure eights, the knobs of his hand bumping gently into hers. Slowly, she exhales, relaxing, easing the pressure building.
Her eyes clamp even tighter shut.
His skin leaves tiny trails of fire on hers and she bites her lip, studying the fireworks of patterns going off behind her eyelids, trying not to analyze it, trying not to follow each movement of his hand. Her own hand is shaking, she can feel it, and even as she’s thinking the words, she feels his wrist dip, feels him hook it under hers, nudging her off.
Her forearm flops inelegantly to the side, landing with a small thump on the soft quilt.
“Veronica.”
He’s too close as he whispers her name and her eyes flick open, blinding her with sudden light, the colors that come at her. She turns to look at him and his eyes are glittering as they watch her.
“Logan, please…”
She’s not sure what she’s going to say, please stop…, please don’t do this…, please let me go…, but she ends up swallowing whatever it is when he leans forward and presses his lips to hers.
Her whole body freezes, unable to move as his entire hand flattens on her belly, five fingers and a warm palm, his lips are soft and plump as he breathes through his nostrils and his other hand comes up to cup the back of her head, holding her in place.
Soft fingers of air caress her whole body, waves and currents of movement, trying to soothe the possible eruption from the heat that surges through her. It’s too hot and too fast and too much all at once and she thinks she’s going to fall apart.
She feels panicked and exhilarated and scared and thrilled and trapped, definitely trapped, and all she can see is the two train tracks of his eyelashes fluttering above her eyes and then, finally, when he pulls away, she feels vaguely disappointed and lonely.
“I’m sorry.” He says it quickly, face paled. “I know you don’t… I shouldn’t…”
It’s not thought, so much as a clinical experiment as she lifts her hand from below her head and reaches out to pull him back, presses her own lips against his, and she feels the surprise in him now. Feels him give a little gasp.
Then something changes.
Their lips glide together, fitting one over the other, finding spaces that are unnaturally comfortable. It shouldn’t be like this, she thinks the words, even as she breathes in deeply, as she smells him. He’s covered in chlorine and sweat and something deeper, something vaguely familiar that shouldn’t be.
Her right hand comes up to curl in the soft hair at the back of his neck, she can feel the ridges at the beginning of his spine, bone under skin, and then his tongue is licking at her lips. It’s a physical sound when she opens her mouth, him moaning, she hears it and feels it like a reverberation, rumbling through her throat and down her arms.
The inside of his mouth tastes sticky, like vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup and she licks at his teeth, trying to remember why it’s a bad idea, why she kept telling herself not to do this. Her brain keeps trying to push a message through the barriers she’s erected, but she’s not listening.
She feels him shift, his whole body rolling like a wave towards her and it makes her freeze, makes her body pull away with a little whimper she can’t control.
Her fingers grip his hair tight in little fists and she pants in uncontrolled bursts, clutching her eyes shut again, while she waits for something, anything, and she can’t stop the trembling.
“Shh.” He pulls back a little, hand disappearing from her belly and coming to land on the side of her face. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“I… I…” But the words don’t come and her throat is closing tight, choking on nothing. “I…”
“Veronica, it’s okay.” He whispers it with little kisses to her nose and chin and cheeks, her closed eyes, as his fingers hold her face firmly, supporting her. “I’m not going to do anything, okay? This is it; this is all. We can stop.”
Stop. The word echoes through her like a balm. Yes, please.
Slowly, her muscles relax, and she can feel his hair pulling out of her grip, springing back to a natural tension in his skin, and her fingers are left to clutch and release in empty air. Her head falls back to the mattress, landing with a soft thump and she tries to take oxygen into her lungs without the burning feeling.
There’s sweat behind her knees.
“Veronica.” Her name has never had so many meanings as she feels him lying down on his side next to her, just her name over and over again. “Veronica.”
She can’t be here, she can’t be lying on this bed with this boy, she’s not supposed to be anywhere. This isn’t how it was meant to be. She was part of a perfect couple, once, and they were dependable and loyal and predictable. There was flowers and jewelry and kisses stolen behind closed doors and dates to movies and then there was confusion and pain and ignorance and misplaced hostility.
And then nothing but a black hole in her memory.
She can’t be here; she can’t be lying on this bed with any boy.
She’s a mess of fractured nerves and flashing images of stars and a pink sweater and Duncan’s hand up her thigh one night and a sickly thread of a hangover she never earned, panting hard with effort she didn’t give, her heart is pounding so fast and so hard she thinks it might explode.
The fuse is lit by the feel of his breath on the side of her neck.
“I have to go.” Her body jackknifes up, bending at the waist as she tries to adjust to the new position. “I can’t be here.”
***
***
Logan sits up on his hip, watching her as she scurries off the bed, her neck snapping left and right as she scans the room looking for her things. He watches her pick up her shirt and find her shoes, sliding her right foot and then her left into them, watches as she rushes to her bag and fiddles with the contents before hefting it up to her shoulder.
“I’m sorry.” She sounds close to crying as she stands still, having nothing left to gather and nothing to distract her. “I’m so…”
He shakes his head, trying to dislodge the image.
“No, don’t be.” He keeps his movements slow and doesn’t take his eyes off her as he slides to the edge of the bed and stands up. “Are you okay?”
It looks like she’s trying to say yes, but her throat wobbles, struggles with it, and she just ends up nodding instead. Her right hand lifts up next to her face and he can see how much she’s still trembling as it hovers next to her ear, as if she’d been planning on fixing her hair, but forgot half way through the act.
If she cries, he’s going to hit something.
“Look…”
It doesn’t matter what he’s going to say, he’s not even sure, because her head swivels to the bar near the door and she practically swoops down on the bowls he’d left there earlier.
“They have to go back!” She says it like it’s a lifeline. “I’ll take them.”
They rattle, china against china, when she picks them up.
“Veronica, leave them.” But he knows she won’t listen. “You don’t have to…”
“Nonsense.”
She’s already halfway out the door.
He has no choice but to slip on his own shoes and follow her. She’s buzzing, her frantic energy multiplying as he watches. It’s like she has to move, because stopping is unthinkable, painful beyond measure, her limbs jerk.
She’s like a horse, held back in the stalls, muscles rippling for the want of freedom.
They barrel through the glass doors, in the middle of the afternoon, creating sound and chaos in a previously calm arena. He sees his mother’s head perk up from a magazine and a clinking tumbler and his father frown as he’s distracted from the latest manuscript. They’re back early.
Logan’s mouth goes dry and he reaches for Veronica without thinking, tries to catch her hip to steady her, to slow her down to something resembling peaceful and unobtrusive. But his fingers slide through empty air and he looks over to where she’s already standing in front of the sink.
“Veronica.” He tries again, sliding in next to her to keep his voice hushed and quiet. “You don’t have to…”
Water gushes from the taps, creating billows of instant steam in her face.
“Do you have detergent?” Her voice is still shaking as she leans back, eying the surrounding cupboards. “You have to have detergent, who doesn’t have…?”
He doesn’t know what to do and her panic seems to be building inside of him.
“Veronica, what are you doing?” Thankfully someone does and Mrs. Navarro appears out of nowhere, bustling in between Veronica and the sink, squeezing her out with wide hips. “This is my job, are you trying to put me out of work? Go.”
She makes giant sweeping motions with her hands.
“Go on.” Her voice is warm and friendly, but firm enough not to invite questions. “Shoo. Get out of here, both of you.”
Veronica lets herself be led away, nervous and lost and seemingly unable to focus on anything to do. She doesn’t fight his hand on the curve of her hip, gently guiding her towards the front door as she bites her lip even further.
She does flinch, physically drawing back, when his mother calls her name.
“Veronica, Dear.” They’re both stuck, deer in the headlights, as Lynn smiles. “It’s nice to see you again. We’ve missed you.”
He’s focused intently on Veronica, on getting her out of there as soon as possible, away from his parents and the heady atmosphere of his house, the people in it, and also the faint, lingering traces of them kissing, but he still sees it. Years of practice means he notices Lynn’s propriety eyes gliding over his hand sitting on Veronica’s hip, the way she takes in Veronica’s nerves and apparent unease, the curve of her lip.
And he hears countless repetitions of Logan, Veronica is such a nice girl…
“Thanks.” Veronica nods her head, automatically, feebly. “You too, Mrs. Echolls.”
Logan glares at his mother, a distinct Not Now!, and ushers Veronica out towards the door.
It’s like breaking the skin of a blister. Walking from inside the temperature controlled enclosure of his house outside into this physical wall of heat, even the sections outdoors next to his pool are automatically cooler from the water.
There are so many things he wants to say and he has no idea how to say them, how to formulate words around them.
He’s never seen her like this.
Somewhere in the back of his brain, some deep, dark place he doesn’t really want to examine, he knows he’s tried to get her there. He would have paid good money to know the quickest route to break her so completely, but now that she’s here, now that she’s flailing and weak and vulnerable and scared in front of him, he feels nothing but hot, boiling rage.
It eddies and swirls just underneath his surface, familiar and unwelcome.
Veronica Mars stands tall amid a schoolyard full of crippling taunts and bloody, vicious accusations. She takes every battering with a cheerful grin and then offers some wiseass remark in turn. She bends, but she never breaks, no matter what they throw at her.
“Are you okay to drive?”
The words sound too loud and awkward in the silence of the late afternoon.
Veronica’s eyes fly to him, wide and surprised and pleading for something.
“Yeah. Yes.” She nods. “Of course.”
Her fingers twitch on the strap of her bag and he’s not sure if he believes her.
They get to her car and he cups her elbow, softly running his hand up her arm. It makes her shiver a little and it looks out of place in the swelter that threatens to decimate them both. He can’t breathe past the image of her smiling, relaxed, on the bed next to him.
And then the instant it all changed.
He wants that back, that moment when she trusted him, so that he can do it again, so he doesn’t push in like a raging bull and shatter everything he’s been trying to build for the last few weeks.
“I’m sorry.” And he means it as he looks down at her upturned face. “Veronica, I’m really sorry.”
He’s sorry, because he knew. Because she told him time and time again she wasn’t ready. In the back of his head, he knows what happened and it galls him, but it’s never been prevalent in the way they’ve acted around each other, she’s never let it be.
And he’s sorry for being so ego centric as to believe all her hesitance and her attempts to push him away had to do with him being him, Logan Echolls, for assuming that all her problems with the two of them were from the stupid stuff he’d done and said.
He’s sorry for not realizing what should have been painfully obvious.
“Logan.” Her brow crinkles in the middle, a soft little furrow of honest confusion. “Please don’t think I’m running from you.”
He can’t move as she grabs the back of his arms, pulling herself up on her toes, and her face is wide and disbelieving as she leans up to place a light, chaste kiss in the corner of his mouth. She blushes, furious red, as she steps back down and the expression on her face clearly announces that she can’t believe she just did it.
She steps, shakily, inside her car and he lets her go before he does something completely stupid like grab her and pull her back, because he doesn’t think his emotions are anywhere near gentle right now.
As the car drives, tires crunching pristine gravel in her wake, Logan’s fingers clench hard.
She is soft and she is beautiful and he can’t stop thinking about her body on his bed, warm and dulled from heat, relaxed and happy. He has, for some time now, known that he wants her. Even when he thought he hated her, he knew she was attractive.
What surprises him is the surge of pure fury, of rock solid possessiveness, of demand when he thinks about her lying next to him.
She is soft and she is beautiful and she is still broken.
And it’s not an accident.
Someone did that to her and he is going to find out who and make them pay.
***
Logan slams the glass door hard.
He almost doesn’t want to return to the pool house, it would be easier if he could forget, but he’s drawn to it. Like a kid picking at scabs on his knee, he wants to go back and picture every painful moment, catalogue it.
Their towels, damp and smelling of sun and chlorine, are still stretched out on the bed. They probably still have faint impressions of their bodies creased into rapidly drying shapes. He wants to see hers. He wants to remember her, warm and silken, before she panicked.
“Hello, Son.” His eyes snap up to see his father standing awkwardly by the shelves at the top of the bed. “I was just getting… something.”
Logan nods, glancing idly at the small, black rectangle his father slips into his pocket. For a long time, he has considered this his pool house, the domain of he and Lilly and Duncan and Veronica, a place to hold parties and have friends come play computer games, but it still holds a lot of Aaron Echolls memorabilia.
It is, as everything in this house, a dedication to the much-loved man, the gleam in the public eye.
Whatever trinket Aaron feels necessary to impress whichever fawning agent, Logan doesn’t care.
“Yeah.” He nods slowly, distantly, his brain firing up a neuron or two. “Okay.”
“Yes, well then.” Aaron stands still, his empty hands brushing down the sides of his pants. “I haven’t seen Veronica in a while. She seemed a bit skittish. Is she…?”
Logan frowns at the solicitation in his father’s voice, but doesn’t react any further. He needs this man on side right now.
“She’s had it tough, since, you know...” The soft insinuation, the not quite reference makes Aaron nod in an almost humorously sympathetic manner. Logan wants to spit. “But I think we’re managing.”
He watches his father flounder, searching mid air for a subject, anything, to talk to his son.
“Okay.” Aaron announces after a long pause. “I should be going, then.”
Logan watches him walk to the door and waits until his back is turned.
“Oh, hey, dad?” The sudden amicability in his voice piques Aaron’s interest. “I need a favor.”
It’s strange, that this man’s most obvious weakness is his family, his need to appease and conciliate, to appear cohesive, if not actually be it. Logan thinks it’s hysterical on a grand scale. Hysterical, hypocritical, po-tay-to, po-tah-toe.
“A favor?” Aaron tastes the word on his tongue, his eyes calculating the gain for effort ratio. “What kind of favor are we talking about?”
Logan scratches the back of his neck and gives a guilty little shit eating grin. Man to man.
“Seems I’m on the outs a bit at school. I need a boost in the polls.”
“Ah.” Aaron nods, because he understands misbehavior, the turning of the tide. “Like that is it? What are we talking about? An appearance?”
Logan wrinkles his forehead.
“Bigger.” He holds his breath for the expected amount of time and then releases it. “I think party big.”
“Party?”
His father’s eyebrows skyrocket.
“Neptune A-list.” Logan confirms. “This decade’s ‘Must-Attend’. All out, no holes barred, kinda thing.”
Aaron fingers his chin, pretending to consider it, but Logan can see the glitter in the back of the man’s eyes, the growing greed, and the interest. In their current social circles, disregarding Hollywood of course, grand gatherings have remained low key, sedate affairs. Quite and polite and respectful.
The possibility of hosting the first big party since Lilly Kane’s death has grabbed Aaron’s attention whoring interest.
“We’ll see.” His father nods. “I think your mother might be talked into it easily enough.”
Logan smiles, insincerity coating his teeth and sticking to the back of his throat.
“One last thing?” He keeps the interest subtle, because giving away his hand this early, especially to this man, is nothing but a bad idea. “I’ll need to scratch ten names off the guest list.”
Aaron chuckles.
“Only ten?”
Then he disappears, backing out of the door with renewed vigor, a project already taking form in his mind. Logan turns back to the suddenly empty pool house and smiles to himself. Ten names that, in crude terms, pretty much makes Neptune High’s A-List if you strike out Echolls.
Kane, Sinclair, Enbom, Casablancas, Pomroy, Moore, Gant, Crawford, Day and Bishop.
The first step in infiltrating an enemy is misdirection. Make them come to you.
He wonders who will be the first to crack.
***
End chapter six.
Questions, comments?
Title: "… To Dream", ch6.
Author: Jacqui wily_one24
Pairing/Character: Logan/Veronica.
Word Count:5,000 ish.
Rating: pg-13 (but there is language here).
Summary: If she cries, he’s going to hit something.
Spoilers: Pre-series, but some season one stuff.
Warnings: None, not really.
Disclaimer: Oh, they’re not mine. I just take them out of their boxes, play with them, muss their hair a bit, and put ‘em back when I’m done.
Previous Chapters: found here
*~*~*~*
…TO DREAM, chapter six.
*~*~*~*
Veronica wakes up on Sunday morning with a light sheen of sweat sticking the sheets to her skin.
The heat swarmed in overnight on Friday and took root on the Saturday. It’s not unheard of for California, but unusual for the time of year and people have become silly and stupid, jealously crowding the beaches and surf shops and air conditioned places like they’ve been allocated only one weekend of sun for the year.
Her father was right. The air conditioning in the apartment leaves a lot to be desired, it’s loud and it strains, giving a random splutter every now and again with little to no result. Sometimes she thinks it’s actually heating up the place.
She oozes out of bed and slumps her way into the kitchen, idly looking down to the check the water levels of Backup’s bowl before heading to the fridge to hydrate herself.
He whines at her.
“No walks.” She whines back, already sluggish and stubborn. “All walks are officially cancelled. By order of management.”
That gets her nothing but a humph and she wonders if dogs can really roll their eyes.
“Fine. We’ll go later. Are you happy?”
The thump of a tail is her only answer.
Logically, she knows her reluctance to start the day are hurting noone but her. She can already see the sun beating through the window slats and feel the heat seeping in through the cracks in the doors, another hour or so and the temperature outside will be uncomfortable at best.
Standing just inside the open fridge door, she can’t quite find the energy to care.
Her father has already gone for the day, leaving nothing but a note on the counter. She skims it briefly, taking in only the general sentiment. Have a nice day. Behave. Don’t stand in front of the open refrigerator door all day.
She crinkles the paper inside her fist and drops it into the garbage.
“Man, he’s getting persnickety in his old age.”
Backup thumps heartily in agreement.
Her cell rings and she nearly trips over her own feet trying to round the kitchen bench, close the fridge door, and make it back to her room in time to answer it. And, somewhere, in the back of her mind, she knows who it is.
There’s really only one person who would call her.
“Hey.” Logan’s voice slips through the cell thickly. “What are your plans for the day?”
“Ice fishing.” She replies without pausing to think, falling comfortably on her bed and smiling. “And then building igloos.”
He chuckles.
“Plural?”
“Not for me.” She explains, logically, reasonably, happily. “For the orphans.”
“Ah, I forgot about your kind and noble Eskimo outreach program. In Neptune.”
It feels slightly bizarre, to by lying back on her bed staring up at her ceiling and sharing casual jokes with none other than Logan Echolls. It feels even more off balance to know that they’re both skirting around the bigger issues.
She shakes her head sadly to give authenticity to the disappointment in her tone.
“Nobody cares about the Southern Californian Eskimos. It’s a shame, really.”
“Seriously.” He cuts her off, his tone becoming sharper and interested. “Do you have plans? You could come over here.”
The ease leaves her body.
“We could hang by the pool.” He continues. “Have burgers for lunch. It’s, like, a gagillion degrees cooler over here than it is there. Proven fact.”
There are so many negatives to that suggestion. She’s still uncomfortable around Aaron. She’s not sure she wants to be alone with Logan for any length of time. And, as she’s listing all of these reasons in her head, one very stark reality comes rushing down on her.
She doesn’t have a bathing suit.
Not a proper one, anyway. A blush, heady and thick, rises to her cheeks as she thinks about the tiny little pink string thing tucked away in her drawer. Lilly approved, of course. She’s replaced nearly an entire wardrobe in the months since October of last year, but swim suits weren’t exactly top on her list of priorities.
Suddenly, the thought of parading around in front of Logan in a barely there suit makes her tongue run dry and her skin break out in goose pimples.
“Hello?” He brngs her back to the topic at hand. “Am I speaking to myself now? Veronica, say yes.”
“But…”
She stops herself just in time.
Oh, no, Logan I can’t possibly come for a private swimming session with you, because I have a scandalously indiscreet bikini that covers absolutely nothing and having you ogle me all day will give me those funny feelings that I don’t really want to even think about.
She can just imagine Logan’s reaction to that. The brakes on the Exterra couldn’t possibly hold up under those speeds, she thinks.
“But what?” He insists. “You can’t tell me you want to spend another day stuck in that hotbox? I’m offering you free food, a private pool, all the air conditioning you could possibly want…”
“Logan…”
“And icecream.” He wheedles suddenly; the triumph in his voice suggests he thinks this is the winning argument. “Lots and lots of icecream.”
And, damn him, he’s right.
“Okay, gimme half an hour.”
She scissors her legs up off the bed and heads for the shower.
***
She’s not wrong.
Much as they’ve been nervous, her and Logan have been fairly normal all day. She hasn’t seen hide nor hair of his parents and hasn’t had to deal with that awkwardness. Logan greeted her at the door and they goofed around with video games and her mocking his pitiful DVD collection until Leticia made giant burgers crammed with cheese and ketchup and lettuce.
But now, as she walks out of the pool house, stripped down to a suit that covers less than her underwear, Veronica can see Logan’s instant reaction. He’s quicker than her, stripping off to his boxers and diving straight into the water, he’s swimming in large, lazy, bored strokes waiting for her.
And he stops, mouth open, for just a second.
She can see the twitch of his fingers on the surface of the water and the dilation of his pupils as he tries, and fails, not to check her out completely.
“Hey.” But he covers quickly. “Took long enough. What were you doing in there anyway?”
Trying to stretch the fabric…
His legs and lower body look short and squat, rippling under the water, divided from his shoulders that stream above the surface. And he looks, strangely, like a predatory beast waiting to lure his prey in for the kill.
“Trying to find the rest of my suit, actually…” She gestures nervously behind her to the pool house, her voice high with the effort of explaining. “I think it got lost…”
And Logan swallows, dips his head back into the water and up again.
“Looks fine to me. Come play.”
“Seriously.” She just can’t stop explaining, she has to make him understand. She’s going to be mortified if he thinks she chose this suit just for him. “It’s the only one I had. It’s from months ago… I would have gotten another, but…”
As she speaks, he’s taken a deep breath and launched himself up over the edge of the pool and come to stand next to her. Her brain idly takes in the sight of a leaner, more muscled body than she remembered, shining in the sun with water dripping all the way down.
“Veronica.” He says simply and without fuss, bending down to place his arms under her knees and shouldersbefore she can stop him. “Get in the damned water.”
And then she’s flying; arms stretching out to break her fall, a futile instinctual act before she breaks the surface and the cold water slips across her skin.
***
“Ugh.” Veronica falls onto her back, stretching out on the bed. “Are you trying to fatten me up for the feast?”
The ice cream sits heavy in a pit in the middle of her stomach, thick and sludgy, and it’s not mixing well with the heat that has permeated the room. Her fingers trail soothing patterns, circles and figure eights, across the taut, swollen skin of her belly.
“Hey.” Logan protests somewhere off to the side. “You’re the one who inhaled the bowl and then stole mine as well!”
Waves of heated air waft around her, spurred into lazy movement by the ceiling fan above, tricking her skin into believing that there are cooling currents. Veronica closes her eyes and drifts, sinks into a stupor of sun and chlorine and dairy food.
She feels the bed dip, feels the universe trip on its axis as the mattress creaks, and she keeps her eyes closed, keeps them shut so that she doesn’t follow his movements as he crawls up next to her, stretching out over his own towel.
“See?” Even his voice is warmer, softer, lazier in the heat. “Doesn’t this beat sitting cooped up in your apartment hovering over the open freezer door?”
“Mmmm.”
She smiles her agreement, not bothering to spend the energy on words.
The skin of her eyelids crinkle, forced shut, and she breathes in, silently counting to ten, to twenty, to fifty. It’s not like she can’t feel his eyes, he’s been watching her all day, but if she doesn’t acknowledge it, if she ignores him completely, maybe it won’t mean anything.
Maybe the tense knotting inside her stomach that appears whenever they’re alone will go away.
The left side of her body is alert, overheated; she can feel the heat of his skin inches from her own. Her hand is cushioning the back of her head, her arm stretched up and leaving her inner and under arm bare, straight, vulnerable. Her right hand continues making lazy patterns over her stomach.
He’s not moving and she feels it in the tension that builds steadily.
don’t move, don’t move, don’t do anything, just ignore…
Veronica gasps audibly, inhaling deeply when she feels his finger join hers on the skin of her belly. Patterns, soothing and slow, circles and figure eights, the knobs of his hand bumping gently into hers. Slowly, she exhales, relaxing, easing the pressure building.
Her eyes clamp even tighter shut.
His skin leaves tiny trails of fire on hers and she bites her lip, studying the fireworks of patterns going off behind her eyelids, trying not to analyze it, trying not to follow each movement of his hand. Her own hand is shaking, she can feel it, and even as she’s thinking the words, she feels his wrist dip, feels him hook it under hers, nudging her off.
Her forearm flops inelegantly to the side, landing with a small thump on the soft quilt.
“Veronica.”
He’s too close as he whispers her name and her eyes flick open, blinding her with sudden light, the colors that come at her. She turns to look at him and his eyes are glittering as they watch her.
“Logan, please…”
She’s not sure what she’s going to say, please stop…, please don’t do this…, please let me go…, but she ends up swallowing whatever it is when he leans forward and presses his lips to hers.
Her whole body freezes, unable to move as his entire hand flattens on her belly, five fingers and a warm palm, his lips are soft and plump as he breathes through his nostrils and his other hand comes up to cup the back of her head, holding her in place.
Soft fingers of air caress her whole body, waves and currents of movement, trying to soothe the possible eruption from the heat that surges through her. It’s too hot and too fast and too much all at once and she thinks she’s going to fall apart.
She feels panicked and exhilarated and scared and thrilled and trapped, definitely trapped, and all she can see is the two train tracks of his eyelashes fluttering above her eyes and then, finally, when he pulls away, she feels vaguely disappointed and lonely.
“I’m sorry.” He says it quickly, face paled. “I know you don’t… I shouldn’t…”
It’s not thought, so much as a clinical experiment as she lifts her hand from below her head and reaches out to pull him back, presses her own lips against his, and she feels the surprise in him now. Feels him give a little gasp.
Then something changes.
Their lips glide together, fitting one over the other, finding spaces that are unnaturally comfortable. It shouldn’t be like this, she thinks the words, even as she breathes in deeply, as she smells him. He’s covered in chlorine and sweat and something deeper, something vaguely familiar that shouldn’t be.
Her right hand comes up to curl in the soft hair at the back of his neck, she can feel the ridges at the beginning of his spine, bone under skin, and then his tongue is licking at her lips. It’s a physical sound when she opens her mouth, him moaning, she hears it and feels it like a reverberation, rumbling through her throat and down her arms.
The inside of his mouth tastes sticky, like vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup and she licks at his teeth, trying to remember why it’s a bad idea, why she kept telling herself not to do this. Her brain keeps trying to push a message through the barriers she’s erected, but she’s not listening.
She feels him shift, his whole body rolling like a wave towards her and it makes her freeze, makes her body pull away with a little whimper she can’t control.
Her fingers grip his hair tight in little fists and she pants in uncontrolled bursts, clutching her eyes shut again, while she waits for something, anything, and she can’t stop the trembling.
“Shh.” He pulls back a little, hand disappearing from her belly and coming to land on the side of her face. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“I… I…” But the words don’t come and her throat is closing tight, choking on nothing. “I…”
“Veronica, it’s okay.” He whispers it with little kisses to her nose and chin and cheeks, her closed eyes, as his fingers hold her face firmly, supporting her. “I’m not going to do anything, okay? This is it; this is all. We can stop.”
Stop. The word echoes through her like a balm. Yes, please.
Slowly, her muscles relax, and she can feel his hair pulling out of her grip, springing back to a natural tension in his skin, and her fingers are left to clutch and release in empty air. Her head falls back to the mattress, landing with a soft thump and she tries to take oxygen into her lungs without the burning feeling.
There’s sweat behind her knees.
“Veronica.” Her name has never had so many meanings as she feels him lying down on his side next to her, just her name over and over again. “Veronica.”
She can’t be here, she can’t be lying on this bed with this boy, she’s not supposed to be anywhere. This isn’t how it was meant to be. She was part of a perfect couple, once, and they were dependable and loyal and predictable. There was flowers and jewelry and kisses stolen behind closed doors and dates to movies and then there was confusion and pain and ignorance and misplaced hostility.
And then nothing but a black hole in her memory.
She can’t be here; she can’t be lying on this bed with any boy.
She’s a mess of fractured nerves and flashing images of stars and a pink sweater and Duncan’s hand up her thigh one night and a sickly thread of a hangover she never earned, panting hard with effort she didn’t give, her heart is pounding so fast and so hard she thinks it might explode.
The fuse is lit by the feel of his breath on the side of her neck.
“I have to go.” Her body jackknifes up, bending at the waist as she tries to adjust to the new position. “I can’t be here.”
***
***
Logan sits up on his hip, watching her as she scurries off the bed, her neck snapping left and right as she scans the room looking for her things. He watches her pick up her shirt and find her shoes, sliding her right foot and then her left into them, watches as she rushes to her bag and fiddles with the contents before hefting it up to her shoulder.
“I’m sorry.” She sounds close to crying as she stands still, having nothing left to gather and nothing to distract her. “I’m so…”
He shakes his head, trying to dislodge the image.
“No, don’t be.” He keeps his movements slow and doesn’t take his eyes off her as he slides to the edge of the bed and stands up. “Are you okay?”
It looks like she’s trying to say yes, but her throat wobbles, struggles with it, and she just ends up nodding instead. Her right hand lifts up next to her face and he can see how much she’s still trembling as it hovers next to her ear, as if she’d been planning on fixing her hair, but forgot half way through the act.
If she cries, he’s going to hit something.
“Look…”
It doesn’t matter what he’s going to say, he’s not even sure, because her head swivels to the bar near the door and she practically swoops down on the bowls he’d left there earlier.
“They have to go back!” She says it like it’s a lifeline. “I’ll take them.”
They rattle, china against china, when she picks them up.
“Veronica, leave them.” But he knows she won’t listen. “You don’t have to…”
“Nonsense.”
She’s already halfway out the door.
He has no choice but to slip on his own shoes and follow her. She’s buzzing, her frantic energy multiplying as he watches. It’s like she has to move, because stopping is unthinkable, painful beyond measure, her limbs jerk.
She’s like a horse, held back in the stalls, muscles rippling for the want of freedom.
They barrel through the glass doors, in the middle of the afternoon, creating sound and chaos in a previously calm arena. He sees his mother’s head perk up from a magazine and a clinking tumbler and his father frown as he’s distracted from the latest manuscript. They’re back early.
Logan’s mouth goes dry and he reaches for Veronica without thinking, tries to catch her hip to steady her, to slow her down to something resembling peaceful and unobtrusive. But his fingers slide through empty air and he looks over to where she’s already standing in front of the sink.
“Veronica.” He tries again, sliding in next to her to keep his voice hushed and quiet. “You don’t have to…”
Water gushes from the taps, creating billows of instant steam in her face.
“Do you have detergent?” Her voice is still shaking as she leans back, eying the surrounding cupboards. “You have to have detergent, who doesn’t have…?”
He doesn’t know what to do and her panic seems to be building inside of him.
“Veronica, what are you doing?” Thankfully someone does and Mrs. Navarro appears out of nowhere, bustling in between Veronica and the sink, squeezing her out with wide hips. “This is my job, are you trying to put me out of work? Go.”
She makes giant sweeping motions with her hands.
“Go on.” Her voice is warm and friendly, but firm enough not to invite questions. “Shoo. Get out of here, both of you.”
Veronica lets herself be led away, nervous and lost and seemingly unable to focus on anything to do. She doesn’t fight his hand on the curve of her hip, gently guiding her towards the front door as she bites her lip even further.
She does flinch, physically drawing back, when his mother calls her name.
“Veronica, Dear.” They’re both stuck, deer in the headlights, as Lynn smiles. “It’s nice to see you again. We’ve missed you.”
He’s focused intently on Veronica, on getting her out of there as soon as possible, away from his parents and the heady atmosphere of his house, the people in it, and also the faint, lingering traces of them kissing, but he still sees it. Years of practice means he notices Lynn’s propriety eyes gliding over his hand sitting on Veronica’s hip, the way she takes in Veronica’s nerves and apparent unease, the curve of her lip.
And he hears countless repetitions of Logan, Veronica is such a nice girl…
“Thanks.” Veronica nods her head, automatically, feebly. “You too, Mrs. Echolls.”
Logan glares at his mother, a distinct Not Now!, and ushers Veronica out towards the door.
It’s like breaking the skin of a blister. Walking from inside the temperature controlled enclosure of his house outside into this physical wall of heat, even the sections outdoors next to his pool are automatically cooler from the water.
There are so many things he wants to say and he has no idea how to say them, how to formulate words around them.
He’s never seen her like this.
Somewhere in the back of his brain, some deep, dark place he doesn’t really want to examine, he knows he’s tried to get her there. He would have paid good money to know the quickest route to break her so completely, but now that she’s here, now that she’s flailing and weak and vulnerable and scared in front of him, he feels nothing but hot, boiling rage.
It eddies and swirls just underneath his surface, familiar and unwelcome.
Veronica Mars stands tall amid a schoolyard full of crippling taunts and bloody, vicious accusations. She takes every battering with a cheerful grin and then offers some wiseass remark in turn. She bends, but she never breaks, no matter what they throw at her.
“Are you okay to drive?”
The words sound too loud and awkward in the silence of the late afternoon.
Veronica’s eyes fly to him, wide and surprised and pleading for something.
“Yeah. Yes.” She nods. “Of course.”
Her fingers twitch on the strap of her bag and he’s not sure if he believes her.
They get to her car and he cups her elbow, softly running his hand up her arm. It makes her shiver a little and it looks out of place in the swelter that threatens to decimate them both. He can’t breathe past the image of her smiling, relaxed, on the bed next to him.
And then the instant it all changed.
He wants that back, that moment when she trusted him, so that he can do it again, so he doesn’t push in like a raging bull and shatter everything he’s been trying to build for the last few weeks.
“I’m sorry.” And he means it as he looks down at her upturned face. “Veronica, I’m really sorry.”
He’s sorry, because he knew. Because she told him time and time again she wasn’t ready. In the back of his head, he knows what happened and it galls him, but it’s never been prevalent in the way they’ve acted around each other, she’s never let it be.
And he’s sorry for being so ego centric as to believe all her hesitance and her attempts to push him away had to do with him being him, Logan Echolls, for assuming that all her problems with the two of them were from the stupid stuff he’d done and said.
He’s sorry for not realizing what should have been painfully obvious.
“Logan.” Her brow crinkles in the middle, a soft little furrow of honest confusion. “Please don’t think I’m running from you.”
He can’t move as she grabs the back of his arms, pulling herself up on her toes, and her face is wide and disbelieving as she leans up to place a light, chaste kiss in the corner of his mouth. She blushes, furious red, as she steps back down and the expression on her face clearly announces that she can’t believe she just did it.
She steps, shakily, inside her car and he lets her go before he does something completely stupid like grab her and pull her back, because he doesn’t think his emotions are anywhere near gentle right now.
As the car drives, tires crunching pristine gravel in her wake, Logan’s fingers clench hard.
She is soft and she is beautiful and he can’t stop thinking about her body on his bed, warm and dulled from heat, relaxed and happy. He has, for some time now, known that he wants her. Even when he thought he hated her, he knew she was attractive.
What surprises him is the surge of pure fury, of rock solid possessiveness, of demand when he thinks about her lying next to him.
She is soft and she is beautiful and she is still broken.
And it’s not an accident.
Someone did that to her and he is going to find out who and make them pay.
***
Logan slams the glass door hard.
He almost doesn’t want to return to the pool house, it would be easier if he could forget, but he’s drawn to it. Like a kid picking at scabs on his knee, he wants to go back and picture every painful moment, catalogue it.
Their towels, damp and smelling of sun and chlorine, are still stretched out on the bed. They probably still have faint impressions of their bodies creased into rapidly drying shapes. He wants to see hers. He wants to remember her, warm and silken, before she panicked.
“Hello, Son.” His eyes snap up to see his father standing awkwardly by the shelves at the top of the bed. “I was just getting… something.”
Logan nods, glancing idly at the small, black rectangle his father slips into his pocket. For a long time, he has considered this his pool house, the domain of he and Lilly and Duncan and Veronica, a place to hold parties and have friends come play computer games, but it still holds a lot of Aaron Echolls memorabilia.
It is, as everything in this house, a dedication to the much-loved man, the gleam in the public eye.
Whatever trinket Aaron feels necessary to impress whichever fawning agent, Logan doesn’t care.
“Yeah.” He nods slowly, distantly, his brain firing up a neuron or two. “Okay.”
“Yes, well then.” Aaron stands still, his empty hands brushing down the sides of his pants. “I haven’t seen Veronica in a while. She seemed a bit skittish. Is she…?”
Logan frowns at the solicitation in his father’s voice, but doesn’t react any further. He needs this man on side right now.
“She’s had it tough, since, you know...” The soft insinuation, the not quite reference makes Aaron nod in an almost humorously sympathetic manner. Logan wants to spit. “But I think we’re managing.”
He watches his father flounder, searching mid air for a subject, anything, to talk to his son.
“Okay.” Aaron announces after a long pause. “I should be going, then.”
Logan watches him walk to the door and waits until his back is turned.
“Oh, hey, dad?” The sudden amicability in his voice piques Aaron’s interest. “I need a favor.”
It’s strange, that this man’s most obvious weakness is his family, his need to appease and conciliate, to appear cohesive, if not actually be it. Logan thinks it’s hysterical on a grand scale. Hysterical, hypocritical, po-tay-to, po-tah-toe.
“A favor?” Aaron tastes the word on his tongue, his eyes calculating the gain for effort ratio. “What kind of favor are we talking about?”
Logan scratches the back of his neck and gives a guilty little shit eating grin. Man to man.
“Seems I’m on the outs a bit at school. I need a boost in the polls.”
“Ah.” Aaron nods, because he understands misbehavior, the turning of the tide. “Like that is it? What are we talking about? An appearance?”
Logan wrinkles his forehead.
“Bigger.” He holds his breath for the expected amount of time and then releases it. “I think party big.”
“Party?”
His father’s eyebrows skyrocket.
“Neptune A-list.” Logan confirms. “This decade’s ‘Must-Attend’. All out, no holes barred, kinda thing.”
Aaron fingers his chin, pretending to consider it, but Logan can see the glitter in the back of the man’s eyes, the growing greed, and the interest. In their current social circles, disregarding Hollywood of course, grand gatherings have remained low key, sedate affairs. Quite and polite and respectful.
The possibility of hosting the first big party since Lilly Kane’s death has grabbed Aaron’s attention whoring interest.
“We’ll see.” His father nods. “I think your mother might be talked into it easily enough.”
Logan smiles, insincerity coating his teeth and sticking to the back of his throat.
“One last thing?” He keeps the interest subtle, because giving away his hand this early, especially to this man, is nothing but a bad idea. “I’ll need to scratch ten names off the guest list.”
Aaron chuckles.
“Only ten?”
Then he disappears, backing out of the door with renewed vigor, a project already taking form in his mind. Logan turns back to the suddenly empty pool house and smiles to himself. Ten names that, in crude terms, pretty much makes Neptune High’s A-List if you strike out Echolls.
Kane, Sinclair, Enbom, Casablancas, Pomroy, Moore, Gant, Crawford, Day and Bishop.
The first step in infiltrating an enemy is misdirection. Make them come to you.
He wonders who will be the first to crack.
***
End chapter six.
Questions, comments?