[fic] just like the robinsons' affair
ugh, what is happening? The worst part is that all this fic I'm posting aren't even the ones from the drafts of fic that I have written on my laptop somewhere. These fics are the ones I'm writing on the spur of the moment. What the actual fuck. Please excuse me, forgive me, etc. etc. And on top of everything, I'm developing an unhealthy obsession with post 2x22 Veronica. Just, why. Also, cranmers and fluffyfrolicker deserve a special apology, because in my infinite wisdom, I saved the fic as public instead of private while writing and they were treated to 1000 words of WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THIS? And they were still ridiculously kind to me about it. So here you go people, I guess you're well sick of me by now. BUT YET I WRITE. I am like a zombie, man, they never learn.
ETA: waltzmatildah is hosting an Impromptu Slash/Femslash Comment Ficathon to celebrate New Zealand becoming the 14th country to legalise same sex marriage. GO PLAY.
just like the robinson's affair
veronica mars | veronica; veronica/logan, wallace, mac, cassidy, dick | hard r |
post season 2 | warning: mentions of rape, sex, language. | ~3000
"I'm not Caitlin Ford," she snaps, once. | The summer of breaking down up.
Her dad says: "are you sure you're okay, honey? Because this trip can wait. It isn't that important."
It is that important, she knows.
She smiles wide, she's done this before after all, at the back of her mind, her white, virginal dress bunched up around her hips, her white, virginal panties on the floor.
"Yes. Just go. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, etcetera, and I got to tell you father-of-mine, my heart could do with more fondness after you ditched me on that outbound plane to New York, that one time two weeks ago. Get me a souvenir, yeah? Some Liquid X, perhaps?"
Her dad shakes his head at her and kisses her on the head. And when he leaves, bags in tow, she slumps against the door.
Backup is locked outside. He is silent, for once.
"Yes." she says again to the empty house.
-
It's a long, endless Californian summer. Her head aches with the heat almost constantly, and she can't be bothered with make-up that slides down her skin in neon colors and sweat, even if she has a boyfriend and Seventeen tells her she should, to keep him interested.
"I'm not Caitlin Ford," she snaps, once, when he's not doing anything more objectionable than flipping through an auto magazine on the beach, surfboard propped against his legs.
It annoys her that he doesn't even look up.
"If I wanted Caitlin Ford, I'd be with Caitlin Ford."
"Except for that whole part where she didn't want you and cheated on you with that PCHer, right?" she's a bitch, really, when it comes right down to it. It probably has something to do with genetics and being Lianne Mars's daughter.
He grins, "is that supposed to be insulting to me for getting cheated on or to you for being the one taking Caitlin Ford's leftovers?"
"Maybe you should be with Caitlin Ford then," she says, shading her eyes to glare at him, "since you want her so much and everything." and this? right here? is ridiculous.
"How much easier would my life be if I was," he muses, turning another page. He should just marry that stupid magazine.
She thinks about that for a moment, wrapping her hands around her knees and digging her feet into the sand.
"No one writes songs about the ones that come easy." she doesn't even know why she says it.
He looks up then, and laughs at her, "what? did Hallmark hire you to write their slogans? Is that why you're Little-Miss-Sunshining this place up?"
She rests her head on top of her knees, "epics are almost always tragic," she absently fingers with the frayed ends of her jeans, "you'd know that if you'd ever bothered to turn up for English."
-
She wears that one red dress way too often after he tells her she looks good in it, and breaks up with him seven times on average.
The fourth time, he laughs. "no, seriously?"
"I mean it." she says, immediately on the defensive, and she's not kidding at all.
"You always do," he replies, and kisses her. Hard. So she knows he's angry. Even if he's learnt to school it. That wasn't her, that was Aaron Echolls. There are some parts of Logan she didn't get the chance to break.
She breaks up with him again after the kiss.
-
She sitting on the ground, with her back against the foot of his bed when he comes back, wet cloth in hand.
"So what is this," Logan asks tightly, as he gets down on his knees beside her, his hands gently peeling away the shirt clinging to her with mud and water and blood, "you decided the daily excitement of being a PI hiding creepily in the bushes and filming adulterous porn wasn't doing it for you, so you want to see how long you can last in mortal combat instead? You got a death-wish, Mars?"
The irony of hearing that line from him possibly breaks the escape velocity of the atmosphere. She finds she can't quite meet his eyes. There is an ache somewhere in the center of her chest, where the man in the black sweatshirt had turned her own taser on her.
This shit is starting to happen way too often for a scenario not involving canned laughter.
"If you'd been paying attention in Psych 101," she says flippantly to the duvet, hanging off the edge of the bed, "you'd know that everyone has one. Freud has a theory on it and everything. Your lack of scholasticism is really starting to catch up with you."
"The least you could have done," he says, and he's mad at her. This is familiar, "is worn leather. Because from where I'm standing it doesn't look like I'm getting anything out of this Florence Nightingale stint."
She thinks she'd have liked a little bit of make-up just then. Her skin is bruising into ugly colors which will be even uglier the next day, she knows. He can't possibly love her like this. Not the guy who's had Caitlin Ford and Lilly Kane and Hannah Whatsername and Kendall Casablancas and god knows how many others for his viewing and other pleasures. She's only ever had Duncan, and he'd never made her scream. And Cassidy. She's had Cassidy. Cassidy's had her. Whatever.
He looks at her for a long time, as she busies herself with the blue glow above his headboard. It shines too brightly and for a moment, she can't see anything else at all.
Finally, he sighs, and presses the cloth against her, water dripping uncomfortably down her stomach, pooling at the waistband of her jeans. The washcloth is cold against her skin. His hands, hot. It hurts a lot more than is strictly bearable, and she grits her teeth.
But then he reaches down and licks the water, right off of the discolored skin. Her stomach muscles clench hard at the sensation, even though, fuck, that fucking hurts.
She tangles her hands in his hair and pulls him up, "what the hell, Logan?"
"Sorry," he says, "not sorry." he says.
-
"So, this must be, like, the eighth time, then?" Mac looks up from the computer, her hands constantly moving over the keyboard. Like if she keeps them still long enough, she'll never be able to move again.
"Ninth," Veronica says automatically, then forces herself to smile, "but who's counting, right?"
-
"You know," he drawls, leaning against the hood of her car, "if you were going to leave like that, you might at least have taken a few dollars from my wallet, make the business all respectable-like."
"A hooker insult," she claps her hands in mock-glee, "I haven't heard one of those in so long, I was starting to miss it. I wonder why we ever broke up."
"When," he says, his eyes careful, searching, she feels her body stiffen with that familiar mixture of arousal and rage, "did we break up, exactly? Just for the sake of future reference."
"Just now," she says, which is a lie. They broke up the moment he made her want him. But that's an explanation and she's not. Explanations. She's the running away.
He nods, like this is exactly what he expects from her, a wide, ugly smirk breaking out across his face, and runs his hands through his hair, the gel breaking with the movement of his hands. When the highlights fall over his forehead, she resists the urge to push them back. She can't reach anyway, unless he lets her. He's always going to have that.
"I knew we shouldn't have kissed," he says, loud, obnoxious, being hurt always makes him want to hurt back, these are things about him she learnt last summer. Summer is their time. Maybe because they're so cold that if winter was their time, they'd just cut each other across sharp edges, "I broke the rule, right? No kissing on the lips? Because now you're in love with me and you've broken your rule about being a heartless, ice-cold bitch and that's got to suck."
She can feel her head start to ache again, the pinch behind her eyes, developing into a hammering and the sheer exhaustion of being in love with Logan Echolls sweep through her, "a Pretty Woman reference, Logan?" she says brightly, instead, "you should have just told me you needed me to be your beard. We're friends, aren't we? I don't judge. If you want to imagine someone, like someone without those fiddly lady-parts-"
"Did last night feel like I was imagining someone else." He begins abruptly, and now he's obviously done with the- whatever it is they're always doing- "and here I would have thought the number of times I repeated your name-"
"Shut up," her throat feels dry, she can still taste herself against his mouth, when she swallows hard. She let him do that, "shut up."
He holds his hands up in mock-surrender, "sorry," he says, exaggeratedly, "sorry I paid so much attention to you. Sorry I made you want it. Sorry I made you ask for it."
Logan please, the voice in her head is low, half-caught, breathy, please. It sounds like Lilly in her head. Veronica always sounds like Lilly in her head.
"I thought you'd be pleased," she smiles widely, "all those time you called me a slut, and now you have first-hand confirmation. Why don't you just run along and tell the 09er gang. You know, for old time's sake. We've been missing the status quo around here."
"Veronica," he says suddenly, so soft, she can feel herself freeze.
"No," she backs away blindly, feeling the handle dig into her back, as she hits the car. "don't."
"I'm not-," he begins, then stops. "Fine, go, whatever."
She gets into her car, the engine starts.
He moves away from her hood and waves, once.
-
She marks it on her calender in red.
When she comes out of the kitchen, Keith is looking at the red slashes with faux-concern, "you need to see a doctor, honey? I may never have been a teenage girl, but I don't think you're supposed to begin your period every three days."
She mimes laughter, "a PMS joke! You're the gift that just keeps giving. Did you see the way I cleverly continued that menstruation thread with a fertility metaphor?"
"I see the way you cleverly avoided the topic at hand, yes." There is far too much understanding in his gaze.
She avoids his eyes, "you. Me. CSI marathon. Tonight. If you figure more of them out before I do, then you buy me dinner. If I figure it out before you do, then I get bought dinner by you."
She looks up then.
"Yes," she says, in answer to the unspoken question in his eyes. "Yes."
-
"I've heard," she swallows thickly, "that guys don't like going on down on girls."
"So have I," he says from between her spread legs, the vibrations from his muffled words making her bite her lip hard enough to draw blood, "it takes all kinds."
"You do." she points out, fisting his sheets between her hands, her heart nearly pounding out of its cage, "and you're a guy."
"So maybe they're wrong." he spreads her wider and she thinks she may just snap her spine, "ignorant. Maybe you should conduct an official research. Interview everyone you know. Or just, you know, stand in the garbage cans, outside their windows and film them, as per the usual."
"Duncan didn't," she feels bad almost immediately, for saying that, it's not true, "I mean, I don't know. I never asked him to. One time he tried, and I just shut him off. I wish I hadn't." she's not trying to be mean, it's just, she misses Duncan. 4. 8. 14. 16. 23. 42. she repeats in her head, over.
"I could," and this time she screams when he does that, it's the competitor in him, she knows, this should be a turn-off, "do this every day for the rest of my life."
She falls back against the impossible thread count, and she can tell he knows he's said something wrong because he doesn't continue the slow teasing, his mouth and fingers working to make her come almost immediately.
She can feel the white-hot, irrational anger making it's way through her. Anger at the fact that he can still make her want him even when she knows she's been raped. Even though she didn't let Duncan do this, Duncan, who's still a fortune on her bedroom mirror, when she didn't know.
And now she wants sex all the time. All he has to do is look. That's one sick Pavlovian reaction he instigates in her.
She dresses silently, after.
"I don't think this is working." The impact of her words is considerably lessened by the fact that he mouths them along with her.
His gaze is quick, calculating. He falls back on the bed, hands behind his head, cushioning. "Okay."
"That's it." she says, "we're done?" that wasn't supposed to be a question. "we're done."
"That's it," he confirms, "we're done."
"If I had such a death-wish," she says snidely, instead, "I'd just have let Bea- Cassidy kill me up on the rooftop, you know."
Logan turns to the side-desk, picking up his half-empty glass and raising it to her in silent acknowledgment, before draining it. He's more drunk than she originally thought, she realizes, "didn't you?"
-
"But- and correct me if I'm missing something here- didn't you break up with him?"
"Yes, but" she twists the cord around her hand. Wallace is supposed to be her BFF, how is he not getting this, "he hasn't called."
"So," Wallace says, his voice sounding blank even over the distance and static, "call him."
She needs a girlfriend, she decides. Maybe a temporary girlfriend, who isn't drowning her grief in complex algorithms and breaking six federal and state laws, she amends.
"I'll do that," she says, mock-cheery, "thanks."
She can hear Wallace sigh on the other end, he's not buying it. The rhythmic sound of the ball hitting the floor reaches her in intervals. It lulls her into a strange place between being awake and dead. "You okay, Mars?"
"Yes," she says, "of course."
-
"Where are you going," she asks, when he starts picking up his clothes and slides one leg into his jeans.
"I thought we'd mix things up a little this time," he says abruptly, "how about I leave and you stay? Just once. Just to keep the mystery alive, you know. Besides, this is kind of your house."
"Wham," she brings her hand down hard in a chopping motion, doesn't bother getting up "bam. Thank you ma'am."
His mouth twists at the corner, but he doesn't stop pulling up his jeans, "we all know who wears the pants in this relationship anyway." He raises his voice in a high-pitched imitation of himself that makes something inside her ache with loss. She is sorry. "I love you so much Veronica. Veronica can I make love to you, please? Our relationship is epic you know, Veronica. "
She doesn't want to go there, "I thought you said you didn't remember anything about that night."
"I don't," he lapses into sullenness, "you said it the next day."
The image of Kendall's arms wrapped around his naked body floods her brain, along with the familiar pang of jealousy. She unconsciously tightens her grip on the sheet, threading it between her fingers. Her bed is too small for both of them and he's ridiculously tall. She still feels sore and cramped from all the maneuvering.
'If I," she says, voice small, "ask you to stay. Right now. Would you?" Maybe he's tired. And that terrifies her. Because she hadn't ever considered he might get tired. Of this. This is how they function.
He rubs his eye in a childish gesture that cuts right through her, "when do I not."
She opens her mouth, just as he continues, looking straight at her, "please. Don't ask me to stay."
She bites her lip to keep the words down.
-
"So, like," Dick Casablancas says, without preamble, when she picks up, "if you're done playing with them and could give back Logan's balls anytime soon, that'd be great. You must be a vixen in bed, Mars, he's so strung up about you."
"What are you," she replies, unable to keep the sting out, "his official spokesperson?"
"His Masculinity-R-Us sponsor, yes."
"Your brother," she says, dully, "raped me."
For about two seconds, there is silence on the other end, "my brother," Dick says, his voice free of recognizable inflections, "is dead."
-
"I'm not," she shoves him, hard, when he opens the door. She can barely get him to move an inch. It pisses her off.
He doesn't look surprised.
"A Grade A psychotic bitch?" he offers helpfully, leaning against the open door, arms crossed. When she inhales, she can smell what he usually smells of; alcohol, and the sea. But mostly Logan.
"Okay," she says fiercely, "I am not okay."
He tilts her head up to meet his eyes with a finger under her chin, and when she can't avoid his gaze any longer, she gives up trying, "okay."
"It's not that simple," she's just lashing out now, as always, but it is not okay, "it isn't just as easy as an 'okay', okay?"
And suddenly he grins.
She deflates against his chest, his arms coming to wrap themselves around her, "don't say it. Don't say it, or I swear I'll-"
"You said it," he murmurs against her hair, bending down in that awkward position he always has to, to reach. Maybe the fact that he still always does means something. Maybe it doesn't. Whatever.
She can still hear his mocking I love you so much Veronica. Veronica can I make love to you, please? Our relationship is epic you know, Veronica. It cramps her inside with something close to tenderness.
No one writes songs about the ones that come easy.
She won't tell him. Just this one time, she won't.
"Yeah," she says, "that was a stupid thing to say. Sometimes I say stupid stuff like that."
She takes his jacket off first.
ETA: waltzmatildah is hosting an Impromptu Slash/Femslash Comment Ficathon to celebrate New Zealand becoming the 14th country to legalise same sex marriage. GO PLAY.
just like the robinson's affair
veronica mars | veronica; veronica/logan, wallace, mac, cassidy, dick | hard r |
post season 2 | warning: mentions of rape, sex, language. | ~3000
"I'm not Caitlin Ford," she snaps, once. | The summer of breaking down up.
Her dad says: "are you sure you're okay, honey? Because this trip can wait. It isn't that important."
It is that important, she knows.
She smiles wide, she's done this before after all, at the back of her mind, her white, virginal dress bunched up around her hips, her white, virginal panties on the floor.
"Yes. Just go. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, etcetera, and I got to tell you father-of-mine, my heart could do with more fondness after you ditched me on that outbound plane to New York, that one time two weeks ago. Get me a souvenir, yeah? Some Liquid X, perhaps?"
Her dad shakes his head at her and kisses her on the head. And when he leaves, bags in tow, she slumps against the door.
Backup is locked outside. He is silent, for once.
"Yes." she says again to the empty house.
-
It's a long, endless Californian summer. Her head aches with the heat almost constantly, and she can't be bothered with make-up that slides down her skin in neon colors and sweat, even if she has a boyfriend and Seventeen tells her she should, to keep him interested.
"I'm not Caitlin Ford," she snaps, once, when he's not doing anything more objectionable than flipping through an auto magazine on the beach, surfboard propped against his legs.
It annoys her that he doesn't even look up.
"If I wanted Caitlin Ford, I'd be with Caitlin Ford."
"Except for that whole part where she didn't want you and cheated on you with that PCHer, right?" she's a bitch, really, when it comes right down to it. It probably has something to do with genetics and being Lianne Mars's daughter.
He grins, "is that supposed to be insulting to me for getting cheated on or to you for being the one taking Caitlin Ford's leftovers?"
"Maybe you should be with Caitlin Ford then," she says, shading her eyes to glare at him, "since you want her so much and everything." and this? right here? is ridiculous.
"How much easier would my life be if I was," he muses, turning another page. He should just marry that stupid magazine.
She thinks about that for a moment, wrapping her hands around her knees and digging her feet into the sand.
"No one writes songs about the ones that come easy." she doesn't even know why she says it.
He looks up then, and laughs at her, "what? did Hallmark hire you to write their slogans? Is that why you're Little-Miss-Sunshining this place up?"
She rests her head on top of her knees, "epics are almost always tragic," she absently fingers with the frayed ends of her jeans, "you'd know that if you'd ever bothered to turn up for English."
-
She wears that one red dress way too often after he tells her she looks good in it, and breaks up with him seven times on average.
The fourth time, he laughs. "no, seriously?"
"I mean it." she says, immediately on the defensive, and she's not kidding at all.
"You always do," he replies, and kisses her. Hard. So she knows he's angry. Even if he's learnt to school it. That wasn't her, that was Aaron Echolls. There are some parts of Logan she didn't get the chance to break.
She breaks up with him again after the kiss.
-
She sitting on the ground, with her back against the foot of his bed when he comes back, wet cloth in hand.
"So what is this," Logan asks tightly, as he gets down on his knees beside her, his hands gently peeling away the shirt clinging to her with mud and water and blood, "you decided the daily excitement of being a PI hiding creepily in the bushes and filming adulterous porn wasn't doing it for you, so you want to see how long you can last in mortal combat instead? You got a death-wish, Mars?"
The irony of hearing that line from him possibly breaks the escape velocity of the atmosphere. She finds she can't quite meet his eyes. There is an ache somewhere in the center of her chest, where the man in the black sweatshirt had turned her own taser on her.
This shit is starting to happen way too often for a scenario not involving canned laughter.
"If you'd been paying attention in Psych 101," she says flippantly to the duvet, hanging off the edge of the bed, "you'd know that everyone has one. Freud has a theory on it and everything. Your lack of scholasticism is really starting to catch up with you."
"The least you could have done," he says, and he's mad at her. This is familiar, "is worn leather. Because from where I'm standing it doesn't look like I'm getting anything out of this Florence Nightingale stint."
She thinks she'd have liked a little bit of make-up just then. Her skin is bruising into ugly colors which will be even uglier the next day, she knows. He can't possibly love her like this. Not the guy who's had Caitlin Ford and Lilly Kane and Hannah Whatsername and Kendall Casablancas and god knows how many others for his viewing and other pleasures. She's only ever had Duncan, and he'd never made her scream. And Cassidy. She's had Cassidy. Cassidy's had her. Whatever.
He looks at her for a long time, as she busies herself with the blue glow above his headboard. It shines too brightly and for a moment, she can't see anything else at all.
Finally, he sighs, and presses the cloth against her, water dripping uncomfortably down her stomach, pooling at the waistband of her jeans. The washcloth is cold against her skin. His hands, hot. It hurts a lot more than is strictly bearable, and she grits her teeth.
But then he reaches down and licks the water, right off of the discolored skin. Her stomach muscles clench hard at the sensation, even though, fuck, that fucking hurts.
She tangles her hands in his hair and pulls him up, "what the hell, Logan?"
"Sorry," he says, "not sorry." he says.
-
"So, this must be, like, the eighth time, then?" Mac looks up from the computer, her hands constantly moving over the keyboard. Like if she keeps them still long enough, she'll never be able to move again.
"Ninth," Veronica says automatically, then forces herself to smile, "but who's counting, right?"
-
"You know," he drawls, leaning against the hood of her car, "if you were going to leave like that, you might at least have taken a few dollars from my wallet, make the business all respectable-like."
"A hooker insult," she claps her hands in mock-glee, "I haven't heard one of those in so long, I was starting to miss it. I wonder why we ever broke up."
"When," he says, his eyes careful, searching, she feels her body stiffen with that familiar mixture of arousal and rage, "did we break up, exactly? Just for the sake of future reference."
"Just now," she says, which is a lie. They broke up the moment he made her want him. But that's an explanation and she's not. Explanations. She's the running away.
He nods, like this is exactly what he expects from her, a wide, ugly smirk breaking out across his face, and runs his hands through his hair, the gel breaking with the movement of his hands. When the highlights fall over his forehead, she resists the urge to push them back. She can't reach anyway, unless he lets her. He's always going to have that.
"I knew we shouldn't have kissed," he says, loud, obnoxious, being hurt always makes him want to hurt back, these are things about him she learnt last summer. Summer is their time. Maybe because they're so cold that if winter was their time, they'd just cut each other across sharp edges, "I broke the rule, right? No kissing on the lips? Because now you're in love with me and you've broken your rule about being a heartless, ice-cold bitch and that's got to suck."
She can feel her head start to ache again, the pinch behind her eyes, developing into a hammering and the sheer exhaustion of being in love with Logan Echolls sweep through her, "a Pretty Woman reference, Logan?" she says brightly, instead, "you should have just told me you needed me to be your beard. We're friends, aren't we? I don't judge. If you want to imagine someone, like someone without those fiddly lady-parts-"
"Did last night feel like I was imagining someone else." He begins abruptly, and now he's obviously done with the- whatever it is they're always doing- "and here I would have thought the number of times I repeated your name-"
"Shut up," her throat feels dry, she can still taste herself against his mouth, when she swallows hard. She let him do that, "shut up."
He holds his hands up in mock-surrender, "sorry," he says, exaggeratedly, "sorry I paid so much attention to you. Sorry I made you want it. Sorry I made you ask for it."
Logan please, the voice in her head is low, half-caught, breathy, please. It sounds like Lilly in her head. Veronica always sounds like Lilly in her head.
"I thought you'd be pleased," she smiles widely, "all those time you called me a slut, and now you have first-hand confirmation. Why don't you just run along and tell the 09er gang. You know, for old time's sake. We've been missing the status quo around here."
"Veronica," he says suddenly, so soft, she can feel herself freeze.
"No," she backs away blindly, feeling the handle dig into her back, as she hits the car. "don't."
"I'm not-," he begins, then stops. "Fine, go, whatever."
She gets into her car, the engine starts.
He moves away from her hood and waves, once.
-
She marks it on her calender in red.
When she comes out of the kitchen, Keith is looking at the red slashes with faux-concern, "you need to see a doctor, honey? I may never have been a teenage girl, but I don't think you're supposed to begin your period every three days."
She mimes laughter, "a PMS joke! You're the gift that just keeps giving. Did you see the way I cleverly continued that menstruation thread with a fertility metaphor?"
"I see the way you cleverly avoided the topic at hand, yes." There is far too much understanding in his gaze.
She avoids his eyes, "you. Me. CSI marathon. Tonight. If you figure more of them out before I do, then you buy me dinner. If I figure it out before you do, then I get bought dinner by you."
She looks up then.
"Yes," she says, in answer to the unspoken question in his eyes. "Yes."
-
"I've heard," she swallows thickly, "that guys don't like going on down on girls."
"So have I," he says from between her spread legs, the vibrations from his muffled words making her bite her lip hard enough to draw blood, "it takes all kinds."
"You do." she points out, fisting his sheets between her hands, her heart nearly pounding out of its cage, "and you're a guy."
"So maybe they're wrong." he spreads her wider and she thinks she may just snap her spine, "ignorant. Maybe you should conduct an official research. Interview everyone you know. Or just, you know, stand in the garbage cans, outside their windows and film them, as per the usual."
"Duncan didn't," she feels bad almost immediately, for saying that, it's not true, "I mean, I don't know. I never asked him to. One time he tried, and I just shut him off. I wish I hadn't." she's not trying to be mean, it's just, she misses Duncan. 4. 8. 14. 16. 23. 42. she repeats in her head, over.
"I could," and this time she screams when he does that, it's the competitor in him, she knows, this should be a turn-off, "do this every day for the rest of my life."
She falls back against the impossible thread count, and she can tell he knows he's said something wrong because he doesn't continue the slow teasing, his mouth and fingers working to make her come almost immediately.
She can feel the white-hot, irrational anger making it's way through her. Anger at the fact that he can still make her want him even when she knows she's been raped. Even though she didn't let Duncan do this, Duncan, who's still a fortune on her bedroom mirror, when she didn't know.
And now she wants sex all the time. All he has to do is look. That's one sick Pavlovian reaction he instigates in her.
She dresses silently, after.
"I don't think this is working." The impact of her words is considerably lessened by the fact that he mouths them along with her.
His gaze is quick, calculating. He falls back on the bed, hands behind his head, cushioning. "Okay."
"That's it." she says, "we're done?" that wasn't supposed to be a question. "we're done."
"That's it," he confirms, "we're done."
"If I had such a death-wish," she says snidely, instead, "I'd just have let Bea- Cassidy kill me up on the rooftop, you know."
Logan turns to the side-desk, picking up his half-empty glass and raising it to her in silent acknowledgment, before draining it. He's more drunk than she originally thought, she realizes, "didn't you?"
-
"But- and correct me if I'm missing something here- didn't you break up with him?"
"Yes, but" she twists the cord around her hand. Wallace is supposed to be her BFF, how is he not getting this, "he hasn't called."
"So," Wallace says, his voice sounding blank even over the distance and static, "call him."
She needs a girlfriend, she decides. Maybe a temporary girlfriend, who isn't drowning her grief in complex algorithms and breaking six federal and state laws, she amends.
"I'll do that," she says, mock-cheery, "thanks."
She can hear Wallace sigh on the other end, he's not buying it. The rhythmic sound of the ball hitting the floor reaches her in intervals. It lulls her into a strange place between being awake and dead. "You okay, Mars?"
"Yes," she says, "of course."
-
"Where are you going," she asks, when he starts picking up his clothes and slides one leg into his jeans.
"I thought we'd mix things up a little this time," he says abruptly, "how about I leave and you stay? Just once. Just to keep the mystery alive, you know. Besides, this is kind of your house."
"Wham," she brings her hand down hard in a chopping motion, doesn't bother getting up "bam. Thank you ma'am."
His mouth twists at the corner, but he doesn't stop pulling up his jeans, "we all know who wears the pants in this relationship anyway." He raises his voice in a high-pitched imitation of himself that makes something inside her ache with loss. She is sorry. "I love you so much Veronica. Veronica can I make love to you, please? Our relationship is epic you know, Veronica. "
She doesn't want to go there, "I thought you said you didn't remember anything about that night."
"I don't," he lapses into sullenness, "you said it the next day."
The image of Kendall's arms wrapped around his naked body floods her brain, along with the familiar pang of jealousy. She unconsciously tightens her grip on the sheet, threading it between her fingers. Her bed is too small for both of them and he's ridiculously tall. She still feels sore and cramped from all the maneuvering.
'If I," she says, voice small, "ask you to stay. Right now. Would you?" Maybe he's tired. And that terrifies her. Because she hadn't ever considered he might get tired. Of this. This is how they function.
He rubs his eye in a childish gesture that cuts right through her, "when do I not."
She opens her mouth, just as he continues, looking straight at her, "please. Don't ask me to stay."
She bites her lip to keep the words down.
-
"So, like," Dick Casablancas says, without preamble, when she picks up, "if you're done playing with them and could give back Logan's balls anytime soon, that'd be great. You must be a vixen in bed, Mars, he's so strung up about you."
"What are you," she replies, unable to keep the sting out, "his official spokesperson?"
"His Masculinity-R-Us sponsor, yes."
"Your brother," she says, dully, "raped me."
For about two seconds, there is silence on the other end, "my brother," Dick says, his voice free of recognizable inflections, "is dead."
-
"I'm not," she shoves him, hard, when he opens the door. She can barely get him to move an inch. It pisses her off.
He doesn't look surprised.
"A Grade A psychotic bitch?" he offers helpfully, leaning against the open door, arms crossed. When she inhales, she can smell what he usually smells of; alcohol, and the sea. But mostly Logan.
"Okay," she says fiercely, "I am not okay."
He tilts her head up to meet his eyes with a finger under her chin, and when she can't avoid his gaze any longer, she gives up trying, "okay."
"It's not that simple," she's just lashing out now, as always, but it is not okay, "it isn't just as easy as an 'okay', okay?"
And suddenly he grins.
She deflates against his chest, his arms coming to wrap themselves around her, "don't say it. Don't say it, or I swear I'll-"
"You said it," he murmurs against her hair, bending down in that awkward position he always has to, to reach. Maybe the fact that he still always does means something. Maybe it doesn't. Whatever.
She can still hear his mocking I love you so much Veronica. Veronica can I make love to you, please? Our relationship is epic you know, Veronica. It cramps her inside with something close to tenderness.
No one writes songs about the ones that come easy.
She won't tell him. Just this one time, she won't.
"Yeah," she says, "that was a stupid thing to say. Sometimes I say stupid stuff like that."
She takes his jacket off first.