(no subject)
Veronica Mars Fic: Post Partum
Title: Post Partum, Part 13/?
Author: Zaftig_darling
Pairing/Character: Logan/Veronica, Keith
Word Count: 1500
Rating: R (this part) for language and adult concepts
Summary: motherhood changes Veronica
Spoilers: All three seasons
Warnings: adult language
Parts 1 to 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12
Thanks to
vanessagalore for the beta, and to
chynaj and
p2880 for their help with this chapter
Veronica dreams she is in the ocean, swimming further and further from the shore. She turns around and sees Logan waving to her from the beach. She reverses course and tries to swim back towards him, but the waves are choppy and she is fighting them. She is struggling in the waves. The harder she fights to stay afloat, the further away the shoreline becomes. Exhausted, her head submerges. Her arms pull desperately for the surface, but she cannot find it. She gives in to the water, and she is sinking…
Fingers grab hold of her hair and pull her to the surface. She emerges from beneath the water to find herself in a swimming pool, THE swimming pool, Lilly Kane’s swimming pool. She knows she is still dreaming when she realizes that Lilly’s hands are caught in her hair, that it is Lilly who has pulled her from
the water.
Veronica blinks and Lilly is sitting at the edge of the pool while Veronica floats on her back. The water is cold. Lilly’s head is whole; no bloody gash mars her perfect face.
“Check YOU out, Veronica Mars,” Lilly says. “I guess you’re not so much a rocker chick anymore. What’s WRONG with you, anyway?”
“I don’t…” Veronica shakes her head, trying to make sense of things. “I don’t know. I think, I think I’m really tired.”
Lilly gives Veronica a mischievous glance. “Buck up little camper! It's not like a movie star bashed in your totally fabulous best friend's skull with an ashtray any time recently. But I still can’t believe you had a baby! That’s just so…messy! And those stretch marks? SO aren’t going away anytime soon. I will say those Echolls' genes make a pretty baby, but, geez, Veronica, you need to pull yourself together...and you need to eat something. You’re not tall enough to pull off the heroin-chic-model-look, m’kay?”
“Lilly, I,” Veronica starts to say, but Lilly is gone.
She is beside another swimming pool now, and Beaver Casablancas is walking towards her. She knows this pool, this place, and this nightmare - she’s visited it far too many times before. Veronica scrambles backwards, because Beaver is glowing like a demon, and he grabs her and holds her down. “No,” Veronica hisses. “No,” but Beaver’s hands are on her thighs ~ burning her thighs ~ and Beaver is pushing himself between her legs. It feels like he is slicing into her with a knife, and there is blood, so much blood, too much blood. She hurts and she is begging him to let go of her. She is trying to roll herself into a ball, but she cannot get away from the pain between her legs.
“Veronica,” Logan says. Logan has appeared suddenly, and is, inexplicably, talking quietly to Beaver, who continues to slam himself mercilessly into her body, and all she can hear is the sound of Logan saying her
name.
"Veronica!” Logan is gently shaking her and she realizes, with a start, that she is awake.
She thinks she is awake. It’s so hard to tell these days.
“How long have I been asleep?” she asks, groggily, trying to sit up. She is lying on her stomach in a small pool of her own milk.
“About...five hours, I think?” Logan says. “It’s 3:00 AM. Jonah’s been asleep since 10:00, so, hopefully you’ve been sleeping that long, too.”
“The baby slept for five hours?” she asks, amazed, but hopeful.
“Yeah,” Logan says, sheepishly, running his hand through his hair and shrugging. “I put him in that, you know, that cradle chair that vibrates a little? And he’s hardly made a sound. He is, in point of fact, sleeping like a baby. I put him right by the daybed in the nursery.”
“And here I thought sleeping like a baby meant, 'waking up 12 times a night',” Veronica says, aiming for sarcastic but not quite making it.
“Well, as nice as it that he slept this long, I worry that he’ll get used to a vibrating bed,” Logan says. “What if he gets to be 16 and we find him sneaking out to a cheap pay-by-the-hour hotel for those magic finger
beds?”
Veronica manages a small smile.
“Why are we awake if the baby’s not awake?” Veronica asks. After an entire day of sleeping round the clock, awakened only to nurse the baby every few hours, she feels far less confused and a bit more like herself.
"You were crying in your sleep," he says.
"Loudly?" she asks, surprised and vaguely alarmed, as the details of the nightmare float back to her.
"I, uh," Logan says, awkwardly, "I was asleep in the nursery, and I had Jonah next to me, but I..." he stops.
"You what?" she demands.
"I was still worried about you after you fed him the last time, so I put the baby monitor in here," he points to a small white and blue device that looks like one half of a walkie-talkie, which is resting on the floor next to the bed. "I didn't want you to feel like I was eavesdropping on you, I just...wanted to make sure I could hear you if you needed me."
"Oh..." she says, not sure whether to be annoyed or touched by his concern.
"Were you having a bad dream, Veronica?" he asks.
She swallows hard and looks down at her damp shirt and the damp sheets, but doesn't answer him.
"I'm just," Logan says, tentatively, "I'm just thinking it was a bad dream because you were crying, 'No, Beaver, No' over and over....that's why I woke you up."
She looks up at him. "Yeah...it was a bad dream. Really bad."
He sits down on the bed next to her.
"Want to talk about it?" he asks.
"No...I...I don't want to talk about it," she answers, but curls herself around his body, resting her head against his chest and clings to him, tightly.
Logan realizes her pajama top is milk-soaked, and asks, "Do you want some fresh pajamas? I'll get you some."
She lets go of him as he stands up.
"This is so…messy," she says, sighing, and she hears Lilly’s voice ringing in her ears.
"Yeah, this parenthood thing does seem to involve a lot of being covered in all manner of bodily fluids," he says, good-naturedly, as he pulls a pair of pajamas from her dresser. She yawns sleepily and raises her arms over her head. Logan leans over to pull her soiled t-shirt from her body.
For the first time in a long time, he is bending over his wife, staring at her naked breasts. His breath catches in his throat and he wants nothing more but to kiss her, and so he does, gently. Reverently, hopefully, he cups her breasts in his hands. He is surprised when she opens her mouth and returns his kiss. He is especially surprised she does not push his hands away from her breasts, so much rounder and heavier than before her pregnancy.
Veronica is also surprised by her response to him. She feels grungy and smelly and she's sure she hasn't brushed her teeth since yesterday. She has been covered in baby spit-up and her breasts are leaky and she’s never felt less sexy in her life. She can't believe she is thinking about how good it feels to let Logan kiss her, how good it feels to let Logan's warm hands roam over her - but for once she doesn't feel like she would happily commit a felony to secure a few more minutes of sleep, and Logan's hands and lips feel too good to ask him to stop. She falls backward on the mattress, dragging Logan with her. She wants to erase the image of Beaver from her brain, and she isn’t allowing herself to think beyond the immediacy of Logan’s mouth against her neck.
All too soon, their intimate moment is interrupted by Jonah’s wail coming from down the hall.
“Jonah needs me,” she says, pushing Logan off of her, her brief flash of passion instantly destroyed.
He jumps off the bed and hurries awkwardly down the hallway. He is uncomfortably hard and tries not to show his discomfort and disappointment.
When he returns to their bedroom a few minutes later, Veronica has put on the clean pajamas Logan had pulled from her drawer. He hands the squalling baby to her, and she lies down on the bed with him, where he is soon happily nursing, curled into his mother.
Logan kisses Veronica’s head and slides into their bed, their son between them. “I’ll take him back to the nursery when he’s done, you can get some more rest,” Logan whispers.
Veronica doesn’t respond.
Logan isn’t sure how much time has passed, and he thinks he may have drifted off to sleep, when he feels the bed shaking slightly, and he knows that Veronica is crying again. Logan is troubled. She had seemed almost like herself for a few minutes; he had been hopeful that she was feeling better with some rest.
He reaches out and touches her face. “Are you okay?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” she answers. “I want…”
She falls silent, so Logan presses, “You want? What do you want, Veronica? Tell me and I’ll get it. Anything you want. Anything at all. Are you hungry?” he asks her, hopefully.
“No,” she says, “I want…” She falls silent, again.
“You want to get away for a while?” Logan asks. “We could take Jonah, go to Hawaii, you could lie on the beach at that resort we stayed at back in September…”
“No, I don’t want to go anywhere,” she pauses, because for a moment the idea of being pampered in Hawaiian paradise is tempting, but she continues, “I want…Logan, I want my mom.”
“You what?” Logan asks, astonished. He could not have been more surprised than if she’d told him she wanted to go scuba diving right this second. “You want your mother?”
“I hate myself for wanting her, Logan. I hate myself for wanting her right now. But I do.”
******************************************
The next morning, Logan sits at his desk in his den. Veronica is sleeping again, and Logan is pleased that she had willingly eaten a bowl of cereal and two eggs before heading back to bed. Elsa has taken Jonah out for a walk in his stroller.
Logan hesitantly dials a number he knows by heart, and it is answered on the second ring.
"Sheriff Mars," Keith says, brusquely.
"Keith, it's Logan," he says.
For a moment, Keith says nothing.
Logan fears (correctly) that Keith has not forgiven him for running away when Veronica first told him about her pregnancy. Their relationship is almost as strained as it had been years ago.
On the other end of the phone, Keith sighs, heavily.
"Is this a bad time?" Logan asks.
"I've just got a mess with a traffic accident...What do you need, Logan? And if it doesn’t involve my daughter or my grandson, I’m going to have to hang up." Keith asks.
"Your grandson is fine," Logan responds. "I'm a little worried about Veronica, though."
"Yeah...I stopped in to see her twice while you were in Vancouver. She seems...on edge."
"She's having a lot of anxiety," Logan says. "About the baby, I mean."
"Well, she definitely wasn't herself. If you hadn't come home, I was going to take a few days off to spend with her," Keith says.
"She might like that anyway, but..."
"But what?" Keith asks.
"Do you know where Lianne is?"
"Why the hell would you ask me that?" Keith says, surprised and angry.
"Veronica…says she wants her mom," Logan explains.
"That’s a terrible idea," Keith says. "
I'm not sure it's a great idea, either, and I think Veronica knows it's not a great idea. But I thought, maybe if you knew where Lianne was...well, maybe..."
"Veronica hasn't seen Lianne since she disappeared with the Kane's reward money," Keith remarks. "Why does she want her now?"
"I don't know, Keith. I don't think Veronica knows. I think she's just feeling very lost and unsure of herself right now."
"The only person who consistently knows how to find Lianne is Jake,” Keith says, his disgust evident in the way he says Jake’s name. “Last I heard, he was keeping an apartment for her in Tucson, but who knows where he’s keeping her now.”
"Thanks, Keith," Logan says. "I want you to know, I’m just trying to…help Veronica. I’m just not sure what she needs right now. She might like to see you…you could come up after work, visit with Jonah and her for a little bit?"
After a long pause, Keith responds, "I might just do that. I’ve got to go now."
“Thanks Keith, Logan says, and starts to hang up the phone. “Wait, Logan,” he hears Keith say as he is pulling the phone away from his ear. “Think twice before you contact Jake Kane...Veronica may think she wants Lianne, but I don't know that Veronica is thinking clearly right now."
Part 14
Title: Post Partum, Part 13/?
Author: Zaftig_darling
Pairing/Character: Logan/Veronica, Keith
Word Count: 1500
Rating: R (this part) for language and adult concepts
Summary: motherhood changes Veronica
Spoilers: All three seasons
Warnings: adult language
Parts 1 to 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12
Thanks to
vanessagalore for the beta, and to
chynaj and
p2880 for their help with this chapter
Veronica dreams she is in the ocean, swimming further and further from the shore. She turns around and sees Logan waving to her from the beach. She reverses course and tries to swim back towards him, but the waves are choppy and she is fighting them. She is struggling in the waves. The harder she fights to stay afloat, the further away the shoreline becomes. Exhausted, her head submerges. Her arms pull desperately for the surface, but she cannot find it. She gives in to the water, and she is sinking…
Fingers grab hold of her hair and pull her to the surface. She emerges from beneath the water to find herself in a swimming pool, THE swimming pool, Lilly Kane’s swimming pool. She knows she is still dreaming when she realizes that Lilly’s hands are caught in her hair, that it is Lilly who has pulled her from
the water.
Veronica blinks and Lilly is sitting at the edge of the pool while Veronica floats on her back. The water is cold. Lilly’s head is whole; no bloody gash mars her perfect face.
“Check YOU out, Veronica Mars,” Lilly says. “I guess you’re not so much a rocker chick anymore. What’s WRONG with you, anyway?”
“I don’t…” Veronica shakes her head, trying to make sense of things. “I don’t know. I think, I think I’m really tired.”
Lilly gives Veronica a mischievous glance. “Buck up little camper! It's not like a movie star bashed in your totally fabulous best friend's skull with an ashtray any time recently. But I still can’t believe you had a baby! That’s just so…messy! And those stretch marks? SO aren’t going away anytime soon. I will say those Echolls' genes make a pretty baby, but, geez, Veronica, you need to pull yourself together...and you need to eat something. You’re not tall enough to pull off the heroin-chic-model-look, m’kay?”
“Lilly, I,” Veronica starts to say, but Lilly is gone.
She is beside another swimming pool now, and Beaver Casablancas is walking towards her. She knows this pool, this place, and this nightmare - she’s visited it far too many times before. Veronica scrambles backwards, because Beaver is glowing like a demon, and he grabs her and holds her down. “No,” Veronica hisses. “No,” but Beaver’s hands are on her thighs ~ burning her thighs ~ and Beaver is pushing himself between her legs. It feels like he is slicing into her with a knife, and there is blood, so much blood, too much blood. She hurts and she is begging him to let go of her. She is trying to roll herself into a ball, but she cannot get away from the pain between her legs.
“Veronica,” Logan says. Logan has appeared suddenly, and is, inexplicably, talking quietly to Beaver, who continues to slam himself mercilessly into her body, and all she can hear is the sound of Logan saying her
name.
"Veronica!” Logan is gently shaking her and she realizes, with a start, that she is awake.
She thinks she is awake. It’s so hard to tell these days.
“How long have I been asleep?” she asks, groggily, trying to sit up. She is lying on her stomach in a small pool of her own milk.
“About...five hours, I think?” Logan says. “It’s 3:00 AM. Jonah’s been asleep since 10:00, so, hopefully you’ve been sleeping that long, too.”
“The baby slept for five hours?” she asks, amazed, but hopeful.
“Yeah,” Logan says, sheepishly, running his hand through his hair and shrugging. “I put him in that, you know, that cradle chair that vibrates a little? And he’s hardly made a sound. He is, in point of fact, sleeping like a baby. I put him right by the daybed in the nursery.”
“And here I thought sleeping like a baby meant, 'waking up 12 times a night',” Veronica says, aiming for sarcastic but not quite making it.
“Well, as nice as it that he slept this long, I worry that he’ll get used to a vibrating bed,” Logan says. “What if he gets to be 16 and we find him sneaking out to a cheap pay-by-the-hour hotel for those magic finger
beds?”
Veronica manages a small smile.
“Why are we awake if the baby’s not awake?” Veronica asks. After an entire day of sleeping round the clock, awakened only to nurse the baby every few hours, she feels far less confused and a bit more like herself.
"You were crying in your sleep," he says.
"Loudly?" she asks, surprised and vaguely alarmed, as the details of the nightmare float back to her.
"I, uh," Logan says, awkwardly, "I was asleep in the nursery, and I had Jonah next to me, but I..." he stops.
"You what?" she demands.
"I was still worried about you after you fed him the last time, so I put the baby monitor in here," he points to a small white and blue device that looks like one half of a walkie-talkie, which is resting on the floor next to the bed. "I didn't want you to feel like I was eavesdropping on you, I just...wanted to make sure I could hear you if you needed me."
"Oh..." she says, not sure whether to be annoyed or touched by his concern.
"Were you having a bad dream, Veronica?" he asks.
She swallows hard and looks down at her damp shirt and the damp sheets, but doesn't answer him.
"I'm just," Logan says, tentatively, "I'm just thinking it was a bad dream because you were crying, 'No, Beaver, No' over and over....that's why I woke you up."
She looks up at him. "Yeah...it was a bad dream. Really bad."
He sits down on the bed next to her.
"Want to talk about it?" he asks.
"No...I...I don't want to talk about it," she answers, but curls herself around his body, resting her head against his chest and clings to him, tightly.
Logan realizes her pajama top is milk-soaked, and asks, "Do you want some fresh pajamas? I'll get you some."
She lets go of him as he stands up.
"This is so…messy," she says, sighing, and she hears Lilly’s voice ringing in her ears.
"Yeah, this parenthood thing does seem to involve a lot of being covered in all manner of bodily fluids," he says, good-naturedly, as he pulls a pair of pajamas from her dresser. She yawns sleepily and raises her arms over her head. Logan leans over to pull her soiled t-shirt from her body.
For the first time in a long time, he is bending over his wife, staring at her naked breasts. His breath catches in his throat and he wants nothing more but to kiss her, and so he does, gently. Reverently, hopefully, he cups her breasts in his hands. He is surprised when she opens her mouth and returns his kiss. He is especially surprised she does not push his hands away from her breasts, so much rounder and heavier than before her pregnancy.
Veronica is also surprised by her response to him. She feels grungy and smelly and she's sure she hasn't brushed her teeth since yesterday. She has been covered in baby spit-up and her breasts are leaky and she’s never felt less sexy in her life. She can't believe she is thinking about how good it feels to let Logan kiss her, how good it feels to let Logan's warm hands roam over her - but for once she doesn't feel like she would happily commit a felony to secure a few more minutes of sleep, and Logan's hands and lips feel too good to ask him to stop. She falls backward on the mattress, dragging Logan with her. She wants to erase the image of Beaver from her brain, and she isn’t allowing herself to think beyond the immediacy of Logan’s mouth against her neck.
All too soon, their intimate moment is interrupted by Jonah’s wail coming from down the hall.
“Jonah needs me,” she says, pushing Logan off of her, her brief flash of passion instantly destroyed.
He jumps off the bed and hurries awkwardly down the hallway. He is uncomfortably hard and tries not to show his discomfort and disappointment.
When he returns to their bedroom a few minutes later, Veronica has put on the clean pajamas Logan had pulled from her drawer. He hands the squalling baby to her, and she lies down on the bed with him, where he is soon happily nursing, curled into his mother.
Logan kisses Veronica’s head and slides into their bed, their son between them. “I’ll take him back to the nursery when he’s done, you can get some more rest,” Logan whispers.
Veronica doesn’t respond.
Logan isn’t sure how much time has passed, and he thinks he may have drifted off to sleep, when he feels the bed shaking slightly, and he knows that Veronica is crying again. Logan is troubled. She had seemed almost like herself for a few minutes; he had been hopeful that she was feeling better with some rest.
He reaches out and touches her face. “Are you okay?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” she answers. “I want…”
She falls silent, so Logan presses, “You want? What do you want, Veronica? Tell me and I’ll get it. Anything you want. Anything at all. Are you hungry?” he asks her, hopefully.
“No,” she says, “I want…” She falls silent, again.
“You want to get away for a while?” Logan asks. “We could take Jonah, go to Hawaii, you could lie on the beach at that resort we stayed at back in September…”
“No, I don’t want to go anywhere,” she pauses, because for a moment the idea of being pampered in Hawaiian paradise is tempting, but she continues, “I want…Logan, I want my mom.”
“You what?” Logan asks, astonished. He could not have been more surprised than if she’d told him she wanted to go scuba diving right this second. “You want your mother?”
“I hate myself for wanting her, Logan. I hate myself for wanting her right now. But I do.”
******************************************
The next morning, Logan sits at his desk in his den. Veronica is sleeping again, and Logan is pleased that she had willingly eaten a bowl of cereal and two eggs before heading back to bed. Elsa has taken Jonah out for a walk in his stroller.
Logan hesitantly dials a number he knows by heart, and it is answered on the second ring.
"Sheriff Mars," Keith says, brusquely.
"Keith, it's Logan," he says.
For a moment, Keith says nothing.
Logan fears (correctly) that Keith has not forgiven him for running away when Veronica first told him about her pregnancy. Their relationship is almost as strained as it had been years ago.
On the other end of the phone, Keith sighs, heavily.
"Is this a bad time?" Logan asks.
"I've just got a mess with a traffic accident...What do you need, Logan? And if it doesn’t involve my daughter or my grandson, I’m going to have to hang up." Keith asks.
"Your grandson is fine," Logan responds. "I'm a little worried about Veronica, though."
"Yeah...I stopped in to see her twice while you were in Vancouver. She seems...on edge."
"She's having a lot of anxiety," Logan says. "About the baby, I mean."
"Well, she definitely wasn't herself. If you hadn't come home, I was going to take a few days off to spend with her," Keith says.
"She might like that anyway, but..."
"But what?" Keith asks.
"Do you know where Lianne is?"
"Why the hell would you ask me that?" Keith says, surprised and angry.
"Veronica…says she wants her mom," Logan explains.
"That’s a terrible idea," Keith says. "
I'm not sure it's a great idea, either, and I think Veronica knows it's not a great idea. But I thought, maybe if you knew where Lianne was...well, maybe..."
"Veronica hasn't seen Lianne since she disappeared with the Kane's reward money," Keith remarks. "Why does she want her now?"
"I don't know, Keith. I don't think Veronica knows. I think she's just feeling very lost and unsure of herself right now."
"The only person who consistently knows how to find Lianne is Jake,” Keith says, his disgust evident in the way he says Jake’s name. “Last I heard, he was keeping an apartment for her in Tucson, but who knows where he’s keeping her now.”
"Thanks, Keith," Logan says. "I want you to know, I’m just trying to…help Veronica. I’m just not sure what she needs right now. She might like to see you…you could come up after work, visit with Jonah and her for a little bit?"
After a long pause, Keith responds, "I might just do that. I’ve got to go now."
“Thanks Keith, Logan says, and starts to hang up the phone. “Wait, Logan,” he hears Keith say as he is pulling the phone away from his ear. “Think twice before you contact Jake Kane...Veronica may think she wants Lianne, but I don't know that Veronica is thinking clearly right now."
Part 14