Erosion - Parts I & II - rejeneration
Title: Erosion
Author: rejeneration, but you can call me Jen.
Pairing/Character: Logan/Veronica
Word Count: Part I: 3021 / Part II: 4350
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Love, actually.
Spoilers/Warnings: Season 2; This is FF.
A/N: I started this months ago for the loveathons Epic Challenge, but I never found enough time to get back to it. I don't do WIP, but unfortunately, this has to be. There are five parts and I'm almost done with part three. I'm hoping to finish it in its entirety within the next month or so. I know it's too late for judging, but I wrote it, so I'm posting it anyway! -smile-
A/N 2: As always, the incredibly stunning and multifaceted rindee beta'd for me. She also gave good Lilly Kane! I tweaked her suggestions just a tiny bit and am finally happy with Lilly’s cameo in Part II. Thanks hon, for your help, your inspiration, your insane editoral skills, for keeping it real and for being ten kinds of wonderful. -mwah-
Feedback is almost better than chocolate coated sex.
Part I
He wakes up to the sticky-warm feeling of her flesh. The taste in his mouth is hers - her sex, her skin, her sweat where he’s licked it from the curve of her neck - and he still can’t believe she’s letting him touch her like this after so long. He rests his hand against her breast, savoring the slow and steady hammer of her heart. Motivation sets in and he works her nipple back and forth between lissome fingers.
There have been more than a few instances in the last three days that have made him want to ask her if anyone has ever made her feel this good, but he thinks better of it. Fact and fiction have always blurred boundaries with Veronica Mars, and he’s smart enough to know she’d rather lie than admit the truth. Letting him think he’s too good at anything would lessen her advantage, and Veronica’s never been against stacking the deck in her favor.
But he’s got his tricks too. There's an entire carnal arsenal of things he can do to her; he thinks maybe he can unhinge her entirely with his tongue and his hands and a whole host of sinful techniques cultivated in his mind and committed with his body.
He rotates her stiff nipple between his thumb and forefinger and she gasps awake. His insistent hands pull her close, spooning her bed-warmed body tightly against chest. She’s one-hundred percent naked, smooth and perfect alabaster skin, and when she twists her head back to kiss him, she’s marvelously flushed.
“What are you doing?” She breathes, her eyes still unopened.
“Getting ready to watch you cum,” he whispers over the seam of her mouth, flicking his tongue out to tangle with hers. The hand looped around her twists her chin up and away from the bed so he can bring more of her into the kiss.
“Looooo-gannnn,” she exhales slowly and it well and truly hurts; it’s a shooting pain that skitters across his heart every time she sighs his name like this might mean something. He convinced himself a long time ago to stop believing in any equation involving hope, love, and Veronica Mars. He’s pretty sure she’s using him; he hasn’t stopped to question how.
He releases the tilt of her chin, allowing her head to fall back to the bed, busying his hand with more explicit endeavors. The one against her breast still brushes and strokes the swell, but his free hand whispers across her skin in a deliberate line. He’s relearning her with his fingers, grazing her skin with a lover’s touch, skating the backs of his fingernails over the sloping plane of her stomach. He’s remembering her like Braille, recalling her every curve with his lips, gliding his tongue across the column of her throat.
Everything about Veronica is malleable angles; the pitch and roll of her hips, the gentle wave of her breasts, the arced perfection of her ass. He could honestly spend hours losing himself in the contours of her form - he has lost hours - worshiping her. She’s yet to push him away, but he’s on edge while he waits for it. The tension has been building inside him ever since she crossed his threshold; it’s resting on his shoulders, forcing him to move. Every time he does, it’s with her, not against her; not angry, like it could be, but placid and tender.
It doesn’t matter that he’s giving her his heart again. He’s making himself open, trying to refund a time in their lives when she was open too and he had purposefully scraped-up her knees. Several times over the last seventy-three hours he’s wondered if she’ll ever let him kiss her deep enough to repair the damage.
She’s bed-warm and disheveled, but even with messy hair and smeared mascara he still thinks she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen in his life, so he murmurs it appreciatively against the curve of her shoulder. “Beautiful.”
She blushes two shades darker. He knows it’s because she’s giving him a little bit of power. Veronica lends it to him for the sake of satisfaction, so he can’t really celebrate the small amounts of trust being passed back and forth between them. It’s small, but it’s not nothing, and being on the outside of nothing with Veronica is one of the worst feelings he’s ever known.
He’s thinking too much, so he goes back to letting his thumb curl against her thigh. She mewls for him and it makes him harder. He rocks against her back, sucking the skin of her neck between his teeth, rolling his tongue around it. He rubs his nose against her earlobe and breathes into her ear, garnering his reward when she whimpers. “Is this what you want?” He huffs the question, making it sound like threatening temptation.
Truth is, she’s probably still too sleepy to really know what she wants, but he doesn’t let that stop him. Her body answers for her in a consummate way. She’s slept next to him for the past two nights, solid and calm, but he wakes her up with subtle demands - trying to light a need within her. He won’t deny it; he wants to shake her up a bit, dislodge something she’s internalized so she might not let him go.
Whimpers are her only real reply. They flutter across her pretty, pink, and slightly parted lips. She’s so wet and hot, and if he could breathe it out without driving her from his bed, he’d tell her how tight she still is. He’s reasonably sure he will tell her if he ever gets the chance to make them nothing new. If there ever comes a time when he doesn’t have to fear she’ll run from too much honesty. Maybe that day will never come and he’ll just have to settle for an occasion he can’t control himself. He has a weapons store of graphic detail he wants to paint across her skin, and the opportunity’s been too long in coming.
His thumb slip-slides over her clit, lazy-slow; he wants her to come not from hurried passion, but from twenty-four carat intensity; the kind of thing that will anchor in her stomach, twist around her limbs, sizzle in her veins, whiting out all thought with blazing severity until she shudders and collapses in his arms. He’s an artist with how it’s done, focusing on one spot, teasing it gradually. She’s still pressed to his chest, his arm heavy around her so he can feel every breath she takes.
Her legs twine around his hand and her belly flutters. She’s tangling herself closer to the source, and his cock throbs against her spine. This is as much about his needs as it is about hers, maybe more. He needs to make her feel. He needs to make her understand. If he could just get her to give him a little more than the false-hope that’s kindling between them, he could love her forever.
“I’m so...,” she pants.
“Close,” he whispers quietly, flicking her nipple so she hiccups in pleasure.
“Yes,” she hisses.
Every sensual emotion involved in this art is drawn unerringly across her face. He strokes his thumb crossways with increased pressure and speed, eliciting messy sounds from her open lips. He palms her breasts, his eyes riveted to her, waiting for the faultless moment of bright light to carry her away.
“Open your eyes.” He releases his tight hold and she falls back into the depression his weight creates in the mattress. Here he can look into her face.
When her eyes sliver open and find his, gazing into their upending depths, she comes - hard. He gulps down her first scream, drinking it from her mouth, melting himself into every tremble - her hands clasped firm and spread out across his shoulder, her lips shaking under his with every murmured cry, her body pulsing around his hand. He’s pretty sure this is the closest he’ll ever get to heaven.
|| + || + ||
Forty-five minutes later she’s sitting Indian style on his floor, day-old Chinese container in one hand, bottle of beer in the other, staring out the full paneled glass windows. The ocean view is breathtaking with the house backed-up against the bluff. Idly, she watches the sea-gulls swirl in the sky. He knows how compelling their airborne dance can be.
They haven’t really said much to each other. He let her shower first, watching her pull on yoga pants while rubbing his hands over his thighs. He gives her space, lets her insinuate herself wherever and however she wants. If he gives her the room she needs, maybe she’ll continue to stay.
He tries to let the tension melt off of him when he steps into the enormous shower. Everything is gold, and marble, and tempered lighting. The spray blossoms from the showerhead, drenching him instantly, and for a second he can breathe. It’s been almost seventy-four hours since she walked back into his life and he hasn’t asked one damn question and she hasn’t offered to answer any either. Maybe he’s missed their game of chess, but he’s a little too old to play the pawn. Still, he’s giving her a comfortable distance because it’s in his heart to do so. He just knows himself well enough now to know he can’t take being tugged behind her on a string.
Twenty-five shouldn’t feel this old, he thinks to himself when he wipes the fog off the mirror. It’s been four years since she walked out of his life and less than four days since she walked back into it. He can’t help but wonder what’s brought her back when he brings the razor to his throat.
He finds her still eating out of the cardboard box. He ambles across the white plush carpeting in bare feet, dropping down behind her. Would she start faulting him immediately if he admitted he can’t be close to her without wanting to touch her? Her list of his faults used to seem pretty limitless, and he wonders where that one would fall on the page.
She turns herself around, crossing her legs again, bringing a wavering chopstick full of Szechwan beef to his mouth. He opens and slides his lips over the food, never breaking their eye contact. She smiles and it’s full of life. She actually looks happy. Her feet are bare too, and she wiggles her painted toenails at him with a raise of her brow. She’s still silent though. The only sounds he can get her to make are beaded in gratification, which, he concedes, is far better than those she makes in pain.
Another mouthful of food, she’s humming her delight. He pulls the container from her hands, giving her a chaste kiss. “We have this thing called delivery. You might remember it. Happened last night?” He puts all of his charm into the smirk. “You don’t have to eat cold, day-old Chinese. I’ll get you anything you want.”
For a second her eyes shimmer, and he’s almost sure she’ll ask him for a pony, but instead she wrinkles her nose and pulls the box back into her hands. “I’m not above this.” She leans up on her knees and crawls across the carpet, dropping herself into his lap.
“No, you’re above me,” he whispers huskily, wondering if this is how it’s going to be between them. Not that he has too big a problem with it. It’s better than stolen moments and side-long glances.
“Are you hungry?” she whispers and he’s not certain which need she’s referring to.
“Famished.” He’s almost sure that’ll cover all the bases.
This is headed in the same direction. What the hell has changed her so much in four years time? She sloppily pushes food past his lips, grinning wide when she licks the column of her arm, following the trail of sauce down her skin. She has this look in her eyes that screams, “I’m going to do this to you.” Of course she never says it. He still has his hard-on from earlier, and even though he’s trying not to remember what it was like with her lips wrapped around his dick, he’s finding it nearly impossible.
“Veronica Minx,” he breathes in an unsteady laugh. Her eyes go a little wide and he smiles deeper. For once in his life, Dick had finally gotten something right. “That Veronica Minx, she’s fucked yer shit up, dude. You gotta let her go, man. Lone wolves, bra, remember? Lone fuckin’ wolves.” The nickname Dick had given her stuck with him throughout the years.
The thrust of her hand against his chest is enough to send him backwards. He lies on the floor, looking up at her. She’s dressed in gray layers, and the pale blue sky behind her head is the perfect compliment. She lifts her hips seductively, like a dancer against a pole, but when she does it there’s a purity that makes it sweet and sexy. Her hands fumble with his jeans, digging the snaps into his abdomen. She pops them open, draws the zipper down, presses her hands up under his ass to get him to lift.
He’s stock-still though, all caught up in the way she’s biting her lower lip, the determination in her eyes. He remembers a time when it was easier to deny her, when he held onto the angry remains of his life and let his resentment fuel him. They’d been building each other on odium back then; some days it seemed to be the only thing holding them upright. Back then, there had been boundaries, lines they didn’t cross even for all the wanting. But now they’re shapeless; two bodies colliding with no delineations - meaningful insignificance.
Nails dig into his hips a little more forcefully and he raises them from the floor, reminding himself not to look for meaning where there is none. He’s not in any hurry to aid her, but she doesn’t need it either, because she tugs the denim down his thighs, pulling the boxers with it, kicking the twisting material down far enough to make movement uncomfortable. He finishes out of frustration, using his feet to kick them the away, his shirt riding up his sculpted stomach.
It’s not his stomach that holds her attention. He tries not to watch her tiny hand wrap around him, but god fucking damn when she does he groans out all the goodness of it. She shifts her fingers over him, clenching her fist, sliding his hot skin over dense muscle. “Fuck,” he murmurs and immediately turns his head. He’s got to concentrate on something other than watching the love of his life jacking him off on his living room floor.
Her hands let up some and he thinks she might make it a little easier on him, but he’s not watching her. She blows a hot breath over the head of his dick and he groans hard, dragging his arm limply from the floor to cover his eyes. She makes small candy cane licks around him, touching the tip of her tongue against the fluid that forms, and he wonders where on his list of faults exploding right then would rank.
A hot mouth engulfs him and he’s in another world of heightened tension. She’s taking her sweet time with this, bobbing her head up and down, being deliberately Veronica in action. She’s swirling her tongue around him with reason. He wants to say something, tell her how good it feels, beg her not to stop pulling him into the hollows of her cheek, or maybe, Christ, to just reassure her that she doesn’t have to be afraid this time. She can stop deflecting every silent moment between them with sex and sit perfectly motionless if she wants, without having to explain. He could accommodate that, at least for a little while. But he can’t force out any words that aren’t just incoherent syllables, so he traces her jaw with his fingertips as some kind of unfocused translation.
She’s licking magic all over him. His fingers urgently wrap up in her hair, and the masculine drive kicks in to tug her closer so she can swallow him whole. His fingers itch to do it, it’s not like he’s never done it before, but he’s never done it to Veronica. He’s never let himself go enough to risk even the slightest possibility he might hurt her. He would never forgive himself if he hurt her during sex. Moreover, he’s not sure she’d ever forgive him. So he tugs his hand away from her, chewing his bottom lip to keep from pleading for more.
A vibrant hum-lick-hum replaces the bobbing, then they’re interspersed, hum-lick-hum-bob-down-then-up; he’s insane, fisting the carpet, forcing out between clenched teeth, “Fuck, Veronica. Do you want me to cum?” He’s sort of twisted in knots, the blade-sharp ecstasy of orgasm so close he can taste it, held back by the fear that she might not want to.
She doesn’t stop though, and her hands slip through her saliva, push-pulling up and down the solid line of him. With one rough thrust from the floor he comes into her open throat, drowning in a sea of unchecked pleasure when she swallows around him. She leans back, gasping for air, a smile blown wide across her face.
“Oh god,” he pants, reaching up to bring her straight against him. He cradles her in the crook of his arm, stroking her hair, saying the same thing, over and over again. “Oh god, oh god, oh god.” He’s all hands now, rocking, stroking, just barely brushing. He kisses her mouth and his bitter flavor still sits on her tongue.
Is this the way it’s meant to be? He’s dying inside, a little at a time with every unexplained moment.
The Szechwan beef is tipped over on the carpet, the brown sauce seeping deep into the white fibers. She apologizes profusely for the stain that’s sure to set. He could really give a fuck about ruined carpet. He’s more concerned about ruined lives.
|| + || + ||
Part II
They sit together in his kitchen while he prepares dinner, chopping vegetables, tossing them elegantly into a large sauté pan. Veronica runs her finger around the solid rim of the crystal bowl sitting in the middle of his stainless steel counter. The bright red hue of each apple reflects back from the surface, making them appear exceptionally vivid. When he turns around with spatula in hand, he can’t help but wonder if maybe this is how Eve appeared in the garden. There’s a cautious sparkle in her eyes that brings to mind something he remembers from high school Lit class, “All things truly wicked, start from innocence.” He can’t remember who said it or if he’s even remembering it correctly, but he can’t help but perceive the virtue of his undoing when he sees her. Silently, he empathizes with Adam’s bad luck.
“So when did you learn how to cook?”
“Oh, you know,” he raises his shoulders in a shrug. The apron tied tightly around his waist moves with the lift of his shoulders. “Life can’t be a total alcoholic malaise.”
She quirks her brow at him, purses her lips. “No? When did you develop a taste for anything else?”
“When I realized I couldn’t spend the rest of my life pining after you,” he’s semi-serious, tosses a piece of bell-pepper into his mouth and chews it with verve.
“Ah,” she leans back, uneasily twisting her fingers. There are little things he’s desperate to scratch at, but he’s holding himself at bay. He can tell by the look on her face that she doesn’t want to revisit the past. She doesn’t want to accept the culpability for decisions she’s made.
“It’s funny the things they teach in community colleges these days. Cooking, photography, TV, VCR repair,” He arches a brow and grins mischievously, then turns back to his pan.
She slips from her stool at the counter, stepping up behind him, sliding her wrists along his abdomen. She leans up on tip-toes, resting her lips against his ear. “So are you telling me that you could fix my VCR? ‘Cause I gotta say, Logan. That’s really, really hot.”
“You’d be surprised the number of things I can do these days, Mars,” he replies fluidly, pressing half his weight back against her, stirring their supper.
“Like?” Her hands roam the expanse of his waist, slipping underneath the apron.
“Laundry?”
“So you’ve manage to learn how to keep the whites white and the brights bright?”
“My underwear is proof positive.” He turns around in her arms and kisses the tip of her nose, rocking back on his heels to lean casually against the stove.
“It looks like you’re doing fairly well for yourself, Logan. All growed up,” her eyes are a little misty and he can’t help but wonder what’s drawing the tears. It looks like fragments of regret, but without the words behind them, the symbolism is hard to decipher.
“I’m a big boy now,” he chirps, giving her one of his quirky smiles, the kind that’s a little more tooth than lip. Her hands tighten in his belt-loops and for a second they seem very much like their old selves… the Veronica and Logan from a time gone by.
The pan sizzles a little louder, drawing his attention back to the vegetables that are quickly becoming less of a brown and more of a black. “Dinner’s done.”
“Good, I’m starving,” she smiles, pressing a kiss in between his shoulderblades. The feeling cuts straight through him.
“I seem to remember that about you; voracious appetite for such a tiny thing.” She slaps him across the ass for his troubles. “I’m sorry, you would have preferred petite?” She can’t help but laugh when he winks over his shoulder.
“I would have preferred less commentary from the peanut gallery, but that’s always been too much to hope for where you were concerned.”
“Ain’t it the truth, baby? Ain’t it the truth? Let’s eat.”
Sitting on his couch, watching The Big Lebowski playing on his sixty inch flat-panel TV, they eat contentedly. Tara Reid murmurs in her whisky-voice, “I’ll suck your cock for a thousand dollars,” and Logan chuckles as he stands to clear the dishes.
“Don’t do it, Dude. You’re being robbed. She offered to suck my dick in Ibiza for five-hundred.”
“What??” Veronica’s mouth draws into a tight ‘o’ and Logan bends down to kiss the top of her head. “Ibiza? How trashy,” she adds with a smirk and crinkles her nose. The pain skips across his heart again. He’s missed how adorable she can be. Watching her now, he can’t remember a time when things have ever been so easy with her, so lighthearted. He’s not sure how much longer he can hold out, but he’s hiding his anxiety well; holding the shape of the fragile bubble they’re cocooning around them.
“Well, you know how it is. Bored, rich, no pressing engagements,” he pauses, stops in his tracks and lays his best “woops” expression on her, “Oh wait-t-t-t-t-t-t.”
“How did you ever get to be such a monumental jackass?” She says it adoringly.
“Genetics.” This is Logan’s levity; the only way he’s learned to deal with his murky History. He’s almost sure there should be a trademark behind the word, for its heavy connotation.
“So how was she?” Veronica laughs, raising an eyebrow, following him into the kitchen.
“Strung out, if memory serves. Other than that, I cannot comment.”
“I know better, Shnookums. You’re not too shy to kiss and tell.”
“I don’t think she had kissing in mind,” he muses. “And there are places even I’m not willing to stick it.”
“Classy.” She’s still laughing, a ripe cherry glow crowning in the apples of her cheeks.
|| + || + ||
He’s not sure if giving her space is becoming easier or harder. He’s too caught up in the mystery of her azure eyes when she sits in front of his piano. “Play for me,” she murmurs with a little quirk of her head.
Flexing his fingers over the keys, he gives her an overindulgent eyebrow waggle, then slowly capitulates. “Alright Mars. I’ll tickle your ivories.” With a bend of his elbows, he starts to play. It’s nothing she’ll ever know. It’s actually something he toyed with during his hours alone in the Echolls mansion. It’s sad, and lonely, and haunting; the sound echoes back to them off glassine walls.
When he finishes he scans her face and she’s all tears. They stream down her cheeks, her shoulders crumpling under an invisible weight. She’s so small to him now, she seems to be dissolving like sugar in the rain and he wants to rescue her like he always does. He doesn’t know what the hell this is inside him, why every time he sees her, every time he’s near her, he wants to shelter her; but somehow they’re the wrong end of the same string that’s become snared across miles of barbed wire fence, frayed edges and tattered threads. How hard does the Universe have to pull until they’ve both come undone?
He drags her close, cupping the back of her head to burrow her into his chest. “Tell me why you’re here.” His voice is so low when he says it that he’s almost positive she hasn’t heard. That’s good. He doesn’t want her to know that he’s caving already, that whatever’s unsaid between them is making him weak with fear.
She hears him though; blinks back the tears and pulls away enough to scan his expressive brown eyes. They’re holding hers so intently when he asks again. Almost all his words are spoken in whispers these days; everything seems so tentative that too much volume might cause an avalanche. These are cobwebbed dreams they’re living. He strokes his thumb across the bridge of her nose, chasing after the tears so he can lick them from his fingers.
“It’s not something I can make simple, Logan.” Her face is flush with emotion. This is not the Veronica that walked away from him. Something has come along and stolen her fire, replaced his sunshine girl with somber light. “I never wanted... I never knew... something happened and I just, never wanted to admit...” She hiccups with tears again, and they fall down her face in a torrent that threatens to wash her away.
He starts to think she’s trying telling him she loves him. For some reason those words are always infinitely unworkable for her. He’s put himself out there so many times, but he’s a glutton for her style of punishment. Sometimes he thinks he should make her a connoisseur of his, but then he’s reminded of the way they use to exchange words like exit wounds, and he realizes he already has.
In hindsight, he really didn’t mean to fuck her on the piano bench. He didn’t intend to bend her backwards over the keys and try to kiss her whole. He’s so sure neither one of them knows what the hell they’re doing, but when she’s underneath him he doesn’t think it matters. It’s the same old song and dance, his hand on her face, the sorry expression in her eyes, worn and sullen memories of too much time wasted, and then the bright-blue-spark between them. It’s imagined in his mind - the spark - but he can feel it everywhere.
The piano keeps their tune, clinks a strange song when they moan in syncope and kiss. It’s pieced together by teeth and hungry lips, hands desperate to find flesh, her nails skimming over his ribcage. He’s positive she says she needs him. He rips her clothes off just to see the truth. Whatever answers he needs lie beyond the fabric of her clothing, in the silk of her skin; every elucidation of what it means to be together can be found buried inside her.
She’s naked before he is. She’s giving him carte blanche to possess her, so he ghosts his lips over her nipples and laps the length of his tongue over them so slowly that her hands clasp tighter around his neck. In his lap she tips her head back, the long strands of her hair falling over his fingers at the center of her back. His fingers slide inside her and he screws them up and around, three at a time. No fucking formalities. She’s perfect - slick when he rakes her depth, angling against the ideal spot that makes her shudder down around him. She pants, dragging hurried breaths in and out of her lungs, causing her breasts to rise and fall in tantalizing revolutions.
He pulls away from her chest, brings her mouth down to his roughly and pushes his tongue inside. She whimpers and it sends a thrill down his back. She rocks forward and back against his hand, and he captures her partially lidded gaze, holding it intently. “Is this why you’re here, Veronica? Am I still the only one that can touch you like this? Fuck you like this?” The necklace constricts around his throat when he breathes hard and heavy, looking up into her face. “Is this why you’re here? Look at me. It’s so much easier to hide from the truth, but you can’t do that like this, can you?”
She opens her eyes a little wider as his tone intensifies, her blue eyes waxy with lust and abandon and… pain. He can’t tell if the sadness is because he’s gotten it wrong, or because he’s gotten it right. Whatever it is, she kisses him again. She wants it completely silent; no emotion, no clutching need, at least not articulated vocally. Some things may never change.
It’s easy enough for him to use his free hand to push the sweats down. She’s pressed up against the cover, her essence smeared across the keys as his reminder, and he pulls his hand out of her. He grips himself and lets her balance over him, dipping her hips down slow. He sinks inside her and they both hiss against each other’s skin. She tries to move, to set the motion, but he stills her with a look, leaning her back against the panel once more. Extending her hand away from her body, he sucks her index finger into his mouth, rolls his tongue over it, then places it against her clit. “Show me,” he breathes, circling her finger over her. “Touch yourself for me, Veronica. Let me watch.”
She groans and quickly shuts her eyes, blushing forty shades of crimson, but when he takes his hand away she does as he asks. He watches her without pumping his hips, running his warm palms over her ass. She pulls her lower lip between her teeth and concentrates, whimpering softly with the swirling tempo. Gently he pushes forward, just to see her arch.
Her knees balance on the bench spread wide-open across his thighs. The tight extension of her body leaned back gives him plenty of room to thrust upward. He watches the place they’re joined; her hand moving cautiously, his cock disappearing when he’s slid all the way home. A familiar tightness builds and he closes his eyes, clasps his jaw shut, sets his grip at her hips tighter and forces her to ride over him until she’s screaming.
She flies apart, digging her nails into his biceps, pulling herself up and around him. He’s completely covered in her, her pelvis rocking up into his abdomen, her arms draped over his shoulders. She kisses him and whimpers; the scorching feather-light flicker of her breath across his mouth when he groans. He’s not used to this sensation, pushing into her without latex separating their skin. Cumming inside her without a condom is so wrong it’s right; she told him almost a week ago now that there was nothing to fear and he believed her.
Between ragged pants and his intense gaze, she’s searching his eyes for something. When she presses her tongue to his nipple and licks around it, fucking him with vibrancy, he closes his fists over the keyboard, the clanking sound melding into the vocalization of his orgasm. His dick jerks inside her, and he gasps into the cleft of her breasts.
Drawing her hands through the sweat clinging to his back, she kisses his damp hair. He can tell she’s crying again so he clutches her close, bringing her to him, resting his forehead against hers, murmuring alongside her skin. “Veronica, what is it? Please? Whatever it is, please, just tell me.”
She stiffens and silences, sighs intensely and he can tell she’s considering it. He thinks maybe she’ll own up to whatever she’s hiding, but denial or something close to it flickers across her features and vanishes before his eyes.
|| + || + ||
“I’m getting married.” Even though she mumbles the words, his brain acknowledges them as though she’s shouted them in his face and he tenses everywhere; he’s still holding her, but his frame is rigid, a solid and inviolable mass.
He pulls back enough to look at her, she turns away quickly to avoid his eyes. He presses his fingers to her chin and brings her back, forcing her to concede. His voice shakes, “When?”
“Saturday.”
“This Saturday? As in two days from now Saturday?” More than his voice is shaking this time.
She nods and slips from his embrace on wobbly legs, picking up her clothes from the floor, dressing unsteadily. Tears slip slowly down her cheeks, the blue ocean and the sunshine coalescing behind her.
“Who is he?” His tone sounds foreign. He drops his arms to the bench. There have been a thousand times in his life when he’s felt pain, betrayal, vivid anger and enough desperation to literally follow in his mother’s footsteps; but he’s not sure there’s ever been a moment in his life when he’s ever felt so chokingly numb.
“His name is Tom. He’s an investment banker from Fresno.”
“Fresno?” He laughs, truly appalled. “Finally becoming someone’s trophy wife, good for you, you’ve always had such daring ambitions,” he chokes, bitterness tripping over his tongue.
“That’s not it, Logan,” she opens her mouth again but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to hear it.
“No, you’re right; this little scenario of ours is all wrong for that. You’re not fucking the pool boy.” He pulls the sweats back up his thighs as he stands up, yanking the cords roughly between his hands to tie them.
“And I’m not your friend’s step mother, so I’m surprised I even got you into bed.” He looks across the room to see her, tears clinging to her wet lashes, looking like she’s got something to be hurt about.
“You’re kidding me, right? You’re here, fucking using me and you’re throwing Kendall in my face? That’s classic, Veronica.” He makes a gesture with his hands and smiles tightly.
“I’m not using you, Logan. Let me explain…”
“I get it, Veronica. I get it, really. This is what you do. You get scared, you run; it’s like your fucking M.O. Things get a little too real for you,” he air-quotes the word ‘real,' “and you scamper away.”
“Scamper away?” she’s about to protest, but a fury is building inside him and his glare forcibly shuts her up.
“Yes. Scamper. Bolt. Dash. Scurry,” every word is annunciated with biting umbrage. “Let’s check the scorecard, sweetheart. How many times did you leave me? I think at last count we had four. Is that right?” He twists his lips up, tapping his finger against them, squinting in thought. “And that last time, what, without even saying goodbye, just sort of wandering off in the middle of the night, ditching your cell phone, disappearing off the face of the earth, that was perfect. Having your dad quarterback my phone calls to the house.” His words hold false-cheer. He nods, then deadpans, “Classic Veronica.”
“Logan, it was out of control, I had to go. I just didn’t know…”
“What didn’t you know, V? How to say goodbye? How much you were going to kill me when I woke up alone?” He’s trembling with anger. “And yet, here you are, on my doorstep, looking like you’re about to fall apart. I didn’t ask one question, I gave you space, I loved you.” The word ‘loved’ cracks, ironically, when he says it. “Congratulations, Veronica. This time you went almost a whole week before ripping my heart out, almost a whole week without reminding me of what a selfish fucking bitch you are.”
“Logan, please,” her small voice trembles. “Please let me explain.”
“Okay, Veronica. Explain. Explain how you showed up here unannounced after four years of nothing. How you threw yourself at me without any explanation at all! How you fucking, how you FUCKING…” He’s screaming at her now, and he just barely registers it, his control slipping out of his grasp. He stalks towards her, forcing her to shrink from him, pressing her until her back is flush against one wall.
Everything about him is menace, something to be feared. Anger rolls off of him in almost visible waves, blanketing them both in so much emotion that it threatens to unlock all the venom swirling under the bridge they’ve built. “Please,” she whispers.
“You won’t be happy until you destroy me, will you?” He grinds the words out between clenched teeth, his hot breath burning her cheek. The turbulence is dynamic in his stormy eyes.
“Listen to me, Logan. Just listen to me,” she whispers, attempting to place a calming hand against his chest. “I was standing in the middle of a boutique a few weeks ago,” her voice gathers some semblance of strength. “That’s when I saw her.” She pauses, fixing her eyes on his, solidly squaring her shoulders. “Lilly, Logan. I saw Lilly.”
“This is bullshit,” he yells and pushes himself off the wall and away from her touch. It’s pretty much the last fucking thing he wants.
“No, Logan. It’s not bullshit. I used to see her, like right after, like it was a daydream,” she’s trying to hold her own, even though she looks like she might collapse. “Still so beautiful, still so free: our Lilly.”
“I won’t go down this road with you, Veronica! Lilly’s been dead for years now and I’m not holding on to old ghosts anymore,” his face mottles like he’s being tortured and Veronica holds herself motionless, but he can still read the guilt.
“This isn’t about old ghosts, Logan. It’s about... misunderstandings. Trying to make up for stupid mistakes?”
“Mistakes? Jesus! You’re unbelievable, you know that! Everything’s a mistake with you! I’m a mistake! I’ve always been a mistake as far as you’re concerned. This, here, is all a mistake!” Throwing his hands wide, he implicates the room.
“Not this! Will you just shut up and LISTEN?” It’s her turn to yell. Her eyes smolder. ““Veronica! What are you doing here, when you so obviously don’t belong? … He’s a mistake, Veronica, the biggest mistake of your life, maybe even worse than Donut. You know who your heart belongs to, so go get him before someone else does... before you end up a soggy old lush like Lianne, or wearing some dreadful yellow pantsuit, lugging three snot-nosed brats to soccer practice in a mini-van. C’mon, Veronica, snap out of it. You’re gonna ruin everything. Go to him, Veronica Mars; he’s like, your destiny or something!’
“Ever since then, I’ve been on autopilot. It took me two days to find you. Six hours to drive up here. Fifteen minutes to get out of the car, and five just to ring your bell. Whether haunted by my dead best friend or just my subconscious, Logan, I’m here because I need to be. I’m here because I need you!”
“Need me? Please Veronica. Go home. Go back to Neptune and your semi-charmed life. The only reason you’re here is because you’re afraid and this is no different from any other time when you’ve, pardon the pun, turned tail,” he rolls his eyes, then turns his back with a wave, quickly spinning around on his heel, “But promise me something. Promise me you won’t show up here again in another five years when you find the husband bending his secretary over his desk, because I’m sick of being your fuck-toy.”
He’s sufficiently silenced her, and he doesn’t pause as he flees the room, crossing the corridors to the kitchen. The entire house is dead silent. Fresh pain is flooding him, pumping the bile through his bloodstream, poisoning his head. He picks up whatever’s in front of him - the large crystal bowl - and smashes it to the floor. The crash resounds with his frustrated scream, “Motherfucker!”
She follows him into the room just in time to see the shards flying, falling back to the floor like luminous confetti. Quiet resolve shimmers in her eyes and she never halts, making her way through the broken glass.
“Veronica, what in the hell are you doing?” He reaches for her, gasping in surprise, but she shrugs away from him. There’s the most beautiful display of calm masking her face.
“You think you’re the only one who’s ever bled for us, Logan? I’m showing you you’re wrong.”
She lifts her foot to take another step, and the white tile beneath her smears red. “Stop, Veronica!” He reaches for her again, but she’s invested in this.
The pain mars her pretty features as she takes another step, the mark on the tile progressively a deeper crimson until she whimpers and he clutches his arms around her stomach and lifts her out of the fucking mess he’s made. She fights against him, trying to twist in his arms. “Look, Logan,” her voice frays. “You want me to bleed for us? I am. I love you and I always have. I just couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t handle how much you frighten me, worry me, how much you love me. You’re right, Logan, I was a selfish bitch. But that was before; I’m here now because I love you. I’m in love with you. I want to be with you.”
Twenty-five certainly wasn’t meant to feel this old. He holds her tight, releases the anger that’s locked in his arms and sets her on one of the island chairs. He looks at her seriously, kicks the trash can to rest underneath her extended leg, holding it in the palm of his hand. He brushes his thumb over one of her feet, sweeping the remaining splinters of glass into the trash, that foot mostly unscathed. On inspection, blood trickles slowly down the other, a shard of glass rooted deeply into her heel, and his expression changes to concern. “This is deep, Veronica. We might need to go to the hospital.”
“No,” she presses her hand to his rapidly rising chest. “Please,” her eyes fall back to her foot. Scraped knees, wounded bodies, broken hearts, tortured souls; their story is a metaphor for pain.
Tenderly he takes hold of the glass and pulls it out as quickly as he can. The warm rush of new blood flows over his thumb, staining his palm. This, too, has more acrimony than either of them can bear.
“I love you,” she winces in a whisper when he sets a white dishtowel over the wound.
“Stop talking,” he returns in like volume. He doesn’t want to hear this right now. He’s holding pressure against the gash, glancing down every few seconds, watching the spot grow. “We need to get you to a hospital, Veronica. This isn’t something I can fix.” She nods, somberly, and she looks more tired than she ever has.
“Come on.” He sweeps his arms under her knees and she wraps her free hand around his neck to stabilize herself. Her eyes implore him, but he’s uncompromising. He carries her to the car, like she’s light as a feather, places her gently against the warm, rich leather seats. “Try not to bleed all over the Jag,” his words are soft, but his compassion is dead.
|| + || + ||
Bored? Want to read more of my crap? You can find it here.
Author: rejeneration, but you can call me Jen.
Pairing/Character: Logan/Veronica
Word Count: Part I: 3021 / Part II: 4350
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Love, actually.
Spoilers/Warnings: Season 2; This is FF.
A/N: I started this months ago for the loveathons Epic Challenge, but I never found enough time to get back to it. I don't do WIP, but unfortunately, this has to be. There are five parts and I'm almost done with part three. I'm hoping to finish it in its entirety within the next month or so. I know it's too late for judging, but I wrote it, so I'm posting it anyway! -smile-
A/N 2: As always, the incredibly stunning and multifaceted rindee beta'd for me. She also gave good Lilly Kane! I tweaked her suggestions just a tiny bit and am finally happy with Lilly’s cameo in Part II. Thanks hon, for your help, your inspiration, your insane editoral skills, for keeping it real and for being ten kinds of wonderful. -mwah-
Feedback is almost better than chocolate coated sex.
Part I
He wakes up to the sticky-warm feeling of her flesh. The taste in his mouth is hers - her sex, her skin, her sweat where he’s licked it from the curve of her neck - and he still can’t believe she’s letting him touch her like this after so long. He rests his hand against her breast, savoring the slow and steady hammer of her heart. Motivation sets in and he works her nipple back and forth between lissome fingers.
There have been more than a few instances in the last three days that have made him want to ask her if anyone has ever made her feel this good, but he thinks better of it. Fact and fiction have always blurred boundaries with Veronica Mars, and he’s smart enough to know she’d rather lie than admit the truth. Letting him think he’s too good at anything would lessen her advantage, and Veronica’s never been against stacking the deck in her favor.
But he’s got his tricks too. There's an entire carnal arsenal of things he can do to her; he thinks maybe he can unhinge her entirely with his tongue and his hands and a whole host of sinful techniques cultivated in his mind and committed with his body.
He rotates her stiff nipple between his thumb and forefinger and she gasps awake. His insistent hands pull her close, spooning her bed-warmed body tightly against chest. She’s one-hundred percent naked, smooth and perfect alabaster skin, and when she twists her head back to kiss him, she’s marvelously flushed.
“What are you doing?” She breathes, her eyes still unopened.
“Getting ready to watch you cum,” he whispers over the seam of her mouth, flicking his tongue out to tangle with hers. The hand looped around her twists her chin up and away from the bed so he can bring more of her into the kiss.
“Looooo-gannnn,” she exhales slowly and it well and truly hurts; it’s a shooting pain that skitters across his heart every time she sighs his name like this might mean something. He convinced himself a long time ago to stop believing in any equation involving hope, love, and Veronica Mars. He’s pretty sure she’s using him; he hasn’t stopped to question how.
He releases the tilt of her chin, allowing her head to fall back to the bed, busying his hand with more explicit endeavors. The one against her breast still brushes and strokes the swell, but his free hand whispers across her skin in a deliberate line. He’s relearning her with his fingers, grazing her skin with a lover’s touch, skating the backs of his fingernails over the sloping plane of her stomach. He’s remembering her like Braille, recalling her every curve with his lips, gliding his tongue across the column of her throat.
Everything about Veronica is malleable angles; the pitch and roll of her hips, the gentle wave of her breasts, the arced perfection of her ass. He could honestly spend hours losing himself in the contours of her form - he has lost hours - worshiping her. She’s yet to push him away, but he’s on edge while he waits for it. The tension has been building inside him ever since she crossed his threshold; it’s resting on his shoulders, forcing him to move. Every time he does, it’s with her, not against her; not angry, like it could be, but placid and tender.
It doesn’t matter that he’s giving her his heart again. He’s making himself open, trying to refund a time in their lives when she was open too and he had purposefully scraped-up her knees. Several times over the last seventy-three hours he’s wondered if she’ll ever let him kiss her deep enough to repair the damage.
She’s bed-warm and disheveled, but even with messy hair and smeared mascara he still thinks she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen in his life, so he murmurs it appreciatively against the curve of her shoulder. “Beautiful.”
She blushes two shades darker. He knows it’s because she’s giving him a little bit of power. Veronica lends it to him for the sake of satisfaction, so he can’t really celebrate the small amounts of trust being passed back and forth between them. It’s small, but it’s not nothing, and being on the outside of nothing with Veronica is one of the worst feelings he’s ever known.
He’s thinking too much, so he goes back to letting his thumb curl against her thigh. She mewls for him and it makes him harder. He rocks against her back, sucking the skin of her neck between his teeth, rolling his tongue around it. He rubs his nose against her earlobe and breathes into her ear, garnering his reward when she whimpers. “Is this what you want?” He huffs the question, making it sound like threatening temptation.
Truth is, she’s probably still too sleepy to really know what she wants, but he doesn’t let that stop him. Her body answers for her in a consummate way. She’s slept next to him for the past two nights, solid and calm, but he wakes her up with subtle demands - trying to light a need within her. He won’t deny it; he wants to shake her up a bit, dislodge something she’s internalized so she might not let him go.
Whimpers are her only real reply. They flutter across her pretty, pink, and slightly parted lips. She’s so wet and hot, and if he could breathe it out without driving her from his bed, he’d tell her how tight she still is. He’s reasonably sure he will tell her if he ever gets the chance to make them nothing new. If there ever comes a time when he doesn’t have to fear she’ll run from too much honesty. Maybe that day will never come and he’ll just have to settle for an occasion he can’t control himself. He has a weapons store of graphic detail he wants to paint across her skin, and the opportunity’s been too long in coming.
His thumb slip-slides over her clit, lazy-slow; he wants her to come not from hurried passion, but from twenty-four carat intensity; the kind of thing that will anchor in her stomach, twist around her limbs, sizzle in her veins, whiting out all thought with blazing severity until she shudders and collapses in his arms. He’s an artist with how it’s done, focusing on one spot, teasing it gradually. She’s still pressed to his chest, his arm heavy around her so he can feel every breath she takes.
Her legs twine around his hand and her belly flutters. She’s tangling herself closer to the source, and his cock throbs against her spine. This is as much about his needs as it is about hers, maybe more. He needs to make her feel. He needs to make her understand. If he could just get her to give him a little more than the false-hope that’s kindling between them, he could love her forever.
“I’m so...,” she pants.
“Close,” he whispers quietly, flicking her nipple so she hiccups in pleasure.
“Yes,” she hisses.
Every sensual emotion involved in this art is drawn unerringly across her face. He strokes his thumb crossways with increased pressure and speed, eliciting messy sounds from her open lips. He palms her breasts, his eyes riveted to her, waiting for the faultless moment of bright light to carry her away.
“Open your eyes.” He releases his tight hold and she falls back into the depression his weight creates in the mattress. Here he can look into her face.
When her eyes sliver open and find his, gazing into their upending depths, she comes - hard. He gulps down her first scream, drinking it from her mouth, melting himself into every tremble - her hands clasped firm and spread out across his shoulder, her lips shaking under his with every murmured cry, her body pulsing around his hand. He’s pretty sure this is the closest he’ll ever get to heaven.
|| + || + ||
Forty-five minutes later she’s sitting Indian style on his floor, day-old Chinese container in one hand, bottle of beer in the other, staring out the full paneled glass windows. The ocean view is breathtaking with the house backed-up against the bluff. Idly, she watches the sea-gulls swirl in the sky. He knows how compelling their airborne dance can be.
They haven’t really said much to each other. He let her shower first, watching her pull on yoga pants while rubbing his hands over his thighs. He gives her space, lets her insinuate herself wherever and however she wants. If he gives her the room she needs, maybe she’ll continue to stay.
He tries to let the tension melt off of him when he steps into the enormous shower. Everything is gold, and marble, and tempered lighting. The spray blossoms from the showerhead, drenching him instantly, and for a second he can breathe. It’s been almost seventy-four hours since she walked back into his life and he hasn’t asked one damn question and she hasn’t offered to answer any either. Maybe he’s missed their game of chess, but he’s a little too old to play the pawn. Still, he’s giving her a comfortable distance because it’s in his heart to do so. He just knows himself well enough now to know he can’t take being tugged behind her on a string.
Twenty-five shouldn’t feel this old, he thinks to himself when he wipes the fog off the mirror. It’s been four years since she walked out of his life and less than four days since she walked back into it. He can’t help but wonder what’s brought her back when he brings the razor to his throat.
He finds her still eating out of the cardboard box. He ambles across the white plush carpeting in bare feet, dropping down behind her. Would she start faulting him immediately if he admitted he can’t be close to her without wanting to touch her? Her list of his faults used to seem pretty limitless, and he wonders where that one would fall on the page.
She turns herself around, crossing her legs again, bringing a wavering chopstick full of Szechwan beef to his mouth. He opens and slides his lips over the food, never breaking their eye contact. She smiles and it’s full of life. She actually looks happy. Her feet are bare too, and she wiggles her painted toenails at him with a raise of her brow. She’s still silent though. The only sounds he can get her to make are beaded in gratification, which, he concedes, is far better than those she makes in pain.
Another mouthful of food, she’s humming her delight. He pulls the container from her hands, giving her a chaste kiss. “We have this thing called delivery. You might remember it. Happened last night?” He puts all of his charm into the smirk. “You don’t have to eat cold, day-old Chinese. I’ll get you anything you want.”
For a second her eyes shimmer, and he’s almost sure she’ll ask him for a pony, but instead she wrinkles her nose and pulls the box back into her hands. “I’m not above this.” She leans up on her knees and crawls across the carpet, dropping herself into his lap.
“No, you’re above me,” he whispers huskily, wondering if this is how it’s going to be between them. Not that he has too big a problem with it. It’s better than stolen moments and side-long glances.
“Are you hungry?” she whispers and he’s not certain which need she’s referring to.
“Famished.” He’s almost sure that’ll cover all the bases.
This is headed in the same direction. What the hell has changed her so much in four years time? She sloppily pushes food past his lips, grinning wide when she licks the column of her arm, following the trail of sauce down her skin. She has this look in her eyes that screams, “I’m going to do this to you.” Of course she never says it. He still has his hard-on from earlier, and even though he’s trying not to remember what it was like with her lips wrapped around his dick, he’s finding it nearly impossible.
“Veronica Minx,” he breathes in an unsteady laugh. Her eyes go a little wide and he smiles deeper. For once in his life, Dick had finally gotten something right. “That Veronica Minx, she’s fucked yer shit up, dude. You gotta let her go, man. Lone wolves, bra, remember? Lone fuckin’ wolves.” The nickname Dick had given her stuck with him throughout the years.
The thrust of her hand against his chest is enough to send him backwards. He lies on the floor, looking up at her. She’s dressed in gray layers, and the pale blue sky behind her head is the perfect compliment. She lifts her hips seductively, like a dancer against a pole, but when she does it there’s a purity that makes it sweet and sexy. Her hands fumble with his jeans, digging the snaps into his abdomen. She pops them open, draws the zipper down, presses her hands up under his ass to get him to lift.
He’s stock-still though, all caught up in the way she’s biting her lower lip, the determination in her eyes. He remembers a time when it was easier to deny her, when he held onto the angry remains of his life and let his resentment fuel him. They’d been building each other on odium back then; some days it seemed to be the only thing holding them upright. Back then, there had been boundaries, lines they didn’t cross even for all the wanting. But now they’re shapeless; two bodies colliding with no delineations - meaningful insignificance.
Nails dig into his hips a little more forcefully and he raises them from the floor, reminding himself not to look for meaning where there is none. He’s not in any hurry to aid her, but she doesn’t need it either, because she tugs the denim down his thighs, pulling the boxers with it, kicking the twisting material down far enough to make movement uncomfortable. He finishes out of frustration, using his feet to kick them the away, his shirt riding up his sculpted stomach.
It’s not his stomach that holds her attention. He tries not to watch her tiny hand wrap around him, but god fucking damn when she does he groans out all the goodness of it. She shifts her fingers over him, clenching her fist, sliding his hot skin over dense muscle. “Fuck,” he murmurs and immediately turns his head. He’s got to concentrate on something other than watching the love of his life jacking him off on his living room floor.
Her hands let up some and he thinks she might make it a little easier on him, but he’s not watching her. She blows a hot breath over the head of his dick and he groans hard, dragging his arm limply from the floor to cover his eyes. She makes small candy cane licks around him, touching the tip of her tongue against the fluid that forms, and he wonders where on his list of faults exploding right then would rank.
A hot mouth engulfs him and he’s in another world of heightened tension. She’s taking her sweet time with this, bobbing her head up and down, being deliberately Veronica in action. She’s swirling her tongue around him with reason. He wants to say something, tell her how good it feels, beg her not to stop pulling him into the hollows of her cheek, or maybe, Christ, to just reassure her that she doesn’t have to be afraid this time. She can stop deflecting every silent moment between them with sex and sit perfectly motionless if she wants, without having to explain. He could accommodate that, at least for a little while. But he can’t force out any words that aren’t just incoherent syllables, so he traces her jaw with his fingertips as some kind of unfocused translation.
She’s licking magic all over him. His fingers urgently wrap up in her hair, and the masculine drive kicks in to tug her closer so she can swallow him whole. His fingers itch to do it, it’s not like he’s never done it before, but he’s never done it to Veronica. He’s never let himself go enough to risk even the slightest possibility he might hurt her. He would never forgive himself if he hurt her during sex. Moreover, he’s not sure she’d ever forgive him. So he tugs his hand away from her, chewing his bottom lip to keep from pleading for more.
A vibrant hum-lick-hum replaces the bobbing, then they’re interspersed, hum-lick-hum-bob-down-then-up; he’s insane, fisting the carpet, forcing out between clenched teeth, “Fuck, Veronica. Do you want me to cum?” He’s sort of twisted in knots, the blade-sharp ecstasy of orgasm so close he can taste it, held back by the fear that she might not want to.
She doesn’t stop though, and her hands slip through her saliva, push-pulling up and down the solid line of him. With one rough thrust from the floor he comes into her open throat, drowning in a sea of unchecked pleasure when she swallows around him. She leans back, gasping for air, a smile blown wide across her face.
“Oh god,” he pants, reaching up to bring her straight against him. He cradles her in the crook of his arm, stroking her hair, saying the same thing, over and over again. “Oh god, oh god, oh god.” He’s all hands now, rocking, stroking, just barely brushing. He kisses her mouth and his bitter flavor still sits on her tongue.
Is this the way it’s meant to be? He’s dying inside, a little at a time with every unexplained moment.
The Szechwan beef is tipped over on the carpet, the brown sauce seeping deep into the white fibers. She apologizes profusely for the stain that’s sure to set. He could really give a fuck about ruined carpet. He’s more concerned about ruined lives.
|| + || + ||
Part II
They sit together in his kitchen while he prepares dinner, chopping vegetables, tossing them elegantly into a large sauté pan. Veronica runs her finger around the solid rim of the crystal bowl sitting in the middle of his stainless steel counter. The bright red hue of each apple reflects back from the surface, making them appear exceptionally vivid. When he turns around with spatula in hand, he can’t help but wonder if maybe this is how Eve appeared in the garden. There’s a cautious sparkle in her eyes that brings to mind something he remembers from high school Lit class, “All things truly wicked, start from innocence.” He can’t remember who said it or if he’s even remembering it correctly, but he can’t help but perceive the virtue of his undoing when he sees her. Silently, he empathizes with Adam’s bad luck.
“So when did you learn how to cook?”
“Oh, you know,” he raises his shoulders in a shrug. The apron tied tightly around his waist moves with the lift of his shoulders. “Life can’t be a total alcoholic malaise.”
She quirks her brow at him, purses her lips. “No? When did you develop a taste for anything else?”
“When I realized I couldn’t spend the rest of my life pining after you,” he’s semi-serious, tosses a piece of bell-pepper into his mouth and chews it with verve.
“Ah,” she leans back, uneasily twisting her fingers. There are little things he’s desperate to scratch at, but he’s holding himself at bay. He can tell by the look on her face that she doesn’t want to revisit the past. She doesn’t want to accept the culpability for decisions she’s made.
“It’s funny the things they teach in community colleges these days. Cooking, photography, TV, VCR repair,” He arches a brow and grins mischievously, then turns back to his pan.
She slips from her stool at the counter, stepping up behind him, sliding her wrists along his abdomen. She leans up on tip-toes, resting her lips against his ear. “So are you telling me that you could fix my VCR? ‘Cause I gotta say, Logan. That’s really, really hot.”
“You’d be surprised the number of things I can do these days, Mars,” he replies fluidly, pressing half his weight back against her, stirring their supper.
“Like?” Her hands roam the expanse of his waist, slipping underneath the apron.
“Laundry?”
“So you’ve manage to learn how to keep the whites white and the brights bright?”
“My underwear is proof positive.” He turns around in her arms and kisses the tip of her nose, rocking back on his heels to lean casually against the stove.
“It looks like you’re doing fairly well for yourself, Logan. All growed up,” her eyes are a little misty and he can’t help but wonder what’s drawing the tears. It looks like fragments of regret, but without the words behind them, the symbolism is hard to decipher.
“I’m a big boy now,” he chirps, giving her one of his quirky smiles, the kind that’s a little more tooth than lip. Her hands tighten in his belt-loops and for a second they seem very much like their old selves… the Veronica and Logan from a time gone by.
The pan sizzles a little louder, drawing his attention back to the vegetables that are quickly becoming less of a brown and more of a black. “Dinner’s done.”
“Good, I’m starving,” she smiles, pressing a kiss in between his shoulderblades. The feeling cuts straight through him.
“I seem to remember that about you; voracious appetite for such a tiny thing.” She slaps him across the ass for his troubles. “I’m sorry, you would have preferred petite?” She can’t help but laugh when he winks over his shoulder.
“I would have preferred less commentary from the peanut gallery, but that’s always been too much to hope for where you were concerned.”
“Ain’t it the truth, baby? Ain’t it the truth? Let’s eat.”
Sitting on his couch, watching The Big Lebowski playing on his sixty inch flat-panel TV, they eat contentedly. Tara Reid murmurs in her whisky-voice, “I’ll suck your cock for a thousand dollars,” and Logan chuckles as he stands to clear the dishes.
“Don’t do it, Dude. You’re being robbed. She offered to suck my dick in Ibiza for five-hundred.”
“What??” Veronica’s mouth draws into a tight ‘o’ and Logan bends down to kiss the top of her head. “Ibiza? How trashy,” she adds with a smirk and crinkles her nose. The pain skips across his heart again. He’s missed how adorable she can be. Watching her now, he can’t remember a time when things have ever been so easy with her, so lighthearted. He’s not sure how much longer he can hold out, but he’s hiding his anxiety well; holding the shape of the fragile bubble they’re cocooning around them.
“Well, you know how it is. Bored, rich, no pressing engagements,” he pauses, stops in his tracks and lays his best “woops” expression on her, “Oh wait-t-t-t-t-t-t.”
“How did you ever get to be such a monumental jackass?” She says it adoringly.
“Genetics.” This is Logan’s levity; the only way he’s learned to deal with his murky History. He’s almost sure there should be a trademark behind the word, for its heavy connotation.
“So how was she?” Veronica laughs, raising an eyebrow, following him into the kitchen.
“Strung out, if memory serves. Other than that, I cannot comment.”
“I know better, Shnookums. You’re not too shy to kiss and tell.”
“I don’t think she had kissing in mind,” he muses. “And there are places even I’m not willing to stick it.”
“Classy.” She’s still laughing, a ripe cherry glow crowning in the apples of her cheeks.
|| + || + ||
He’s not sure if giving her space is becoming easier or harder. He’s too caught up in the mystery of her azure eyes when she sits in front of his piano. “Play for me,” she murmurs with a little quirk of her head.
Flexing his fingers over the keys, he gives her an overindulgent eyebrow waggle, then slowly capitulates. “Alright Mars. I’ll tickle your ivories.” With a bend of his elbows, he starts to play. It’s nothing she’ll ever know. It’s actually something he toyed with during his hours alone in the Echolls mansion. It’s sad, and lonely, and haunting; the sound echoes back to them off glassine walls.
When he finishes he scans her face and she’s all tears. They stream down her cheeks, her shoulders crumpling under an invisible weight. She’s so small to him now, she seems to be dissolving like sugar in the rain and he wants to rescue her like he always does. He doesn’t know what the hell this is inside him, why every time he sees her, every time he’s near her, he wants to shelter her; but somehow they’re the wrong end of the same string that’s become snared across miles of barbed wire fence, frayed edges and tattered threads. How hard does the Universe have to pull until they’ve both come undone?
He drags her close, cupping the back of her head to burrow her into his chest. “Tell me why you’re here.” His voice is so low when he says it that he’s almost positive she hasn’t heard. That’s good. He doesn’t want her to know that he’s caving already, that whatever’s unsaid between them is making him weak with fear.
She hears him though; blinks back the tears and pulls away enough to scan his expressive brown eyes. They’re holding hers so intently when he asks again. Almost all his words are spoken in whispers these days; everything seems so tentative that too much volume might cause an avalanche. These are cobwebbed dreams they’re living. He strokes his thumb across the bridge of her nose, chasing after the tears so he can lick them from his fingers.
“It’s not something I can make simple, Logan.” Her face is flush with emotion. This is not the Veronica that walked away from him. Something has come along and stolen her fire, replaced his sunshine girl with somber light. “I never wanted... I never knew... something happened and I just, never wanted to admit...” She hiccups with tears again, and they fall down her face in a torrent that threatens to wash her away.
He starts to think she’s trying telling him she loves him. For some reason those words are always infinitely unworkable for her. He’s put himself out there so many times, but he’s a glutton for her style of punishment. Sometimes he thinks he should make her a connoisseur of his, but then he’s reminded of the way they use to exchange words like exit wounds, and he realizes he already has.
In hindsight, he really didn’t mean to fuck her on the piano bench. He didn’t intend to bend her backwards over the keys and try to kiss her whole. He’s so sure neither one of them knows what the hell they’re doing, but when she’s underneath him he doesn’t think it matters. It’s the same old song and dance, his hand on her face, the sorry expression in her eyes, worn and sullen memories of too much time wasted, and then the bright-blue-spark between them. It’s imagined in his mind - the spark - but he can feel it everywhere.
The piano keeps their tune, clinks a strange song when they moan in syncope and kiss. It’s pieced together by teeth and hungry lips, hands desperate to find flesh, her nails skimming over his ribcage. He’s positive she says she needs him. He rips her clothes off just to see the truth. Whatever answers he needs lie beyond the fabric of her clothing, in the silk of her skin; every elucidation of what it means to be together can be found buried inside her.
She’s naked before he is. She’s giving him carte blanche to possess her, so he ghosts his lips over her nipples and laps the length of his tongue over them so slowly that her hands clasp tighter around his neck. In his lap she tips her head back, the long strands of her hair falling over his fingers at the center of her back. His fingers slide inside her and he screws them up and around, three at a time. No fucking formalities. She’s perfect - slick when he rakes her depth, angling against the ideal spot that makes her shudder down around him. She pants, dragging hurried breaths in and out of her lungs, causing her breasts to rise and fall in tantalizing revolutions.
He pulls away from her chest, brings her mouth down to his roughly and pushes his tongue inside. She whimpers and it sends a thrill down his back. She rocks forward and back against his hand, and he captures her partially lidded gaze, holding it intently. “Is this why you’re here, Veronica? Am I still the only one that can touch you like this? Fuck you like this?” The necklace constricts around his throat when he breathes hard and heavy, looking up into her face. “Is this why you’re here? Look at me. It’s so much easier to hide from the truth, but you can’t do that like this, can you?”
She opens her eyes a little wider as his tone intensifies, her blue eyes waxy with lust and abandon and… pain. He can’t tell if the sadness is because he’s gotten it wrong, or because he’s gotten it right. Whatever it is, she kisses him again. She wants it completely silent; no emotion, no clutching need, at least not articulated vocally. Some things may never change.
It’s easy enough for him to use his free hand to push the sweats down. She’s pressed up against the cover, her essence smeared across the keys as his reminder, and he pulls his hand out of her. He grips himself and lets her balance over him, dipping her hips down slow. He sinks inside her and they both hiss against each other’s skin. She tries to move, to set the motion, but he stills her with a look, leaning her back against the panel once more. Extending her hand away from her body, he sucks her index finger into his mouth, rolls his tongue over it, then places it against her clit. “Show me,” he breathes, circling her finger over her. “Touch yourself for me, Veronica. Let me watch.”
She groans and quickly shuts her eyes, blushing forty shades of crimson, but when he takes his hand away she does as he asks. He watches her without pumping his hips, running his warm palms over her ass. She pulls her lower lip between her teeth and concentrates, whimpering softly with the swirling tempo. Gently he pushes forward, just to see her arch.
Her knees balance on the bench spread wide-open across his thighs. The tight extension of her body leaned back gives him plenty of room to thrust upward. He watches the place they’re joined; her hand moving cautiously, his cock disappearing when he’s slid all the way home. A familiar tightness builds and he closes his eyes, clasps his jaw shut, sets his grip at her hips tighter and forces her to ride over him until she’s screaming.
She flies apart, digging her nails into his biceps, pulling herself up and around him. He’s completely covered in her, her pelvis rocking up into his abdomen, her arms draped over his shoulders. She kisses him and whimpers; the scorching feather-light flicker of her breath across his mouth when he groans. He’s not used to this sensation, pushing into her without latex separating their skin. Cumming inside her without a condom is so wrong it’s right; she told him almost a week ago now that there was nothing to fear and he believed her.
Between ragged pants and his intense gaze, she’s searching his eyes for something. When she presses her tongue to his nipple and licks around it, fucking him with vibrancy, he closes his fists over the keyboard, the clanking sound melding into the vocalization of his orgasm. His dick jerks inside her, and he gasps into the cleft of her breasts.
Drawing her hands through the sweat clinging to his back, she kisses his damp hair. He can tell she’s crying again so he clutches her close, bringing her to him, resting his forehead against hers, murmuring alongside her skin. “Veronica, what is it? Please? Whatever it is, please, just tell me.”
She stiffens and silences, sighs intensely and he can tell she’s considering it. He thinks maybe she’ll own up to whatever she’s hiding, but denial or something close to it flickers across her features and vanishes before his eyes.
|| + || + ||
“I’m getting married.” Even though she mumbles the words, his brain acknowledges them as though she’s shouted them in his face and he tenses everywhere; he’s still holding her, but his frame is rigid, a solid and inviolable mass.
He pulls back enough to look at her, she turns away quickly to avoid his eyes. He presses his fingers to her chin and brings her back, forcing her to concede. His voice shakes, “When?”
“Saturday.”
“This Saturday? As in two days from now Saturday?” More than his voice is shaking this time.
She nods and slips from his embrace on wobbly legs, picking up her clothes from the floor, dressing unsteadily. Tears slip slowly down her cheeks, the blue ocean and the sunshine coalescing behind her.
“Who is he?” His tone sounds foreign. He drops his arms to the bench. There have been a thousand times in his life when he’s felt pain, betrayal, vivid anger and enough desperation to literally follow in his mother’s footsteps; but he’s not sure there’s ever been a moment in his life when he’s ever felt so chokingly numb.
“His name is Tom. He’s an investment banker from Fresno.”
“Fresno?” He laughs, truly appalled. “Finally becoming someone’s trophy wife, good for you, you’ve always had such daring ambitions,” he chokes, bitterness tripping over his tongue.
“That’s not it, Logan,” she opens her mouth again but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to hear it.
“No, you’re right; this little scenario of ours is all wrong for that. You’re not fucking the pool boy.” He pulls the sweats back up his thighs as he stands up, yanking the cords roughly between his hands to tie them.
“And I’m not your friend’s step mother, so I’m surprised I even got you into bed.” He looks across the room to see her, tears clinging to her wet lashes, looking like she’s got something to be hurt about.
“You’re kidding me, right? You’re here, fucking using me and you’re throwing Kendall in my face? That’s classic, Veronica.” He makes a gesture with his hands and smiles tightly.
“I’m not using you, Logan. Let me explain…”
“I get it, Veronica. I get it, really. This is what you do. You get scared, you run; it’s like your fucking M.O. Things get a little too real for you,” he air-quotes the word ‘real,' “and you scamper away.”
“Scamper away?” she’s about to protest, but a fury is building inside him and his glare forcibly shuts her up.
“Yes. Scamper. Bolt. Dash. Scurry,” every word is annunciated with biting umbrage. “Let’s check the scorecard, sweetheart. How many times did you leave me? I think at last count we had four. Is that right?” He twists his lips up, tapping his finger against them, squinting in thought. “And that last time, what, without even saying goodbye, just sort of wandering off in the middle of the night, ditching your cell phone, disappearing off the face of the earth, that was perfect. Having your dad quarterback my phone calls to the house.” His words hold false-cheer. He nods, then deadpans, “Classic Veronica.”
“Logan, it was out of control, I had to go. I just didn’t know…”
“What didn’t you know, V? How to say goodbye? How much you were going to kill me when I woke up alone?” He’s trembling with anger. “And yet, here you are, on my doorstep, looking like you’re about to fall apart. I didn’t ask one question, I gave you space, I loved you.” The word ‘loved’ cracks, ironically, when he says it. “Congratulations, Veronica. This time you went almost a whole week before ripping my heart out, almost a whole week without reminding me of what a selfish fucking bitch you are.”
“Logan, please,” her small voice trembles. “Please let me explain.”
“Okay, Veronica. Explain. Explain how you showed up here unannounced after four years of nothing. How you threw yourself at me without any explanation at all! How you fucking, how you FUCKING…” He’s screaming at her now, and he just barely registers it, his control slipping out of his grasp. He stalks towards her, forcing her to shrink from him, pressing her until her back is flush against one wall.
Everything about him is menace, something to be feared. Anger rolls off of him in almost visible waves, blanketing them both in so much emotion that it threatens to unlock all the venom swirling under the bridge they’ve built. “Please,” she whispers.
“You won’t be happy until you destroy me, will you?” He grinds the words out between clenched teeth, his hot breath burning her cheek. The turbulence is dynamic in his stormy eyes.
“Listen to me, Logan. Just listen to me,” she whispers, attempting to place a calming hand against his chest. “I was standing in the middle of a boutique a few weeks ago,” her voice gathers some semblance of strength. “That’s when I saw her.” She pauses, fixing her eyes on his, solidly squaring her shoulders. “Lilly, Logan. I saw Lilly.”
“This is bullshit,” he yells and pushes himself off the wall and away from her touch. It’s pretty much the last fucking thing he wants.
“No, Logan. It’s not bullshit. I used to see her, like right after, like it was a daydream,” she’s trying to hold her own, even though she looks like she might collapse. “Still so beautiful, still so free: our Lilly.”
“I won’t go down this road with you, Veronica! Lilly’s been dead for years now and I’m not holding on to old ghosts anymore,” his face mottles like he’s being tortured and Veronica holds herself motionless, but he can still read the guilt.
“This isn’t about old ghosts, Logan. It’s about... misunderstandings. Trying to make up for stupid mistakes?”
“Mistakes? Jesus! You’re unbelievable, you know that! Everything’s a mistake with you! I’m a mistake! I’ve always been a mistake as far as you’re concerned. This, here, is all a mistake!” Throwing his hands wide, he implicates the room.
“Not this! Will you just shut up and LISTEN?” It’s her turn to yell. Her eyes smolder. ““Veronica! What are you doing here, when you so obviously don’t belong? … He’s a mistake, Veronica, the biggest mistake of your life, maybe even worse than Donut. You know who your heart belongs to, so go get him before someone else does... before you end up a soggy old lush like Lianne, or wearing some dreadful yellow pantsuit, lugging three snot-nosed brats to soccer practice in a mini-van. C’mon, Veronica, snap out of it. You’re gonna ruin everything. Go to him, Veronica Mars; he’s like, your destiny or something!’
“Ever since then, I’ve been on autopilot. It took me two days to find you. Six hours to drive up here. Fifteen minutes to get out of the car, and five just to ring your bell. Whether haunted by my dead best friend or just my subconscious, Logan, I’m here because I need to be. I’m here because I need you!”
“Need me? Please Veronica. Go home. Go back to Neptune and your semi-charmed life. The only reason you’re here is because you’re afraid and this is no different from any other time when you’ve, pardon the pun, turned tail,” he rolls his eyes, then turns his back with a wave, quickly spinning around on his heel, “But promise me something. Promise me you won’t show up here again in another five years when you find the husband bending his secretary over his desk, because I’m sick of being your fuck-toy.”
He’s sufficiently silenced her, and he doesn’t pause as he flees the room, crossing the corridors to the kitchen. The entire house is dead silent. Fresh pain is flooding him, pumping the bile through his bloodstream, poisoning his head. He picks up whatever’s in front of him - the large crystal bowl - and smashes it to the floor. The crash resounds with his frustrated scream, “Motherfucker!”
She follows him into the room just in time to see the shards flying, falling back to the floor like luminous confetti. Quiet resolve shimmers in her eyes and she never halts, making her way through the broken glass.
“Veronica, what in the hell are you doing?” He reaches for her, gasping in surprise, but she shrugs away from him. There’s the most beautiful display of calm masking her face.
“You think you’re the only one who’s ever bled for us, Logan? I’m showing you you’re wrong.”
She lifts her foot to take another step, and the white tile beneath her smears red. “Stop, Veronica!” He reaches for her again, but she’s invested in this.
The pain mars her pretty features as she takes another step, the mark on the tile progressively a deeper crimson until she whimpers and he clutches his arms around her stomach and lifts her out of the fucking mess he’s made. She fights against him, trying to twist in his arms. “Look, Logan,” her voice frays. “You want me to bleed for us? I am. I love you and I always have. I just couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t handle how much you frighten me, worry me, how much you love me. You’re right, Logan, I was a selfish bitch. But that was before; I’m here now because I love you. I’m in love with you. I want to be with you.”
Twenty-five certainly wasn’t meant to feel this old. He holds her tight, releases the anger that’s locked in his arms and sets her on one of the island chairs. He looks at her seriously, kicks the trash can to rest underneath her extended leg, holding it in the palm of his hand. He brushes his thumb over one of her feet, sweeping the remaining splinters of glass into the trash, that foot mostly unscathed. On inspection, blood trickles slowly down the other, a shard of glass rooted deeply into her heel, and his expression changes to concern. “This is deep, Veronica. We might need to go to the hospital.”
“No,” she presses her hand to his rapidly rising chest. “Please,” her eyes fall back to her foot. Scraped knees, wounded bodies, broken hearts, tortured souls; their story is a metaphor for pain.
Tenderly he takes hold of the glass and pulls it out as quickly as he can. The warm rush of new blood flows over his thumb, staining his palm. This, too, has more acrimony than either of them can bear.
“I love you,” she winces in a whisper when he sets a white dishtowel over the wound.
“Stop talking,” he returns in like volume. He doesn’t want to hear this right now. He’s holding pressure against the gash, glancing down every few seconds, watching the spot grow. “We need to get you to a hospital, Veronica. This isn’t something I can fix.” She nods, somberly, and she looks more tired than she ever has.
“Come on.” He sweeps his arms under her knees and she wraps her free hand around his neck to stabilize herself. Her eyes implore him, but he’s uncompromising. He carries her to the car, like she’s light as a feather, places her gently against the warm, rich leather seats. “Try not to bleed all over the Jag,” his words are soft, but his compassion is dead.
|| + || + ||
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