The Return 16-Understanding (Ensemble, LoVe, MaDi) R
Title: The Return 16-Understanding
Rating: R (mentions of sexual situations and just in case there’s everything else)
Word Count: 2,944
Characters/Pairings: Lilly, Logan, Veronica, Piz, Mac, Dick (mentions of: Duncan, Aaron, and Jake and Celeste Kane) LoVe and MaDi
Spoilers: All episodes (from 1.01: Pilot to 3.20: The Bitch Is Back. Just to be sure) Although this is obviously AU and there are obviously going to be some alterations to events and especially some in the last couple of episodes.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Literally, nothing. So don’t sue me over his, because you won’t get anything. It all belongs to Rob Thomas and if I had owned it when it was still on the last season would have been way different.
A/N: This story was also no originally mine, and I’d really like to stress that in the first two chapters. The original story can be found here) And this is my first attempt at anything AU, so… enjoy
Chapter 1: Awake/ Chapter 2: Homecoming/ Chapter 3: Forgive/ Chapter 4: Arrival/ Chapter 5: Reconnect/ Chapter 6: Belong/ Chapter 7: Bets/ Chapter 8: Fight/ Chapter 9: Battle/ Chapter 10: Retreat/ Chapter 11: Push/ Chapter 12: Sound/ Chapter 13: Potential/ Chapter 14: More/ Chapter 15: Storytime
The Return
16
Understanding
~Lilly~
Logan was not in his room. She had knocked three times and when there was no answer she opened the door, announcing herself as she strode into the room. Looking around at the explosion of clothes on the floor and his things thrown and scattered about, she felt that he might actually be in here. Buried beneath all his crap.
“Logan?” She called, her voice still a little on the quiet side. When there was no response she settled herself on his bed, making herself comfortable as she waited. Veronica had said that he was waiting up here for her. So where is he?
Picking a novel up from the bedside table, she read the first few lines. It wasn’t something she’d normally find in Logan’s room. Wasn’t really a book she thought he’d read. Must be a school thing.
She was about seven pages in when the door opened and in walked Logan, wearing only a towel around his waist. It took a few seconds, but she noted the exact moment he saw her. He stopped abruptly and his hands flew to where the towel was knotted, making sure it was secure and he was still unexposed.
“You don’t knock?” His voice was snide, a little angry. She was starting to get the impression that he wasn’t expecting her.
“I did. About a million times, you weren’t in here.” Lilly replied, completely at ease and not showing any of the anxiety she felt over this. I’m going to kill a certain little blonde.
“Well I’m in here now, and I’m telling you to get out.” Logan walked towards his dresser, clutching the towel, making sure it stayed in place.
“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t want to harm your delicate sensibilities. But I do need to talk to you.”
“I don’t give a fuck. I’m practically naked here Lilly, and you are so not my girlfriend.” Logan threw a nervous glance towards the door, obviously worried what his girlfriend would think if she walked in on this scene. Lilly on the bed and him practically in the buff. “You need to leave.”
“Okay, I’ll go outside while you dress, but I’ll be back.” Lilly sprung off the bed, eager to get out so he could dress. The faster he was dressed, the sooner they’d talk and the quicker this was fixed and she wouldn’t have to talk about it ever again.
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It took him a lot longer to dress than she had expected, but then again, finding clothes in the disaster of that room would take a while.
“So, you wanted to talk?” Logan asked, opening his bedroom door and making to leave. Lilly pushed him back into the room and shut the door. “What the hell, Lilly?”
“I want to do this a little more privately than what is currently available downstairs.” She explained, crossing the room again to settle back on the bed.
“Okay. You’re a bitch and I don’t want anything to do with you. How’s that? You’ve been around for a week now and have already jeopardized the most important relationship in my life, twice. At least. You’ve caused more drama in the last week than there’s been in months.” Logan took a deep breath and released it, she could tell that he was getting worked up. He was getting angrier and angrier and trying to control it. He was trying not to yell.
“You know, there was a time when I was the most important relationship in your life. There was a time when this push and pull fighting thing, well, you got off on it. The back and forth, the fighting and making up.” Lilly pointed out, knowing it would just push his anger further.
“You know Lilly. You’re right, there was a time when you were pretty damn important, but there was never a time when I enjoyed the break ups and make ups. Not when I knew what you were doing when we were together, and that it was probably worse when we were ‘broken up’. The making up part was fun, until I realized that’s all we were. A series of breakups, followed by a hot makeup which lasted about a day.” His voice was rising, he was starting to reach that point that always meant he was about to lose his tenuous hold on his anger. Always meant he’d start yelling any minute.
“Oh, poor baby. I fucked with your head. Get over it. It was years ago.” Lilly said callously, getting up off the bed now to face him. She was shorter than he was, but she looked him straight in the face.
“I’m glad you can be so fucking cavalier about all this. About the way you treated everyone. Treated me. Because fucking with my head was the least of it, there were other things you fucked that you should have left alone.” Logan was yelling now, his dark eyes angry and turbulent. “You know my mom always said you were trouble, that I shouldn’t have… She never liked you, always pushed for the breakups and was disappointed by the make ups. That should have been clue number one.”
“What should have been clue number one, Logan, was that I was a bitch. God, you’re so dumb sometimes.” Lilly broke in, unable to stop herself from adding her own opinion, even though that’s what she’d been resolved to do. Have a big yelling match with Logan, let him get all his issues out and then after his purging he almost always dropped it.
“Yeah, it really should have been. It’s funny what blinding lust can do huh? How much you can forget to see when the girl is taking off her clothes.” Lilly’s head snapped back at that one, she felt almost as if she’d been slapped. There was no mention of love. He had always said that it was love that blinded him, now he was citing it all as lust. The taking off of the clothes comment, it was crude and just this side of vulgar. He’d never spoken that way about her, not to her face at least. She knew he had called her a slut and a whore behind her back when they were broken up and he was pissed, but never to her.
“Yeah, well you never complained.”
“I’m complaining now.” He bit out, the tension coming off him nearly making the air around him vibrate. He was still holding back. This wasn’t the worst of it and that thought made Lilly pause.
His temper had worsened as he had gotten older, but his control over it had apparently gotten better. In the old days he never would have held back. Logan didn’t just take it, he lashed out first with the intent of mortally wounding his enemy.
“Too late. Statute of limitations was up on that one when I got my just desserts. The moment your daddy bashed my head in was the moment any punishment you could dole out became obsolete. I lost four years Logan, and everyone changed and your complaints are nothing to me now.”
Logan stood there, mouth agape and eyes widened in shock. She knew it would end here, her having to admit that she screwed up beyond repair and that she’d deserved Aaron’s treatment for what she’d done.
“You didn’t deserve that, Lilly.” His voice was quiet, and he seemed to be speaking against his will, probably trying to decide if she really had deserved the near death experience or not. Most likely his inner dialog had decided she had, but his conscience-the one that probably sounded a lot like Veronica-had firmly been against that, she was still a victim.
“On some level I did though, right? I got myself into a mess I had no business getting into. I pushed and pushed and didn’t know when to stop and in the end I got what was coming to me.” Lilly responded quietly, collapsing on the end of his bed again. She’d saved her energy for this all morning, knew the big confrontation was coming where she’d have to take responsibility. She’d saved energy for it, but now it was all sapped and she just felt like walking out of this room and going back to bed. Sleeping until it all went away.
But she’d learned from experience that that didn’t work. You can’t go to sleep and expect to wake up and everything was fixed. She slept for four years, enough time to let everything settle down and fade away and fix itself. Instead she’d woken up to bigger problems, everything she’d done before hadn’t faded away but gotten bigger and meaner and harder.
“No, you shouldn’t have been in that situation, you didn’t have any right getting involved in it. But in the end you were only sixteen and da-Aaron was well into his forties and knew better. You were sixteen and stupid, we all were at sixteen. You just were a little dumber than most, took things a little further.” Logan corrected, sitting next to her on the bed.
“Wow. You’ve really grown up, haven’t you? This almost sounds like forgiveness.” Lilly said, leaning her head against his shoulder. She was so tired. So tired of confrontations and yelling and fighting and the drama that was her life.
The drama that you’re making, an inner voice corrected. And it was right. Their lives looked drama-free now, like they’d grown out of the high school stuff. Now their lives were all about college and new friends and new experiences. She was the one stuck in high school still, and she was dragging everyone back to it.
“It’s not forgiveness, that will still take some more time, but it’s a little bit of understanding. The man was charming, even I have to admit that. He charmed half the world into thinking his movies were good, charmed them into giving him an Oscar. He beat me all my life but charmed the world into thinking he was perfect father. The perfect family man actually, even though he cheated on my mom with everything that moved.” Logan turned his head to look over at her before continuing. “It’s not hard to imagine that he could seduce an insecure sixteen year old girl.”
“You of all people should know that there was nothing I was insecure about.” She picked her head up off his shoulder and stared at him, shocked. Shocked that he seemed to be able to see right though her now, with a couple years more on him he was wise.
“Come on Lilly, everything you did? I get it, your parents were all about Duncan being perfect and you being the screw up.” Stopping briefly to direct a well aimed smirk at her then add with the perfect amount of sarcasm: “You just wanted to be loved.”
“My daddy issues that obvious?”
“A little, but that’s okay. Because all I wanted was Jake’s approval back then. He was the perfect dad, and mine hated me and yours took a personal interest.”
“I think that maybe I should spend a little time away from you guys, get some distance. Grow up a bit, figure out who I am as an adult, as a person.” She told him, laying her head back down on his shoulder. They might have been a horrible couple, fought all the time, but once upon a time they’d been friends who talked.
“If you need time and space, for you, that’s fine. Just don’t do it because of Veronica and I, because we had space and time, four years of it. And you know, your friends are what shapes you, helps you become who you’re supposed to be. It’s okay to be around us, Lil. You’re allowed to have friends while you figure it out.” Logan told her. “you just can’t try and stir up trouble like this anymore. You can’t pit us against each other.”
“I know! You see? I didn’t mean to… the first time. What if this is something I can’t control, what if this is who I am?” Lilly asked, worriedly looking up at Logan’s profile before he turned his face to her.
“Lilly, if homicidal psychopath isn’t genetically ingrained in me, the manipulative ice bitch hasn’t been passed on to you.” Logan smiled at her, and she felt like this was almost forgiveness again.
“But what if it is?” She asked again, still worried.
“Then practice at not doing it. And if it’s a learned habit, then stop. Don’t do it anymore, break yourself of the habit.” Logan got up off the bed and walked towards the door. He was half way there before he turned around to face her. “If you don’t stop. If you keep on being the way you were and doing what you have been doing, you aren’t going to have any friends. I can’t be your friend if you’re constantly starting a fight, and I will refuse to be a friend if you attack Veronica like you did yesterday. And I’ll never speak to you again if you ever cause problems between her and I again, if you ever pull the stunt you pulled in the kitchen.”
Logan walked out of his room, leaving her sitting there on the bed staring at the open door and the space he’d been a moment ago.
Suddenly, Lilly felt really bad for finishing off his cereal.
~Logan~
He finds Veronica in the living room, pretending to listen to Piz talk as she really reads a book. Pride and Prejudice. He remembers it being in the bookshelves, one of Trina’s school assignments that his mother loved. His mom had bought a copy for every house they’ve ever had.
“Hey,” Veronica was visibly startled at the sound of his voice, proving that she’d been ignoring Piz the entire time.
“Hey.” Piz returned, glancing up at Logan before turning to Veronica. “Don’t you agree?”
“What?” Veronica looked from Piz to Logan and then back to Piz’s face again. Logan tampered down on the urge to laugh, she looked so lost with her big eyes and her mouth fallen slightly open. She had no idea what he was talking about.
“Do you agree?” Piz asked again, looking at her expectantly.
“I’m sorry Piz, I wasn’t paying attention. What was it?” Veronica asked, not really looking at all sorry that she’d missed the conversation.
“Nevermind.” Piz said, brushing off the subject and picking up his guitar magazine that he had obviously been reading before Veronica came in and he’d stopped to talk.
Veronica stood and Logan followed her out into the hallway, towards the kitchen. Thoughts of the kitchen and food made his stomach growl.
“Was that your stomach?” Veronica asked, chuckling as she looked back at him over her shoulder.
“What do you expect? It’s after two and I had a… busy morning.” He told her, coming up quickly behind her to wrap his arms around her waist and nuzzle his nose into the crook of her neck, breathing in the scent of her shampoo and perfume.
They burst into the kitchen, giggling and laughing. Logan immediately let her go, his hands staying on her hips a moment to make sure she had her balance. He had no doubt she’d come straight down and devoured half the kitchen.
“Hey,” Mac greeted through a mouth full of food, turning around in her chair at the table.
“Sup?” Dick called out from his position next to her.
“Hey, so you guys want to go out and do something today? Like a hike or something?” Logan asked, ignoring the weirdness of seeing his friend and Veronica’s friend practically cuddling over lunch.
Lilly walked into the kitchen with the nonchalance of someone who wasn’t engaged in a yelling match as recently as ten minutes ago. She just walked in, smiled and nodded at Veronica and took a seat on the other side of Dick, looking around the table as if she lost something.
“Has anyone seen my book?” She asked, leaning back in her chair to peer at the countertops, as if she’d somehow missed it on her way in.
“Your book? Pride and Prejudice?” Veronica asked, sitting down next to Mac and looking at the other blonde girl with curiosity and just a hint of concern.
At Lilly’s nod to the affirmative, Veronica continued, “I was wondering how that got in here. I took it back in the living room, it’s on the coffee table.”
Lilly just nodded her acceptance of that, but made no effort to get up and retrieve the book. Logan shook his head in his own confusion at Lilly’s sudden interest in reading the classics and continued on his search for food.
Logan searched the cabinet in which his cereal was normally kept before he noticed a red cardboard corner sticking out of the trash can. Logan walked over and lifted it out of the trash, examining the box before turning back to the others in the kitchen.
“What happened to my Lucky Charms?” he asked, his voice closely resembling a child’s whine.
Lilly rolled her eyes and left the room as Mac, Dick and Veronica merely shook their heads and stared at him.
“I don’t get my cereal today? That’s not fair, apparently everyone else got it.” Logan dropped the empty box back into the trash, turning woeful eyes on Veronica. “Baby, they ate my cereal.”
“Yeah, and you’re not five.” Veronica informed him. Logan simply took a deep breath and sighed so pathetically that Veronica gave in. “Okay, how about I make you pancakes?”
Logan grinned. “That’ll do.”
Piggback
Rating: R (mentions of sexual situations and just in case there’s everything else)
Word Count: 2,944
Characters/Pairings: Lilly, Logan, Veronica, Piz, Mac, Dick (mentions of: Duncan, Aaron, and Jake and Celeste Kane) LoVe and MaDi
Spoilers: All episodes (from 1.01: Pilot to 3.20: The Bitch Is Back. Just to be sure) Although this is obviously AU and there are obviously going to be some alterations to events and especially some in the last couple of episodes.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Literally, nothing. So don’t sue me over his, because you won’t get anything. It all belongs to Rob Thomas and if I had owned it when it was still on the last season would have been way different.
A/N: This story was also no originally mine, and I’d really like to stress that in the first two chapters. The original story can be found here) And this is my first attempt at anything AU, so… enjoy
Chapter 1: Awake/ Chapter 2: Homecoming/ Chapter 3: Forgive/ Chapter 4: Arrival/ Chapter 5: Reconnect/ Chapter 6: Belong/ Chapter 7: Bets/ Chapter 8: Fight/ Chapter 9: Battle/ Chapter 10: Retreat/ Chapter 11: Push/ Chapter 12: Sound/ Chapter 13: Potential/ Chapter 14: More/ Chapter 15: Storytime
The Return
16
Understanding
~Lilly~
Logan was not in his room. She had knocked three times and when there was no answer she opened the door, announcing herself as she strode into the room. Looking around at the explosion of clothes on the floor and his things thrown and scattered about, she felt that he might actually be in here. Buried beneath all his crap.
“Logan?” She called, her voice still a little on the quiet side. When there was no response she settled herself on his bed, making herself comfortable as she waited. Veronica had said that he was waiting up here for her. So where is he?
Picking a novel up from the bedside table, she read the first few lines. It wasn’t something she’d normally find in Logan’s room. Wasn’t really a book she thought he’d read. Must be a school thing.
She was about seven pages in when the door opened and in walked Logan, wearing only a towel around his waist. It took a few seconds, but she noted the exact moment he saw her. He stopped abruptly and his hands flew to where the towel was knotted, making sure it was secure and he was still unexposed.
“You don’t knock?” His voice was snide, a little angry. She was starting to get the impression that he wasn’t expecting her.
“I did. About a million times, you weren’t in here.” Lilly replied, completely at ease and not showing any of the anxiety she felt over this. I’m going to kill a certain little blonde.
“Well I’m in here now, and I’m telling you to get out.” Logan walked towards his dresser, clutching the towel, making sure it stayed in place.
“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t want to harm your delicate sensibilities. But I do need to talk to you.”
“I don’t give a fuck. I’m practically naked here Lilly, and you are so not my girlfriend.” Logan threw a nervous glance towards the door, obviously worried what his girlfriend would think if she walked in on this scene. Lilly on the bed and him practically in the buff. “You need to leave.”
“Okay, I’ll go outside while you dress, but I’ll be back.” Lilly sprung off the bed, eager to get out so he could dress. The faster he was dressed, the sooner they’d talk and the quicker this was fixed and she wouldn’t have to talk about it ever again.
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It took him a lot longer to dress than she had expected, but then again, finding clothes in the disaster of that room would take a while.
“So, you wanted to talk?” Logan asked, opening his bedroom door and making to leave. Lilly pushed him back into the room and shut the door. “What the hell, Lilly?”
“I want to do this a little more privately than what is currently available downstairs.” She explained, crossing the room again to settle back on the bed.
“Okay. You’re a bitch and I don’t want anything to do with you. How’s that? You’ve been around for a week now and have already jeopardized the most important relationship in my life, twice. At least. You’ve caused more drama in the last week than there’s been in months.” Logan took a deep breath and released it, she could tell that he was getting worked up. He was getting angrier and angrier and trying to control it. He was trying not to yell.
“You know, there was a time when I was the most important relationship in your life. There was a time when this push and pull fighting thing, well, you got off on it. The back and forth, the fighting and making up.” Lilly pointed out, knowing it would just push his anger further.
“You know Lilly. You’re right, there was a time when you were pretty damn important, but there was never a time when I enjoyed the break ups and make ups. Not when I knew what you were doing when we were together, and that it was probably worse when we were ‘broken up’. The making up part was fun, until I realized that’s all we were. A series of breakups, followed by a hot makeup which lasted about a day.” His voice was rising, he was starting to reach that point that always meant he was about to lose his tenuous hold on his anger. Always meant he’d start yelling any minute.
“Oh, poor baby. I fucked with your head. Get over it. It was years ago.” Lilly said callously, getting up off the bed now to face him. She was shorter than he was, but she looked him straight in the face.
“I’m glad you can be so fucking cavalier about all this. About the way you treated everyone. Treated me. Because fucking with my head was the least of it, there were other things you fucked that you should have left alone.” Logan was yelling now, his dark eyes angry and turbulent. “You know my mom always said you were trouble, that I shouldn’t have… She never liked you, always pushed for the breakups and was disappointed by the make ups. That should have been clue number one.”
“What should have been clue number one, Logan, was that I was a bitch. God, you’re so dumb sometimes.” Lilly broke in, unable to stop herself from adding her own opinion, even though that’s what she’d been resolved to do. Have a big yelling match with Logan, let him get all his issues out and then after his purging he almost always dropped it.
“Yeah, it really should have been. It’s funny what blinding lust can do huh? How much you can forget to see when the girl is taking off her clothes.” Lilly’s head snapped back at that one, she felt almost as if she’d been slapped. There was no mention of love. He had always said that it was love that blinded him, now he was citing it all as lust. The taking off of the clothes comment, it was crude and just this side of vulgar. He’d never spoken that way about her, not to her face at least. She knew he had called her a slut and a whore behind her back when they were broken up and he was pissed, but never to her.
“Yeah, well you never complained.”
“I’m complaining now.” He bit out, the tension coming off him nearly making the air around him vibrate. He was still holding back. This wasn’t the worst of it and that thought made Lilly pause.
His temper had worsened as he had gotten older, but his control over it had apparently gotten better. In the old days he never would have held back. Logan didn’t just take it, he lashed out first with the intent of mortally wounding his enemy.
“Too late. Statute of limitations was up on that one when I got my just desserts. The moment your daddy bashed my head in was the moment any punishment you could dole out became obsolete. I lost four years Logan, and everyone changed and your complaints are nothing to me now.”
Logan stood there, mouth agape and eyes widened in shock. She knew it would end here, her having to admit that she screwed up beyond repair and that she’d deserved Aaron’s treatment for what she’d done.
“You didn’t deserve that, Lilly.” His voice was quiet, and he seemed to be speaking against his will, probably trying to decide if she really had deserved the near death experience or not. Most likely his inner dialog had decided she had, but his conscience-the one that probably sounded a lot like Veronica-had firmly been against that, she was still a victim.
“On some level I did though, right? I got myself into a mess I had no business getting into. I pushed and pushed and didn’t know when to stop and in the end I got what was coming to me.” Lilly responded quietly, collapsing on the end of his bed again. She’d saved her energy for this all morning, knew the big confrontation was coming where she’d have to take responsibility. She’d saved energy for it, but now it was all sapped and she just felt like walking out of this room and going back to bed. Sleeping until it all went away.
But she’d learned from experience that that didn’t work. You can’t go to sleep and expect to wake up and everything was fixed. She slept for four years, enough time to let everything settle down and fade away and fix itself. Instead she’d woken up to bigger problems, everything she’d done before hadn’t faded away but gotten bigger and meaner and harder.
“No, you shouldn’t have been in that situation, you didn’t have any right getting involved in it. But in the end you were only sixteen and da-Aaron was well into his forties and knew better. You were sixteen and stupid, we all were at sixteen. You just were a little dumber than most, took things a little further.” Logan corrected, sitting next to her on the bed.
“Wow. You’ve really grown up, haven’t you? This almost sounds like forgiveness.” Lilly said, leaning her head against his shoulder. She was so tired. So tired of confrontations and yelling and fighting and the drama that was her life.
The drama that you’re making, an inner voice corrected. And it was right. Their lives looked drama-free now, like they’d grown out of the high school stuff. Now their lives were all about college and new friends and new experiences. She was the one stuck in high school still, and she was dragging everyone back to it.
“It’s not forgiveness, that will still take some more time, but it’s a little bit of understanding. The man was charming, even I have to admit that. He charmed half the world into thinking his movies were good, charmed them into giving him an Oscar. He beat me all my life but charmed the world into thinking he was perfect father. The perfect family man actually, even though he cheated on my mom with everything that moved.” Logan turned his head to look over at her before continuing. “It’s not hard to imagine that he could seduce an insecure sixteen year old girl.”
“You of all people should know that there was nothing I was insecure about.” She picked her head up off his shoulder and stared at him, shocked. Shocked that he seemed to be able to see right though her now, with a couple years more on him he was wise.
“Come on Lilly, everything you did? I get it, your parents were all about Duncan being perfect and you being the screw up.” Stopping briefly to direct a well aimed smirk at her then add with the perfect amount of sarcasm: “You just wanted to be loved.”
“My daddy issues that obvious?”
“A little, but that’s okay. Because all I wanted was Jake’s approval back then. He was the perfect dad, and mine hated me and yours took a personal interest.”
“I think that maybe I should spend a little time away from you guys, get some distance. Grow up a bit, figure out who I am as an adult, as a person.” She told him, laying her head back down on his shoulder. They might have been a horrible couple, fought all the time, but once upon a time they’d been friends who talked.
“If you need time and space, for you, that’s fine. Just don’t do it because of Veronica and I, because we had space and time, four years of it. And you know, your friends are what shapes you, helps you become who you’re supposed to be. It’s okay to be around us, Lil. You’re allowed to have friends while you figure it out.” Logan told her. “you just can’t try and stir up trouble like this anymore. You can’t pit us against each other.”
“I know! You see? I didn’t mean to… the first time. What if this is something I can’t control, what if this is who I am?” Lilly asked, worriedly looking up at Logan’s profile before he turned his face to her.
“Lilly, if homicidal psychopath isn’t genetically ingrained in me, the manipulative ice bitch hasn’t been passed on to you.” Logan smiled at her, and she felt like this was almost forgiveness again.
“But what if it is?” She asked again, still worried.
“Then practice at not doing it. And if it’s a learned habit, then stop. Don’t do it anymore, break yourself of the habit.” Logan got up off the bed and walked towards the door. He was half way there before he turned around to face her. “If you don’t stop. If you keep on being the way you were and doing what you have been doing, you aren’t going to have any friends. I can’t be your friend if you’re constantly starting a fight, and I will refuse to be a friend if you attack Veronica like you did yesterday. And I’ll never speak to you again if you ever cause problems between her and I again, if you ever pull the stunt you pulled in the kitchen.”
Logan walked out of his room, leaving her sitting there on the bed staring at the open door and the space he’d been a moment ago.
Suddenly, Lilly felt really bad for finishing off his cereal.
~Logan~
He finds Veronica in the living room, pretending to listen to Piz talk as she really reads a book. Pride and Prejudice. He remembers it being in the bookshelves, one of Trina’s school assignments that his mother loved. His mom had bought a copy for every house they’ve ever had.
“Hey,” Veronica was visibly startled at the sound of his voice, proving that she’d been ignoring Piz the entire time.
“Hey.” Piz returned, glancing up at Logan before turning to Veronica. “Don’t you agree?”
“What?” Veronica looked from Piz to Logan and then back to Piz’s face again. Logan tampered down on the urge to laugh, she looked so lost with her big eyes and her mouth fallen slightly open. She had no idea what he was talking about.
“Do you agree?” Piz asked again, looking at her expectantly.
“I’m sorry Piz, I wasn’t paying attention. What was it?” Veronica asked, not really looking at all sorry that she’d missed the conversation.
“Nevermind.” Piz said, brushing off the subject and picking up his guitar magazine that he had obviously been reading before Veronica came in and he’d stopped to talk.
Veronica stood and Logan followed her out into the hallway, towards the kitchen. Thoughts of the kitchen and food made his stomach growl.
“Was that your stomach?” Veronica asked, chuckling as she looked back at him over her shoulder.
“What do you expect? It’s after two and I had a… busy morning.” He told her, coming up quickly behind her to wrap his arms around her waist and nuzzle his nose into the crook of her neck, breathing in the scent of her shampoo and perfume.
They burst into the kitchen, giggling and laughing. Logan immediately let her go, his hands staying on her hips a moment to make sure she had her balance. He had no doubt she’d come straight down and devoured half the kitchen.
“Hey,” Mac greeted through a mouth full of food, turning around in her chair at the table.
“Sup?” Dick called out from his position next to her.
“Hey, so you guys want to go out and do something today? Like a hike or something?” Logan asked, ignoring the weirdness of seeing his friend and Veronica’s friend practically cuddling over lunch.
Lilly walked into the kitchen with the nonchalance of someone who wasn’t engaged in a yelling match as recently as ten minutes ago. She just walked in, smiled and nodded at Veronica and took a seat on the other side of Dick, looking around the table as if she lost something.
“Has anyone seen my book?” She asked, leaning back in her chair to peer at the countertops, as if she’d somehow missed it on her way in.
“Your book? Pride and Prejudice?” Veronica asked, sitting down next to Mac and looking at the other blonde girl with curiosity and just a hint of concern.
At Lilly’s nod to the affirmative, Veronica continued, “I was wondering how that got in here. I took it back in the living room, it’s on the coffee table.”
Lilly just nodded her acceptance of that, but made no effort to get up and retrieve the book. Logan shook his head in his own confusion at Lilly’s sudden interest in reading the classics and continued on his search for food.
Logan searched the cabinet in which his cereal was normally kept before he noticed a red cardboard corner sticking out of the trash can. Logan walked over and lifted it out of the trash, examining the box before turning back to the others in the kitchen.
“What happened to my Lucky Charms?” he asked, his voice closely resembling a child’s whine.
Lilly rolled her eyes and left the room as Mac, Dick and Veronica merely shook their heads and stared at him.
“I don’t get my cereal today? That’s not fair, apparently everyone else got it.” Logan dropped the empty box back into the trash, turning woeful eyes on Veronica. “Baby, they ate my cereal.”
“Yeah, and you’re not five.” Veronica informed him. Logan simply took a deep breath and sighed so pathetically that Veronica gave in. “Okay, how about I make you pancakes?”
Logan grinned. “That’ll do.”
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