Fic: Happy Family (Duncan/Veronica) R
Title: Happy Family
Author: tiscwslabmuz
Pairing/Character: Duncan/Veronica, Logan/Veronica, ensemble
Word Count: 3911
Rating: R
Summary: Veronica is given an offer she can't refuse.
Spoilers: Vague through the beginning of Season 3, probably at most through 3x02. If you know who's going to what college, you're good.
Warnings: Language and sex.
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of Veronica Mars. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Note: For the most part this is set in an AU about a year or so in the future. While similar to that other little AU I've created, it's not the same and requires no knowledge of any of my other stories. Written for the Incognito Challenge at vm_library for taken_with_you, and beta'd by the incomparable lit_chick08. Any mistakes, as always, are mine.
Mac's collection of papers, brochures, and application forms were forming an uneven pile on the table in front of her as she scoured her bag. Veronica watched, her eyes widening. Mac seemed to have somehow found a bag not unlike Mary Poppins', but instead of parrot-handled umbrellas and fringed desk lamps, all it produced was a staggering number of binders and textbooks and notebooks and pencils with interesting fluffy erasers. All Veronica seemed to collect was crinkled syllabi in the bottom of her canvas messenger bag.
"Ahh," Mac groaned, lifting out her laptop to rummage underneath. "The prompt has to be in here somewhere."
Dick had hissed like a vampire when he caught sight of their final destination and even now was probably trying to chat up a sorority girl in the food court; Wallace was busily texting someone under the table; Logan was snorting under his breath every few seconds as he skimmed Wallace's class notes, which seemed to consist of double-spaced hastily scrawled lines and doodles of cubes, circles, crosshatches and checkerboard patterns.
"Did you take these blindfolded?" Logan mumbled to Wallace, his fingers idly trailing up and down Veronica's spine. Without bothering to look up Wallace replied with a nonverbal request for Logan to fuck himself, which resulted in another snicker.
"Damn it," Mac mumbled.
Another girl, another poor victim of the financial aid office's sick sense of humor, was standing a few tables away, sorting loose books onto a cart, darting glances at Veronica from the corner of her eye. Veronica sighed. Since she'd started working here, she hated being recognized as the information counter girl; the library was never her first choice for a study venue, but anywhere else, it seemed, was too private for Logan to keep his hands off her for long.
Logan glanced up, at Veronica's laptop screen. "Wikipedia?"
"Someone started an article on my criminology professor," Veronica explained before minimizing the window and rubbing the back of her neck. "I need a latte. And you two," she said, glancing between Wallace and Logan, "need to study for that test."
Wallace shrugged, as Veronica stared at the top of his head. "All up here, baby," he said, tapping his temple, still not looking up. "Steel trap."
"Yeah, well, Mister Steel Trap, just because they gave you a basketball scholarship..."
"Hey," Logan protested mildly. "This coming from the girl who used to study during stakeouts."
"Study? Moi?" Veronica batted her lashes and shrugged. "I seem to remember I never got much studying when you came along."
"So how about that latte?" Mac interjected hastily, sliding her laptop back into her bag. "I have no idea where that damn prompt went."
Veronica gave Logan a peck on the cheek before pushing her chair back. "You sure it's not in there?"
Mac shrugged. "I'll just IM one of my classmates when we get back."
Logan ripped a sheet of paper out of the notebook, crumpled it and tossed it at Wallace. Wallace caught it, grinning, and threw it back. Logan missed and it bounced from his shoulder onto Mac's stack of papers. The top few slipped off and fell to the floor, and Veronica brushed her hair back before leaning over to help Mac pick them up.
"'AustraLearn'?"
Mac smiled. "Why be a social outcast in Neptune when I can be one in another country?"
Veronica turned the pamphlet over in her hands a few times, then folded it and stuck it into her purse as she followed Mac's lead. "Good point," she said, glancing back over her shoulder. Wallace's head was ducked over his phone again, and Logan was digging the point of a pen between the spiral binding of Wallace's notebook, his jaw slack. He smirked and gave a wave when he felt her gaze on him.
"Come on. Papers wait for no woman," Mac said, tugging at Veronica's arm, and she gave in.
--
Mac wanted to go to New Zealand.
Veronica had taken to wearing a ballcap to class, after that one... incident. The editor at the newspaper swore that the online edition had been hacked, and the article had only been online for twelve hours, but that had been long enough, and the leering, and the "I saw Veronica Mar's A$$$$!11!!" group on Facebook, well, there had to be a line somewhere. She was pretty sure she had crossed it a long time ago.
But somehow, even back at Neptune High, it had never been this bad. Better to be a pariah than the butt of a joke. Better to be despised for her cutting wit and striking sassiness, than known only as the hot freshman who had been publicly humiliated.
At least she had grown up a little, though.
Logan and Dick were setting fire to abandoned swimming pools on the weekends, Wallace was waiting for his chance to prove his value to the team, and Veronica stayed up the night before the application was due, giggling from sleep deprivation as Mac made the final touches on her personal statement.
"Do you think 'computer genius to an unconvicted mass murderer' is a positive or a negative?"
Veronica shrugged. "I think it's about even with 'suspected accomplice to rogue billionaire's son,'" she replied. "But I'm not taking any bets. Besides, we won't be social outcasts. We'll be the hot exotic Americans, and all our admirers will have accents," she sighed, smiling.
"Maybe you will," Mac said, clicking Print. "From here on out, I'm Canadian."
--
Logan kissed her chastely in the airport. Keith gave her a long hug, and she closed her eyes.
"Don't wreck my car while I'm gone, okay?"
"I'll be sure to set the mileage back," Keith replied, giving her his familiarly goofy smile. "Be careful. I've already sent a taser to your university address. And I'll be studying up on extradition treaties, just in case."
"Send Cliff after me. I'm sure I can find him some hot number named Desiree who loves a lawyer in a cheap suit."
"Hey, if there are hot chicks named Desiree in on this..."
Veronica and Keith simultaneously shot Logan a dirty look. "Absence makes the heart grow... oh, you know the rest," she told him, brushing her fingers over his shirt sleeve. "Try to keep it that way, all right?"
"I'll miss you."
"Not while there are Clint Eastwood movies to watch," she chirped, grinning. "Behave yourselves. Don't do anything I'd think of doing."
Veronica was past the security checkpoint when she realized she hadn't packed a picture of Logan.
--
She had been in class for a week. Logan had called once and muttered into the phone about missing her while Dick shouted drunkenly in the background. She sent daily email updates to Wallace and her father; Wallace replied with his latest basketball statistics, and her father with “wanted-for-bail-jumping” posters. "If you see this one, he's suspected to be in the area," he'd written with his last. "Use the taser. I would send Backup, but I think he'd hate the plane ride over even more than you did."
She was in a tank top, her bare feet sliding over the cold floor and a spoon stuck to the arch of her tongue, when she heard a knock at the door. She looked at her bed, the spread of battered books and crumpled sheets, and shrugged.
"Who is it?"
No one answered and Veronica picked her taser up, standing on her tiptoes to peer through the glass. With a muffled laugh she unlocked the door and turned back to her desk, tossing the taser down.
"Here to check the plumbing."
"Oh really?" Veronica drawled, turning back to look at the man who had shouldered the door closed behind him. He carried a grubby red toolbox in his right fist, a ballcap pulled low over his eyes, a dirty faded-blue coverall stretched over his broad shoulders. "Because I seem to remember your favorite porno started this way."
He pulled the cap off and tossed it onto her dresser, and she gazed into his calm blue eyes. "Yeah, well," he smiled.
"And what am I supposed to call you?" She looked down at his stitched nametag before tugging the zipper down from his collar. "Tom? How very original."
"I think Duncan will work fine," he replied, backing her to the bed.
--
Veronica had found Clarence Weidman sitting in her section two weeks before classes started in the fall, when she was still working shifts at Java the Hut. He'd ordered a cup of coffee, staying silent despite the question in her eyes, and she found a note in the folded dollar bill he left as her tip.
Back entrance at Kane Software, 11pm.
"He's being very good," Clarence explained when she showed up, her fists buried in her pockets, and she wished for a moment that she'd never taken his order. But she hadn't been able to stop herself, and she couldn't walk away. Not now. "He's being good and he's doing everything I've told him, but for one thing: he wants to see you."
Veronica blew out her breath, slowly. "So is he here?"
Clarence chuckled. "He's not here and he won't be here."
"And you want me to fly to Timbuktu for a little fling before I go to classes and act like everything's normal?"
"You're a smart girl. You'll figure something out."
--
The summer after he left, Veronica took a faded lavender shirt, drug a q-tip through bleach and traced it over the fabric. Sometimes her mother had been drunk when she did the laundry and shirts she had loved, skirts that fit her perfect, were never perfect again. This one, at least, she could salvage.
true love stories never have endings
She wore it when she was hungover, her hair a mess, and Logan always scowled when he saw it, as she pulled it down over her thighs, tight against her breasts.
"I hate that shirt."
She just smiled into her curved palm, because Logan didn't know, her father didn't know, no one else knew. She wore it only when she felt weak, defenseless, bruised.
She wore it when she woke the next morning, Duncan curved tight against her with his bare back against the wall. The floor was cold as she hooked her toes into the discarded blue zippered suit and bent her knee, sweeping it up into her open palm. She twisted her hair up and brushed her teeth and then leaned back with her face shining to see him looking back at her, smiling.
"Hey."
"I like your shirt," he mumbled, his voice still thick with sleep, and she grinned.
"I thought you might." She rinsed her mouth and bounced back into the bed with him, straddling his bare waist. "I'm in class at ten."
"So we have some time."
She grinned, leaning down to kiss him. "Your turn," she mumbled against his mouth. "What do I have to wear?"
"Hmm." Duncan hooked his fingers under the hem of her shirt and tugged until her breasts were loose and bare in the faint light. "Let me think about it."
--
Duncan's repairman outfit had made sense, just in case anyone was keeping her under surveillance, but the cops had lost interest in Duncan's unusual custody arrangements a long time ago, and all the gazes she felt on her were the usual, lightly speculative, lingering in appreciation. She was sure now that they were safe, and it was all a game; besides, she couldn't scream too loud in the dorms, and she wanted to see Lilly. But she had no idea where she was going to find the Brownie uniform Duncan had so charmingly requested, on such short notice.
In the lecture hall she let herself drift, pulling her knees tight together, feeling the sudden renewed ache between her thighs. Her phone vibrated in her bag, and she pulled it out, holding it on her lap. It was a message from Logan.
Miss u
"Right," she mouthed, and sighed, as the marker squeaked over the whiteboard. Veronica's notebook was blank.
Is that all u can say, she painstakingly typed, then deleted the message before sending it.
--
"Have you slept with Astrid?"
She had made a makeshift uniform out of a cheap brown silk dress, faded short-sleeved white button-down and a shock-orange scarf knotted at her neck. He was pushing the skirt up above her thighs, his eyes lighting when he saw that she had opted to lose the panties early, but at the sound of her voice he stopped.
"Once, almost," he exhaled, not meeting her eyes. "I was really drunk and she," he sighed, "she looks a lot like you in the dark."
"I slept with Logan."
His fists twisted into her skirt, pulling the fabric tight over her thighs. "Oh," he managed. "I guess..."
She traced her fingertips down his cheek, down the line of his chest, over the sun-darkened skin. "I thought I'd never see you again."
He shook his head, and she could read the words before they rose to his lips, so she stopped him with a long slow kiss. "I know," she said. "I'm sorry."
He chuckled against her mouth. "How fucked up are we," he managed, sliding his hand up, cupping his palm between her thighs. "I will find a way to come back for you."
She moaned, her breasts straining against the silk, her fists tight against his shirt. "With Lilly? One little happy family?"
He sat up, her thighs spread loose on either side of his hips, his fingers groping against the brown silk. The dress fell to the floor and she could feel his breath through the thin material of her shirt, her nipples tight and dark against it.
"One little happy family," he murmured, unbuttoning from the bottom, tracing his mouth over her skin. "One little happy family." He kissed the tight underbelly of each breast, her fingers buried in his hair, cut short and bleached pale, the freckles trailing over his shoulders invisible in the dark.
She sank slowly into his lap, the shirt hanging loose from her shoulders, her gaze wet as it searched his. "Where will we live?"
"Wherever you want."
"It wasn't supposed to be like this," she murmured, her arms around his shoulders as he lay back down, pulling her with him. "It wasn't supposed to be this hard."
She could feel him smile as he pushed her knees apart. "What would we do if it weren't," he mumbled against her cheek as she took him inside her, and there was nothing else, no one else, the first. He fit perfect and tight inside her and she sank her teeth into his shoulder when she came.
--
Astrid made cupcakes for Halloween, and Lilly had pink ribbons in her wisp-soft blonde hair while she toddled on, her hand safe in Duncan's, grinning up at the pumpkins all the adults around her carried. Veronica was looking down at her as they navigated the sidewalks and quirky neighborhoods, and she smiled when Lilly took one balled fist and rubbed it against her eye.
"Here, let me hold her for a while."
Veronica wasn't sure if Astrid had seen it, going from Celeste Kane's quasi-personal assistant to Duncan Kane's live-in nanny and occasional surrogate sexual release. It probably paid better, but Astrid had taken to wearing yoga pants and tiny braids in her now chestnut-brown hair. Maybe Australia felt like grad school. Maybe playing surrogate mother to Duncan's reincarnated sister was good work experience.
Lilly was warm and solid in her arms, slippery under her garish pink-satin fairy princess gown, by turns flirty and suspicious, sometimes burying her face against Veronica's shoulder. Duncan was dressed as a cowboy in high leather boots and a straw ten-gallon pulled low over his blue eyes. Veronica was in a fringed silk flapper's dress with a beaded headband over her forehead and low thin metallic flats on her aching feet.
"We have enough candy yet?"
Lilly leaned over in Veronica's arms to peer into the pumpkin bucket Astrid carried. "No!" she announced, lurching so that Veronica fell off-balance and ran into Duncan's shoulder, the three of them stumbling drunkenly over the pavement, giggling. Astrid trailed her white-sheet toga over the sidewalk, adjusting it with every other step.
"How much more candy?" Veronica asked, holding little Lilly's blue-eyed gaze for a moment before she grinned and buried her face against Veronica's shoulder.
"Three more houses," Duncan announced. "Then Little Einstein."
"Again?" Veronica sighed with mock disappointment. "I was really cheering for Dora."
"Yeah, but it's just not normal for a monkey to be wearing boots and nothing else," Astrid said, grinning. She tugged on the fabric sliding down her shoulder. "Next year, I'm going to be a ghost."
Veronica shook her head. "There's no originality there," she protested. "I say... Betsy Ross."
Astrid giggled, and when Lilly reached for her, Veronica handed her off. Astrid had been surprised at how quickly Lilly had taken to Veronica, but Duncan hadn't. And Veronica, who had come perilously close to failing their joint assignment to raise a fake baby, found herself missing the sweet smell of powder and the weight of Lilly against her chest.
But this was a borrowed life, and even with all his reassurance, the promises he whispered into her skin when they were alone, she couldn't bring herself to believe it. He had been hers, he always would be hers, but she...
But she couldn't even imagine what real life was supposed to be anymore. Not when Duncan was sweeping off his cowboy hat, tugging off his shitkicker boots, unfastening his silver plate of a belt buckle, while she lay on the bed waiting for him in nothing but her sparkling headband. Halloween, the one night nothing was normal for anyone.
"You okay?"
Veronica shook her head, then smiled up at Duncan as he climbed into bed with her. "Yeah."
"You've been quiet."
She cupped her palm against his cheek as he knelt between her legs. "I don't have to be," she said with a smile.
He slipped his palms against her thighs and urged them apart. "I... could get used to this."
Veronica closed her eyes, her mouth falling open as he slid inside her. "Which part?" she managed, her fist closing in his hair as his thumb found her clit. "Having costumed sex on a semi-regular basis?"
Duncan chuckled. "That's great too," he managed, then groaned softly. "Having you here."
She couldn't remember anything else, like this. There had been a time when having him, being with him, was all she thought about, all she had wanted. That had been the plan: sneaking into each other's dorm rooms in the middle of the night, stealing hours in the library stacks, double dating with Lilly and her flavor of the week. That was how life was supposed to be, and she had slipped into some horrible dark alternate universe where Lilly's death meant she was cheating on Lilly's boyfriend with her brother, who was dressed like a cowboy and was hiding out in Australia with his illegitimate daughter.
But he was Duncan, and she knew every line of his face and the exact place to kiss him when she wanted to drive him nuts, and when they were this close she could forget how things were supposed to be, and how things had been, and just know how right it had always felt to be with him.
She kissed his throat, her heels pressed into the small of his back as he rocked inside her, slow and building. She gasped with every stroke of his thumb against her clit, tightening against him. "Oh God... oh God, Duncan, please..."
"That..." She could feel his breath, warm against her ear, and she shivered hard. "That's what I miss."
She thrust her hips up to meet his, matching his rhythm, and when the length of his cock caught her clit on the downstroke, she moaned into his skin. "God," she breathed, as he buried his hand in her hair. "Duncan..."
All she could feel was the thick press of him so deep, deep at her center, and she panted, groaning when she began to come, pulling him hard to her, wrapping herself tight around him. His thrusts were short and quick and then he was shaking against her, his face against her neck as he followed.
And for the first time in a long time, she fell asleep without the horribly familiar emptiness eating her alive.
--
He made her forget, but the relief, the release, was temporary, always temporary. The closer December and her inevitable departure came, the more she began to forfeit, the more time she spent with him. She skipped half her classes, daydreamt her way through her lectures, and counted the minutes until she could be with him, with them, again.
Duncan and Lilly and Astrid. Duncan in black and smeared eyeliner, temporary tattoos and a spiked collar, smirking as he fucked her against the brick wall behind a seedy club, the pulsing bass of the swelled music punctuating his every thrust, the bricks scraping her back raw. Veronica wore a purple and white cheerleading uniform, no panties, and a come-hither grin the afternoon she finished her exams, digging French-tipped nails into his shoulders when she mounted him and tossed her hair out of her face.
She wasn't who she was supposed to be anymore, but with him, she was beginning to see how it could be, how she could begin to put the pieces back together. Not everything had been lost to her the day Aaron smashed Lilly's skull in on the side of the Kane swimming pool. Just everything else, everything other than this life she could have for so brief a pocket of time.
The last time, he was in argyle and she was in her lavender t-shirt and when they were skin to skin she waited as long as she could before she started crying. He didn't ask, he didn't try to comfort her with the elaborate tissue of a plausible lie, just brushed her hair away from her flushing face and kissed her tears from her cheeks until she planted her heels against the mattress and thrust her hips up to meet his again. He held himself back until she was screaming, her breasts trembling against his every thrust, and she threw her head back in an agony of pleasure when he finally let himself come.
Maybe this was what happy family was supposed to mean, outside of the slow fever-dream of Neptune: a lapsed graduate student, the precious daughter of an un-canonized saint, and the blue-eyed son of the family who had managed to destroy her own.
"I'll find a way to you."
He kissed her palm. Lilly the younger was in green velvet, and Astrid wore the tackiest Christmas sweatshirt Veronica had ever seen. It was the perfect disguise: the right-hand girl who managed to blend into the background.
Once upon a time, they had all had lives: future president, future prom queen. She had never thought until just now how lonely this had to be, for Astrid, for the little girl whose father Veronica was damned to love until the day she died.
She could only nod, at the expression in his eyes. "I'll be waiting," she breathed.
And she wanted to believe it was true.
Author: tiscwslabmuz
Pairing/Character: Duncan/Veronica, Logan/Veronica, ensemble
Word Count: 3911
Rating: R
Summary: Veronica is given an offer she can't refuse.
Spoilers: Vague through the beginning of Season 3, probably at most through 3x02. If you know who's going to what college, you're good.
Warnings: Language and sex.
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of Veronica Mars. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Note: For the most part this is set in an AU about a year or so in the future. While similar to that other little AU I've created, it's not the same and requires no knowledge of any of my other stories. Written for the Incognito Challenge at vm_library for taken_with_you, and beta'd by the incomparable lit_chick08. Any mistakes, as always, are mine.
Mac's collection of papers, brochures, and application forms were forming an uneven pile on the table in front of her as she scoured her bag. Veronica watched, her eyes widening. Mac seemed to have somehow found a bag not unlike Mary Poppins', but instead of parrot-handled umbrellas and fringed desk lamps, all it produced was a staggering number of binders and textbooks and notebooks and pencils with interesting fluffy erasers. All Veronica seemed to collect was crinkled syllabi in the bottom of her canvas messenger bag.
"Ahh," Mac groaned, lifting out her laptop to rummage underneath. "The prompt has to be in here somewhere."
Dick had hissed like a vampire when he caught sight of their final destination and even now was probably trying to chat up a sorority girl in the food court; Wallace was busily texting someone under the table; Logan was snorting under his breath every few seconds as he skimmed Wallace's class notes, which seemed to consist of double-spaced hastily scrawled lines and doodles of cubes, circles, crosshatches and checkerboard patterns.
"Did you take these blindfolded?" Logan mumbled to Wallace, his fingers idly trailing up and down Veronica's spine. Without bothering to look up Wallace replied with a nonverbal request for Logan to fuck himself, which resulted in another snicker.
"Damn it," Mac mumbled.
Another girl, another poor victim of the financial aid office's sick sense of humor, was standing a few tables away, sorting loose books onto a cart, darting glances at Veronica from the corner of her eye. Veronica sighed. Since she'd started working here, she hated being recognized as the information counter girl; the library was never her first choice for a study venue, but anywhere else, it seemed, was too private for Logan to keep his hands off her for long.
Logan glanced up, at Veronica's laptop screen. "Wikipedia?"
"Someone started an article on my criminology professor," Veronica explained before minimizing the window and rubbing the back of her neck. "I need a latte. And you two," she said, glancing between Wallace and Logan, "need to study for that test."
Wallace shrugged, as Veronica stared at the top of his head. "All up here, baby," he said, tapping his temple, still not looking up. "Steel trap."
"Yeah, well, Mister Steel Trap, just because they gave you a basketball scholarship..."
"Hey," Logan protested mildly. "This coming from the girl who used to study during stakeouts."
"Study? Moi?" Veronica batted her lashes and shrugged. "I seem to remember I never got much studying when you came along."
"So how about that latte?" Mac interjected hastily, sliding her laptop back into her bag. "I have no idea where that damn prompt went."
Veronica gave Logan a peck on the cheek before pushing her chair back. "You sure it's not in there?"
Mac shrugged. "I'll just IM one of my classmates when we get back."
Logan ripped a sheet of paper out of the notebook, crumpled it and tossed it at Wallace. Wallace caught it, grinning, and threw it back. Logan missed and it bounced from his shoulder onto Mac's stack of papers. The top few slipped off and fell to the floor, and Veronica brushed her hair back before leaning over to help Mac pick them up.
"'AustraLearn'?"
Mac smiled. "Why be a social outcast in Neptune when I can be one in another country?"
Veronica turned the pamphlet over in her hands a few times, then folded it and stuck it into her purse as she followed Mac's lead. "Good point," she said, glancing back over her shoulder. Wallace's head was ducked over his phone again, and Logan was digging the point of a pen between the spiral binding of Wallace's notebook, his jaw slack. He smirked and gave a wave when he felt her gaze on him.
"Come on. Papers wait for no woman," Mac said, tugging at Veronica's arm, and she gave in.
--
Mac wanted to go to New Zealand.
Veronica had taken to wearing a ballcap to class, after that one... incident. The editor at the newspaper swore that the online edition had been hacked, and the article had only been online for twelve hours, but that had been long enough, and the leering, and the "I saw Veronica Mar's A$$$$!11!!" group on Facebook, well, there had to be a line somewhere. She was pretty sure she had crossed it a long time ago.
But somehow, even back at Neptune High, it had never been this bad. Better to be a pariah than the butt of a joke. Better to be despised for her cutting wit and striking sassiness, than known only as the hot freshman who had been publicly humiliated.
At least she had grown up a little, though.
Logan and Dick were setting fire to abandoned swimming pools on the weekends, Wallace was waiting for his chance to prove his value to the team, and Veronica stayed up the night before the application was due, giggling from sleep deprivation as Mac made the final touches on her personal statement.
"Do you think 'computer genius to an unconvicted mass murderer' is a positive or a negative?"
Veronica shrugged. "I think it's about even with 'suspected accomplice to rogue billionaire's son,'" she replied. "But I'm not taking any bets. Besides, we won't be social outcasts. We'll be the hot exotic Americans, and all our admirers will have accents," she sighed, smiling.
"Maybe you will," Mac said, clicking Print. "From here on out, I'm Canadian."
--
Logan kissed her chastely in the airport. Keith gave her a long hug, and she closed her eyes.
"Don't wreck my car while I'm gone, okay?"
"I'll be sure to set the mileage back," Keith replied, giving her his familiarly goofy smile. "Be careful. I've already sent a taser to your university address. And I'll be studying up on extradition treaties, just in case."
"Send Cliff after me. I'm sure I can find him some hot number named Desiree who loves a lawyer in a cheap suit."
"Hey, if there are hot chicks named Desiree in on this..."
Veronica and Keith simultaneously shot Logan a dirty look. "Absence makes the heart grow... oh, you know the rest," she told him, brushing her fingers over his shirt sleeve. "Try to keep it that way, all right?"
"I'll miss you."
"Not while there are Clint Eastwood movies to watch," she chirped, grinning. "Behave yourselves. Don't do anything I'd think of doing."
Veronica was past the security checkpoint when she realized she hadn't packed a picture of Logan.
--
She had been in class for a week. Logan had called once and muttered into the phone about missing her while Dick shouted drunkenly in the background. She sent daily email updates to Wallace and her father; Wallace replied with his latest basketball statistics, and her father with “wanted-for-bail-jumping” posters. "If you see this one, he's suspected to be in the area," he'd written with his last. "Use the taser. I would send Backup, but I think he'd hate the plane ride over even more than you did."
She was in a tank top, her bare feet sliding over the cold floor and a spoon stuck to the arch of her tongue, when she heard a knock at the door. She looked at her bed, the spread of battered books and crumpled sheets, and shrugged.
"Who is it?"
No one answered and Veronica picked her taser up, standing on her tiptoes to peer through the glass. With a muffled laugh she unlocked the door and turned back to her desk, tossing the taser down.
"Here to check the plumbing."
"Oh really?" Veronica drawled, turning back to look at the man who had shouldered the door closed behind him. He carried a grubby red toolbox in his right fist, a ballcap pulled low over his eyes, a dirty faded-blue coverall stretched over his broad shoulders. "Because I seem to remember your favorite porno started this way."
He pulled the cap off and tossed it onto her dresser, and she gazed into his calm blue eyes. "Yeah, well," he smiled.
"And what am I supposed to call you?" She looked down at his stitched nametag before tugging the zipper down from his collar. "Tom? How very original."
"I think Duncan will work fine," he replied, backing her to the bed.
--
Veronica had found Clarence Weidman sitting in her section two weeks before classes started in the fall, when she was still working shifts at Java the Hut. He'd ordered a cup of coffee, staying silent despite the question in her eyes, and she found a note in the folded dollar bill he left as her tip.
Back entrance at Kane Software, 11pm.
"He's being very good," Clarence explained when she showed up, her fists buried in her pockets, and she wished for a moment that she'd never taken his order. But she hadn't been able to stop herself, and she couldn't walk away. Not now. "He's being good and he's doing everything I've told him, but for one thing: he wants to see you."
Veronica blew out her breath, slowly. "So is he here?"
Clarence chuckled. "He's not here and he won't be here."
"And you want me to fly to Timbuktu for a little fling before I go to classes and act like everything's normal?"
"You're a smart girl. You'll figure something out."
--
The summer after he left, Veronica took a faded lavender shirt, drug a q-tip through bleach and traced it over the fabric. Sometimes her mother had been drunk when she did the laundry and shirts she had loved, skirts that fit her perfect, were never perfect again. This one, at least, she could salvage.
true love stories never have endings
She wore it when she was hungover, her hair a mess, and Logan always scowled when he saw it, as she pulled it down over her thighs, tight against her breasts.
"I hate that shirt."
She just smiled into her curved palm, because Logan didn't know, her father didn't know, no one else knew. She wore it only when she felt weak, defenseless, bruised.
She wore it when she woke the next morning, Duncan curved tight against her with his bare back against the wall. The floor was cold as she hooked her toes into the discarded blue zippered suit and bent her knee, sweeping it up into her open palm. She twisted her hair up and brushed her teeth and then leaned back with her face shining to see him looking back at her, smiling.
"Hey."
"I like your shirt," he mumbled, his voice still thick with sleep, and she grinned.
"I thought you might." She rinsed her mouth and bounced back into the bed with him, straddling his bare waist. "I'm in class at ten."
"So we have some time."
She grinned, leaning down to kiss him. "Your turn," she mumbled against his mouth. "What do I have to wear?"
"Hmm." Duncan hooked his fingers under the hem of her shirt and tugged until her breasts were loose and bare in the faint light. "Let me think about it."
--
Duncan's repairman outfit had made sense, just in case anyone was keeping her under surveillance, but the cops had lost interest in Duncan's unusual custody arrangements a long time ago, and all the gazes she felt on her were the usual, lightly speculative, lingering in appreciation. She was sure now that they were safe, and it was all a game; besides, she couldn't scream too loud in the dorms, and she wanted to see Lilly. But she had no idea where she was going to find the Brownie uniform Duncan had so charmingly requested, on such short notice.
In the lecture hall she let herself drift, pulling her knees tight together, feeling the sudden renewed ache between her thighs. Her phone vibrated in her bag, and she pulled it out, holding it on her lap. It was a message from Logan.
Miss u
"Right," she mouthed, and sighed, as the marker squeaked over the whiteboard. Veronica's notebook was blank.
Is that all u can say, she painstakingly typed, then deleted the message before sending it.
--
"Have you slept with Astrid?"
She had made a makeshift uniform out of a cheap brown silk dress, faded short-sleeved white button-down and a shock-orange scarf knotted at her neck. He was pushing the skirt up above her thighs, his eyes lighting when he saw that she had opted to lose the panties early, but at the sound of her voice he stopped.
"Once, almost," he exhaled, not meeting her eyes. "I was really drunk and she," he sighed, "she looks a lot like you in the dark."
"I slept with Logan."
His fists twisted into her skirt, pulling the fabric tight over her thighs. "Oh," he managed. "I guess..."
She traced her fingertips down his cheek, down the line of his chest, over the sun-darkened skin. "I thought I'd never see you again."
He shook his head, and she could read the words before they rose to his lips, so she stopped him with a long slow kiss. "I know," she said. "I'm sorry."
He chuckled against her mouth. "How fucked up are we," he managed, sliding his hand up, cupping his palm between her thighs. "I will find a way to come back for you."
She moaned, her breasts straining against the silk, her fists tight against his shirt. "With Lilly? One little happy family?"
He sat up, her thighs spread loose on either side of his hips, his fingers groping against the brown silk. The dress fell to the floor and she could feel his breath through the thin material of her shirt, her nipples tight and dark against it.
"One little happy family," he murmured, unbuttoning from the bottom, tracing his mouth over her skin. "One little happy family." He kissed the tight underbelly of each breast, her fingers buried in his hair, cut short and bleached pale, the freckles trailing over his shoulders invisible in the dark.
She sank slowly into his lap, the shirt hanging loose from her shoulders, her gaze wet as it searched his. "Where will we live?"
"Wherever you want."
"It wasn't supposed to be like this," she murmured, her arms around his shoulders as he lay back down, pulling her with him. "It wasn't supposed to be this hard."
She could feel him smile as he pushed her knees apart. "What would we do if it weren't," he mumbled against her cheek as she took him inside her, and there was nothing else, no one else, the first. He fit perfect and tight inside her and she sank her teeth into his shoulder when she came.
--
Astrid made cupcakes for Halloween, and Lilly had pink ribbons in her wisp-soft blonde hair while she toddled on, her hand safe in Duncan's, grinning up at the pumpkins all the adults around her carried. Veronica was looking down at her as they navigated the sidewalks and quirky neighborhoods, and she smiled when Lilly took one balled fist and rubbed it against her eye.
"Here, let me hold her for a while."
Veronica wasn't sure if Astrid had seen it, going from Celeste Kane's quasi-personal assistant to Duncan Kane's live-in nanny and occasional surrogate sexual release. It probably paid better, but Astrid had taken to wearing yoga pants and tiny braids in her now chestnut-brown hair. Maybe Australia felt like grad school. Maybe playing surrogate mother to Duncan's reincarnated sister was good work experience.
Lilly was warm and solid in her arms, slippery under her garish pink-satin fairy princess gown, by turns flirty and suspicious, sometimes burying her face against Veronica's shoulder. Duncan was dressed as a cowboy in high leather boots and a straw ten-gallon pulled low over his blue eyes. Veronica was in a fringed silk flapper's dress with a beaded headband over her forehead and low thin metallic flats on her aching feet.
"We have enough candy yet?"
Lilly leaned over in Veronica's arms to peer into the pumpkin bucket Astrid carried. "No!" she announced, lurching so that Veronica fell off-balance and ran into Duncan's shoulder, the three of them stumbling drunkenly over the pavement, giggling. Astrid trailed her white-sheet toga over the sidewalk, adjusting it with every other step.
"How much more candy?" Veronica asked, holding little Lilly's blue-eyed gaze for a moment before she grinned and buried her face against Veronica's shoulder.
"Three more houses," Duncan announced. "Then Little Einstein."
"Again?" Veronica sighed with mock disappointment. "I was really cheering for Dora."
"Yeah, but it's just not normal for a monkey to be wearing boots and nothing else," Astrid said, grinning. She tugged on the fabric sliding down her shoulder. "Next year, I'm going to be a ghost."
Veronica shook her head. "There's no originality there," she protested. "I say... Betsy Ross."
Astrid giggled, and when Lilly reached for her, Veronica handed her off. Astrid had been surprised at how quickly Lilly had taken to Veronica, but Duncan hadn't. And Veronica, who had come perilously close to failing their joint assignment to raise a fake baby, found herself missing the sweet smell of powder and the weight of Lilly against her chest.
But this was a borrowed life, and even with all his reassurance, the promises he whispered into her skin when they were alone, she couldn't bring herself to believe it. He had been hers, he always would be hers, but she...
But she couldn't even imagine what real life was supposed to be anymore. Not when Duncan was sweeping off his cowboy hat, tugging off his shitkicker boots, unfastening his silver plate of a belt buckle, while she lay on the bed waiting for him in nothing but her sparkling headband. Halloween, the one night nothing was normal for anyone.
"You okay?"
Veronica shook her head, then smiled up at Duncan as he climbed into bed with her. "Yeah."
"You've been quiet."
She cupped her palm against his cheek as he knelt between her legs. "I don't have to be," she said with a smile.
He slipped his palms against her thighs and urged them apart. "I... could get used to this."
Veronica closed her eyes, her mouth falling open as he slid inside her. "Which part?" she managed, her fist closing in his hair as his thumb found her clit. "Having costumed sex on a semi-regular basis?"
Duncan chuckled. "That's great too," he managed, then groaned softly. "Having you here."
She couldn't remember anything else, like this. There had been a time when having him, being with him, was all she thought about, all she had wanted. That had been the plan: sneaking into each other's dorm rooms in the middle of the night, stealing hours in the library stacks, double dating with Lilly and her flavor of the week. That was how life was supposed to be, and she had slipped into some horrible dark alternate universe where Lilly's death meant she was cheating on Lilly's boyfriend with her brother, who was dressed like a cowboy and was hiding out in Australia with his illegitimate daughter.
But he was Duncan, and she knew every line of his face and the exact place to kiss him when she wanted to drive him nuts, and when they were this close she could forget how things were supposed to be, and how things had been, and just know how right it had always felt to be with him.
She kissed his throat, her heels pressed into the small of his back as he rocked inside her, slow and building. She gasped with every stroke of his thumb against her clit, tightening against him. "Oh God... oh God, Duncan, please..."
"That..." She could feel his breath, warm against her ear, and she shivered hard. "That's what I miss."
She thrust her hips up to meet his, matching his rhythm, and when the length of his cock caught her clit on the downstroke, she moaned into his skin. "God," she breathed, as he buried his hand in her hair. "Duncan..."
All she could feel was the thick press of him so deep, deep at her center, and she panted, groaning when she began to come, pulling him hard to her, wrapping herself tight around him. His thrusts were short and quick and then he was shaking against her, his face against her neck as he followed.
And for the first time in a long time, she fell asleep without the horribly familiar emptiness eating her alive.
--
He made her forget, but the relief, the release, was temporary, always temporary. The closer December and her inevitable departure came, the more she began to forfeit, the more time she spent with him. She skipped half her classes, daydreamt her way through her lectures, and counted the minutes until she could be with him, with them, again.
Duncan and Lilly and Astrid. Duncan in black and smeared eyeliner, temporary tattoos and a spiked collar, smirking as he fucked her against the brick wall behind a seedy club, the pulsing bass of the swelled music punctuating his every thrust, the bricks scraping her back raw. Veronica wore a purple and white cheerleading uniform, no panties, and a come-hither grin the afternoon she finished her exams, digging French-tipped nails into his shoulders when she mounted him and tossed her hair out of her face.
She wasn't who she was supposed to be anymore, but with him, she was beginning to see how it could be, how she could begin to put the pieces back together. Not everything had been lost to her the day Aaron smashed Lilly's skull in on the side of the Kane swimming pool. Just everything else, everything other than this life she could have for so brief a pocket of time.
The last time, he was in argyle and she was in her lavender t-shirt and when they were skin to skin she waited as long as she could before she started crying. He didn't ask, he didn't try to comfort her with the elaborate tissue of a plausible lie, just brushed her hair away from her flushing face and kissed her tears from her cheeks until she planted her heels against the mattress and thrust her hips up to meet his again. He held himself back until she was screaming, her breasts trembling against his every thrust, and she threw her head back in an agony of pleasure when he finally let himself come.
Maybe this was what happy family was supposed to mean, outside of the slow fever-dream of Neptune: a lapsed graduate student, the precious daughter of an un-canonized saint, and the blue-eyed son of the family who had managed to destroy her own.
"I'll find a way to you."
He kissed her palm. Lilly the younger was in green velvet, and Astrid wore the tackiest Christmas sweatshirt Veronica had ever seen. It was the perfect disguise: the right-hand girl who managed to blend into the background.
Once upon a time, they had all had lives: future president, future prom queen. She had never thought until just now how lonely this had to be, for Astrid, for the little girl whose father Veronica was damned to love until the day she died.
She could only nod, at the expression in his eyes. "I'll be waiting," she breathed.
And she wanted to believe it was true.