Fic: Broken Toys (NC-17) Ensemble
Title: Broken Toys
Author: theohara
Pairing/Character: Duncan/Veronica, Lilly/Logan, Logan/Veronica, Logan/Veronica/Lilly, and quite possibly the kitchen sink.
Word Count: 9496
Rating: NC-17
Summary: An answer to the A/U challenge, the "Lilly Doesn't Die" flavor. Porny, angsty, fluffy, and weird.
Spoilers/Warnings: All of Season One.
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"I've got a secret," Lilly crows. "A good one."
And you grin, because you can't help grinning at Lilly, and raise an eyebrow. "Oh, yeah? I've got one, too."
"Veronica Mars!" Lilly gasps in delight. "Have you been terribly naughty?"
"Just observant," you laugh, and point across the street.
You expect Lilly to smile, to prance, to at least gloat a little -- Logan's Xterra across the street is proof positive that Lilly's won their ongoing game, that he's come to beg and grovel and plead, three of Lilly's favorite things.
But Lilly deflates, her lower lip pushing into a pout. "Oh, dammit."
"He came back from Mexico early," you offer, a flutter of oncoming panic in your stomach; Lilly unhappy is a situation that must be remedied immediately if not sooner, for the good of everyone. "He must be really desperate."
"Oh, I'm sure he is." Lilly slaps her towel against the hood of the car, scrubs angrily. "And ruining what was going to be a perfectly fabulous afternoon."
Your brow wrinkles. "You want me to tell him to go away?"
"No, don't bother," Lilly sighs. "He won't go. Trust me. He makes your pit bull look totally ADD."
"What do you want me to do?"
Lilly considers this for a long moment... and smiles.
You know that smile... it gets you grounded every time. But Lilly doesn't look unhappy anymore, and anything's better than that.
"Tell him to pick us up after the car wash."
"But I was going to..."
"Veronica!" Lilly squeals, looking up from her washcloth in utter betrayal. "You're not going to leave me alone with him, are you? He'll want to talk and talk and talk and blah blah blah blah. You must save me."
"You're putting off the inevitable," you warn, but you both already know you'll be calling your father and asking for a rain check on dinner. There really isn't any resisting Lilly when she wants something.
So you run across the street, and knock on Logan's window. He's writing something, and he looks up in shock, crumpling the paper into a ball and cranking down the window at your gesture.
Wow, his eyes are red. Mexico is a harsh mistress.
"Veronica Mars," he smirks at you, sniffles a little. He must be getting a cold. "Doing outside sales?"
"Lilly wants to know if you'd pick us up after the car wash."
He raises an eyebrow, smiles a little. He knows what this means. "No, Lilly demands that I pick you up after the car wash."
"Well, yeah." He speaks Lilly as fluently as you do. "So... will you?"
"I want to say no, but those drenched little short-shorts just scream yes."
You're so relieved you could cry; you weren't sure if he'd forgive you, but apparently this new olive branch from Lilly has healed all wounds.
So, you punch him on the shoulder. "Pervert. Three o'clock."
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Lilly's practically giddy when Logan arrives, and that's a bad sign. It means that she's fleshed out her plan, and you will be grounded for that much longer.
"Jesus, Logan, we're wet," Lilly complains as you buckle your seatbelt in the back.
He turns down the A/C without a returning snark, and now you're getting a little bit worried about him.
"Where to, ladies?"
"Do you still have the key to your dad's liquor cabinet?" Lilly demands.
He shoots her a look. "As always."
"Well mush, young Echolls, mush!"
Lilly settles back in her seat, Logan's jaw sets, and you realize.
You're going to be grounded until your death.
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Logan's dad is in the poolhouse when you get there, and his face lights up as Lilly charges through the curtains. He sees you next, and his eyebrow raises.
"I didn't realize you were bringing a friend," he says, like you're a special present.
Which is nice, but weird, and it's even weirder when Logan walks in after you and Aaron's whole face freezes in shock.
"Well," Aaron smiles widely, "Glad you're back, son. I'll leave you kids to it."
Aaron walks out, and Logan stares after him... and then at Lilly, his eyes all narrowed.
There's a moment happening, and you're outside it, and you don't think it's a good one. So, you smile at Logan. "Your Dad seemed happy you were back."
"Yeah, he's a prince among men," Logan drawls, but at least he and Lilly aren't staring at each other anymore. Logan pulls open a drawer, twirls a screwdriver out of it, and heads for an air-vent in the wall.
"Taught him everything he knows," Lilly laughs into your ear, and you hope this means the weird is over.
Logan pulls the liquor cabinet doors back and Lilly prances forward, snatching a bottle of Ketel One.
"Somebody means business," Logan notices.
"I have to use my new shot glass, don't I?" she retorts, holding it up and smiling at him.
Lilly fills it and passes it to you, and you shake your head. "Lilly, I can't, my Dad..."
"Christ, Veronica," Lilly sighs. "Call him and tell him you're sleeping at my house."
"What if he calls your parents?"
"By tonight, we'll be there. Don't be lame."
And she's looking at you and Logan's looking at her, and you take the shot glass and try to smile.
The first shot tastes horrible, and the second one tastes a little better, and the third one's not so bad and Logan won't let Lilly give you the fourth one. You're lying on the bed with your head in the pillows, tracing the cable that comes out of the ceiling fan with your pointed toe. Which is kind of like a sobriety test, and you're so passing it. Mostly.
"Jesus, Lilly, you trying to kill her?"
"Oh, please, Logan. She's fine."
"She's tiny. And she almost never drinks."
"Will you chill? She's been weeping over Donut for, like, weeks. The girl needs some fun in her life."
"And sitting here on the bed pouring shots down her is fun?"
"So we'll play a game." Lilly bounces up on the bed, and the sudden motion makes you vaguely seasick, which is fitting since everything's swimming around you.
"I'm sick of playing games," Logan mutters, but you're pretty sure you're the only one who heard him. The next thing you know, there's something cold and wet and plastic touching your hand, and it's a bottle of water and Logan's holding it and you smile at him. Lilly mad at you is worse than Duncan mad at you is worse than Logan mad at you, but you're grateful for any break you can get.
"Way to ruin the drinking game," Lilly pouts.
"Way to make sure you still have a best friend tomorrow," Logan counters, and deals the cards.
Your stomach's sort of tumbling over itself and everything seems kind of far away, but it's all worth it for the look on Logan's face when it's your turn to deal. Drunk or not, you're Keith Mars' daughter, and your arsenal of flashy card tricks is limitless.
"Okay, if she can do that, she needs to drink more," Lilly protests.
"Damn," is all Logan will say, but he smiles at you in a way that makes you glow all over. Standing next to Lilly, you don't get noticed much.
Two hands later, Lilly is bored, which is almost as dangerous as unhappy.
"God, let's spice it up," she sighs. "Strip poker or something."
"Fine by me," Logan laughs. "I'm wearing six times as much clothing as you guys are."
"Okay, dare poker."
"Pretty sure you just made that up."
Lilly looks at him archly, shaking out her hair. "Which is exactly why it's going to be so fabulous."
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Logan wins, and makes Lilly do a pep squad cheer; you win, and make Logan duplicate it.
Then Lilly wins... and there's something in her face that tells you she's been waiting for this for hours.
She points fingers at both of you, then brings them together. "Make out."
"Not funny," Logan growls.
And maybe your feelings are hurt a little, but you can get why he's angry.
Your dad's the sheriff; you know all about entrapment.
"You forfeit?" Lilly sing-songs.
You and Logan share a look, nod.
"Fine, be a pussy," Lilly sighs. "Veronica, make out with me."
You shoot a wild-eyed glance at Logan, and another at Lilly. "W-why?"
"Well, A, because it will drive the big girl over there crazy," Lilly grins. "B, it's a forfeit, and you have to. And C, because I can't think of anything that would make my dumbass brother more ragingly jealous."
She raises an eyebrow, and you sigh, so she knows she just won.
It's... weird. Her lips are soft and slippery and lip-glossed and she tastes like vodka, which doesn't begin to cover the whole breasts-where-none-should-be issue. She's a better kisser than Duncan is, which is weird all on its own and icky to think too much about.
But Logan's making choking, tortured sounds on the bed beside you guys, and that's pretty funny, and Lilly's right -- given the way he cheered at Homecoming, this must be just killing him. Logan can be a real asshole when he wants to be, so you smile against Lilly's lips and open your mouth and try not to laugh when Logan mutters, "Oh, God."
And Lilly touches your breast, which is further than you'd planned for this to go but bothers Logan so much that you let her, and it doesn't make you gay if this feels a little better than you'd thought it would. You've just been dumped. You're lonely.
Lilly's lips on your neck make you gasp a little, and Logan groans low in his throat, a sound that makes warmth flood though your stomach, and you're still not gay because Logan's a boy and it's the noise he made that did that to you, not...
Oh, my God, Lilly's pulling up your shirt.
"Okay, time out, round over," Logan says in a strangled voice, and Lilly pops up from where she's straddling you with the most wicked grin you've ever seen on her, which is saying a lot.
"Pillow in the lap, Logan?" she teases. "So cliche."
"Get off Veronica and deal," he growls.
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You are relatively certain that there's no way in hell Lilly got that straight without cheating.
Once again, she points at you and Logan. "Unless you want to forfeit?" she challenges.
Logan glares at her again, but you know that glare; that's his "Bitch, I am about to get you back in ways you never imagined" glare.
Which is not terribly reassuring, considering.
"Veronica?" he says casually, like he's inviting you for tea, and you glance at Lilly to see how you're supposed to react. She seems gleeful, so you guess this is okay, and she just claps her hands together when you crawl across the bed to him, so... so hopefully this isn't going to be some Yolanda thing.
You know how they think of you... innocent little Veronica... and it drives you crazy the way they'll glance at each other over your head or not finish stories when you walk into the room.
So you manage not to squeak when Logan grabs you by the hips and pulls you onto his lap, and you'd kinda figured out from the whole pillow thing that he was kind of excited already, so...
But that doesn't prepare you for the way he feels, hard and hot and pressed right against you there, and it doesn't prepare you for his hands cupping your jaw and bringing your mouth down to his, for the way he kisses you, slow and sweet and drowsy, burning through your veins like the vodka had, the way his arms go around you and his palms slide up your shoulders, the way his thighs lift you to slide along the hard length of him, friction building between you until you'd bite your lip if he wasn't doing it for you.
He gasps against your lips and it sends a thrill down your spine, a shock of power. Logan Echolls... Logan Echolls, owned by Lilly, miles past innocence, is gasping for you. And that makes you grind yourself against him, pressing deep and hard where it feels the best, smiling against his mouth as his gasp turns into a low, helpless groan.
Logan Echolls, helpless. You like that. You like that quite a bit.
Your fingers beneath the edges of his t-shirt make him shudder and your fingernails raked suddenly, roughly down his back make him growl into your mouth, and you're a little scared by how... wicked you feel, how much fun it is to taunt and torment him, and when you open your eyes and meet his, there's an insanity there that makes your toes curl.
Why isn't Lilly stopping this?
You glance over for Lilly, but she's turning around from examining a bookcase, and she's laughing, smoky and smutty and delighted.
"Perfect," Lilly smiles, and she knows something, something that's made her so gleeful that you're pretty sure Dad will lock you in the basement until you turn eighteen.
"Perfect," Lilly repeats... and jumps on the bed.
You and Logan both freeze, and this just makes Lilly laugh harder.
"No-no-no," she insists, waving her hands like she's interrupted your tennis match. She's grinning up at the ceiling fan and you're wondering why but then Logan moves his hips again and maybe... maybe you don't care.
Logan certainly doesn't seem to... his hand snakes up and into your hair, pulling you back down, and this time, Lilly crawls over and shoves you lightly on the arm.
You roll off Logan, which he's really unhappy about until Lilly starts to unbutton his pants.
You meet Lilly's eyes, and she just smiles; there's a dare in them, and a silent promise, and you relax, because you've figured out the rules, and it's going to be okay. There's nothing you can do here to piss Lilly off except walk away. She has some other plan entirely, and it's given you a free pass... you've discovered the perfect way to make her happy, at least for today.
So when she jerks her head in the direction of Logan's, you climb up the bed and kiss him; and when she reaches inside his pants and she's moaning louder than he is, you get it.
Lilly wants you to put on a show.
For Logan, you guess, and you have to admit... you're not as opposed to the idea as you ought to be.
And when you kiss him this time, you let yourself go. This may be the last time anyone teases you about being little and innocent, the last day anyone stops a story when you walk in the room, the end of glances over your head and stifled laughter.
You are Veronica Mars, badass in a threesome with the two people that would make Duncan Kane's head explode, and that makes you feel a little bit evil and even more turned on... which you'll analyze later when Logan isn't pulling your shirt off.
And Logan's mouth is moving beneath yours, warm and wet and sure, and his hands are sliding to your waist, lifting you up, and then they're peeling down your bra and ohgod his mouth is on you, his tongue swirling in practiced circles and you've never let Duncan do this and you're starting to think that was pretty stupid of you and you can feel Lilly's hair sliding across your thighs and you calculate where that means her head is and you look down in shock and she meets your eyes, her cherry-red mouth full of ohdeargod and she winks at you, letting him pop out between her lips like the strawberry lollys she sucks in class, making a show of running her tongue around him while Logan sputters against your breast and pulls you closer.
You've had your hand on Logan's neck, but now you let it trail downward, slowly, barely skimming the surface of his skin, brushing the backs of your knuckles through the hair that trails below his navel, and you think you've never had Lilly's total approval until the moment she takes your hand and wraps it around the base of him, moving you in concert with her lips.
Logan lets you go, inarticulate sounds coming from his throat, his eyes rolled so far back in his head that the whites are showing, and you think you could get very fond of him like this.
And Lilly tugs your calf down, and you move until you're even with her, and you lean over and press a wet, slow kiss on the smooth skin just beneath Logan's hipbone. She's still moving your hand and moving her mouth and Logan's thrashing and growling and cursing and you lean in further and lick.
Logan screams and Lilly closes her eyes, her cheeks hollowed and you think you have a pretty good idea of what she's doing but you aren't prepared at all for when she grabs you by the back of the head, smashes her lips on yours and shares.
"Fuck," Logan whimpers. He's watched her do it and collapses back on the bed, mind blown. "Fuck."
"Maybe in a few minutes," Lilly laughs. She's curled up to his side, head on his bicep, running her fingers down his ribs affectionately, so you do it too, and she still seems to be okay with that.
You can still taste him in your mouth. He tastes a little bit like the ocean.
Lilly kisses his arm and rolls away, but it's just to pull her shirt off; she reaches behind her, unhooks her bra, and raises an eyebrow at you.
You sit up and copy her. You're too far past anything else.
"Jesus, you're going to kill me," Logan groans.
"You're sixteen! Prime of your life," Lilly laughs, and slaps his stomach, and wriggles out of her pep squad shorts. Her underwear is black and lacy and barely existent, and you realize with horror that yours is white cotton and, quite possibly, has "Friday" embroidered on it.
Lilly has no sympathy for your dilemma. "C'mon, Mars. In for a penny, in for a pound."
"Logan's too dressed," you fire back.
"Right you are," she smiles, and she's... proud of you. "Right... you... are."
So you both pull off Logan's overshirt, which is more difficult than it sounds because he's basically dead weight, and his t-shirt, by which time he's recovered enough to help a little. Then Lilly pulls his pants and boxers off, and... and Logan's naked.
You're very distressed by how weird this isn't.
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Logan's never looked at you quite like this, like he's just discovered something new and fascinating, and he brushes your hair back from your face with his ring finger and gives you a smile.
Lilly's across the room, rummaging in the liquor cabinet; she has announced that she's sick of vodka.
Logan almost seems to be... deciding something, and whatever the answer is apparently requires that he take your underwear off.
"Friday," he reads, and you blush, but he runs his thumb over the word affectionately before he hooks his fingers through your waistband and starts to shimmy them off.
"Oh, God, I know that look," Lilly sighs, naked and holding up a bottle of rum like some sort of dirty magazine ad. "Should I go make a sandwich?"
"What is she talking about?" you whisper.
"Logan has a process," Lilly informs you, screwing the top off the bottle. "Takes forever. Totally worth it."
She kisses your forehead on her way to the side table, and then it's just you and Logan.
And you figure out what the 'process' is.
No one has ever watched you like Logan Echolls is watching you; you finally close your eyes to escape the intensity of his gaze.
He's learning you, inch by inch; his fingers slide through you, tiny variations on pressure, direction, speed, position. He notes your every gasp, every flinch, every shudder, every hissed breath; when you can bear to meet his eyes, he's smiling, his eyes alight.
You should feel exposed, naked, bizarre; it's almost clinical, scientific, what he's doing.
But you feel... important. Cherished. He slides a finger inside you, notes your reaction, adds another one... searching, pressing. He kisses your temple, shifts his hand a little... and ohmigodohmigodohmigod...
Normally, you want to punch Logan when he looks this smug, but right now, it's a little bit endearing.
And you'd forgive him anything when research becomes practice, slippery fingers working you like a mind-reader, and his other hand moves inside and ohgod he's right back to that spot he found and he laughs when you break apart in his arms, your whole body arching so hard you nearly take his hand off at the wrist.
"Careful, I need these," he chuckles, and kisses your cheek.
And you lie there, staring, panting, and hope that this feeling of worship is going to wear off.
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"That's the beautiful thing about the process," Lilly sighs happily, climbing back on the bed. "Side-effects."
You can't think yet, and it takes you a minute to realize what she means... but she's on top of him by then, and Logan's pulled you to his side, your head comfortably pillowed between his chest and his arm, and you're strung-out and drowsy and warm and sated and you don't even really mind the bouncing and you can't really manage to care that they're having sex, like, right in front of you.
But you open your eyes, after a while, and watch; Lilly's beautiful, pale and swollen and ripe. She's a flawless white goddess, curse words streaming from her mouth in an unending stream, and you think maybe you just understood something about Lilly.
Logan's hand is in your hair, making slow circles against your scalp with his fingers, and you like the sticky warmth of his skin against yours; it's easy to let your eyes flutter closed again.
You wake up, and Lilly's laughing.
"God, Logan, you're the one that killed her."
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Logan kisses his way down your stomach, and you're sleepy and fuzzed-out and still tipsy and Lilly's wrapped herself around you, her head tucked beneath your chin, and it takes you a minute to realize where he's going, what he's about to do.
And then his mouth is on you, and you're melting into the mattress, Lilly whispering in your ear that she told you it was worth it, but you're pretty sure she's not there because your entire world has relocated to Logan's lips and tongue and teeth and you're positive it's an improvement.
He lets you beg him, and his chuckles against your skin feel almost as good as everything else he's done, and you wonder how you'll ever look at him again, ever watch him chew on his pencil in Geometry without remembering that he can do this, ever watch him drum his fingers across a table without thinking of how you begged him to use them.
Soft and slow isn't cutting it anymore and greed pounds behind your eyes like a headache and just before you start cussing him out he gives you what you want, his fingers rough and sure and then brutal when you plead for it and his mouth moves faster and harder and someone screams his name and it's you, your fingers tangled in his hair and your whispers of don'tstopohgoddon'tstop dying on your lips.
Logan raises his head, and he's all smug again and it's so fucking sexy you want to kiss him until you both die from it.
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You fell asleep on one side of his chest and Lilly fell asleep on the other, and when you wake up, you and she are still holding hands.
She's awake and Logan's not; there's a satisfied smile across her lips, and she bats her eyelashes at you.
"So," you whisper, "What was your secret?"
"Doesn't matter," she laughs softly. "I've got a better one now."
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Lilly pulls you close in the limo, laying her head on your shoulder.
"Are you mad at me?" you ask.
"Hell, no, Veronica," she laughs into your shoulder. "It's fate."
"What do you mean?"
"Your life was totally meant to change today," she says grandly. "You'll see."
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You can't decide if Duncan can tell or not.
You feel like it's branded into your skin, written across your forehead; you run into him in the hallway on the way to brush your teeth, and you blush so hard you think your toes are red.
But he won't look at you anyway, just like yesterday and the day before and days and days before that... although he turns around after he passes you, and you feel his eyes on your back.
Part of you hopes he can see the scratch-marks Logan left, and part of you is mortified by the exact same possibility.
A week later, you find out that he's asked Jake and Celeste to apply him at a private boarding school in Escondido, and you bite your swollen lip and wonder.
"Donut's on antidepressants," Lilly says, like that explains everything.
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Logan won't have sex with you.
You're learning things about Logan, things you never expected. For all his smartass comments and feigned apathy, he's kind of a romantic, way more than Lilly, who makes fun of him for it.
You watch him and Lilly, and can't help but laugh a little; she's so the boy, he's so the girl.
What that makes you, you're not exactly sure.
And Logan cares about your virginity, maybe even more than you do; it's getting a little ridiculous.
You're not learning that much about Lilly, except that Lilly naked is basically the same as Lilly clothed, and maybe that's enough to have learned about Lilly.
And Lilly's a little annoyed at Logan's refusals; you've picked that up. She's been shockingly unjealous throughout all this, whatever the hell 'all this' is turning into, but that's one area where her eyes narrow and her nostrils flare.
You think you get it; Logan's unwillingness to go there means there's something special about you, something he values, something you have and Lilly doesn't.
Or at least, you think that's how Lilly sees it. You suspect that Logan just wants your first time to be a little more Harlequin Romance and a little less Penthouse Forum.
Which you read, now; Lilly has dozens of magazines like that, has always had them and you never knew. She shows them to you now, wants you to read them. You're starting to think you're her project.
And if you're her project, then Logan's her crafting equipment... and on this one point, he's not being cooperative.
You want Logan, sometimes desperately, but you're afraid; when Lilly gets what she wants, boredom follows, and the only reason you're allowed in between them is because Lilly isn't bored with it yet.
Duncan's gone, and you're not sure you can handle losing all three of them.
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You're pretty sure that Lilly's seeing other people, pretty sure that you're her bargaining chip; Logan can hardly get jealous, the situation being what it is.
Mom seems bizarrely relieved that Duncan's gone off to boarding school; she watches you a lot, asks you how you feel about it.
You can't tell her that Duncan isn't your primary problem anymore.
You can admit, now, that you have a crush on Logan. You're not sure you could have possibly helped it. What keeps you up at night is the fear that it will get worse -- that you'll fall in love with him. If that happens, you'll lose Lilly and you'll lose him five seconds later... you don't have any illusions about that.
And sometimes, when you're wrapped in his arms and he's whispering in your ear and he's making everything inside you shatter until the only word you remember is his name, you feel like you're on a knife's edge, biting your lip to keep from saying things you shouldn't.
He belongs to Lilly, and so do you.
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Lilly's right -- you're changing.
Part of it, you think, is the absence of Duncan. The girl you wanted to be for him seems very far away now, and there's so much she didn't know.
Part of it, you know, is Logan. He adores it when you sass him back, and you love being his worthy adversary; you've always had a sarcastic streak, but it's turning into a sarcastic superhighway, fed by his smiles of delight.
You've never competed with Lilly before, never tried; you loved Duncan, but it's no coincidence that the first boy you successfully dated was the only one that was truly off-limits for Lilly.
You wear a little more makeup, dress a little more daring, do different things with your hair. Sometimes, when the two of you walk down the hall, you're the one people are looking at.
Sometimes, you're the one that Logan's looking at.
Which is okay, as long as Lilly doesn't notice.
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Guys at school have started paying a lot more attention to you. It worries you. Some days Lilly acts like you're her puppy that she's taught a marvelous trick, and some days she's mad at you and you can't tell why.
And it bothers Logan. He's quiet about it; there's not really anything he can say. But you've seen him sort of seething, casting glares beneath his eyelids at whatever guy's maneuvered himself onto the lunch table beside you.
Today, it's Dick Casablancas, and he's pressed himself so close to you that you can tell which brand of Axe he uses and is asking you all casual-like if you like surfing, and Logan's looking at you without looking at you, little flashing glances while he mostly stares into his Kung Pao Chicken.
And you tell Dick Casablancas that you love surfing, that your boyfriend who goes to St. Michael's takes you, like, every weekend, and why did he ask?
And Dick's smile drops and he makes some excuse to go to another table and when you turn back to your fried rice, Logan's staring at you like he asked you to bring him the moon and two days later, you showed up at his house with it.
Lilly's staring at you too, so you shrug and say "What? Like I want to surf with Dick when I could be with you guys."
And Logan smiles a little, just a flash, and digs his chopsticks in.
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Duncan's won all the awards that Duncan's expected to win, so Lilly has to go to Escondido on Friday with Jake and Celeste to watch Duncan stand on stage and accept lots of paper.
Logan's a little hurt that he wasn't invited, which Lilly tells him is so lame because it's going to be the most boring evening ever and that you and he should go out and do something fabulous.
So Logan takes you out on father's yacht to Catalina Island.
It's the perfect day... you can't watch his hands on the wheel without thinking about his hands on other places, and he lets you steer for a while while he stands behind you, pressing kisses on the back of your neck, and he tastes like sea salt and champagne, and it's nice, being like this, out in the open and in the sunshine where everyone can see you.
You've gotten used to Lilly's room, Logan's room, Logan's poolhouse, ceilings and walls, used to the way you all look by artfully interior-decorated lightscapes, used to air-conditioning chilling the sweat off your bodies as you lay together. You're used to denials and eggshell-walking, careful planning, concerned looks.
It's easier, being alone with him, and you feel horrible for thinking that. Lilly's your best friend; she's everything.
Logan takes you to dinner on the island, tuna steaks and laughter by candlelight, and afterwards you're staring out at Avalon Bay with his arms around you from behind and his chin on your shoulder.
You think this may be the happiest you've ever been, one of those moments you'll freeze and save to pull out when you're older, a perfect moment.
And then he tells you that both his parents and yours think that the two of you are in Escondido with the Kanes and won't be back until tomorrow.
And you freeze in his arms, tallying up the day... the perfect boat ride, the perfect island, the perfect dinner, the perfect stroll.
And you realize: Harlequin Romance.
"Who told them that?" you ask, and your voice is shaking a little.
"Lilly called them up and asked if we could come," he says, but his voice is a little on edge from hearing yours.
And you know it, now.
Lilly's set you up.
"Let me guess," you say, and now your voice is shaking a lot. "There's a hotel room here on the island, already rented, with candles and rose petals or something?"
He sighs, and his arms tighten around you; you think he's afraid you're about to run, and he's right to be afraid.
"Who rented the room?" you ask.
"I did."
"And whose idea was it?"
He sighs again. "Lilly's."
Everything is the same: the warmth of his arms around you, the sound of his voice that makes you weak-kneed, the gorgeous view, the wind off the water, the lights in the distance.
Nothing is the same.
"Thank you, Logan," you say evenly, firmly, and you're terribly impressed with the way you sound, all rational and logical and calm. "I appreciate what you tried to do."
"But I should take you home now," he whispers against your hair.
"Yes, please."
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You don't laugh and talk and kiss on the ride home; he drives the boat, and you sit on the white leather couch in the back, hugging your sweater around you and staring out at the sea.
You feel his eyes on you, but you don't turn around.
He ties up the yacht, and his hands are still beautiful, still bring back a hundred memories.
So you look at your shoes, instead.
"I could drive you home," he says, and there's a desperation in his eyes that burns in your throat.
And part of you, most of you even, wants him to untie the boat, drive back across the water, carry you into that hotel room, do exactly what Lilly wants and you want and he wants. You know every inch of his skin, and he knows yours; if you want a magical first time, one that lives up to the hype, one that trumps the other girls you know, whose stories are all about drunken parties and backseats and pain and boys who never called, this is your evening and your chance.
But Lilly's right -- you've changed.
And you think you'd rather have honesty than magic.
So you kiss his cheek, and you call a cab, and you don't turn around as you walk towards it, not even when you hear his breath hitch and you're pretty sure he's crying.
There's nothing to say, nothing to do.
He belongs to Lilly.
And you... maybe you don't anymore.
--------------------------------------------------
You sign on to be a camp counselor in Huntington Beach, and you're gone less than a day after school lets out.
Lilly sends you one letter, and you don't answer it, and there aren't any more after that.
Logan doesn't send you anything.
--------------------------------------------------
A few days before school starts back, your dad busts some PCH'ers for shoplifting at the Sac-n-Pac. He takes care of it at the scene, more worried about the possible fate of the kid behind the counter than adding another count to some already hefty records.
The kid, he tells you over burgers at In-and-Out (your mother's having another one of her "headaches"), is named Wallace Fennel. He's new in town, single mom, having a tough time of it. Your dad asks if you'll take him to school with you, show him the ropes, show him around.
You end up being glad you agreed; Wallace is wide-eyed at the way kids turn from you in the hall, the snickers and whispers. You explain that it's not him, it's you; you pissed off the Queen of Neptune High.
You sit alone with Wallace at a lunch table, trying to ignore the teasing and catcalling.
You like Wallace; he's so low-maintenance he constantly shocks you, so easy to be with he makes you nervous.
It's your junior year, which, thank God, means most of your classes are AP now, Logan-and-Lilly-free. You walk past the Pep Squad signup sheet, shaking your head.
Lilly's been ignoring you, but two days into the school year, she pulls up next to you in the parking lot in the SUV she used to have to share with Duncan.
"Hey Ronnie," she catcalls. "Hey, we've decided that we'd rather surf than study today, you wanna come with?"
You ignore her, keep your head down, keep walking.
"Logan will promise to take his shirt off. Does that sweeten the pot?"
Laughter from the backseat. You can see Logan, sitting shotgun, his jaw clenched.
"C'mon, Logan, flex," Lilly teases. "You know how she loves it."
Logan stares out the window, and Lilly sighs.
"Too bad," she smiles, and bats her eyelashes at you. "You used to be fun."
--------------------------------------------------
"Easy, Lilly," says a voice behind you. "You oughta play a little nicer with your old toys."
It's Weevil, the leader of the PCH'ers, and you have no idea why he's standing up for you, or why his eyes are flashing, but you know a lot more now than you did last year, and you think you can guess.
You'll know, later, once you've seen the tattoo.
You're grateful to Weevil, and he's pretty nice to you after that -- he never explains why, but he seems to think you have something in common, and you wonder sometimes just how much he knows about last year.
So when his grandmother gets accused of stealing from the Echolls, you're happy to help with your Dad's investigation. It turns out Weevil's cousin was taking Lilly out on Logan's dime, which sounds just about right to you.
You could say that you're a little bitter.
Weevil's even more bitter than you are.
He watches your back, after that, and that's not the only thing that changes.
You get a new reputation. It doesn't overwrite the one Lilly's spreading, unfortunately... but around Neptune High, you're getting known as the girl who can find people, fix things.
You find people, you fix things, and you try to stay the hell away from Logan Echolls. Rumor has it that you're obsessed with him, tried to seduce him, tried unsuccessfully to steal him from Lilly, and you try not to feed the flames.
As for Logan, well, Logan's getting... quieter, and that's the one thing Logan's never been before; Logan doesn't get quiet, he gets angry and mouthy and sarcastic and aggressive.
Logan seems broken.
Which, you suppose, is what happens to old toys.
--------------------------------------------------
You're really not sure why your mom insists on making sweet potato casserole every Thanksgiving -- nobody likes it but Backup.
But it's why you're here at the gas station, staring at the candy aisle, wondering why your mother thought they'd have marshmallows, and if you could possibly use circus peanuts instead.
"Hey," Duncan Kane says.
You look up; he's holding a box of cocoa, and you almost laugh, because apparently Celeste is as prone to forgetting crucial meal ingredients as Lianne is. The Kanes give all the help the day off on Thanksgiving; it's a Thing.
"Hey," you reply, and try on a smile. "You didn't happen to see marshmallows, did you?"
"They're over by the food. The, y'know, boxes of mac-n-cheese and stuff."
"Thanks."
And you think that'll be it, but he follows you down the aisle, and you've just stooped to pluck out the marshmallows -- one bag left, thank God -- when he says it.
"So... you figured it out, huh?"
You blink. "Figured what out?"
"You stopped hanging out with Lilly. You must have figured it out." Duncan scuffs his foot on the linoleum, looks away. "I thought... I thought maybe I knew what was going on, but I wasn't sure and I didn't... I was angry, really angry, and I should have warned you. I'm sorry."
"Warned me about what?"
"Well, a lot of stuff, I guess." He smiles, sheepishly. "But mostly, y'know, the whole we're-related thing."
You blink, and his face falls. "Oh, God. You still don't know. I thought..."
"Know what, Duncan?"
He leans towards you, lowers his voice. "Veronica... you're our half-sister. Mine and Lilly's. It's why I broke up with you."
And you laugh, because that's the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard. "Is that some crap that Lilly told you? Duncan, that's not why she hates me."
He sighs. "Mom told me. My dad and your mom. Seriously. Look into it. I did. They dated in high school, and..."
"That's why you dumped me? Why you left?"
"I couldn't... I couldn't be with you after that. Mom said I couldn't tell you, that you'd sue, that..." Duncan sighs. "And I was just gonna... end it, y'know? But when Lilly found out... she was all over you. I couldn't stand it, couldn't watch it."
And you know he's wrong, but that's a horrible thing for him to have gone through, and such Celeste bullshit to pull that your heart goes out to him. So you put your hand on his arm, and you tell him you're sorry.
"My new school... I like it," he smiles. "It's easier... to be myself, y'know? Without Lilly."
You smile, and he smiles, and you pay for your marshmallows and he pays for his cocoa, and you watch him drive off.
And two weeks later, when the paternity results come back exactly like you knew they would, you mail Duncan a copy and hope it gives him some peace of mind.
You e-mail each other, after that. Mostly silly forwards, but it's contact. Sometimes, he says that he's worried about Logan. Occasionally, you can tell that he'd like to try again, but you pretend not to notice.
It wouldn't be fair.
Guys still ask you out; Troy Vandergriff, before he disappears, the cute deputy in your dad's office.
But there's always something wrong with them. They're too short, have too many muscles, their hair's too blonde or too red or too black, their car isn't yellow enough and they don't have puka shell necklaces.
Not that you're pining for anybody.
--------------------------------------------------
Slowly but surely, your social circle is expanding.
Meg Manning's first, after the whole Purity Test debacle, which is how you get Cindy MacKenzie, and it expands outwards; from Wallace come the basketball players, from Meg the theatre people, from Mac the computer geeks. Your boy Weevil brings in the auto shop; good old Corky, who's always loved you, brings in the art stoners.
Before you know it, you are possibly more popular than Lilly, pure-numbers-wise. She still rules the 09'ers, of course.
And you start to hear a different version of the rumor; that you, Veronica Mars, unofficial patron of Neptune High's underclass, through no fault of your own stole the heart of Lilly's little rich-boy lapdog.
He stares at you, they say, when he thinks you're not looking. He punched a wall in P.E. when he found out Troy had asked you out. They claim he stopped Dick Casablancas from slashing your tires, broke into your locker and took a bunch of fake ID's out after he saw some kid plant them there.
People in your new world hate Lilly Kane on principle, and they love their story too much to let it go just because you say it's not true.
So you take everything they say about Logan with a huge grain of salt.
--------------------------------------------------
One night, you open your door, and Logan Echolls is there.
He looks utterly miserable, his coat wrapped around him. You invite him in; he shoots faint smiles at your Mom and Dad on the way back to your room.
He hands you a DVD, one that he's burned. You start to head for the player in the living room; he shakes his head emphatically and points to your laptop.
A moment after you start the video, you see why.
There's a camera in Logan's poolhouse.
And you watch yourself, him, Lilly, laying on the bed and doing shots.
Logan skips a chapter, and you see what he wanted you to see.
You're on top of him, kissing him, and Lilly's laying on her back, bored, staring up at the ceiling fan. She notices something, traces a line with her eyes, opens the bookcase, smiles.
You look up at her just as she's shut it.
"Perfect," Lilly says as she jumps on the bed.
You stop the video; you need a minute, need some time for all the pieces to fall into place, the million-and-a-half-reasons that this makes sense.
"She was fucking my Dad," Logan whispers, which is, of course, the piece that explains everything.
"How many copies of this are there?" you ask, and Logan ejects the DVD from your drive, snaps it in half.
"None, now," he replies. "The original is up in smoke. Along with all the others in the same genre."
He does a little up-in-smoke hand gesture, and it warms your heart; it's been a while since you've seen any trace of the old Logan.
"What do you want me to do?" you ask.
He sits on the edge of your bed, steeples his hands.
"Are you happy?" he asks, after a minute. "You seem happier, now. Without us."
"It's... easier," you say, carefully.
He smiles a little. "That day at the car wash. The letter I was writing, the one I wadded up. I was telling Lilly it was over. For good, forever. Y'know."
Why is he telling you this? "Well... I guess you changed your mind?"
He searches your face, and you blush, a little; he's examined you like this before, a long time ago. Until a few minutes ago, you had DVD evidence.
"Yeah," he finally says, and he looks disappointed. "Yeah, I guess I did."
--------------------------------------------------
Two weeks later, you're watching Lilly and Aaron Echolls have sex on CNN.
Well, not sex; they've edited it down to PG-13 for broadcast, but that's not making Duncan feel any better, if your inbox is any indication.
You'd suspected Logan, but your Dad tells you it was Lynn; she's been leaking damaging materials to the tabloids, the news media. This is her final volley; in a weekend, Lynn takes Logan out of school, files for divorce, and moves them both to L.A. on the proceeds of a book deal with so many digits you just blinked at them.
Monday, Lilly struts into school like she always does -- sex is part of who Lilly is, written on her skin. Fucking a huge movie star should change nothing.
But the huge movie star was her boyfriend's father, and at lunch period, you see Lilly trying to scrub the word "SKANK" off her locker.
--------------------------------------------------
Lilly gives bad press; she gets in the camera's face, grants interviews to anyone, says things that you're sure are turning Celeste gray faster than her hairdresser can keep up. The broadcasters are comparing her to Courtney Love; Kane Software stock is going down, Aaron Echolls' latest movie has had its release date pushed back. Her parents take away her car, change their number, take away her cellphone, and finally send her to a boarding school in the south of England.
All three networks do a movie. Your character appears in only one of them, the one on ABC, the one sanctioned by Lynn.
You don't watch it, but Meg does, and she tapes it. She says you really, really need to see it, but you don't make it past the first five minutes; Lilly was a lot of things, but she wasn't the girl on your screen, grasping and slutty and vapid.
Logan was many things too, but a saint was never one of them.
You wouldn't have the kind of dreams you do about a saint.
--------------------------------------------------
Lilly turns eighteen, and all hell breaks loose.
She's out of the boarding school and in Hollywood before the week is out, riding the tail end of the nation's obsession with heiresses behaving badly.
She's on your TV, in every magazine. She's at parties with Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan, she's in a catfight with Jessica Simpson, she's on another grainy sex tape, this time with Tommy Lee, and that leads to her hitting Tara Reid over the head with a champagne bottle and getting arrested.
She's in a bunch of movies where she shows her breasts and is killed in the first hour, and every time you see Jake Kane, he looks like he has a headache.
For Duncan, however, the pressure's off; he'll never be in office anywhere, now. He tells you he's thinking of majoring in creative writing.
Lynn gets a breast reduction and a makeunder and a gritty film role as a Vegas madam and her first Oscar.
--------------------------------------------------
You're valedictorian, and so is Duncan. You went to his graduation, and he went to yours. It's not a thing, though.
"Yale, baby!" your father crows at every opportunity. It's almost as annoying as "Who's Your Daddy?", but not quite.
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One night, when your Mom's been in the bottle too long, she asks if you're a lesbian.
You think you cringe with every molecule of your body, wondering what's on CNN now, what Lilly's told Access Hollywood.
"You don't date, baby," your Mom slurs, leaning against the counter. "You can tell me."
You're 200% positive that you can't.
--------------------------------------------------
Your new roommate thinks it's inutterably amazing -- her words -- that you knew Lilly Kane. You sort of wish she'd shut up, but she's nice enough, even if she does insist on telling you each and every Lilly tidbit, from oh-my-god-she-lost-ten-pounds-she's-on-cocaine to oh-my-god-she-gained-ten-pounds-she's-pregnant.
Lilly gets married, Lilly gets divorced, Lilly is saved by Scientology, Lilly goes into rehab, Lilly comes out of rehab, Lilly says Scientology is crap, Lilly might put out an album.
And that's just your first semester.
--------------------------------------------------
Duncan's the one who figures out that you and Logan are going to college in the same state.
You have coffee; he has a girlfriend, and you still can't look at his hands without blushing.
Your past is electronic now, blue lines on Gmail. Duncan sends you stories to proofread and critique (love the boy, but his spelling sucks), Wallace is obsessed with his new videophone and sends you endless snippets of his Nelly-like existence. Meg sends you pictures of her twins, Mac sends you petitions from MoveOn.org, Weevil sends you love from your Dad and you still can't believe he's a Deputy now.
And Logan sends you letters that make you ache, hilariously described anecdotes of the commonplace, send-ups of his professors that make you snort Skist out of your nose. Thankfully, he doesn't mention the girlfriend much.
You date, semi-successfully, and lose your virginity on a futon to a lit major who turns out to have five other girlfriends and issues with premature ejaculation. There are other guys, after him.
But they don't have a process, and they take it personally when you're constantly checking your cellphone for new e-mail.
--------------------------------------------------
Diane Sawyer's doing a big interview with Lilly. They've been running commercials for it for weeks.
You weren't going to watch it, but you wake up from a nap to find your roommate has it on.
Lilly sucks you in just like she always did.
She looks older, and not just older than you remember; older than you. She's had some plastic surgery; her nose is all different, her lips bigger, and something's happened in the cheekbone area, too. Her hair is extremely blonde, shorter and larger, wild around her head in artful layers.
"Can you pinpoint the moment your life changed?" Diane asks in that hurry-up-and-cry tone of voice.
Lilly thinks about this a moment, pursing her large new lips, and you don't know why you're shocked when she names that day at the car wash.
"That was, like, the last day," Lilly says thoughtfully, "That everything was perfect. I think maybe I peaked, right?"
She ashes her cigarette, crosses her legs.
"Sometimes I wish I could just be frozen in that moment, y'know? Like, forever. And I knew it, too. That something big and huge was going to happen. I told my best friend..."
Here Lilly gets a little choked up, and you can't blink, can't move.
"Anyway," Lilly says, breaking the spell. "That's it. That's when."
--------------------------------------------------
You wake up and someone's banging on the door of your apartment, and when you open it it's Logan and he's crying.
Lilly is dead, overdosed on heroin in the bathroom of a nightclub in downtown L.A.
You pull Logan inside and feed him Tylenol P.M. and put him in your bed when he passes out and don't let yourself cry until later, alone with your laptop, looking at the photos on the Smoking Gun website.
Lilly is wasted away and bony, Lilly has blooming track marks, Lilly has three-inch roots and collagen lips gone horribly wrong and she's staring right at you with a long strand of toilet paper in her hands.
Lilly always said she wanted to die young, gorgeous and fabulous.
This is none of the above.
You sleep in Logan's arms for the first time in seven years, his tears hot on the back of your neck.
You're not at all surprised when Duncan arrives in the morning, still arguing with Celeste on his cellphone as you open the door.
The three of you spend the next twenty-four hours in a daze, watching news footage until one of you gets angry and turns it off, staring blankly until one of you gets curious and turns it back on.
Logan smokes on your fire escape; it's bitterly cold, and you tell him to just smoke in the apartment for God's sake, but he won't, and he won't wear gloves or a coat either, and you and Duncan finally haul him inside and you slam the window closed and Duncan lights a cigarette for Logan and sticks it in his mouth, which ends the argument.
None of you realize how long you haven't eaten until Duncan's stomach makes a horrible rumbling noise. Logan half-laughs and disappears, returning thirty minutes later with pizza, a bottle of bourbon, and another carton of Lucky Strikes.
Later, when Duncan's passed out and you and Logan aren't that much more conscious, Logan turns to you, rubbing his thumb over the neck of the bourbon bottle.
"I stayed for you," he says unsteadily. "That's what I never told you. I stayed for you."
You have no idea what he's talking about, and cover him with the other end of the blanket you just put on Duncan.
--------------------------------------------------
Duncan's credit card is everywhere. Plane tickets, rental cars, airport restaurants. He gets the three of you back to California, and drives you out of LAX with Logan half-drunk and smoking out the window.
Duncan books you all into one room; Logan attacks the mini-bar and passes out on one of the double beds. Duncan collapses on the other one not soon after, not even bothering to take off his shoes.
You peel the sheets back next to Logan, trying not to disturb him, and slip in between them.
You think, with a glance at the drunk, stubbly boy drooling on the pillow next to you, that you're finally in a hotel room with Logan Echolls, and you almost laugh.
Instead, you lay still and watch the ceiling, thinking about Lilly, thinking about that day. Her pep squad uniform, her pale curves, the taste of gloss and vodka when she kissed you... and how that's the day she wished she had died.
You try to imagine life without Lilly. Would you have stayed popular, stayed innocent, stayed soft-spoken and hesitant and a little naive? Gotten back together with Duncan? Been with Logan without the angst? Would you have even met Wallace, ever befriended Weevil, Mac, Meg?
It's too much to think about, too large, too huge, a little blasphemous.
You never quite managed to hate Lilly Kane. You think, in some ways, you still belong to her.
You think maybe you all do.
Author: theohara
Pairing/Character: Duncan/Veronica, Lilly/Logan, Logan/Veronica, Logan/Veronica/Lilly, and quite possibly the kitchen sink.
Word Count: 9496
Rating: NC-17
Summary: An answer to the A/U challenge, the "Lilly Doesn't Die" flavor. Porny, angsty, fluffy, and weird.
Spoilers/Warnings: All of Season One.
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"I've got a secret," Lilly crows. "A good one."
And you grin, because you can't help grinning at Lilly, and raise an eyebrow. "Oh, yeah? I've got one, too."
"Veronica Mars!" Lilly gasps in delight. "Have you been terribly naughty?"
"Just observant," you laugh, and point across the street.
You expect Lilly to smile, to prance, to at least gloat a little -- Logan's Xterra across the street is proof positive that Lilly's won their ongoing game, that he's come to beg and grovel and plead, three of Lilly's favorite things.
But Lilly deflates, her lower lip pushing into a pout. "Oh, dammit."
"He came back from Mexico early," you offer, a flutter of oncoming panic in your stomach; Lilly unhappy is a situation that must be remedied immediately if not sooner, for the good of everyone. "He must be really desperate."
"Oh, I'm sure he is." Lilly slaps her towel against the hood of the car, scrubs angrily. "And ruining what was going to be a perfectly fabulous afternoon."
Your brow wrinkles. "You want me to tell him to go away?"
"No, don't bother," Lilly sighs. "He won't go. Trust me. He makes your pit bull look totally ADD."
"What do you want me to do?"
Lilly considers this for a long moment... and smiles.
You know that smile... it gets you grounded every time. But Lilly doesn't look unhappy anymore, and anything's better than that.
"Tell him to pick us up after the car wash."
"But I was going to..."
"Veronica!" Lilly squeals, looking up from her washcloth in utter betrayal. "You're not going to leave me alone with him, are you? He'll want to talk and talk and talk and blah blah blah blah. You must save me."
"You're putting off the inevitable," you warn, but you both already know you'll be calling your father and asking for a rain check on dinner. There really isn't any resisting Lilly when she wants something.
So you run across the street, and knock on Logan's window. He's writing something, and he looks up in shock, crumpling the paper into a ball and cranking down the window at your gesture.
Wow, his eyes are red. Mexico is a harsh mistress.
"Veronica Mars," he smirks at you, sniffles a little. He must be getting a cold. "Doing outside sales?"
"Lilly wants to know if you'd pick us up after the car wash."
He raises an eyebrow, smiles a little. He knows what this means. "No, Lilly demands that I pick you up after the car wash."
"Well, yeah." He speaks Lilly as fluently as you do. "So... will you?"
"I want to say no, but those drenched little short-shorts just scream yes."
You're so relieved you could cry; you weren't sure if he'd forgive you, but apparently this new olive branch from Lilly has healed all wounds.
So, you punch him on the shoulder. "Pervert. Three o'clock."
--------------------------------------------------
Lilly's practically giddy when Logan arrives, and that's a bad sign. It means that she's fleshed out her plan, and you will be grounded for that much longer.
"Jesus, Logan, we're wet," Lilly complains as you buckle your seatbelt in the back.
He turns down the A/C without a returning snark, and now you're getting a little bit worried about him.
"Where to, ladies?"
"Do you still have the key to your dad's liquor cabinet?" Lilly demands.
He shoots her a look. "As always."
"Well mush, young Echolls, mush!"
Lilly settles back in her seat, Logan's jaw sets, and you realize.
You're going to be grounded until your death.
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Logan's dad is in the poolhouse when you get there, and his face lights up as Lilly charges through the curtains. He sees you next, and his eyebrow raises.
"I didn't realize you were bringing a friend," he says, like you're a special present.
Which is nice, but weird, and it's even weirder when Logan walks in after you and Aaron's whole face freezes in shock.
"Well," Aaron smiles widely, "Glad you're back, son. I'll leave you kids to it."
Aaron walks out, and Logan stares after him... and then at Lilly, his eyes all narrowed.
There's a moment happening, and you're outside it, and you don't think it's a good one. So, you smile at Logan. "Your Dad seemed happy you were back."
"Yeah, he's a prince among men," Logan drawls, but at least he and Lilly aren't staring at each other anymore. Logan pulls open a drawer, twirls a screwdriver out of it, and heads for an air-vent in the wall.
"Taught him everything he knows," Lilly laughs into your ear, and you hope this means the weird is over.
Logan pulls the liquor cabinet doors back and Lilly prances forward, snatching a bottle of Ketel One.
"Somebody means business," Logan notices.
"I have to use my new shot glass, don't I?" she retorts, holding it up and smiling at him.
Lilly fills it and passes it to you, and you shake your head. "Lilly, I can't, my Dad..."
"Christ, Veronica," Lilly sighs. "Call him and tell him you're sleeping at my house."
"What if he calls your parents?"
"By tonight, we'll be there. Don't be lame."
And she's looking at you and Logan's looking at her, and you take the shot glass and try to smile.
The first shot tastes horrible, and the second one tastes a little better, and the third one's not so bad and Logan won't let Lilly give you the fourth one. You're lying on the bed with your head in the pillows, tracing the cable that comes out of the ceiling fan with your pointed toe. Which is kind of like a sobriety test, and you're so passing it. Mostly.
"Jesus, Lilly, you trying to kill her?"
"Oh, please, Logan. She's fine."
"She's tiny. And she almost never drinks."
"Will you chill? She's been weeping over Donut for, like, weeks. The girl needs some fun in her life."
"And sitting here on the bed pouring shots down her is fun?"
"So we'll play a game." Lilly bounces up on the bed, and the sudden motion makes you vaguely seasick, which is fitting since everything's swimming around you.
"I'm sick of playing games," Logan mutters, but you're pretty sure you're the only one who heard him. The next thing you know, there's something cold and wet and plastic touching your hand, and it's a bottle of water and Logan's holding it and you smile at him. Lilly mad at you is worse than Duncan mad at you is worse than Logan mad at you, but you're grateful for any break you can get.
"Way to ruin the drinking game," Lilly pouts.
"Way to make sure you still have a best friend tomorrow," Logan counters, and deals the cards.
Your stomach's sort of tumbling over itself and everything seems kind of far away, but it's all worth it for the look on Logan's face when it's your turn to deal. Drunk or not, you're Keith Mars' daughter, and your arsenal of flashy card tricks is limitless.
"Okay, if she can do that, she needs to drink more," Lilly protests.
"Damn," is all Logan will say, but he smiles at you in a way that makes you glow all over. Standing next to Lilly, you don't get noticed much.
Two hands later, Lilly is bored, which is almost as dangerous as unhappy.
"God, let's spice it up," she sighs. "Strip poker or something."
"Fine by me," Logan laughs. "I'm wearing six times as much clothing as you guys are."
"Okay, dare poker."
"Pretty sure you just made that up."
Lilly looks at him archly, shaking out her hair. "Which is exactly why it's going to be so fabulous."
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Logan wins, and makes Lilly do a pep squad cheer; you win, and make Logan duplicate it.
Then Lilly wins... and there's something in her face that tells you she's been waiting for this for hours.
She points fingers at both of you, then brings them together. "Make out."
"Not funny," Logan growls.
And maybe your feelings are hurt a little, but you can get why he's angry.
Your dad's the sheriff; you know all about entrapment.
"You forfeit?" Lilly sing-songs.
You and Logan share a look, nod.
"Fine, be a pussy," Lilly sighs. "Veronica, make out with me."
You shoot a wild-eyed glance at Logan, and another at Lilly. "W-why?"
"Well, A, because it will drive the big girl over there crazy," Lilly grins. "B, it's a forfeit, and you have to. And C, because I can't think of anything that would make my dumbass brother more ragingly jealous."
She raises an eyebrow, and you sigh, so she knows she just won.
It's... weird. Her lips are soft and slippery and lip-glossed and she tastes like vodka, which doesn't begin to cover the whole breasts-where-none-should-be issue. She's a better kisser than Duncan is, which is weird all on its own and icky to think too much about.
But Logan's making choking, tortured sounds on the bed beside you guys, and that's pretty funny, and Lilly's right -- given the way he cheered at Homecoming, this must be just killing him. Logan can be a real asshole when he wants to be, so you smile against Lilly's lips and open your mouth and try not to laugh when Logan mutters, "Oh, God."
And Lilly touches your breast, which is further than you'd planned for this to go but bothers Logan so much that you let her, and it doesn't make you gay if this feels a little better than you'd thought it would. You've just been dumped. You're lonely.
Lilly's lips on your neck make you gasp a little, and Logan groans low in his throat, a sound that makes warmth flood though your stomach, and you're still not gay because Logan's a boy and it's the noise he made that did that to you, not...
Oh, my God, Lilly's pulling up your shirt.
"Okay, time out, round over," Logan says in a strangled voice, and Lilly pops up from where she's straddling you with the most wicked grin you've ever seen on her, which is saying a lot.
"Pillow in the lap, Logan?" she teases. "So cliche."
"Get off Veronica and deal," he growls.
--------------------------------------------------
You are relatively certain that there's no way in hell Lilly got that straight without cheating.
Once again, she points at you and Logan. "Unless you want to forfeit?" she challenges.
Logan glares at her again, but you know that glare; that's his "Bitch, I am about to get you back in ways you never imagined" glare.
Which is not terribly reassuring, considering.
"Veronica?" he says casually, like he's inviting you for tea, and you glance at Lilly to see how you're supposed to react. She seems gleeful, so you guess this is okay, and she just claps her hands together when you crawl across the bed to him, so... so hopefully this isn't going to be some Yolanda thing.
You know how they think of you... innocent little Veronica... and it drives you crazy the way they'll glance at each other over your head or not finish stories when you walk into the room.
So you manage not to squeak when Logan grabs you by the hips and pulls you onto his lap, and you'd kinda figured out from the whole pillow thing that he was kind of excited already, so...
But that doesn't prepare you for the way he feels, hard and hot and pressed right against you there, and it doesn't prepare you for his hands cupping your jaw and bringing your mouth down to his, for the way he kisses you, slow and sweet and drowsy, burning through your veins like the vodka had, the way his arms go around you and his palms slide up your shoulders, the way his thighs lift you to slide along the hard length of him, friction building between you until you'd bite your lip if he wasn't doing it for you.
He gasps against your lips and it sends a thrill down your spine, a shock of power. Logan Echolls... Logan Echolls, owned by Lilly, miles past innocence, is gasping for you. And that makes you grind yourself against him, pressing deep and hard where it feels the best, smiling against his mouth as his gasp turns into a low, helpless groan.
Logan Echolls, helpless. You like that. You like that quite a bit.
Your fingers beneath the edges of his t-shirt make him shudder and your fingernails raked suddenly, roughly down his back make him growl into your mouth, and you're a little scared by how... wicked you feel, how much fun it is to taunt and torment him, and when you open your eyes and meet his, there's an insanity there that makes your toes curl.
Why isn't Lilly stopping this?
You glance over for Lilly, but she's turning around from examining a bookcase, and she's laughing, smoky and smutty and delighted.
"Perfect," Lilly smiles, and she knows something, something that's made her so gleeful that you're pretty sure Dad will lock you in the basement until you turn eighteen.
"Perfect," Lilly repeats... and jumps on the bed.
You and Logan both freeze, and this just makes Lilly laugh harder.
"No-no-no," she insists, waving her hands like she's interrupted your tennis match. She's grinning up at the ceiling fan and you're wondering why but then Logan moves his hips again and maybe... maybe you don't care.
Logan certainly doesn't seem to... his hand snakes up and into your hair, pulling you back down, and this time, Lilly crawls over and shoves you lightly on the arm.
You roll off Logan, which he's really unhappy about until Lilly starts to unbutton his pants.
You meet Lilly's eyes, and she just smiles; there's a dare in them, and a silent promise, and you relax, because you've figured out the rules, and it's going to be okay. There's nothing you can do here to piss Lilly off except walk away. She has some other plan entirely, and it's given you a free pass... you've discovered the perfect way to make her happy, at least for today.
So when she jerks her head in the direction of Logan's, you climb up the bed and kiss him; and when she reaches inside his pants and she's moaning louder than he is, you get it.
Lilly wants you to put on a show.
For Logan, you guess, and you have to admit... you're not as opposed to the idea as you ought to be.
And when you kiss him this time, you let yourself go. This may be the last time anyone teases you about being little and innocent, the last day anyone stops a story when you walk in the room, the end of glances over your head and stifled laughter.
You are Veronica Mars, badass in a threesome with the two people that would make Duncan Kane's head explode, and that makes you feel a little bit evil and even more turned on... which you'll analyze later when Logan isn't pulling your shirt off.
And Logan's mouth is moving beneath yours, warm and wet and sure, and his hands are sliding to your waist, lifting you up, and then they're peeling down your bra and ohgod his mouth is on you, his tongue swirling in practiced circles and you've never let Duncan do this and you're starting to think that was pretty stupid of you and you can feel Lilly's hair sliding across your thighs and you calculate where that means her head is and you look down in shock and she meets your eyes, her cherry-red mouth full of ohdeargod and she winks at you, letting him pop out between her lips like the strawberry lollys she sucks in class, making a show of running her tongue around him while Logan sputters against your breast and pulls you closer.
You've had your hand on Logan's neck, but now you let it trail downward, slowly, barely skimming the surface of his skin, brushing the backs of your knuckles through the hair that trails below his navel, and you think you've never had Lilly's total approval until the moment she takes your hand and wraps it around the base of him, moving you in concert with her lips.
Logan lets you go, inarticulate sounds coming from his throat, his eyes rolled so far back in his head that the whites are showing, and you think you could get very fond of him like this.
And Lilly tugs your calf down, and you move until you're even with her, and you lean over and press a wet, slow kiss on the smooth skin just beneath Logan's hipbone. She's still moving your hand and moving her mouth and Logan's thrashing and growling and cursing and you lean in further and lick.
Logan screams and Lilly closes her eyes, her cheeks hollowed and you think you have a pretty good idea of what she's doing but you aren't prepared at all for when she grabs you by the back of the head, smashes her lips on yours and shares.
"Fuck," Logan whimpers. He's watched her do it and collapses back on the bed, mind blown. "Fuck."
"Maybe in a few minutes," Lilly laughs. She's curled up to his side, head on his bicep, running her fingers down his ribs affectionately, so you do it too, and she still seems to be okay with that.
You can still taste him in your mouth. He tastes a little bit like the ocean.
Lilly kisses his arm and rolls away, but it's just to pull her shirt off; she reaches behind her, unhooks her bra, and raises an eyebrow at you.
You sit up and copy her. You're too far past anything else.
"Jesus, you're going to kill me," Logan groans.
"You're sixteen! Prime of your life," Lilly laughs, and slaps his stomach, and wriggles out of her pep squad shorts. Her underwear is black and lacy and barely existent, and you realize with horror that yours is white cotton and, quite possibly, has "Friday" embroidered on it.
Lilly has no sympathy for your dilemma. "C'mon, Mars. In for a penny, in for a pound."
"Logan's too dressed," you fire back.
"Right you are," she smiles, and she's... proud of you. "Right... you... are."
So you both pull off Logan's overshirt, which is more difficult than it sounds because he's basically dead weight, and his t-shirt, by which time he's recovered enough to help a little. Then Lilly pulls his pants and boxers off, and... and Logan's naked.
You're very distressed by how weird this isn't.
--------------------------------------------------
Logan's never looked at you quite like this, like he's just discovered something new and fascinating, and he brushes your hair back from your face with his ring finger and gives you a smile.
Lilly's across the room, rummaging in the liquor cabinet; she has announced that she's sick of vodka.
Logan almost seems to be... deciding something, and whatever the answer is apparently requires that he take your underwear off.
"Friday," he reads, and you blush, but he runs his thumb over the word affectionately before he hooks his fingers through your waistband and starts to shimmy them off.
"Oh, God, I know that look," Lilly sighs, naked and holding up a bottle of rum like some sort of dirty magazine ad. "Should I go make a sandwich?"
"What is she talking about?" you whisper.
"Logan has a process," Lilly informs you, screwing the top off the bottle. "Takes forever. Totally worth it."
She kisses your forehead on her way to the side table, and then it's just you and Logan.
And you figure out what the 'process' is.
No one has ever watched you like Logan Echolls is watching you; you finally close your eyes to escape the intensity of his gaze.
He's learning you, inch by inch; his fingers slide through you, tiny variations on pressure, direction, speed, position. He notes your every gasp, every flinch, every shudder, every hissed breath; when you can bear to meet his eyes, he's smiling, his eyes alight.
You should feel exposed, naked, bizarre; it's almost clinical, scientific, what he's doing.
But you feel... important. Cherished. He slides a finger inside you, notes your reaction, adds another one... searching, pressing. He kisses your temple, shifts his hand a little... and ohmigodohmigodohmigod...
Normally, you want to punch Logan when he looks this smug, but right now, it's a little bit endearing.
And you'd forgive him anything when research becomes practice, slippery fingers working you like a mind-reader, and his other hand moves inside and ohgod he's right back to that spot he found and he laughs when you break apart in his arms, your whole body arching so hard you nearly take his hand off at the wrist.
"Careful, I need these," he chuckles, and kisses your cheek.
And you lie there, staring, panting, and hope that this feeling of worship is going to wear off.
--------------------------------------------------
"That's the beautiful thing about the process," Lilly sighs happily, climbing back on the bed. "Side-effects."
You can't think yet, and it takes you a minute to realize what she means... but she's on top of him by then, and Logan's pulled you to his side, your head comfortably pillowed between his chest and his arm, and you're strung-out and drowsy and warm and sated and you don't even really mind the bouncing and you can't really manage to care that they're having sex, like, right in front of you.
But you open your eyes, after a while, and watch; Lilly's beautiful, pale and swollen and ripe. She's a flawless white goddess, curse words streaming from her mouth in an unending stream, and you think maybe you just understood something about Lilly.
Logan's hand is in your hair, making slow circles against your scalp with his fingers, and you like the sticky warmth of his skin against yours; it's easy to let your eyes flutter closed again.
You wake up, and Lilly's laughing.
"God, Logan, you're the one that killed her."
--------------------------------------------------
Logan kisses his way down your stomach, and you're sleepy and fuzzed-out and still tipsy and Lilly's wrapped herself around you, her head tucked beneath your chin, and it takes you a minute to realize where he's going, what he's about to do.
And then his mouth is on you, and you're melting into the mattress, Lilly whispering in your ear that she told you it was worth it, but you're pretty sure she's not there because your entire world has relocated to Logan's lips and tongue and teeth and you're positive it's an improvement.
He lets you beg him, and his chuckles against your skin feel almost as good as everything else he's done, and you wonder how you'll ever look at him again, ever watch him chew on his pencil in Geometry without remembering that he can do this, ever watch him drum his fingers across a table without thinking of how you begged him to use them.
Soft and slow isn't cutting it anymore and greed pounds behind your eyes like a headache and just before you start cussing him out he gives you what you want, his fingers rough and sure and then brutal when you plead for it and his mouth moves faster and harder and someone screams his name and it's you, your fingers tangled in his hair and your whispers of don'tstopohgoddon'tstop dying on your lips.
Logan raises his head, and he's all smug again and it's so fucking sexy you want to kiss him until you both die from it.
--------------------------------------------------
You fell asleep on one side of his chest and Lilly fell asleep on the other, and when you wake up, you and she are still holding hands.
She's awake and Logan's not; there's a satisfied smile across her lips, and she bats her eyelashes at you.
"So," you whisper, "What was your secret?"
"Doesn't matter," she laughs softly. "I've got a better one now."
--------------------------------------------------
Lilly pulls you close in the limo, laying her head on your shoulder.
"Are you mad at me?" you ask.
"Hell, no, Veronica," she laughs into your shoulder. "It's fate."
"What do you mean?"
"Your life was totally meant to change today," she says grandly. "You'll see."
--------------------------------------------------
You can't decide if Duncan can tell or not.
You feel like it's branded into your skin, written across your forehead; you run into him in the hallway on the way to brush your teeth, and you blush so hard you think your toes are red.
But he won't look at you anyway, just like yesterday and the day before and days and days before that... although he turns around after he passes you, and you feel his eyes on your back.
Part of you hopes he can see the scratch-marks Logan left, and part of you is mortified by the exact same possibility.
A week later, you find out that he's asked Jake and Celeste to apply him at a private boarding school in Escondido, and you bite your swollen lip and wonder.
"Donut's on antidepressants," Lilly says, like that explains everything.
--------------------------------------------------
Logan won't have sex with you.
You're learning things about Logan, things you never expected. For all his smartass comments and feigned apathy, he's kind of a romantic, way more than Lilly, who makes fun of him for it.
You watch him and Lilly, and can't help but laugh a little; she's so the boy, he's so the girl.
What that makes you, you're not exactly sure.
And Logan cares about your virginity, maybe even more than you do; it's getting a little ridiculous.
You're not learning that much about Lilly, except that Lilly naked is basically the same as Lilly clothed, and maybe that's enough to have learned about Lilly.
And Lilly's a little annoyed at Logan's refusals; you've picked that up. She's been shockingly unjealous throughout all this, whatever the hell 'all this' is turning into, but that's one area where her eyes narrow and her nostrils flare.
You think you get it; Logan's unwillingness to go there means there's something special about you, something he values, something you have and Lilly doesn't.
Or at least, you think that's how Lilly sees it. You suspect that Logan just wants your first time to be a little more Harlequin Romance and a little less Penthouse Forum.
Which you read, now; Lilly has dozens of magazines like that, has always had them and you never knew. She shows them to you now, wants you to read them. You're starting to think you're her project.
And if you're her project, then Logan's her crafting equipment... and on this one point, he's not being cooperative.
You want Logan, sometimes desperately, but you're afraid; when Lilly gets what she wants, boredom follows, and the only reason you're allowed in between them is because Lilly isn't bored with it yet.
Duncan's gone, and you're not sure you can handle losing all three of them.
--------------------------------------------------
You're pretty sure that Lilly's seeing other people, pretty sure that you're her bargaining chip; Logan can hardly get jealous, the situation being what it is.
Mom seems bizarrely relieved that Duncan's gone off to boarding school; she watches you a lot, asks you how you feel about it.
You can't tell her that Duncan isn't your primary problem anymore.
You can admit, now, that you have a crush on Logan. You're not sure you could have possibly helped it. What keeps you up at night is the fear that it will get worse -- that you'll fall in love with him. If that happens, you'll lose Lilly and you'll lose him five seconds later... you don't have any illusions about that.
And sometimes, when you're wrapped in his arms and he's whispering in your ear and he's making everything inside you shatter until the only word you remember is his name, you feel like you're on a knife's edge, biting your lip to keep from saying things you shouldn't.
He belongs to Lilly, and so do you.
--------------------------------------------------
Lilly's right -- you're changing.
Part of it, you think, is the absence of Duncan. The girl you wanted to be for him seems very far away now, and there's so much she didn't know.
Part of it, you know, is Logan. He adores it when you sass him back, and you love being his worthy adversary; you've always had a sarcastic streak, but it's turning into a sarcastic superhighway, fed by his smiles of delight.
You've never competed with Lilly before, never tried; you loved Duncan, but it's no coincidence that the first boy you successfully dated was the only one that was truly off-limits for Lilly.
You wear a little more makeup, dress a little more daring, do different things with your hair. Sometimes, when the two of you walk down the hall, you're the one people are looking at.
Sometimes, you're the one that Logan's looking at.
Which is okay, as long as Lilly doesn't notice.
--------------------------------------------------
Guys at school have started paying a lot more attention to you. It worries you. Some days Lilly acts like you're her puppy that she's taught a marvelous trick, and some days she's mad at you and you can't tell why.
And it bothers Logan. He's quiet about it; there's not really anything he can say. But you've seen him sort of seething, casting glares beneath his eyelids at whatever guy's maneuvered himself onto the lunch table beside you.
Today, it's Dick Casablancas, and he's pressed himself so close to you that you can tell which brand of Axe he uses and is asking you all casual-like if you like surfing, and Logan's looking at you without looking at you, little flashing glances while he mostly stares into his Kung Pao Chicken.
And you tell Dick Casablancas that you love surfing, that your boyfriend who goes to St. Michael's takes you, like, every weekend, and why did he ask?
And Dick's smile drops and he makes some excuse to go to another table and when you turn back to your fried rice, Logan's staring at you like he asked you to bring him the moon and two days later, you showed up at his house with it.
Lilly's staring at you too, so you shrug and say "What? Like I want to surf with Dick when I could be with you guys."
And Logan smiles a little, just a flash, and digs his chopsticks in.
--------------------------------------------------
Duncan's won all the awards that Duncan's expected to win, so Lilly has to go to Escondido on Friday with Jake and Celeste to watch Duncan stand on stage and accept lots of paper.
Logan's a little hurt that he wasn't invited, which Lilly tells him is so lame because it's going to be the most boring evening ever and that you and he should go out and do something fabulous.
So Logan takes you out on father's yacht to Catalina Island.
It's the perfect day... you can't watch his hands on the wheel without thinking about his hands on other places, and he lets you steer for a while while he stands behind you, pressing kisses on the back of your neck, and he tastes like sea salt and champagne, and it's nice, being like this, out in the open and in the sunshine where everyone can see you.
You've gotten used to Lilly's room, Logan's room, Logan's poolhouse, ceilings and walls, used to the way you all look by artfully interior-decorated lightscapes, used to air-conditioning chilling the sweat off your bodies as you lay together. You're used to denials and eggshell-walking, careful planning, concerned looks.
It's easier, being alone with him, and you feel horrible for thinking that. Lilly's your best friend; she's everything.
Logan takes you to dinner on the island, tuna steaks and laughter by candlelight, and afterwards you're staring out at Avalon Bay with his arms around you from behind and his chin on your shoulder.
You think this may be the happiest you've ever been, one of those moments you'll freeze and save to pull out when you're older, a perfect moment.
And then he tells you that both his parents and yours think that the two of you are in Escondido with the Kanes and won't be back until tomorrow.
And you freeze in his arms, tallying up the day... the perfect boat ride, the perfect island, the perfect dinner, the perfect stroll.
And you realize: Harlequin Romance.
"Who told them that?" you ask, and your voice is shaking a little.
"Lilly called them up and asked if we could come," he says, but his voice is a little on edge from hearing yours.
And you know it, now.
Lilly's set you up.
"Let me guess," you say, and now your voice is shaking a lot. "There's a hotel room here on the island, already rented, with candles and rose petals or something?"
He sighs, and his arms tighten around you; you think he's afraid you're about to run, and he's right to be afraid.
"Who rented the room?" you ask.
"I did."
"And whose idea was it?"
He sighs again. "Lilly's."
Everything is the same: the warmth of his arms around you, the sound of his voice that makes you weak-kneed, the gorgeous view, the wind off the water, the lights in the distance.
Nothing is the same.
"Thank you, Logan," you say evenly, firmly, and you're terribly impressed with the way you sound, all rational and logical and calm. "I appreciate what you tried to do."
"But I should take you home now," he whispers against your hair.
"Yes, please."
--------------------------------------------------
You don't laugh and talk and kiss on the ride home; he drives the boat, and you sit on the white leather couch in the back, hugging your sweater around you and staring out at the sea.
You feel his eyes on you, but you don't turn around.
He ties up the yacht, and his hands are still beautiful, still bring back a hundred memories.
So you look at your shoes, instead.
"I could drive you home," he says, and there's a desperation in his eyes that burns in your throat.
And part of you, most of you even, wants him to untie the boat, drive back across the water, carry you into that hotel room, do exactly what Lilly wants and you want and he wants. You know every inch of his skin, and he knows yours; if you want a magical first time, one that lives up to the hype, one that trumps the other girls you know, whose stories are all about drunken parties and backseats and pain and boys who never called, this is your evening and your chance.
But Lilly's right -- you've changed.
And you think you'd rather have honesty than magic.
So you kiss his cheek, and you call a cab, and you don't turn around as you walk towards it, not even when you hear his breath hitch and you're pretty sure he's crying.
There's nothing to say, nothing to do.
He belongs to Lilly.
And you... maybe you don't anymore.
--------------------------------------------------
You sign on to be a camp counselor in Huntington Beach, and you're gone less than a day after school lets out.
Lilly sends you one letter, and you don't answer it, and there aren't any more after that.
Logan doesn't send you anything.
--------------------------------------------------
A few days before school starts back, your dad busts some PCH'ers for shoplifting at the Sac-n-Pac. He takes care of it at the scene, more worried about the possible fate of the kid behind the counter than adding another count to some already hefty records.
The kid, he tells you over burgers at In-and-Out (your mother's having another one of her "headaches"), is named Wallace Fennel. He's new in town, single mom, having a tough time of it. Your dad asks if you'll take him to school with you, show him the ropes, show him around.
You end up being glad you agreed; Wallace is wide-eyed at the way kids turn from you in the hall, the snickers and whispers. You explain that it's not him, it's you; you pissed off the Queen of Neptune High.
You sit alone with Wallace at a lunch table, trying to ignore the teasing and catcalling.
You like Wallace; he's so low-maintenance he constantly shocks you, so easy to be with he makes you nervous.
It's your junior year, which, thank God, means most of your classes are AP now, Logan-and-Lilly-free. You walk past the Pep Squad signup sheet, shaking your head.
Lilly's been ignoring you, but two days into the school year, she pulls up next to you in the parking lot in the SUV she used to have to share with Duncan.
"Hey Ronnie," she catcalls. "Hey, we've decided that we'd rather surf than study today, you wanna come with?"
You ignore her, keep your head down, keep walking.
"Logan will promise to take his shirt off. Does that sweeten the pot?"
Laughter from the backseat. You can see Logan, sitting shotgun, his jaw clenched.
"C'mon, Logan, flex," Lilly teases. "You know how she loves it."
Logan stares out the window, and Lilly sighs.
"Too bad," she smiles, and bats her eyelashes at you. "You used to be fun."
--------------------------------------------------
"Easy, Lilly," says a voice behind you. "You oughta play a little nicer with your old toys."
It's Weevil, the leader of the PCH'ers, and you have no idea why he's standing up for you, or why his eyes are flashing, but you know a lot more now than you did last year, and you think you can guess.
You'll know, later, once you've seen the tattoo.
You're grateful to Weevil, and he's pretty nice to you after that -- he never explains why, but he seems to think you have something in common, and you wonder sometimes just how much he knows about last year.
So when his grandmother gets accused of stealing from the Echolls, you're happy to help with your Dad's investigation. It turns out Weevil's cousin was taking Lilly out on Logan's dime, which sounds just about right to you.
You could say that you're a little bitter.
Weevil's even more bitter than you are.
He watches your back, after that, and that's not the only thing that changes.
You get a new reputation. It doesn't overwrite the one Lilly's spreading, unfortunately... but around Neptune High, you're getting known as the girl who can find people, fix things.
You find people, you fix things, and you try to stay the hell away from Logan Echolls. Rumor has it that you're obsessed with him, tried to seduce him, tried unsuccessfully to steal him from Lilly, and you try not to feed the flames.
As for Logan, well, Logan's getting... quieter, and that's the one thing Logan's never been before; Logan doesn't get quiet, he gets angry and mouthy and sarcastic and aggressive.
Logan seems broken.
Which, you suppose, is what happens to old toys.
--------------------------------------------------
You're really not sure why your mom insists on making sweet potato casserole every Thanksgiving -- nobody likes it but Backup.
But it's why you're here at the gas station, staring at the candy aisle, wondering why your mother thought they'd have marshmallows, and if you could possibly use circus peanuts instead.
"Hey," Duncan Kane says.
You look up; he's holding a box of cocoa, and you almost laugh, because apparently Celeste is as prone to forgetting crucial meal ingredients as Lianne is. The Kanes give all the help the day off on Thanksgiving; it's a Thing.
"Hey," you reply, and try on a smile. "You didn't happen to see marshmallows, did you?"
"They're over by the food. The, y'know, boxes of mac-n-cheese and stuff."
"Thanks."
And you think that'll be it, but he follows you down the aisle, and you've just stooped to pluck out the marshmallows -- one bag left, thank God -- when he says it.
"So... you figured it out, huh?"
You blink. "Figured what out?"
"You stopped hanging out with Lilly. You must have figured it out." Duncan scuffs his foot on the linoleum, looks away. "I thought... I thought maybe I knew what was going on, but I wasn't sure and I didn't... I was angry, really angry, and I should have warned you. I'm sorry."
"Warned me about what?"
"Well, a lot of stuff, I guess." He smiles, sheepishly. "But mostly, y'know, the whole we're-related thing."
You blink, and his face falls. "Oh, God. You still don't know. I thought..."
"Know what, Duncan?"
He leans towards you, lowers his voice. "Veronica... you're our half-sister. Mine and Lilly's. It's why I broke up with you."
And you laugh, because that's the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard. "Is that some crap that Lilly told you? Duncan, that's not why she hates me."
He sighs. "Mom told me. My dad and your mom. Seriously. Look into it. I did. They dated in high school, and..."
"That's why you dumped me? Why you left?"
"I couldn't... I couldn't be with you after that. Mom said I couldn't tell you, that you'd sue, that..." Duncan sighs. "And I was just gonna... end it, y'know? But when Lilly found out... she was all over you. I couldn't stand it, couldn't watch it."
And you know he's wrong, but that's a horrible thing for him to have gone through, and such Celeste bullshit to pull that your heart goes out to him. So you put your hand on his arm, and you tell him you're sorry.
"My new school... I like it," he smiles. "It's easier... to be myself, y'know? Without Lilly."
You smile, and he smiles, and you pay for your marshmallows and he pays for his cocoa, and you watch him drive off.
And two weeks later, when the paternity results come back exactly like you knew they would, you mail Duncan a copy and hope it gives him some peace of mind.
You e-mail each other, after that. Mostly silly forwards, but it's contact. Sometimes, he says that he's worried about Logan. Occasionally, you can tell that he'd like to try again, but you pretend not to notice.
It wouldn't be fair.
Guys still ask you out; Troy Vandergriff, before he disappears, the cute deputy in your dad's office.
But there's always something wrong with them. They're too short, have too many muscles, their hair's too blonde or too red or too black, their car isn't yellow enough and they don't have puka shell necklaces.
Not that you're pining for anybody.
--------------------------------------------------
Slowly but surely, your social circle is expanding.
Meg Manning's first, after the whole Purity Test debacle, which is how you get Cindy MacKenzie, and it expands outwards; from Wallace come the basketball players, from Meg the theatre people, from Mac the computer geeks. Your boy Weevil brings in the auto shop; good old Corky, who's always loved you, brings in the art stoners.
Before you know it, you are possibly more popular than Lilly, pure-numbers-wise. She still rules the 09'ers, of course.
And you start to hear a different version of the rumor; that you, Veronica Mars, unofficial patron of Neptune High's underclass, through no fault of your own stole the heart of Lilly's little rich-boy lapdog.
He stares at you, they say, when he thinks you're not looking. He punched a wall in P.E. when he found out Troy had asked you out. They claim he stopped Dick Casablancas from slashing your tires, broke into your locker and took a bunch of fake ID's out after he saw some kid plant them there.
People in your new world hate Lilly Kane on principle, and they love their story too much to let it go just because you say it's not true.
So you take everything they say about Logan with a huge grain of salt.
--------------------------------------------------
One night, you open your door, and Logan Echolls is there.
He looks utterly miserable, his coat wrapped around him. You invite him in; he shoots faint smiles at your Mom and Dad on the way back to your room.
He hands you a DVD, one that he's burned. You start to head for the player in the living room; he shakes his head emphatically and points to your laptop.
A moment after you start the video, you see why.
There's a camera in Logan's poolhouse.
And you watch yourself, him, Lilly, laying on the bed and doing shots.
Logan skips a chapter, and you see what he wanted you to see.
You're on top of him, kissing him, and Lilly's laying on her back, bored, staring up at the ceiling fan. She notices something, traces a line with her eyes, opens the bookcase, smiles.
You look up at her just as she's shut it.
"Perfect," Lilly says as she jumps on the bed.
You stop the video; you need a minute, need some time for all the pieces to fall into place, the million-and-a-half-reasons that this makes sense.
"She was fucking my Dad," Logan whispers, which is, of course, the piece that explains everything.
"How many copies of this are there?" you ask, and Logan ejects the DVD from your drive, snaps it in half.
"None, now," he replies. "The original is up in smoke. Along with all the others in the same genre."
He does a little up-in-smoke hand gesture, and it warms your heart; it's been a while since you've seen any trace of the old Logan.
"What do you want me to do?" you ask.
He sits on the edge of your bed, steeples his hands.
"Are you happy?" he asks, after a minute. "You seem happier, now. Without us."
"It's... easier," you say, carefully.
He smiles a little. "That day at the car wash. The letter I was writing, the one I wadded up. I was telling Lilly it was over. For good, forever. Y'know."
Why is he telling you this? "Well... I guess you changed your mind?"
He searches your face, and you blush, a little; he's examined you like this before, a long time ago. Until a few minutes ago, you had DVD evidence.
"Yeah," he finally says, and he looks disappointed. "Yeah, I guess I did."
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Two weeks later, you're watching Lilly and Aaron Echolls have sex on CNN.
Well, not sex; they've edited it down to PG-13 for broadcast, but that's not making Duncan feel any better, if your inbox is any indication.
You'd suspected Logan, but your Dad tells you it was Lynn; she's been leaking damaging materials to the tabloids, the news media. This is her final volley; in a weekend, Lynn takes Logan out of school, files for divorce, and moves them both to L.A. on the proceeds of a book deal with so many digits you just blinked at them.
Monday, Lilly struts into school like she always does -- sex is part of who Lilly is, written on her skin. Fucking a huge movie star should change nothing.
But the huge movie star was her boyfriend's father, and at lunch period, you see Lilly trying to scrub the word "SKANK" off her locker.
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Lilly gives bad press; she gets in the camera's face, grants interviews to anyone, says things that you're sure are turning Celeste gray faster than her hairdresser can keep up. The broadcasters are comparing her to Courtney Love; Kane Software stock is going down, Aaron Echolls' latest movie has had its release date pushed back. Her parents take away her car, change their number, take away her cellphone, and finally send her to a boarding school in the south of England.
All three networks do a movie. Your character appears in only one of them, the one on ABC, the one sanctioned by Lynn.
You don't watch it, but Meg does, and she tapes it. She says you really, really need to see it, but you don't make it past the first five minutes; Lilly was a lot of things, but she wasn't the girl on your screen, grasping and slutty and vapid.
Logan was many things too, but a saint was never one of them.
You wouldn't have the kind of dreams you do about a saint.
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Lilly turns eighteen, and all hell breaks loose.
She's out of the boarding school and in Hollywood before the week is out, riding the tail end of the nation's obsession with heiresses behaving badly.
She's on your TV, in every magazine. She's at parties with Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan, she's in a catfight with Jessica Simpson, she's on another grainy sex tape, this time with Tommy Lee, and that leads to her hitting Tara Reid over the head with a champagne bottle and getting arrested.
She's in a bunch of movies where she shows her breasts and is killed in the first hour, and every time you see Jake Kane, he looks like he has a headache.
For Duncan, however, the pressure's off; he'll never be in office anywhere, now. He tells you he's thinking of majoring in creative writing.
Lynn gets a breast reduction and a makeunder and a gritty film role as a Vegas madam and her first Oscar.
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You're valedictorian, and so is Duncan. You went to his graduation, and he went to yours. It's not a thing, though.
"Yale, baby!" your father crows at every opportunity. It's almost as annoying as "Who's Your Daddy?", but not quite.
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One night, when your Mom's been in the bottle too long, she asks if you're a lesbian.
You think you cringe with every molecule of your body, wondering what's on CNN now, what Lilly's told Access Hollywood.
"You don't date, baby," your Mom slurs, leaning against the counter. "You can tell me."
You're 200% positive that you can't.
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Your new roommate thinks it's inutterably amazing -- her words -- that you knew Lilly Kane. You sort of wish she'd shut up, but she's nice enough, even if she does insist on telling you each and every Lilly tidbit, from oh-my-god-she-lost-ten-pounds-she's-on-cocaine to oh-my-god-she-gained-ten-pounds-she's-pregnant.
Lilly gets married, Lilly gets divorced, Lilly is saved by Scientology, Lilly goes into rehab, Lilly comes out of rehab, Lilly says Scientology is crap, Lilly might put out an album.
And that's just your first semester.
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Duncan's the one who figures out that you and Logan are going to college in the same state.
You have coffee; he has a girlfriend, and you still can't look at his hands without blushing.
Your past is electronic now, blue lines on Gmail. Duncan sends you stories to proofread and critique (love the boy, but his spelling sucks), Wallace is obsessed with his new videophone and sends you endless snippets of his Nelly-like existence. Meg sends you pictures of her twins, Mac sends you petitions from MoveOn.org, Weevil sends you love from your Dad and you still can't believe he's a Deputy now.
And Logan sends you letters that make you ache, hilariously described anecdotes of the commonplace, send-ups of his professors that make you snort Skist out of your nose. Thankfully, he doesn't mention the girlfriend much.
You date, semi-successfully, and lose your virginity on a futon to a lit major who turns out to have five other girlfriends and issues with premature ejaculation. There are other guys, after him.
But they don't have a process, and they take it personally when you're constantly checking your cellphone for new e-mail.
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Diane Sawyer's doing a big interview with Lilly. They've been running commercials for it for weeks.
You weren't going to watch it, but you wake up from a nap to find your roommate has it on.
Lilly sucks you in just like she always did.
She looks older, and not just older than you remember; older than you. She's had some plastic surgery; her nose is all different, her lips bigger, and something's happened in the cheekbone area, too. Her hair is extremely blonde, shorter and larger, wild around her head in artful layers.
"Can you pinpoint the moment your life changed?" Diane asks in that hurry-up-and-cry tone of voice.
Lilly thinks about this a moment, pursing her large new lips, and you don't know why you're shocked when she names that day at the car wash.
"That was, like, the last day," Lilly says thoughtfully, "That everything was perfect. I think maybe I peaked, right?"
She ashes her cigarette, crosses her legs.
"Sometimes I wish I could just be frozen in that moment, y'know? Like, forever. And I knew it, too. That something big and huge was going to happen. I told my best friend..."
Here Lilly gets a little choked up, and you can't blink, can't move.
"Anyway," Lilly says, breaking the spell. "That's it. That's when."
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You wake up and someone's banging on the door of your apartment, and when you open it it's Logan and he's crying.
Lilly is dead, overdosed on heroin in the bathroom of a nightclub in downtown L.A.
You pull Logan inside and feed him Tylenol P.M. and put him in your bed when he passes out and don't let yourself cry until later, alone with your laptop, looking at the photos on the Smoking Gun website.
Lilly is wasted away and bony, Lilly has blooming track marks, Lilly has three-inch roots and collagen lips gone horribly wrong and she's staring right at you with a long strand of toilet paper in her hands.
Lilly always said she wanted to die young, gorgeous and fabulous.
This is none of the above.
You sleep in Logan's arms for the first time in seven years, his tears hot on the back of your neck.
You're not at all surprised when Duncan arrives in the morning, still arguing with Celeste on his cellphone as you open the door.
The three of you spend the next twenty-four hours in a daze, watching news footage until one of you gets angry and turns it off, staring blankly until one of you gets curious and turns it back on.
Logan smokes on your fire escape; it's bitterly cold, and you tell him to just smoke in the apartment for God's sake, but he won't, and he won't wear gloves or a coat either, and you and Duncan finally haul him inside and you slam the window closed and Duncan lights a cigarette for Logan and sticks it in his mouth, which ends the argument.
None of you realize how long you haven't eaten until Duncan's stomach makes a horrible rumbling noise. Logan half-laughs and disappears, returning thirty minutes later with pizza, a bottle of bourbon, and another carton of Lucky Strikes.
Later, when Duncan's passed out and you and Logan aren't that much more conscious, Logan turns to you, rubbing his thumb over the neck of the bourbon bottle.
"I stayed for you," he says unsteadily. "That's what I never told you. I stayed for you."
You have no idea what he's talking about, and cover him with the other end of the blanket you just put on Duncan.
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Duncan's credit card is everywhere. Plane tickets, rental cars, airport restaurants. He gets the three of you back to California, and drives you out of LAX with Logan half-drunk and smoking out the window.
Duncan books you all into one room; Logan attacks the mini-bar and passes out on one of the double beds. Duncan collapses on the other one not soon after, not even bothering to take off his shoes.
You peel the sheets back next to Logan, trying not to disturb him, and slip in between them.
You think, with a glance at the drunk, stubbly boy drooling on the pillow next to you, that you're finally in a hotel room with Logan Echolls, and you almost laugh.
Instead, you lay still and watch the ceiling, thinking about Lilly, thinking about that day. Her pep squad uniform, her pale curves, the taste of gloss and vodka when she kissed you... and how that's the day she wished she had died.
You try to imagine life without Lilly. Would you have stayed popular, stayed innocent, stayed soft-spoken and hesitant and a little naive? Gotten back together with Duncan? Been with Logan without the angst? Would you have even met Wallace, ever befriended Weevil, Mac, Meg?
It's too much to think about, too large, too huge, a little blasphemous.
You never quite managed to hate Lilly Kane. You think, in some ways, you still belong to her.
You think maybe you all do.