I did not create any of these characters. This takes place after season one, during the senior high school year. This is written under the pretenses that the crash did not happen, so some of the events are different. Read, review, and send love!
01
The game they played was disgusting. It made Veronica's life so hard, so unbelievably hard. She was lying, and it wasn't just her little white lies she normally told to get jobs done. No. She was lying to everyone. Duncan. Her father. Logan. God, Logan. She paused by her car, putting her hand on the roof of it as she slid the key into the door. She closed her eyes and slid her hand off of the car, reaching up to her light black jacket and clutching it closed just above her breasts, the chill of the night air making the skin exposed by her sheer camisole prickle. The small warmth was not comforting; not as comforting as the warmth in her vivid memory of Don's finger dragging lightly down her sternum only hours before.
A shudder of a breath brought her back to the present. It was pre-dawn, cold, and she was alone on the street in front of Don Lamb's house. December in Neptune was strange – it was still temperate enough during the day to get away with a hooded sweatshirt, but at night, when the marine layer swept in off of the coast, it could drop into the fifties. It wasn't the actual temperature that made her cold, though. It was that guilt washing over her. The drive home from his house was always the time where it actually hit her: how much of her day-to-day life was an act. It was stupid for her to even have her car this close to his house, but two of the houses in his neighborhood had just sold, and the other neighbors were away for Christmas vacation. He'd told her to park it there; he didn't like her having to walk two blocks to the beach parking lot. He couldn't watch her, couldn't see her leave safely, and after everything that had happened, he didn't like the idea of her just walking off into the night and being the last one to see her alive – especially because he wouldn't be able to even admit it.
He didn't have to say that last part to her for her to be able to put two and two together. If she left and someone grabbed her, her time line would stop sometime in the early evening, and eventually they'd trace it back to him. He couldn't afford that sort of publicity, nevermind the fact that she wasn't eighteen yet. She would be very soon, but even still, they'd trace events backward and it would all come out. All of that made it sound like he didn't care, and that wasn't true, but the timing was just wrong, and she was grown up enough to know that.
She turned the key counter-clockwise and glanced over her shoulder, biting on her lower lip. She could see the white gauzy curtain over the bay window flutter a little, and a dark form move from left to right. He was watching her; no doubt the shower was already running, steam billowing out of the half-opened door. She didn't see him exactly, but she knew that he was still there. She turned back around and climbed into the car, her eyes welling up with tears.
As she drove home, she cried her eyes out. She did it every time. She alternated between feeling untouchable because of the idea that she lead a completely double life, and feeling like a disgusting whore because of the boys that she was effectively juggling. Duncan, Logan, Leo, now Don? She didn't have a second to herself to sort out her feelings. It was always Lilly's case or a job or her dad or her mother or -
"FUCK!" she screamed. This was routine. Get to the second light outside of the subdivision and the yelling started. She had another mile before she'd be crying so hard that she'd need to pull over in the parking lot of the small gas station. It was the only gas station that was closed at midnight and didn't reopen until five in the morning, so she always left right before then. Nobody ever saw her. She was a ghost.
She got home around five-thirty in the morning. Sunrise officially began at quarter til five, so by the time she got home it was already bright enough outside for her to see, and to be seen. She walked briskly to her apartment, shoulders hunched and head down, arms folded beneath her breasts as tightly as she could. Her head was pounding from dehydration and sinus pressure now, from crying and from sex. Her physical and emotional rollercoaster was summed up perfectly by her nightly activities. Everything was fine, and then everything was so good, and then everything came crashing down. Then, she'd go to sleep and wake up and do it all over again.
Christmas break was good for a lot of different reasons, and one of which meant that she could sleep in until noon. Her father was out of town for a few days chasing down a bail jumper, so it was just she and Backup. Now that Lilly's murder had been solved, finally, she had a new bag of tricks to sort out. She'd broken up with Duncan because she hated the idea of causing Meg the continued heartache of having to raise a child without the father. She spent time with Logan often, but the way he looked at her made her want to scream. It was in his eyes, that sort of dependency that she couldn't handle. He cared so much that sometimes she thought it physically hurt him. It wasn't exactly something she could bring up, though.
She showered, and it was cold. The pipes had begun to act up again, and this morning she felt like she needed to punish herself. She brushed her teeth after, and then let the sink fill with water and stuck her head down into it. She screamed in the water, the sound strange and muffled and aquatic. When she straightened back up, she blotted her face with a towel and wrapped herself in her fuzzy moon and stars bathrobe. Veronica walked into the living room for a moment, just to see the Christmas tree lit up. The lights made her feel more innocent somehow, took her back to a time when she didn't worry so much about everything.
She didn't dream much these days. Her life had become such a blur of motion and sound and violence, that sleep was her only real release. There were a few instances where she would rent a car over a long weekend that way she wouldn't blow her cover, and then park it between the property lines of his neighbor's houses so everyone thought that whoever she was, she was a guest of the other person. He gave her a key to the padlock on the gate, but the back sliding glass door was always open. She'd disrobe and crawl into bed, since he usually worked late anyways. The feeling that Veronica felt when he would come in and try to get out of his uniform and shower without waking her up (even though he would undoubtedly every time) was indescribable. It was a sense of wholeness that she didn't feel with... anyone else.
She'd always been independent, but this gave her a different sort of sensation. She didn't fool herself into thinking he loved her, or even that he cared about her. The way they played the hate game was too real, even to her. The sexual tension was just a side effect, but the truth of the matter was that she thought he only enjoyed the affair because of the hate. If he knew Veronica cared at all, she'd be thrown away with little more than a crass parting word, and she could bet that he'd step the cruelty up in public to punish her.
Veronica awoke around ten AM to the sound of her phone ringing, and slapped at the cord to her alarm clock a few times to pull it off of the shelf before the realized it. She grabbed her cell from the pile of blankets it had become buried in, only to widen her tired, road-mapped eyes in surprise as she saw the caller ID reading 'Peking Takeout'. That was Don's number, or at least, how she'd entered it into her phone. She didn't want anyone picking it up and just thumbing through her number list to see 'Don Lamb' right out there, not that anyone should be going through her phone in the first place – but she knew how tricky people were. She was one of those types of people. Peking Takeout wasn't even a real place, but nobody knew that, either. There were so many different Chinese restaurants just in Neptune alone that the only way anyone would figure it out was if they dialed it. Veronica was pretty smart about deleting messages and calls out of the log, but she was careful of where she left her phone, all the same.
She realized she was still holding this white ringing thing in her hand while she stared at it, half-awake, and snapped back into reality. She held it up to her ear, doing nothing to mask the exhaustion in her voice.
"Yes?" she asked.
There was a little chuckle at the other end of the line. "Please, please do not tell me you just woke up," Don said.
Veronica smiled and rolled over, tugging the blanket over her shoulder to ward off the cold. "I'd still be asleep if I had the good sense to turn my phone off for once in my life," she countered. She always felt a little nervous when he called, since he did so very rarely during the day. She was waiting for him to break it off, and even though she played the good role of being very secure, the act did nothing for her nerves those initial ten seconds of conversation. This time, she was lucky, and she was so tired that she couldn't get nervous.
"Yes, but then what would you do when someone needed you to break into a random house or office building and steal information?" he asked, that playful tone in his voice. It was still strange to hear the same things he'd say to her in front of others, only without the malicious intent behind them. If it was still there, he was a better actor than she gave him credit for.
"Have you forgotten? High school? Winter vacation? Come on, it's this and then nothing until Spring Break in March. Could you cut me a little slack here?" she whined. On the floor beside the bed, Backup yawned very loudly and rolled over to reposition himself.
From inside his personal vehicle, a brand new black 2005 Dodge Ram SRT-10, Don rolled his eyes so loudly that the person in the lane next to him at the light could have heard him. Of course he hadn't forgotten she was in high school. He tried, very hard in fact, but it was very difficult when he came home during the week and she wasn't curled up in the bed, more on his side than hers. That's how he knew she was actually asleep. When she was faking, she was usually on the other side of the bed – he would bet any amount of money she did not know that he knew these small facts, because he was quiet when he came in despite the knowledge. It just tickled him to know that he had one up on her at something.
"Nnnnoooo," he trailed, the slightest hint of irritation to his voice. This wasn't something he liked talking about, even if it was in jest. "Look. You know I don't like the reminder, and if I pick a fight that will completely defeat the purpose for my call," he informed her sternly. He wasn't that much older than her – ten years wasn't so bad. Kendall Casablancas was twenty years younger than her husband... although, she was the typical trophy-type gold-digger, so he didn't like the fact that that was how he tried to justify this.
"Okay, fine, fine," she said, shifting around in bed. "So what's the story, morning glory?"
"Well, it's Friday," he began. The light had turned green and was driving again, passenger window half cracked so that he didn't heat himself out of the truck. The temperature was low that day, and he'd found the perfect balance between the heater setting and a nice, small breeze so that he didn't melt – or freeze.
"And I was thinking that since your dad won't be home for a few more days, you can get up and we can go somewhere for the weekend. I'm out early today – the town is dead. Everyone is gone, and there is nothing at that office that I need to do that would have taken me all day to accomplish. I went in after you left this morning and knocked out the paperwork I needed to."
He paused. Why was he even doing this, again? When had it actually become something that he looked forward to? Don knew that he was attractive, and Neptune was not short of beautiful, privileged women who could appreciate his authority in more ways than one, so why was it that he was sneaking off into the dark with Veronica?
"Ooh," she replied. It already sounded like a negative response, based on her tone, but he let her finish. "I had four hours of sleep, and when I decide to actually get out of bed, I sort of told Trina that I'd dig up some dirt on a guy that's been trying to get her out on a date. After her last boyfriend turned out to be a tool, I kind of feel obligated to help any way I can," she admitted.
Right – that's why. The girl was smart, and tenacious. Sometimes she did stupid things, but she was the most intelligent person he'd ever met, shy of her father. He made something that sounded akin to a grunt, and flicked on his blinker to turn right, guiding the large truck along. "If you must," he said, a wistful sigh punctuating his disappointment.
Veronica couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not. "Besides," she said, a logical tone to her voice, "isn't it about fifteen or so hours too early for me to be coming around there?"
"Oh, but you declined before you even heard the full offer," he teased.
"Well, tell me and I'll see if it's worth my while to get up right now," Veronica said slyly.
"You can have your Christmas present early," he offered.
Veronica mock-gasped. "Why, Mister Sheriff, are you trying to bribe me? You know I'm just happy to be on the right side of the interrogation glass," she teased back. In truth, she hadn't even expected him to get her anything. "You didn't get me a certain... item that can be found in a box, one that YouTube made famous, did you?"
He laughed out loud at that notion. It had been such an unexpected reference he nearly dropped his phone as he pulled into his driveway. "But you've already had that," he reminded her. "I'm serious. Bring your laptop, you can just do whatever you need to over here, and then we can get on with the weekend. If you're tired, you can take a nap."
Veronica had to consider this. She had been planning to go over to the hotel to see Logan and Trina. Now that she'd found out who her birth mother was, she – well, she wasn't any less melodramatic or cruel, but she certainly had taken the focus off of Logan. She also didn't like Kendall, which endeared her to Veronica somewhat. And she wanted to see Logan, honestly, because she had missed the way he smiled so sweetly at her. The boy who Veronica was convinced couldn't do a genuine thing in his life, and he actually made her stomach get butterflies with that smile. Of course, Lamb had found a way to make her pulse race and heart thunder so roughly in her chest that she was short of breath with a smile, too, but it was a different type of smile.
Yeah, she shouldn't have let her mind go there, but now it had. "I'll have you know that the prospect of a present makes me curious, but it's not the reason I'm agreeing to do this," she warned him. "It's because the idea of you with nothing but a festive ribbon on has somehow made the last chance I had of going back to sleep suddenly slip away. I'll see you in an hour," she said.
"Oh, before I forget – there's a garage door opener in your center console. The guys came by and fixed it while I was at work. You can park your car in there if you get tired of walking two blocks to retrieve it," he offered.
"Nn – no can do, sheriff," she said, sitting up. Now that she was coherent, her mind was back to its usual 150MPH competition rally race through the wilderness of her brain. "There's no way I can get in and out of that quietly. But," she added, before he cut her off, "it will be useful in the unlikely event of an emergency – or you forget to leave the back door unlocked."
"Suit yourself," he said. He hadn't actually even been thinking beyond the whole, not walking so far to her car aspect of the benefits of using the garage, but she made a good point. He didn't want to admit it, so he wouldn't, and he'd just tell her to do whatever, knowing she would anyways. It felt better if he told her, though, because then it was like he had some say in the matter, which he knew he absolutely did not.
"See you in an hour," she said, hanging up before he could get any further with his well-planned ideas. She set the phone down and flopped back against her pillows, trying to collect her thoughts. She was suspicious, of course, because he never called her: during the day, during a week-day, and especially in the mornings; also because he never spent any sort of time with her aside from the usual roll in the hay and perhaps some cuddling before or after.
"What are you up to, Lamby-kins?" she asked, to nobody in particular, her bright blue eyes narrowed at her phone. She sat there for a few minutes, and when she began to nod off, she shook her head violently back and forth.
"Well, guess I'd better go get all beautiful," she muttered. She pushed off of the bed and headed for another dose of the ol' frozen ice-water shower. That ought to keep her invigorated long enough to get there, and maybe get through one session of show-and-tell.