Haven't posted here in a while, but here's a short future fic for your enjoyment. Logan and Veronica in the future with kids. Mostly fluffy. Thoughtful comments are always cherished.
-boobsnotbombs
It's like in 8th grade when he thought that one song by that one band was so profound. What was it called again?
'Absolutely' by Nine Days. Yeah, that was it. More commonly known as 'Story of a Girl.' And he felt so goddamn cool for knowing the real title of it, avoiding the trap of calling it by the lyrics of the chorus: This is the story of a girl / who cried a river and drowned the whole world.
When you're thirteen, every angst-ridden, whining song seems like an example of lyrical genius. At least it did to Logan. It never occurred to him that talking about girls crying rivers was cliché. No, not even the fact that there was an Nsync song called 'Cry Me a River" tipped him off.
Jesus, thirteen year olds are so goddamn dumb. They think the ugliest, simplest shit is beautiful. "Oh, look, safety pins in my shirt! I'm badass! Oh, look, I wrote in markers on my shoes! I'm badass! Oh, look, my bangs obscure my face! I'm badass!"
Fucking Scarlet and those fucking bangs. I mean, is that even comfortable? Can she see? Doesn't it kind of tickle? Itch?
Logan's daughter, thirteen years old with a fucking vengeance, has dark brown—almost black—hair that tents over her forehead and droops down to her nose. She looks like a sheep dog-George Harrison hybrid.
"I mean," Logan says aloud, finally bringing his thoughts public, "it's not like I'm suggesting she part her hair down the middle and wear pigtails a la Laura Ingalls. But that Yeti thing she has going on? I just don't get it. It's not attractive. And why does she wear such heavy black eyeliner if her eyes are just going to be concealed by the bangs anyway?"
"It's so that when she casually sweeps back her hair before talking to a guy—you know—like if he says her name to get her attention and she nonchalantly looks up from her book, probably the Bell Jar or the Virgin Suicides—she can look really intense and deep when they make eye contact. Like, 'Oo, I'm one of those intense girls who the dumb guy realizes he wants at the end of the movie,'" Veronica says, spooning some fresh whipped cream over a bowl of blackberries.
Logan had bought out the whole supply of berries at the farmer's market, knowing they were going out of season. It was kind of a September ritual: back to school for the kids, blackberries, cooler weather.
"Is that how you snared me?" Logan asks, dipping his finger in Veronica's bowl to gather up a dollop of whipped cream, slipping it into his mouth.
"You better believe it," Veronica says. "You were so easy. The intense, wounded girl gaze is like dumb boy crack."
"Well why are we letting our daughter leave the house looking like boy crack? That can't be good parenting. Aren't we, like, supposed to put our feet down or something? Ground her? I am not opposed to a chastity belt."
"Honey, you're turning into an old man. I do not approve," Veronica says.
"She just looks—"
"She looks fine," Veronica interrupts. "Just let her be. Besides, ridiculous is in style when you're in 8th grade. She's asserting her personality. Just be glad she's not bleaching her hair blonde and wearing short shorts that say juicy on the ass."
"Ugh, they still make those?" Logan asks.
Veronica laughs and puts her pointer finger over her lips, shushing Logan. "She's going to back in here in a minute. And you know how sensitive she is. If Scarlet gets the sense you don't like how she looks she'll lock herself into her room and cry for days."
She walks over to the counter and pours herself a cup of coffee, sprinkling some cinnamon on top before adding half-and-half and some brown sugar.
"I guess I just miss the days when she wanted to dress up as a pirate queen for the first day of school. I mean, wasn't that, like, yesterday?"
Logan settles into the chair on the kitchen table. Thirteen years old. Damn. Was Scarlet really that old? Was he even old enough to have a thirteen year old kid? God, it had been twenty-seven years since he, himself, was thirteen. That would've been, what, year 2000? So incredibly near and so incredibly far. Like yesterday and like an eternity ago all at once. All he did was turn around for a second—one measly second—and suddenly he was thirty-nine with four kids, complaining about how his thirteen year old daughter dressed for school. Could this be happening? Had he entered some time warp?
He can still see himself at that young age, gangly and tall with scruffy, floppy hair, still awkwardly hanging on to baby fat. Reading GQ because that's what men did, right? Too much bad cologne. White socks and skater shoes, though he didn't skate.
That was the year both Veronica and Lilly started wearing their hair down, as if ponytails were so last year, so childish, so elementary school. And Duncan and those frickin' oxfords he used to wear! He insisted they made him look sophisticated. He used to say, "What's wrong with these? They make me look sharp."
Veronica would shake her head and say, "No, they make you look like a math teacher." Duncan had finally stopped wearing the oxfords in an attempt to impress her. One summer they'd all gone to the movies together to see the first X-Men, and Logan noticed how Duncan had finally switched back to sneakers.
And no, it's not 2000 anymore. It's two thousand and – God, Logan doesn't even want to think about.
Okay, breakfast reverie over.
"Logan, how do I look?"
And that could only be his son Alec, who since learning to speak insisted on calling Logan by his name rather than 'Dad.' He also called his grandpa 'Keith.'
"Well, Logan? Come on. What do you think? Is it okay? I don't want to look like a complete asshat on the first day," Alec says.
Parental failure #861. All the kids have been swearing since they were two or three, often learning "damn it" and "shit" and "asshole" right alongside "ma-ma" and "ba-ba" and "nooooo."
Logan takes in the appearance of his only son. He's nine years old, going on fifty. He wears round, dark green, wire-rimmed glasses. Even though he's not even ten yet, Alec sports a Mohawk and has his hair sprayed purple (Veronica said no to letting him bleach then dye it permanently). He's got it gelled up, the hairs sticking every which way but right. Black jeans. Black shirt. Purple Chuck Taylors—to match the hair, of course. "Well, how do I look?" he asks again.
"You look purple," Logan says. At that, Alec smiles brightly, braces apparent, the most unselfconscious kid Logan has ever seen.
"Good, that's exactly what I was going for." He goes to the fridge and removes a carton of whole milk, drinking several gulps worth straight from the container. Doesn't matter. He's the only one in the family who drinks it.
"Barbarian," Veronica says, running her hand through Alec's hair, intentionally trying to flatten it. But the gel he used must be some serious stuff, because it barely budges.
"Hey, Mom?" Alec asks, taking a few more chugs of milk before returning it to the refrigerator.
"Hey, Alec?" she says.
"Can we have chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast? I think it might make the first day of school less depressing."
"Ha," a voice says, easily identifiable as coming from Scarlett. She enters the kitchen looking like a reincarnated 80s metal star. Shaggy dark hair. Thick eyeliner. A shirt with holes in it. Boots up to her knees. A plaid skirt leftover from when she still wore a uniform. God, she can still fit that thing? Barely. It's too fucking short. Maybe Logan wouldn't mind it so much if it weren't for the bangs from Hades.
"What's your problem?" Alec says to his sister.
"Like you aren't totally excited for the first day of school. You finished your summer reading list before school was even over last year. By the way, you look like a dildo."
"Scarlett!" Veronica says, choking on a blackberry. Logan tries to bury a laugh into his cup of coffee.
"What's a dildo?" asks Alec, looking only mildly curious. He's probably already given up on his dream of chocolate chip pancakes, moving on to fixing himself a slice of toast with peanut butter and banana on it.
"Nothing," says Veronica, looking sharply at Scarlett.
"I'm just curious," Logan says to his daughter Scarlett, "why Dildo? As opposed to, I don't know, Barney?"
"I feel like dildos are always purple," says Scarlett. She lets her backpack drop onto the floor and grabs some plain yogurt from the fridge, spooning several globs of it into the blender before adding some orange juice and some blackberries to mix, then a little bit of maple syrup. The girls survived on smoothies and smoothies alone. "Or some other obnoxious color like hot pink. What's up with that?"
"You know I'm just going to look up what a 'dildo' is on Google if you don't tell me," Alec says, his voice matter-of-fact.
"FML," says Veronica.
"I think we failed at this whole parenting thing, babe," Logan shrugs.
"On that note," Scarlett says, sweeping the bangs of death by her ear, "Gwyn is out of control. You know she kept me up all night with her stupid jumping and counting shit. Little weirdo."
Veronica sighs. "I should probably help her go get ready. And please don't talk about your sister that way."
Getting Gwyn ready for school seemed like a full time job some days, and Logan was secretly glad it was one of the responsibilities that seemed to have fallen to Veronica. Gwyn needed to have everything just so. She had to do twenty jumping jacks absolutely perfectly before she could put on her shirt. If she messed up once, she had to start over. When she brushed her hair, she had to do twenty strokes on either side, and if something made her lose count, she had a screaming fit.
This year they were sending her to a new school, deciding that The Boys and Girls Academy, where Alec was still going, was no longer a good fit. There, teachers sent Gwyn to the principal's office at least every other day. Once, the librarian had called her freak. This year, she'd be attending a place that was particularly focused on working with kids with mental health/behavioral issues or learning disabilities: OCD, ADHD, ADD, dyslexia, Asperger's—the works.
It wasn't Logan's first choice. He had wanted Gwyn to toughen it out. But it really was getting too hard. All the crying and the shouting—he couldn't take it. She needed to be someplace else, someplace where they knew how to help support her and take care of her needs.
"Logan, do I really look like a dildo?" Alec asks, putting down his iPhone on the kitchen counter, clearly having just looked up the word on Google Images.
"Yes," Scarlett says.
"Shut up. No one asked you, vagina breath." Alec seems very pleased with himself. He must've spent the better part of the last few days thinking up good insults for his older sister.
"Hey, hey," Logan says. "Enough of that. Peace, love, blah blah."
That's when little Nola comes waddling in, Logan and Veronica's youngest daughter. She's four years old and the only one to really have taken after Veronica physically, though they all seemed to have inherited her attitude. Nola, though, is all Veronica on the outside: blonde hair and blue-eyed, smaller than most kids her age. Button nose.
The only shoes she'll wear is these red cowboy boots that look ridiculous. For the first day of Pre-K, she's dressed herself in black overalls, no shirt underneath, and a cape.
"Scarlett?" Logan asks. "Can you help Nola find something else to wear?"
"Why can't you do it? What, 'cause I'm a girl I have to be the homemaker? Get real, Dad."
Get real. It used to be cute when she said that. When she was three and Logan was trying to get her to eat her broccoli. Get weal, Daddy she'd say.
"I've got to make lunches," Logan says.
"Daddy, do I have vagina breath?" asks Nola.
Scarlett looks like she's about to spit out some of her smoothie.
"No, sweetheart," says Logan, scooping Nola up and rubbing his nose against her nose, making her giggle. He used to call that an Eskimo kiss, until Scarlett told him when she was ten that that was racist, that he should instead call it a Native American kiss.
Kids.
One day, would Nola be thirteen, too—bad bangs and all? Impossible.
"I'll get her changed," begins Scarlett in her bargaining voice, "if you let me have my laptop back."
"No," Logan says, pointblank. She had to be kidding, right?
"It's been four months. This is so unfair."
"I said no," Logan repeats.
Veronica and he were pretty firm on this. No computer for six months. She could use them at school, sure, and use the family desktop supervised for homework, but that's it. Period.
How could she even ask for it back early after what she put them through?
Scarlett slams down her half-finished glass of smoothie on the table and runs out of the room, no doubt crying.
"Hormones," little Nola says, shaking her head.
Logan smiles, glad one of his daughters is still cute. "Why don't you run upstairs and put on the outfit Mommy and Daddy laid out for you last night?" Logan says.
"But I want to wear this," she says.
"Please?" Logan says.
Nola pouts her lip.
"Pretty please?" Logan tries again.
"Fine," she says, sliding off of his lap.
Alec is shaking his head. "Kids," he says.
Veronica comes down the stairs with Gwyn.
"Morning," Gwyn says, dark brown hair fixed into two French braids.
Logan smiles at his middle daughter. She was the most like him—difficult. Prone to tantrums and over emotionality, but she had her moments of real sweetness, too. She even loved the water like him. Neither Alec nor Scarlett wanted anything to do with surfing, but Gwyn loved it. It was one of the few things she could focus on without agonizing over her various counting rituals.
"I like your hair," Logan says. Gwyn's face lights up. She's so particular about it, and she loves when people make positive comments about it.
"You didn't say you liked my hair," says Alec.
"I think your hair is amazing," Logan says. "It's purple. I didn't say anything because does purple hair really need comment? Of course it's awesome."
"So I don't look like a dildo?" he asks.
Veronica rolls her eyes. "Just try to ignore Scarlett. You look nothing like a dildo."
But really, he kind of does, Logan thinks.
"Speaking of Scarlett," Veronica continues, "what happened? I saw her storm up the stairs, not that that's unusual. Alec, did you call her fungus face again? You know how sensitive she is about her freckles."
"She asked for her computer back," Alec says, somewhat innocently. He doesn't understand why this is a big deal at all.
But it had been scary enough to warrant a complete ban of the computer. Like straight out of the premier of Degrassi: The Next Generation, Scarlett had gotten herself mixed up with some guy she met in an online forum. If only it had just been talking. She'd sent him naked pictures. He showed up at the house one day when Scarlett was there alone, though she claims she never gave the main the address. But it's not like they were hard to find. They were the fucking Echolls. Scarlett knew enough not to let the guy in.
Logan will never forget receiving that call from her. She had been crying, scared to pieces.
And Logan can't really think too much about it without feeling the urge to puke. He wasn't mad at her. He really wasn't. He couldn't be—she was thirteen. But Jesus, it frightened him like no other to think that he couldn't protect his children.
"All right, guys," Veronica says. "7:45. We need to get a move on. Finish up breakfast. Load the car."
With that, there's a flurry of movement. Dishes in the sink. Jugs of juice back in the fridge. Plates clanking. Spoons scraping out the last remains of peanut butter in the jar.
Alec checks his reflection in the mirror, making sure is glasses are straight, that his hair is still purple and spiked just so.
Gwyn washes her hands after eating—for far too long, but not as long as she used to.
Nola fumbles through a picture book while waiting at the foot of the stairs for Mommy or Daddy to pick her up and load her in the car seat.
Scarlett rejoins everyone downstairs, pointedly ignoring Logan.
Finally all packed and inside the car, Logan inserts the key into the ignition. Veronica places her hand on his knee and squeezes. She's not one for sentimentality, but he can tell she knows he needs the reassurance of her touch.
"We're not the worst parents ever, are we?" Logan asks.
Veronica smiles. "Not even close."