So here I am, with something new two weeks after the last posting. This is an odd one-shot for me...for one, I don't generally put Veronica with Duncan, even for a little while. Here though, I think we're dealing with the equivalent of pre-show Veronica and Duncan, who never endured all the canon drama that broke them up in high school. As you'll see, she couldn't escape her interest in Logan, but the need for normal brought her back to Duncan. However, rest assured, I would never leave her with him.

This piece came about as a result of an Instagram post, originating from World_of_Magick and shared with the VM community by redqueen095, about the uses for the plant, Marsh Mallow. While the listed uses in the post did inspire what follows, the method of use and any specifics are fully made up. My research was unsuccessful so any comments about non-toxicity in certain places is completely fabricated. In other words, don't take M'Beam's advice without further research of your own. You'll see what I mean.

Veronica was still sound asleep, flat on her stomach, spread into an X. For a tiny person, she took up a lot of room in their bed. With the coast clear, Duncan slid out from under the covers as quietly as possible, not wanting to disturb her before he could see…well…before he could check.

In the bathroom, he took a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling and scrunching his face tightly. "Not this morning, please," he muttered, then looked down.

Crap. Third morning in a row. His flaccid penis had tiny black spots all over it, that were rough and loose as he took it in hand to do further inspection. Ugh. All over his nuts too. What the actual fuck?

Of course, he knew which actual fuck had done this. Damn Madison Sinclair. Why they'd bothered to go to the ten year high school reunion, he had no idea. Veronica hated nearly everyone in their class and the only real exceptions, Mac and Wallace, she saw fairly regularly without needing a Neptune High reunion to bring them together. She'd argued long and hard against accepting the invitation, but his mom had insisted they come back to town when she heard about the reunion, and even though Veronica had threatened to make him go alone, eventually she'd caved.

And honestly, he wished she had stayed home. Because who else should decide to attend, but Logan? Logan Fucking Echolls, his once-upon-a-time best friend and the guy that Veronica almost ran off with in grad school, before Duncan convinced her that she'd never have a normal life with Logan. The reunion was supposed to be a good time, and the last thing Duncan needed was his wife watching Logan the whole night, but, tough shit, that's what he got. Oh, except for the part where they danced. That was even worse. The look on Veronica's face as she gazed up at fucking Logan, her arms loosely around his neck, Logan's hands resting on her hips, that look is what drove him out of the ballroom and straight into Madison Sinclair.

The reunion wasn't the first time he'd seen Madison. She'd been working for the design company Kane Software used for renovations for several years, and somehow she got herself attached to decorating the Bay Area offices that he'd opened when Veronica refused to come back to Neptune after they graduated from Stanford. Madison had done pretty much everything short of taking her clothes off to entice him, making sure she was the one who'd decorated his office personally, bending over his desk to point out details on the plans in skirts that were barely there to begin with and got even shorter as she posed.

He'd resisted the blatant come-ons, valiantly if he did say so himself, through all of that; he loved Veronica. Most guys wouldn't have passed up that opportunity, but he wasn't most guys and he wasn't going to cheat on his wife. In fact, he'd made it a point to never even mention the presence of her old high school rival, in his office, nearly every day for months. Why bother her about it? But watching her look at Logan, with an expression that he'd never seen when she looked at him, he couldn't take it anymore. When Madison had flounced in front of him out in the lobby, he'd stopped fighting fate. It's Veronica's own fault, he thought, as he followed Madison into a unisex bathroom and banged her between the towel dispenser and the urinal.

But now, a few weeks later…every morning, this weird black stuff all over his junk…what had she given him? Some kind of crabs? It washed off, but it kept coming back. He needed to see a doctor and get rid of this. He couldn't pass it onto Veronica; then she'd know. He had no illusions that infidelity would be something she could forgive, although he was confident that even if Madison told her, Veronica wouldn't believe her. An STD though? That would be proof.

A knock on the door and Veronica's muffled voice jarred him from his tortured thoughts. "Duncan, honey?"

"Uhh, yeah?"

"Are you okay?"

"Of course. I'm just getting in the shower." He realized he was still clutching his penis in his hand and dropped it, grimacing at the black flecks all over his palm. He moved to the sink and rinsed them off. He didn't want to spread whatever this was.

"Want company?"

"No!" He shook his head, irritated at himself for shouting at her. "I mean, no, I'm just going to be quick and then I'm going into the office."

"It's Saturday."

"Got a lot of work, Veronica. Can't be helped." He turned the shower on. "Go back to bed, sweetheart. I'll let you know before I leave."

Duncan heard her sigh and then shuffle away from the door. He shook his head. He had to make a doctor's appointment. Soon.

Veronica stopped to brush the loose black seeds out from between the sheets before she crawled back into bed. She should have known this was a stupid idea.

Seeing Logan at the reunion had apparently fried her brain if she was making choices like this. The jackass had actually tried to remind her how things were between them once upon a time. And he'd actually made something of himself, so the fears that Duncan had preyed on when he convinced her that she needed to be with someone who was going to 'buckle down', it turned out that those fears were groundless. Truthfully, it could probably be said that Logan had made more of a mark than Duncan, since he hadn't had his daddy's business to join and his success was all his own.

Knock it off, Veronica. It wasn't fair to Duncan to compare him to Logan. It wasn't Duncan's fault that his life had been mostly planned for him. It's hard to get a fire in your belly to succeed when everything's comfortable. Life had never been as comfortable for Logan, in spite of what most of the world thought about all the fame and fortune that had swirled around him continuously since birth.

He'd gotten to her though, as they danced, and he'd had the gall to ask her if she was truly happy with Duncan. If he made her feel how Logan used to make her feel. If he'd ever managed to make her…that was the point where she'd left him in the middle of the dance floor. Where did he get off talking about her sex life with her husband?

Of course, her husband had been nowhere to be found when she'd decided to storm away, so she'd had to cool off with Wallace and his crowd of jocks she didn't know, to keep Logan from moving in on her again. Then, Duncan did show up and suddenly he wanted to leave. It was for the best anyway. Logan was still stalking around, giving her those 'gimme a chance' eyes that had worked on her a lifetime ago, but she was a married woman now, and despite what Logan might think, that was a real bond, and she wasn't tempted by him anymore anyway. He wasn't the only person capable of exciting her physically, okay, yes, he was the only person who had ever really excited her sexually, but she loved Duncan. Maybe he wasn't a sexual dynamo, but he had other qualities.

But she could admit, to herself at least, that it was the thought of Logan that drove her to purchase the little bag of seeds. Not because he would ever need them, and certainly not with her, although who knew anyway, it had been three years since the last time they'd been…intimate, and maybe he did need them now. She'd heard that it happened to some guys, even at their age. Not Duncan, but he'd never been as…enthusiastic or frankly, interested, as Logan always had been. Duncan was more of a once every couple of weeks kinda guy, unlike Logan, who'd never missed any opportunity to get her naked and gasping and…oh fuck, just knock it off, Veronica.

Of course, the whole thing was actually Mindy's fault anyway. She was the reporter who Veronica worked with most frequently and she'd brought Veronica along on a research mission for a piece on alternative medicine and folk healing. It wasn't exactly investigative journalism, but at least she was working. Duncan had tried to convince her to stop, but she was pretty sure he understood now that that wasn't going to happen. Most everything she worked on with Mindy was fluff anyway, so it wasn't like she was going to accidentally uncover corruption by any of his friends. Not that Duncan would have friends like that. His dad might, but not Duncan.

A week after the reunion, Veronica accompanied Mindy to a small spiritual and metaphysical supply shop in the heart of San Francisco. As Mindy questioned the shopkeeper with the highly dubious name of M'Beam (my given name is Moonbeam, but it's so cliché) on alternative medicines and a holistic approach to life, Veronica crept around the store, looking for interesting shots. There weren't a lot that would look very exciting in a photo, but she'd found a little book with page after page of crazy things that different plants could supposedly do and had chanced on a page for a plant called a Marsh Mallow, something she'd never heard of before, but that made her laugh, since that was Wallace's joking nickname for her. Learning what the Marsh Mallow could do made her laugh again.

Steep the flowers and leaves in oil and apply to your skin before astral traveling.

I'll be sure to do that, she thought.

Use for love spells and sex magick.

Does it somehow become real if you give the word magic a strange spelling?

Harvest seeds under a full moon to use for aphrodisiac oils and powders.

Uh huh.

Seeds act as aphrodisiac when eaten by women.

But only when harvested under a full moon of course.

Sprinkle seeds on a man's genitals to increase his sexual appetite.

That was the one that made her laugh out loud as she tried to picture Duncan sprinkling himself with seeds. She didn't know what these seeds looked like specifically, but for some reason, the thought of Duncan with his privates covered in sunflower seeds kept recurring.

"What do you find so amusing?" She jumped at the shopkeeper's voice. She hadn't heard Mindy and the rather odd woman approach.

"I'm trying to decide if I know any guys who would sprinkle seeds on themselves to increase their sexual drive."

"I highly doubt it," Mindy said caustically. She said most things caustically, which is why she and Veronica got along so well. "Most men I know are pretty sure their drive is exactly where it should be. If you want less, you're frigid. If you want more, you're a slut. That's why I mostly only fuck women these days."

"Well, you'd need to feed these seeds to your girlfriends," Veronica informed her. "The pharmacist's instructions are taken by mouth for women, sprinkled on the junk for men."

Mindy shook her head. "Nah. I don't date women who need to be chemically enhanced, even natural chemicals. And no guy I know would agree to sprinkle himself with something. Again, they all think they're perfect already."

Veronica considered the two men she'd actually had sex with in her life. She had to admit, Duncan was exactly what Mindy was describing. He would never agree that maybe there could be a little more kick in their sex life. Logan though, he probably would let her sprinkle him with whatever she wanted, and then he'd go down on her, and make her scream his name, before letting her climb on top of him and... She shook her head. Knock it off, Veronica. Enhancing Logan would probably kill his partner. She fought a grin. Oh, but what a way to go.

"Generally, the sprinkling is done surreptitiously, with ground seeds," M'Beam said. "You're largely correct about many men's interest in being enhanced, so sometimes you have to resort to, a little silent assistance."

"They don't notice the ground seeds on themselves?" Veronica asked, skeptical.

"If it works, no, probably not, and the seeds are not harmful when introduced to vaginal tissue." Veronica blushed at what the woman was telling them. "If it doesn't work, well, chances are the man isn't going to notice before the powder falls off on its own."

"Because he's so sexually backward that he doesn't even touch himself," Mindy said, elbowing Veronica in the side. "Come on, get some."

"What? No."

"I know that husband of yours can't be any kind of sexual powerhouse. You're way too frustrated all the time to be getting any good action. Give it a try."

Veronica gasped. "Mindy! Don't talk about Duncan like that."

"You are not denying it."

"I wouldn't dignify this with a denial." She slammed the book closed, glaring. "Are you done with the interview? I want to get home."

"Not to get any," Mindy mumbled under her breath and M'Beam tittered a nervous laugh. Veronica glared again and Mindy held up a placating hand.

"Look, I'm sorry, V, I went too far, as I often do." Mindy made a face as she apologized, that made her look not as sorry as she probably should be. "But come on, give it a try. I will if you will." She threw her arm around Veronica's shoulders. "I'm trying some of the other herbal supplements to see if they work for part of the story. Let's try this one too."

"It's not right to drug someone secretly," Veronica said, hoping that the moral high road might work when nothing else seemed to deter Mindy.

"You don't have to. Take it yourself if you'd rather. See if it increases your drive."

"My drive is just fine."

"And it's not something that alters consciousness," M'Beam added. "I fully concur with your reticence. I would never advocate for something that takes away someone's free will."

"Isn't that what you're doing with this stuff?" Veronica volleyed back. "If they aren't interested in having sex, isn't an aphrodisiac taking the decision out of their hands?"

"Not the decision itself. The powder just gives them a heightened interest. It doesn't necessarily mean they act on that interest."

"Come oooonnnnnn." Mindy's wheedling tone earned her another glare, but honestly, this was part of the reason Veronica liked working with her. She reminded her a little of Lilly, with her refusal to ever take no for an answer.

"All right, fine. It wouldn't hurt either of us if Duncan was…a little more avid, in the bedroom."

Don't you mean a little more like Logan? The voice in her head was really starting to piss her off. No. Knock it off, Veronica.

"That's the spirit, V. We should never stop trying new things."

A week later, Veronica shook her head at how dumb this idea had been. She'd chosen Duncan, not Logan, so why all of a sudden was she trying to turn the man she married into the one she hadn't? She flicked another bit of seed dust off the bed. This is just from seeing Logan again at the reunion. She'd known it was a sucky idea to go there in the first place. She's nearly talked Duncan out of it when Celeste got wind of a way to get her precious son back in the hellhole that was Neptune. All that had come of it was Logan in her head again, with those puppy dog eyes, trying to remind her why they were so good together. But life wasn't just sex. It was responsibilities, and obligations, and the paths chosen. Crap, that sounds grim. It was about the people in her life too, and how to make them happy, and her happy as well. And she was happy. Right?

Duncan came out of the bathroom then, a towel around his waist, and his eyes widened at the sight of her, sitting up, leaning against the headboard.

"I thought you were going back to sleep."

"No. I've got some photos to print for a project with Mindy. I might as well get up." She flipped the covers back and cringed at the sight of more of the seed powder on the sheets. She apparently hadn't been very careful last night when she sprinkled the powder on the sleeping Duncan. She slid over to the side of the mattress, hoping he wouldn't notice as she brushed it off.

"Veronica, no!" Her head snapped up as he darted toward her. "Don't touch that."

Shit. "Duncan, I—"

"Dammit." He grabbed the comforter and pulled it back over the loose dust. "Look, I'm so sorry." He dropped onto the bed, basically holding the bedding in place over the evidence of her silly gameplaying.

"You're sorry? Why are you sorry?"

"I…I didn't mean for you to find out. It was just once and it really wasn't my fault. I mean, you were dancing with Logan, and I just felt like—"

"Hang on." Veronica pushed back to her original spot, putting some distance between them. "What are you talking about?

"You saw that black stuff."

"Uh huh, but…"

"I was just going to get it taken care of. No need for you to find out and be upset. And I've been very careful not to do anything that could infect you too." He looked at her sadly, his lower lip pouting out. "The last couple nights especially were hard. I felt like…" His voice trailed off.

"You felt like what?" Did this dumb stuff work after all?

"Doesn't matter. Look, I'm going to call the doctor. Whatever I've got, I'm sure some antibiotics will clear it right up."

Veronica froze, not sure what she was hearing. "What do you mean? What do you have?"

"I don't know. I can only guess it's like some kind of crabs or something."

What the fuck? He thinks the black dust is coming from him? "Why would you have crabs, Duncan?"

"Look, I'm sorry, but it was just that one time, and it was Logan's fault."

"Logan gave you crabs?" What the actual fuck?

"Veronica!" He sounded scandalized. "I'm not into guys."

She did not understand where the sense of calm came from, but she was grateful for it as she sorted through this mess. "Then who gave you crabs, Duncan? And how was it Logan's fault?"

"You were watching him all night, and then you were dancing with him, and the way he looks at you...it's not right that he should look at my wife like he's in love with her. People will start talking."

"So what, pray tell, did you do to get back at Logan for looking at me?"

He looked at her apprehensively, and she gave him an encouraging smile, then patted his hand. She really wanted to know what he did.

"If you hadn't been looking at him…" He paused, like he was considering how much to try to blame her for whatever indiscretion he was trying to confess. "You know, we shouldn't even have gone to that reunion."

"I completely agree. Which is why I said that about a thousand times. But you wanted to go."

"I didn't expect Logan to show up."

"What did you do while I danced with my ex-boyfriend, Duncan?"

"He's my ex-friend." Now he wants to debate semantics?

"True. An event that occurred around the time I started dating him, as I recall. Before you convinced me that he was unstable and untrustworthy and that I should come back to you." She gave him a flat stare. She was done trying to charm the truth out of him. "So what did you do?"

"I had sex with Madison Sinclair, and she apparently gave me some STD, and now you're going to leave me, and it's all Logan's damn fault."

At Madison's name, her mouth fell open, shock and disgust flooding her. At Logan's name, it snapped shut, teeth knocking together sharply. She nodded, then flipped the covers back on her side of the bed and climbed out.

"Thank you for telling me," she said as she went to her closet.

"Aren't you mad?" he asked tentatively.

"Yes, but not as much as I would have expected." She wriggled into a pair of underwear and then tugged jeans on over them. "It's good that you shared this."

He stood and walked toward her slowly. "Yeah. Honesty's important in a relationship. We can get past this; I know we can."

She grabbed a blouse and shrugged into it, not bothering with a bra. "Yeah, we'll get past this. Not to worry." She slipped her feet into her shoes, then turned toward him. "Get your antibiotics, Donut. I'll be back for my stuff in a couple of days. I'll let you know when, and then, please don't be here."

"Veronica, no!" He rushed at her then, hands outstretched, but she dodged him and grabbed her bag, then headed for the front door. "Come on, Veronica, give me a chance."

She stopped at the coat closet and grabbed her leather jacket. "You know what, I really do need to thank you, Duncan. You've made me realize something I've been trying not to admit for a long time." She dropped her bag at her feet to pull the jacket on. "It has been Logan all along. That used to scare me, a lot, and when you tried to convince me he was a mistake for me, I let you, because it gave me an excuse to play things safe. But the last couple of years with you…they were the mistake. If he still wants me…I'm going to try to fix that. Convince him he didn't make a mistake too, when he chose me."

She grabbed her bag and spun for the door, but his voice stopped her.

"He'll never make you happy, Veronica."

She looked at Duncan and smiled. "I think you're wrong, Duncan, and I'm willing to take that chance."

"Hold your horses, I'm coming."

Logan wasn't sure who was at his door, but they were very insistent. He'd ignored the first knocks, not being particularly interested in company, but when it continued, he finally decided to answer it and cuss the pesky intruder out. That might make him feel better. His bad idea to attend his class reunion almost a month earlier had put him in a perpetual bad mood. Knock it off, Logan, you know what's got you in a bad mood.

He flung the door open, ready to launch into a tirade, but he was stunned into silence at the sight of the source of his bad mood herself.

"Hi," Veronica said, and like magic, the bad mood lifted.

"Hi." He couldn't really move, but when she smiled, he reflexively smiled back.

"Any chance you'll let me in?"

"Every chance in the world."