Title: "Deadweight"
Author: Lila
Rating: R
Character/Pairing: Logan/Jackie with a special appearance by Veronica
Spoiler/Warning: "One Angry Veronica"
Length: one-shot
Summary:On a highway, unpaved, going my way…"
Author's Note: Oh, jeeze. I'm not sure I really know what this is or where it came from and I'm not sure I really like it but it's been fleshed out and gone through all the drafts I can handle, so this is it. I suck at summaries and I know this one makes no sense, but I can't come up with anything else so please bear with me and ignore it! For those interested, I've started planning the next installment of my Lamb/Veronica series and it should be out in the week after "Donut Run." Title and summary courtesy of Beck. Hope you enjoy.
It's three days past Christmas and for the first time in as long as you can remember, you're not lying on a silky white beach and watching the way the lifeguards and locals watch you in your bikini. When you'd called your mother on the Thanksgiving day you'd spent alone with your father, you'd asked her why she hadn't sent you a ticket for your annual Christmas vacation to Hawaii and after a prolonged pause her voice had sounded distant and far away and it hadn't been the hundreds of miles separating you. "Jackie," she'd sighed, her voice hardening with every breath. "You live in California. Why should I pay to take you to Hawaii when you can go to the beach whenever you want?" You'd heard you brother and sisters in the background - your half-brother and sisters - and Tony's voice yelling for your mother to get off the phone because it was time for dinner. She'd hung up with a muted goodbye and no "I love you" and disappeared to join the family she loved more than you. The husband she loved more than you. The kids she loved more than you. You'd reached into your nightstand and dug into your pill bottle and made it all go away.
You'd shared a catered Christmas dinner with your father and a bottle of red wine and tried to forget the previous Christmas, and the Christmas before that, when Tony had leered at you over his cup of eggnog and told you how much you'd grown since he married your mother and you'd wished you were anywhere but in New York and your mother would let you put a lock on your bedroom door. You got your wish and a beach at your feet and a father who doesn't know how to talk to you and never touches youthat way and it's everything you thought you wanted and you still end up the same, running away with three Oxycontin and shot of Grey Goose.
You're lying on your bed, ankles crossed and calves hanging in the air, watching the phone for a call that will never come because your psychic scheme may have rid your life of Veronica Mars, but it also drove Cora away and any chance at a real friendship - any friendship - at Neptune High. You haven't seen Wallace in weeks and you heard through the grapevine that he skipped town with a long-lost father and too much anger. You wish you had the decency to care, or feel guilty because it was mostly your fault, but all you feel is annoyance and resentment that Veronica Mars beat you at something else. The TV is on and the volume is way too loud, but your father is out with his baseball buddies and the house is dark and too quiet and you know for a fact you're a child of the technology generation when your TV became your best friend. It's Christmas though, and you can't sit through another round of Charlie Brown and Friends and you settle on whatever reality crap MTV is broadcasting because it's showy and sparkly and makes you think you're at the kind of party you wish you were attending, hanging with the people you rolled with in New York. The kids on "Laguna Beach" aren't good people, but you forgive them for being liars and cheaters and possible cokeheads because at least they have each other. You're a liar and a cheater too, but it's more than you have.
Jessica and Jason drunkenly mack on each other in full view of everyone else when your phone rings and you barely hear it over the blare of LC's whining. It's your house phone, your dad's phone, and the caller ID tells you that someone's ringing you from the Neptune Grand. You have no idea who's calling you. With Cora gone and Wallace out of your life and Veronica controlling everyone else in your world, you have no idea who'd want to talk to you. You know Duncan Kane is shacked up in the Presidential Suite and thinks you're totally hot, but you understand girl-speak too well for Veronica to let him invite you over for a night of movies and popcorn and whatever else the two of them do in their G-Rated existence. Well, maybe PG-13 if Duncan's feeling lucky.
It's not like you have anything better to do and you can't take Jessica's shrieking much longer, so you pick up the phone and testily say "Hello?"
"Hey, Jackie O," a voice slurs. "Remember me?"
It takes you a minute to place the voice, a minute longer to recall the teasing words in your homeroom and remember that Logan Echolls moved in with Duncan Kane when his house burned down. It takes a bit longer to bring his face to mind, and you wonder if you'd even know who he was if your father and his buddies weren't all Aaron Echolls addicts and didn't think "Breaking Point" was the greatest movie ever made. Even after the guy killed slept with and murdered his son's girlfriend.
"Who is this?" you ask anyway, because you're in that kind of mood, and you might not win a superlative for "Nicest Girl" at Neptune High, but you still remember how to be a bitch.
"Awww," he says, the alcohol in his voice dragging the words into one long line. "You don't remember our magic moment? You tripped, landed in my arms, tried to go all "Girlfight" on the dance floor?"
Your smile disappears, remembering the arrogant confidence on Veronica's face when she ruined your life. "How could I forget?" you bite out. "What do you want?" Your voice is getting colder, nastier, and you're beginning to feel more like yourself.
"What are you doing right now?"
You glance at the TV and LC is screaming hysterically and slapping at Jason's shoulders like a mad woman. Suddenly, their canned drama doesn't seem so enviable anymore and you need to get away from them and your empty house and your lack of a life. "What do you want me to be doing?" you ask and your voice is intentionally sultry.
You expect a gasp of shock but remember this is Logan Echolls you're talking to and it'll take a lot more than crass comments to make his temperature rise. "Come over," he commands and for the first time since you picked up the phone his voice is clear. "Come over here and we'll hang out."
You should say no. Your mother, when she remembered to be a parent, raised you to be a "Rules" kind of girl and you know you should make him beg. But it's Christmas and your mother forgot to take you to Hawaii and your father is playing poker with his baseball buddies and you're beginning to feel more pathetic the longer you're alone and you're only company is the cast of "Laguna Beach." You glance at your sweats, the ratty Yankees t-shirt you wear to piss your dad off, and decide that you don't know Logan Echolls and don't have much desire to get to know him but it's better than being by yourself with nothing but bad memories. A new outfit and some make up and you'll be as good as new. "Give me half an hour," you breathe into the phone and he laughs in the background.
"I'm in the Presidential Suite," he says as if you didn't already know. "Bring your pills."
You show up closer to an hour later and he opens the door and barely looks at you as you slide past him. You're tempted to say something like, "Hi" or "Thanks for having me!" but you and Logan Echolls aren't friends. You're not enemies either. You're nothing one way or the other. You're still not sure why he called you, because it's Christmas and he should have that loyal pack of braindead toadies you see him palling around with at his beck and call, but as you slink into the suite and search for signs of Duncan or Veronica prowling around, you realize he's as alone as you are, because it looks like he has full run of the place, videocassettes and empty vodka bottles littering the coffee table. The place smells like ash and alcohol and you gingerly walk around a smoking trash can, the smell of burned plastic and cardboard hanging in the air. If you were a normal person, if you cared about Logan Echolls as someone more than a warm body to pass the time with or a way to get out of your house, you'd ask him what's going on, why he's a wannabe pyromaniac, why he asked you over when you've maybe said ten words to each other and they were all about Veronica Mars.
But you don't ask, because you don't care, and while his behavior is weird and cold and you're annoyed he's not on you the instant you walk through the door, the thought of going back to that cold, empty house gives you the strength you need to step into the living room and act like hanging out with strange boys and popping pills and drinking yourself into oblivion on Christmas is an every day occurrence. You step into the room, the blank TV set whining in your ear, and your eyes fix on the sterile, black screen. Your reflection stares back at you, your curls muted, your sweater shapeless and drab, and you barely look like yourself. You turn away from the TV, ignore the static buzzing and the way it sets your teeth on edge, and flop down on the couch, eyes locking on him. He seems tense as he sits across from you, eyes constantly flicking from the blank tapes to the blank TV, and pushes a sweating bottle of Kettle One across the table, hand shaking slightly. Without a word you dig into your purse and pull out the pills, pushing them towards him with steady hands. He smiles for the first time all night, and flips off the childproof lid, pills rattling against the thin plastic as he presses the bottle to his mouth. You respond by slipping the Kettle One between your lips and tilting your head back, refusing to gag or grimace or show any kind of emotion as the booze slides down your throat like ice and it feels a bit too familiar.
At 10:00 you decide it's time to speak with him. "Why did you invite me over?" you ask and look directly at him, so he can't run away or escape, so he has to tell you the truth.
He doesn't flinch when he responds. "Because you hate Veronica," and you think that without the shield of too much Kettle One, you'd probably be insulted that he just wants to be with you because you hate the second girl to break his heart. He pauses, and asks a question in turn. "What made you decide to grace me with your presence?"
It's your turn not to flinch. "Because you hate Veronica as much as I do."
At 10:30 you've had what you guess is around four shots of vodka and he's settled into a drug induced haze on the couch across from you, when you tell him you can't stand the buzz of the TV any longer and he looks at you like he just realized you're there, and makes a vague gesture towards the remote. You change the channel and some lame late night HBO movie begins to fill the space between you.
At 11:00 you've been through more of the Kettle One than you should have drunk and ask him for the pills and he actually gets up to give them to you, tripping over his stumbling feet and landing with a giggle next to you. You slip out of your sweater and kick off your shoes and watch the way he watches you reach for the bottle, your breasts one breath from slipping out of the thin camisole you threw on last minute.
At 11:30 he watches you chase two pills with a swig of vodka and runs his fingers through your hair and says his mother's favorite drink was a Valium and Stoli cocktail. He tells you that his mother is dead and asks where yours is and you think of her in Hawaii with the family she chose over you and tell him that she might as well be gone. He's sitting next to you, six inches separating your bodies, fingers hidden beneath the long black sleeves of his t-shirt and his shoulders are hunched like he's trying to slip inside himself, and without taking his eyes off the TV, reaches over and rests his fingers on yours. It's the most anyone has touched you in the last two months.
At midnight you're half-heartedly watching "Real Sex" while playing a pathetic game of "Never Have I Ever" when he suddenly looks at you and fingers the ponytail you've dragged your hair into and the way you're drinking right out of the bottle and says you remind him of Lilly. You suck in a breath, wondering if it's a compliment to remind a guy of the dead girlfriend who slept with his father and broke his heart, but he's looking at you - really looking at you - in ways he hasn't looked at you all night. Looking at you the way you Steve looked at you in his jeep after spiked coffee at Java the Hut, the way you wanted Wallace to look at you and Veronica prevented him from looking at you, and you close your eyes and he reaches up and softly tucks a stray curl behind your ear and runs his knuckles gently down your cheek. You snap back to reality when his hand curls around the line of your jaw and you fall back on the couch as his lips smash into yours and his fingers tangle through your hair, and while there's nothing gentle about the feel of him pressing you into the cushions and his knees digging into your thighs and his elbow wedging painfully in your side it feels too familiar to protest.
You know you should say no. A "Rules" kind of girl would never sleep with a guy on the first date. But this isn't a date, and you're not quite sure where your mind is after so many pills and so much booze, and the last time someone looked at you like you really mattered you were flat on your back while he dug through his wallet for a condom you should never have used and the whole thing was sterile and routine and you'd watched yourself in the rear view mirror as he moved over you and your mouth formed words and made sounds you'd only seen in movies and the only thing you'd felt was a mild sense of appreciation that someone wanted to be around you for more than five seconds before realizing what a mistake he'd made by taking a gamble on a girl like Jackie Cook. That you'd had to keep him interested by spreading your legs and pretending you didn't know him the next day never occurred to you as wrong - you'd gotten too much practice living with your mother and Tony.
Instead you breathe hard right along with him and slip one hand under the hem of his t-shirt and give a hard tug on his belt buckle with the other and he pulls back long enough to ask you if you're sure. You consider your options for half a second, note the lust in his eyes and the way they can't seem to look away even as you're not sure he's even looking at you, and smile like you mean it. "I'm always sure" you say and give his belt buckle one final tug, hands slipping past the zipper as you close your eyes and pretend it's what you really want.
You get to the bedroom first, dropping articles of clothing as you go, and he follows quickly, something silver and glaring in his hands. It's a video camera, and he's putting in one of those blank cassettes, fidgeting like the child of an actor only could as he sets it on his dresser and adjusts the lens. He kicks off his jeans and you can barely make out his eyes in the darkness as he crawls across the bed towards you and asks you if it's okay. You know you should say no. You can already hear your mother's voice the day Terrence Cook's daughter's sex tape hits the Internet. "How could you do this to me?" you can hear your mother scream. It wouldn't matter that you'd be the one naked and compromised for the entire world's undeserving eyes. Your mother has never been anything but about herself, and picturing that horrified look on her face…you wrap a hand around the back of Logan's head and pull him towards you and whisper in his ear, "It's showtime, baby."
He tugs the camisole over your head and pulls the tie out of your ponytail and soon you're half-naked beneath him. "Keep your bra on," he says as you fidget with the clasps and there's something raw and angry in his voice and you get that feeling again that he's not really talking to you. He spreads his fingers though your hair and it fans across the pillow like an A-List heroine and his eyes get all liquid and satisfied as he slips your jeans down your hips and strips out of his own clothes and slides his tongue down the length of you.
You wonder if he's done this before as he directs you through the motions like he was born to, telling you to ride him like a good cowgirl and smile for the camera before flipping you over and moving in for his own close up. He smirks for a moment at the camera before ripping his eyes away and turning to focus on you without looking at you, concentrating on your shoulder, or your hair, and anywhere but your face. You're still a "Rules" girl at heart and you pull him towards you for a kiss or caress or something to make him remember exactly who he's fucking, but he twists out of your grip and tells you not to touch him. He's staring intently at the camera and you have a feeling this whole thing has nothing to do with you and everything to do with his father and his dead girlfriend and how much you remind him of her. You lie back and wrap your legs around his back and grind your hips and your mouth forms words and makes sounds you've only seen in movies, and you ignore the blank look in his eyes and how much it reminds you of the dead look in Lilly Kane's in crime scene tape you saw in streaming video.
You look at yourself in the mirror as you get dressed and wish you didn't recognize the person staring back at you. You can hear you mother scoffing at the wild hair and swollen lips, the burn of Tony's eyes as you slipped down the hall and mumbled something about a new boyfriend when you'd never left the apartment all night. You close your eyes, take a deep breath, pull your hair back and smooth your sweater as you put the finishing touches on your mask. You're Jackie Cook. You've made a life out of stories like these, one thing to brag about if Wallace takes you back and you're stuck wasting a night on a Veronica/Duncan double date mindsuck. It doesn't quite register that most high school girls don't make sex tapes with strange boys for kicks. Your fingers shake as you button your jeans and your head is still fuzzy and thick and you wonder if you'd have done this at all if not for the Valium and the vodka and someone - anyone - wanting you.
The TV is still blaring in the other room and when Logan pauses it for a moment you hear loud pounding on the door. He's too far away to make out what he's saying under his breath, but you hear the door creak open and can't mistake Veronica Mars' voice carrying through the suite. You can't resist the show and peak through the half open door.
Veronica is angrily stomping towards the couch, arms crossed furiously over her chest while Logan just watches her with thinly-veiled boredom as he slouches against the closed door. "I heard about the tapes," she hisses. "You know they're evidence in your dad's trial. What were you thinking?"
Logan flinches but keeps up appearances, regarding Veronica with annoyed indifference. "Veronica Mars has accused me of evil. It must be Wednesday."
She strides towards him with purpose, lays a furious hand on his forearm, gets all up in his space. "Your dad locked me in a refrigerator and set me on fire because of those tapes. I almost died for them, Logan. Do you get that? And then you pull something like this -"
You don't let her finish. "Jeeze, Veronica," you say and burst through the bedroom door. "Don't you get it? It's not all about you. It has nothing to do with you." It has nothing to do with you either, and you have no idea what tapes they're talking about, but you can't resist. You don't love Logan or particularly like him, but you can't stand her, for taking Cora away and Wallace away and taking your life away. If you hate anyone, the way you hate your mother and Tony and every boy who laid a hand on you after him, you hate her.
She whips around to face you and you hope she never decides to go into acting because the expression on her face can only be described as disappointed and disgusted and sad all at once and all she can do is whisper, "Jackie?" She looks between you and Logan with naked emotion in her eyes, all jealousy and anger and pain, the phantom tapes momentarily forgotten. "Her?" she says and directs her comment towards Logan as you step into the light. You try to catch Logan's eye and when you finally do you're shocked that the anger and pain mirrors Veronica's and that despite what he said, or didn't say before, he doesn't hate her at all.
He looks away hurriedly but doesn't apologize. "I did what I had to do," he says and Veronica just shakes her head in disgust.
The pain is gone from her eyes and all you see is the anger. "Go to hell," she whispers and there are tears in her eyes and pain in her voice and you see the same thing in him and it's like you're not even in the room.
You follow his eyes to the coffee table and yours lock on the lone videotape and you can't breathe when he tells Veronica he has something to give her. Her head snaps up and she follows his gaze to the videotape and your heart pounds a mile a minute as he ambles over there and you let out an audible gasp when his fingers close around a bowl of candy from the Neptune Grand staff.
"Merry Christmas," he says and slips a candy cane into Veronica's hand, his fingers closing around hers the way they did with yours just a few hours ago and for a split second you think she's going to jump into his arms and ask him to make it all go away.
She pulls away and it's like it hurts her just to look at him. "Merry Christmas," she whispers and sends one last agonized gaze in his direction, eyes narrowing as they lock on you, and gets out of there like her life depends on it.
The silence left between you and Logan is thicker than when you first arrived, and the alcohol and pills have worn off to the point where it's awkward just to breathe the same air as him. You take up a sudden interest in the floor because you don't want to see the kind of pain in his eyes that no one's ever felt for you.
"Why did you defend me?" he asks and you expect him to be annoyed with you for letting him get caught, but he sounds strangely grateful.
"Why did you lie to me?" you counter. He just looks at you blankly. "You don't hate Veronica. You wanted to get caught. You wanted to hurt her the way she hurt you."
He cocks his head and studies you. "Didn't you?"
You bite your lip. Six hours ago it was all you wanted and now it feels like a lifetime ago. You want to feel smug satisfaction at the pain in her eyes and you're shocked by the jealousy you feel coursing through your veins instead because she was hurt and scared and lashing out but at least she was feeling. At least she doesn't remind Logan Echolls of a dead girl. "You didn't answer my question," he says and you want to say something snide about how you just wanted to make Veronica suffer but you're tired and the fight seems too pointless to care.
"Everyone needs a hero every now and then," you say. "Even you." He smiles a little and some of the shadows leave his eyes. His expression changes and he looks almost guilty as his eyes jump back to the tape on the coffee table and everything that went down to make it. He picks up the tape and turns on what suspiciously looks like a degausser and you call out before he can erase the evidence. "Stop," you say and he's so surprised he almost drops the degausser and wipes the tape clean anyway. "I - do you think I could have it?"
He turns off the degausser and puts the tape down and sits on the edge of the coffee table, his hands creeping back into the sleeves of his t-shirt. "Two years ago I turned on my computer and saw the love of my life lying dead by her parents' pool." He turns to look at you and his eyes are shimmering with tears and you resist the urge to comfort him because you might have defended him and you might have played his hero for ten minutes, but you're still not his friend and he's not yours and you don't have it in you to make him feel better when you can't even help yourself. "I can't open another email and see her all over again. Do you understand? I can't ever see this tape."
"No one will ever know it exists." You paste on your best smile and force the flirt back into your voice. "It will be our little secret." He relaxes a little, like he can trust you, and you realize he can because you don't want anyone to view the tape either and see you for who you really are, and you smile a little yourself as you slip the tape in your purse and turn to go, because there's really nothing left to keep you with him except the pain you both want to escape. He kisses your cheek on your way out and tells you he'll see you in school next week and when you lock eyes one last time for a brief moment he looks at you like you might be someone worth caring about after all.
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