A/N: Thank you, review-peops, for all the lovely support :)

(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)

Chapter 19

"I wish I could make sense of it, but it doesn't make any kind of actual sense," Veronica explained to Logan via the Skype feed, rubbing her forehead that ached with the strain of the day. "You know what Dick is like, I can understand a whole bunch of people wanting to pop him in the mouth for something dumb he said or for inciting some woman to cheat on her boyfriend or husband, but a person needs a real motive for something like this. It was well planned, well executed, and just nasty. I can imagine Darryl Marone being the guy but it doesn't connect back to Missy and Adam."

"I wish I could help," her boyfriend said with a sigh. "I really don't know any of these people any more than Dick does. I see your point about Betina's brother but-"

The picture froze and jolted, making Logan appear to stutter terribly before finally coming back to life. He frowned into the camera lens as if unsure what happened or if he could now be seen or heard.

"You're back," said Veronica with a smile she meant and a yawn she had hoped to conceal but failed.

"You're exhausted," remarked Logan with a smile of his own. "I can see the bags under your eyes from here, beautiful."

"Gee, you say the sweetest things, hon," she joked, "but yeah, I guess I'm a little tired. Lot going on here, and I always sleep better with your company anyway," she told him honestly. "I know, I know, you need to be where you need to be, and I couldn't be more proud."

"You know I'm proud of you too, right? And that I worry about you just as much as you worry about me. Maybe more."

"Impossible," she told him like a reflex. "Still, I won't be sorry when you're home again, Fly Boy."

"Might be sooner than you think," said Logan with a smirk she knew well.

Veronica smiled because she just couldn't help herself, but the expression didn't last long. "Don't tease," she urged him, knowing it would only hurt more to have her hopes built up and then dashed.

"I wouldn't do that to you," he promised. "Y'know you're not the only one who knows how to pull strings, Miss Mars."

Another yawn overtook Veronica's face, totally ruining the genuine smile that was meant to be there. Logan didn't mind, he never did.

"Go and sleep, crazy woman," he urged her.

"I don't want to waste a second when I could be talking to you," she protested. "You have no idea how much I miss you right now."

"I miss you too, and I love you," he promised. "But I have to go anyway. Sorry."

"Don't be sorry, just be safe," she told him. "I love you."

Veronica wasn't one for saying the words all of the time, but it felt so necessary when they parted ways after one of their Skype chats. She hated to think it, but it was always there in the back of Veronica's mind that maybe this was the last time she would see Logan alive. It helped her understand a little better the fears he always had for her in her dangerous job. It felt like some kind of revenge on her, even though she knew Logan had not and would not base his career on such a thing.

The connection was soon severed, and Veronica let another yawn take her over. She really needed sleep. It was stupid o'clock already and she had a busy day ahead tomorrow. Somehow she doubted any sleep she got would be peaceful. It almost never was after talking to Logan as her head became full of worries and concerns, as well as dreams of when he came home. She really hoped he meant it when he said it would be soon.

They had talked for hours. Mac wasn't sure she had ever spent that much time alone with a guy doing nothing but talking. Some of what she and Dick had discussed was serious, but more was just pointless stories that were easy to tell and nice to hear. Mac talked about her childhood some, what it was like growing up Mackenzie. She wondered here and there about how things might have been different as a Sinclair, something she really wasn't able to speak about to anybody else. Dick didn't act like he thought she was crazy or anything, he just listened, and he smiled in that way that she still wasn't quite accustomed to. Maybe that wasn't it, maybe it was just the feelings it evoked in her she wasn't really used to yet. It was so strange and examining it bothered her too much to dare.

Dick told his own tales. Some contained his brother, but even those were happy in their own way. Mac figured it was easier for him to talk to her than most other people too. It gave him licence to be honest, which he was. Brutally sometimes, but that was okay. They let the moments come and go, pass over them like water over stones. It was strangely cathartic. Mac could even deal with hearing one or two stories that contained Madison's name in passing. She knew Dick meant no harm and it was hardly his fault that he dated the woman who had been raised by Mac's biological parents. It really was a twisted mess they lived in, and so strange that more than one tie seemed determined to bind them together.

They took bathroom breaks, food breaks, but the games consoles went untouched and the TV just the same. They just kept talking, about anything and everything. The hours went by so fast, the time only marked by Dick's painful reminders that it was time for painkillers and such. It was dark before they realised where they were and Mac noted that she was yawning more often than she wasn't. Even then it was tempting to stay, to fall asleep just as she was now, stretched out next to Dick on his bed.

It was a bad plan. Mac knew it and was pretty sure Dick did too, no matter how dumb he often seemed. They had literally slept together once before and it had ended in confusion and awkwardness. Given how far they had come today, it would be a shame to spoil it just because Mac was too lazy to haul ass back to her own room, just a few feet down the hall.

Mac tidied around Dick and helped him get under the covers to sleep. There was a tempting moment when she almost kissed him goodnight but thought better of it at the last. If she wasn't so smart, Mac would have sworn he looked disappointed when she backed off and left him alone. That would be crazy and she knew it. Dick wasn't attracted to her, not that way. They were friends now, there was no use denying it, but nothing more, because that would be just ridiculous. That was what Mac told herself, over and over, for hours before sleep finally claimed her.

In his own room, Dick had similar trouble in dropping off to sleep, despite how tired he had felt before. It was strange that he had been more comfortable with Mac in the room than out of it. He had the oddest feeling that if she had stayed he might have rested more easily. That made no sense to Dick Casablancas, who never shared a bed with a woman for the purposes of sleep alone. Mac was so different to any other woman in his life before. He wished he could explain it, but he couldn't, not at all.

Social media. It was a wonderful invention in a lot of ways. Find a long lost friend or missing family member. Keep in touch with all your buds from high school or those that had moved away from town. For Veronica, the dawn of Facebook, Twitter, and the like had its way of making her job much easier and much tougher at the same time. With cheating partners often proved to be just that thanks to posts they never should have made, Veronica didn't get quite as many clients in that area as she used to. On the other hand, she could dig up all kinds of dirt on social media that would have been perhaps impossible to find by other channels. Some folks got very sloppy about their privacy settings, and posting drunk was always dangerous. Veronica found social media to be a goldmine of useful information sometimes. Other times, she got more confused than anything else.

Extensive Googling had led her to a couple of accounts that seemed to belong to Lucy Laos. Those that used her real name for Facebook and such were easy to find, but the trick was often to get into the more obscure places. The Tumblr or Twitter accounts that were hidden behind cleverly disguised pseudonyms and fandom-based screen-names. Thankfully, a presumably careless message that probably should've been private but wasn't led Veronica from Lucy's Facebook to a Tumblr account that hadn't been used for the past six months. When it was, the content seemed to be mostly reblogged gifs of a half-naked Zac Efron, entirely naked Chris Evans, and other similar things that Veronica couldn't say she really objected to seeing. Somewhere in the middle of all of this she made an interesting discovery.

A slew of posts were not reblogs but written by Lucy herself, under her screen-name of 'hodbodlover09'. They were nothing short of nasty as she made comments about 'that bitch' who seemed to have caused her pain. It read as if Lucy's other half, Darryl, had cheated with said bitch, and Lucy was full of bile towards the mystery woman. The only clue as to her identity seemed to be a picture of a woman from a movie that Veronica vaguely recognised. Devil horns and such had been badly Photoshopped, or rather added in Paint by an amateur, but there was no doubting she was a place-holder for whoever Darryl cheated with.

"The vampire slayer," Veronica muttered as she stared at the picture, knowing this wasn't the famous Buffy Summers but her one-time sister-in-arms Faith Lehane she was looking at.

Frowning, Veronica flipped open a new tab on her web browser and typed in the web address for IMDb. The only other thing she ever saw this actress in was a peppy cheerleading flick back when she and Lily were young enough to think it was fun to watch. Finding 'Bring It On' in the list of acting credits, Veronica smiled. Eliza Dushku had played 'Missy Pantone' in the movie. Lucy hated Missy, who must have cheated with Darryl. How Dick fitted into all this, she couldn't exactly say, but at least now she had a connection!

A new day dawned, and Mac woke up smiling. If nothing else had been achieved yesterday, she and Dick now knew where they stood with each other. There was pretty much nothing they couldn't say to each other and they were most definitely friends in the truest sense of the word. Mac sure never expected that to happen when she moved in here, but now that it had, she couldn't really be sorry about it.

Things would be fine, if Dick was feeling the same. Unfortunately, as much as he was sure on he and Mac being buds now, he wasn't exactly clear on one other point. Two nights ago, on the day of his birthday, Mac had kissed him. He still didn't know what to do with that, and for all the things they had talked over yesterday, which was a lot, that particular moment had never come up. They mentioned it only once, in a yelling match that he never wanted to repeat, not with Mac, it was too painful. They got onto the whole deal of him maybe being a father and all. Dick hadn't the capacity to think about that right now. He wanted to deal with Mac and that kiss first.

It was early yet, at least for Dick, but he was awake and figured he may as well be up and moving. Levering himself from the bed wasn't easy, but he made it and hopped all the way to the bathroom, using his good arm to steady himself on the night stand, the chair, the balcony doors, the wall, and so on. He used the facilities, and then started the journey back, making it to the bed just as Mac walked in. Whether she was coming his way anyway or just heard the noise he made in moving, Dick couldn't be sure. Still, he was grinning as she looked his way.

"Check me out!" he said like a proud child. "Bathroom breaked all by myself."

"Wow," she replied, smiling also. "Colour me impressed. You work up an appetite for breakfast with all that movement?"

"You betcha," he told her, slowly nodding his head. "Wow, when you don't move much, just that much really takes it outta ya."

"I'll bet," Mac sympathised. "Well, soon you'll be all healed up and moving will become second nature again," she promised. "I'll go get some food together."

She turned to leave and looked genuinely startled when he called her name to stop her. Looking back over her shoulder, she was mostly expecting a specific request for breakfast. Mac was definitely not ready for what Dick actually said.

"Are we ever gonna talk about that kiss?"

Opening her mouth to speak, Mac closed it again just as fast. Realising after doing this three times that she must look like a landed fish, she stopped. Dick wanted to talk and she owed it to him to agree. It was the one thing they hadn't covered yesterday and she supposed she should give an explanation. The real problem was, she didn't have one, at least not one she was willing to delve into.

"What do we need to say?" she asked, still hovering in the doorway.

Dick shrugged, manoeuvered himself so he was sitting more than lying down. "I don't know, I guess... Well, I kinda wondered why?" he asked at last. "I mean, me, I get drunk, I kiss chicks. Kind of a thing with me, you know that," he admitted, looking half ashamed of his behaviour all of a sudden. "But you, you're Mac. All sensible and... and, like, definite about what you do, especially with guys. So drunk or not, when you kissed me, you had a reason, right?"

Mac couldn't deny he was right. After all she had told Dick the past few weeks, and most especially yesterday in their talk to end all talks, he knew she wasn't the type to go randomly putting the moves on guys like that. She had a reason for kissing him, she was certain on that, she just really didn't know how to put it into words without making a fool out of herself.

"Dick..." she began awkwardly, turning to face him properly, fingers intertwining and letting go more than once as she thought about the words she had to say. "Um, the truth is, I had a lot to drink and... well, you're not exactly lacking in the looks department," she told him, knowing full well he already knew that. "We get along, we're friends and all. I was in a good mood and it was... it was an impulse, I guess," she admitted at last, one hand running back through her short hair. "I didn't think it through a whole lot, but in the moment, it was what I wanted to do, so I did. Okay?"

There was too long a pause after she finished talking. It felt like a half hour to Mac as she stood there waiting for Dick's response, her feet apparently glued to the spot and her eyes wandering everywhere even as she felt his gaze burning into her face. When she finally dared to glance his way, Mac found Dick smiling.

"Okay," he agreed, nodding his head. "Hey, even geeks are allowed to have drunken impulses, I guess."

She laughed a little at the phrasing he used though even Mac wasn't sure why. She never did take the words 'geek' or 'nerd' as an insult, especially not these days when they had become that much cooler than they used to be. From Dick, it was just funny to hear, so much like a high school insult and yet he said it with the friendliest of smiles.

"I don't want to complicate things, Dick," she told him then, unsure why she was making things serious again just when they weren't, but somehow Mac felt compelled to get this out there. "We like each other, we're friends, and it works. In the circumstances, the less complications, the better, right?"

"Right," he agreed, nodding once, smile fading some.

Mac turned and left then, muttering about breakfast. She didn't want to cause pain, not to Dick or to herself, but the truth was, getting into anything serious with him would be dumb on a good day. This was the day after they found out Dick might be the father of a newborn, and that the mother's ex may have been the one to kick the crap out of Dick not so long ago. It was way too messed up to add in the potential of romance. Mac wondered if it would ever be simpler, and unfortunately, she doubted it somehow.

To Be Continued...