Title: "Pathogen"
Author: monimala
Fandom: VM
Rating/Classification: Veronica/?, VD mentions, angst, adult language, sexual content, ficlet.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to Rob Thomas, not me.
Summary: Veronica hoped the feeling spread. A thoroughly-screwed up little story that came from a much angrier place than my usual offerings.
Notes: The pairing probably isn't that much of a surprise, but, hey, sometimes even the illusion of suspense helps! (You never know, it was *almost* Jake Kane...)
The smile on her face was beginning to cut, like sharp bits of glass. She could feel the blood dripping down her chin even if nobody else could see it. Days, weeks, hours, of walking around and pretending everything was alright. She thought...she honest-to-fucking God thought that she'd never have to feel this way again. That when she boxed up her combat boots and dusted off a pair of Lilly's Manolo's that she'd liberated from her closet during some random jaunt to the Kane mansion, everything old in her life would be new again.
Not so much.
No.
Because she couldn't breathe without bleeding. She couldn't walk without bleeding. She walked down the hall at Neptune High and thought she saw her footsteps behind her outlined in red. Logan brushed against her, deliberately, of course, punctuated with a "slut' sneeze, and she hoped the feeling spread. She hoped he got it, too, like Ebola...and paid it forward to Kendall when she bounced up and down on him in bed.
Duncan was gone, safe, south, and the only fight they'd ever had was the one they'd faked.
She'd never yelled, she'd never screamed. She'd only smiled like she had in her freshman Homecoming photo. She'd held his hand and kissed his neck and made love. Everything old, new again.
Not so much.
No.
Because now she missed him and it sucked and it throbbed and she'd done her good deed for baby Lilly but it wasn't enough because who the Hell was going to do a good deed for her? Who?
"Not me," whispered the person who cleaned out her wounds, drowned her in antiseptic, and bandaged her with his mouth. "Don't even think it, Veronica."
So, she didn't. Think. She let him slam her up against the wall, replace the pain and glass with something even sharper. It took her by surprise. The violence of it. The total lack of predictability. One moment she was trudging, battered and bruised, and the next flat, trapped, between him and concrete blocks. He slid down her body and she steadied herself against his shoulders, clutching as he pulled off her impractical heels. There was no box to put them in. He just tossed them. This way and that. Lilly's shoes, with the impressions of her feet etched into the lining.
"Give it to me," he urged as he violated her from the toes up. "Come on, Veronica. All of it. Show me what you're made of."
So, she coated him in red. She hit him every time he thrust into her. She scratched as he split her apart. She infected him with every fake grin and every tinkling bell-like laugh, and every angry tear she'd never bothered to shed.
"Duncan was the love of my life, you know," she told him. She remembered tiny pink fingers wrapping around an index finger three times their size. It was the totally inappropriate thought, the only thought, she had when she came. That and... "But I was never his, was I?"
Sheriff Lamb licked the last stitch at the corner of her mouth. "Not so much. No."
--end--
January 27, 2006.