Title: "Sporting Chance"
Author: monimala
Fandom: VM
Word Count: 1430
Rating/Classification: AC for language, angst, V/Lamb-ish.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and am making no profit.
Summary: "Still picking winners, huh, Veronica?" Post 2.17, "Plan B."
His t-shirt clings to his skin, the sweat like glue. He can hear his own breath echoing in his ears, coming in huffs and pants as he lines up another shot from the three-point line. Hand-eye, be-the-ball and swoosh. He tries to remember everything he hasn't needed since playing for the JV squad in high school. But the ball bounces off the rim, again, and rolls harmlessly across the cracked asphalt and faded white lines.
"Fuck," he hisses, fists clenching as he rubs them into his skull and tries to pop the tension out of his shoulders.
He's too fucking old for this shit. For playing Horse by himself in an empty park and trying to prove something -- he has no idea what -- and proving nothing except that he's capable of getting to H-O-R. There's probably some kind of meaning in that, but he hasn't needed symbolism since high school either.
He stomps around the court, kicking at the ball but seeing no reason to confirm that he's lost his soccer skills, too. And he doesn't even think about football anymore. There are no Hail Mary passes and no glory days to remember. He's lost a lot of skills. A lot of things.
That was supposed to change when he won the election.
Everything was supposed to change when he won the election.
But he can't even sink a simple basket. Not even from the free throw line. Because his hands shake and his palms get sweaty against the rubbery texture of the ball and he hears Veronica laugh, "When I start picking losers, it's all you."
Hand-eye, be-the-ball and swoosh.
Right.
She probably doesn't count it, but he's the one who gave Veronica Mars her very first kiss. All right, so most of the time, he doesn't count it either. Because she was 12 and there was spiked eggnog at his first departmental Christmas party and mistletoe and Lianne laughing about Keith getting out the shotgun. "Go for it, Slugger!" Veronica had screwed her pretty little face up, crossed her eyes, and stuck out her tongue before he kissed her, chastely like he'd kiss his mother or his niece…and then she'd rated him "mediocre at best." Even at 12, she had a bigger vocabulary than he did. He'd blushed to the tips of his ears. He's forgotten how in the years since. It's another thing he hasn't needed.
He makes his way to the rickety bench on the side of the court, grabs up a towel he stole from the Neptune Grand and mops his face. The ball gets shoved into his gym bag and he pulls at his shirt, trying to get unstuck before he heads to the car and cranks the A/C up to the highest setting.
Of course, it doesn't work. So he just gives up and yanks the tee over his head, shoving it in next to the basketball. He doubts anyone is going to care if the sheriff drives by them shirtless. In fact, they'll probably cheer because they know he'll stick to the hot vinyl of the seat and it'll hurt like a bitch when he climbs out.
"Isn't this, like, public indecency or something?" There's only the subtlest sound of the fence rattling to signal that she's even there, but he's not all that surprised. Veronica is ever-present, omni-fucking-present (he's learned a word or two by now). "Or do you have a secret second career as a go-go boy?"
He turns from zipping up his stuff, scowling at her like he always does. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail in deference to the heat, but she has a hooded sweatshirt on, like most of her slacker breed, and he almost immediately covets it. If only just to get her to shut up about possible second careers.
"Don't you have, like, school to attend?" he murmurs, knowing that mocking her tone is not one of his best efforts, but he's exhausted and defeated and it's the best she's going to get.
And she knows it, too. She taps her watch. "3:30, oh Lord of the Truants. I would have caught your actual routine except that I had a rumble in the parking lot right after class."
He snorts. "Did you win?"
"Don't I always?"
He doesn't want to see that her smile is a little bit wobbly, a little bit bitter. He doesn't want to see her losses in her chewed-off lipstick. Lilly Kane and the kids on the bus and her long-gone boyfriend.
"Did *you* win?" she asks, looking over his shoulder at the hoop, pretending that nobody sees anything at all.
"What do you think?"
It's every bit as rhetorical as her answer to him, so she just shrugs. She walks alongside him to the car and he sees that the LeBaron is right behind his cruiser on the street. No wonder she stopped to pester him. She knows the plates, the serial numbers. It used to be Keith's, after all.
Her silence is unnatural. It's when she's chatty and bubbly like a Malibu Barbie come to life that she's up to something. When she's quiet, thinking, and casting sideways glances at him, he can't figure out what she wants. And it's too much work to even hazard a guess. He unlocks the back, tossing his bag in behind the mesh barricade and then slamming the door shut.
"Can I help you with something in particular or did you just miss me so much that you had to stop and visit?" he wonders.
"You? Help?" She laughs. And laughs. And laughs some more.
*"When I start picking losers, it's all you."*
"Go away, Veronica," he growls. "Before I…"
"Before you what? Tell me you're 'not like other guys' and then turn into a werewolf? Or maybe…oh, shocker…you'll do absolutely nothing?"
It's too much like a dare, a challenge. One that speaks to a skill he definitely hasn't lost since high school. Hand-eye, be-the-ball and swoosh. Right? He lines up the shot with his entire body, feeling her gasp with surprise when he curls his hand around the back of her neck.
"Don't push me," he warns her, hoping that her clothes and her skin smell like him for hours, that she has to wash him and his failures off. "Don't push me, because you're going to realize that you don't have to pick the losers if the choice is already made…"
"Lamb…I don't know what you…let me go…" Of course she doesn't remember what she said to him. It's been days. She wrote him off, like she always does. And she flinches, probably because she knows that, in the movies, statements like this are followed by violent kisses. The kind that punish and prove and punctuate.
What she doesn't realize is that he's never wanted to kiss her that way. He strokes her pulse with his thumb, lightly, until she's staring up at him with more rhetorical questions in her eyes and the unnecessary answers are probably reflected in his. And then he leans down. No eggnog, no mistletoe…and no chastity.
Her sweatshirt clings to his skin, his sweat like glue. He can hear his own breath echoing in his ears, coming in huffs and pants…and hers. He cups her cheeks and kisses her slowly, taking his time because this…this right here is his Hail Mary Pass, the last minute miracle, sailing on desperation and desperation alone. Her mouth is faintly sweet and warm and she gives under him, more out of curiosity than anything else.
She kisses him back just long enough to make it ache. To make him remember why he quit playing ball…why he could never stay in the game.
"Mediocre at best, remember?" she whispers, pushing gently at his bare chest. Her hands don't linger there. She strokes his face, her blunt nails catching on his stubble. And then she pulls away, walks away, and drives away.
God, he really is too old for this shit.
He deletes four whiny voicemails from Madison as he drives back to his place, shifting and hissing every time he comes into contact with sun-warmed vinyl. All he wants now is a scalding hot shower and some leftover pork fried rice and the week's worth of "The Young and the Restless" he has on TiVo.
"Fuck," he hisses again, because it bears repeating. Because he *is* a loser and he'll always be a loser and it doesn't matter how many winning teams, winning tickets, he joins.
Everything was supposed to change, but nothing ever does.
--end--
April 13, 2006.