Title: "From Here to Iniquity"
Author: monimala
Fandom: VM
Rating/Classification: AC for language, V/Lamb, humor, fluff, AU.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters yet and I doubt it will happen soon.
Summary: 1450 words. 16th in the "Between The Rock and a Not-So Hard Place" series. It had been stupid to think they could exist in a vacuum.
They spent four days after Beaver's swan dive from the Neptune Grand in bed, doing things that were largely unprintable outside of Penthouse letters. Veronica called it an "affirmation." He just called it "a straight man's wet dream." Every spare second they had was spent making love, having sex, fucking, and generally verb-ing on every flat surface in his apartment. It was like "The Blue Lagoon" and "9 1/2 Weeks" with a possible side of "Bend it Like Beckham." They only came up for the occasional breath of air, emergency refueling from Mr. Chao's, pulse checks from Keith -- "You two are having a Parcheesi marathon, right?" "Dungeons & Dragons, actually. You should see Donnie Boy with the 12-sided dice." -- and the obligatory check of phone messages.
Veronica frowned down at her Sidekick after swiping it off the bedside table and shuffling through a backlog of six or seven calls. "Wallace, Wallace, Mac, Dad," she murmured, absently. And then -- "Why is Madison Sinclair pretending to be anonymous and calling me a 'bitch'? Aside from her usual sunny personality, I mean."
Oh, shit.
He gave up trying to look innocent pretty quickly. He was naked. There was shrinkage. It was an automatic lie detector. "It was just once!" he defended. "Last year, before we even remotely had our "From Here to Eternity" moment on Dog Beach. I think I was sublimating. She IS a blond teenager, after all."
"Sublimating? Is THAT what they're calling it these days?"
"Psych 101. Hot girl from my freshman dorm," he said, before she could ask.
"You know, for a guy who dropped out after a year, you sure hit the books pretty hard."
"I have unplumbed depths."
"No offense, Don, but I think I've plumbed everything there is to plumb."
"I knew I should never have agreed to let you do that."
"It's your fault for passing along that Angelina Jolie-and-a-bag-of-sex-toys fantasy you had."
"Madison's nothing to me. Less than nothing. You know that, right?"
Her eyebrows quirked. She wasn't even going to waste breath saying "duh."
And he wasn't going to acknowledge that it was probably because *her* exes still meant something to her. They managed to do a good job of never mentioning those names. "You're fragile, I know," she'd tease sometimes, prompting him to prove to her just how wrong she was. Bed was where they made the most -- and the least -- sense.
But, eventually, all the kinky sex, the banter and the Hunan chicken had to give way to reality. Morning loomed like a big looming thing -- Jesus, you knew it was bad when Veronica's speech pattern started invading his head -- and it was time for him to go back to the office and face a very stern, very un-amused, review board...(not one romantic bone in their collective body, apparently) and time for Veronica to 'fess up to her friends that she was, in fact, practically cohabitating with the odious sheriff of Neptune of her own free will.
It had been stupid to think they could exist in a vacuum. Especially after the way he'd hauled her out of the Grand. Making a public spectacle of yourself pretty much guaranteed that you were, well, *public*.
How was he going to explain it?
How was *she* going to explain it?
That was what scared him. And, fuck, but he hated having to admit to anybody…even himself…that he was scared of anything. Besides cockroaches. He hated those motherfucking things.
"Do you want to switch?" he asked, abruptly, fixing his tie in the bathroom mirror.
She poked her head around the shower curtain. "I think the term you're looking for, oh-so-wise one, is 'swing'?"
"Funny. Why the Hell would I want some other man to have his hands all over you? I'm a pig and I'm possessive."
"You'll get no argument from me on that!" she chuckled, going back to fixing the water temperature to just how she liked it.
Over the spray, he made his pitch again. "No, Veronica...I meant, do you want to go to my meeting and let me talk to Wallace?"
She poked around the *other* side of the curtain. Her hair was plastered to her head and she looked like a (really cute) half-drowned Chihuahua. "Trust me, you do *not* want to talk to Wallace for me. Not if you value your man parts. And even if you don't, I do...so this is for your own good. You go meet. Be brilliant...or as close to 'mildly shiny' as you can manage."
His tie was still crooked. Damn. He stared at her outline against the curtain...bracing himself against the sink as he sucked in a painful breath. She was soaping up one of his favorite spots on her gorgeous little body. Double damn. "Veronica, I'm only close to shiny when I'm with you."
"Flatterer. Forget your tie, Donald. And lose the pants, too."
***
"When did this liaison with Ms. Mars begin?"
"When did I meet her or when did we liaise? Because those are two different questions, each with their own legal parameter and dress code."
"Don, I don't think you appreciate the severity of your situation."
"With all due respect, *Councilman*, I don't think you appreciate the severity of the incident at the Neptune Grand."
"When you neglected to call for back up?"
"Veronica called for back up. And I backed her up. I will always back her up."
***
"You're telling me that not only have you been seeing Lamb for months, but you've been lying to me about it? Me? Your bunkmate? The Robin to your Batman? The man who's always got your back?"
"Wallace, I didn't mean for it to turn out that way. I didn't mean for any of this to happen."
"Girl, practically the entire graduating class found about it before me. You couldn't dial a brother? Text me, 'I'm alive, it's all good, and, by the way, I'm hittin' it with the sheriff'? That's just low. That's *wrong*."
"I know. But…but Lamb and me? We're not. We're really kind of right."
"I didn't need to hear that."
"Actually, I think you did. I think *I* did."
***
"I ask, again, when did you pursue this inappropriate relationship with Ms. Mars?"
"And I say, again, there was nothing inappropriate about it. Veronica turned eighteen last summer. So, unless watching B movies starring former wrestlers is a crime on the Balboa County books that I wasn't aware of, you cannot suspend me for seeing her."
"Don't tell us how to do our job, Sheriff Lamb."
"I do *my* job, Councilman. And I have a girlfriend. If there's something punishable in that, I could say the same about you -- but your wife and kids might take issue with it."
"*That* we can suspend you for."
***
"So, it's like that, huh? That serious?"
"Seems like it, doesn't it? I love him, Wallace…and, yeah, that's weird, but it's true. He doesn't hurt me. He doesn't compare me to a ghost. He's just this guy who wears tube socks and can't cook."
"Tube socks? For real?"
"Mhmm. And he loves The Rock. Passionately. Almost more than he loves me."
"You gonna talk to Logan about this?"
"About The Rock? He'd say Seagal could kick Dwayne's ass. And he'd be wrong."
"*Veronica*."
"I…I just don't know. Not right now."
"If Lamb ever does hurt you, he's a dead man. You know *that*, right?"
"Oh, yeah. Get in line behind Dad. And me. I know where he sleeps."
***
Veronica met him on the beach, in the middle of the afternoon, with half of Neptune out sunning themselves and playing volleyball. She had a gigantic frappuccino in each hand and he practically groaned with relief as he snagged the nearest one and snaked an arm around her waist.
They could do this now. Kiss in front of a three-year-old in Little Swimmers and a junior high girl who looked like she was drinking spiked Coke.
They could kiss all over town if they wanted to.
Because they were public now.
"Do you want to swing?"
"They fired you, didn't they?"
"What do you think this is, 'Dirty Dancing?'" She'd made him watch that one night under extreme duress…and then act it out. Under not so extreme duress. "Two week suspension without pay. How about you?"
"Wallace is okay with us…but he might kill you if you look at me funny."
"Like right now? Because this is a funny look."
"Mhmm. Possibly."
"Well, shit. I better use you as a human shield."
"You're such a prince."
"I'm your hero, Babe, and you know it."
"Donald?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm *so* plumbing your depths tonight."
--end--
July 14, 2006