Title: "Noose"
Author: monimala
Fandom: VM
Rating/Classification: AC for language, sexual content. Lamb/V/Weevil (Lamb/V in this part). AU. 700 words.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, nope!
Summary: The 6th in my Loserverse stories. It would almost be a domestic tableau.
She slowly moves Eli's arm from around her waist and he flinches, whimpers a little, the shadows of jail like circles beneath his eyes. But he doesn't wake up, so she climbs out of bed and pads to the window...where Lamb is standing, naked, with a cup of coffee and surveying what passes for a decent dawn in Neptune. She swipes the still-steaming mug from him -- they all drink it black now -- and he kisses her shoulder.
"Morning, Sunshine," she murmurs, sarcastically, swallowing the staleness of sex and sleep.
It would almost be a domestic tableau if it weren't so...not. If the sheets weren't strewn all over the floor along with condom wrappers and lube and empty beer bottles. If she didn't ache in places she didn't know it was possible to ache in. "Don't leave marks," she'd pleaded last night. "Be careful." And they had been. They listened to her, for once. They laid her down gently, cradled her between them like something soft, precious. They only bruised her on the inside. Where she's already broken beyond repair.
"Does your boyfriend know you slept over?" he asks, too casual to even count as cruel anymore. He hasn't stopped asking since she returned to them. As if, at some point, her answer is going to be different. As if she's going to answer that at all.
The bitter brew from the coffeemaker in the bathroom burns the back of her throat and she chokes. "Shut up," she whispers, without rancor, without bite. "Isn't it enough that I'm here?"
"I don't know. Is it, Mars?" His lips twist and she remembers them shaping words like "bitch" and "whore" against her thigh. It's funny how familiar it all sounds now, how much like "baby" and "honey." Those are his endearments, his sweet nothings. She'd like to believe it's still blackmail. That they force her into these cheap motel rooms, into back alleys and empty offices and the gutter. But all Don Lamb has to do is call her a slut and she falls apart in his arms.
Who is she? She doesn't even know anymore. Sometimes, she feels like she left Veronica Mars behind on the roof of the Neptune Grand, holding a gun she never got to fire. Like Veronica jumped over the edge, too, and left a stranger behind in the arms of the boy she thought she loved.
She curls her hand into a fist and punches Lamb in the stomach, not hard enough to hurt him but hard enough so that she sloshes coffee on herself and tears prick her eyes at the sting. "Logan's not pressuring me to sleep with him. Did you know that, Lamb? Logan Echolls. Waiting for a girl to be 'ready.' I don't think he's done that for anyone. God knows, Lilly didn't need that kind of patience. And he loves me. He loves me so much. What do you give me besides no choice?"
"What do I give you? The same thing you give me. The same thing you fried Navarro's brain with. This." He drags her to him and the mug hits the floor -- coffee everywhere now, so much for being careful -- as her arms automatically encircle him. She doesn't push away anymore. She pulls. She yanks. She demands. He kisses her, hard; biting at her bottom lip and winding her hair through his fingers like enough rope to hang himself. To hang them both. "You picked the losers, Veronica," he hisses as he lifts her, locks her legs around his hips and steadies her against the glass. They're two stories up, the curtain is threadbare, and she prays nobody is watching...before she starts praying for other things entirely. "You picked us," Lamb repeats, thickly, with each thrust. "You could've walked away."
"I did," she reminds, gasping against his neck. "I did. I did. I did."
He strokes her spine with damp fingers and doesn't have to point out that she came back. She always comes back. She always comes.
Later, when she's curled back into Weevil, drowsing in the salt-tequila taste of his shoulder, she whimpers a little. And Lamb breathes, "Morning, Sunshine," against her skin.
--end--
July 26, 2006