Title: "Flip"
Author: monimala
Fandom: VMars
Rating/Classification:SAC for dark themes, language. Veronica/Logan, angst.
Disclaimer: Rob Thomas is still my Tiki god. Kinda.
Summary: 300 words. I was in the mood to write something fucked up and that pretty much sums this up.
When she hits him, when her eyes automatically brim with tears as she stares at her hand like it's some sentient alien being, he goes all Ali MacGraw on her. "Love means never having to say you're sorry," he reminds, rubbing out the soreness in his jaw.
Of course, she says it anyway, rocking back on her heels and whispering, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," and pushing her empty (fourth) beer to the far end of the coffee table before she scrambles up and away. Like that will help. Like that will push away the fact that she came to him like this again, that she belted him again.
Veronica is a nasty drunk.
Like her mother.
He can see the shadow of Lianne in her face now. In the circles under her eyes and the whiteness of her knuckles. In the way she goes rifling through his cabinets on the pretense of looking for crackers or an ice pack or her soul but really meaning vodka or bourbon or gin.
"Veronica, stop," he says, coming up behind her, catching her small but powerful hands and pressing them flat against the countertop. "It's okay."
"No, it's not." She sobs the words and they break his heart, and reassemble it, like always. "You know it's not."
He kisses the top of her head. She's shaking. He's perfectly still. It's funny how flipped, turned around, screwed up and sideways they've become.
And then she's sliding his belt through the loops in his jeans and the whip-whisper of it against the cloth is so fucking blissfully familiar that it makes him cry out louder than a punch in the face ever could.
It's not okay.
But when has it ever been?
Logan never says he's sorry.
After all, he learned from the best.
--end--
August 7, 2006