Title: "The Salient Lines"
Author: monimala
Fandom: VM
Rating/Classification: SAC for mild language, sexual situations, angst. Veronica, Lamb, LoVe hints.
Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my obsession.
Summary: I keep seeing fics that kill off Keith as a LoVe hurt/comfort device. I thought I'd give it a Lamb-flavored whirl. 1300 words.
She knows the minute she sees his outline against the mesh of the screen door. It's in his not-quite shadow and the way he holds his hat in his hands, creasing the brim repeatedly between his thumb and his forefinger as she jerkily pulls back the security chain and fumbles with the lock. She's never seen him wear a hat. She knows he brought it just so he would have something to worry, something to *do*, while he tightens his jaw and stammers his way through the standard "I'm sorry," speech.
"You're not sorry," she says, quietly, before he can start the script. "So don't even say it." She's already crying, the tears coursing down her cheeks in hot, miserable trails, but her voice is steady. The only part of her that's steady. She's leaning against the doorjamb so he won't notice how her knees are trembling.
"You already know." The pulse jumps in his cheek and he's not looking at her. She didn't expect him to. His eyes are somewhere between her throat and the too-tight chest of the Sharks jersey Dad bought her when she was 12.
She doesn't give him the satisfaction of crossed arms and female offense.
She doesn't give him anything at all except the tears. It's almost familiar. Almost a comfort. "Were you chomping at the bit to give me the news in person? Couldn't send Sacks or Wilson or--"
"Is there someone I can call?" He talks over her, voice too loud and too obnoxiously filled with fake concern. "Lianne? Logan?"
"Rehab and rehab," she says, matter-of-factly, not even bothering to add the "again." At this point, it's a given. Everyone knows Veronica Mars can't compete with Jose Cuervo and his Tia Maria. "Wallace is driving down from L.A. He'll be here tonight."
She can just barely hear the sigh of relief. The "thank God I don't have to drag this dog-and-pony show out any longer than necessary." And still he won't look at her. "They're transporting the body to County." And it's back to the prepared speech. Did he practice it on the drive over? Memorize the salient lines, the conciliatory, vaguely patronizing tone? Is this what he does for dead officer's wives? They must feel so touched. "By the time Fennel gets here, they should be all set to release it to you. I'm sure the department would like to be notified of any arrangements you make for the funeral."
"The." "It." They're tiny words, but they feel huge, crushing like boulders. "Keith," she grinds out, shakily, wiping at her face. "He has a name. It's Keith. Mars. Or are you too much of a coward to even say it? Were you there, Sheriff?" she wonders, unable to help herself. Like how she'd turned up the dial on the police scanner as they rattled off the CHP codes for an armed suspect and a possible fatality on the same curve of road that had claimed a busload of Neptune High students three years ago. She'd blasted it like DMX at a frat party. "Did you wait just a little too long before taking down the perp? Did you laugh a little as Dad took his last breath? I bet you couldn't wait to get over here and share the good news, right?" The words burst out of her like gunfire. "Is that why you can't even fucking look at me? Because you're smiling? Did you have a good chuckle in the cruiser on the way over? Ding dong, Keith Mars is dead?"
"Shut up, Veronica." He finally looks up at her...two seconds before his fist flies towards her face and she has to duck a punch.
And while he stares at his still-clenched fingers like they belong to someone else, she gasps like he actually made contact.
Because Don Lamb's eyes are more red than blue.
"Shut up," he repeats, even though she's stopped talking. "Just shut up. Damn you." His voice isn't fake anymore, no concern, not too loud. It's barely above a whisper. "What the Hell would you know about how sorry I am?"
She steps, no stumbles, back over the threshold and the door bangs shut behind him. As he follows her right up to the arm of the threadbare couch she and Logan harvested from someone's curb, the answer is clear: entirely too much.
**
He tugged her hair loose from the pigtails, harshly, uncaring of the fact that he got a couple of hairs by the roots in the process. Tears sprang to her eyes but she didn't care much either as she yanked his shirt from the waistband of his perfectly pressed department-issue khakis and ripped it apart, sending a button and the shining golden sheriff's star spinning.
He picked her up easily, too easily, like he had on the sidewalk outside of the Seventh Veil after her latest public screaming match with Logan. The interrogation table was cool against her back and she shivered, eyes closed against the cheap lighting and his even cheaper smirk.
"I'm sorry," he mocked her, sounding so much like Logan -- complete with slurred syllables -- that it made her skin crawl. With both revulsion and desire. "I'm sorry, Veronica. It won't happen again."
"Yes, it will," she told him as he ripped open a foil package and prepared to slide inside her. "It always does."
"Then you're a goddamned idiot, Mars."
"Maybe I am," she whispered, raising her hips. "It's my choice."
"Which makes me even sorrier…for you."
**
She makes tea, even though she doesn't drink it. She has a stale box of chamomile that she uses in times of crisis, though a dead parent is a new one for her. Dead best friend? Check. Rape? Check. Dead dog? Check. God she misses Backup. Sometimes even more than she misses the transient people in her life. But back to her crisis list. Ill-advised one night stand with the county sheriff? Check. Though she hadn't made the tea until at least two days after the fact with that one. It had taken her that long to walk to the kitchen without wincing.
She sets the chipped Corningware cup down on the coffee table in front of Lamb, knowing he won't drink it either. It's just something to worry, something to *do* while they wait for Wallace's car to pull up in the driveway. He's back to not looking at her, arranging his hat carefully next to the teacup, like they match and he's going to be judged by Martha Stewart for his mad interior decorating skillz.
"I respected Keith," he says, quietly, grimly, sounding so adult that she has to blink. "I even liked him."
"He mildly tolerated you," she informs with a damp laugh.
"And he loved you like nobody's business. *That's* the last thing he said, Veronica. His last breath: 'Tell Veronica I love her.' And I wasn't laughing."
Of all the things she's heard today, this might be the worst because it's coming from him. And maybe he knows that because when she doubles over with sudden, ugly sobs, he pulls her into his lap. He whispers, "Shh," and "It's okay," and the Texas is so thick in his voice that she thinks of warm Mexican blankets and yellow roses.
Lamb must have had a grandmother once, one who held him just like this, before he got too old and too asinine to be comforted.
He cradles her, in a ghastly parallel of a pieta. She gets the vague déjà vu sense of having been held like this before, on another night when she believed her daddy was dead. Only this time…this time it's true.
She knows.
It's in Lamb's not-quite shadow.
And the sigh against her hair that tells her that the dog-and-pony show is just beginning.
--end--
September 18, 2006