buffyx | It begins with the look she gives him as her fingers tangle in his hair.

Title: The Rain King (1/1)
Author: BuffyX
Pairing/Character: Logan POV; shades of Logan/Lilly, Logan/Duncan
Rating: R
Spoilers/Warnings: All of season one. Pretty slight m/m slash.
A/N: Thanks to

sexycereal for prompt words (soft, clean, shimmer, skin, gloss). Also, I am aware of how much my Lilly voice sucks, but writing her is like crack, so nyah nyah.

if you wrap yourself in daffodils / i will wrap myself in pain
if you're the queen of California / baby i am the king of the rain
-- “goodnight elizabeth,” counting crows

**

It begins with the look she gives him as her fingers tangle in his hair.

She says, “Good morning, there, beautiful,” like she has never been gone and she’ll never leave him again.

They sit cross-legged on her bed in their underwear, atop smooth silken sheets, and drink gin out of her mother’s finest china. He says her name. He doesn’t know what else to say. She just laughs and kisses him with a mouth that is cotton-soft, pillowy tongue tangling with his. When he goes to touch his palm to the milk-white curve of her cheek, she disappears.

When he pulls his hand back, it is covered in her blood.

**

He wakes up painfully hard; he wakes up hating himself.

This is nothing new.

**

Logan’s world falls apart in numerous ways, all incredibly dramatic and spectacularly tragic. It is a mess. He is a mess.

No one knows what to do with him; but hell, he doesn’t know what to do with himself, so he doesn’t blame them. He is unstable and inconsistent. He is angry and raw and broken. He is most definitely damaged goods, and who wants to deal with that?

One minute he’s teetering on the edge of a bridge, thoughts of water-clogged lungs and free at last running through his head like a CD that keeps skipping on the same track, waiting to either free-fall or to be pummeled into the ground by Chachi and Co.; neither happens. Instead, there’s the pavement rushing up to meet him, Weevil spitting in his face, calling him gabacho and you little bitch. Then the backseat of a cruiser, blinding lights and wailing sirens, a barrage of words that hit him like bullets: Father. Lilly. Murder. Hospital. Arrest. Lilly. Affair. Tapes. Veronica. Murder. Lilly. Lilly.

Lilly.

Of course, it always comes back to her.

**

He doesn’t remember a lot after that. He remembers a few things: not recognizing the sounds coming from him, thinking they sounded like someone dying. Grief catching and breaking open in his throat. All of those eyes, on him, calculating his next move. Stop looking at me. Did he scream the words, sob them, or did he keep them locked in his head, reverberating against the sides of his skull? He can’t be sure.

Mostly, Logan wishes he was on the bridge again, where his death wish would not be so half-hearted now, where his soundtrack was only the silence, the leftover tracks of his own tears that wouldn’t seem to dry off, the tides of the ocean, the bourbon sloshing around in his flask as he took another long pull. He drowns himself on a daily basis, in some form or another.

The weight of everything is too much-- it is like stones around his neck, bound to his wrists and ankles. Some moments, it would be so easy just to go ahead with it already. To go ahead and drown.

So easy.

**

He comes across her lounging poolside, flipping absentmindedly through some magazine on her lap, legs crossed at the knees, shorts tucked up to expose her smooth thighs. Everything is in shades of monochrome, pale and sharp, too much contrast. He shades his eyes against the sun and squints.

When he catches better sight of her, spotting the open wound, he staggers back, feels his heart ramming wildly in his chest. He remembers streaming video: her dead on the ground, dead doll eyes rolling into her head, spending an hour over the toilet seat retching until his entire body ached from heaving so hard.

“Oh, hey!” She greets him with a bright Lilly-smile, casual, as if this is an everyday occurrence, as if she isn‘t a corpse and dead and this is all normal.

Bile rises in the back of his throat. “Fuck. Fuck.”

Seeing him staring at her, she reaches up and touches the gash with an annoyed frown. “Oh, this? Ugh, I know. How am I supposed to read this if I keep bleeding all over it? What a bitch.” She flicks past another page and sighs loudly. “By the way, Ensenada? Can’t believe Dick roped you into that one-- god, everyone knows the real fun goes down in Rosarito. But whatever, it‘s your life. Not mine.” A short, dry laugh. “You know, with the being-dead and all.”

“Lilly,” he says, swallowing hard, “why are you here?”

“Don’t ask me.” She snorts. “I’m not the one in charge of these things, bucko.”

**

One of the lawyers is holding a envelope.

He knows it won’t be good news; this is the youngest of the set that is always dropping in and out of his house, making phone calls, pouring over paperwork, having discussions with Trina behind closed doors, out of his earshot-- which is fine by him, because he wants nothing to do with any of it.

This guy is fresh out of law school, some Ivy League place, Dartmouth or Princeton or something like that. Fuck if Logan can remember which. He can’t even remember the man’s name. He’s maybe in his mid-twenties, overeager and aggressive and green, and with that, he’s sure to be relegated the dirty work, the office buttmonkey. Certainly he tries too hard-- wears crisp button-down dress shirts, pressed slacks, penny loafers. A clean-shaven, refined fellow who overcompensates for his inexperience however possible. Would probably get down on his knees and suck cock if it made him look good to the higher-ups.

Now, the envelope is positioned on the table between them, creamy-white, sealed. No stamp, just his name, printed in neat, black lettering, block letters: LOGAN. He stares at it blankly, unmoving.

“Your father,” the lawyer explains after a sufficiently awkward silence, tugging at his tie, nervousness showing underneath all that gloss and polish, the professional front he works so diligently to maintain.

It hits Logan: This man not only doesn’t want to be doing this, but he is sincerely afraid of him. It’s a bit startling, and a bit amusing, but then, maybe not that surprising, when he thinks about it. Everyone seems to fear him these days, tries to evade him whenever possible. No one wants to get too close. He could shatter at any second, after all. He could snap. Fly off the handle. Go crazy, kill someone, break.

Like father, like son, isn’t that what they say?

And sometimes, he’s scared, too. Because sometimes he thinks he could. Could just… lose it. Ha. Lose what? Like he has anything left anyway. Sometimes it’s hard to remember if he had anything to begin with, aside from fallacies, aside from illusions.

“Your father,” the young man says again, “he asked me to give this to you. He’s gaining basic motor skills now, but he’s still in a lot of pain. They have him on medication for that, so his-- his thoughts-- they’re a bit scrambled. But he understands what is, uh, you know, what’s going to be proceeding. And even so, he said it’s important to him, for you to read it.”

Logan tries to imagine it: His father’s broken body, the snarl of tubes, machined breathing. Pen clasped in his trembling, weak hand, painstakingly scratching out letter after letter with excruciating attentiveness. All for him.

“Well.” Logan shifts in his seat, eyes the letter a moment longer before leaning in and picking it up off the table. “If it’s that important.”

He turns the envelope over in his hands, studying it. Digs into his pocket and pulls out his mother’s lighter. A moment later, the envelope is catching on fire, smoldering. The young lawyer lets out a yelp of surprise. The letter flutters out of his hands and cascades to the floor, where he grinds the flames out with the heel of his shoe. Charred black remains stain the sterling white carpet.

He wonders, briefly, if his mother would be proud. He hopes so. But Logan doesn’t think about it for long, because there isn’t any point in wondering, or in hoping. He doesn’t have the energy for such luxuries.

**

Trina is hysterical: about the accusations, about the trial, about everything, exhibiting signs of assorted insanity. This isn’t at all atypical; she has always had a flair for dramatics. These days it is kicked into overdrive. Thankfully, there is only one (failed) attempt to discuss everything with Logan, a laughable imitation of a heart-to-heart at the dinner table.

“We have to support Daddy,” she says over Indian takeout, since neither know the first thing about cooking and the personal chef quit last week and this is the only way they know how to take care of themselves. Trina makes this statement with such adamance that she nearly tricks him into believing her sincerity; her acting skills must be improving. Now that’s a shock.

Logan swirls the teriyaki chicken on his plate with the curry and meets her level gaze with his own. “Right. So, what is it I’m supporting now? Him fucking my girlfriend, or killing her? Really, tell me, so I can work on throwing my full backing behind the old man.”

“After all he’s done for you, the least--”

“Look, Trina, we all know your mouth is only good for one thing, and it sure as fuck isn’t talking. So why don’t you do everyone a favor and shut the hell up?”

Her cheeks flush furious crimson, and she glares, shooting daggers at him. He slams his chair back from the table and makes for an exit, not wanting to hear any answer. He gets one anyway.

“And who would you be, if it weren’t for him? Huh? Tell me that!” she screams in his general direction. “Who would you be?”

**

She is sweaty and glistening and draped across his mattress, body wrapped in Egyptian cotton sheets, twisting her bloody mass of hair to the top of her skull and pinning it there with her hand. She lets go, and it cascades back down past her shoulders, tangled. She is bleeding everywhere, making a mess of everything. She doesn’t seem to care. That doesn’t surprise him. She never did care about what she left in her wake.

“So what?” he questions, irritated. “You’re taking up permanent residence in all my dreams now? Gonna haunt me for all eternity to make me suffer?”

The sheet wrapped around her slips as she runs one perfectly manicured hand through her hair, exposing more of her cleavage. “God, I hope not. Talk about boring.”

She mock-frowns, and he stares at her pouty mouth, swollen, plush lips. She kissed his father with that mouth. Probably wrapped those lips around his father’s dick, too-- she always loved giving head. Loved being in control. She must’ve thought that just because she’d spread her legs and opened up shop for the big movie star, that she was the one in power. Just because he wanted her pretty little cunt. Little did she know.

She should’ve been smart enough to know better. He should’ve been smart enough to see what was happening.

“I swear to god, I could kill you,” he finds himself saying. The urge to grab her, to knock that smug little preening smile off her face, is frightening and overwhelming. He balls his fists at his sides and clenches his jaw to keep himself from springing forward.

“Hello, been there, done that, had the funeral-- death threats are so passe,” she teases, laughing harshly. At him. Anger courses through his veins.

“Well, fuck off already, okay? Okay,” he seethes. “It’s over. You’re over. So just--stop. Whatever this is, stop.”

A smile curves on her lips, taunting. “I’m not the one who won’t let go.”

**

Lilly’s grave is hidden behind a clove of trees; the Kanes wanted it to be a private site, to not attract the attention of intruders and media. There is no epitaph, just a headstone, her name and lifespan engraved into the granite. The last time he saw it, it was adorned in flowers, wreaths of lilies and rose stems.

Logan hasn’t been here since the first time-- that day, when the world seemed to be collapsing around him like a house of cards. They buried her in the ground, and part of him died that day, too, would forever be left six feet under the dirt. He stood next to Duncan at the ceremony, and he remembers that Veronica was there, too, and she was crying silently and before he left, he went over to her and touched her arm and let her cling to him like a little girl because things between them hadn’t gone completely to shit yet.

After, there was the wake, and he and Duncan holed up in his room, sat on his bed and passed a bottle of Jack Daniels back and forth. He ended up with his face in Duncan’s lap as he wept-- big, body-racking sobs that left him gulping for air. Duncan didn’t cry, because Duncan was too out of it and numb and what back then Logan had presumed to be shock, but now knows was most likely an epileptic-fit-slash-drug-induced stupor.

But he held Logan’s shoulder with his rough palm and kissed his hair, pressed his mouth to the space above his ear, lips grazing the skin there, and that just made him cry harder, because he couldn’t remember the last time anyone had touched him out of loving kindness, with such intimacy. Lilly was dead and the ghost of her memory was already fading, he had to look at polaroids now to remember her hands, and Duncan was there and offering consolation and touching him and he shared her blood, and that meant something, and the fact that he held him and meant it, that had to mean something, too.

And they didn’t ever talk about it after, but Logan held onto that memory, cradled it in his palm and locked it up for safekeeping, and sometimes, when things were bad-- like, really, really bad-- he’d take it out and remember.

When he felt he was nothing but an open wound, bleeding over everyone, deserving of nothing, he could remember that moment, that one moment. When he needed to.

**

Logan’s staring at her headstone and at her name inscribed there, those fancy capital letters, reminding him of the way his father scrawled across an envelope. Another pack of lies. His whole life, a pack of lies. That is what he has been built on since the beginning: feather-light illusions that can be snagged away if you put any effort into it, like wind-tossed papers on the street, caught in a gust of air.

He doesn’t deserve to be here, but fuck it. And fuck her, too, because no matter how Celeste tried to twist the truth, Lilly was never sanctimonious, was never sweet. She was bold and brash and a bitch, and she burned so bright that sometimes it hurt to look at her. She was too vibrant, too vivacious. A force of nature that was never meant to last.

“Here’s to you,” he says to no one, and stares at her grave plot. Raises his flask in the air before swigging it down; the acrid taste burns the back of his throat. A half-assed toast to a girl who would never see another birthday, who would never fall in or out of love again, who would forever be frozen in time as she was the day she died.

“To you,” he repeats, “you bitch. You fucking bitch,” and unceremoniously dumps the contents of his flask onto the ground. The damp soil darkens.

He laughs and laughs, so hard he can’t breathe, and he sinks to the ground and holds his knees and rocks back and forth, alternately laughing and crying until he can’t tell which he is doing anymore.

**

He sits on the perfect white sand and waits as she walks out of the waves. Water slides off her body, drips from her sleek hair. She stands in front of him, naked, unabashed.

“You’re not bleeding,” he remarks, surprised. In his dreams, she has always bled.

She sits down next to him and smiles, and that above all things unsettles him, because it isn’t cruel or snide or bright. It’s just… sad, and soft. Lilly has never been soft.

“I’m not wearing any clothing, and that’s what you notice?” she teases, eyes rolling. “God, you never did appreciate the hotness that is me.” She gestures emphatically to her body. She is beautiful, shimmering skin and wide almond eyes, covered in moonlight. He cannot look away.

“So this is it,” he says, understanding.

Lilly nods and sighs. “Yeah, the gig’s up. I guess I’m done raging against the dying of the light or whatever.”

“You were never in love with me,” Logan tells her, without anger.

She shrugs, a graceful motion. “Maybe not. But you know, we were fabulous while we lasted. I mean, we totally ruled. And the sex was pretty rocking, right?”

A firecracker grin, and then she’s turning away, almost disappearing. Something cracks inside him, in his chest. It is suddenly hard to breathe.

She looks over her shoulder and frowns, spinning back. “I forgot something.”

And he tilts his face up to meet hers. They kiss again, and again, and he doesn’t know how long it lasts.

Lilly pulls away, finally.

“Goodnight,” she says to him, and fades away.

“Goodnight,” he says.

**

Who would he be. Isn’t that the million-dollar question.

He is nothing but shards, pieces and fragments and splinters and slices of the world he once knew, a world made of plastic smiles and flimsy silicone and houses made of straw. Until one day, the Big Bad Wolf blew it all to shambles. But it didn’t make any difference how it happened, really, because it would’ve fallen apart eventually, unraveled at the seams and collapsed in on itself.

Because the sad truth is that you can’t live in a straw house forever. So this is his life now: living in the wreckage, the ruins.

He is the aftermath of the hurricane. He is what’s still standing.

--end

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: "Passenger Seat," Death Cab For Cutie