Chapter Text
“On the twelfth day before Christmas, some asshole gave to me…the worst fucking flu in all of history.” Logan sings the familiar tune to himself through clogged sinuses, groaning internally when the concluding ‘eee’ sound buzzes painfully against the congestion in his head.
Even sarcasm hurts. Woe is Logan.
Pushing away from his resting place, he trails disconsolately down the hallway of his apartment, the comforter from his bed wrapped around him like a Grande Dame’s shawl, ends dragging on the floor.
A brutal coughing fit forces him to stop briefly and lean on the wall again for support. He almost just turns around and goes back to the bedroom, but he has a mission: Cold medicine. If there’s any cold medicine in his spartan new apartment it’s probably in the kitchen.
This is a shitty time to get sick. Despite the song running through his head, it’s actually probably more like—Logan tries to calculate, but the math escapes him at the moment—it’s some fucking day in early December. One week left until exams. Sophomore year half over. And yesterday he’d woken up shivering. Fucking flu.
He’s never sick. Never. Hungover, yes, but not sick. Somehow, though, when he is, it’s just, like—it’s just the worst. Logan coughs and brings the blanket up to cover his mouth for no good reason, since he’s totally alone in the apartment.
It must be that he has such a strong immune system that when it goes down it really goes down hardcore. Other people can’t possibly feel this bad when they’re sick.
He reaches the kitchen and clutches at the counter. Shifting the comforter swaddling to free one arm, he roots through the cabinet above the coffee maker. When he’d moved out of the Grand this summer he’d tossed a bunch of random crap up here. He shifts aside what looks like the top half of a bicycle pump and then stops to cough into the crook of his elbow.
When Veronica’d had that cold a few weeks ago, she’d still come to class and she’d kept working that dumbass poodle case. Solved it, too, he thinks. They don’t see each other much these days, mostly just during their oh-so-awkward thrice weekly encounters in Film Studies. Two weeks ago, she’d shown up at Monday lecture looking pale and tired—said she was sick—but she hadn’t missed a class. He must have, like, some mutated mega version of whatever she had. Logan rubs a palm across his aching chest and coughs hard enough to double over this time. Probably he’s got pneumonia. Everything hurts.
The cabinet is mostly full of junk, but shoved to the back there are a few bottles. He extracts a mostly full bottle of el cheapo rum and smiles at it, fondly. Well hello, where did you come from? If he can’t find any cold medicine, The Captain will do fine as a substitute. Feed a cold, drown a fever. That’s a thing, right?
He reaches into the cabinet again.
Ah ha! One of the other bottles has the familiar ovoid shape and cap of cough medicine. He pulls it toward him and the viscous syrup inside sloshes comfortingly. It’s not Nyquil or Sudafed it’s—he squints at the label, which he can’t read—Crap. It’s in Spanish. Sudatos. Soo-day-toes? Must be one of Dick’s purchases.
Doesn’t even live here and I’m still curating his under-the-counter crap.
The Dick-ster is convinced that anything even remotely medicine-like from Mexico will “fuck you up,” so he always stocks up at border pharmacies when they go to TJ. His enthusiasm has waned a little, though, since that off-brand Claritin didn’t do anything more than clear his sinuses.
Logan sighs and eyes the label again, trying to summon up the ghost of his high school Spanish classes. No dice.
Ah well, one side has a picture of a sick person and the other has the same person looking all better, so it’s clearly cold medicine, despite the lack of an ingredient list. Logan shrugs mentally. He’s put sketchier things into his body.
He unscrews the cap and takes a healthy swallow, grimacing at the licorice-y medicine taste. For good measure, he chases the Suda-whatsis with a slug of rum—the combination ought to either make him feel better, or kill him off. Frankly, at this point—he coughs harshly and clutches his head against the pain—either one sounds acceptable.
Once he staggers out of the kitchen and flops down on the couch, exhaustion spreads through Logan’s body. Just standing upright for that long tired him out, but he doesn’t want to go all the way back to bed. He snags the remote and clicks the TV on as the medicine (or the booze) starts to kick in.
Click. Judge Judy. Click. Yu-Gi-Oh!. Click. A movie. Ooh, James Caan...Aaron hated him. Acceptable.
His eyelids are drooping closed even before the hand with the remote settles on his stomach. Somewhere in the background, the brassy ring of his landline phone sounds. It’s in the kitchen. Too far. The machine’ll get it...
Every joint in Logan’s body hurts, as if someone’d taken a sledgehammer to him. A familiar voice fades in and out of what sounds like a monologue. “You weren’t in class… paper was due… same number.”
“Paper?” he rasps.
Veronica—he thinks it’s Veronica—comes into blurry focus, her head above his. Her hair hangs straight, the bangs held to the side with a child’s barrette. This time when she speaks her voice is closer and oozes sympathy. “Oh, what happened to you? Your nose is all ookey.”
“Sick,” Logan half says, half coughs. His head is too heavy to lift and he contents himself with rolling it to watch as she walks away.
His eyes come more into focus and he gets a backside view. Even the shapeless dress with the flower print can’t downplay a sizeable ass. Heavy tights and clunky shoes complete the LDS-compound look.
The room he’s in is dismal; faded flower wallpaper, too-dark wood, and worn furniture a lá a 1930s Sears Roebuck catalog. On the bedside table is a pile of magazines; the top one’s a tattered issue of Surfing with a shot of Dick on the cover, wetsuit and artfully mussed hair et al, staring wistfully into a sunset.
Pain accompanies his attempts to reach for it and brings—I told her no one can eat fifty lasagnas—Veronica back to him.
Small, meaty hands press his shoulders into the mattress and she shakes her head. “Now you just stay right there. I know what you need.”
A chill racks his body and he coughs so hard his lungs burn. Logan curls his legs into his chest and Veronica disappears. “Don’t go,” he wants to beg but the words won’t leave his tortured throat.
When he next becomes aware, his head is full of pressure—most of it centered behind his eye sockets. In front of him is the same print dress, three buttons straining at the midsection.
“V’ronca?” Logan slurs. His tongue is thick, oversized for his mouth. She leans over him to straighten his blanket. He pats her ample bottom and kisses the air in her direction. “You c’m back.”
Veronica grabs his wrist. With her other hand she waggles a finger in his face. “Because you have work to do, Mister.”
“Hmm-mmm.” He shakes his head. “Too tired. You on top.”
She hikes up the skirt of her dress, bringing a twinge of anticipation to his cock. Until she pulls a laptop from between her thighs and throws it on top of him.
“Wha’?”
She shakes her head. “The paper silly. You need to write the paper.”
Paper. Confusion reigns as Logan tries to remember what paper has to do with a computer. He turns the laptop over and looks for the paper tray. He fumbles and drops it on the floor.
Her face flushes a deep red. The eyes he thought were small in her now-large face loom huge, inches from his and full of rage. “Your EFF-ing paper Logan! The cockadoodie is due TODAY! But NOOOO you want to lay here to pee and groan. TOUGH NUT, MISTER!”
A racing panic makes him damp with sweat. The paper, due today. The paper. Write the paper. He did. Didn’t he? His finger reach out and click a ‘Send’ button in sense memory. He breathes. “I wrote it. It’s okay, it’s okay.”
Veronica backs up. Again the skirt is hoisted and she throws a stapled group of papers at him. “NOT GOOD ENOUGH! It’s never good enough!” she yells. The laptop materializes in her hands again and she smashes it against his knees to punctuate her words. “You! Do it again! Do it right!”
He’s sitting at a desk, a laptop open in front of him and Veronica behind him. Pink neon from outside is filtered through the stained glass window. She places her pudgy hands on top of Logan’s and pushes his fingers on the keyboard so words form on the screen. A player piano in the corner plunks out a tune in synch.
Logan, weakened further, submits. His mind blurs and his own thoughts fade as Veronica’s voice takes them over. “Oh, Logan,” she simpers at his ear. “It’s going to be so good. See, when you just follow me—“
“No!” With the last of his will his fingers splay open and catch hers. “No,” he says, stronger now, “Don’t ask me to do that.”
A small man with a too-white smile and a sequined suit prances into the room. He sits down at the piano and changes the music to something upbeat. A kitten climbs out of the sparkly jacket and chases the many-ringed fingers across the keys.
Veronica’s hands thin and slide out of Logan’s. When she walks around to sit in his lap the dress is gone; in its place are jeans and a t-shirt. Her hair hangs in waves and her eyes are different, bigger and artfully shadowed.
“Okay,” she says, and kisses his eyebrow, his nose. The kitten pounces onto the desk and crawls between them, climbing Logan’s shirt to stick it’s face between theirs. Its little mouth breathes in, pulling the air from Logan’s lungs—