VM Fanfic: Post Partm 6/?

[zaftig_goddess]

In the waning afternoon light, Logan stares at the back of Veronica’s head, where she has crumpled back down into their king size bed.

He is expecting her to fall back to sleep immediately, considering the extent of her exhaustion, but, instead, he hears her breathing become rapid and erratic.

He slides himself onto the bed behind her, and tentatively reaches out to rub her back.

Her shoulder blades tense as he begins to rub slow circles on her skin.

“What are you doing?” she whispers.

He stops rubbing her back. “I was just…trying to make you feel better.”

“You’re not getting laid right now, just forget it” she said, her voice cracking, her breathing still rapid.

He pulls away from her, hurt. “That wasn’t…I was just…trying to calm you down. Can’t I touch you without you assuming it’s about sex?” Internally he adds, “Which we haven’t had in almost 10 weeks, but, who’s counting?”

He starts to push himself off the bed when he hears a small strangled sound from her – she is crying. Very, very quietly, Veronica is crying.

He wraps his arms around her and pulls her towards him, despite her resistance, until he has pulled her body into him, her forehead resting against his chest.

“Please don’t cry, Veronica. Please don’t. I’m sorry. Whatever I did, whatever I did that’s making you cry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it, I don’t know what it was or is, but, I swear, I didn’t want to make you cry.”

He feels her body relax against him, but, her tears come harder, and louder. They lay together, entwined around each other, for fully ten minutes, as Veronica cries herself out.

Logan is bewildered, and uncertain. He knows only that he is tired of letting her push him away, and that he wants to keep holding her tight.

In the quiet aftermath of her crying jag, he hears her whisper his name.

“Logan?”

“Yes?”

“I’m so tired,” she said.

“I know, hon. I know you are. You need to sleep. That’s what you need to do right now,” he answered, sliding his fingers through her hair, pulling through some tangles.

“I’m afraid,” she said, so softly he almost missed it.

He is surprised. Veronica? HIS Veronica? The woman who took on his father? And the boy who had killed their classmates? The woman who regularly stared in the faces of vicious narcotics dealers and sent them to prison? His Veronica wasn’t afraid of anything, a fact that, on more than one occasion, terrified Logan.

“What are you afraid of?” he asked, curious.

She doesn’t answer him for so long that he wonders if she has fallen back to sleep, before being able to tell him what it is she is so afraid of that it is keeping her from sleeping.

But then he hears her.

“I’m afraid,” she paused. “I’m afraid….I’m afraid that if I fall asleep Jonah will stop breathing.”

He doesn’t answer her, so she repeats herself. “Logan, I’m afraid, I’m…I’m petrified that if I fall asleep Jonah won’t be able to breathe.”

Logan pulls her in closer to him and kisses the top of her head. He wants to tell her that her fear is unfounded. He wants to tell her that babies don’t just stop breathing simply because their mothers fall asleep. Instead he picks up the phone from the bedside table and pages the extension in the playroom.

“Elsa,” he says, when she picks up. “How’s Jonah?”

“He’s fine, he’s having a bit of a nap, and enjoying his binky,” she answers.

“Thank you, Elsa,” he said.

He turned back to Veronica, “he’s fine. He’s breathing. Elsa won’t let him stop breathing.”

“You don’t understand,” she turned away from him.

“Explain it to me, then,” he whispered.

“It doesn’t matter that I KNOW that he’s fine right this second. It doesn’t take away the FEAR that he won’t be, in the next second, in the second I fall asleep. He might stop breathing, Logan. He might stop, anytime I fall asleep…he might.”

As Logan gently strokes his hands up and down her arms, Veronica begins to cry again. Having no answers, Logan holds her tighter, and wonders, helplessly, what to do.