Afterglow
by Zeelee

Trina had disguised her puffy red eyes with concealer by the time he finally got home, almost three days later. He had slept for maybe two hours total since he'd heard about the arrest.

From the way Trina looked, she had slept for even less.

She screamed at him when he stumbled through the back door. Unintelligible, wailing sobs. She didn't know where he'd been, she was so scared, they'd found his car by the bridge, how could she leave him to the bastard press vultures.

He ignored her, searching for some advil and maybe something to eat, and after a while she calmed down enough to stop yelling and retrieve a cigarette, lighting it with shaking fingers.

"You know what the worst of it is? I'm not really all that surprised. And neither are you."

Logan's throat was too dry; he had to swallow and cough before he could speak. "Yeah. Go us--we win the People award for Most Fucked-up Family of the Year."

Her laugh sounded brittle, lifeless. Logan looked at her and he didn't see the same person he'd seen just four days ago; he looked at their whole house (it had been crawling with police the last few days, combed for 'evidence') and it seemed dreamlike, surreal, fake like a movie set.

When he looked over at Trina again, she was pressing the end of her cigarette against her palm, calmly and casually as if she were retouching her makeup. He could smell burning flesh, and see her face contort in pain, but she didn't make a sound.

He walked over to her, taking the cigarette out of her hands. "Now now, dear sister. Stop that silliness; you wouldn't want to damage your chances as an upcoming TV actress with scar tissue."

The slap was sharp and painful and real, and the best thing he'd felt in days.

He rubbed his cheek, smirking at her, and she touched his lips lightly.

"You're bleeding."

It was true; the wound on his mouth, one of the many souvenirs of Weevil's marvelous beatings, had been sluggishly bleeding on and off since that night on the bridge. Later, he'd learned that Veronica had been risking her life and bringing his father to justice while he had been drinking vodka like water and getting off on that Mexican bitch beating him to death, like the masochistic pervert he was.

Trina's fingers were still lightly touching his lip (she was getting blood on her manicure), and he opened his mouth and felt her slide one finger inside. The nail scraped his tongue, and he closed his eyes and sucked, let her slide her fingers rhythmically in and out of his mouth. He could see the pink, seared flesh of the cigarette burn on her hand, and he closed his eyes.

When she took her hand away he didn't open his eyes; he groped for her blindly, and he wasn't sure who kissed who. It wasn't really a kiss, anyway; more of a mutual agreement not to talk anymore.

Somehow they made it to the couch. Somehow he got her clothes off; somehow he ended up holding her small, sad-looking breasts in his hands; somehow she got her hand down his pants, squeezing his cock and murmuring his name in his ear.

She had lots of scars and bruises, and he knew that Dylan had only been the latest in a series of similar boys. But she didn't let him spend any time on her scars, didn't let him trace the faint white line underneath her collarbone with his tongue, like he used to trace Lilly's appendectomy scar. Instead she dug her nails into his skin and smiled when he hissed (she had to know how much he liked that), gasped slightly when she managed to draw blood or a bruise.

He moved his fingers inside her until she came, but was too exhausted (scared, pathetic, impotent, choose an adjective) to do anything but pass out on the couch before his turn came.

She let him sleep the night there, and he woke up the next morning to the smell of her burning bacon in a futile attempt to be domestic. She smiled sarcastically at him when she noticed that he was awake, and he grunted in return.

He laid on his back and stared at the ceiling; he could hear the faint strains of some oldies station floating in from the stereo in the kitchen.

Maybe this was his destiny. Hangovers and sex with his stepsister (not Lilly, not Veronica), watching daytime TV and doing as much coke as possible (or hey, maybe he could try heroin next, it would kill him sooner), succumbing to the inner sad fuck that lived inside him, dying to come out.

He dragged himself off the couch, started the coffeepot, put two pop tarts in the toaster and listen to Trina talk on the phone to her latest boyfriend.

 

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