Fic!
Title: 5 Ways Lilly Kane Never Died
Author: sadiekate
Pairing/Character: It's all about Lilly. Plus, there's a little Lilly/Duncan. And guest spots by Veronica, Cliff, Madison, Dick, Trina, that crazy broad from AEFC, and Joe Rogan. No, I am not kidding.
Word Count: 3098
Rating: NC-17 (for language, Kanecest, and the fact that I am on crack)
Summary: If Lilly hadn't died that one day, guess what? She still would have died.
Spoilers: Through season one.
Warnings: Did I mention the Kanecest?
Notes: Many thanks to rachel_shanz, the Supreme Ruler of Kanecestia for encouraging the madness. quotableboy deserves all the credit/blame in the world for the fourth section. Iced-Ti, as always, gets my undying gratitude, and gets to cop as many feels as she wants to. And also, big ups to Dorothy Parker for writing poems that inspire me to kill Lilly Kane. Written for the Lilly challenge at 5thingsthat and x-posted to fic_from_mars and veronicamarsfic.
Nooses Give
It was a good thing Duncan had come home when he had. Lilly had known Aaron had like, a dark side or whatever. He had won that Oscar for that one movie where he was totally a serial killer, and it’s not like he was ever that good of an actor before. Lilly was from California, so she knew all about Method.
Still, it’s not like she had expected Aaron to come at her swinging with an ashtray. If Duncan hadn’t forgotten his soccer gear and run home to get it before practice, she probably would have wound up with one serious black eye, which, gross.
Instead, she got to watch Duncan get a few good swings in before she ran upstairs to call the police and retrieve the videos. By the time that idiot Deputy Veal or whatever arrived, she was pale and trembling, eyes glossy with unshed tears.
“He taped us,” she said numbly, rocking back and forth. “He told me he loved me, but …”
A tear rolled down her cheek at just the right moment, and where the hell was her fucking Oscar?
She was at the station all night giving her statement. One of the guys wrapped her in his big jacket, and her hands disappeared inside the sleeves. The jacket smelled really nice, and the guy who gave it to her would probably actually be really cute if she shaved his mustache and mussed up his hair.
When she got home the next morning, her parents were gone. Daddy’s business meetings could never wait, and Mother probably needed a spa day and a fresh round of Botox after all the trauma.
Duncan was in bed still, pillow over his face. She stripped off her pep squad t-shirt, but left on the shorts, because he liked them, and wrapped herself around him.
“You’re home,” he muttered sleepily, and she snuggled into his chest.
“God, Donut,” she yawned. “That was like, the most tedious night of my life.”
When he didn’t say anything, she glanced up at him. His brow was knit together in confusion.
“He didn’t seduce, you, did he?” he asked flatly. “It was the other way around, wasn’t it? Jesus, Lilly. I’ve been feeling terrible all night that he took advantage of you.”
“Aww, what’s the matter?” Lilly taunted, slithering over him and rising up, pressing the insides of her thighs against his bare torso. “Did you think I went to him all vulnerable after you told me you didn’t want to fuck me anymore? You’re certainly overestimating your own impact, not to mention your abilities.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to fuck you anymore, I said I couldn’t,” Duncan corrected her automatically, and she grinned in triumph.
“I don’t know why you always do this,” she told him, moving down to brush her bare breasts against his chest and slip her tongue past his lips. “You always come back to me. Face it. Stop pretending that you don’t want to be with me.”
“It’s not that simple, Lilly,” he said, but when she pinned his hands above his head and dug her perfect fingernails into his wrists and bit down hard on his earlobe, he made this shuddering noise in the back of his throat, and she knew she was slowly destroying any semblance of reason.
She liked him so much better when he wasn’t thinking. Duncan always had a tendency to like, totally overcomplicate everything.
“Say you love me,” she whispered against his skin, licking a delicate line against his collarbone. “Tell me how much.”
“You know I love you,” Duncan groaned. “I want to fuck you until we both die from it.”
And Lilly believed him when he said it, because she knew he loved her. She knew he was probably the only person who ever really had.
Duncan rolled her over, and he was the only one who could ever get away with that, because usually she liked to be on top. But Duncan had this thing about control, and so sometimes she’d let him pretend that he had some.
“Why’d you do it?” he whispered into her stomach, shimmying her stretchy green shorts down, and moving farther along her body to press rough kisses against her hipbones.
“Because I wanted to,” she shrugged, laughing when he hit a ticklish spot below her bellybutton.
“Why?” he persisted, yanking her down the bed and smothering her with a sudden, bruising kiss.
“What do you want me to say?” she gasped, when he finally let her go. “That I thought of you the whole time? That I only did it to make you crazy?”
“You do make me crazy,” he admitted, trailing his fingers across her exposed torso, like he was a cartographer, and she was a place he could somehow map out. “This is still wrong, you know. Nothing’s changed.”
“God, Duncan, you think too much,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Just shut up and fuck me, already.”
And as much as he always made this big show of needing to be convinced, it was the same as it ever was, because he was always hard for her like, the second she showed up, and he shoved his way into her practically before she even finished talking.
“Fuck, yes,” Lilly hissed, and she canted her hips up against his, and he pulled her hard against him, and she felt his cock hit home.
“This can’t happen again,” he choked out, even though he was practically fucking her into the mattress, and sweat was beading up on his forehead.
“I know,” she humored, groaning in equal parts passion and annoyance, reaching down to rub her own clit because he always forgot about that when he was in self-flagellation mode.
Duncan slowed his strokes down for a moment and brushed his hand across her face. He was looking at her tenderly, almost like he wanted to memorize something about the moment, and Lilly felt her chest swell with a sudden, inexplicable warmth.
“I mean it,” he said softly, and then he was wrapping his hands around her throat, and picking up the pace to fuck her hard and deep again.
“God, yes,” Lilly managed to wheeze with the last of her breath, wrapping her legs around his waist to pull him even deeper.
But something wasn’t right, because he wasn’t letting go. He just kept squeezing, tightening his grip a little with each thrust.
“Duncan?” she mouthed, clawing at him uselessly, and he just looked at her with something like grief scrawled across his face.
“Never again, Lilly,” he said, and she came at the same time he did (because they always came together), and then her vision whited out.
The last thought she ever had was that the fucking bastard had better kill himself next.
Razors Pain You
So maybe in retrospect selling those tapes she had swiped from Aaron hadn’t been the most brilliant idea of all time. Yeah, Lilly got a metric assload of money, but her parents completely overreacted and cut off her trust fund. Plus, no one would even talk to her anymore, which was completely insane, because it wasn’t like Logan hadn’t fucked around on her, but he just moped around all broody and morose, and everyone in the whole goddamn school took his side. Even Veronica, and when had she grown a backbone?
But, whatever. School was practically over. Lilly stuck it out ‘til graduation, and then went straight on down to Hollywood. Like Neptune could really handle her fabulousness anyway, right?
The tabloids ate her up with a spoon, too, because she rocked the party scene like no one had before. She was way more famous than any of the celebutantes, and she totally transcended the label. Lilly had skipped out on the whole debutante thing, since she was firmly convinced the hypocrisy of her in a white dress would cause a schism and California would wind up in the fucking ocean or something.
It was a Wednesday, so the ladies’ room at whatever hot club she was in that week was completely deserted. Lilly rested her compact mirror on the sink, pulled out a razor, and began to chop her last line of coke. She was going to have to call that cousin of Weevil’s who lived out in East L.A. and see if he could hook her up with some more.
She snorted the line and rubbed the last traces from the mirror into her gums, and then leaned forward into the mirror to touch up her lipstick. Everything was all fake-plastic-perfect in L.A., and Lilly could play that part. She paid no attention to the bathroom door swinging open behind her, until the girl stopped behind her and regarded her curiously.
“You’re Lilly Kane, right?”
“Who wants to know?” Lilly asked shortly. She really didn’t want to get another random lecture from one of Aaron’s fans.
“Oh, sorry. You probably wouldn’t remember me,” the girl said nervously. “I just moved down here from Neptune. I used to help cater your parents’ parties sometimes. I carve things. Like ice sculptures. You know.”
“Huh. What a funny coincidence,” Lilly shrugged, tucking her makeup back into her trendy oversized bag. She was only half-listening. If the girl had never shown up on her radar back home, she obviously wasn’t that important.
“I think,” the girl said thoughtfully, “I’m here to do something great.”
“Model or actress?” Lilly asked politely. She wouldn’t really believe either one. The girl was cute-ish, but sort of mousy and angular.
“Neither,” she replied vaguely.
“Well, it’s been like, super-awesome catching up,” Lilly said, smiling brightly and fakely, because this was getting kind of creepy. “I’ve really got to run, though.”
She turned to leave, but the girl said something that stopped her in her tracks.
“You shouldn’t think you’re special, you know. I was with Aaron, too. I bet he didn’t tell you he loved you. He said it to me. I think he meant it. We had something special. I wish you hadn’t ruined everything.”
The crazy bitch actually sounded sort of wistful. Lilly didn’t have any patience for that kind of thing, and she turned around to face her.
‘Listen, you -“
Whatever Lilly was going to say, never came out, because the girl moved her arm out fast and did something, but Lilly was too distracted by the drops of blood on the floor to think about that. She wondered if she had another nose bleed, but when she touched her hand to her face, it came back clean and dry, but she was still bleeding, bleeding a lot, and oh god my throat, that fucking bitch cut my throat.
Lilly had never done well in English class, but she thought this might be irony - cut by her own razor blade at the hands of a professional carver, or whatever. Mr. Daniels would have been so proud, had he been privy to her dying thought.
Guns Aren’t Lawful
“God, Veronica. Boring much?”
“Hey, you’re the one who wanted to come on a stakeout.”
“You could have warned me it would be such a snoozefest.”
“I did!” Veronica said indignantly. “You didn’t listen.”
“I never listen,” Lilly pointed out.
“At least you’re aware of your shortcomings.”
They had been parked outside of this sleazy motel for like, hours. It was utterly tedious. Still, Lilly was slightly impressed by Veronica, who had not, as expected, fallen apart when her mom had split town after the whole paternity thing had emerged. No, she had dusted herself off, and helped her dad start his own business when he decided he didn’t want to kiss the new County Supervisor’s ass, and now she was positively hardboiled, or whatever adjective they used in those old black and white detective movies where everyone talked really fast and smoked a lot.
“Here we go,” Veronica muttered, lifting her camera suddenly. “This is the money shot. Things are about to get a lot more interesting.”
Lilly watched the stocky man slink out of the motel room. The woman hovering inside the doorway was so clearly not his wife. You know, unless he was like, married to a hooker.
“You son of a bitch!” someone screamed from outside the car, and Veronica looked in the rearview mirror.
“Shit,” she said. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”
“What?” Lilly asked excitedly.
“It’s Cheaty McScumbag’s wife. She must have followed us here. Stay put. I’m going to go try and calm her down.”
But before Veronica could open the door, the woman had pulled a gun out of her bag and begun waving it around.
“Okay. New plan,” she said, turning the keys in the ignition. “Let’s get out of here.”
Veronica screeched the LeBaron out into the street. Gunshots rang out behind them, and the back window shattered.
“What the fuck?” Veronica swore, yanking the wheel and sending them haphazardly around the corner.
Lilly tried to breathe, and suddenly found it very difficult.
“Um, Veronica?”
Veronica glanced over and gasped at the unfurling bloom of sticky red on the front of Lilly’s shirt.
“Oh my god, Lilly.”
“Yeah, you should probably take me to the hospital,” Lilly said faintly. She was pretty sure she had seen on one of those crime shows on TV that a gut shot was really bad.
Veronica slammed on the accelerator and fumbled with her cellphone.
“Come on Dad, pick up,” she muttered.
Lilly reached over and trailed her fingers across Veronica’s cheek.
‘Hey,” Lilly said gently. “This really was exciting.”
Her eyes fluttered closed against the sight of Veronica’s horror-stricken face.
Rivers Are Damp
So, these Fear Factor theme shows were getting like, ridiculously specific. After Aaron’s conviction on charges of statutory rape and corrupting a minor, the producers had gathered together anyone in Neptune who had been even peripherally connected with the case who was actually willing to be on the show.
Lilly wasn’t surprised that Trina had signed on, not after her bid to defend her father from spurious accusations had been deflated by the, you know, videotaped evidence. She was even more of a laughingstock in Hollywood now than she had been before, which was to say, about as much a laughingstock as a total nonentity could be.
Madison had also testified as to Aaron’s creepy and inappropriate behavior, which, whatever. Like he would have ever been that desperate.
There was this lawyer guy there. Cliff, maybe? Lilly didn’t actually remember him being at the trial, but maybe he had consulted or something.
And of course, Dick, was officially there in the capacity of the best friend of the son of the pervy movie star, but was unofficially there to get quasi-famous enough to score chicks. Like anyone would be tempted by the sight of his flabby beer gut on the small screen.
Lilly knew she was really above all this, but it wasn’t like she was going to pass up a chance to meet Joe Rogan. The dude was cut, right?
Only, Joe seemed way more enamored of Madison, which totally sucked. Apparently he liked fake tits better than real ones, even though Lilly’s boobs were like, seriously awesome.
Day two brought the water stunt, and Lilly drew the short straw to go first. She half-listened as the producers reminded her of the route she had to take to get through the obstacle course in order to grab the keys and rescue the test dummy, and whatever the fuck else. She was really more concerned with trying to remember whether or not she had put on waterproof mascara that morning.
The whistle blew, and she was making pretty good time. She finally made it to the end, hauling the fucking dummy into the narrow tube. All she had to do was unlock the top, and she was home free.
Only the fucking key broke in the lock.
And the dummy was wedged in with her so tight, so she couldn’t shimmy her way back out the other side.
Damn her awesome boobs which were suddenly just entirely too big.
As the rescue workers struggled to free her, and little spots started to appear in front of her eyes from lack of oxygen, Lilly looked over to see Joe Rogan wrap Madison in a soothing hug, while he rested his hand comfortingly on her ass.
Oh, she was going to fucking haunt that prick like it was her job.
You Might As Well Live
Lilly Kane left Neptune, and she left her secrets behind. She went to college at an all-girls’ school, and she didn’t have any boyfriends for a long time, and when she did, she didn’t fuck their fathers. She made friends with girls who would never date her brother and could not possibly ever be her maybe-sister.
She only went home on the holidays, and after a few years, she quit going home at all, because it just wasn’t as much fun now that she wasn’t the most fucked-up one anymore.
She grew up.
She got married.
She had three children, two boys and a girl. She might have loved her daughter the best a little bit, just because she channeled all the love she wished her own mother would have felt for her into it, but she never, ever let her children know that love could have inequalities. They could learn that from someone else.
She had a job, and she didn’t like it, and then she got another one, but she didn’t like that either, so she got another one and that went on for years. And her husband and her kids teased her gently about her capricious ways, because they had no fucking idea about the kind of person she used to be. Lilly knew she didn’t actually need to work anyway, but still. It was always some small kind of adventure.
She grew old.
Lilly Kane died one night, decades after she had stopped admitting her real age to anyone, because as she always said, you can take the girl out of California, and everyone else knows the rest.
She died peacefully, with her children and her grandchildren and her great grandchildren all around her.
She died in her sleep, as she dreamed about her own life. And maybe it wasn’t as exciting as the lives she had once dreamed of, but she knew in her bones that this one had been the best. Because she was Lilly fucking Kane, and she had never settled for anything less.
Author: sadiekate
Pairing/Character: It's all about Lilly. Plus, there's a little Lilly/Duncan. And guest spots by Veronica, Cliff, Madison, Dick, Trina, that crazy broad from AEFC, and Joe Rogan. No, I am not kidding.
Word Count: 3098
Rating: NC-17 (for language, Kanecest, and the fact that I am on crack)
Summary: If Lilly hadn't died that one day, guess what? She still would have died.
Spoilers: Through season one.
Warnings: Did I mention the Kanecest?
Notes: Many thanks to rachel_shanz, the Supreme Ruler of Kanecestia for encouraging the madness. quotableboy deserves all the credit/blame in the world for the fourth section. Iced-Ti, as always, gets my undying gratitude, and gets to cop as many feels as she wants to. And also, big ups to Dorothy Parker for writing poems that inspire me to kill Lilly Kane. Written for the Lilly challenge at 5thingsthat and x-posted to fic_from_mars and veronicamarsfic.
Nooses Give
It was a good thing Duncan had come home when he had. Lilly had known Aaron had like, a dark side or whatever. He had won that Oscar for that one movie where he was totally a serial killer, and it’s not like he was ever that good of an actor before. Lilly was from California, so she knew all about Method.
Still, it’s not like she had expected Aaron to come at her swinging with an ashtray. If Duncan hadn’t forgotten his soccer gear and run home to get it before practice, she probably would have wound up with one serious black eye, which, gross.
Instead, she got to watch Duncan get a few good swings in before she ran upstairs to call the police and retrieve the videos. By the time that idiot Deputy Veal or whatever arrived, she was pale and trembling, eyes glossy with unshed tears.
“He taped us,” she said numbly, rocking back and forth. “He told me he loved me, but …”
A tear rolled down her cheek at just the right moment, and where the hell was her fucking Oscar?
She was at the station all night giving her statement. One of the guys wrapped her in his big jacket, and her hands disappeared inside the sleeves. The jacket smelled really nice, and the guy who gave it to her would probably actually be really cute if she shaved his mustache and mussed up his hair.
When she got home the next morning, her parents were gone. Daddy’s business meetings could never wait, and Mother probably needed a spa day and a fresh round of Botox after all the trauma.
Duncan was in bed still, pillow over his face. She stripped off her pep squad t-shirt, but left on the shorts, because he liked them, and wrapped herself around him.
“You’re home,” he muttered sleepily, and she snuggled into his chest.
“God, Donut,” she yawned. “That was like, the most tedious night of my life.”
When he didn’t say anything, she glanced up at him. His brow was knit together in confusion.
“He didn’t seduce, you, did he?” he asked flatly. “It was the other way around, wasn’t it? Jesus, Lilly. I’ve been feeling terrible all night that he took advantage of you.”
“Aww, what’s the matter?” Lilly taunted, slithering over him and rising up, pressing the insides of her thighs against his bare torso. “Did you think I went to him all vulnerable after you told me you didn’t want to fuck me anymore? You’re certainly overestimating your own impact, not to mention your abilities.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to fuck you anymore, I said I couldn’t,” Duncan corrected her automatically, and she grinned in triumph.
“I don’t know why you always do this,” she told him, moving down to brush her bare breasts against his chest and slip her tongue past his lips. “You always come back to me. Face it. Stop pretending that you don’t want to be with me.”
“It’s not that simple, Lilly,” he said, but when she pinned his hands above his head and dug her perfect fingernails into his wrists and bit down hard on his earlobe, he made this shuddering noise in the back of his throat, and she knew she was slowly destroying any semblance of reason.
She liked him so much better when he wasn’t thinking. Duncan always had a tendency to like, totally overcomplicate everything.
“Say you love me,” she whispered against his skin, licking a delicate line against his collarbone. “Tell me how much.”
“You know I love you,” Duncan groaned. “I want to fuck you until we both die from it.”
And Lilly believed him when he said it, because she knew he loved her. She knew he was probably the only person who ever really had.
Duncan rolled her over, and he was the only one who could ever get away with that, because usually she liked to be on top. But Duncan had this thing about control, and so sometimes she’d let him pretend that he had some.
“Why’d you do it?” he whispered into her stomach, shimmying her stretchy green shorts down, and moving farther along her body to press rough kisses against her hipbones.
“Because I wanted to,” she shrugged, laughing when he hit a ticklish spot below her bellybutton.
“Why?” he persisted, yanking her down the bed and smothering her with a sudden, bruising kiss.
“What do you want me to say?” she gasped, when he finally let her go. “That I thought of you the whole time? That I only did it to make you crazy?”
“You do make me crazy,” he admitted, trailing his fingers across her exposed torso, like he was a cartographer, and she was a place he could somehow map out. “This is still wrong, you know. Nothing’s changed.”
“God, Duncan, you think too much,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Just shut up and fuck me, already.”
And as much as he always made this big show of needing to be convinced, it was the same as it ever was, because he was always hard for her like, the second she showed up, and he shoved his way into her practically before she even finished talking.
“Fuck, yes,” Lilly hissed, and she canted her hips up against his, and he pulled her hard against him, and she felt his cock hit home.
“This can’t happen again,” he choked out, even though he was practically fucking her into the mattress, and sweat was beading up on his forehead.
“I know,” she humored, groaning in equal parts passion and annoyance, reaching down to rub her own clit because he always forgot about that when he was in self-flagellation mode.
Duncan slowed his strokes down for a moment and brushed his hand across her face. He was looking at her tenderly, almost like he wanted to memorize something about the moment, and Lilly felt her chest swell with a sudden, inexplicable warmth.
“I mean it,” he said softly, and then he was wrapping his hands around her throat, and picking up the pace to fuck her hard and deep again.
“God, yes,” Lilly managed to wheeze with the last of her breath, wrapping her legs around his waist to pull him even deeper.
But something wasn’t right, because he wasn’t letting go. He just kept squeezing, tightening his grip a little with each thrust.
“Duncan?” she mouthed, clawing at him uselessly, and he just looked at her with something like grief scrawled across his face.
“Never again, Lilly,” he said, and she came at the same time he did (because they always came together), and then her vision whited out.
The last thought she ever had was that the fucking bastard had better kill himself next.
Razors Pain You
So maybe in retrospect selling those tapes she had swiped from Aaron hadn’t been the most brilliant idea of all time. Yeah, Lilly got a metric assload of money, but her parents completely overreacted and cut off her trust fund. Plus, no one would even talk to her anymore, which was completely insane, because it wasn’t like Logan hadn’t fucked around on her, but he just moped around all broody and morose, and everyone in the whole goddamn school took his side. Even Veronica, and when had she grown a backbone?
But, whatever. School was practically over. Lilly stuck it out ‘til graduation, and then went straight on down to Hollywood. Like Neptune could really handle her fabulousness anyway, right?
The tabloids ate her up with a spoon, too, because she rocked the party scene like no one had before. She was way more famous than any of the celebutantes, and she totally transcended the label. Lilly had skipped out on the whole debutante thing, since she was firmly convinced the hypocrisy of her in a white dress would cause a schism and California would wind up in the fucking ocean or something.
It was a Wednesday, so the ladies’ room at whatever hot club she was in that week was completely deserted. Lilly rested her compact mirror on the sink, pulled out a razor, and began to chop her last line of coke. She was going to have to call that cousin of Weevil’s who lived out in East L.A. and see if he could hook her up with some more.
She snorted the line and rubbed the last traces from the mirror into her gums, and then leaned forward into the mirror to touch up her lipstick. Everything was all fake-plastic-perfect in L.A., and Lilly could play that part. She paid no attention to the bathroom door swinging open behind her, until the girl stopped behind her and regarded her curiously.
“You’re Lilly Kane, right?”
“Who wants to know?” Lilly asked shortly. She really didn’t want to get another random lecture from one of Aaron’s fans.
“Oh, sorry. You probably wouldn’t remember me,” the girl said nervously. “I just moved down here from Neptune. I used to help cater your parents’ parties sometimes. I carve things. Like ice sculptures. You know.”
“Huh. What a funny coincidence,” Lilly shrugged, tucking her makeup back into her trendy oversized bag. She was only half-listening. If the girl had never shown up on her radar back home, she obviously wasn’t that important.
“I think,” the girl said thoughtfully, “I’m here to do something great.”
“Model or actress?” Lilly asked politely. She wouldn’t really believe either one. The girl was cute-ish, but sort of mousy and angular.
“Neither,” she replied vaguely.
“Well, it’s been like, super-awesome catching up,” Lilly said, smiling brightly and fakely, because this was getting kind of creepy. “I’ve really got to run, though.”
She turned to leave, but the girl said something that stopped her in her tracks.
“You shouldn’t think you’re special, you know. I was with Aaron, too. I bet he didn’t tell you he loved you. He said it to me. I think he meant it. We had something special. I wish you hadn’t ruined everything.”
The crazy bitch actually sounded sort of wistful. Lilly didn’t have any patience for that kind of thing, and she turned around to face her.
‘Listen, you -“
Whatever Lilly was going to say, never came out, because the girl moved her arm out fast and did something, but Lilly was too distracted by the drops of blood on the floor to think about that. She wondered if she had another nose bleed, but when she touched her hand to her face, it came back clean and dry, but she was still bleeding, bleeding a lot, and oh god my throat, that fucking bitch cut my throat.
Lilly had never done well in English class, but she thought this might be irony - cut by her own razor blade at the hands of a professional carver, or whatever. Mr. Daniels would have been so proud, had he been privy to her dying thought.
Guns Aren’t Lawful
“God, Veronica. Boring much?”
“Hey, you’re the one who wanted to come on a stakeout.”
“You could have warned me it would be such a snoozefest.”
“I did!” Veronica said indignantly. “You didn’t listen.”
“I never listen,” Lilly pointed out.
“At least you’re aware of your shortcomings.”
They had been parked outside of this sleazy motel for like, hours. It was utterly tedious. Still, Lilly was slightly impressed by Veronica, who had not, as expected, fallen apart when her mom had split town after the whole paternity thing had emerged. No, she had dusted herself off, and helped her dad start his own business when he decided he didn’t want to kiss the new County Supervisor’s ass, and now she was positively hardboiled, or whatever adjective they used in those old black and white detective movies where everyone talked really fast and smoked a lot.
“Here we go,” Veronica muttered, lifting her camera suddenly. “This is the money shot. Things are about to get a lot more interesting.”
Lilly watched the stocky man slink out of the motel room. The woman hovering inside the doorway was so clearly not his wife. You know, unless he was like, married to a hooker.
“You son of a bitch!” someone screamed from outside the car, and Veronica looked in the rearview mirror.
“Shit,” she said. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”
“What?” Lilly asked excitedly.
“It’s Cheaty McScumbag’s wife. She must have followed us here. Stay put. I’m going to go try and calm her down.”
But before Veronica could open the door, the woman had pulled a gun out of her bag and begun waving it around.
“Okay. New plan,” she said, turning the keys in the ignition. “Let’s get out of here.”
Veronica screeched the LeBaron out into the street. Gunshots rang out behind them, and the back window shattered.
“What the fuck?” Veronica swore, yanking the wheel and sending them haphazardly around the corner.
Lilly tried to breathe, and suddenly found it very difficult.
“Um, Veronica?”
Veronica glanced over and gasped at the unfurling bloom of sticky red on the front of Lilly’s shirt.
“Oh my god, Lilly.”
“Yeah, you should probably take me to the hospital,” Lilly said faintly. She was pretty sure she had seen on one of those crime shows on TV that a gut shot was really bad.
Veronica slammed on the accelerator and fumbled with her cellphone.
“Come on Dad, pick up,” she muttered.
Lilly reached over and trailed her fingers across Veronica’s cheek.
‘Hey,” Lilly said gently. “This really was exciting.”
Her eyes fluttered closed against the sight of Veronica’s horror-stricken face.
Rivers Are Damp
So, these Fear Factor theme shows were getting like, ridiculously specific. After Aaron’s conviction on charges of statutory rape and corrupting a minor, the producers had gathered together anyone in Neptune who had been even peripherally connected with the case who was actually willing to be on the show.
Lilly wasn’t surprised that Trina had signed on, not after her bid to defend her father from spurious accusations had been deflated by the, you know, videotaped evidence. She was even more of a laughingstock in Hollywood now than she had been before, which was to say, about as much a laughingstock as a total nonentity could be.
Madison had also testified as to Aaron’s creepy and inappropriate behavior, which, whatever. Like he would have ever been that desperate.
There was this lawyer guy there. Cliff, maybe? Lilly didn’t actually remember him being at the trial, but maybe he had consulted or something.
And of course, Dick, was officially there in the capacity of the best friend of the son of the pervy movie star, but was unofficially there to get quasi-famous enough to score chicks. Like anyone would be tempted by the sight of his flabby beer gut on the small screen.
Lilly knew she was really above all this, but it wasn’t like she was going to pass up a chance to meet Joe Rogan. The dude was cut, right?
Only, Joe seemed way more enamored of Madison, which totally sucked. Apparently he liked fake tits better than real ones, even though Lilly’s boobs were like, seriously awesome.
Day two brought the water stunt, and Lilly drew the short straw to go first. She half-listened as the producers reminded her of the route she had to take to get through the obstacle course in order to grab the keys and rescue the test dummy, and whatever the fuck else. She was really more concerned with trying to remember whether or not she had put on waterproof mascara that morning.
The whistle blew, and she was making pretty good time. She finally made it to the end, hauling the fucking dummy into the narrow tube. All she had to do was unlock the top, and she was home free.
Only the fucking key broke in the lock.
And the dummy was wedged in with her so tight, so she couldn’t shimmy her way back out the other side.
Damn her awesome boobs which were suddenly just entirely too big.
As the rescue workers struggled to free her, and little spots started to appear in front of her eyes from lack of oxygen, Lilly looked over to see Joe Rogan wrap Madison in a soothing hug, while he rested his hand comfortingly on her ass.
Oh, she was going to fucking haunt that prick like it was her job.
You Might As Well Live
Lilly Kane left Neptune, and she left her secrets behind. She went to college at an all-girls’ school, and she didn’t have any boyfriends for a long time, and when she did, she didn’t fuck their fathers. She made friends with girls who would never date her brother and could not possibly ever be her maybe-sister.
She only went home on the holidays, and after a few years, she quit going home at all, because it just wasn’t as much fun now that she wasn’t the most fucked-up one anymore.
She grew up.
She got married.
She had three children, two boys and a girl. She might have loved her daughter the best a little bit, just because she channeled all the love she wished her own mother would have felt for her into it, but she never, ever let her children know that love could have inequalities. They could learn that from someone else.
She had a job, and she didn’t like it, and then she got another one, but she didn’t like that either, so she got another one and that went on for years. And her husband and her kids teased her gently about her capricious ways, because they had no fucking idea about the kind of person she used to be. Lilly knew she didn’t actually need to work anyway, but still. It was always some small kind of adventure.
She grew old.
Lilly Kane died one night, decades after she had stopped admitting her real age to anyone, because as she always said, you can take the girl out of California, and everyone else knows the rest.
She died peacefully, with her children and her grandchildren and her great grandchildren all around her.
She died in her sleep, as she dreamed about her own life. And maybe it wasn’t as exciting as the lives she had once dreamed of, but she knew in her bones that this one had been the best. Because she was Lilly fucking Kane, and she had never settled for anything less.