plantfood | [For Veronica]

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veronica

[For Veronica]

There are many things about Henrich that drove Mathias crazy before Mexico and the ruins, things that now and then resulted in physical altercations or shouting matches which left them both feeling sheepish and hurt, but there is one thing Henrich was so good at. One thing Mathias wishes he could have learned from his brother, something he still can't quite seem to grasp no matter how hard he tries or doesn't try, as Henrich used to advise.

He's terrible with women.

It's been a month and a half since New Year's Eve and Mathias has done almost nothing to impress Veronica or further what relationship they might be developing. In fact, with the exception of assuring her there is nothing going on with Stacy, he's barely made any indication that he's interested in her, which he realizes is incredibly stupid. He's very interested and absolutely terrified. Coming to her while stuck as a woman hardly counts as making an attempt at getting another date, so earlier in the week, he'd gathered up all his courage and asked.

Which is why he finds himself heading down the path toward her hut, a bag with some food slung over one shoulder and his towel folded over the other. In a fit of panic, unsure what people do for dates on the island, he'd suggested dinner and swimming at the waterfall, hoping it isn't too forward to include swimming. Already he's starting to doubt himself, but he schools his face to blankness and then raps his knuckles gently against her door.

He can do this. It's a date, after all, he's been on dates before.

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"It takes more than just a pretty face to impress me," Mathias answers and although he's smiling, he genuinely means that as well. There's a difference between that initial attraction and wanting to spend more time with someone. Everyone is fascinating in their own way, but too often it turns out to be only on the surface.

It's why he prefers to watch. Standing on the sidelines lessens the chance of disappointment.

"Besides, she would just get herself kidnapped and I, having spent too much time with her, would be a prime suspect," he points out, looking pleased with himself for having reached this conclusion.

Veronica laughed, pleased herself. "Well, then, I'd just have to exonerate you," she said. "It's rarely the prime suspect anyway. That'd just be way too boring." Or maybe that was just life as she'd lived it, not how real mysteries, whatever those were, worked out at all. Second-guessing her skill as a detective wasn't in the plan, though. It was one thing she knew she could do.

They're discussing a fictional crime against Nancy Drew in a cave behind a waterfall and yet Mathias can't remember the last time he's had a more successful or interesting date. He turns his hand up, his knuckles bumping gently against Veronica's palm before he laces his fingers with hers.

"I am too innocent looking as well," he decides, his smile widening. "No one would ever really believe that I could do anything wrong."

"Oh, no," Veronica protested, though she couldn't help smiling, hand pressed to his, "that just makes you more suspicious. The innocent ones usually have something to hide." Everyone had something to hide, but for all her exploits and mishaps, it was starting to seem like there wasn't much she'd have trouble telling him. What he had to hide was a different question, but she couldn't even work up any real suspicion right then, standing up a little straighter, a little nearer.

There's still that hint of teasing there, but Mathias considers what he might have to hide, taking a mental catalogue of things he's already told Veronica and, worse, the things she's already seen. Until Mexico, his life had been relatively normal, if privileged, and she already knows that.

It's hard to think of something he would hide from the woman who has seen him crying over his brother's body.

"I did try to steal a painting from a student art exhibit once," he concedes after a moment, his smile returning. "In my defense, it was very nice and I was only fifteen and a girl asked me to."

"Oh, an art thief," Veronica said, mock-impressed, "with a soft spot for the ladies. You got an early start." It was strange to think of just where she'd been at fifteen - a world away, not just in terms of location, but who she'd been. It was a long way off from now.

She liked now a hell of a lot better. "I... stole a lot of files. That was kind of a specialty. But never art."

"I got into a lot of trouble for it, too," he answers, grinning as he thinks back to it. The girl had denied involvement, his parents had grounded him for a month and he'd been suspended from school for three days. "It was the extent of my criminal activities."

Curiously, he lifts an eyebrow and asks, "What sort of files?"

Veronica shrugged. "School records. Medical records." Mostly she'd stuck to photocopies or had Wallace do it for her, but sometimes the urgency of the moment had required out and out theft. That had just been a matter of necessity. "Case stuff. It would sound so much cooler if I could just say art. Very Cary Grant in How to Steal a Million."

"I don't know," Mathias says, considering this. "Saying you've had to steal medical records for case stuff sounds pretty cool as well. Besides, I just stole a university student's painting. It was nice, but anyone was allowed to hang things in that display as long as they were a student."

"Yeah, but if you just leave it at 'art thief,' no one's the wiser," Veronica pointed out cheerfully. The closest she'd ever come was rearranging art, which really wasn't the same thing at all. In no frame of mind to want to think about Duncan or Abel Koontz, she shrugged and smiled. With an idleness which might have been faked, she lifted her free hand to drape across his shoulder. "And now they let me into nearly all the records. Takes some of the fun out of it."

"So you could look up anything you want to?" Mathias asks, lifting his free hand to the ends of her hair, his fingers tangling gently in the wet strands. "Then I should not have told you of my sordid past as an art thief when you could just find my file and read all about it," he teases, knowing full well there's no such thing in any file that may exist on him.

"It's better if you just come clean about these things upfront," Veronica teased, mock-serious. Where she leaned back, the wall of the cave was cool and rough, pleasantly so, and she just tipped her head up and smiled. "Besides, then I'd have to bother actually reading it. Confession's much better. Makes it easier for everyone."

"Then I confess that I was an art thief," Mathias murmurs, his fingers finding the line of her jaw, tipping her chin up just the slightest bit more. "And I confess that I'm a little bit afraid of dogs." That's embarrassing, but she's seen worse from him and he knows it.

"And I confess that I very much like being here with you," he adds, leaning down enough to press a kiss to the corner of her mouth.

"Well, then," Veronica said softly, "I have to confess it's been a long time since I made any confessions; that I have a dog." She turned her head a little, pressing onto her toes, finding his mouth again with her own. "And that I very much like being here with you."

He's going to say about about hoping that her dog doesn't bite him, but there are more important things at this moment. Veronica is kissing him and, really, when it comes down to it, his fear of dogs is far less important than that.

Fingers splayed against her cheek, he kisses her back, eyes closed, still faintly amused that he's kissing her in the dark cave of a waterfall.

After so many endings, they were the simplest part to remember. Beginnings got lost in the wash, the thrill forgotten or glossed over in favor of regret or rage. She couldn't mind that. Getting reminded all over again was kind of the good part.

Dropping back from the kiss - literally, her heels hitting the ground lightly - she smiled, the backs of her fingers tracing idly along his neck. "Confession's not really my strong suit."

"Nor mine," he admits, arms still around her, fingers still tracing down the line of her neck until he finds her shoulder. "I learned early to play things close to the chest."

Despite that, it isn't what he's doing here. This is the most honest he's been in a long time. Everything about the island and what's happened to him before seems to make that easier. He hates to think of the horror on the ruins as something good, but maybe, in a way, it's something that was needed.

"Yeah," Veronica said, the word an exhalation. "Me too." For a long time, she hadn't thought it was necessary. The learning curve on that one had been more than a little steep. "Even when it stops being... necessary, it's not an easy habit to break." It wasn't even one she'd tried to break, no matter how much easier things got here. She'd softened in her years on the island, that was certain, but not by as much as all that.

"My mom was... very much like me," Mathias explains, nodding his agreement to what Veronica has said. Unlike the dancing, it isn't something she'd taught him, just something he thinks he's acquired from her in a way. Like his height and his frame, he's quiet like his mother.

"She didn't like to talk about things, she liked to watch people and hear their stories," he continues, smiling a bit. "We used to unnerve my brother and my father, the two of us, just sitting, not saying a word."

"I don't think I've ever been exactly quiet," she said, half-laughing, bordering on sheepish. She talked a lot, but she didn't say much. That, too, was a difficult habit to break. "I used to think I was like my mom, but the older I got, the more I became like my dad. Which is how I like it." She still worried sometimes that she was as much like Lianne as she'd once imagined. Worry was, she sometimes thought, all that kept it from being true. "You and she were close?"

"No, not really," Mathias answers with a small, sheepish smile. "My parents were very... social. They liked to be away from home, liked to travel and go out to parties, things like that. Henrich and I spent a lot of time alone."

He loves his parents, but in a distant, distracted way, more because he knows he should than because he knows them well.

"Mm," she murmured, nodding. "We weren't that social. I mean, I went to parties, but mostly because my best friend was into them. Being sheriff, though, didn't always make my dad a lot of friends, and then when he wasn't anymore, there were even fewer of them." There was a sense in her that it was okay to say these things, to let bits and pieces of her life slip to him. She'd trusted him enough to be here. Tiny hints of the truth were fair game.

"Do you have any brothers or sisters? Or was it just you?" he asks, knowing she's close to her father in a way he's never managed to be. There's a part of him that is almost jealous, wishing he'd had the same sort of relationship with his parents, but he had Henrich. He knows not everyone has a sibling they are close to like he was with Henrich and he knows he's lucky to have had that.

"Just me," she said, shaking her head, smiling fondly. "But I had Lilly. She was the closest thing I ever had to a sister." Wallace, too, had been like family, and even though they'd both been gone a long time, she still missed them like pieces of herself. She could live without them just fine, but she didn't have to like it.

"Did you want to strangle her as often as you had fun with her?" Mathias asks with a small smile, knowing that seems to be the defining aspect of any sibling relationship. There's something about loving someone unconditionally, though, that only seems to have in families. Now and then, when it happens between such close friends, he finds himself a little awed and a little envious.

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