(no subject)
Title: More Than Words
Author: Jaime
Characters/Pairings: Logan/Veronica (yep, another one...), with a very brief appearance by Wallace
Rating: I'd say about PG, but it's pretty tame- no swearing that I can find so far, and minor physicality.
Length: 2828
Spoilers: None really. This fic could kind of stand on its own, though there is reference to an event in Leave it to Beaver (S1 finale)
Summary: [I really can suck at summaries sometimes, keep in mind...] A continuation to chapter one (obviously, hehe). For the past two weeks, Veronica has been finding all sorts of creative ways to avoid Logan, filling him with a deep sense of confused worry. Now though, he decides he needs answers...
Notes: My song was 'More Than Words' by Extreme. Yep, I chose the same name for my fic, but that's just 'cause it worked so well. This is the first ever VM fic I've posted, so feedback (constructive or otherwise) would be greatly appreciated. I'm always interested in improving my writing! :):)
In case you missed the first part and are interested:
Chapter One -+- Actions and Words
...And now for the conclusion...
[also, I apologize for the wonky font change under the cut... apparently LJ is not happy with me tonight...*shrug*]
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Now, Logan was beginning to wonder if there would ever be a next time. Two weeks had passed since that night. Worse though, two weeks had passed since he’d spent more than one hour alone with her.
Veronica had planned to stay over at his house that evening. After the movie though, she’d made the abrupt decision to go home. Manufacturing some flimsy excuse about biology homework, she’d negotiated her way back through the front door, promising to call him the next day.
But she hadn’t called.
In fact, the next time he saw her was at school on Monday, though not without a bit of effort. She hadn’t been waiting at his locker that morning as usual. He’d gone in search of her, stopping by her locker and asking anyone nearby if they’d seen her, but his efforts were unsuccessful. A charge of panic had taken hold of his heart then, an irrational reflex of fear that had been engrained in him since the death of Lilly and his mother, and the near-murder of his current and elusive girlfriend.
When he finally did find her in class, the aftershock of relief almost knocked him over. Sliding into the seat beside her, he’d given her a playful nudge with his shoulder, hoping all the terror had drained from his face. “Hey,” he’d said in as calm a voice as he could manage, not wanting her to know what sort of emotional turbulence he’d been sailing through over the past couple of hours.
“Hey you,” she’d responded with an almost shy tip of her head.
Those were about the only words Veronica had offered to him for the duration of class. Afterward, she’d rushed off, almost forgetting to even say good-bye.
Now, eleven days later, things had all but improved. They’d been filled with even more vague responses, brush-offs, and heartache.
During lunch period, she always had a reason to leave early- school projects, spy projects, and other mystery school functions that no one else seemed to be attending. When he called her at night, she was either on the other line, swamped with homework, or just heading out the door.
Even Wallace had commented on the now tangible strain between them.
“Is everything okay with you guys?” he’d asked during a lunch period when she’d scurried off yet again.
“Why, has Veronica said anything to you?” Logan countered with concern, though his eyes had remained fixed on her diminishing form.
“Naw, it’s just…she’s been acting weird. Even for her,” he’d commented with a raised eyebrow, watching the departure of his best friend.
Logan had maintained a moment of silence, his brain a storm of worry and confusion. “Well, listen man. If she does say something to you, could you- I don’t know -just tell her to talk to me?” he’d requested, a glassy, desperate gleam in his eyes.
“Sure,” Wallace had agreed, looking as if he really empathized with his fellow man. The guy looked like a part of his world was ending, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Veronica had never come to talk to him though.
Which is why Logan was now sitting in his car outside her apartment complex with a sick heart and a noisy mind. He just couldn’t figure out what was going wrong. She hadn’t given him any indication that she was unhappy in their relationship. Whenever they were together, she still favoured him with smiles and pleasant words. The only anomaly had been her attempts to limit the time they spent with each other.
Tracing back the moments they’d shared since the beginning of her strange behavior, he managed to pin down what he thought to be its conception. As likely as it seemed though, he didn’t want to believe it. He didn’t want to believe that what he’d said was now causing the uncontrolled dumping of toxins into the once pristine waters of their relationship.
After two weeks of having his soul pulled and twisted in a thousand different directions though, he’d decided he needed answers. Veronica was the only person who could give them to him.
White knuckles knocked against her front door, and he grinned when Backup gave an excited yip on the other side. At least he knew one member of the Mars family would be glad to see him.
Reaching it a few seconds later, his girlfriend opened the front door of her home with a smile. “Hey Logan,” she said in that tender, near-whispering voice she sometimes used.
At that moment, everything he’d wanted to say- the questions and statements he’d prepared on the drive over -flew from his mind, forgotten like a breath on the wind. All of the fear and uncertainty that had been simmering within him over the past two weeks boiled over, and he pushed past her, pacing a few steps across her living room and then turning around. “I need to know what’s going on, Veronica,” he stated, blunt and pleading at the same time.
A confused frown wrinkled her brow. “Going on with what?” she asked.
“With us,” he said in a ‘duh’ manner, though there was some frustration behind his voice too. “I mean, did I do something, or… or say something? Or both?”
“What do you mean?” Veronica said, backing up to close the door behind her.
“I mean you’ve been dodging me for the past two weeks, and I don’t know why. Every time we’re together, you find a way to get out of it. You avoid me on the phone. We haven’t even seen each other outside of school for almost a week now,” he said, voice catching as all of the turmoil that had been building within him began to effervesce in his windpipe. “So I need to know what I did that’s making you act this way,” he said, no longer masking the anxiety in his voice.
Veronica had been trying to prepare herself for this conversation over the past fourteen days. She’d known it was inevitable from the second she walked out of his house that night. Countless versions had rolled around in her head, each one of them tested out for its effectiveness. By yesterday afternoon, she’d come up with a few winners, each with their own strengths depending on the situation. None of them seemed helpful anymore though.
Avoiding Logan had been the easy part, after all. When she wasn’t around him, she didn’t have to deal. Not with the issue itself, or with what her own actions might be doing to him.
Now though, reality was hitting her like a transport truck. Standing in the same room with him, it was obvious that all attempts to protect her boyfriend from the truth had only served to cut through his soul like a rusty scalpel. They’d gotten the job done, but in the most gruesome way imaginable.
“No… You didn’t do anything,” she said, her voice quiet.
“So it was something I said,” he clarified for her. When she didn’t respond, he knew that he’d been right all along. Fighting against the fluid that was attempting to sneak out from under his tear ducts, he flexed his jaw from one side to the other before speaking again, putting all of his strength into maintaining control over his vocal chords. “It’s because I told you that I love you.”
Waves of terror-filled agony were palpable as they wafted off of him, and each one that hit her only served to dig Veronica deeper into her pit of shame. His eyes glimmered with a teary sheen now, and the sight wrenched the vice grip around her heart just a little tighter. “Yeah,” she muttered in a monosyllabic confession, head dropped like a child who’d been caught smearing crayon on the walls.
“But why, Veronica? What’s so wrong with that? I mean, isn’t that the sort of thing a girl likes to hear?”
“Usually, yeah.”
“Usually?” Logan frowned, finding that to be an odd word to use in this situation.
“Well, I just mean… When you said it that night, it caught me off-guard. I didn’t know what to think, and I… I couldn’t say it back.”
“I told you-”
“I know. But, it was more than that, too. I mean, Duncan was the only other person to ever tell me that, and things with us didn’t stay very nice-”
“But I’m not Duncan.”
Those words stomped down on the brakes in the motor of Veronica’s mind, metal scraping against metal she came to such a grinding halt. Her azure eyes snapped up to meet his, and she couldn’t help being somewhat surprised by what she saw in them. Resentment. Anger. An ounce of jealousy. Above all though, there was the silent plea for her to understand the fact that he wasn’t her ex boyfriend.
After all, Logan knew what her relationship with his best friend had meant to her. Duncan was her first love. And in that respect, he had a firm hold over a small piece of Veronica’s heart, a piece that Logan knew he’d never get to touch. What he feared most though was the idea that every step in their relationship would be something she’d compare with Duncan. Was that what was happening…?
There were too many thoughts tumbling around in his head. He needed to get outside, grab a few gulps of fresh air. If he kept going in this condition, there was no doubt in his mind that he’d start slinging malicious words and phrases around that he really didn’t mean. Rubbing his face, he gave her one last meaningful look before heading for the front door.
Veronica turned with him as he brushed past her. Realizing what was happening, panic rose in her throat, releasing itself in a squeaky bubble that somehow formed his name. “Logan.”
Beside them, Backup yelped, as if he could sense the distress in his best friend’s soul and was trying to help however he could.
Their voices stopped Logan at the front door, and he turned to see that in just a few short seconds, the composure of his girlfriend’s face had morphed into something much more distorted than it had been. Her bottom lip trembled, her eyebrows were sewn together in a pleading frown, and a gossamer layer of tears had stretched out over her sapphire pools.
“I’m sorry,” she choked out, knowing the tiny words were hardly substantial enough to make up for the past two weeks of torture she’d caused him. At this point though, all Veronica cared about was stopping him from walking through that door. Stopping him from walking out of her life. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, putting every bead of sincerity in her soul behind it this time.
Logan let his hand slip off the doorknob as he turned the rest of the way around to face her. A little corridor of his subconscious was already doing cartwheels over the simple fact that she’d kept him from leaving.
“It’s just, that night at your house, when you said that…” she paused, trying to collect her thoughts into an even minimally cohesive ball before continuing. “I don’t know. I guess part of me hadn’t realized just how far things had gone between us in the past couple of months. And then I got scared. Scared because I couldn’t say it back, and because of the simple fact that things with my past relationships tended to implode right when they were getting good. And I know you’re not Duncan or…” she trailed off and then sighed, deciding that listing off the names of her past boyfriends wasn’t the best idea in this situation.
“Believe me, I know,” she said, the smile- albeit a teary one -on her face emphasizing that she was glad about that fact. “It’s just, no matter how good things are going, no matter how happy I am, fate’s had a way of walking into my life and throwing it all in a wood chipper without any warning.”
“Veronica,” Logan said in a low tone, closing the gap between them so he could lift a hand to cup her face. “I guarantee you I’m not planning on going anywhere anytime soon. Whether you like it or not. It doesn’t matter if you tell me you love me tomorrow, or if you never do,” he said with enough assertiveness that she knew he wasn’t being flippant with his remarks.
Reaching down, he laced his fingers through hers to give her hand a firm squeeze. “It’s enough for me to just be with you. All that matters to me is being with you. And even if you never say the words, I can still feel it,” he said, letting out an airy laugh and looking up to the ceiling for a brief moment. “I mean, God, Veronica. I’m not going to throw away everything we have… I’m not going to walk away from the most important person in my life because of three little words. You mean more to me than a stupid phrase.”
And that was all it took. Something in her clicked at that moment. She couldn’t explain why, or how, but that was all it took to slide the last, missing piece into its rightful place in her heart. It was like a door had been unlocked within her, allowing new and exhilarating emotions to flood her soul and psyche, warming her like the smooth taste of hot chocolate on a chilly winter morning. They were the ones that had been missing two weeks ago when Logan had made his admission to her. Their absence is what had sent her running from him, scared and confused.
Reaching up, she took his face in her hands and pulled him down to seal her lips against his. Wrapping her arms around him once he was at a better height, she pulled him closer and deeper. Their tongues met with intense ferocity, dueling and tangoing, getting reacquainted after too long apart.
When they separated, it was only out of a need for oxygen, each of them breathless and trembling. Leaning back just enough to allow her to gaze into her boyfriend’s mahogany eyes, she gave him a brilliant smile, made all the more gorgeous by her now swollen lips.
“I love you, Logan,” she said, sounding almost relieved.
Startled, he stood up straighter, a look of puzzlement scrawled over his features.
“I love you,” she repeated for emphasis, toying with the cropped hair at the base of his skull.
Logan laughed in response, a sound that was giddy and delighted. Touching his forehead against hers, he slid his fingers through her hair before resting them against her cheek. “I love you too,” he whispered.
A moment of contented silence followed, breaking at the sound of Veronica’s voice. “So, you wanna stick around?” she asked, hands coming forward to begin fiddling with the lapels on his jacket. “I rented a movie. Dad’s gone for the weekend, so you could even sleep over if you wanted.”
“Take two of our last night together, huh?”
“Yeah,” she agreed, somewhat bashful. “Of course, this time the movie doesn’t have stars whose names end in ‘Schwarzenegger’, ‘Van Damme’, or ‘Norris’.”
“Hm. That’s disappointing,” he said with a put-upon sigh. “But as long as it’s not some sappy chick flick, I think we’re good.”
“Nope. It’s a Columbo DVD.”
“And yet again, you prove to be the only girl on the planet who’s willing to watch movies about cops.”
“Columbo isn’t a cop. He’s a detective.”
“Either way,” Logan said with a shrug and a grin. “You’re still the best movie-watching girlfriend I’ve ever known.”
“Which I assume means you’re staying?” she asked. He nodded, and she leaned up to brush a kiss over his lips. “I’ll get the popcorn cooking then,” she said, releasing herself from his embrace and heading for the cupboards.
Logan took a seat at the kitchen table-slash-counter, watching as she worked her way around the tiny area. Different thoughts started rolling around in his head at the sight of her being so domestic- or, as domestic as she could be for a teenager. He began contemplating what their lives might be like twenty years from now, when they were Mr. and Mrs. Echolls.
Veronica Echolls, he thought, testing out the sound of her first name attached to his family one.
Of course, he wouldn’t be surprised if she turned out to be the type of girl who preferred to hold on to her maiden name. Logan wouldn’t mind if that were the case though. In all honesty, he thought ‘Veronica Mars’ had a unique ring to it. Like those five syllables belonged with each other, and trying to mess with them would be a crime against nature.
Besides, this girl meant more to him than a last name.
She meant more to him than words.
Because to Logan, quite simply, she meant everything.
End
[ Well, that's it folks! Thanks very much for reading, and as per usual feedback is greatly appreciated! Hope you enjoyed what I had to offer :) ]