Two Week Stay-cation // (Logan, Veronica) PG
Title: Two Week Stay-cation -+- Chapter Eight of Eight
Author: cloud_forest
Pairing/Characters: Logan/Veronica
Word Count: 3,662
Rating: PG
Summary: Two nights ago, Logan and Veronica kissed for the first time. Now, her stay with the Echolls is over, and it remains to be seen what will come of the recent changes in their relationship…
Spoilers: Veronica and Logan are actually zombies who are about to attack Aaron and eat his braaaiiiinnnn! Just kidding. But that WOULD be a fitting ending for the movie star, don’tcha think?
Disclaimer: None of this is mine, but I’m totally gonna copyright the Aaron-killed-by-zombies idea.
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{ Day Fifteen ~ Friday }
Thirty-seven hours had passed since Logan first kissed Veronica Mars. Since the fantasies he’d been cultivating for the last few days had finally grown roots in reality. Nimble projections that now crept into every fold and fissure in his brain, making it impossible for him to think about anything else.
All five of his senses were in a constant state of overload. Every light on their switchboards was blinking, every alarm screaming for attention.
Wintergreen toothpaste and chocolate chips were the two main flagships sailing on his tongue. Sugary innocence and spicy excitement were their passengers. Food was grey and boring compared to the taste of her tongue and her lips.
Plastered to every wall in his visual cortex were images both new and old. Veronica, standing under the shower of a streetlight, eyes glittering with determination and playful rage when he refused to admit that she was right. How she’d been the most delicious looking thing in the kitchen the previous morning, knees pressed together, arms folded up as she sat on the stool waiting for breakfast. Glaring at him from across the lunch table, fighting a losing battle against the grin that was tugging on her mouth.
Shuffling through his ears was a playlist of different sounds. Tiny moans that had scurried out of her that night, tickling his earlobes. Screaming laughter when he tossed her across the pool during their battle a week ago. The sharp blades of air that sliced through her lips in a surprised gasp. Those animalistic groans from his dreams, excised from real life events and inserted into more risqué scenery.
Fruity shampoo and floral body wash were scents he couldn’t shake from his mind. Transferred to him when he’d buried his nose in her hair or skimmed it down the pillar of her neck. Traces of a sweet, tangy perfume lingered in his memory, too. Those and other unidentifiable ingredients made up the gossamer veil that surrounded her. An olfactory cocktail that intoxicated him when he was close enough to get a taste of it.
Shockwaves were still running through his nerves at sites where her skin had touched his. Electrical pulses firing at his brain, reminding him what it felt like when her fingers had tunneled into his flesh. His arms ached to be folded around her again, to return to that comfortable position they assumed when he was cradling her.
Put simply, Logan felt like he was overdosing on Veronica Mars. All he could think about was her. All he wanted was her. And his mind was going crazy without access to his human drug, raging at the fact that it could rely on only memories to fill its quota.
He suspected that one cause of this temporary insanity was the blinding excitement that came with a brand-new relationship. Something he hadn’t had in a long time. For the last year or so, he’d been consumed by exactly one person: Lilly Kane. Even during the brief periods when they were broken up, the only thing he thought about was how to get her back. Other girls would pass through his air space occasionally, but they were small aircraft. Rarely did he take note of anything more significant than surface details.
With Veronica though, there were so many new things to discover. Things he wanted to discover. She was a book he’d had sitting on a shelf for years. Full of complex characters and thrilling plot points. Ready to take him to wild, uncharted destinations. For so long he’d failed to do much more than just flip through a few pages of her story. Now that he’d finally committed to reading it though, he couldn’t stop.
Part of him was completely surprised by this new development, as well. Going from dating Lilly Kane to Veronica Mars- well, maybe dating Veronica Mars -was quite a change. Sure they were best friends, but they were different in a lot of big ways. Polar opposites that somehow managed to mesh with each other.
Lilly was the embodiment of running across a golf course during a thunderstorm with a nine iron strapped to one’s head. White water rafting in a beer cooler with no helmet and a spatula for a paddle. Walking up to an already pissed-off grizzly bear and punching it in the face.
Veronica, meanwhile, was an exhilarating roller coaster that had properly functioning safety harnesses. Diving into a school of great white sharks under the protection of a titanium cage. Riding to the top of a mountain in a gondola, dangling some thousand feet in the air.
She was activities that, though they might make a person jittery, were inherently safe. Daring, but not dangerous. Nine times out of ten, they walked away with barely more than a scratch or a nasty bruise. With Lilly, someone would be lucky to come out with two of their four limbs still attached to their bodies.
So, yes, she would be a change of pace for him. But after spending all this time running away from that pissed off grizzly bear, he was excited to get in line for a roller coaster instead.
First, though, he needed to find that roller coaster. After their brunch the previous morning, he hadn’t seen much of Veronica. Despite the fact that they went to the same school, had classes together, and were even living on the same property, she’d been rather elusive. He wasn’t sure if it was a case of bad timing, or of her avoiding him.
Either way, he was about to put an end to the separation. Lilly dropped her off twenty minutes ago, and she’d headed straight for the pool house. By now, enough time had passed that he could find her without making her feel like he was cornering her. Like he’d been waiting in his room for the last hour and a half so he could talk to her when she got home.
…Which, okay, he had been doing, but there was no need to make it obvious.
Veronica was in the bedroom when he found her. Two suitcases were sprawled across the bed, and she was stuffing clothing into them. Busy with her work, she didn’t notice him making his approach.
Not wanting to scare her again- as hilarious as it had been that other time -Logan stopped when he reached the doorway, making sure to slap his feet against the sliding door’s metal track.
Turning at the sound, he saw a mixture of excitement and anxiety flicker through her eyes as they settled on him. “Hey,” she said with a smile that wasn’t quite enthusiastic.
“Hey,” he tossed the simple greeting back to her. “What are you up to?”
She shrugged. “Playing volleyball. I know it looks a lot like I’m packing up to go home, but don’t let your eyes fool you.”
So her sense of humor was at least still in working order. This was a good sign. Okay, Logan. Start with casual conversation. “That’s a good idea. This way you get it done now, and won’t have to worry about it tomorrow.”
She frowned, looking at him like he must’ve been making a bad joke. “Uh, Logan… You know I’m going home tonight, don’t you?”
A brick dropped into his stomach. “What? I thought your parents weren’t coming home until tomorrow.” She couldn’t leave yet. They were supposed to have the rest of the night to hang out.
“They are. But at, like, two in the morning. I’m sleeping at my house tonight so I’ll be there to unlock the door when they get back. I doubt they want to spend the early morning hours lounging on the front steps,” she laughed.
Okay. Okay, this was better. He could work with this new information. “So, you don’t have to go home for a while then right? Technically you could stick around for another nine hours, and things would still be okay?”
“I guess.” The way she spoke, it was as if she didn’t think she had any real reason to stay that long.
Moving toward the head of the bed, Logan spun and flopped down, moving far enough back that he could swing his legs back and forth, toes barely skimming the carpet. He watched as Veronica made a valiant effort to keep herself busy. To stay focused on the task of packing so she wouldn’t have to stop and look in his direction. What she didn’t seem to know was that he had many tricks to grab her attention. Grabbing her suitcase, for example, and tugging it beside him just as she was about to deposit a shirt.
“What are you doing?” she asked, partly annoyed, partly playful.
“Well, for one thing… I’m sitting here watching you pack, and wondering what you’re doing next Saturday.” A floppy grin appeared on his lips. Forget casual conversation. He was getting straight to the point.
“Um…” She started folding a set of pajamas. “I’m not sure. Lilly hasn’t mentioned anything to me yet. Why, what did she say to you?”
Logan had to laugh. He wondered how she could misinterpret such a simple question. Either she had a serious case of denial going on, or something had happened in the last day and a half to make her want to avoid the topic of their interlude like it was the second coming of the black plague. “No, Veronica…” He waited until she dropped her most recently folded item into the suitcase, then snared her hand in his, holding it like it was a newborn kitten. “I’m wondering what you are doing next Saturday. Just you.”
She waited a few seconds before gently extracting herself from his grasp. He let her go without resistance, knowing she was one person he definitely couldn’t force anything on. And he didn’t want to. Still, he had reason to hope. Just before she pulled away he could swear he saw a glimmer of delight in her eyes. A sign that, though she might be timid, she did want this. At least a part of her did.
What came next didn’t quite corroborate his theory though.
“Oh,” she said, the tiny word dull and heavy. “That.” She sighed. “I don’t… think that’s gonna work.”
All right. He definitely hadn’t been expecting a flat-out rejection. For her to slam down on his proposal like a big red stamp with ‘failure’ written in capital letters. “What? Why?” He thought about putting a big, smiling mask over his outward signs of disappointment, but tossed it in the trash a second later. She needed to see this. Needed to see that he didn’t like this answer. That he was going to put up a fight for her. For them. For the possibility of there being a ‘them’.
“Because.” Another sigh. Like she was forcing herself to say these words. “Because you’re you, and I’m me.”
“Meaning…?”
“Meaning we don’t mix well. Chocolate sauce and apple juice go better together than we do.”
He pretended to think about this for a second. “So, which one am I? Chocolate sauce or apple juice? What if I’m actually ice cream, or… something that goes good with apple juice?”
“Logan.” The look she gave him said he wasn’t making this easy for her.
Good. “Well, it sounds like a load of crap to me. I mean, we seemed to be mixing pretty well the other night.” He said it as pure, simple fact. Like a cop trying to prove his case to the D.A.
“That was…” She trailed off, apparently unable to find a properly fitting second half for her sentence.
“What?” he prompted, the barest hint of desperation coming through his voice. A plea for her to explain how they’d gone from kissing in his kitchen over breakfast yesterday, to her putting the brakes on this entire operation.
“It was nice. Really nice,” she conceded, probably knowing that he would accept no other answer as the truth. “But I think it would be best, for both of us, if we just chalked it up to misbehaving hormones and extreme exhaustion, and left it at that.”
Logan thought about this proposition for a second. He thought about going along with it, about backing down. Then, his mouth started working. “No.”
“What?”
Granted, he hadn’t been expecting to say that either. Still, now that it was out in the open, he decided to run with it. “No. Veronica, I told you that night… nothing that happened was a mistake. My hormones were in check, and I definitely wasn’t tired. Besides, if that’s all it was, how do you explain the next morning? Was that a Veronica body double I was kissing?”
“No,” she said, humoring him with an answer. Accompanied by an eye-roll.
“Then what is it, really?” he asked, ducking his head in hopes of catching her gaze, which was welded to the mattress right now. “I know it’s not the fact that we bicker all the time, because you said yourself, you think it’s fun. Besides, did you see the way Lilly and I were with each other? If there had ever been real weapons involved, one of us would be dead by now.”
This earned him a laugh, and he was encouraged to continue. “And I know it’s not that you didn’t like what happened. I was there too, remember.” She looked up when he said this, and he offered her a small grin. Hating that there was so much distance between them during this crucial conversation, he shoved the suitcase back toward the foot of the bed, offering the space to her. After a moment of hesitation, she complied, tossing aside the shirt she’d been folding and climbing up on the bed next to him.
“Look. If you’re really not interested… If this is all just a big, stupid misunderstanding, or you’re having second thoughts, then fine. I’ll back off, no questions asked. I just want to know what’s going on in that head of yours.”
Veronica opened her mouth to speak, but then snapped it shut a second later. She shook her head and dropped her chin to her chest. “I can’t. It’s… it’s embarrassing,” she told him with a sigh.
Reaching out, he brushed his fingers along the lower edge of her jaw, coaxing her to look at him. “Tell me,” he insisted, voice soft, barely more than a whisper.
There was a shift in her mood, a point where she seemed to realize that she wasn’t leaving the pool house until he got his answer. Where she stopped looking at him like he was a mildly dangerous animal, and more like the friend he’d been to her for the last four years. Sitting up a little straighter, she still didn’t quite meet his gaze when she explained herself. “The thing is. If we were dating… Then, there would come a time when I probably wouldn’t be able to give you what you want.”
Logan sat silent for a moment, waiting for this answer to make sense to him. After several tries at decoding it though, he was still baffled. “You’re going to have to clarify that one for me,” he said slowly. “What do you mean by ‘what I want’?”
“You know…” she waved her hand at him. Annoyance was sparking in her eyes, as she clearly wished he would pick up on her meaning.
“No…” he drew the vowel out, shaking his head, still confused.
“I couldn’t… I’ve never… And you…” she half-laughed after that last part.
“This would go a lot faster if you used more than two words at a time,” he quipped.
“I mean… physically,” she punched the word out, finally finding the right one. “I just don’t know how soon I’d be ready to do anything, let alone the thing.”
Suddenly, everything clicked. What she was talking about, what she was worried about… and exactly where it had all come from. “You’ve been talking to Lilly, haven’t you?”
“Maybe.”
He laughed. “Veronica… I don’t know what she said to you, but no matter what it was… You can’t listen to her about this.”
“She’s right though. I mean, having sex is practically how you and Lilly used to say hello to each other.”
Logan thought about protesting. Admittedly though, she was pretty much right.
“Meanwhile, I’d never even kissed a boy before two nights ago. Who knows how long it’ll be before I’m ready to…” she trailed off before saying the actual words. “It might be three months… it might be six… it might be longer. Are you gonna tell me you could actually wait that long?”
He didn’t give his penis time to weigh in on this decision. Instead, he gave an answer that was straight from his real brain. “Yes.”
She looked up, surprised by this declaration.
“Veronica, this isn’t about getting into your pants. If that… if sex was all I cared about, I’d be talking to one of the looser girls at our school right now. I won’t name names, but you know who I mean,” he half-joked, tossing in a bit of lightness where he could. “All I’m asking for here is a date, Veronica. One night. Who knows if we’ll even make it past that?” he said with a quirk of his lips.
She smiled, lifting her gaze to his for a quick second before dropping it back down to the spot on the comforter she’d been studying for a while now.
“I really like you. You’re all I’ve been able to think about for the last week and a half.” Logan couldn’t remember ever being this open with a girl about his feelings for her. Usually he just let his body parts do all the talking. But he figured he was only going to get one chance at this, and he didn’t want to risk not saying enough. “You’re smart, and interesting, and you make me laugh. I like that you piss people off when you don’t always follow the crowd, and that you don’t care. I think it’s awesome that one of your favourite channels to watch is Turner Classic Movies. Not enough people at our school know there’s a difference between Audrey and Katherine Hepburn.” He paused just long enough for another idea to pop into his head. “Oh, and speaking of movie stars, I like that you’ve been living here for two weeks now, and haven’t once asked my Mom or Dad for their autograph.”
Veronica scoffed. “Well then, you better not look in that other suitcase of mine, or you’re in for a nasty surprise.”
Logan smiled at her joke. He wondered if she realized how serious he was about that last point though. How much it meant to him that she saw him as a real person, rather than as a means to an end.
Feeling adventurous, and confident from the fact that she hadn’t run for the door yet, he instructed his index finger to creep over to her exposed knee. Skimming it over the bumpy landscape, the rest of his digits joined in on his second pass. Staring down at her own hands, which were busy repeatedly tying and untying themselves into a tight knot, she was surprised by the tickling touch. A gasp popped out of her. “I want to be with you Veronica. If that means I have to wait a few months to have all of you, then I’ll wait a few months.”
“Or longer,” she corrected him.
“Or longer,” he agreed instantly. He knew that addition of hers had been half truth, and half challenge. Her way of seeing if she could make him back down… if she could scare him away. What she didn’t realize though… what he hadn’t said… was that he understood from the beginning that this whole being-a-virgin thing was part of who she was. It was a vital component of what made Veronica, Veronica.
Didn’t change how he felt about her.
Slipping his hand between hers, he pulled her forward so she was kneeling on the bed before him, his legs laid out on either side of her. “So,” he said, bringing her hand up so he could stamp his lips to the back of it. “Tell me again…” A grin tickled his lips as he leaned forward and kissed her cheek. She smiled and turned slightly away from him; whether it was an attempt to avoid his lips or to give him more room, he didn’t know. He backed away far enough to look into her eyes, their faces just inches apart now. “What are you doing next Saturday?” he asked for the third time, hope wrapped around every word.
Seconds, maybe a couple of minutes passed as she contemplated her response. It felt like hours. Logan couldn’t read her expression, couldn’t see what was going on her surely busy cranium. All he knew was that the silence was like a neurotoxin, aberrant nerve impulses clenching his stomach into a tight ball and sending his heart running at a world record pace.
“Well…” Finally, she spoke. She sighed, the sound shaky as the chassis of a car rolling down a dirt road. “It looks like I’m going on a date with you.”
He could tell she was trying to confuse him, to fool him with that somber tone and the way she kept her head down. But his mind quickly sorted out what she’d actually said. Plus, there was that excited grin she was trying so hard to hide. She was failing miserably.
Logan wondered for a second if this was the first of what would be many attempts by her to drive him insane. He didn’t care though. Happiness flooded through him, washing over every cubic inch of his body both inside and out. “Damn straight,” he said, mixing his words with laughter.
Then he pulled her in for a long, deep kiss that set them both on fire.
)) End ((
[ *gasp*! She didn’t just end it like that, did she? Oh yes, yes she did! Hehe… I really hope you guys have enjoyed it though. And um, I don’t want to inspire too much squee-age here (thought I hope I am), but I’ve already got a series of sequels to this fic lined up. So, if you enjoyed cutesy Stay-cation LoVe, don’t worry! There’s more to come! ]
[ Okay, so that last note was a bit of a lie. There is an Epilogue to come in about two days, so just keep your eye out ;) ]
[ P.S. I’d like to show my love to note_sarcasm once again, for a) coming up with the inspiration to this fic (ie. the Veronica-lives-with-Logan part, aka the whole basis of the plot), and b) for being so very, very patient with me. She’s waited almost a year for this fic to be completed (it was her vm_santa gift from 2008), and has been pretty much wonderful throughout. ]
Author: cloud_forest
Pairing/Characters: Logan/Veronica
Word Count: 3,662
Rating: PG
Summary: Two nights ago, Logan and Veronica kissed for the first time. Now, her stay with the Echolls is over, and it remains to be seen what will come of the recent changes in their relationship…
Spoilers: Veronica and Logan are actually zombies who are about to attack Aaron and eat his braaaiiiinnnn! Just kidding. But that WOULD be a fitting ending for the movie star, don’tcha think?
Disclaimer: None of this is mine, but I’m totally gonna copyright the Aaron-killed-by-zombies idea.
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{ Day Fifteen ~ Friday }
Thirty-seven hours had passed since Logan first kissed Veronica Mars. Since the fantasies he’d been cultivating for the last few days had finally grown roots in reality. Nimble projections that now crept into every fold and fissure in his brain, making it impossible for him to think about anything else.
All five of his senses were in a constant state of overload. Every light on their switchboards was blinking, every alarm screaming for attention.
Wintergreen toothpaste and chocolate chips were the two main flagships sailing on his tongue. Sugary innocence and spicy excitement were their passengers. Food was grey and boring compared to the taste of her tongue and her lips.
Plastered to every wall in his visual cortex were images both new and old. Veronica, standing under the shower of a streetlight, eyes glittering with determination and playful rage when he refused to admit that she was right. How she’d been the most delicious looking thing in the kitchen the previous morning, knees pressed together, arms folded up as she sat on the stool waiting for breakfast. Glaring at him from across the lunch table, fighting a losing battle against the grin that was tugging on her mouth.
Shuffling through his ears was a playlist of different sounds. Tiny moans that had scurried out of her that night, tickling his earlobes. Screaming laughter when he tossed her across the pool during their battle a week ago. The sharp blades of air that sliced through her lips in a surprised gasp. Those animalistic groans from his dreams, excised from real life events and inserted into more risqué scenery.
Fruity shampoo and floral body wash were scents he couldn’t shake from his mind. Transferred to him when he’d buried his nose in her hair or skimmed it down the pillar of her neck. Traces of a sweet, tangy perfume lingered in his memory, too. Those and other unidentifiable ingredients made up the gossamer veil that surrounded her. An olfactory cocktail that intoxicated him when he was close enough to get a taste of it.
Shockwaves were still running through his nerves at sites where her skin had touched his. Electrical pulses firing at his brain, reminding him what it felt like when her fingers had tunneled into his flesh. His arms ached to be folded around her again, to return to that comfortable position they assumed when he was cradling her.
Put simply, Logan felt like he was overdosing on Veronica Mars. All he could think about was her. All he wanted was her. And his mind was going crazy without access to his human drug, raging at the fact that it could rely on only memories to fill its quota.
He suspected that one cause of this temporary insanity was the blinding excitement that came with a brand-new relationship. Something he hadn’t had in a long time. For the last year or so, he’d been consumed by exactly one person: Lilly Kane. Even during the brief periods when they were broken up, the only thing he thought about was how to get her back. Other girls would pass through his air space occasionally, but they were small aircraft. Rarely did he take note of anything more significant than surface details.
With Veronica though, there were so many new things to discover. Things he wanted to discover. She was a book he’d had sitting on a shelf for years. Full of complex characters and thrilling plot points. Ready to take him to wild, uncharted destinations. For so long he’d failed to do much more than just flip through a few pages of her story. Now that he’d finally committed to reading it though, he couldn’t stop.
Part of him was completely surprised by this new development, as well. Going from dating Lilly Kane to Veronica Mars- well, maybe dating Veronica Mars -was quite a change. Sure they were best friends, but they were different in a lot of big ways. Polar opposites that somehow managed to mesh with each other.
Lilly was the embodiment of running across a golf course during a thunderstorm with a nine iron strapped to one’s head. White water rafting in a beer cooler with no helmet and a spatula for a paddle. Walking up to an already pissed-off grizzly bear and punching it in the face.
Veronica, meanwhile, was an exhilarating roller coaster that had properly functioning safety harnesses. Diving into a school of great white sharks under the protection of a titanium cage. Riding to the top of a mountain in a gondola, dangling some thousand feet in the air.
She was activities that, though they might make a person jittery, were inherently safe. Daring, but not dangerous. Nine times out of ten, they walked away with barely more than a scratch or a nasty bruise. With Lilly, someone would be lucky to come out with two of their four limbs still attached to their bodies.
So, yes, she would be a change of pace for him. But after spending all this time running away from that pissed off grizzly bear, he was excited to get in line for a roller coaster instead.
First, though, he needed to find that roller coaster. After their brunch the previous morning, he hadn’t seen much of Veronica. Despite the fact that they went to the same school, had classes together, and were even living on the same property, she’d been rather elusive. He wasn’t sure if it was a case of bad timing, or of her avoiding him.
Either way, he was about to put an end to the separation. Lilly dropped her off twenty minutes ago, and she’d headed straight for the pool house. By now, enough time had passed that he could find her without making her feel like he was cornering her. Like he’d been waiting in his room for the last hour and a half so he could talk to her when she got home.
…Which, okay, he had been doing, but there was no need to make it obvious.
Veronica was in the bedroom when he found her. Two suitcases were sprawled across the bed, and she was stuffing clothing into them. Busy with her work, she didn’t notice him making his approach.
Not wanting to scare her again- as hilarious as it had been that other time -Logan stopped when he reached the doorway, making sure to slap his feet against the sliding door’s metal track.
Turning at the sound, he saw a mixture of excitement and anxiety flicker through her eyes as they settled on him. “Hey,” she said with a smile that wasn’t quite enthusiastic.
“Hey,” he tossed the simple greeting back to her. “What are you up to?”
She shrugged. “Playing volleyball. I know it looks a lot like I’m packing up to go home, but don’t let your eyes fool you.”
So her sense of humor was at least still in working order. This was a good sign. Okay, Logan. Start with casual conversation. “That’s a good idea. This way you get it done now, and won’t have to worry about it tomorrow.”
She frowned, looking at him like he must’ve been making a bad joke. “Uh, Logan… You know I’m going home tonight, don’t you?”
A brick dropped into his stomach. “What? I thought your parents weren’t coming home until tomorrow.” She couldn’t leave yet. They were supposed to have the rest of the night to hang out.
“They are. But at, like, two in the morning. I’m sleeping at my house tonight so I’ll be there to unlock the door when they get back. I doubt they want to spend the early morning hours lounging on the front steps,” she laughed.
Okay. Okay, this was better. He could work with this new information. “So, you don’t have to go home for a while then right? Technically you could stick around for another nine hours, and things would still be okay?”
“I guess.” The way she spoke, it was as if she didn’t think she had any real reason to stay that long.
Moving toward the head of the bed, Logan spun and flopped down, moving far enough back that he could swing his legs back and forth, toes barely skimming the carpet. He watched as Veronica made a valiant effort to keep herself busy. To stay focused on the task of packing so she wouldn’t have to stop and look in his direction. What she didn’t seem to know was that he had many tricks to grab her attention. Grabbing her suitcase, for example, and tugging it beside him just as she was about to deposit a shirt.
“What are you doing?” she asked, partly annoyed, partly playful.
“Well, for one thing… I’m sitting here watching you pack, and wondering what you’re doing next Saturday.” A floppy grin appeared on his lips. Forget casual conversation. He was getting straight to the point.
“Um…” She started folding a set of pajamas. “I’m not sure. Lilly hasn’t mentioned anything to me yet. Why, what did she say to you?”
Logan had to laugh. He wondered how she could misinterpret such a simple question. Either she had a serious case of denial going on, or something had happened in the last day and a half to make her want to avoid the topic of their interlude like it was the second coming of the black plague. “No, Veronica…” He waited until she dropped her most recently folded item into the suitcase, then snared her hand in his, holding it like it was a newborn kitten. “I’m wondering what you are doing next Saturday. Just you.”
She waited a few seconds before gently extracting herself from his grasp. He let her go without resistance, knowing she was one person he definitely couldn’t force anything on. And he didn’t want to. Still, he had reason to hope. Just before she pulled away he could swear he saw a glimmer of delight in her eyes. A sign that, though she might be timid, she did want this. At least a part of her did.
What came next didn’t quite corroborate his theory though.
“Oh,” she said, the tiny word dull and heavy. “That.” She sighed. “I don’t… think that’s gonna work.”
All right. He definitely hadn’t been expecting a flat-out rejection. For her to slam down on his proposal like a big red stamp with ‘failure’ written in capital letters. “What? Why?” He thought about putting a big, smiling mask over his outward signs of disappointment, but tossed it in the trash a second later. She needed to see this. Needed to see that he didn’t like this answer. That he was going to put up a fight for her. For them. For the possibility of there being a ‘them’.
“Because.” Another sigh. Like she was forcing herself to say these words. “Because you’re you, and I’m me.”
“Meaning…?”
“Meaning we don’t mix well. Chocolate sauce and apple juice go better together than we do.”
He pretended to think about this for a second. “So, which one am I? Chocolate sauce or apple juice? What if I’m actually ice cream, or… something that goes good with apple juice?”
“Logan.” The look she gave him said he wasn’t making this easy for her.
Good. “Well, it sounds like a load of crap to me. I mean, we seemed to be mixing pretty well the other night.” He said it as pure, simple fact. Like a cop trying to prove his case to the D.A.
“That was…” She trailed off, apparently unable to find a properly fitting second half for her sentence.
“What?” he prompted, the barest hint of desperation coming through his voice. A plea for her to explain how they’d gone from kissing in his kitchen over breakfast yesterday, to her putting the brakes on this entire operation.
“It was nice. Really nice,” she conceded, probably knowing that he would accept no other answer as the truth. “But I think it would be best, for both of us, if we just chalked it up to misbehaving hormones and extreme exhaustion, and left it at that.”
Logan thought about this proposition for a second. He thought about going along with it, about backing down. Then, his mouth started working. “No.”
“What?”
Granted, he hadn’t been expecting to say that either. Still, now that it was out in the open, he decided to run with it. “No. Veronica, I told you that night… nothing that happened was a mistake. My hormones were in check, and I definitely wasn’t tired. Besides, if that’s all it was, how do you explain the next morning? Was that a Veronica body double I was kissing?”
“No,” she said, humoring him with an answer. Accompanied by an eye-roll.
“Then what is it, really?” he asked, ducking his head in hopes of catching her gaze, which was welded to the mattress right now. “I know it’s not the fact that we bicker all the time, because you said yourself, you think it’s fun. Besides, did you see the way Lilly and I were with each other? If there had ever been real weapons involved, one of us would be dead by now.”
This earned him a laugh, and he was encouraged to continue. “And I know it’s not that you didn’t like what happened. I was there too, remember.” She looked up when he said this, and he offered her a small grin. Hating that there was so much distance between them during this crucial conversation, he shoved the suitcase back toward the foot of the bed, offering the space to her. After a moment of hesitation, she complied, tossing aside the shirt she’d been folding and climbing up on the bed next to him.
“Look. If you’re really not interested… If this is all just a big, stupid misunderstanding, or you’re having second thoughts, then fine. I’ll back off, no questions asked. I just want to know what’s going on in that head of yours.”
Veronica opened her mouth to speak, but then snapped it shut a second later. She shook her head and dropped her chin to her chest. “I can’t. It’s… it’s embarrassing,” she told him with a sigh.
Reaching out, he brushed his fingers along the lower edge of her jaw, coaxing her to look at him. “Tell me,” he insisted, voice soft, barely more than a whisper.
There was a shift in her mood, a point where she seemed to realize that she wasn’t leaving the pool house until he got his answer. Where she stopped looking at him like he was a mildly dangerous animal, and more like the friend he’d been to her for the last four years. Sitting up a little straighter, she still didn’t quite meet his gaze when she explained herself. “The thing is. If we were dating… Then, there would come a time when I probably wouldn’t be able to give you what you want.”
Logan sat silent for a moment, waiting for this answer to make sense to him. After several tries at decoding it though, he was still baffled. “You’re going to have to clarify that one for me,” he said slowly. “What do you mean by ‘what I want’?”
“You know…” she waved her hand at him. Annoyance was sparking in her eyes, as she clearly wished he would pick up on her meaning.
“No…” he drew the vowel out, shaking his head, still confused.
“I couldn’t… I’ve never… And you…” she half-laughed after that last part.
“This would go a lot faster if you used more than two words at a time,” he quipped.
“I mean… physically,” she punched the word out, finally finding the right one. “I just don’t know how soon I’d be ready to do anything, let alone the thing.”
Suddenly, everything clicked. What she was talking about, what she was worried about… and exactly where it had all come from. “You’ve been talking to Lilly, haven’t you?”
“Maybe.”
He laughed. “Veronica… I don’t know what she said to you, but no matter what it was… You can’t listen to her about this.”
“She’s right though. I mean, having sex is practically how you and Lilly used to say hello to each other.”
Logan thought about protesting. Admittedly though, she was pretty much right.
“Meanwhile, I’d never even kissed a boy before two nights ago. Who knows how long it’ll be before I’m ready to…” she trailed off before saying the actual words. “It might be three months… it might be six… it might be longer. Are you gonna tell me you could actually wait that long?”
He didn’t give his penis time to weigh in on this decision. Instead, he gave an answer that was straight from his real brain. “Yes.”
She looked up, surprised by this declaration.
“Veronica, this isn’t about getting into your pants. If that… if sex was all I cared about, I’d be talking to one of the looser girls at our school right now. I won’t name names, but you know who I mean,” he half-joked, tossing in a bit of lightness where he could. “All I’m asking for here is a date, Veronica. One night. Who knows if we’ll even make it past that?” he said with a quirk of his lips.
She smiled, lifting her gaze to his for a quick second before dropping it back down to the spot on the comforter she’d been studying for a while now.
“I really like you. You’re all I’ve been able to think about for the last week and a half.” Logan couldn’t remember ever being this open with a girl about his feelings for her. Usually he just let his body parts do all the talking. But he figured he was only going to get one chance at this, and he didn’t want to risk not saying enough. “You’re smart, and interesting, and you make me laugh. I like that you piss people off when you don’t always follow the crowd, and that you don’t care. I think it’s awesome that one of your favourite channels to watch is Turner Classic Movies. Not enough people at our school know there’s a difference between Audrey and Katherine Hepburn.” He paused just long enough for another idea to pop into his head. “Oh, and speaking of movie stars, I like that you’ve been living here for two weeks now, and haven’t once asked my Mom or Dad for their autograph.”
Veronica scoffed. “Well then, you better not look in that other suitcase of mine, or you’re in for a nasty surprise.”
Logan smiled at her joke. He wondered if she realized how serious he was about that last point though. How much it meant to him that she saw him as a real person, rather than as a means to an end.
Feeling adventurous, and confident from the fact that she hadn’t run for the door yet, he instructed his index finger to creep over to her exposed knee. Skimming it over the bumpy landscape, the rest of his digits joined in on his second pass. Staring down at her own hands, which were busy repeatedly tying and untying themselves into a tight knot, she was surprised by the tickling touch. A gasp popped out of her. “I want to be with you Veronica. If that means I have to wait a few months to have all of you, then I’ll wait a few months.”
“Or longer,” she corrected him.
“Or longer,” he agreed instantly. He knew that addition of hers had been half truth, and half challenge. Her way of seeing if she could make him back down… if she could scare him away. What she didn’t realize though… what he hadn’t said… was that he understood from the beginning that this whole being-a-virgin thing was part of who she was. It was a vital component of what made Veronica, Veronica.
Didn’t change how he felt about her.
Slipping his hand between hers, he pulled her forward so she was kneeling on the bed before him, his legs laid out on either side of her. “So,” he said, bringing her hand up so he could stamp his lips to the back of it. “Tell me again…” A grin tickled his lips as he leaned forward and kissed her cheek. She smiled and turned slightly away from him; whether it was an attempt to avoid his lips or to give him more room, he didn’t know. He backed away far enough to look into her eyes, their faces just inches apart now. “What are you doing next Saturday?” he asked for the third time, hope wrapped around every word.
Seconds, maybe a couple of minutes passed as she contemplated her response. It felt like hours. Logan couldn’t read her expression, couldn’t see what was going on her surely busy cranium. All he knew was that the silence was like a neurotoxin, aberrant nerve impulses clenching his stomach into a tight ball and sending his heart running at a world record pace.
“Well…” Finally, she spoke. She sighed, the sound shaky as the chassis of a car rolling down a dirt road. “It looks like I’m going on a date with you.”
He could tell she was trying to confuse him, to fool him with that somber tone and the way she kept her head down. But his mind quickly sorted out what she’d actually said. Plus, there was that excited grin she was trying so hard to hide. She was failing miserably.
Logan wondered for a second if this was the first of what would be many attempts by her to drive him insane. He didn’t care though. Happiness flooded through him, washing over every cubic inch of his body both inside and out. “Damn straight,” he said, mixing his words with laughter.
Then he pulled her in for a long, deep kiss that set them both on fire.
)) End ((
[ *gasp*! She didn’t just end it like that, did she? Oh yes, yes she did! Hehe… I really hope you guys have enjoyed it though. And um, I don’t want to inspire too much squee-age here (thought I hope I am), but I’ve already got a series of sequels to this fic lined up. So, if you enjoyed cutesy Stay-cation LoVe, don’t worry! There’s more to come! ]
[ Okay, so that last note was a bit of a lie. There is an Epilogue to come in about two days, so just keep your eye out ;) ]
[ P.S. I’d like to show my love to note_sarcasm once again, for a) coming up with the inspiration to this fic (ie. the Veronica-lives-with-Logan part, aka the whole basis of the plot), and b) for being so very, very patient with me. She’s waited almost a year for this fic to be completed (it was her vm_santa gift from 2008), and has been pretty much wonderful throughout. ]