Fic: Down the Rabbit Hole, Logan, PG-13
Title: Down the Rabbit Hole
Author:gertinator
Pairing/Character: Logan
Word Count: 2269
Rating: PG-13, but dark theme
Summary: Logan's life just gets worse after Veronica dumps him.
Spoilers/Warnings: Season 3 vaguely referenced, no real details. Angsty and depressing.
A/N: There are ever so may things I should be doing now (including laundry, packing... working on Triangulations...) But this wanted to be written, and I must follow the muse or she will turn on me :)
Wallace stared at Logan's empty seat. This was the fourth class he had missed in a row. The next one resulted in an automatic failure for the semester. Wallace sighed. Not that Logan had been doing passing work anyway. Ever since he and Veronica had broken up, he was either drunk or hung over for class, when he managed to make it. His attendance was sporadic but not usually this bad.
Wallace resolved to go and find out what was up. He and Logan weren't close, but he thought Logan was a good guy, maybe better than Veronica gave him credit for. Decision made, Wallace settled into his seat to take notes on the lecture. Maybe Logan would even want a copy.
There was a "Do Not Disturb" sign on Logan's suite at the Grand, and no one answered when Wallace knocked. But being friends with Veronica Mars had shown him how to look past the obvious. He questioned a maid cleaning the next room who said the "Do Not Disturb" sign had been up for at least two weeks. No one had seen Logan, but he got room service occasionally and Dial-A-Bottle often. That sealed it for Wallace, who managed to convince the maid to let him in to check on his friend.
A cloud of alcohol fumes rolled into the hallway as soon as the door opened. The room reeked of stale beer, old whiskey, and vomit, mixed with sweat and something else rank and unpleasant. The curtains were drawn and the lights were dim, but it was clear the place was wrecked. Wallace stepped over a smashed lamp, shoes crunching on glass, to open the sliding glass door and let in some light and air. He surveyed the damage with a whistle. It was destruction worthy of a band on tour trying to impress a load of groupies. Furniture was ripped, pictures were pulled off the walls, and empty liquor bottles were everywhere.
Logan was not in the living room or kitchen, or in his bedroom. That left one place, the one Wallace should have checked first, he thought ruefully. The bathroom. Sure enough, Logan was slumped on the floor, passed out while worshipping the porcelain goddess. Wallace cleaned the puke off Logan's face and tried to wake him. No luck. A little worried, Wallace finally gave up being nice and pushed Logan in the shower and turned it on, on cold. It looked and smelled like it had been days since Logan had been near soap, so it couldn't hurt.
"What the hell?" Logan came awake with a growl and a shout. "What the fuck are you doing?" He pounded his fist against the tile wall, then cranked the water to hot. "Fuck," he mumbled to himself, standing under the stream without bothering to remove his clothes. "Fuck."
Wallace didn't say a word. He was in fact pretty much stunned speechless. He knew a little about Logan, but this, this was bad. This was on par with the stories of him at the bridge. Wallace wondered briefly if he should call Veronica, but decided that would only make things worse. Instead, he grabbed sweats from Logan's room and threw them in the bathroom for Logan to change into. Then he ordered some toast and coffee from room service. If Logan could keep that down, they'd try something more.
Wallace cleared a place to sit on the couch, moving aside bottles and discarded clothing. As he gathered up the dead soldiers, he noticed Logan's mom's lighter on the table. Next to it sat a handgun. Wallace took a sharp breath, feeling as if he was falling into some altered state. His eyes skipped to the bathroom. Logan hadn't come out yet, and Wallace scanned the living room, trying to figure out where to hide the gun. There was only one reason Logan would have a gun out, and Wallace didn't like it one bit. He emptied the bullets into his pocket, then shoved the gun under the couch just as Logan came out of the bathroom toweling off his hair.
"That was a shitty thing to do, man," Logan said sardonically. His voice was a little soft around the edges, but he seemed relatively sober. Then again with Logan, it was always hard to tell. "Did you come by for a reason? I mean other than making my life just a little more miserable?"
"Logan, what the hell is going on? And don't tell me you had Metallica over for dinner, because I won't buy it." Wallace tried for humor, but it sounded forced. Logan's eyes were sunken and hollow, and he had lost weight. His skin hung off bony limbs and sloped shoulder, his face pale and pasty. This wasn't a joke. Two weeks of extreme self pity and binge drinking had changed him a lot, though Wallace realized that it was a snowball that had started down the hill three months before when Veronica ended their relationship. Wallace still didn't know any of the details of that, though he was supposed to be the BFF.
Logan laughed, but it was a bitter, rasping sound. "Following in the footsteps of the 'rents. Can't you tell? Though it seems I fall short where it really counts. I couldn't manage to throw myself off the bridge or splatter my brains across a TV set here at the Grand. Thought I'd drink myself to death instead. I'm pretty sure I can handle that."
"Logan," Wallace tried to sound reasonable, but he had never seen the kind of haunted emptiness and pain that lurked in the eyes of the man in front of him. It made him feel incredibly helpless. "I know you're upset about Veronica..." He faltered, not sure if he should continue or not.
"What, you mean the way she pretended to care but cut me loose first chance she got? Or the way she could never bring herself to tell me she loved me? Or maybe the fact that she's banging whasisface, that bland Duncan wannabe room mate of yours?" Logan gave a caustic snort and located a whiskey bottle with an inch or two of amber at the bottom. "That's rearview window, man. You haven't heard my latest fuck up. If we're lucky, it might even make the six o'clock news and an update of the Tinseltown Diaries." Logan took a swig, choked a little and wiped his mouth. He raised the bottle in a toast. "Here's to another generation of Echolls!"
Wallace stared in shock. "What?"
"Yep. That's right, Wallace. My boys are swimmers, even when I'm too drunk and stoned to know who I'm mounting. Got the happy news a week ago... or was it two? Ahh, how time flies when you're passed out. Sorry I don't have any cigars for you, dude." Logan tried to smile, but it was much more of a grimace, stretched taut across his devastated face. "Oh, don't look at me like that, Wallace. The disapproving gentleman. She's a little at fault, too, since she was a hell of a lot more sober. She might have even done it on purpose, since her first words to me were, '2 mill and I'll go away without a word.'" Logan threw his empty bottle at the wall, where it smashed.
Wallace winced. "Who - who is she? Are you sure... she's really pregnant... that it's yours?" Logan rummaged around until he found another bottle of whiskey, this one almost three quarters full. Wallace didn't bother trying to stop him from drinking; this story clearly required some lubrication.
"Come on, Wallace." Logan waved the bottle to emphasize his point. "This isn't some soap opera. I'm not gonna just take her word on it. There are ways to check. I'm paying the bills 'till the kid's born, and then I'll have a DNA test run. We could do it sooner, but I'm not gonna risk causing birth defects just because I was impatient." Logan took a big mouthful of the liquor, almost choking, and maybe even heaving a little. It didn't stop him from sucking down more of the poison. His eyes were desperate. "And besides..." His voice caught, broke, and he stopped speaking to get control.
"Yeah? Logan?" Wallace was appalled at the complete despair and desolation on Logan's face, even as Logan's lips quirked into a smirk.
"She's five foot tall, blonde... Says I called her Veronica all night. Sound possible to you?"
*********
Logan looked through the peephole. The sight of the blonde on the other side of the door, the blonde not carrying his child but who had apparently been on his mind the night he did the deed, made him hurt so bad he wanted to crumple to the floor and die. Of course, he felt like that 90% of the time these days, so he should be used to it by now. He closed his eyes and tried to pretend he hadn't seen her.
"I'm not going away," she said, in an echo of a different confrontation on her porch long ago. "Not until you talk to me."
He opened the door a crack and said viciously, "Let me guess. You are offering a special deal for ex-boyfriends who need to flee the country with their bastard children. Thanks, but I'm not interested." He tried to slam the door shut, but she had wedged her foot in it.
"I brought you something." Veronica's voice was low, defeated. "Just let me in for a minute."
"It wasn't enough to tell me what an irresponsible jackass I am in person? You decided to burn it on CD so I could make it my theme song?" His voice sizzled like acid, even as his eyes ate up the sight of her like a starving man.
"I thought you should know a thing or two about the little woman." Veronica handed him a fat file. Her hand brushed his. She jolted at the sensation, the electricity that still passed between them, and he could see the tears in her eyes. His eyes were drier than a desert and he had to look away to keep them that way. His throat was too tight to speak and tension stretched between them. She finally broke the silence. "I'm so sorry." In those three words, he heard the shadow of three other words, three words he had been begging her to say for years but she could never quite get past her lips.
He met her eyes with a look that scorched through her and nearly destroyed him, but all he could manage to say was, "Yeah, me, too." Then he pushed her out the door and closed it. His legs wouldn't take him as far as the couch, though, and he collapsed against the wall.
The file on Chelsea Jones was very thorough. Chelsea had started fucking celebrities at the age of fifteen, according to the transcribed wiretaps of interviews with some old friends. It had always been her goal to get pregnant and find a pay out, and in the meantime, she was checking off a list of the famous guys she had banged. There were also signed aphadavits saying she had bragged about taking Logan for all he was worth.
But the most sickening part? After she got the settlement from Logan, she planned to sell off the kid in an under the table, black market adoption to make an extra $200,000. She got pregnant on purpose to get rich and double sold her returns. Logan barely made it to the garbage can before emptying his stomach and then dry heaving himself into breathless spasms. The depravity of the human soul shouldn't shock him anymore, but it did.
Logan though of his kid. Barely more than a bundle of cells in this bitch's body. The kid was already weighted down under more burdens than a person should have to bear and he hadn't even taken a breath yet. Maybe he was better off being sold at auction to some rich couple desperate for a child. But not this particular couple. These sick fucks wanted proof the kid had movie star DNA before shelling out the cash. That thought made Logan dry heave some more. They wanted their own little piece of Aaron Echolls. How could they possibly be decent parents?
Logan had spent his life fucking up. He had always felt justified at blowing off the world and doing whatever the hell he wanted. After all, he had been dealt a pretty shitty hand. But that wouldn't matter to this kid, any more than Grandpa Echoll's being an asshole made up for Aaron's crimes. The kid would hate him for being a drunk, for being stupid and reckless and irresponsible. For letting him be sold to some celebrity-worshiping psychos. The kid would hate him for abandoning him.
And suddenly, for the first time, it really mattered to Logan that one person not hate him, that his kid not grow up despising his own father.
Logan's first call was to the platoon of lawyers kept on retainer to deal with problems like this. "We're not giving a cent to the bitch and I'm taking the kid. I'm going to courier a file to you to make it happen." That was the easy one. Logan called the front desk and secured the courier, made sure the file was on its way. Now for the hard part. He clenched his fists, took a deep breath. He had about five months to get his shit together. He picked up his cell phone and punched in 4-1-1.
"Los Angeles. Betty Ford Clinic. Yeah, thanks, I'll wait."
Author:gertinator
Pairing/Character: Logan
Word Count: 2269
Rating: PG-13, but dark theme
Summary: Logan's life just gets worse after Veronica dumps him.
Spoilers/Warnings: Season 3 vaguely referenced, no real details. Angsty and depressing.
A/N: There are ever so may things I should be doing now (including laundry, packing... working on Triangulations...) But this wanted to be written, and I must follow the muse or she will turn on me :)
Wallace stared at Logan's empty seat. This was the fourth class he had missed in a row. The next one resulted in an automatic failure for the semester. Wallace sighed. Not that Logan had been doing passing work anyway. Ever since he and Veronica had broken up, he was either drunk or hung over for class, when he managed to make it. His attendance was sporadic but not usually this bad.
Wallace resolved to go and find out what was up. He and Logan weren't close, but he thought Logan was a good guy, maybe better than Veronica gave him credit for. Decision made, Wallace settled into his seat to take notes on the lecture. Maybe Logan would even want a copy.
There was a "Do Not Disturb" sign on Logan's suite at the Grand, and no one answered when Wallace knocked. But being friends with Veronica Mars had shown him how to look past the obvious. He questioned a maid cleaning the next room who said the "Do Not Disturb" sign had been up for at least two weeks. No one had seen Logan, but he got room service occasionally and Dial-A-Bottle often. That sealed it for Wallace, who managed to convince the maid to let him in to check on his friend.
A cloud of alcohol fumes rolled into the hallway as soon as the door opened. The room reeked of stale beer, old whiskey, and vomit, mixed with sweat and something else rank and unpleasant. The curtains were drawn and the lights were dim, but it was clear the place was wrecked. Wallace stepped over a smashed lamp, shoes crunching on glass, to open the sliding glass door and let in some light and air. He surveyed the damage with a whistle. It was destruction worthy of a band on tour trying to impress a load of groupies. Furniture was ripped, pictures were pulled off the walls, and empty liquor bottles were everywhere.
Logan was not in the living room or kitchen, or in his bedroom. That left one place, the one Wallace should have checked first, he thought ruefully. The bathroom. Sure enough, Logan was slumped on the floor, passed out while worshipping the porcelain goddess. Wallace cleaned the puke off Logan's face and tried to wake him. No luck. A little worried, Wallace finally gave up being nice and pushed Logan in the shower and turned it on, on cold. It looked and smelled like it had been days since Logan had been near soap, so it couldn't hurt.
"What the hell?" Logan came awake with a growl and a shout. "What the fuck are you doing?" He pounded his fist against the tile wall, then cranked the water to hot. "Fuck," he mumbled to himself, standing under the stream without bothering to remove his clothes. "Fuck."
Wallace didn't say a word. He was in fact pretty much stunned speechless. He knew a little about Logan, but this, this was bad. This was on par with the stories of him at the bridge. Wallace wondered briefly if he should call Veronica, but decided that would only make things worse. Instead, he grabbed sweats from Logan's room and threw them in the bathroom for Logan to change into. Then he ordered some toast and coffee from room service. If Logan could keep that down, they'd try something more.
Wallace cleared a place to sit on the couch, moving aside bottles and discarded clothing. As he gathered up the dead soldiers, he noticed Logan's mom's lighter on the table. Next to it sat a handgun. Wallace took a sharp breath, feeling as if he was falling into some altered state. His eyes skipped to the bathroom. Logan hadn't come out yet, and Wallace scanned the living room, trying to figure out where to hide the gun. There was only one reason Logan would have a gun out, and Wallace didn't like it one bit. He emptied the bullets into his pocket, then shoved the gun under the couch just as Logan came out of the bathroom toweling off his hair.
"That was a shitty thing to do, man," Logan said sardonically. His voice was a little soft around the edges, but he seemed relatively sober. Then again with Logan, it was always hard to tell. "Did you come by for a reason? I mean other than making my life just a little more miserable?"
"Logan, what the hell is going on? And don't tell me you had Metallica over for dinner, because I won't buy it." Wallace tried for humor, but it sounded forced. Logan's eyes were sunken and hollow, and he had lost weight. His skin hung off bony limbs and sloped shoulder, his face pale and pasty. This wasn't a joke. Two weeks of extreme self pity and binge drinking had changed him a lot, though Wallace realized that it was a snowball that had started down the hill three months before when Veronica ended their relationship. Wallace still didn't know any of the details of that, though he was supposed to be the BFF.
Logan laughed, but it was a bitter, rasping sound. "Following in the footsteps of the 'rents. Can't you tell? Though it seems I fall short where it really counts. I couldn't manage to throw myself off the bridge or splatter my brains across a TV set here at the Grand. Thought I'd drink myself to death instead. I'm pretty sure I can handle that."
"Logan," Wallace tried to sound reasonable, but he had never seen the kind of haunted emptiness and pain that lurked in the eyes of the man in front of him. It made him feel incredibly helpless. "I know you're upset about Veronica..." He faltered, not sure if he should continue or not.
"What, you mean the way she pretended to care but cut me loose first chance she got? Or the way she could never bring herself to tell me she loved me? Or maybe the fact that she's banging whasisface, that bland Duncan wannabe room mate of yours?" Logan gave a caustic snort and located a whiskey bottle with an inch or two of amber at the bottom. "That's rearview window, man. You haven't heard my latest fuck up. If we're lucky, it might even make the six o'clock news and an update of the Tinseltown Diaries." Logan took a swig, choked a little and wiped his mouth. He raised the bottle in a toast. "Here's to another generation of Echolls!"
Wallace stared in shock. "What?"
"Yep. That's right, Wallace. My boys are swimmers, even when I'm too drunk and stoned to know who I'm mounting. Got the happy news a week ago... or was it two? Ahh, how time flies when you're passed out. Sorry I don't have any cigars for you, dude." Logan tried to smile, but it was much more of a grimace, stretched taut across his devastated face. "Oh, don't look at me like that, Wallace. The disapproving gentleman. She's a little at fault, too, since she was a hell of a lot more sober. She might have even done it on purpose, since her first words to me were, '2 mill and I'll go away without a word.'" Logan threw his empty bottle at the wall, where it smashed.
Wallace winced. "Who - who is she? Are you sure... she's really pregnant... that it's yours?" Logan rummaged around until he found another bottle of whiskey, this one almost three quarters full. Wallace didn't bother trying to stop him from drinking; this story clearly required some lubrication.
"Come on, Wallace." Logan waved the bottle to emphasize his point. "This isn't some soap opera. I'm not gonna just take her word on it. There are ways to check. I'm paying the bills 'till the kid's born, and then I'll have a DNA test run. We could do it sooner, but I'm not gonna risk causing birth defects just because I was impatient." Logan took a big mouthful of the liquor, almost choking, and maybe even heaving a little. It didn't stop him from sucking down more of the poison. His eyes were desperate. "And besides..." His voice caught, broke, and he stopped speaking to get control.
"Yeah? Logan?" Wallace was appalled at the complete despair and desolation on Logan's face, even as Logan's lips quirked into a smirk.
"She's five foot tall, blonde... Says I called her Veronica all night. Sound possible to you?"
*********
Logan looked through the peephole. The sight of the blonde on the other side of the door, the blonde not carrying his child but who had apparently been on his mind the night he did the deed, made him hurt so bad he wanted to crumple to the floor and die. Of course, he felt like that 90% of the time these days, so he should be used to it by now. He closed his eyes and tried to pretend he hadn't seen her.
"I'm not going away," she said, in an echo of a different confrontation on her porch long ago. "Not until you talk to me."
He opened the door a crack and said viciously, "Let me guess. You are offering a special deal for ex-boyfriends who need to flee the country with their bastard children. Thanks, but I'm not interested." He tried to slam the door shut, but she had wedged her foot in it.
"I brought you something." Veronica's voice was low, defeated. "Just let me in for a minute."
"It wasn't enough to tell me what an irresponsible jackass I am in person? You decided to burn it on CD so I could make it my theme song?" His voice sizzled like acid, even as his eyes ate up the sight of her like a starving man.
"I thought you should know a thing or two about the little woman." Veronica handed him a fat file. Her hand brushed his. She jolted at the sensation, the electricity that still passed between them, and he could see the tears in her eyes. His eyes were drier than a desert and he had to look away to keep them that way. His throat was too tight to speak and tension stretched between them. She finally broke the silence. "I'm so sorry." In those three words, he heard the shadow of three other words, three words he had been begging her to say for years but she could never quite get past her lips.
He met her eyes with a look that scorched through her and nearly destroyed him, but all he could manage to say was, "Yeah, me, too." Then he pushed her out the door and closed it. His legs wouldn't take him as far as the couch, though, and he collapsed against the wall.
The file on Chelsea Jones was very thorough. Chelsea had started fucking celebrities at the age of fifteen, according to the transcribed wiretaps of interviews with some old friends. It had always been her goal to get pregnant and find a pay out, and in the meantime, she was checking off a list of the famous guys she had banged. There were also signed aphadavits saying she had bragged about taking Logan for all he was worth.
But the most sickening part? After she got the settlement from Logan, she planned to sell off the kid in an under the table, black market adoption to make an extra $200,000. She got pregnant on purpose to get rich and double sold her returns. Logan barely made it to the garbage can before emptying his stomach and then dry heaving himself into breathless spasms. The depravity of the human soul shouldn't shock him anymore, but it did.
Logan though of his kid. Barely more than a bundle of cells in this bitch's body. The kid was already weighted down under more burdens than a person should have to bear and he hadn't even taken a breath yet. Maybe he was better off being sold at auction to some rich couple desperate for a child. But not this particular couple. These sick fucks wanted proof the kid had movie star DNA before shelling out the cash. That thought made Logan dry heave some more. They wanted their own little piece of Aaron Echolls. How could they possibly be decent parents?
Logan had spent his life fucking up. He had always felt justified at blowing off the world and doing whatever the hell he wanted. After all, he had been dealt a pretty shitty hand. But that wouldn't matter to this kid, any more than Grandpa Echoll's being an asshole made up for Aaron's crimes. The kid would hate him for being a drunk, for being stupid and reckless and irresponsible. For letting him be sold to some celebrity-worshiping psychos. The kid would hate him for abandoning him.
And suddenly, for the first time, it really mattered to Logan that one person not hate him, that his kid not grow up despising his own father.
Logan's first call was to the platoon of lawyers kept on retainer to deal with problems like this. "We're not giving a cent to the bitch and I'm taking the kid. I'm going to courier a file to you to make it happen." That was the easy one. Logan called the front desk and secured the courier, made sure the file was on its way. Now for the hard part. He clenched his fists, took a deep breath. He had about five months to get his shit together. He picked up his cell phone and punched in 4-1-1.
"Los Angeles. Betty Ford Clinic. Yeah, thanks, I'll wait."