Fic: "Insomnia" PG-13
Author: hillaryr
Title: Insomnia
Rating: Hard Pg-13 for language
Word Count: 4,000
Pairing: V/L, V/D
Spoilers: Up 2.10- And is a sequel to “Commonsensical” - you don’t necessarily have to read that to get this, though.
Summary: Veronica considers the lasting benefits of kindness
Disclaimer: Rob Thomas holds the title and the deed. I just go visit his property and pretend it’s my very own special playground.
A/N: Written for the Suspension of Disbelief Challenge. Device at end. X Posted at Veronicamarsfic and my LJ
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Veronica Mars was having trouble sleeping. Scratch that-trouble was an understatement. Sleep was impossible and chalking it up as mere “trouble” only glossed over the situation. Duncan lay curled at her side, his face devoid of emotion, features softened by sleep. Through the blue light of the muted television she watched him with a mixture of unsettling feelings curling in the pit of her stomach.
Why was she here?
She pulled her eyes away from Duncan and stared blankly at the silent screen. The dial was set to the local access station, on Wednesday nights they re-aired Answers from Angels until dawn. This week featured a montage of footage from 2005, some of which included her special cameo and the bomb that was the Lilly message from the great beyond.
Duncan shifted his body and mumbled incoherently. He could sleep through anything, it seemed that absolutely nothing bothered him. As the months stretched on, her boyfriend’s unflappable ability to simply not care had become unsettling. The lackluster way he dealt with everything in his life as though it was simply too taxing to actually emote about something had become a real issue. The only time that she saw him even partially human was when he was spending time with his six-week old daughter.
Veronica drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. So much of her had believed that everything was going to be perfect when she got back together with Duncan. She would be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that the first half of junior year had been spent pining over what they’d had together and nursing her seriously broken heart. The only real diversion had been the unsettling discovery that they could have possibility been brother and sister, but that didn’t matter anymore. Despite everything they’d gone through, despite everything she’d learned about his illness and their drugged sex at Shelly Pomeroy’s party that she’d believed was rape for a year, she still wanted to be with him.
Duncan had been so many firsts for her-first real boyfriend, first love, first---well, despite all the reasons their reunion ought to be uncomfortable, it had been easy going back to being his girlfriend. She’d thought easy was what she needed, what she wanted-but that easiness had dissolved into a comfort that led to complacency, and complacency led to a stagnant boringness that was quickly turning into impatience. She couldn’t go back to being fifteen again. The days before Lilly’s murder were long gone, and so was the girl that she'd been back then. Despite all the ways she kept trying to convince herself how much she changed, she still wanted to return to that point in her life when everything was novel and true love was true.
“I’m going to miss you,” Logan’s words crept to her mind, unbidden. As much as she didn’t want to think about him, he still managed to pop up on a regular basis. She still couldn’t figure him out-couldn’t figure them out. He confused her, and she didn’t like how unsetting that confusion was. Confusion was the antithesis to comfort, and comfort was in direct relation to the normalcy that she’d so desperately tried to attain in the past six months. It seemed simple to want to be the girl her father asked why she wasn’t-it seemed better for everyone.
The past year had not been normal, not in any sense of the word-her mother had betrayed her, three times-three times more than she could ever forgive. She’d solved Lilly’s murder with devastating effect-one that risked both her father and her own life. Aaron Echolls was in prison awaiting trial for the murder of Lilly Kane. There was the bus crash and Meg and the baby--and then there was Logan.
The first time he kissed her she’d been shocked by her body’s response, the way she felt as though she was melting into him and he into her-it was too Harlequin Romance. She never knew why she welcomed him in her home that night after breaking up with him and nearly being killed-didn’t understand the rush of emotion when she’d actually seen him there on her doorstep. Relief, it had been relief, that and something else. Something unfamiliar that she quickly grew accustomed to second- guessing as a means of self-preservation.
While they were dating, she was constantly weighing the pros and cons, trying to figure out why she was with him. Logan Echolls was hardly her idea of perfect boyfriend material. Less than a year ago, he’d bashed in her headlights and had spent the majority of his time practicing his skill of the perturbingly sarcastic degradation of her character on a daily basis. But then he’d changed. They had both changed.
Veronica shifted again, her stomach tying in knots. She didn’t like that thinking about Logan was impossible without feeling a sensation very close to guilt. This summer had been hard, standing by his side when he suffered through the most difficult days of his life. The darkness in him had been overwhelming, and she had feared that he was getting close to self-destructing. When he said that he loved her, she hadn’t known how to respond. Logan, in love with her. It’s not that she didn’t believe he was capable of love; he’d loved Lilly to a fault. His loving her seemed entirely out of the question, outside of the stratosphere of probable possibility. And she’d done her damndest to ignore it, to make light of it, to pretend that no such confession happened so that he’d be free to revoke it when the time was right.
In short, the puppy dog eyed, devoted version of her nemesis had been hard to cope with. Devotion from him made her uneasy, maybe because he made her want to believe in him. Veronica knew that there was more light than darkness in him, she just couldn’t help him sort through all the fractured pieces and put himself back together. It weighed too heavily on her, cost too much, and the fear of failure-his failure, so much like her mother’s-terrorized her to her core.
Knowing this didn’t change anything, because as much distance as she wanted to put between herself and him the more she thought about how every time he touched her she felt like electricity was in her veins. Yes, Logan Echolls had some kind of perverse effect on her senses, he made her feel drunken and wanton and stupid with desire whenever he gave her one of his trademarked impassioned looks. But no matter the level of sexual chemistry they shared, there was one thing Veronica couldn’t do: she couldn’t trust herself enough to trust him.
She slid from beneath the sheets and put her feet on the ground, pausing briefly when Duncan moaned in his sleep, rolled over, and then continued in dreamland. Dawn would be coming soon, and she needed to go home and take a shower before school. Her hair spilled over her shoulders as the heaviness resettled on her chest. It wasn’t about her and Duncan anymore, not even about her and Logan-it was about Meg, and all the things Duncan had left unsaid, all the lies and the guilt and the burdens of responsibility that now rested on the second youngest Kane’s shoulders. And despite her unflappable ability to forgive Duncan for almost anything, she regretted how easily she’d accepted his apologies about Kendall, and then Meg, and how effortless it had been to curl back into his arms, back into his bed, in search of shelter.
She dressed silently as her thoughts drifted to the night of Dick Cassablancas’ party. Duncan had been an ass showing up with Kendall, and Logan had been the perfect gentleman. He’d taken care of her and let her sleep off the alcohol without so much as a lewd stare. Despite her drunken mumblings that they weren’t forming a truce, in some ways they had. Logan hadn’t commented when Veronica had accepted Duncan’s apologies about Kendall, about Meg, about the baby-hadn’t blinked an eye when Veronica had started helping to take care of Elizabeth Kane, illegitimate child to a dead mother and an underage father. If anything, he’d been kinder to her in response-a kindness she couldn’t help but associate with pity.
She scribbled a note to Duncan, asking him to give her a call later in the day. She stared at her handwriting (girlie and cute on Neptune Grand stationary) and grimaced. Why did she want to keep going back there, to cutesy Veronica Mars, 09er to the core, preppy pretty pep-squad princess? Why did she need to pretend that everything was perfect, true love and all of that, when her boyfriend was boring, disenchanted and distant? When he’d probably cheated on her with Kendall and the foundation of their relationship was all based on a carefully controlled deceit?
The heavy door closed behind her with a whisper. She paused, glancing down at Logan’s shut bedroom door. Even if he was nicer, it wasn’t all warm and fuzzy, either. She knew that he disapproved of her choice to stay with Duncan-everyone she knew disagreed with it, from her father to Wallace. And in her very core-the part of her heart that she continued to repress and ignore, she knew it wasn’t right either. There was a limit to how much happy house she could play with her boyfriend, only so long that the idea of being the glue that held Duncan Kane together would hold appeal. Logan’s silence on all the major issues that they’d barely uncovered at Dick’s party remained on the surface, unspoken, threatening to break her.
It was past time to get him off her mind, time to stop analyzing every little thing he’d done or said to her in the brief time that they were friends and then more than friends and now…friends again? Now the familiar ground of mutual semi-trust was the only thing they both had to link the two of them together. She was with Duncan. Logan was a thing of the past, a mistake, a bad judgment call that kept coming back to bite her in the ass.
So, why was she leaning against the wall, feeling empty and alone, wanting nothing more than to knock on Logan’s door and ask him to go somewhere, anywhere with her-only because she couldn’t, shouldn’t, do it? Veronica crossed the room to the wide windows that looked down on Neptune’s quiet streets. She reasoned that she could find the courage to break things off with Duncan if she got some kind of sign that it was the right thing to do, that she wasn’t being weak by walking away and letting him deal with his own mess of a life.
“Fascinating view?” Logan’s voice raised the hair on the back of her neck. She turned to watch him approach the window from the shadows of the room. “Let me guess, can’t sleep?”
“It’s too quiet.” She answered, averting his eyes.
“Got used to that baby crying all hours of the night, huh?” Duncan's daughter was spending the week at the Kane’s, part of the court’s mandated custody arrangement. Duncan had not been deemed acceptable parenting material until he was at least 18, and restrictions had been placed on the amount of time that the baby could spend with either her father or the Mannings. The Kane’s legal team had worked hard threatening to discredit the Mannings by bringing Grace’s abuse to the public forum, and they’d succeeded when the Mannings agreed to a private custody settlement out of court.
“Yeah,” Logan’s voice was hushed. “Why can’t you sleep Veronica?”
“I don’t feel right being here.” She whispered the words, afraid of her confession. If Logan hadn’t showed up she could have wasted the hours away analyzing her complicated feelings for Duncan. She understood why she felt the way she did about him, but she was completely clueless when it came to the way she felt when she was with Logan. Now that things were less antagonistic between them she felt doubly confused, as the time they'd been together went further and further away, becoming a brief stint that had been more like sleepwalking rather than reality. He had made her feel something other than the aching loneliness she felt since Lilly’s death and her descent into the netherworld of anonymity, an ignored third-class system in the social network of Neptune High. He was dangerous and mysterious and forbidden-he was a broken rule, a night past curfew, her very own teenaged fantasy.
But to think of it as mere rebellion cheapened things somehow. It made his declarations somehow less, made the way she felt about him relegated to something meaningless, a trite teenaged adventure. Kissing Logan had been chaos, feeling the rush of emotions that he brought to the surface was madness, and it made things different somehow. Definitely when compared to the way things were with Duncan-everything was soft, each kiss a sensitive declaration-a promise of passionless love and saccharine emotion.
Logan didn’t respond for a long time, and Veronica almost thought he wasn’t going to at all. But then, in the same hushed tone, he said “Then why don’t you just leave?”
She turned to face him, surprised when he was closer than she anticipated. “I don’t know,” she shook her head in frustration, “I feel obligated somehow.”
“Obligation isn’t love, Veronica.” Logan intoned, his eyes skirting over her face. “You’re hurting. You’ve been this way since Dick’s party, and I haven’t wanted to say anything to disrupt the careful balance you’ve got going on. But damnit, Ronnie, I’m not going to sit here and watch you throw your life away for a guy like Duncan.”
“But…” Tears pricked behind her eyes. “Logan, I…” she raised her hands in frustration and turned away from him. “What about the baby?”
“She isn’t your daughter. She’s Duncan and Meg’s kid.”
“I promised Meg, promised her,” Veronica hiccupped as a rush of hot tears spilled over to her flushed cheeks. “Promised her that I’d help look after her baby.”
Logan’s hand closed around Veronica’s arm and he forced her to turn into him. She collided against his chest, his arms wrapped around her in an awkward hug. “That doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice yourself in the process.”
“Maybe it does. Maybe I’ve got to make some kind of sacrifice to make things right.”
“When are you going to realize that nothing has ever been right with you and Duncan, Veronica?” She wriggled from his arms, instantly incensed by his words.
“What is that supposed to mean?” She hissed, carefully controlling the volume of her voice. Logan’s eyes narrowed as he pursed his lips.
“C’mon, do I really need to bring the messenger of all the bad news that is you two? The first time he broke up with you he didn’t even bother to tell you about it. And, oh, there’s that one time that he took advantage of your total state of intoxication at Shelly Pomeroy’s party-“
She moved toward him, tears long forgotten as she burned with an intense need to lash out at Logan Echolls, to wipe that stupid, smug look off his face. “Let’s not forget the role that you played in that 'total state of intoxication',' Logan.”
He shifted on his feet and swept his eyes to the wall. He sucked in a breath and then turned his face back to hers, his next words delivered with a cold calmness: “You’re right. I’m sorry for that Veronica, you know that, but Duncan’s the one that made a choice to fuck you while you were drugged up and he thought you were his sister.”
His brown eyes bore into hers as she searched for a response. Before she had a chance, he continued his assault on his best friend, “He got Meg pregnant and didn’t bother to tell you about it. He visited Meg every day, for months, without you even knowing about it. He didn’t bother to mention that the two of you were back together to his parents. For all we know he fucked Kendall Cassablancas, maybe even more than just once. And what do you do about all this, Veronica? You make excuses for yourself, you act like everything is perfectly okay. You stay with Duncan because it’s what you think is the honorable, good thing to do. And all the while, you fucking beg him for him to love you.”
Logan turned away from her as angry tears burned at her eyes. She brushed them away, searching for a response and finding…nothing… within her to dispute all that he had said. She turned her face to the window again, and irrationally wondered when it would be sunrise, wondered how many sunrises she’d missed in this hotel room. Her mind felt fuzzy from lack of sleep, exhaustion claiming her body and dulling the usual safeguards she used to protect herself from getting too emotional, too honest.
“You’re right.” Her voice was broken when she finally spoke. “I know you’re right, Logan. I want to have the strength to walk away from this situation with Duncan. And even when I know that staying here, with him, is going to destroy me-I can’t seem to find it within me to do it.”
She rested her head against the glass, watching Logan’s distorted reflection as he nervously returned to her proximity, standing less than a handful of inches away from her. He was close enough that she could hear his breathing, its erratic pace matching her own.
“Why do you think that you owe him so much of yourself, of your love?” She raised her face and eyes to pair with his in reflection only, a simulation of intimacy that alerted her senses to the dangerous nature of their conversation. Logan always seemed so capable of tapping into her emotions, with effortless yet careful precision. All Veronica knew was that she both hated and craved the way that he made her feel, perhaps if most in the way it screamed that there was the possibility of a life outside of the one that she currently shared with Duncan Kane.
“I don’t know, Logan.” He breathed in again, his body closer now as he moved on what she knew to be instinct. Since that first kiss at the Camelot, her body had a magnetic attraction to Logan’s that was supernaturally persuasive. Her subconscious controlled the way his breathing affected her own, his closeness quickened her heartbeat-an automatic nervous system response. And as much as she kept telling herself that-throwing in a few rationalizations about teenaged hormones and the effect a newborn baby has on your sex life, she realized even further how messed up her life had become, and just how much she was in need of something - or someone -- to rescue her.
She turned to him, her back pressed against the glass, his hands centimeters from her shoulders. “If you’d…” Logan’s voice fell away as he looked at her in a predatory way that made her know what could happen here, if she wanted it to. His eyes were trained on her face, alert to the way she was reacting to him and the awareness that brought him. Discovery-yes, that was all part of the chemistry that was between the two of them, she was constantly surprised by their combustibility.
“If I’d what?” She whispered, struggling with the words. She kind of felt like she was drowning, and thought about how odd that was-to feel like she was drowning when all she was doing was trying to breathe, and Logan was so close…
He shook his head. “I’m not going to do this with you, Veronica.” She shut her eyes in response, because it was too heavy, the weight of emotion that she felt for him. She couldn’t escape it, and she was more and more not wanting to.
“You’re not going to do what with me, Logan?” She opened her eyes, brown clashing with blue as she challenged him to admit just what was going on between them.
He leaned in, bracing himself against the window, arms extending on either side of her body. She reflexively pressed her palms into the cold glass at her back, her face tilting to his. They were barely a breath apart, and she felt torn by how to react or what to do in response to his closeness.
“This,” he whispered, and Veronica knew that he intended to kiss her, and she was surprisingly willing for it to happen. Resisting it, resisting him, felt futile. And she so desperately wanted to feel something other than her dejected, broken emotions she’d been carrying around for so long that she couldn’t remember anymore when her self-destruction began in the first place.
Her eyes closed. And then she felt him shifting, and wondered if he intended to stay true to his declaration. “The sun’s coming up.” He whispered, moving to stand beside her. She turned her body to the window again, their shoulders brushing in the process, sending an electric fissure through her body as an aching disappointment settled in her.
They watched the sunrise in silence as heavy clouds filled the sky, muting the light as the first hour of daylight stretched out between them, with things said and unsaid, of actions almost taken. Veronica searched for any logical excuse for her feelings and found none. The room filled with warm light that cast everything around them in unnatural glow, diffusing the angles of their bodies, their shadows swallowed in the haze.
“I’m not going to sympathize with you for much longer, Veronica.” Logan murmured after the epic stretch of quiet, and again she struggled with a response. He pushed himself off the glass window and stalked away from her, closing his bedroom door without another word.
After a few minutes of self-reflective silence, she surmised that she didn’t know what she was going to do, or where she was going to go from here. Her exchange with Logan hadn’t been just physical, he had inspired a wealth of emotions she hadn’t expected to experience. All she knew was that he’d touched a real chord in her, a chord that she’d been trying to reach for the past month as a basis for the reality check she so desperately needed.
Veronica left the hotel feeling oddly numb. The elevator doors opened on the ground floor and she moved through the quiet lobby. School started in two hours-she barely had enough time to grab some breakfast and review her English essay before homeroom.
“Morning Henry,” Veronica waved at the doorman affectionately.
“Hey,Veronica. Hear about the groundhog?”
“What groundhog?” Veronica paused in her exit, still feeling dazed and out of it, a status she quickly blamed on her lost battle with insomnia.
“It’s Groundhog’s Day. You know, seeing the shadow and 6 weeks of winter?”
“We live in Southern California, Henry. I don’t think we’re in desperate need of warmer weather.”
Henry grinned, “Think of it as a metaphor, then. There’s something really inspiring about the idea of an early spring, if you know what I mean? Springtime is all about the thaw from winter into a new period of growth.”
“That’s quite poetic.” Veronica smiled. “But nice. So, what’s the verdict? Six more weeks of winter, or an early spring?”
“He didn’t see his shadow.” Henry’s lips curled into a bigger grin than before, “Early spring.”
“Well,” She tilted her head. “Thanks for that uplifting start to the day, Henry.”
“Yeah, it is, isn’t it?” He waved. “Have a great day.”
“You too,” Veronica exited, a smile fixed to her face. Maybe Henry was right with his metaphor for spring: a chance for new growth. Unlocking her car, she paused and looked out at the cloudy sky, the sun peeking through at occasional angles. Her eyes lifted to the window that she’d spent with Logan in a silent hour. She could remember the electricity between them, the extent to which she’d wanted to badly to feel his lips on hers.
Yes, Veronica was sure that it was high time for a steady thaw.
*fin*
A/N: My Suspension of Disbelief challenge was on Groundhog’s Day. I hope I didn’t get to cliché in the way I worked it.
Also: The glass windows-I don’t know if they exist. Suspend Disbelief there for me too, if you will.
Title: Insomnia
Rating: Hard Pg-13 for language
Word Count: 4,000
Pairing: V/L, V/D
Spoilers: Up 2.10- And is a sequel to “Commonsensical” - you don’t necessarily have to read that to get this, though.
Summary: Veronica considers the lasting benefits of kindness
Disclaimer: Rob Thomas holds the title and the deed. I just go visit his property and pretend it’s my very own special playground.
A/N: Written for the Suspension of Disbelief Challenge. Device at end. X Posted at Veronicamarsfic and my LJ
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Veronica Mars was having trouble sleeping. Scratch that-trouble was an understatement. Sleep was impossible and chalking it up as mere “trouble” only glossed over the situation. Duncan lay curled at her side, his face devoid of emotion, features softened by sleep. Through the blue light of the muted television she watched him with a mixture of unsettling feelings curling in the pit of her stomach.
Why was she here?
She pulled her eyes away from Duncan and stared blankly at the silent screen. The dial was set to the local access station, on Wednesday nights they re-aired Answers from Angels until dawn. This week featured a montage of footage from 2005, some of which included her special cameo and the bomb that was the Lilly message from the great beyond.
Duncan shifted his body and mumbled incoherently. He could sleep through anything, it seemed that absolutely nothing bothered him. As the months stretched on, her boyfriend’s unflappable ability to simply not care had become unsettling. The lackluster way he dealt with everything in his life as though it was simply too taxing to actually emote about something had become a real issue. The only time that she saw him even partially human was when he was spending time with his six-week old daughter.
Veronica drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. So much of her had believed that everything was going to be perfect when she got back together with Duncan. She would be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that the first half of junior year had been spent pining over what they’d had together and nursing her seriously broken heart. The only real diversion had been the unsettling discovery that they could have possibility been brother and sister, but that didn’t matter anymore. Despite everything they’d gone through, despite everything she’d learned about his illness and their drugged sex at Shelly Pomeroy’s party that she’d believed was rape for a year, she still wanted to be with him.
Duncan had been so many firsts for her-first real boyfriend, first love, first---well, despite all the reasons their reunion ought to be uncomfortable, it had been easy going back to being his girlfriend. She’d thought easy was what she needed, what she wanted-but that easiness had dissolved into a comfort that led to complacency, and complacency led to a stagnant boringness that was quickly turning into impatience. She couldn’t go back to being fifteen again. The days before Lilly’s murder were long gone, and so was the girl that she'd been back then. Despite all the ways she kept trying to convince herself how much she changed, she still wanted to return to that point in her life when everything was novel and true love was true.
“I’m going to miss you,” Logan’s words crept to her mind, unbidden. As much as she didn’t want to think about him, he still managed to pop up on a regular basis. She still couldn’t figure him out-couldn’t figure them out. He confused her, and she didn’t like how unsetting that confusion was. Confusion was the antithesis to comfort, and comfort was in direct relation to the normalcy that she’d so desperately tried to attain in the past six months. It seemed simple to want to be the girl her father asked why she wasn’t-it seemed better for everyone.
The past year had not been normal, not in any sense of the word-her mother had betrayed her, three times-three times more than she could ever forgive. She’d solved Lilly’s murder with devastating effect-one that risked both her father and her own life. Aaron Echolls was in prison awaiting trial for the murder of Lilly Kane. There was the bus crash and Meg and the baby--and then there was Logan.
The first time he kissed her she’d been shocked by her body’s response, the way she felt as though she was melting into him and he into her-it was too Harlequin Romance. She never knew why she welcomed him in her home that night after breaking up with him and nearly being killed-didn’t understand the rush of emotion when she’d actually seen him there on her doorstep. Relief, it had been relief, that and something else. Something unfamiliar that she quickly grew accustomed to second- guessing as a means of self-preservation.
While they were dating, she was constantly weighing the pros and cons, trying to figure out why she was with him. Logan Echolls was hardly her idea of perfect boyfriend material. Less than a year ago, he’d bashed in her headlights and had spent the majority of his time practicing his skill of the perturbingly sarcastic degradation of her character on a daily basis. But then he’d changed. They had both changed.
Veronica shifted again, her stomach tying in knots. She didn’t like that thinking about Logan was impossible without feeling a sensation very close to guilt. This summer had been hard, standing by his side when he suffered through the most difficult days of his life. The darkness in him had been overwhelming, and she had feared that he was getting close to self-destructing. When he said that he loved her, she hadn’t known how to respond. Logan, in love with her. It’s not that she didn’t believe he was capable of love; he’d loved Lilly to a fault. His loving her seemed entirely out of the question, outside of the stratosphere of probable possibility. And she’d done her damndest to ignore it, to make light of it, to pretend that no such confession happened so that he’d be free to revoke it when the time was right.
In short, the puppy dog eyed, devoted version of her nemesis had been hard to cope with. Devotion from him made her uneasy, maybe because he made her want to believe in him. Veronica knew that there was more light than darkness in him, she just couldn’t help him sort through all the fractured pieces and put himself back together. It weighed too heavily on her, cost too much, and the fear of failure-his failure, so much like her mother’s-terrorized her to her core.
Knowing this didn’t change anything, because as much distance as she wanted to put between herself and him the more she thought about how every time he touched her she felt like electricity was in her veins. Yes, Logan Echolls had some kind of perverse effect on her senses, he made her feel drunken and wanton and stupid with desire whenever he gave her one of his trademarked impassioned looks. But no matter the level of sexual chemistry they shared, there was one thing Veronica couldn’t do: she couldn’t trust herself enough to trust him.
She slid from beneath the sheets and put her feet on the ground, pausing briefly when Duncan moaned in his sleep, rolled over, and then continued in dreamland. Dawn would be coming soon, and she needed to go home and take a shower before school. Her hair spilled over her shoulders as the heaviness resettled on her chest. It wasn’t about her and Duncan anymore, not even about her and Logan-it was about Meg, and all the things Duncan had left unsaid, all the lies and the guilt and the burdens of responsibility that now rested on the second youngest Kane’s shoulders. And despite her unflappable ability to forgive Duncan for almost anything, she regretted how easily she’d accepted his apologies about Kendall, and then Meg, and how effortless it had been to curl back into his arms, back into his bed, in search of shelter.
She dressed silently as her thoughts drifted to the night of Dick Cassablancas’ party. Duncan had been an ass showing up with Kendall, and Logan had been the perfect gentleman. He’d taken care of her and let her sleep off the alcohol without so much as a lewd stare. Despite her drunken mumblings that they weren’t forming a truce, in some ways they had. Logan hadn’t commented when Veronica had accepted Duncan’s apologies about Kendall, about Meg, about the baby-hadn’t blinked an eye when Veronica had started helping to take care of Elizabeth Kane, illegitimate child to a dead mother and an underage father. If anything, he’d been kinder to her in response-a kindness she couldn’t help but associate with pity.
She scribbled a note to Duncan, asking him to give her a call later in the day. She stared at her handwriting (girlie and cute on Neptune Grand stationary) and grimaced. Why did she want to keep going back there, to cutesy Veronica Mars, 09er to the core, preppy pretty pep-squad princess? Why did she need to pretend that everything was perfect, true love and all of that, when her boyfriend was boring, disenchanted and distant? When he’d probably cheated on her with Kendall and the foundation of their relationship was all based on a carefully controlled deceit?
The heavy door closed behind her with a whisper. She paused, glancing down at Logan’s shut bedroom door. Even if he was nicer, it wasn’t all warm and fuzzy, either. She knew that he disapproved of her choice to stay with Duncan-everyone she knew disagreed with it, from her father to Wallace. And in her very core-the part of her heart that she continued to repress and ignore, she knew it wasn’t right either. There was a limit to how much happy house she could play with her boyfriend, only so long that the idea of being the glue that held Duncan Kane together would hold appeal. Logan’s silence on all the major issues that they’d barely uncovered at Dick’s party remained on the surface, unspoken, threatening to break her.
It was past time to get him off her mind, time to stop analyzing every little thing he’d done or said to her in the brief time that they were friends and then more than friends and now…friends again? Now the familiar ground of mutual semi-trust was the only thing they both had to link the two of them together. She was with Duncan. Logan was a thing of the past, a mistake, a bad judgment call that kept coming back to bite her in the ass.
So, why was she leaning against the wall, feeling empty and alone, wanting nothing more than to knock on Logan’s door and ask him to go somewhere, anywhere with her-only because she couldn’t, shouldn’t, do it? Veronica crossed the room to the wide windows that looked down on Neptune’s quiet streets. She reasoned that she could find the courage to break things off with Duncan if she got some kind of sign that it was the right thing to do, that she wasn’t being weak by walking away and letting him deal with his own mess of a life.
“Fascinating view?” Logan’s voice raised the hair on the back of her neck. She turned to watch him approach the window from the shadows of the room. “Let me guess, can’t sleep?”
“It’s too quiet.” She answered, averting his eyes.
“Got used to that baby crying all hours of the night, huh?” Duncan's daughter was spending the week at the Kane’s, part of the court’s mandated custody arrangement. Duncan had not been deemed acceptable parenting material until he was at least 18, and restrictions had been placed on the amount of time that the baby could spend with either her father or the Mannings. The Kane’s legal team had worked hard threatening to discredit the Mannings by bringing Grace’s abuse to the public forum, and they’d succeeded when the Mannings agreed to a private custody settlement out of court.
“Yeah,” Logan’s voice was hushed. “Why can’t you sleep Veronica?”
“I don’t feel right being here.” She whispered the words, afraid of her confession. If Logan hadn’t showed up she could have wasted the hours away analyzing her complicated feelings for Duncan. She understood why she felt the way she did about him, but she was completely clueless when it came to the way she felt when she was with Logan. Now that things were less antagonistic between them she felt doubly confused, as the time they'd been together went further and further away, becoming a brief stint that had been more like sleepwalking rather than reality. He had made her feel something other than the aching loneliness she felt since Lilly’s death and her descent into the netherworld of anonymity, an ignored third-class system in the social network of Neptune High. He was dangerous and mysterious and forbidden-he was a broken rule, a night past curfew, her very own teenaged fantasy.
But to think of it as mere rebellion cheapened things somehow. It made his declarations somehow less, made the way she felt about him relegated to something meaningless, a trite teenaged adventure. Kissing Logan had been chaos, feeling the rush of emotions that he brought to the surface was madness, and it made things different somehow. Definitely when compared to the way things were with Duncan-everything was soft, each kiss a sensitive declaration-a promise of passionless love and saccharine emotion.
Logan didn’t respond for a long time, and Veronica almost thought he wasn’t going to at all. But then, in the same hushed tone, he said “Then why don’t you just leave?”
She turned to face him, surprised when he was closer than she anticipated. “I don’t know,” she shook her head in frustration, “I feel obligated somehow.”
“Obligation isn’t love, Veronica.” Logan intoned, his eyes skirting over her face. “You’re hurting. You’ve been this way since Dick’s party, and I haven’t wanted to say anything to disrupt the careful balance you’ve got going on. But damnit, Ronnie, I’m not going to sit here and watch you throw your life away for a guy like Duncan.”
“But…” Tears pricked behind her eyes. “Logan, I…” she raised her hands in frustration and turned away from him. “What about the baby?”
“She isn’t your daughter. She’s Duncan and Meg’s kid.”
“I promised Meg, promised her,” Veronica hiccupped as a rush of hot tears spilled over to her flushed cheeks. “Promised her that I’d help look after her baby.”
Logan’s hand closed around Veronica’s arm and he forced her to turn into him. She collided against his chest, his arms wrapped around her in an awkward hug. “That doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice yourself in the process.”
“Maybe it does. Maybe I’ve got to make some kind of sacrifice to make things right.”
“When are you going to realize that nothing has ever been right with you and Duncan, Veronica?” She wriggled from his arms, instantly incensed by his words.
“What is that supposed to mean?” She hissed, carefully controlling the volume of her voice. Logan’s eyes narrowed as he pursed his lips.
“C’mon, do I really need to bring the messenger of all the bad news that is you two? The first time he broke up with you he didn’t even bother to tell you about it. And, oh, there’s that one time that he took advantage of your total state of intoxication at Shelly Pomeroy’s party-“
She moved toward him, tears long forgotten as she burned with an intense need to lash out at Logan Echolls, to wipe that stupid, smug look off his face. “Let’s not forget the role that you played in that 'total state of intoxication',' Logan.”
He shifted on his feet and swept his eyes to the wall. He sucked in a breath and then turned his face back to hers, his next words delivered with a cold calmness: “You’re right. I’m sorry for that Veronica, you know that, but Duncan’s the one that made a choice to fuck you while you were drugged up and he thought you were his sister.”
His brown eyes bore into hers as she searched for a response. Before she had a chance, he continued his assault on his best friend, “He got Meg pregnant and didn’t bother to tell you about it. He visited Meg every day, for months, without you even knowing about it. He didn’t bother to mention that the two of you were back together to his parents. For all we know he fucked Kendall Cassablancas, maybe even more than just once. And what do you do about all this, Veronica? You make excuses for yourself, you act like everything is perfectly okay. You stay with Duncan because it’s what you think is the honorable, good thing to do. And all the while, you fucking beg him for him to love you.”
Logan turned away from her as angry tears burned at her eyes. She brushed them away, searching for a response and finding…nothing… within her to dispute all that he had said. She turned her face to the window again, and irrationally wondered when it would be sunrise, wondered how many sunrises she’d missed in this hotel room. Her mind felt fuzzy from lack of sleep, exhaustion claiming her body and dulling the usual safeguards she used to protect herself from getting too emotional, too honest.
“You’re right.” Her voice was broken when she finally spoke. “I know you’re right, Logan. I want to have the strength to walk away from this situation with Duncan. And even when I know that staying here, with him, is going to destroy me-I can’t seem to find it within me to do it.”
She rested her head against the glass, watching Logan’s distorted reflection as he nervously returned to her proximity, standing less than a handful of inches away from her. He was close enough that she could hear his breathing, its erratic pace matching her own.
“Why do you think that you owe him so much of yourself, of your love?” She raised her face and eyes to pair with his in reflection only, a simulation of intimacy that alerted her senses to the dangerous nature of their conversation. Logan always seemed so capable of tapping into her emotions, with effortless yet careful precision. All Veronica knew was that she both hated and craved the way that he made her feel, perhaps if most in the way it screamed that there was the possibility of a life outside of the one that she currently shared with Duncan Kane.
“I don’t know, Logan.” He breathed in again, his body closer now as he moved on what she knew to be instinct. Since that first kiss at the Camelot, her body had a magnetic attraction to Logan’s that was supernaturally persuasive. Her subconscious controlled the way his breathing affected her own, his closeness quickened her heartbeat-an automatic nervous system response. And as much as she kept telling herself that-throwing in a few rationalizations about teenaged hormones and the effect a newborn baby has on your sex life, she realized even further how messed up her life had become, and just how much she was in need of something - or someone -- to rescue her.
She turned to him, her back pressed against the glass, his hands centimeters from her shoulders. “If you’d…” Logan’s voice fell away as he looked at her in a predatory way that made her know what could happen here, if she wanted it to. His eyes were trained on her face, alert to the way she was reacting to him and the awareness that brought him. Discovery-yes, that was all part of the chemistry that was between the two of them, she was constantly surprised by their combustibility.
“If I’d what?” She whispered, struggling with the words. She kind of felt like she was drowning, and thought about how odd that was-to feel like she was drowning when all she was doing was trying to breathe, and Logan was so close…
He shook his head. “I’m not going to do this with you, Veronica.” She shut her eyes in response, because it was too heavy, the weight of emotion that she felt for him. She couldn’t escape it, and she was more and more not wanting to.
“You’re not going to do what with me, Logan?” She opened her eyes, brown clashing with blue as she challenged him to admit just what was going on between them.
He leaned in, bracing himself against the window, arms extending on either side of her body. She reflexively pressed her palms into the cold glass at her back, her face tilting to his. They were barely a breath apart, and she felt torn by how to react or what to do in response to his closeness.
“This,” he whispered, and Veronica knew that he intended to kiss her, and she was surprisingly willing for it to happen. Resisting it, resisting him, felt futile. And she so desperately wanted to feel something other than her dejected, broken emotions she’d been carrying around for so long that she couldn’t remember anymore when her self-destruction began in the first place.
Her eyes closed. And then she felt him shifting, and wondered if he intended to stay true to his declaration. “The sun’s coming up.” He whispered, moving to stand beside her. She turned her body to the window again, their shoulders brushing in the process, sending an electric fissure through her body as an aching disappointment settled in her.
They watched the sunrise in silence as heavy clouds filled the sky, muting the light as the first hour of daylight stretched out between them, with things said and unsaid, of actions almost taken. Veronica searched for any logical excuse for her feelings and found none. The room filled with warm light that cast everything around them in unnatural glow, diffusing the angles of their bodies, their shadows swallowed in the haze.
“I’m not going to sympathize with you for much longer, Veronica.” Logan murmured after the epic stretch of quiet, and again she struggled with a response. He pushed himself off the glass window and stalked away from her, closing his bedroom door without another word.
After a few minutes of self-reflective silence, she surmised that she didn’t know what she was going to do, or where she was going to go from here. Her exchange with Logan hadn’t been just physical, he had inspired a wealth of emotions she hadn’t expected to experience. All she knew was that he’d touched a real chord in her, a chord that she’d been trying to reach for the past month as a basis for the reality check she so desperately needed.
Veronica left the hotel feeling oddly numb. The elevator doors opened on the ground floor and she moved through the quiet lobby. School started in two hours-she barely had enough time to grab some breakfast and review her English essay before homeroom.
“Morning Henry,” Veronica waved at the doorman affectionately.
“Hey,Veronica. Hear about the groundhog?”
“What groundhog?” Veronica paused in her exit, still feeling dazed and out of it, a status she quickly blamed on her lost battle with insomnia.
“It’s Groundhog’s Day. You know, seeing the shadow and 6 weeks of winter?”
“We live in Southern California, Henry. I don’t think we’re in desperate need of warmer weather.”
Henry grinned, “Think of it as a metaphor, then. There’s something really inspiring about the idea of an early spring, if you know what I mean? Springtime is all about the thaw from winter into a new period of growth.”
“That’s quite poetic.” Veronica smiled. “But nice. So, what’s the verdict? Six more weeks of winter, or an early spring?”
“He didn’t see his shadow.” Henry’s lips curled into a bigger grin than before, “Early spring.”
“Well,” She tilted her head. “Thanks for that uplifting start to the day, Henry.”
“Yeah, it is, isn’t it?” He waved. “Have a great day.”
“You too,” Veronica exited, a smile fixed to her face. Maybe Henry was right with his metaphor for spring: a chance for new growth. Unlocking her car, she paused and looked out at the cloudy sky, the sun peeking through at occasional angles. Her eyes lifted to the window that she’d spent with Logan in a silent hour. She could remember the electricity between them, the extent to which she’d wanted to badly to feel his lips on hers.
Yes, Veronica was sure that it was high time for a steady thaw.
*fin*
A/N: My Suspension of Disbelief challenge was on Groundhog’s Day. I hope I didn’t get to cliché in the way I worked it.
Also: The glass windows-I don’t know if they exist. Suspend Disbelief there for me too, if you will.