Fic: For the Sake of a Friend, (Logan/Veronica), PG-13, 6/?
Title: For the Sake of a Friend, (Logan/Veronica), PG-13, 6/?
Author: jacedesbff
Pairing/Character: Logan/Veronica, Duncan, ensemble
Word Count: 7149
Rating: PG-13; angst and mature themes
Summary: AU from the Pilot. The rest of the back story (a.k.a. exposition) through the end of the Pilot.
Spoilers: Familiarity with Season 1 required.
Disclaimer: Rob Thomas owns all.
A/N: What if Logan and Veronica were a couple all through Season 1, but had to hide it from everyone? I recommend reading the other chapters so you know the background.
Mercedes (Merc4), if it weren’t for you, this wouldn’t continue, so everyone owes you a big hug and lots of cookies! (And you know that anyone who can correctly edit the phrase “skanky-ass chick” is both a fabulous beta and a kickin' bff!)
I hope you all enjoy the rest of the Pilot. :-) This is the end of the school year and in the past week I have acted in one play across town and closed out one that I directed at school. And yes, there is one more to go (sigh…), so I will get going on Ep 2 as soon as possible. Summer vacation will see more frequent updates!
Xposted to veronicamarsfic, veronicalogan and fic_from_mars. Please comment and give feedback! I loves it and loves it and truly appreciate it!
Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5
Veronica knew that she was probably supposed to be angry. But she wasn’t. Her head was too filled with white noise to register anything normal like emotion.
After she smashed the clown figurine, Veronica went to the storage closet in the hallway where she and her dad had put some of the leftover boxes from the move. She pulled out one of the big plastic Wal-Mart tubs and dumped the contents on the hallway floor. Her dad never had to know.
This was because Keith was in Sacramento chasing down a bail jumper. The two of them had quickly discovered that if a private investigator was good at finding missing lowlifes, the private investigator in question could generate a fairly steady source of income. Since it turned out that Keith was very good at tracking down the criminal element, he was now spending a lot of time so occupied, including tonight. Keith never had to see the mess that Veronica was making.
She put the now-empty tub in the middle of her bedroom floor and picked up a mother-daughter Precious Moments figurine that her mother had given her on her fifth birthday. She looked from the painted ceramic statue in her hand to the others placed carefully around her room. She had been collecting figurines her entire life. Birthdays, Christmases, congratulations gifts-her friends and family members had been contributing to her collection every year since she was born. She had cute little animals, cute little kids, cute little outdoor scenes-basically if it was cute and little, she had it.
Using every bit of her might, Veronica hurled the Precious Moments statue into the tub, instantly destroying it. She blindly started grabbing other figures, violently throwing each one into the large container where the broken fragments mixed together in a haze of white grit and powder.
Veronica had destroyed almost every ornament in the room before the snow in her head finally began to lift. She blinked her eyes and the world swam back into focus. As she looked at the cloud of white dust that hung over her room she became conscious of what she had just done. She wasn’t sure, but she thought that she might have just had a rage blackout. She looked down at her hands to find herself holding one of the two statues that had survived this uncharacteristic outburst and a giggle escaped her lips.
Lilly had hated Veronica’s collection and steadfastly refused to add to it up until the day she arrived home from Hawaii with two very garish Polynesian dancer dolls. The frightfully tacky man and woman were as far from “cutesy” as was humanly possible and were therefore, in Lilly’s opinion, an acceptable gift. Veronica set the male doll down next to its paramour (Lilly’s word, not hers). It was too ugly to die.
While her blind fury had passed, Veronica’s anger wasn’t done being spent. Turning her back on the bucket of porcelain shards, Veronica went into the kitchen and took out several garbage bags. She took them back into her room and started pulling clothes off of the hangers in her closet and throwing them into the bags. She opened her drawers and pulled out more items of clothing, then she started on her shoes. By the time she was finished, everything in her wardrobe that could possibly qualify as cutesy, virginal, precious, sweet and/or innocent had been shoved into a trash bag.
Veronica carried the bags filled with her former life out to her car, locked up the apartment, and headed out of Neptune to complete her errands. First she took the clothes and shoes to the Salvation Army. Then she drove to a vintage shopping district far enough away from home to ensure that she was unlikely to run into anyone she knew. There she used all of the money that she had saved over the past year to buy a new wardrobe. Between the allowance that she had been given before her family’s change in fortune and what her father had paid her in the past few months, she had a considerable amount of money to spend on her new image.
When she returned home that evening she had several bags full of reasonably priced outfits-all reflecting an inner self that she hadn’t known existed. More importantly, though, she came home feeling empowered. Before Lilly’s death, Veronica had rarely gone shopping alone as Lilly would invariably criticize whatever her best friend chose for herself. It was simpler to let Lilly come along and pick things out, so Veronica got into the habit of only shopping when her best friend was available. She hadn’t been shopping since October because it made her miss her friend so much. Today had been important in more ways than one.
She made a few more important stops between shopping and home, at which point she gathered up all of her bags and headed into her apartment complex. As she opened the door and dropped her bags, her cell phone rang. She knew it wasn’t her dad, as he had called to check in with her about a half an hour ago. He expected to be gone one more night and wanted to make sure that she was okay. She told him about Duncan, although she left out the part about the reputed catalyst for his attempted suicide being the loss of her virginity. Somehow she didn’t think that her dad would appreciate that part of the story. He had told her to take care and call immediately if she needed anything.
She smiled when she saw the caller I.D.
“Hello,” she said in a better tone of voice than she had used all day.
“Need some help?” breathed a voice that sent shivers down her spine and the voice wasn’t just on the phone.
Having not yet closed the door to the apartment, Veronica turned around to find her boyfriend standing behind her.
Cell phones forgotten, Logan lifted her off the ground in a steamy kiss.
Talk about turn your frown upside down.
“I like the hair,” he said as they finally broke up apart and moved inside. She leaned into him as he fell back against the closed door.
“I needed a change.” She smiled as she ran her fingers through her much shorter hair. He caught her hand and kissed her palm, once again sending shivers down her back.
“What’s in the bags?” he asked with a smile.
“I could tell you, but then I’d have to-“
And the mood was broken.
They both sighed and she laid her head against his chest while he rested his chin on top of her head.
“How is Duncan?” she asked softly.
“Alive,” he sighed as he ran his fingers through her newly-shorn hair.
She mentally shook herself as she pulled back from Logan’s embrace.
“So, you ready to be put to work?”
He leered at her, readily following her change in attitude. “It depends. Can you afford me?”
“Like you would turn down any price I offered,” she snarked back.
He raised an eyebrow as she led him back to her room.
Logan was stunned when they reached it. A layer of fine white powder coated one of those ubiquitous blue Wal-Mart buckets and the surrounding floor. On the other side of the room, there was a mark on the wall where another porcelain figure-were those plastic balloons?-had been shattered outside of the box where the rest of Veronica’s infamous menagerie apparently now resided. In pieces.
What the hell?
He looked down at the petite blonde, concern etched across his face.
Veronica looked back at him, her eyes shuttered. “Can you help me clean up?”
Logan knew with a flash of insight that she wasn’t just asking about her room.
He smiled at her. “Where do you want me to start?”
*
Logan went home at about 5 a.m. The two of them spent about an hour cleaning up Veronica’s room and the apartment hallway. Then Logan helped her completely rearrange the furniture in her room. Later she modeled all of her new outfits for him, which he was only willing to do if she changed clothes in front of him. While this made her blush furiously, she agreed to it when her boyfriend wryly pointed out that he had already seen her as naked as was humanly possible-why was she being shy about her bra and panties?
As she was finishing up the fashion show, her dad called to make sure that she got home alright. When she told him that Logan was there, her dad asked to speak to the young man, to whom Veronica somewhat reluctantly handed the phone. The end of the conversation that Veronica heard consisted primarily of Logan saying “yes, sir” a lot, so she didn’t get much of a sense of the content until her boyfriend hung up and told her that Keith wanted Logan to spend the night. Veronica’s eyebrows shot up so high that Logan laughed.
“He made me promise to be a gentleman. I believe that deadly weapons might have been mentioned.” Veronica’s look softened to simple surprise. “He said that he didn’t want you to be alone tonight, with Duncan and everything…”
True to his word, Logan was a gentleman. He held Veronica while they slept and they both did their best to forget what school was going to be like the next day, just as they had both assiduously avoided any discussion of the situation at school all evening long. Logan then left early the next morning to go home and change. Normally they wouldn’t have school at this time of year, but the holidays fell on odd days so schools in Balboa County were to be open the Monday and Tuesday before vacation-just long enough to provide the 09ers time to eviscerate Veronica while the memories of Shelley’s party were still nice and fresh.
*
No one spoke to Veronica as she made her way to her locker that morning. When she got there, she realized why. Painted in huge red letters across the bank of lockers where hers was located were the words, “LET’S DO THAT AGAIN!”
Before she left for school, Veronica had decided to hold her head high and prove that she wasn’t intimidated by the rich losers at Neptune High. She had gotten rid of every pink skirt that she had, cut her hair, and reorganized her bedroom along with her self-perception.
Last week this desecration of the best night of her life would have sent her racing to the bathroom in tears. This week it made her want to race to the bathroom in tears, but she didn’t. She ignored the graffiti, walked up to her locker, opened it, took out her books and moved on to her first class.
As she walked down the hall, Veronica felt like she was in the middle of one of those naked dreams where everybody stares at you. It was small consolation to know that while everyone really was staring at her, at least she wasn’t naked. Apparently the 09ers talked to people outside of their group often enough to spread gossip this juicy.
Wherever she went that day, people moaned, groaned, whimpered, grunted and cried out “Let’s do that again!” A few of her teachers looked around for the source of the strange noises during class, but of course no one was actually caught.
Soon after lunch, the height of Veronica’s feeling as though she were on display in a porn shop window, it finally occurred to her how to handle the situation. As she did so, she told herself that in the future she would go with her instincts sooner and not have to plan these things out. For now, though, she took a deep breath, imagined Logan holding her hand, and waited for Dick to pass her in the hallway near her locker.
It had to be Dick. That was part of the plan.
It didn’t take long. Sure enough, Dick, Logan and several 09er boys conveniently walked past her right before the last class of the day. As she knew he would, Dick said loudly as they passed, “Shelley’s party ruled-let’s do that again!”
Veronica spun around. “Hoping for more pointers, Dick?”
Dick stopped in his tracks, almost leading to an 09er pile-up in the middle of the hall.
“Did you say something, Ronnie?” he demanded defensively. “I thought you only moaned.”
“And I thought you only listened,” she countered.
Dick was momentarily taken aback. This wasn’t the Veronica he knew. A crowd began to gather around the expensively dressed young men and the tiny target of their ire. This would entertain the entire student body all vacation long.
“Come on, Dick, you keep saying you want to do it again. I mean, if you want tips on how to last longer in bed, all you have to do is ask. I mean, I have standards-I won’t show you myself, but I can tell you what to do.”
“Who the hell-“ Dick began.
“I was at the party, remember?” Veronica cut him off. “I mean, your girlfriend wouldn’t give you the time of day. And Madison-you know, your girlfriend-was the one who got everybody to come listen at the door-that’s what I’ve heard, anyway. All I can figure is that she wanted you to pick up some helpful hints-why else would she listen to someone else having sex when she could be off doing it herself? Wow. Sounds like you just don’t satisfy, Dick. It’s okay, though-you must have learned lots!” She turned to Madison who had joined the crowd around them. “All better now, Madison?”
Veronica stopped and looked from Madison to Dick expectantly.
“At least Dick admits it when he sleeps with me,” said Madison pointedly. “That’s more than I can say for you.”
“He doesn’t want to be mobbed, Madison!” Veronica explained. “You know, the guy that I was with. Believe it or not, there was only one guy in there with me. You had to tell everybody that there were what-two or three? I guess it was the only way you could explain it, given your own experience. Anyway, if people knew who this guy was, he’d be hounded by girls wanting a real man. Dick doesn’t have to worry about that, of course, so you can be open about your sad little sex life and Dick can live on unmolested.” She continued as both Dick and Madison tried to jump in.
“Take Logan, for instance.” The turn in conversation confused everyone and heads swung around to look at the nonplussed object of Veronica’s comment. “I heard today that he wasn’t there, right? That totally supports my theory. I mean, you should have heard Lilly talk-she said Logan was like the Energizer bunny-he could go for hours!” She turned to Logan, whose face was a mask of shock. “I have to warn you, Logan, this may mean that Madison will attack you after school, but I have to go on what Lilly said.” She turned back to Dick. “So Logan wasn’t there and you were. I’d say that speaks volumes.”
She opened up her next statements to the entire crowd. “So if any of the rest of you need any tips, you don’t need to whisper. It’s okay if your sex lives suck. I certainly won’t loan out my Energizer bunny, but I’ll see what I can do.”
Vice Principal Clemmons chose that moment to call out loudly, “What’s going on here?” He pushed his way into the middle of the crowd of students. “Dick Casablancas. Why am I not surprised? And, I’m sorry-what’s your name?” He looked at the girl clearly at the center of this little gathering.
“Veronica Mars,” she answered calmly.
“Come with me, Miss Mars, Mr. Casablancas,” said the administrator in his gravelly voice.
This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Veronica thought to herself as she followed Mr. Clemmons down the hallway. As she passed Logan, she had to look away. If she looked at him right now, she would lose it right there in the middle of the hall. Compassion-even from someone who couldn’t show it-would be the end of her.
As Logan watched Veronica being led away by Mr. Clemmons (not something one saw every day), he was pretty sure that he had never been more turned on in his entire life. By anyone.
*
The Present
As Veronica sat in the Blue Bomber across the street from the Seventh Veil she realized that she was wearing the same blue jean mini skirt that she had worn the Monday after Shelley’s party. That day held mixed emotions for Veronica. She had been treated like the great whore of all the earth, but she had stood up for herself for the first time. It was also the day that she and Logan almost got caught making out in the janitor’s closet by-gasp!-a janitor. The experience of hiding under a tarp in the corner of the closet had been the impetus for the creation of the infamous “Out of Order” sign that then became a standard fixture on the girls’ bathroom door.
Veronica noted the time-11:00-and smiled. Time to call Logan. Taking pictures of sleazy cops hitting up strippers for free services was not considered to be high-risk, so Logan was spending some quality time with Dick and Cassidy at Chez Casablancas. As she hit speed dial, she pictured the mansion’s living room in her mind-with the most recent Mrs. Casablancas having been recently divorced, the seaside palace had become a bachelor pad extraordinaire. Logan picked up on the first ring.
“Destiny, you know I don’t pay when you call me. I mean, I know I’m good, but…”
Ooh…time to play! She loved it when he had an audience.
“Are you in the living room?” she asked him.
“You know it.” His voice became sultry.
“Is there a copy of Maxim on the coffee table?” she asked in a straightforward tone.
“Is there ever not?” The contrast in their tones of their voices alone was enough to win them both Emmy nominations.
“Is there a scantily clad woman on the cover?”
“Define ‘scantily clad’,” he returned.
“Okay,” and her tone suddenly matched his. “I want you to take a deep breath.” She paused. “I’m not kidding. Take a deep breath, Logan.” Like he could resist her when she sounded like that. She heard him do as requested. “Alright. Now I want you to picture me in that outfit. I’m in your bedroom, lying on your bed, and I’m in a really good mood. I even get out of bed to make sure you see every angle of my outfit. ” She didn’t have to tell Logan to breathe heavily now-he had it on his own. “Do you have that image in your head?”
She took his incoherent grunt to mean yes.
Her voice returned to normal. “Great. See you tomorrow-love you!” And she hung up.
It took her several minutes to stop laughing and calm down enough so that she could go back to watching for cop cars in front of the strip club.
About fifteen minutes after that there was a sudden noise at the back door of the van that scared the crap out of her, followed immediately by Logan throwing himself into the back, slamming the door behind him. She was about to snark at him for sneaking up on her, but he grabbed her and proceeded to kiss her senseless.
She retained enough coherence to ask, “Where did you park?” She should have seen him arrive.
As he kissed his way down her neck, he answered, “A block over. I hope you got the money shot, ‘cause you’re going to be occupied for awhile.”
Money shot? Oh, yeah…surveillance…Cliff…right… “Um…a few minutes ago.”
“That’s convenient,” he said as he hit the release button for the bed stored in the wall and proceeded to describe to her in detail exactly what the model on the cover of Maxim had been wearing.
You know what they say about playing with matches.
*
The next morning as Veronica got ready for school, she smiled as she remembered the previous evening’s parting conversation with Logan.
“So where’s this war you promised? You’re such a slacker,” he chided her with a kiss.
“Famous last words, Mr. Echolls. Famous last words.”
That was all the warning he got before the end of first period. Veronica got Wallace out of Home Ec. (not hard to do) and dragged him towards the hallway near Logan’s locker.
“Let’s go,” she urged her new friend. When this was done, Wallace would have no doubt as to her and Logan’s mutual “animosity.”
“Hey, FloJo, slow your ass down,” Wallace managed to get out as Veronica pulled him along.
Veronica paused at the top of the stairs that led to the hall and held Wallace back to observe Logan, whose locker was about to be searched by Vice Principal Clemmons and a sheriff’s deputy. Logan opened the locker and stepped back.
”There you go,” he said, secure in his innocence.
Ah, how quickly they forget.
Inside the locker, a bong in the form of a cherub was clearly visible. Clemmons reached for it.
”Well, what’s this Logan?” asked the administrator. “This would appear to be a device they use to smoke marijuana.”
”That’s exactly what it looks like,” chimed in Deputy Sacks.
”Back to the office. Come on.”
Veronica watched comprehension dawn on Logan’s face as he looked around for signs of her. He knew there was no way that she would miss this.
Students stared in amazement as they filled the hallway and witnessed Logan’s arrest, who finally saw her standing at the corner of the hall with Wallace.
“It was you?“ he demanded.
Oh, yeah, Wallace was convinced.
Veronica affected a ‘who me?’ expression. Logan laughed and then his face turned serious. Veronica was very proud of him-he was playing this beautifully.
”Listen, I know it was you. This isn’t over, okay?”
She exaggerated a yawn.
Clemmons pulled Logan’s attention back with, “Hey.”
Logan grinned but was still pointing, now closer to Veronica and Wallace.
”You’re so cute and innocent.” She managed not to stick her tongue out at him. “Listen, I’ll get you for this.”
Clemmons pushed Logan along. “Let’s go.”
Logan ignored the vice principal as his eyes remained on Veronica. The war was on and he fully intended to return fire. “I will.”
Impatient now, Clemmons said in his “administrator” voice, “Come on, let’s go.”
Corny, who had made the bong for Veronica, had been watching and as Logan headed down the hall, still looking back at Veronica, the stoner congratulated Veronica.
”Eeee, solid.” The student body at large did not care for Logan Echolls.
Wallace was impressed. “You’re right, that was funny.”
“Meet me at my car after school. Let’s see if you’ve done your part.” As fun as it was to mess with Logan, there was work to be done.
That afternoon, she had Wallace help her destroy the bong in a fire, thereby enabling one of her dad’s friends in the fire department to switch the incriminating Sac ‘N Pac video with the one that she had made of the Seventh Veil paying for their liquor license.
After Wallace went home, Veronica went to court and watched Lamb have his ass handed to him on a platter when the video that he expected to show the delinquent PCHers instead showed his deputy getting serviced.
Love you, too, Lamb!
*
Logan felt bad. Dick had come to the sheriff’s department to make sure his friend was okay (really he was there because Dick liked to be where the action was, but that was beside the point.) He had arrived right about the same time that Aaron had and therefore had heard Aaron ground Logan from his car. So when Dick called late that afternoon to find out how they were going to retaliate against Miss Mars, Logan didn’t have an out. Everyone had seen his performance in the hallway and Dick knew that Logan had been punished (he knew part of it, anyway). Which is why Logan was now in Justin Crassen’s mom’s SUV on the way to Dog Beach to “teach that skanky-ass chick a lesson”, as Dick had so eloquently put it.
Logan sighed. Sometimes he hated his life.
At least the sheriff’s department had called to say that the evidence in the case had been destroyed so they had to drop the charges. Leave it to Veronica to have him arrested and cleared on the same day. She went to war, but she knew how to pull her punches so that no one got permanently hurt. Was he the only one that knew what a marshmallow she really was?
When they pulled up, Veronica was working the controls of the new guy’s model airplane. Logan got out of the truck, Dick, Justin and Bobby right behind him. Dick handed Logan a tire iron and Logan assumed a comfortable position on the hood of Veronica’s LeBaron, finally catching his girlfriend’s attention.
“Hey, Veronica Mars.” He jumped off the car. Had to make this good or neither Dick nor Wallace would buy it. “Do you know what your little joke cost me?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure you won’t be getting your bong back.”
Somehow Logan didn’t think that Dick would understand why comments like that made him want to rip Veronica’s clothes off in broad daylight.
Logan redirected his sexual tension and swung the crowbar at Veronica’s car, taking out a headlight in the process. Veronica flinched, a feeling that he echoed internally. Externally he grinned and twirled the crowbar.
”Wrong answer. Would you care to guess again?”
“Clearly your sense of humor.”
He took out the other headlight, careful to only damage things that could be easily repaired.
”Nope. You’re usually so good at pop quizzes. No, the correct answer is my car. That’s right. My daddy took my T-Bird away. And you know what I won’t be having? Fun, fun, fun.”
The 09ers at his back were egging him on; Wallace looked horrified.
Smirking, he moved to stand directly in front of Veronica, the crowbar resting on the back of his neck. Veronica’s eyes distracted him and he didn’t immediately register the motorcycles pulling up onto the scene until Bobby said something.
“Um, Logan?”
Logan turned around as Weevil and the PCHers got off of their bikes. This was what one referred to as “plans going awry.” Damage control time.
Logan headed for Weevil as the gang leader got off of his bike.
And Weevil was in such fine form, too. “What do we have here? Vandalism? No, no, no. Only vandalism that happens in this town goes through me.”
“Listen man, I don’t have a problem with you.” Logan had never admitted it to anyone, but he respected Eli Navarro. He had noticed-even if no one else understood-that Weevil kept his gang members in check, in general preventing them from doing more than acting menacing.
”That’s where you’re wrong.”
It would seem the respect was not mutual. Not surprising.
They stared at each other and Weevil took the crowbar from Logan.
Everyone turned when one of Weevil’s lackeys called out from Justin’s car, “Hey, yo. Is this O-Town any good? I mean my little sister likes it but, you know, she likes ponies and juice boxes too.”
The bikers laughed and Logan sized them up, weighing the chances of everyone-Veronica included-getting out of this situation safely.
Attuned to her as he was, he heard the quick exchange between her and Wallace.
”I suddenly feel like I’m in a scene from ‘The Outsiders’,” said Wallace.
“Be cool, Sodapop.”
This was not an appropriate time to laugh. Damn Veronica Mars.
Weevil headed for the SUV with Logan’s crowbar.
Someone besides Logan finally spoke up.
“Hey that’s not his car, that’s my mom’s car.” Justin’s mom was a hard-core ball buster.
“She can bill me,” deadpanned Weevil and with that the gang leader hit the SUV in the middle of the hood, hard. So much for “easily repaired”.
Weevil continued, taking out a headlight and banging up the hood some more. Everyone present watched in silence, the 09ers in dread, the bikers in glee.
When he stopped, Weevil said, “That’s it.”
He handed the crowbar back to Justin, who had a look on his face that held more fear of his mother than it did of Weevil, who continued, ”Head for the hills. I’m not gonna say it twice.”
The rest of the 09ers headed for the SUV as Weevil pointed to Logan and stopped him. “Except for you. You, say you’re sorry.”
Ah, hell, no.
Logan laughed. “Rub a lamp.” He winked and smirked at the gang leader, who punched the 09er, sending him to his knees. As he went down, Logan saw the look of horror on Veronica’s face.
The biker continued. “I said, say you’re sorry.”
Logan got back up and faced the biker again. Suddenly Weevil was just a kid-he didn’t begin to compare to what Logan had experienced.
Logan informed Weevil of this very deliberately. “Kiss my ass.”
In response, Weevil threw a punch to Logan’s face, sending the taller boy down again. He heard Weevil laugh, but Logan got up, blood coming from his nose. He kept the look of defiance on his face. Logan knew better than to apologize-that just made it worse.
“Now…” the biker began.
Veronica couldn’t handle it anymore.
“Let him go.”
“Are you sure? I could do this for a while.” Weevil looked slightly disappointed.
“I don’t want his apology,” she assured him.
She watched Logan wipe the blood from his nose and groan.
Her boyfriend headed for the SUV, stumbling slightly. As Logan approached the car, Bobby stepped forward to help him.
“Let’s go man, come on. Are you all right?”
Why was he friends with these people?
“I hope you guys are comfortable.”
Logan heard the PCHers laughing as Justin pulled the car out of the beach parking lot.
*
As Veronica got her car fixed, she thought about the journey that she and Logan had taken over the past year. After two very eventful days in school, the pair of them had managed to have a fairly low-key Christmas vacation. The semester that followed had been a roller coaster of emotions-the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows. While in private she and Logan had fallen even more in love with each other, in public their split had grown more and more bitter. They went through several difficult periods and on more than one occasion they had almost broken up, but neither of them could ever bring themselves to end it.
Even so, they may not have made it had it not been for one of Lynn Echolls’ rare returns to work. The summer in between her son’s sophomore and junior years, Logan’s mom accepted a supporting role in a film scheduled to shoot in the Romanian wilderness. Had it been Aaron, Logan would never have considered going. Had his daughter’s semester not been a living hell, Keith would never have considered letting Veronica go. As it was, they both went and it was nothing short of magical.
They had been able to spend two months away from Neptune, away from just about everything in the civilized world (including easy access to hot water and fully functional indoor plumbing, both of which led to some interesting situations). While Lynn did very little work but managed to look very busy, Logan and Veronica spent their time wandering through countryside that looked like a Merchant-Ivory set gone wild. They swam in lakes, walked through woods, made love anywhere and everywhere, and learned how to love each other.
A couple of times, both of them felt like they had stepped through the looking glass into an alternate world. On those occasions when they got a little weirded out by the absence of civilization, they hitchhiked a ride to Budapest on the studio jet and did some sightseeing and hanging out. Spending money and having real bathtubs worked wonders. Both times they returned to the middle of nowhere a little more appreciative of both what they had in the moment and what existed outside of it.
Before Romania, Logan had never taken much time to be introspective and he found the experience daunting but addictive. With Veronica’s influence to help him navigate the experience, he started drinking less and opening up more. Veronica had never realized that she could experience the world in such a way and she found herself discovering what was out there through and with Logan.
They learned things about each other and told each other things that neither of them had ever considered telling anyone else. Veronica found herself telling Logan the intimate details of her mother’s descent into alcoholism and how she continued to hold herself responsible. Being the son of an alcoholic himself, Logan’s insights were then invaluable for Veronica.
On one lazy afternoon that was particularly idyllic and “Room with a View”-like, as the two of them lay on top of a blanket in the middle of a field of tall grass, Veronica got up the courage to ask Logan about some of his scars. Veronica had been a cop’s daughter her entire life and she had known for some time that “childhood accidents” did not explain some of the marks on her boyfriend’s body. Hesitantly, Logan admitted that his father had beaten him on a fairly regularly basis until right after his tenth birthday. Shortly thereafter, Aaron had gone too far and put his son in the hospital overnight with a severe concussion, prompting Lynn to finally put her foot down. She told her husband that either he stopped beating their son and get some counseling or she would leave him and take Logan with her. Logan told Veronica that things had gotten better after that and while Aaron still had a temper, he hadn’t hit his son anymore.
Veronica had held Logan as he told her his story and they had fallen asleep in the middle of the field. When they woke up, they returned to the filming location and hadn’t talked about Logan’s treatment at his father’s hand since. But Veronica felt closer to Logan for having been able to talk to him about it and she admired him more as a person for continuing on in the face of such hidden pain.
After a semester of stolen moments, blockaded bathrooms, public hatred and tension-filled declarations of love, Romania had been a revelation. Neither of them wanted to go back to Neptune at the end of the summer, but they both understood why it was necessary. Nevertheless, had it not been for Keith, they both acknowledged to themselves (if not openly to each other) that they might very well have tried to find some way to remain in the Eastern European countryside, never to return to southern California.
But the real world did exist and they did return. They didn’t want to hide anymore, though, and the day after they got back Logan made plans with Duncan to go to a Padres game. On the way there, Logan brought up the subject of Veronica, but before he had a chance to so much as hint as to the reason for bringing her up, Duncan’s BMW ran off the road and into a tree, knocking Logan unconscious and breaking Duncan’s arm in three places.
Logan and Veronica had reluctantly agreed that for whatever reason, Duncan could not (or would not) handle anything related to his former girlfriend, so they reluctantly decided to keep their relationship clandestine. Unfortunately, while their summer in Romania had been amazing, it also made it almost physically painful to put their relationship back in the closet. Every wound was more painful and every public disagreement more difficult to live with. While Duncan had been in counseling, though, Celeste told Logan that her son continued to teeter on the edge of mental health; so Veronica and Logan endured the situation as it was, both of them constantly looking for a way to end the hiding, both of them coming up empty.
As Veronica paid for the repairs done to her car by Logan’s crowbar, she laughed. In April, she had gotten into a very strange situation that entailed a drunk albino, a busted radiator hose and her getting stranded in Twenty-Nine Palms, California without a dime to get home. After coming to her rescue, Logan had insisted on providing her a no-limit black AmEx in her own name should such a situation ever arise again. Veronica had fought him on it, insisting that she would never use it. Logan had fired back that if she didn’t at least keep it in case of emergencies, he would tell Keith the detailed version of how she came to be stranded in a desert town populated almost entirely by U.S. Marines.
Veronica had taken the card.
Until now she had never had cause to use it. She recognized that Logan hadn’t damaged anything difficult to fix just as she knew that he would cop to the fact that while she had set him up to be arrested, she had also destroyed the evidence against him. He still got to pay for the repairs, though.
After driving home to switch out her LeBaron for the Mazda, she drove over to Logan’s home where she used her passcard to gain access to the palatial estate. Lynn had long ago insisted that Veronica stop knocking and had provided her son’s girlfriend with a key to the house. Veronica had very warm feelings for her boyfriend’s mom. She understood perfectly well that having an alcoholic for a parent didn’t mean that you didn’t-or shouldn’t-love them.
Veronica let herself into the house and walked back to Logan’s room. She was pretty sure that his parents were home, but she didn’t hear them moving around. Well, it had been a rough day. When she walked into Logan’s room, she heard the water running in his bathroom. She crossed his room to find her boyfriend wearing only his pajama bottoms, standing in front of the mirror applying Neosporin to a cut on his nose.
“I’m so sorry, Logan. I swear I felt every hit along with you.”
Logan froze when he heard his girlfriend open the bathroom door wider. He had known that she would come over, but he had expected her to call first. He thought he would have time to get ready-he would never have let her walk in on him like this.
“Let me see,” Veronica said as she crossed the large bathroom to look at his wounds more closely. Just as he had feared, though, it was not his face or the bruise on his stomach that she looked at. It was the marks on his back.
Involuntarily he flinched as her fingers gently traced the fresh welts on his back and he heard her soft intake of breath as comprehension flooded her sharp mind.
“He didn’t stop when you were ten,” she practically breathed the words.
The only thing Logan had never been fully honest about with Veronica was his father’s continued abuse. He hadn’t lied to her about it-he just hadn’t told her the rest of the story. His father refused to get therapy and hadn’t stopped beating up his only son and instead of following through on her threat, his mom had descended into a bottle. The fact that he hadn’t come clean with Veronica hung over Logan like a cloud, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell her the full extent of what went on. It was a private shame and it had been unbearable to him that she know that he still suffered under it. He knew her well enough to know that she wouldn’t judge him, but he was terrified that he would think less of himself.
Without a word, Veronica took the Neosporin tube out of his hand and began applying it to his back. Logan couldn’t reach most of the areas she tended to and he hadn’t asked anyone for help since he was ten and his teacher failed to report the abuse he had told her about. He watched Veronica in the mirror, but she had eyes only for the task at hand. His gaze swept over the curves of her face, the tilt of her head and he wondered what was going to happen next. Was she going to be mad because he had lied to her about his father having stopped this years ago? Would she start crying? Would she ask him to go to the police?
Those were just a few of the thousands of reasons that he had created over the months to justify why he hadn’t told her the whole truth. He couldn’t think of a single reaction that she could have that would be palatable to him.
After Veronica finished applying the healing salve to Logan’s battered back, she took him by the hand and led him to the bed in the adjacent room. As he watched, she took off her shirt, pants and bra and put on one of his t-shirts. Still no words had passed between them since her moment of realization.
She crossed over to him and pulled his arms around her. Even though he was sitting and she was standing, she wasn’t that far above him and it was easy for their lips to meet. Veronica had told him once that she loved the feel of his lips and that thought came unbidden to his mind as her lips teased the edges of his.
Before it got too intense, Veronica pulled him up and turned down the covers. She got in bed first and gently tugged his hand to follow her. Their favorite sleeping position was her back to his front and as she settled herself in, pulling his arms tight around her, he wondered how she had done it.
How had Veronica found the perfect way to handle the truth of his abuse? How had she done it without wounding his pride or making it worse or any of the other scenarios he had envisioned? As Logan drifted off to sleep, Veronica held tightly in his arms, the last thought that crossed his mind was that if he had anything to do about it, he and Veronica were going to spend the rest of their lives together.
It took Veronica much longer to fall asleep and as she lay awake holding just as tightly to Logan as he was to her, only one thought went through her mind, playing on a continuous loop:
She was going to destroy Aaron Echolls.
End Pilot.
To be continued.
Author: jacedesbff
Pairing/Character: Logan/Veronica, Duncan, ensemble
Word Count: 7149
Rating: PG-13; angst and mature themes
Summary: AU from the Pilot. The rest of the back story (a.k.a. exposition) through the end of the Pilot.
Spoilers: Familiarity with Season 1 required.
Disclaimer: Rob Thomas owns all.
A/N: What if Logan and Veronica were a couple all through Season 1, but had to hide it from everyone? I recommend reading the other chapters so you know the background.
Mercedes (Merc4), if it weren’t for you, this wouldn’t continue, so everyone owes you a big hug and lots of cookies! (And you know that anyone who can correctly edit the phrase “skanky-ass chick” is both a fabulous beta and a kickin' bff!)
I hope you all enjoy the rest of the Pilot. :-) This is the end of the school year and in the past week I have acted in one play across town and closed out one that I directed at school. And yes, there is one more to go (sigh…), so I will get going on Ep 2 as soon as possible. Summer vacation will see more frequent updates!
Xposted to veronicamarsfic, veronicalogan and fic_from_mars. Please comment and give feedback! I loves it and loves it and truly appreciate it!
Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5
Veronica knew that she was probably supposed to be angry. But she wasn’t. Her head was too filled with white noise to register anything normal like emotion.
After she smashed the clown figurine, Veronica went to the storage closet in the hallway where she and her dad had put some of the leftover boxes from the move. She pulled out one of the big plastic Wal-Mart tubs and dumped the contents on the hallway floor. Her dad never had to know.
This was because Keith was in Sacramento chasing down a bail jumper. The two of them had quickly discovered that if a private investigator was good at finding missing lowlifes, the private investigator in question could generate a fairly steady source of income. Since it turned out that Keith was very good at tracking down the criminal element, he was now spending a lot of time so occupied, including tonight. Keith never had to see the mess that Veronica was making.
She put the now-empty tub in the middle of her bedroom floor and picked up a mother-daughter Precious Moments figurine that her mother had given her on her fifth birthday. She looked from the painted ceramic statue in her hand to the others placed carefully around her room. She had been collecting figurines her entire life. Birthdays, Christmases, congratulations gifts-her friends and family members had been contributing to her collection every year since she was born. She had cute little animals, cute little kids, cute little outdoor scenes-basically if it was cute and little, she had it.
Using every bit of her might, Veronica hurled the Precious Moments statue into the tub, instantly destroying it. She blindly started grabbing other figures, violently throwing each one into the large container where the broken fragments mixed together in a haze of white grit and powder.
Veronica had destroyed almost every ornament in the room before the snow in her head finally began to lift. She blinked her eyes and the world swam back into focus. As she looked at the cloud of white dust that hung over her room she became conscious of what she had just done. She wasn’t sure, but she thought that she might have just had a rage blackout. She looked down at her hands to find herself holding one of the two statues that had survived this uncharacteristic outburst and a giggle escaped her lips.
Lilly had hated Veronica’s collection and steadfastly refused to add to it up until the day she arrived home from Hawaii with two very garish Polynesian dancer dolls. The frightfully tacky man and woman were as far from “cutesy” as was humanly possible and were therefore, in Lilly’s opinion, an acceptable gift. Veronica set the male doll down next to its paramour (Lilly’s word, not hers). It was too ugly to die.
While her blind fury had passed, Veronica’s anger wasn’t done being spent. Turning her back on the bucket of porcelain shards, Veronica went into the kitchen and took out several garbage bags. She took them back into her room and started pulling clothes off of the hangers in her closet and throwing them into the bags. She opened her drawers and pulled out more items of clothing, then she started on her shoes. By the time she was finished, everything in her wardrobe that could possibly qualify as cutesy, virginal, precious, sweet and/or innocent had been shoved into a trash bag.
Veronica carried the bags filled with her former life out to her car, locked up the apartment, and headed out of Neptune to complete her errands. First she took the clothes and shoes to the Salvation Army. Then she drove to a vintage shopping district far enough away from home to ensure that she was unlikely to run into anyone she knew. There she used all of the money that she had saved over the past year to buy a new wardrobe. Between the allowance that she had been given before her family’s change in fortune and what her father had paid her in the past few months, she had a considerable amount of money to spend on her new image.
When she returned home that evening she had several bags full of reasonably priced outfits-all reflecting an inner self that she hadn’t known existed. More importantly, though, she came home feeling empowered. Before Lilly’s death, Veronica had rarely gone shopping alone as Lilly would invariably criticize whatever her best friend chose for herself. It was simpler to let Lilly come along and pick things out, so Veronica got into the habit of only shopping when her best friend was available. She hadn’t been shopping since October because it made her miss her friend so much. Today had been important in more ways than one.
She made a few more important stops between shopping and home, at which point she gathered up all of her bags and headed into her apartment complex. As she opened the door and dropped her bags, her cell phone rang. She knew it wasn’t her dad, as he had called to check in with her about a half an hour ago. He expected to be gone one more night and wanted to make sure that she was okay. She told him about Duncan, although she left out the part about the reputed catalyst for his attempted suicide being the loss of her virginity. Somehow she didn’t think that her dad would appreciate that part of the story. He had told her to take care and call immediately if she needed anything.
She smiled when she saw the caller I.D.
“Hello,” she said in a better tone of voice than she had used all day.
“Need some help?” breathed a voice that sent shivers down her spine and the voice wasn’t just on the phone.
Having not yet closed the door to the apartment, Veronica turned around to find her boyfriend standing behind her.
Cell phones forgotten, Logan lifted her off the ground in a steamy kiss.
Talk about turn your frown upside down.
“I like the hair,” he said as they finally broke up apart and moved inside. She leaned into him as he fell back against the closed door.
“I needed a change.” She smiled as she ran her fingers through her much shorter hair. He caught her hand and kissed her palm, once again sending shivers down her back.
“What’s in the bags?” he asked with a smile.
“I could tell you, but then I’d have to-“
And the mood was broken.
They both sighed and she laid her head against his chest while he rested his chin on top of her head.
“How is Duncan?” she asked softly.
“Alive,” he sighed as he ran his fingers through her newly-shorn hair.
She mentally shook herself as she pulled back from Logan’s embrace.
“So, you ready to be put to work?”
He leered at her, readily following her change in attitude. “It depends. Can you afford me?”
“Like you would turn down any price I offered,” she snarked back.
He raised an eyebrow as she led him back to her room.
Logan was stunned when they reached it. A layer of fine white powder coated one of those ubiquitous blue Wal-Mart buckets and the surrounding floor. On the other side of the room, there was a mark on the wall where another porcelain figure-were those plastic balloons?-had been shattered outside of the box where the rest of Veronica’s infamous menagerie apparently now resided. In pieces.
What the hell?
He looked down at the petite blonde, concern etched across his face.
Veronica looked back at him, her eyes shuttered. “Can you help me clean up?”
Logan knew with a flash of insight that she wasn’t just asking about her room.
He smiled at her. “Where do you want me to start?”
*
Logan went home at about 5 a.m. The two of them spent about an hour cleaning up Veronica’s room and the apartment hallway. Then Logan helped her completely rearrange the furniture in her room. Later she modeled all of her new outfits for him, which he was only willing to do if she changed clothes in front of him. While this made her blush furiously, she agreed to it when her boyfriend wryly pointed out that he had already seen her as naked as was humanly possible-why was she being shy about her bra and panties?
As she was finishing up the fashion show, her dad called to make sure that she got home alright. When she told him that Logan was there, her dad asked to speak to the young man, to whom Veronica somewhat reluctantly handed the phone. The end of the conversation that Veronica heard consisted primarily of Logan saying “yes, sir” a lot, so she didn’t get much of a sense of the content until her boyfriend hung up and told her that Keith wanted Logan to spend the night. Veronica’s eyebrows shot up so high that Logan laughed.
“He made me promise to be a gentleman. I believe that deadly weapons might have been mentioned.” Veronica’s look softened to simple surprise. “He said that he didn’t want you to be alone tonight, with Duncan and everything…”
True to his word, Logan was a gentleman. He held Veronica while they slept and they both did their best to forget what school was going to be like the next day, just as they had both assiduously avoided any discussion of the situation at school all evening long. Logan then left early the next morning to go home and change. Normally they wouldn’t have school at this time of year, but the holidays fell on odd days so schools in Balboa County were to be open the Monday and Tuesday before vacation-just long enough to provide the 09ers time to eviscerate Veronica while the memories of Shelley’s party were still nice and fresh.
*
No one spoke to Veronica as she made her way to her locker that morning. When she got there, she realized why. Painted in huge red letters across the bank of lockers where hers was located were the words, “LET’S DO THAT AGAIN!”
Before she left for school, Veronica had decided to hold her head high and prove that she wasn’t intimidated by the rich losers at Neptune High. She had gotten rid of every pink skirt that she had, cut her hair, and reorganized her bedroom along with her self-perception.
Last week this desecration of the best night of her life would have sent her racing to the bathroom in tears. This week it made her want to race to the bathroom in tears, but she didn’t. She ignored the graffiti, walked up to her locker, opened it, took out her books and moved on to her first class.
As she walked down the hall, Veronica felt like she was in the middle of one of those naked dreams where everybody stares at you. It was small consolation to know that while everyone really was staring at her, at least she wasn’t naked. Apparently the 09ers talked to people outside of their group often enough to spread gossip this juicy.
Wherever she went that day, people moaned, groaned, whimpered, grunted and cried out “Let’s do that again!” A few of her teachers looked around for the source of the strange noises during class, but of course no one was actually caught.
Soon after lunch, the height of Veronica’s feeling as though she were on display in a porn shop window, it finally occurred to her how to handle the situation. As she did so, she told herself that in the future she would go with her instincts sooner and not have to plan these things out. For now, though, she took a deep breath, imagined Logan holding her hand, and waited for Dick to pass her in the hallway near her locker.
It had to be Dick. That was part of the plan.
It didn’t take long. Sure enough, Dick, Logan and several 09er boys conveniently walked past her right before the last class of the day. As she knew he would, Dick said loudly as they passed, “Shelley’s party ruled-let’s do that again!”
Veronica spun around. “Hoping for more pointers, Dick?”
Dick stopped in his tracks, almost leading to an 09er pile-up in the middle of the hall.
“Did you say something, Ronnie?” he demanded defensively. “I thought you only moaned.”
“And I thought you only listened,” she countered.
Dick was momentarily taken aback. This wasn’t the Veronica he knew. A crowd began to gather around the expensively dressed young men and the tiny target of their ire. This would entertain the entire student body all vacation long.
“Come on, Dick, you keep saying you want to do it again. I mean, if you want tips on how to last longer in bed, all you have to do is ask. I mean, I have standards-I won’t show you myself, but I can tell you what to do.”
“Who the hell-“ Dick began.
“I was at the party, remember?” Veronica cut him off. “I mean, your girlfriend wouldn’t give you the time of day. And Madison-you know, your girlfriend-was the one who got everybody to come listen at the door-that’s what I’ve heard, anyway. All I can figure is that she wanted you to pick up some helpful hints-why else would she listen to someone else having sex when she could be off doing it herself? Wow. Sounds like you just don’t satisfy, Dick. It’s okay, though-you must have learned lots!” She turned to Madison who had joined the crowd around them. “All better now, Madison?”
Veronica stopped and looked from Madison to Dick expectantly.
“At least Dick admits it when he sleeps with me,” said Madison pointedly. “That’s more than I can say for you.”
“He doesn’t want to be mobbed, Madison!” Veronica explained. “You know, the guy that I was with. Believe it or not, there was only one guy in there with me. You had to tell everybody that there were what-two or three? I guess it was the only way you could explain it, given your own experience. Anyway, if people knew who this guy was, he’d be hounded by girls wanting a real man. Dick doesn’t have to worry about that, of course, so you can be open about your sad little sex life and Dick can live on unmolested.” She continued as both Dick and Madison tried to jump in.
“Take Logan, for instance.” The turn in conversation confused everyone and heads swung around to look at the nonplussed object of Veronica’s comment. “I heard today that he wasn’t there, right? That totally supports my theory. I mean, you should have heard Lilly talk-she said Logan was like the Energizer bunny-he could go for hours!” She turned to Logan, whose face was a mask of shock. “I have to warn you, Logan, this may mean that Madison will attack you after school, but I have to go on what Lilly said.” She turned back to Dick. “So Logan wasn’t there and you were. I’d say that speaks volumes.”
She opened up her next statements to the entire crowd. “So if any of the rest of you need any tips, you don’t need to whisper. It’s okay if your sex lives suck. I certainly won’t loan out my Energizer bunny, but I’ll see what I can do.”
Vice Principal Clemmons chose that moment to call out loudly, “What’s going on here?” He pushed his way into the middle of the crowd of students. “Dick Casablancas. Why am I not surprised? And, I’m sorry-what’s your name?” He looked at the girl clearly at the center of this little gathering.
“Veronica Mars,” she answered calmly.
“Come with me, Miss Mars, Mr. Casablancas,” said the administrator in his gravelly voice.
This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Veronica thought to herself as she followed Mr. Clemmons down the hallway. As she passed Logan, she had to look away. If she looked at him right now, she would lose it right there in the middle of the hall. Compassion-even from someone who couldn’t show it-would be the end of her.
As Logan watched Veronica being led away by Mr. Clemmons (not something one saw every day), he was pretty sure that he had never been more turned on in his entire life. By anyone.
*
The Present
As Veronica sat in the Blue Bomber across the street from the Seventh Veil she realized that she was wearing the same blue jean mini skirt that she had worn the Monday after Shelley’s party. That day held mixed emotions for Veronica. She had been treated like the great whore of all the earth, but she had stood up for herself for the first time. It was also the day that she and Logan almost got caught making out in the janitor’s closet by-gasp!-a janitor. The experience of hiding under a tarp in the corner of the closet had been the impetus for the creation of the infamous “Out of Order” sign that then became a standard fixture on the girls’ bathroom door.
Veronica noted the time-11:00-and smiled. Time to call Logan. Taking pictures of sleazy cops hitting up strippers for free services was not considered to be high-risk, so Logan was spending some quality time with Dick and Cassidy at Chez Casablancas. As she hit speed dial, she pictured the mansion’s living room in her mind-with the most recent Mrs. Casablancas having been recently divorced, the seaside palace had become a bachelor pad extraordinaire. Logan picked up on the first ring.
“Destiny, you know I don’t pay when you call me. I mean, I know I’m good, but…”
Ooh…time to play! She loved it when he had an audience.
“Are you in the living room?” she asked him.
“You know it.” His voice became sultry.
“Is there a copy of Maxim on the coffee table?” she asked in a straightforward tone.
“Is there ever not?” The contrast in their tones of their voices alone was enough to win them both Emmy nominations.
“Is there a scantily clad woman on the cover?”
“Define ‘scantily clad’,” he returned.
“Okay,” and her tone suddenly matched his. “I want you to take a deep breath.” She paused. “I’m not kidding. Take a deep breath, Logan.” Like he could resist her when she sounded like that. She heard him do as requested. “Alright. Now I want you to picture me in that outfit. I’m in your bedroom, lying on your bed, and I’m in a really good mood. I even get out of bed to make sure you see every angle of my outfit. ” She didn’t have to tell Logan to breathe heavily now-he had it on his own. “Do you have that image in your head?”
She took his incoherent grunt to mean yes.
Her voice returned to normal. “Great. See you tomorrow-love you!” And she hung up.
It took her several minutes to stop laughing and calm down enough so that she could go back to watching for cop cars in front of the strip club.
About fifteen minutes after that there was a sudden noise at the back door of the van that scared the crap out of her, followed immediately by Logan throwing himself into the back, slamming the door behind him. She was about to snark at him for sneaking up on her, but he grabbed her and proceeded to kiss her senseless.
She retained enough coherence to ask, “Where did you park?” She should have seen him arrive.
As he kissed his way down her neck, he answered, “A block over. I hope you got the money shot, ‘cause you’re going to be occupied for awhile.”
Money shot? Oh, yeah…surveillance…Cliff…right… “Um…a few minutes ago.”
“That’s convenient,” he said as he hit the release button for the bed stored in the wall and proceeded to describe to her in detail exactly what the model on the cover of Maxim had been wearing.
You know what they say about playing with matches.
*
The next morning as Veronica got ready for school, she smiled as she remembered the previous evening’s parting conversation with Logan.
“So where’s this war you promised? You’re such a slacker,” he chided her with a kiss.
“Famous last words, Mr. Echolls. Famous last words.”
That was all the warning he got before the end of first period. Veronica got Wallace out of Home Ec. (not hard to do) and dragged him towards the hallway near Logan’s locker.
“Let’s go,” she urged her new friend. When this was done, Wallace would have no doubt as to her and Logan’s mutual “animosity.”
“Hey, FloJo, slow your ass down,” Wallace managed to get out as Veronica pulled him along.
Veronica paused at the top of the stairs that led to the hall and held Wallace back to observe Logan, whose locker was about to be searched by Vice Principal Clemmons and a sheriff’s deputy. Logan opened the locker and stepped back.
”There you go,” he said, secure in his innocence.
Ah, how quickly they forget.
Inside the locker, a bong in the form of a cherub was clearly visible. Clemmons reached for it.
”Well, what’s this Logan?” asked the administrator. “This would appear to be a device they use to smoke marijuana.”
”That’s exactly what it looks like,” chimed in Deputy Sacks.
”Back to the office. Come on.”
Veronica watched comprehension dawn on Logan’s face as he looked around for signs of her. He knew there was no way that she would miss this.
Students stared in amazement as they filled the hallway and witnessed Logan’s arrest, who finally saw her standing at the corner of the hall with Wallace.
“It was you?“ he demanded.
Oh, yeah, Wallace was convinced.
Veronica affected a ‘who me?’ expression. Logan laughed and then his face turned serious. Veronica was very proud of him-he was playing this beautifully.
”Listen, I know it was you. This isn’t over, okay?”
She exaggerated a yawn.
Clemmons pulled Logan’s attention back with, “Hey.”
Logan grinned but was still pointing, now closer to Veronica and Wallace.
”You’re so cute and innocent.” She managed not to stick her tongue out at him. “Listen, I’ll get you for this.”
Clemmons pushed Logan along. “Let’s go.”
Logan ignored the vice principal as his eyes remained on Veronica. The war was on and he fully intended to return fire. “I will.”
Impatient now, Clemmons said in his “administrator” voice, “Come on, let’s go.”
Corny, who had made the bong for Veronica, had been watching and as Logan headed down the hall, still looking back at Veronica, the stoner congratulated Veronica.
”Eeee, solid.” The student body at large did not care for Logan Echolls.
Wallace was impressed. “You’re right, that was funny.”
“Meet me at my car after school. Let’s see if you’ve done your part.” As fun as it was to mess with Logan, there was work to be done.
That afternoon, she had Wallace help her destroy the bong in a fire, thereby enabling one of her dad’s friends in the fire department to switch the incriminating Sac ‘N Pac video with the one that she had made of the Seventh Veil paying for their liquor license.
After Wallace went home, Veronica went to court and watched Lamb have his ass handed to him on a platter when the video that he expected to show the delinquent PCHers instead showed his deputy getting serviced.
Love you, too, Lamb!
*
Logan felt bad. Dick had come to the sheriff’s department to make sure his friend was okay (really he was there because Dick liked to be where the action was, but that was beside the point.) He had arrived right about the same time that Aaron had and therefore had heard Aaron ground Logan from his car. So when Dick called late that afternoon to find out how they were going to retaliate against Miss Mars, Logan didn’t have an out. Everyone had seen his performance in the hallway and Dick knew that Logan had been punished (he knew part of it, anyway). Which is why Logan was now in Justin Crassen’s mom’s SUV on the way to Dog Beach to “teach that skanky-ass chick a lesson”, as Dick had so eloquently put it.
Logan sighed. Sometimes he hated his life.
At least the sheriff’s department had called to say that the evidence in the case had been destroyed so they had to drop the charges. Leave it to Veronica to have him arrested and cleared on the same day. She went to war, but she knew how to pull her punches so that no one got permanently hurt. Was he the only one that knew what a marshmallow she really was?
When they pulled up, Veronica was working the controls of the new guy’s model airplane. Logan got out of the truck, Dick, Justin and Bobby right behind him. Dick handed Logan a tire iron and Logan assumed a comfortable position on the hood of Veronica’s LeBaron, finally catching his girlfriend’s attention.
“Hey, Veronica Mars.” He jumped off the car. Had to make this good or neither Dick nor Wallace would buy it. “Do you know what your little joke cost me?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure you won’t be getting your bong back.”
Somehow Logan didn’t think that Dick would understand why comments like that made him want to rip Veronica’s clothes off in broad daylight.
Logan redirected his sexual tension and swung the crowbar at Veronica’s car, taking out a headlight in the process. Veronica flinched, a feeling that he echoed internally. Externally he grinned and twirled the crowbar.
”Wrong answer. Would you care to guess again?”
“Clearly your sense of humor.”
He took out the other headlight, careful to only damage things that could be easily repaired.
”Nope. You’re usually so good at pop quizzes. No, the correct answer is my car. That’s right. My daddy took my T-Bird away. And you know what I won’t be having? Fun, fun, fun.”
The 09ers at his back were egging him on; Wallace looked horrified.
Smirking, he moved to stand directly in front of Veronica, the crowbar resting on the back of his neck. Veronica’s eyes distracted him and he didn’t immediately register the motorcycles pulling up onto the scene until Bobby said something.
“Um, Logan?”
Logan turned around as Weevil and the PCHers got off of their bikes. This was what one referred to as “plans going awry.” Damage control time.
Logan headed for Weevil as the gang leader got off of his bike.
And Weevil was in such fine form, too. “What do we have here? Vandalism? No, no, no. Only vandalism that happens in this town goes through me.”
“Listen man, I don’t have a problem with you.” Logan had never admitted it to anyone, but he respected Eli Navarro. He had noticed-even if no one else understood-that Weevil kept his gang members in check, in general preventing them from doing more than acting menacing.
”That’s where you’re wrong.”
It would seem the respect was not mutual. Not surprising.
They stared at each other and Weevil took the crowbar from Logan.
Everyone turned when one of Weevil’s lackeys called out from Justin’s car, “Hey, yo. Is this O-Town any good? I mean my little sister likes it but, you know, she likes ponies and juice boxes too.”
The bikers laughed and Logan sized them up, weighing the chances of everyone-Veronica included-getting out of this situation safely.
Attuned to her as he was, he heard the quick exchange between her and Wallace.
”I suddenly feel like I’m in a scene from ‘The Outsiders’,” said Wallace.
“Be cool, Sodapop.”
This was not an appropriate time to laugh. Damn Veronica Mars.
Weevil headed for the SUV with Logan’s crowbar.
Someone besides Logan finally spoke up.
“Hey that’s not his car, that’s my mom’s car.” Justin’s mom was a hard-core ball buster.
“She can bill me,” deadpanned Weevil and with that the gang leader hit the SUV in the middle of the hood, hard. So much for “easily repaired”.
Weevil continued, taking out a headlight and banging up the hood some more. Everyone present watched in silence, the 09ers in dread, the bikers in glee.
When he stopped, Weevil said, “That’s it.”
He handed the crowbar back to Justin, who had a look on his face that held more fear of his mother than it did of Weevil, who continued, ”Head for the hills. I’m not gonna say it twice.”
The rest of the 09ers headed for the SUV as Weevil pointed to Logan and stopped him. “Except for you. You, say you’re sorry.”
Ah, hell, no.
Logan laughed. “Rub a lamp.” He winked and smirked at the gang leader, who punched the 09er, sending him to his knees. As he went down, Logan saw the look of horror on Veronica’s face.
The biker continued. “I said, say you’re sorry.”
Logan got back up and faced the biker again. Suddenly Weevil was just a kid-he didn’t begin to compare to what Logan had experienced.
Logan informed Weevil of this very deliberately. “Kiss my ass.”
In response, Weevil threw a punch to Logan’s face, sending the taller boy down again. He heard Weevil laugh, but Logan got up, blood coming from his nose. He kept the look of defiance on his face. Logan knew better than to apologize-that just made it worse.
“Now…” the biker began.
Veronica couldn’t handle it anymore.
“Let him go.”
“Are you sure? I could do this for a while.” Weevil looked slightly disappointed.
“I don’t want his apology,” she assured him.
She watched Logan wipe the blood from his nose and groan.
Her boyfriend headed for the SUV, stumbling slightly. As Logan approached the car, Bobby stepped forward to help him.
“Let’s go man, come on. Are you all right?”
Why was he friends with these people?
“I hope you guys are comfortable.”
Logan heard the PCHers laughing as Justin pulled the car out of the beach parking lot.
*
As Veronica got her car fixed, she thought about the journey that she and Logan had taken over the past year. After two very eventful days in school, the pair of them had managed to have a fairly low-key Christmas vacation. The semester that followed had been a roller coaster of emotions-the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows. While in private she and Logan had fallen even more in love with each other, in public their split had grown more and more bitter. They went through several difficult periods and on more than one occasion they had almost broken up, but neither of them could ever bring themselves to end it.
Even so, they may not have made it had it not been for one of Lynn Echolls’ rare returns to work. The summer in between her son’s sophomore and junior years, Logan’s mom accepted a supporting role in a film scheduled to shoot in the Romanian wilderness. Had it been Aaron, Logan would never have considered going. Had his daughter’s semester not been a living hell, Keith would never have considered letting Veronica go. As it was, they both went and it was nothing short of magical.
They had been able to spend two months away from Neptune, away from just about everything in the civilized world (including easy access to hot water and fully functional indoor plumbing, both of which led to some interesting situations). While Lynn did very little work but managed to look very busy, Logan and Veronica spent their time wandering through countryside that looked like a Merchant-Ivory set gone wild. They swam in lakes, walked through woods, made love anywhere and everywhere, and learned how to love each other.
A couple of times, both of them felt like they had stepped through the looking glass into an alternate world. On those occasions when they got a little weirded out by the absence of civilization, they hitchhiked a ride to Budapest on the studio jet and did some sightseeing and hanging out. Spending money and having real bathtubs worked wonders. Both times they returned to the middle of nowhere a little more appreciative of both what they had in the moment and what existed outside of it.
Before Romania, Logan had never taken much time to be introspective and he found the experience daunting but addictive. With Veronica’s influence to help him navigate the experience, he started drinking less and opening up more. Veronica had never realized that she could experience the world in such a way and she found herself discovering what was out there through and with Logan.
They learned things about each other and told each other things that neither of them had ever considered telling anyone else. Veronica found herself telling Logan the intimate details of her mother’s descent into alcoholism and how she continued to hold herself responsible. Being the son of an alcoholic himself, Logan’s insights were then invaluable for Veronica.
On one lazy afternoon that was particularly idyllic and “Room with a View”-like, as the two of them lay on top of a blanket in the middle of a field of tall grass, Veronica got up the courage to ask Logan about some of his scars. Veronica had been a cop’s daughter her entire life and she had known for some time that “childhood accidents” did not explain some of the marks on her boyfriend’s body. Hesitantly, Logan admitted that his father had beaten him on a fairly regularly basis until right after his tenth birthday. Shortly thereafter, Aaron had gone too far and put his son in the hospital overnight with a severe concussion, prompting Lynn to finally put her foot down. She told her husband that either he stopped beating their son and get some counseling or she would leave him and take Logan with her. Logan told Veronica that things had gotten better after that and while Aaron still had a temper, he hadn’t hit his son anymore.
Veronica had held Logan as he told her his story and they had fallen asleep in the middle of the field. When they woke up, they returned to the filming location and hadn’t talked about Logan’s treatment at his father’s hand since. But Veronica felt closer to Logan for having been able to talk to him about it and she admired him more as a person for continuing on in the face of such hidden pain.
After a semester of stolen moments, blockaded bathrooms, public hatred and tension-filled declarations of love, Romania had been a revelation. Neither of them wanted to go back to Neptune at the end of the summer, but they both understood why it was necessary. Nevertheless, had it not been for Keith, they both acknowledged to themselves (if not openly to each other) that they might very well have tried to find some way to remain in the Eastern European countryside, never to return to southern California.
But the real world did exist and they did return. They didn’t want to hide anymore, though, and the day after they got back Logan made plans with Duncan to go to a Padres game. On the way there, Logan brought up the subject of Veronica, but before he had a chance to so much as hint as to the reason for bringing her up, Duncan’s BMW ran off the road and into a tree, knocking Logan unconscious and breaking Duncan’s arm in three places.
Logan and Veronica had reluctantly agreed that for whatever reason, Duncan could not (or would not) handle anything related to his former girlfriend, so they reluctantly decided to keep their relationship clandestine. Unfortunately, while their summer in Romania had been amazing, it also made it almost physically painful to put their relationship back in the closet. Every wound was more painful and every public disagreement more difficult to live with. While Duncan had been in counseling, though, Celeste told Logan that her son continued to teeter on the edge of mental health; so Veronica and Logan endured the situation as it was, both of them constantly looking for a way to end the hiding, both of them coming up empty.
As Veronica paid for the repairs done to her car by Logan’s crowbar, she laughed. In April, she had gotten into a very strange situation that entailed a drunk albino, a busted radiator hose and her getting stranded in Twenty-Nine Palms, California without a dime to get home. After coming to her rescue, Logan had insisted on providing her a no-limit black AmEx in her own name should such a situation ever arise again. Veronica had fought him on it, insisting that she would never use it. Logan had fired back that if she didn’t at least keep it in case of emergencies, he would tell Keith the detailed version of how she came to be stranded in a desert town populated almost entirely by U.S. Marines.
Veronica had taken the card.
Until now she had never had cause to use it. She recognized that Logan hadn’t damaged anything difficult to fix just as she knew that he would cop to the fact that while she had set him up to be arrested, she had also destroyed the evidence against him. He still got to pay for the repairs, though.
After driving home to switch out her LeBaron for the Mazda, she drove over to Logan’s home where she used her passcard to gain access to the palatial estate. Lynn had long ago insisted that Veronica stop knocking and had provided her son’s girlfriend with a key to the house. Veronica had very warm feelings for her boyfriend’s mom. She understood perfectly well that having an alcoholic for a parent didn’t mean that you didn’t-or shouldn’t-love them.
Veronica let herself into the house and walked back to Logan’s room. She was pretty sure that his parents were home, but she didn’t hear them moving around. Well, it had been a rough day. When she walked into Logan’s room, she heard the water running in his bathroom. She crossed his room to find her boyfriend wearing only his pajama bottoms, standing in front of the mirror applying Neosporin to a cut on his nose.
“I’m so sorry, Logan. I swear I felt every hit along with you.”
Logan froze when he heard his girlfriend open the bathroom door wider. He had known that she would come over, but he had expected her to call first. He thought he would have time to get ready-he would never have let her walk in on him like this.
“Let me see,” Veronica said as she crossed the large bathroom to look at his wounds more closely. Just as he had feared, though, it was not his face or the bruise on his stomach that she looked at. It was the marks on his back.
Involuntarily he flinched as her fingers gently traced the fresh welts on his back and he heard her soft intake of breath as comprehension flooded her sharp mind.
“He didn’t stop when you were ten,” she practically breathed the words.
The only thing Logan had never been fully honest about with Veronica was his father’s continued abuse. He hadn’t lied to her about it-he just hadn’t told her the rest of the story. His father refused to get therapy and hadn’t stopped beating up his only son and instead of following through on her threat, his mom had descended into a bottle. The fact that he hadn’t come clean with Veronica hung over Logan like a cloud, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell her the full extent of what went on. It was a private shame and it had been unbearable to him that she know that he still suffered under it. He knew her well enough to know that she wouldn’t judge him, but he was terrified that he would think less of himself.
Without a word, Veronica took the Neosporin tube out of his hand and began applying it to his back. Logan couldn’t reach most of the areas she tended to and he hadn’t asked anyone for help since he was ten and his teacher failed to report the abuse he had told her about. He watched Veronica in the mirror, but she had eyes only for the task at hand. His gaze swept over the curves of her face, the tilt of her head and he wondered what was going to happen next. Was she going to be mad because he had lied to her about his father having stopped this years ago? Would she start crying? Would she ask him to go to the police?
Those were just a few of the thousands of reasons that he had created over the months to justify why he hadn’t told her the whole truth. He couldn’t think of a single reaction that she could have that would be palatable to him.
After Veronica finished applying the healing salve to Logan’s battered back, she took him by the hand and led him to the bed in the adjacent room. As he watched, she took off her shirt, pants and bra and put on one of his t-shirts. Still no words had passed between them since her moment of realization.
She crossed over to him and pulled his arms around her. Even though he was sitting and she was standing, she wasn’t that far above him and it was easy for their lips to meet. Veronica had told him once that she loved the feel of his lips and that thought came unbidden to his mind as her lips teased the edges of his.
Before it got too intense, Veronica pulled him up and turned down the covers. She got in bed first and gently tugged his hand to follow her. Their favorite sleeping position was her back to his front and as she settled herself in, pulling his arms tight around her, he wondered how she had done it.
How had Veronica found the perfect way to handle the truth of his abuse? How had she done it without wounding his pride or making it worse or any of the other scenarios he had envisioned? As Logan drifted off to sleep, Veronica held tightly in his arms, the last thought that crossed his mind was that if he had anything to do about it, he and Veronica were going to spend the rest of their lives together.
It took Veronica much longer to fall asleep and as she lay awake holding just as tightly to Logan as he was to her, only one thought went through her mind, playing on a continuous loop:
She was going to destroy Aaron Echolls.
End Pilot.
To be continued.