Fic: Armed With a Broken Heart 2/2, R, LoVe
A Veronica Mars FanFic
Title: Armed With a Broken Heart 2/2
Author: Zaftig_darling
Pairing/Character: LoVe, Dick
Word Count: 4831
Rating:Hard R
Summary: Post Season 3, Logan tries to forget Veronica
Spoilers: All three seasons
Warnings: Swearing, strippers, under-age alcohol consumption, angst, cheap cigars
Beta'd by the lovely
celtic_flicka. All mistakes are mine. Written as a tribute only, no copyright infringement is intended.
The title comes from a John Gorka song by the same name.
Part 1 HERE
Three hours (and six shots of Jameson) after their conversation in the parking lot, Logan was beginning to think that Dick might have arrived at a single fabulous idea. Dick had, in fact, located a redhead, and if her tits weren’t the size of melons, they were impressively close.
The improbably named July, a tall girl with gravity-defying curves, was beginning her fourth lap dance for Logan, at Dick’s insistence (and expense). As befitting her name, she was wearing only a blue and white thong and red star-shaped pasties. Her hair fell to her waist in long red waves, which she dangled now in front of Logan’s glassy eyes.
Logan allowed himself to drift on a sea of whiskey and pheromone-induced bliss, his eyes crossing as he found himself hypnotized by the undulation of July’s cleavage, tantalizingly close to his face.
She smells good, Logan thought to himself. She smells like… Logan’s addled brain searched for a word to describe the spicy scent of July’s skin, and finding none, decided that she smelled like not Veronica.
In fact, Logan mused, watching in fascination as her belly button ring danced around her abdomen, she was the antithesis of Veronica. Red and round and curvy and tall and, and, and…Logan head gently dropped against the faux leather of his chair as he was trying to enumerate all of the other ways the redhead was not-like-Veronica.
July - whose given name was actually Anya - was disappointed to find her high-tipping customer had fallen asleep, literally, underneath her, but not surprised. He’d been drunk and sad when his friend had hired her, and she didn’t think he was aware that he’d been calling her “not-Veronica” on and off for quite some time. Asleep he looked incredibly young, and July-really-Anya suspected that was too young to be in the Seventh Veil. She wondered who this Veronica was, who had broken such a handsome boy’s heart.
******
Donal Fitzpatrick, nominal owner of the Seventh Veil, was a jealous man, and he’d been watching Anya Jelavich entertain the Echolls bastard and his idiot friend for too long.
The primary purpose of Neptune’s finest strip club was the laundering of dirty money from other Fitzpatrick enterprises. Any money brought in by the actual business of stripping was considered a bonus for Donal and he viewed most of the girls he employed as simple commodities.
However, Donal was uncommonly fond of the tall Russian girl who had arrived at the club six months before, bearing a stunning head of auburn hair and immigration papers of questionable veracity. Donal had arranged for more authentic documents through other Fitzpatrick channels, and she quickly became known among the other strippers and the regulars who patronized the Seventh Veil as the owner’s favorite girl. They’d been sleeping together for four months, and though her English was spotty, her other oral skills were exceptional. He was only a two-bit Irish thug, stuck on the bottom rung of a complicated ladder of organized crime - but his Russian lover made him happy, and he did not enjoy sharing her. On the other hand, she brought in a lot of money. It was a frustrating dilemma for a businessman in lust.
****************
Logan, who had indeed passed out briefly against the chair, blindly reached out to steady himself, accidentally brushing against the stripper’s significant breasts. As he did so, he had a moment of striking and surprising clarity - that the impressive and spicily scented flesh attached to the girl now eyeing him with a mixture of concern and nervousness was not what he wanted - not what he wanted at all. Along with this came the constant reminder that the girl he did want - the tiny, vengeful, tough-as-nails-on-the-outside-marshmallow-on-the-inside blonde pixie who clutched his heart in her small hands - was forever out of reach.
Dick, equally inebriated but wishing to avoid a repeat of Logan’s earlier performance, thrust his arm at Logan, trying to keep him from standing up too quickly and pushing July away. In so doing, he found himself with a handful of July’s hair, which he allowed to slip through his fingers almost reverently.
**************
Donal Fitzpatrick had been filling in for his bartender, who had called in sick, and for his back-up bartender, who made more money shaking her ass on the stage than slinging drinks. As he mixed and poured, he watched the two obnoxious college boys buying dance after dance from his Anya. He observed with growing consternation when it appeared the Echolls boy had dropped his head back against the chair and then reached up to pull the redhead on top of him, and the blonde moron with him seemed to be pulling the girl’s hair.
Donal actually growled at the sight of the Echolls asshole and his imbecile sidekick assaulting his girl. He stomped from behind the bar, snarling, “Get your filthy paws off of July, you stupid fuckwits!”
***************
Veronica fishes her taser from her bag as she pulls her Saturn into the parking lot of the Seventh Veil. Now that’s she’s arrived, she’s not sure how to proceed, not knowing what kind of trouble Logan might have gotten himself into.
As she hesitates, she is reminded of another day, another Fitzpatrick front - the sound of a tattoo gun, the smell of stale beer and even staler cigarette smoke. Although she had been furious with Logan on that afternoon for charging into the bar with a gun, she is forever grateful for his willingness to barge in to save her.
She has no coat to hide the taser, so she places it back into her bag and slings the bag over her shoulder, holding it in front of her, sliding her hand inside to grip the weapon. She affects a look of confidence she does not feel as she opens the door to the club, trying to decide what role she wants to play to extract Logan from whatever mess he’s gotten himself into.
Considering Logan’s relative fame - or infamy - she decides to act on a reasonable approximation of the truth: Angry girlfriend come to pick up her drunken boyfriend from somewhere he shouldn’t have been in the first place.
The bouncer at the door eyes her curiously and stops her from entering. “You need to be 21, sweetheart, and - “
Veronica is about to pull her fake I.D. from her bag to show to the bouncer when they are distracted by the bellow of Donal Fitzpatrick, demanding that the “fuckwits” keep their hands off his girl.
The bouncer spins around and heads towards the offending patrons, as Veronica realizes that one of the fuckwits in question is her very own. She sprints over as Donal hauls Logan from his chair and punches him in the face, followed quickly by a knee to the groin.
Logan falls to his knees, and then pitches forward onto his face, as Donal pulls back, apparently contemplating a kick to the head.
“Logan!” Veronica calls out, throwing her self down next to him on the floor, taking a considerable gamble that Donal will not kick a teenaged girl in order to finish off Logan. She is lucky and the big Irishman steps back for a moment, muttering, “What the hell? What the fucking hell?”
Anya is watching the tiny girl - who is clearly more than casually concerned for the now nearly-unconscious boy - and makes a less-than-wild guess as to her identity. “Ver-on-i-ka,” Anya says, breathily, her accent making the name charmingly exotic.
Veronica, mopping blood from Logan’s nose with her sleeve, looks up at the tall Russian in surprise. “Do I know you?”
The redhead shakes her head. “No…he’s just been…asking for you,” she lies politely. She’s not sure what the fact that the boy has been referring to her as “not-Veronica” for the past three hours means exactly, but she’s been taking her clothes off for men long enough to recognize a broken heart when she sees one.
***********************
Logan blinks, groggily, staring up into the face of a furious Donal Fitzpatrick, and the simultaneously confused, concerned, and angry face of Veronica Mars. Damn. Seeing her is like a knife to his heart, and he rolls into a ball, away from her.
Donal leans down and lifts Logan awkwardly from the floor by his shirt. “If this piece of shit belongs to you,” he says, pointedly, to Veronica, “get him the fuck out of my club. And take the Village Idiot with you,” he snarls, pushing Dick in the general direction of the door.
Logan is making strange gasping sounds, like he is have trouble getting enough air. It makes Veronica nervous, and she slides her small body under his arm, trying to help him walk out the door.
They say nothing as the three of them make their awkward way into the parking lot, but as the approach Veronica’s car, Dick explodes, “Who the hell called you, Veronica? Why the fuck do you keep showing up, every time he comes close to getting over your sorry ass? Why? Why do you do that?”
“Shut up, Dick,” Veronica snaps, and Dick loses any semblance of control.
“You broke him! You broke him, and then every time I think I have an answer to put him back together again, you show up and fucking break him all over! You are like a walking, talking, Logan-destroying machine. And it’s not like you want him! You just want him at your beck and call!”
Dick looks over at Logan, who is leaning into Veronica because he cannot stand on his own.
“You thought you could fix him with hookers and Jack Daniels? How does that fix anything?” Veronica yells at Dick.
Dick actually looks offended. “They are EXOTIC DANCERS, Veronica. They are not HOOKERS. Hookers come to your hotel room, duh! And don’t you think I’ve already tried? But oh no! He’s got some ‘code of honor’ about ‘not paying for it.’ He’s pathetic. He’s pathetic and broken and it’s your damn fault! I’m outta here!” Dick yells, walking clumsily across the parking lot, towards a small cluster of taxis by the curb.
Logan says nothing and Veronica isn’t sure that he isn’t passed out on his feet. She gives him a push and he stumbles towards her Saturn, opening the driver’s side door into the backseat. He falls face first into the car and pulls his legs in, lying across the bench seat with his knees and feet on the floor.
Veronica slams the door shut, checking to make sure she won’t crush any of his toes in doing so. She contemplates that she feels like crushing his toes, but decides that won’t help the situation at all.
A few minutes later, she pulls into the parking lot of the Grand. Logan has shifted in the back seat and is now staring at the ceiling as she opens the door to help him out. She reaches into his back pocket, trying to find his room key, but he pushes her away.
“I didn’t ask you to be the fucking cavalry, Veronica,” he whispers.
“I know you didn’t,” she says. “But you would have done the same for me, if I…if I…”
“If you found yourself drunk in a strip club about the shit kicked out of you by the Irish mob?” Logan slurs, awkwardly pulling himself out of the car.
“Well, as unlikely as that is -” Veronica starts to say.
“You know I will always come for you, Veronica,” Logan says, and his words sound more tender than he wants them to.
“Do I?” she asks, a bitter tone in her voice.
“I can’t believe you have to even ask that,” Logan snaps, spinning around and nearly falling again.
Logan looks up and realizes that they are at the Grand and not at his apartment. Of course, she’s been completely disinterested in him - why would she know I’ve moved? he thinks to himself, laughing sulkily.
“I don’t live here anymore,” he says.
Veronica is legitimately surprised, and considers that her powers of observation are evidently on the fritz. “You don’t? Where did you…?”
“Campbell Woods Apartments,” he says quietly. “By campus.”
“And how are you surviving without maids or room service?” Veronica says, her tone angrier than she intends.
“You know what, Veronica, forget it. I’ll just go in, and get a damn room, and sleep until I don’t fucking care anymore. So thanks for the ride, and thanks for maybe saving my ass one more time. I’m sure you won’t fucking let me forget it,” Logan growls, stumbling towards the front of the hotel and realizing, belatedly, that he doesn’t have his wallet, because he left it in Dick's car.
He’s torn between turning around and trying to make nice long enough for her to give him a ride to his apartment, or going inside and trying to charm whoever is working the front desk to look up the number for his Black AmEx. He’s sure they must still have it on file, and he doesn’t think he can spend one more minute with Veronica without his heart actually breaking into a million pieces.
“Logan!” she calls. “Let me drive you home.”
He sighs and turns around, unable to argue with her in his state, docilely getting into the passenger side and expending all his remaining energy on locating the seat belt and maneuvering it until it clicks closed. He rests his head against the door and wills himself not to throw up. He has embarrassed himself enough today, and vomiting in Veronica’s cherished Saturn is not something he thinks he can ever live down.
Ten minutes later, she pulls into the parking lot of a well-kept apartment complex and shuts off the engine, climbing down from the car, intending to help him to his apartment.
He means to tell her to get back in her car and leave him alone in his misery, but finds he is truly having trouble putting one foot in front of the other, and he’s not sure he can remember how to use a key.
“Which apartment?” she asks.
“312,” he says, stumbling in the general direction of the building.
She catches up to him and gently reaches out to take the keys from his hand, as he fumbles, trying to get the security door open.
He pushes the call button for the elevator and then leans against the wall, wishing the entryway would stop spinning.
He is somewhat surprised when she follows him onto the elevator, but evidently she isn’t confident in his ability to even get through his own front door. When the elevator arrives on the third floor, he lurches off, heading down the hall, to the last apartment on the left.
Once again she assists him with the key and opens the door. He staggers inside, surprised when she follows him still. He raises his arm, trying to stop her from entering.
“I can’t be around you right now, Veronica. It hurts too fucking much, okay? So just, please. Go.”
“I don’t want to leave you like this, Logan,” she says, flatly, as her eyes take in the disarray of the living room, which quite obviously belongs to two 19-year-old boys who have been accustomed to maid service their entire lives.
“I don’t need an audience while I fall apart, Veronica,” Logan hisses, as he sinks onto the couch. “I am entitled to some privacy while I wallow in the hot mess that is my fucking life!” He kicks at the coffee table, sending it, and its haphazard contents, onto the floor.
“Logan, I - ”
“What do I have to say to make you go away, Veronica? What do I have to say to you to make you leave?”
She stares at him, dumbfounded. This was not how she imagined their reunion. For weeks she had been waiting for him to call. She had been hoping for Italian food and multiple orgasms. She was angry and frustrated that he had never responded to the text she sent before she left D.C.
“Logan, what did I - ” she starts to ask, but he cuts her off.
“Will you please let me hate you for a little while, please?” his says, his voice breaking.
Veronica looks like she’s been slapped and steps away from him. “Why?” she wonders. “Why would you say that?”
Logan sees the hurt cross her face and he hates himself, but he needs to hate her now, he needs to hate her because if he doesn’t conjure up the hurt and pain at her rejection, he knows all he will feel is his overwhelming love for her - the hopeless passion for Veronica that has been eating him alive for months.
“You want to be with Piz, and have your normal boyfriend, and - fuck - okay, I get it. But if I can’t hate you…I don’t know how to keep breathing, because all I feel is how much I love you and how much you don’t love me! So, please, just go away, Veronica. Go away and let me hate you for a while.”
“You want to sit in this apartment and hate me and drink until your liver commits an act of treason? Is that what you want?” she snaps.
“Who are you to judge what gets me through the night?” he says, kicking at the table again, accomplishing nothing.
He stands up, furious, but still monstrously drunk, so he stumbles over his own feet as he turns to face her.
“What do I have to say to make you walk out that door, Veronica? What?” he snaps.
She shakes her head and looks at the floor.
He tries to imagine the most horrible thing he can think of, something that he is sure will make her turn tail and run. It shouldn’t be this hard to make Veronica Mars run away - running away is her modus operandi. And yet, the one time when he needs her to do just that, when he needs some peace in which to drink his broken heart away - she won’t leave.
A thought comes to him, and he knows, he knows exactly what he can say, exactly what words he could use to cut her to the bone, exactly what would make her run out and never look back. The words form in his head, swirling around in the haze of alcohol and rage and lust and grief, they are conjured to the front of his brain and he knows, he knows these words, tickling the back of his tongue, will end this farce once and for all. I fucked Madison to hurt you on purpose, I fucked Madison to hurt you on purpose. It’s a horrible, fucked up, wretched thing to say, and a grievous lie at that, but if he says them, if he lets the words fall from his mouth…
Before he sets loose the words that would amount to his dropping a nuclear warhead on whatever exists between them, the door opens and Dick stumbles in, laughing, holding the hand of a Pi Phi that Veronica recognizes from her Anthropology class.
“Well this is fabulous,” Dick snorts, looking at Veronica. “You just keep showing up, ruining everyone’s day!”
With that, Veronica turns and runs out the door, looking over he shoulder one last time before she leaves. Logan can see tears have started to run down her cheeks, and he hates himself for making her cry, and he hates her for not loving him anymore.
**************
Logan groans as he rolls over, pulling the comforter over his head, trying to block out the light. He nearly falls backwards out of bed when he sees a blonde head lying next to him.
He has so far managed to avoid adding “slumming with skanks” to his “mourning doomed relationship with Veronica” daily regimen of drinking heavily, smoking cigars, and watching black and white movies. Apparently he had sunk to a new low last night after he’d chased Veronica out. He sits up and cradles his head in his hands, trying to figure out who this girl is in his bed. He has no memory of anything after watching Veronica’s tear-stained face walk out his door.
He glances over at the blonde strands mostly buried beneath the blankets and tries to remember how she got there and who she might be. He notices, with a certain sense of relief, that he is wearing a pair of flannel pajama pants with Yosemite Sam all over them, a strange choice for a night with spent with a stranger. Stranger still considering they were a gift from Veronica.
He looks back at the girl, at hair the exact same shade as Veronica’s, and he risks pulling the comforter back a bit to get a glimpse of her face. Maybe it’s Parker, he thinks. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was Parker. He and Parker hadn’t ever actually had sex when they were together - if she’s here now, maybe nothing much happened.
The blonde heads rolls over and Logan actually falls on the floor when he realizes who’s in his bed. Veronica blinks as she opens her eyes, staring into Logan’s stunned face.
“How did you -” Logan asks.
“I came back when I realized I had your key in my pocket. I knocked but you didn’t let me in.”
“So you just came in?” Logan says, incredulous.
“I didn’t want to leave you without your apartment key!” she says defensively. “You were on the couch. Your nose was bleeding again, I - ”
“You what?”
“There was a lot of blood on your face. I said I wanted to take you to the hospital to make sure your nose wasn’t broken, but you said you just wanted to go to sleep,” she says. “I cleaned up your face and you came in here and you were snoring…in a strange way. I was afraid to leave you. So I stayed.”
She has pulled herself to a sitting position in bed, and he sees that the sleeve of her sweatshirt is brown with dried blood.
“I don’t need your pity, Veronica,” he says.
“This isn’t pity, Logan. I was worried.”
“Well, I’m fine now, so you can leave,” he says petulantly.
“Can’t we talk?” she asks.
“Oh, is this the talk where tell me you want us to still be friends? Because that’s not happening. Not right now. What part of ‘it hurts too much’ do you not understand?” he says, as he stands up and begins pacing in the small space between his bed and a large dresser.
Veronica says nothing, pulling her knees into her chest, worrying a corner of the comforter between her fingers.
“Why. Are. You. Still. Here?” Logan chokes out, afraid he might actually start crying. He feels like he can’t breathe with her so close to him, the knowledge that she prefers safe, boring, pasty Piz to him making him physically sick.
“I wanted to talk about…what you said about Piz,” she says, haltingly.
“You spent the night in my bed because you want to defend your boyfriend?” he snaps.
“I spent the night in your bed because I was worried about you, you, Jackass!” she yells. “And I wanted to tell you that you are wrong about Piz. I don’t know why you think I’m with him. He broke up with me after that day in the cafeteria. HE broke up with ME, Logan.”
“Am I supposed to say I’m sorry?” he says. “What, he broke up with you because I punched him? Because I beat up Gorya? And you’re broken-hearted and it’s my fault?”
She stands up, and Logan realizes she is wearing his sweatpants and they are completely absurd on her tiny frame. She drops them to the floor and kicks them off angrily, unconcerned about modesty. “Yes, Logan. Yes, my heart IS broken, and yes, it’s YOUR fault, but it’s not about Piz!” She rummages around on the floor, trying to find her jeans.
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me, Veronica. I don’t understand why you don’t understand why I don’t want to be around you right now - why you won’t give me some space to get over you. To get over us!”
“What if I said I don’t WANT you to get over me. I don’t want you to get over us!” she barks.
“What, you want me to just wallow in this unbearable pain for the foreseeable future? God, you are a sadist!” he snaps.
“Stop being an asshole and listen to me! I want to BE WITH YOU. I don’t want to be apart from you!”
“You have a funny way of expressing that. Ignoring me completely since you’ve been home?” he says as her turns to stare at her, confusion clear on his face.
“YOU’VE BEEN IGNORING ME!” she yells. “Why didn’t you answer my text?”
“What text?” he says. “You never sent me any text!”
“I DID! Just before I left D.C. Look!” she says, grabbing her phone from the pocket of her jeans that she has just pulled off the floor, and scrolling through various texts, sent and received. She holds the phone in front of his eyes - a message to his phone number that reads,
LEAVING D.C. NOW. HOME 2NIGHT. DO U WANT 2 TALK? WANT 2 C U. VLM
Logan grabs his phone and starts scrolling through messages. There are none from Veronica. He picks up her phone and stares incredulous, at the message, now four weeks old, that would have meant the world to him.
“It’s not on my phone. I don’t understand. Where did you send this from?” he asks.
“The airport. I sent it right before I got on the plane. I was hoping…you would want to talk to me. When you didn’t call…I thought you didn’t want to see me,” she says quietly.
He sighs heavily. “I wanted to see you, Veronica. I wanted to see you and talk to you more than anything. When you called me the day before you left, and you said you needed to concentrate on your internship but you wanted to talk when you got home…I thought…when I didn’t hear from you…I thought you had changed your mind about…about everything.”
“I didn’t change my mind, Logan. I’m really angry right now,” she pauses, “but I didn’t change my mind. I don’t want you to hate me because you think I don’t love you. “
“What do you want, then?” he asks. She is standing next to his bed, still wearing only her sweatshirt and plain white underpants, holding her jeans in her hand.
“I want you to love me because I love you, too,” she says, finally.
He makes a choking sound and walks abruptly from the room and Veronica is crushed.
He closes the door to the bathroom and Veronica puts her pants on, and locates her socks in the detria on the floor. She chokes back tears, trying to find her keys, trying to get out of the apartment as fast as she can.
She is almost to the front door when he comes out of the bathroom, calling after her. “Veronica, where are you going?”
She can taste the tears at the back of her throat and she cannot answer him without a deluge starting, so she just opens the door.
He grabs her arm and spins her around. He pulls her to his chest and crushes her against him. “I love you, Veronica. I…”
“Why did you walk away from me when I said it?” she asks, burying her head against his shoulder, no longer trying to keep the tears at bay. “It’s so hard for me to say, and you walked away…”
“I’ve waited so long…I’ve waited so long for you to say that to me, and you said it and my face was covered with dried blood and I hadn’t brushed my teeth and I felt like something died in my mouth. I needed a minute to…well, I needed a minute. And I wanted to kiss you, but not…I needed a minute,” he says.
He leans down and kisses her now, and she can taste the toothpaste and mouthwash on his breath, though she can still smell the whiskey seeping from his pores. His kiss is tender and she melts into it, into him.
For the first time in four weeks they both feel better. There are still lots of jagged edges to their respective broken hearts, but they both feel hopeful. And hopeful was a good place to start again.
“Can we pretend the last four weeks didn’t happen?” he asked, as he strokes his hand up and down her back.
She looks up at him, wide-eyed. “Hi” she says. “I’m home. I missed you.”
“I missed you, too, Veronica. So very much.”
******END******
A/N: I listened to the John Gorka song "Armed With a Broken Heart" over and over again while I wrote this. The line "Please just let me hate you now" is taken directly from the lyrics. This is meant only as a tribute to Gorka's song-writing abilities.
A/N 2: The bit about the missed text is lifted directly from my life. I recently had a huge blow out with my younger sister because I sent her a very important text and she never answered, and I spent 3 weeks stewing about it, and when I finally saw her at our parents house for our grandmother's birthday I was very accusatory, and she was completely confused. We went through both our phones, and you can clearly see where I sent the text, but it does not show up on her phone. The day I sent the text, she was flying home from Los Angeles (she is an engineer who has to travel a lot for business.) We think maybe the fact that she was traveling caused the message to bounce away into the ether. Anyway, hence the motivation for the undelivered text message that ruined a month of Logan and Veronica's lives.