Fanfic: Like Oxygen, But Less Corrosive.
Title: Like Oxygen, But Less Corrosive.
Rating: PG, for mild cursing.
Fandom: Veronica Mars.
Synopsis: Logan and Veronica are friends. This wasn’t easy to achieve, and Mac has some commentary on the situation. Written for Devil Piglet, in the Friendship Ficathon.
***
Things that are easy, at least subjectively: becoming enemies when the girl you both loved more than oxygen (which is, scientifically speaking, a corrosive chemical that inevitably kills everything it touches, and maybe there’s a reason so many lousy songwriters compare love to the air we breathe, because love does something pretty similar) goes and dies on you. You let down your people, Evita. You were supposed to have been immortal. That’s all they wanted, not much to ask for, but in the end you could not deliver...
Maybe that’s an unfair comparison. Eva Perron probably had more shoes than Lilly Kane did, just by dint of having a whole country for her closet. But unfair comparison or not, the fact remains that it was easy for Veronica and Logan to be enemies, because the loss of Lilly changed things so much, for both of them, that they couldn’t even see that they were bleeding from the same scars.
Things that are less easy: realizing that maybe the fact that it was so easy to become enemies has something to do with the way Veronica’s hair goes whiskey-blonde when the light hits it right, just like Lilly’s did (and I’ve seen pictures, I know). Realizing that maybe there was always the vague expectation that when Lilly finally threw Logan away for good, like last year’s hot new thing, he’d be there to be picked up fair and square, just like all the other hand-me-downs. Realizing that when you put all these things together, one on top of the other, it doesn’t spell anything in the neighborhood of ‘hate’. Not unless you really do live in a town where ‘love’ and ‘hate’ are kinky kissing cousins.
Things that are really, really, really hard, especially if you happen to be Veronica ‘stubborn is my middle name’ Mars or Logan ‘behold the power of snark’ Echolls, king and queen of the Neptune antisocial scene: making it past the hate, which is a big, strong, scary emotion, and making it past the love, which is an even bigger, stronger, scarier emotion, and striking out into the neighborhood of ‘actually being friends who have things in common beyond a corpse, a mutual desire to be smarter than the entire world, and the desire to explore all the erotic options possible in the back seat of a safety yellow SUV’.
And those things have big back seats, too.
My name is Mac. Well. No, my name isn’t Mac, but since Mac is better than any of the other nomenclative options open to me just now, it’ll do. My name is Mac; this is a story about people who are friends, even if they got there in the wrong order.
That’s all.
*
The friendship of Veronica Mars and Logan Echolls could almost be described as a Zen koan. ‘First there was a mountain, then there was no mountain, then there was a mountain’. Only in this case, first there was a hesitant friendship, then there was a whole lot of making out, and a murder trial, and a reunion with an old boyfriend, and some messy illicit statutory rape sex, and a whole lot of bad shit, then there was a hesitant friendship. Coupled with more making out, since at least that was comfortable, and familiar, and didn’t involve as much risk of saying the wrong thing.
They’d managed to maintain the friendship -- and the making out -- for the better part of the summer, which was practically a record, for the two of them. Now, the summer was drifting lazily to a close, having exhausted the possibilities of June and July, and used up the better part of August’s splendors, and the two of them were sitting on a bench overlooking the water, her hand folded loosely into his, like a love-note tucked into a locker, and it seemed like there was nothing left to say.
Finally, glancing at him out of the corners of her eyes, Veronica said, “I need to go and pick up my books tomorrow.” There it was, out in the open: school was about to start. Not just school, college, and that meant that once again, everything was going to change.
‘Everything is going to change’. There’s a phrase she’d heard often enough to make her flinch every time someone used it. Everything changed in high school, yeah; she lost her best friend, lost her mother, lost her fairy-tale dreams of what life was going to be, and found that she was a lot more Chandler than Cinderella. Smoking guns and double-dealing dames seemed like a poor exchange for glass slippers and talking mice, but it wasn’t exactly like she’d had the chance to vote. And then, just when she was getting accustomed to the status quo, everything changed again. The villain turned out to be Prince...okay, not Prince Charming, but definitely Prince Not-Entirely-Bad. One of the footmen turned out to be the villain. It was enough to make a girl’s head spin.
The big news wasn’t that everything was going to change. Everything changed all the goddamn time. The big news would be if something was going to stay the same.
“I’ll drive you, if you want,” said Logan, meeting her sidelong glance with one of his own. Then: “College boys, cute blonde looking for knowledge...I’ve seen those ‘Girls Gone Wild’ videos. I know their type.”
“Given that you’ll be starting college at the same time as most of them, I think you technically are their type,” said Veronica, unable to conceal her amusement.
“All the more reason to go with you.”
“It takes a thief to catch a thief?”
“I was thinking more ‘punching is fun, and they’ve met you, so they’ll be expecting the taser’, but something like that.”
“Hmmm.” Veronica smiled, turning her face back towards the utter cliche of the slowly setting sun. Logan squeezed her fingers, and her smile widened. “I think that could be acceptable. But if you’re doing all the punching, how am I supposed to have any fun?”
“There could be girls.”
“Girls.”
“Thinking lustful thoughts about my pursuit of knowledge.”
“Girls, thinking lustful thoughts about you. And my role in this fantasy, would it involve whipped cream? Handcuffs? Operation of the video camera?”
“I was thinking punching.”
“Punching. Them or me?”
“If I get to do all the punching of the cro magnon males, you get to punch the cro magnon females. It’s affirmative action with knuckles.”
“Hmmm. Can we sign up for the no-punching bookstore tour, do you think?”
Logan squeezed her fingers again. Veronica squeezed back. “I think it can be arranged.”
*
Yeah. So cute you could barf, isn’t it? If life were a sitcom, they’d totally be the background stages of some Nick and Nora married detective couple that fights crime and drinks cocktails (only in Veronica’s case, that’s maybe not the best idea, what with her mom and all, so maybe they drink coffee and energy drinks) and makes snide comments about the world and each other. And every season or two one of them would have an affair so that they could break up and get back together again with renewed dedication to making it work.
Come to think of it, that’s pretty much what they’re doing. So when the universe decides to cast this show, I want to be played by Linda Cardellini, okay?
*
At the bookstore, Logan’s threatened legions of the unevolved were nowhere to be seen. Instead, there was a succession of picked-over shelves, most of them missing the essential texts for anything short of a major in underwater basket weaving, and a sadly denuded ballpoint pen display.
“Anything?” Logan asked, flipping through a pile of workbooks that purported to be Freshman Calculus, but were actually Latin IV.
“I found half of an American History 101 book,” Veronica said.
“Half?”
“Half.”
Logan paused, considering this, before he said, “Front or back?”
“Back. I can’t even use this to fake half the semester.” Veronica dropped the mutilated manuscript with a thump. “I foresee a lot of eye-strain and reliance on the kindness of strangers in my future. At least until the new shipment comes in.”
“Wear low-cut blouses and breathe in a lot,” Logan advised. “I expect that’ll help with the professors.”
Veronica eyed him. “You think this will work?”
“It works on me.”
She threw the history book at him.
*
I’m not actually in this story, so you know. It just seemed to need a narrator -- someone who isn’t a part of it, who can take notes, because I know how this goes. Someday soon, one of them is going to do something. It’s in their natures, they can’t help it; they get too happy, and they freak, like they figure the ghost of Lilly Kane is behind them looking disapproving or something. I didn’t like her when she was alive, and I don’t like her now that she’s dead, and she can shove her disapproval for all I care...but they both loved her, and to them, she still matters. So one day real soon now, one of them is going to slip, because they still feel like they’re betraying Lilly, and they can’t let that happen.
First comes the slip, and then comes the tumble, and then their entire happy house of cards comes falling down, because love is like oxygen: they’re corrosive, and you can’t build a strong foundation when there’s too much of them around. Veronica loves Logan, Logan loves Veronica, that’s fine, but they both love Lilly, too, and that knocks the strength right out of them. But here’s the thing -- are you paying attention? This is important.
Millions of years ago, there was practically no oxygen on Earth. It was so rare it was crazy. So plants starting producing it by the bucketful, partially to stop animals from eating them. And they made more and more oxygen, and a lot of animals died. Foundations fell out from under entire species. And then, one day, it stopped happening. The animals that were still around were the ones that were at least a little bit immune to oxygen. The ones who needed it to survive.
That’s happening here, too. He loves her, she loves him, they love Lilly, they fall down...and then they pick themselves up again, and they love each other, and they love Lilly a little less. They’re evolving. They’re finally friends. That’s a good thing, because their love is like oxygen, but less corrosive.
They need it to survive.
Rating: PG, for mild cursing.
Fandom: Veronica Mars.
Synopsis: Logan and Veronica are friends. This wasn’t easy to achieve, and Mac has some commentary on the situation. Written for Devil Piglet, in the Friendship Ficathon.
***
Things that are easy, at least subjectively: becoming enemies when the girl you both loved more than oxygen (which is, scientifically speaking, a corrosive chemical that inevitably kills everything it touches, and maybe there’s a reason so many lousy songwriters compare love to the air we breathe, because love does something pretty similar) goes and dies on you. You let down your people, Evita. You were supposed to have been immortal. That’s all they wanted, not much to ask for, but in the end you could not deliver...
Maybe that’s an unfair comparison. Eva Perron probably had more shoes than Lilly Kane did, just by dint of having a whole country for her closet. But unfair comparison or not, the fact remains that it was easy for Veronica and Logan to be enemies, because the loss of Lilly changed things so much, for both of them, that they couldn’t even see that they were bleeding from the same scars.
Things that are less easy: realizing that maybe the fact that it was so easy to become enemies has something to do with the way Veronica’s hair goes whiskey-blonde when the light hits it right, just like Lilly’s did (and I’ve seen pictures, I know). Realizing that maybe there was always the vague expectation that when Lilly finally threw Logan away for good, like last year’s hot new thing, he’d be there to be picked up fair and square, just like all the other hand-me-downs. Realizing that when you put all these things together, one on top of the other, it doesn’t spell anything in the neighborhood of ‘hate’. Not unless you really do live in a town where ‘love’ and ‘hate’ are kinky kissing cousins.
Things that are really, really, really hard, especially if you happen to be Veronica ‘stubborn is my middle name’ Mars or Logan ‘behold the power of snark’ Echolls, king and queen of the Neptune antisocial scene: making it past the hate, which is a big, strong, scary emotion, and making it past the love, which is an even bigger, stronger, scarier emotion, and striking out into the neighborhood of ‘actually being friends who have things in common beyond a corpse, a mutual desire to be smarter than the entire world, and the desire to explore all the erotic options possible in the back seat of a safety yellow SUV’.
And those things have big back seats, too.
My name is Mac. Well. No, my name isn’t Mac, but since Mac is better than any of the other nomenclative options open to me just now, it’ll do. My name is Mac; this is a story about people who are friends, even if they got there in the wrong order.
That’s all.
*
The friendship of Veronica Mars and Logan Echolls could almost be described as a Zen koan. ‘First there was a mountain, then there was no mountain, then there was a mountain’. Only in this case, first there was a hesitant friendship, then there was a whole lot of making out, and a murder trial, and a reunion with an old boyfriend, and some messy illicit statutory rape sex, and a whole lot of bad shit, then there was a hesitant friendship. Coupled with more making out, since at least that was comfortable, and familiar, and didn’t involve as much risk of saying the wrong thing.
They’d managed to maintain the friendship -- and the making out -- for the better part of the summer, which was practically a record, for the two of them. Now, the summer was drifting lazily to a close, having exhausted the possibilities of June and July, and used up the better part of August’s splendors, and the two of them were sitting on a bench overlooking the water, her hand folded loosely into his, like a love-note tucked into a locker, and it seemed like there was nothing left to say.
Finally, glancing at him out of the corners of her eyes, Veronica said, “I need to go and pick up my books tomorrow.” There it was, out in the open: school was about to start. Not just school, college, and that meant that once again, everything was going to change.
‘Everything is going to change’. There’s a phrase she’d heard often enough to make her flinch every time someone used it. Everything changed in high school, yeah; she lost her best friend, lost her mother, lost her fairy-tale dreams of what life was going to be, and found that she was a lot more Chandler than Cinderella. Smoking guns and double-dealing dames seemed like a poor exchange for glass slippers and talking mice, but it wasn’t exactly like she’d had the chance to vote. And then, just when she was getting accustomed to the status quo, everything changed again. The villain turned out to be Prince...okay, not Prince Charming, but definitely Prince Not-Entirely-Bad. One of the footmen turned out to be the villain. It was enough to make a girl’s head spin.
The big news wasn’t that everything was going to change. Everything changed all the goddamn time. The big news would be if something was going to stay the same.
“I’ll drive you, if you want,” said Logan, meeting her sidelong glance with one of his own. Then: “College boys, cute blonde looking for knowledge...I’ve seen those ‘Girls Gone Wild’ videos. I know their type.”
“Given that you’ll be starting college at the same time as most of them, I think you technically are their type,” said Veronica, unable to conceal her amusement.
“All the more reason to go with you.”
“It takes a thief to catch a thief?”
“I was thinking more ‘punching is fun, and they’ve met you, so they’ll be expecting the taser’, but something like that.”
“Hmmm.” Veronica smiled, turning her face back towards the utter cliche of the slowly setting sun. Logan squeezed her fingers, and her smile widened. “I think that could be acceptable. But if you’re doing all the punching, how am I supposed to have any fun?”
“There could be girls.”
“Girls.”
“Thinking lustful thoughts about my pursuit of knowledge.”
“Girls, thinking lustful thoughts about you. And my role in this fantasy, would it involve whipped cream? Handcuffs? Operation of the video camera?”
“I was thinking punching.”
“Punching. Them or me?”
“If I get to do all the punching of the cro magnon males, you get to punch the cro magnon females. It’s affirmative action with knuckles.”
“Hmmm. Can we sign up for the no-punching bookstore tour, do you think?”
Logan squeezed her fingers again. Veronica squeezed back. “I think it can be arranged.”
*
Yeah. So cute you could barf, isn’t it? If life were a sitcom, they’d totally be the background stages of some Nick and Nora married detective couple that fights crime and drinks cocktails (only in Veronica’s case, that’s maybe not the best idea, what with her mom and all, so maybe they drink coffee and energy drinks) and makes snide comments about the world and each other. And every season or two one of them would have an affair so that they could break up and get back together again with renewed dedication to making it work.
Come to think of it, that’s pretty much what they’re doing. So when the universe decides to cast this show, I want to be played by Linda Cardellini, okay?
*
At the bookstore, Logan’s threatened legions of the unevolved were nowhere to be seen. Instead, there was a succession of picked-over shelves, most of them missing the essential texts for anything short of a major in underwater basket weaving, and a sadly denuded ballpoint pen display.
“Anything?” Logan asked, flipping through a pile of workbooks that purported to be Freshman Calculus, but were actually Latin IV.
“I found half of an American History 101 book,” Veronica said.
“Half?”
“Half.”
Logan paused, considering this, before he said, “Front or back?”
“Back. I can’t even use this to fake half the semester.” Veronica dropped the mutilated manuscript with a thump. “I foresee a lot of eye-strain and reliance on the kindness of strangers in my future. At least until the new shipment comes in.”
“Wear low-cut blouses and breathe in a lot,” Logan advised. “I expect that’ll help with the professors.”
Veronica eyed him. “You think this will work?”
“It works on me.”
She threw the history book at him.
*
I’m not actually in this story, so you know. It just seemed to need a narrator -- someone who isn’t a part of it, who can take notes, because I know how this goes. Someday soon, one of them is going to do something. It’s in their natures, they can’t help it; they get too happy, and they freak, like they figure the ghost of Lilly Kane is behind them looking disapproving or something. I didn’t like her when she was alive, and I don’t like her now that she’s dead, and she can shove her disapproval for all I care...but they both loved her, and to them, she still matters. So one day real soon now, one of them is going to slip, because they still feel like they’re betraying Lilly, and they can’t let that happen.
First comes the slip, and then comes the tumble, and then their entire happy house of cards comes falling down, because love is like oxygen: they’re corrosive, and you can’t build a strong foundation when there’s too much of them around. Veronica loves Logan, Logan loves Veronica, that’s fine, but they both love Lilly, too, and that knocks the strength right out of them. But here’s the thing -- are you paying attention? This is important.
Millions of years ago, there was practically no oxygen on Earth. It was so rare it was crazy. So plants starting producing it by the bucketful, partially to stop animals from eating them. And they made more and more oxygen, and a lot of animals died. Foundations fell out from under entire species. And then, one day, it stopped happening. The animals that were still around were the ones that were at least a little bit immune to oxygen. The ones who needed it to survive.
That’s happening here, too. He loves her, she loves him, they love Lilly, they fall down...and then they pick themselves up again, and they love each other, and they love Lilly a little less. They’re evolving. They’re finally friends. That’s a good thing, because their love is like oxygen, but less corrosive.
They need it to survive.