Weevil rolled down the window of his uncle's truck, trying to get some air in the damn thing. He felt like he always did whenever he was driving a car instead of his bike—trapped, confined, and claustrophobic.
There was nothing like the freedom of a motorcycle; the rush of the air in his ears; the rumble of the engine reverberating from the handle bars up through his arms and into his very blood; the heat of the exhaust against his leg. All these things were so much a part of him that it felt wrong somehow to be driving this piece of shit clunker around. But his cousin had bailed again—no surprise there—and Weevil was headed to pick up his grandmother from work at the Echolls' mansion.
He sighed, drumming his fingers impatiently on the window frame as he waited at a red light. Weevil hated going to the Echolls' house. He hated that his grandmother worked for that fucking prick's family. He hated that Logan would never let him forget it. He hated that it gave Logan something to hang over his head. That if the fancy struck him, Logan could snap his fingers and daddy dearest would probably fire his grandma without a second thought. And that would be that. Weevil wouldn't put it past Logan to be that petty and cruel.
Of all the 09er douche bags inhabiting Neptune High, none of them could hold a candle to Logan Echolls. He was the worst kind of rich kid; born with a silver spoon in his mouth that he wasn't ashamed to flash around and wield like a weapon against the have-nots.
He was a selfish, entitled, ass and—like most 09ers—seemed to have everything going for him anyways. He had the looks, and despite his attitude with teachers still managed to score the grades. He had the newest gadgets, the most expensive cars, and despite his propensity for the love em' and leave em' approach to girls, they were always lined up around the corner, drooling over him. Just waiting their turn to get fucked and then fucked over by Logan Echolls. Nothing pissed Weevil off as much as Logan did just by breathing.
Logan. Fucking. Echolls.
If Weevil were to be truly honest with himself about his feelings—which he made a point of never doing—he might admit that his hatred of the guy probably had more to do with Lilly then it did anything else. But Weevil was not one to dwell on his feelings if he could help it. There would be no sharing and caring or wallowing in his grief over a pint of Ben & Jerry's. Instead, Weevil chose to channel all of his rage and sorrow over Lilly's death into the hatred of one Logan Echolls. And occasionally drowning his pain in a fifth of whiskey, then picking a fight with the closest thing that could through a punch in return.
Deep down, Weevil had always known that he and Lilly were from two different worlds. Part of him had realized from the very beginning that Lilly was probably using him, that she was only with him to piss someone—most likely Logan—off. But it didn't matter. He couldn't have stopped himself from falling in love with her even if he had tried.
There was something about her; an energy. A carefree, sexy, fun loving, free spirit that was irresistible. It drew him in, gripped his heart tight and refused to let go. But she was never truly his. No matter what he did, she would always go back to Logan in the end.
Weevil gripped the steering wheel tighter as thoughts of Lilly rushed unbidden into his mind. He clenched his jaw and pushed the thoughts away. Shoved them to the back of his mind where he buried them as deep as he could and tried to pretend they didn't exist.
Instead, he thought of the look on Logan's face earlier that day when the bong had been discovered in his locker. This brought a smile to Weevil's face. Even though he knew the prick would get off easy with the authorities, it was still satisfying to know that Logan had been forced to spend the afternoon down at the station enduring the insufferable idiocy of Sherriff Lamb which, Weevil knew from personal experience, could be punishment enough.
Weevil was just grateful that someone had knocked that cocky grin of Logan's face, if only temporarily. Someday, that asshole would get what was coming to him, and if there truly was a Santa Clause, Weevil would get to be the one to administer the justice. This thought too brought a smile to his face.
The brakes on the truck screeched in protest as Weevil pulled to a stop next to the intercom in front of the gate to the Echolls' mansion as if announcing to the world—of at least the few die hard paparazzi stationed around the fence—that he didn't belong here. The truck stood out grotesquely against the perfection the Echolls' pristinely manicured grounds; a giant rusty, dirty blemish in the middle of the otherwise flawless surroundings. Weevil never felt more exposed then he did when setting foot in that world, the word of the rich and entitled, and he couldn't wait to get the fuck out of there.
He leaned out the window and pressed the intercom.
"Name and business?" a crisp, cold voice demanded through the speaker.
"Eli Navarro, I'm here to pick up my grandmother."
There was a slight pause as whoever was on the other end of the intercom verified this information, then a buzz sounded and the gate swung slowly open. Weevil pulled into the driveway. He was already feeling on edge. His senses were on overdrive as if they were expecting an attack at any moment. God, he fucking hated this place. Weevil cut the engine and waited to see his grandma coming towards him from the side of the house as usual.
Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen. By the time it hit twenty, Weevil was ready to crawl out of his skin.
Fuck it. He thought to himself, and turned the keys in the ignition, bringing the engine roaring to life and getting ready to back out. But then he thought of his grandmother coming out to find the driveway empty, making the long walk home alone, wondering what had happened to him.
"Fuck," he said aloud, twisting the keys and wrenching them from the ignition with more force then was strictly necessary. He beat his fingers on the steering wheel for a few seconds before pushing the door open and going to investigate.
What's the worst Echolls could do anyway, kick him off the property? That was fine with Weevil.
Weevil walked around the house to the side door that he knew his grandmother always used to enter and exit. He hesitated, almost turning back, shrugged and gave the door a slight push. It opened easily. Huh. Weevil stepped inside and looked around.
He had never been inside the Echolls house before, but it was pretty much what he had expected. As he walked around he could see that most of the walls were hung with various movie posters featuring Aaron Echolls in all his movie star splendor. There were a few framed pictures of Aaron posed with different co-stars and directors, and one lone family portrait.
It featured Logan at about age ten, looking sulky and defiant. There was a girl in the picture a few years older, who Weevil vaguely recognized as Logan's sister, hanging on Aaron's arm with a smug looking smile plastered self-importantly on her face. Logan's mother was the perfect picture of a trophy wife, a statue of poise, smiling serenely for the camera like a pro. The whole picture was centered around Aaron; his chiseled features arranged into a million dollar smile, as if presenting the world that he was the perfect father to a perfect fucking apple pie family.
Weevil turned away from the picture with disgust. Family portraits were not a part of his world, nor did he really want any part in them. Everything about this fucking family made his skin crawl. He just wanted to get his grandma and leave this glittery gaudy monstrosity of a house in his rearview mirror.
As he made his way down a hallway Weevil heard the muffled sound of voices ahead. Curious, Weevil stopped in his tracks to listen. It could be his grandmother, but he quickly dismissed this thought as he identified the voices as male. Weevil knew he should retreat the way he came and continue looking for his grandma, but he couldn't stop himself from lingering.
"Are you proud of yourself Logan?" Came the unmistakable voice of Aaron Echolls, dripping with a dangerous sickly sweet sarcasm. It was a tone Weevil had never heard before, from the man before in any of his films or countless interviews; deceivingly calm but concealing a deadly edge.
"Well, are you, son?" The edge in his voice was no longer hidden. Instead, expertly sharpened and intended to cut like a knife.
"Dad, please." Logan's voice sounded strange to Weevil as he replied. Not the acerbic taunting tone he was used to. It was strangely dull, muted, resigned.
The phrase was not really an answer to his father's question.
It wasn't an affirmation or a denial. Not a request, or the beginning of an excuse, or even a plea for mercy.
It was just two words strung together. No real meaning behind them.
Just two words hanging in the air, used to fill the silence; Cold and bracing, a reconciled acceptance of whatever was to come. Was this the same Logan Echolls who never failed to spit back a biting insult or witty reply?
Weevil caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and turned his head instinctively, it was just a reflection in a large mirror hanging in the wall of the hallway. Weevil realized that what he had seen was the movement of Aaron reaching for his son. The angle of the mirror was just such that Weevil could make out the shapes of Logan and his father in it, but neither of them were able to see Weevil. Nor would they probably notice him even if they could, as they were both currently preoccupied with their confrontation. Weevil could see that Aaron had taken hold of the back of Logan's neck in a vise like grip.
"Do you think this is how I planned on spending my afternoon Logan? Driving all the way to the station to pick up my degenerate son? Do you think this is a good use of my valuable time?"
Logan gave no reply, just stared at the floor and ran a slightly shaky hand through his hair.
"Well, son?" Aaron intoned. His words were slow, deliberate, drawn out in a calculatingly ominous way. It was almost theatrical. With no warning, he shook Logan violently. This only elicited a half hearted shrug from his son. Zeroing in, Aaron increased the pressure of his hold on Logan's neck.
"But this must have been how you wanted to spend your afternoon. You must have wanted to get caught, or you never would have made such a rookie mistake. Your locker Logan? Or are you really that stupid?"
No reply.
"The least you could do is keep your recreational drug habits private. Is that too much to ask?"
There was a pause in which Logan, yet again, did nothing. Weevil began to realize that this was Logan defying his father in the only way he could; refusing to give the man the satisfaction of a fight. A fight Aaron clearly wanted.
Aaron's mouth twisted into a cruel smile then, "Well, you certainly are your mother's son."
Logan's eye's flashed, and Aaron's smile grew broader as he realized he'd found the right tactic.
"If you really want to start a drug habit son, narcotics seem the way to go. I'm sure your mother wouldn't mind sharing. A pill for every day of the week, that woman."
Logan's jaw was slowly clenching and unclenching, his eyes a dangerous stormy color that Weevil had never seen them. He was clearly fighting to stay in control of himself. Fighting against his urge to give into what his father wanted from him.
"Although, with a fuck up like you for a son who could blame her?"
Logan remained still; silent; a statue. His eyes focused resolutely on the carpet.
Aaron removed his hand from the back of Logan's neck, sliding it down and squeezing the outside of his shoulder in a gesture that could have been almost fatherly if there wasn't so much malice behind the movement.
"Can't say that I don't wish I could forget about you too most days." Aaron continued musingly.
"It must be nice for her to just tune out. Of course it does get old you know…" And Aaron made a face, all fake concern and an empty pretence of regret.
Aaron turned his head toward Logan, leaning in to whisper his next words right into his son's ear, "I do get tired of fucking a corpse."
Logan's delicately held resolve shattered and with a look of anguished disgust he shoved his father off of him, hard.
"You're such a worthless piece of shit," he spit at his father, pure hatred resonating in every word.
The force of the shove caused his father to stumble a few steps back.
But Aaron just smiled; this was exactly what he'd wanted all along. Shaking his head Aaron made a "tsk, tsk" sound with his tong.
"Temper temper, my boy," Aaron chided, his eyes seeming to dance with some sick twisted excitement.
Eyes flashing with ager, Logan struggled to regain his former resolve to remain stony in the face of his father's torment. After a slight pause, Aaron cocked his head to the side in a movement that Weevil recognized with a sickening drop in his stomach as something Logan did all the time.
"So, what do you think your punishment should be for the trouble you caused me today? For the pain you caused our family this afternoon?"
Logan just stared daggers at his father, the distance that now stood between the two of them crackled with pent up energy; just waiting to be released. Aaron sighed overdramatically, taking on a tone of phony regret.
"Well son, you have a choice to make,"
As soon as the words were out of Aaron's mouth Logan's eyes darkened, clouding over with some sort of acknowledgment of defeat that Weevil didn't understand. There was obviously some significance to Aaron's words that Weevil could not see, but was clear to Logan. It was apparent that this exact sentence had been spoken countless times before, like a warped ritual to precede some perverse ceremony.
"Take your punishment now like a man, or she pays tonight."
The meaning behind these words hit Weevil like a steel pipe to the chest, shock reverberating through him. What the fuck? This was a whole new level of sick. What kind of pathetic, twisted man would offer up such an ultimatum to their own child?
But Logan did not look surprised at all; in fact he didn't really look like anything. It was as if he had completely shut down, his face slipping into a mask of indifferent resolve. His eyes were unreadable as he turned away from his father and methodically lifted his shirt over his head with an air of familiarity that indicated he had done this exact thing many times before.
Aaron pulled his belt off in one swift motion, the leather snapping threateningly as he did so. Weevil flinched as the first time leather connected with bare skin with a sickening crack. Logan did not. Aaron drew back and struck again. The sound was horrible; the hiss leather cutting ruthlessly through the air and biting into flesh with a relentless appetite. Again, and again, and again.
Aaron was unforgiving; throwing all of his strength into each swing. His face was a warped mask of fury. It was a deep seeded rage that clearly had little to do with the current situation and everything to do with the dark, bitter demons within himself.
Logan remained silent throughout the whole ordeal. Weevil could no longer see his face and if he was honest with himself, he wasn't sure he wanted to.
Aaron still hadn't stopped when the cracks of the belt had sounded too many times to count. Still hadn't stopped when there was scarcely a patch of skin not raised in an angry red welt. It was not until trickles of blood began running down Logan's back, like tiny rivers of crimson tears—signaling the surrender that Logan would never give voice to, that Aaron finally relented.
Aaron leaned back against the wall, he was out of breath. There was a fleeting moment where Weevil thought he saw a strange expression flash briefly across Aaron's face, something akin to a deep, tortured, regret. But it was gone as quickly as it had appeared, and Weevil wondered if he had even seen it at all.
Logan straitened up slowly, wordlessly picking up his shirt and pulling it back on. He eased it carefully over the raw flesh of his back. He stood for a moment facing the wall before he turned back toward his father. His face still firmly etched into a mask of indifference, whether it had stayed that way the whole time, even while he had been out of his father's sight, Weevil would never know. He didn't want to know. He didn't want to imagine other possible expressions that could have flittered across Logan's face in the last fifteen minutes.
Logan began to move toward the door past his father, when Aaron said,
"Car keys, Logan."
And Logan paused, fishing in his pocket for the requested item. He pulled them out and dropped them flippantly into his father's outstretched palm, his face still an indecipherable mask.
It was then, with a sudden jolt, that Weevil realized he had been standing in the hall for who knows how long, unable to look away from the horror in front of him—like someone witnessing a car crash. He quickly made his retreat before he could be found out.
Finding himself in the Echolls' kitchen, Weevil was trying to remember where exactly he had come in, when he heard footsteps behind him. Quickly, Weevil spun to face the sound. It was Logan.
Logan stopped dead in his tracks, eyes narrowing at the sight of Weevil. Then he cocked his head to the side ever so slightly, and it was jarring see this gesture from Logan knowing now where he had acquired the habit. Weevil wondered absently if Logan even realized he did it.
"Casing the joint, Weev?" Logan inquired in a clipped, mocking tone. "I would have expected a higher caliber of sleuthing skills from a hardened criminal such as yourself." He leaned forward conspiratorially, saying in a loud stage whisper "I think you're supposed to rob us when no one is home."
It was the same old Logan, which was just so—strange. To see him so easily slide into their usual snarky banter as if everything were normal after what Weevil had just witnessed was throwing Weevil for a loop.
Logan was standing casually, showing no indication that he was in any pain. It was as if he had just stepped inside from a nice relaxing swim in the pool, instead of being beaten bloody only moments before by his movie star father.
Weevil hadn't quite collected himself enough to reply with his usual rally of insults, and Logan raised an eyebrow at his lack of response.
"I'm sorry, silly me. I forget English isn't your first language," he said, smacking himself on the forehead.
"Let me rephrase," Logan took on the tone of a kindergarten teacher trying to explain the concept of finger paints to a particularly stupid five year old. "What the fuck. Are you doing. In my house?"
Nothing about his demeanor indicated that Logan suspected Weevil was in any way privy to what had just taken place with his father, so Weevil decided to go with it. Whether or not Logan actually did assume that he had seen or heard anything, Weevil would never know. He certainly wasn't about to be the one to bring it up.
"Logan, Logan, Logan," Weevil shook his head, "What makes you think I could possibly be casing your house? There really isn't anything here worth stealing. I'm not currently in the market for any ridiculous figurines or animal print throw pillows."
"You sure you don't want a signed movie poster? You could sell it on Ebay and feed your family for a month."
"Thanks for the offer Echolls, but you couldn't pay me enough to stare at those ugly posters for a second longer."
"Fair enough," Logan laughed bitterly, as if sharing a dark joke with himself. But Weevil could guess after what he'd just witnessed, that Logan probably felt even less like staring at those posters than he did. Weevil decided it was time to end this little pow-wow and the hell out of dodge.
"I'm looking for my grandmother," he said.
"Sorry Esse, my dad sent your Grams home early today," Logan's voice took on a mocking tone once again, "but be sure to tell her when you see her to keep up the super work. Takes a true expert the scrub toilets the way that lady does. She sure is the queen of the porcelain throne around here."
"I'll pass that along," Weevil ground out through his teeth, jaw clenched tightly. As always, he felt a flair of anger at Logan's casually thrown insults.
There was the sound of someone moving around down the hall, and Logan stiffened almost imperceptivity, revealing that he was not as relaxed as he was trying to seem.
"Time for you to show yourself out, Weev," Logan hissed, his tone not quite concealing the hint of desperation that he was clearly trying to play off as impatience.
"Oh come on, Echolls. I was thinking we could have a sleep over now that I'm here. You know, paint each other's nails, play Truth or Dare?"
Logan seemed to appreciate the familiar exchange of sardonic wit, and rose to the occasion as Weevil had known he would with a quip of his own.
"Ah, but Weevil, you've clearly forgotten to bring your princess pajamas and the Ouija Board. Maybe next time."
"Dang," Weevil snapped his fingers in exaggerated frustration, "I was really looking forward to some girl talk."
It was past time for Weevil to make his exit and, giving up on finding the side door again, he headed out the front.
"Call me!" Logan yelled after him; a flawless impression of a clingy girlfriend.
Weevil flipped him off behind his back as the door closed behind him, and he heard Logan laugh from the kitchen.
There was something comforting about the interaction with Logan. As if by witnessing for himself that Logan was still, well Logan, Weevil could walk be reassured that come Monday, nothing about the guy would have changed. Not that Weevil would admit to himself that he needed any reassurance when it came to the well being of Logan Echolls.
Back in the truck, Weevil's head was swimming as he pulled out of the driveway. What he had witnessed was just so fucked up. Weevil had experienced his fair share of beatings—both giving them and receiving them, but this was different.
There was something about the way Aaron clearly enjoyed it, enjoyed fucking with his son's mind, that chilled Weevil to the bone. It had been like watching a particularly sadistic cat, viciously toying with it's prey; taking some perverse pleasure in the game. Batting the mouse back and forth and dangling it by its tail. Just to watch it squirm.
It gave Weevil a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. His hatred for Logan still remained, but deep down Weevil knew he would never be able to look at him quite the same way again. He felt like he had somehow invaded Logan's privacy today, glimpsed something he was never meant to see, and he wished he'd never stepped foot in that house. And while Weevil made a point to avoid dwelling on Logan whenever possible, he couldn't help but see the guy in a slightly new light; a strange mixture of annoyance, pity, and grudging respect.
Annoyance, because this new information made Weevil feel uncertain, threw off the established balance of status quo. He could no longer go on blissfully hating the jackass, looking at Logan as simply another privileged 09er with a bad attitude. He had unwillingly and unwittingly uncovered something deep and dark about Logan's life that he would much rather not know.
Pity, because despite how much Weevil hated the guy—and now he wasn't sure if he even could hate him—he had to admit that Logan had suffered a lot. More than most people suffered in a lifetime. And regardless of how Weevil felt about him, no one deserved to be the victim of what he had witnessed this afternoon.
And respect.
Respect, because despite it all, Logan still had the balls to defy his father in any way he could.
Respect because it was clear that underneath his bold displays of douche-baggery and bravado, Logan was cracked and frayed and barely holding it together. But he was hiding it well.
Respect because, while he might be cracked—he was not broken. He would not let his father break him.
Respect because, from somewhere inside himself, Logan found the strength to get up every day, put on his mask, and live his life as if he couldn't give a fuck. It was more than Weevil could do some days.