The first night she bolts up of bed and dashes to the toilet just in time to be sick, Veronica assumes she's coming down with the flu, and as she's getting back into bed after brushing her teeth, thinks that this isn't an especially convenient time to be ill. Senior year starts in a couple of days, and she has work and plans with her newly reinstated boyfriend, Duncan, between now and then.
But by the next morning the bug seems to have passed, and so Veronica pulls a shift at Java the Hut, then goes to the beach with Duncan, who makes her laugh so hard she actually wishes she could freeze her life and live in that afternoon forever. The kiss goodnight on her door step in nice, too, even if it's a little too much like being fourteen again. Still, she was happy when she was fourteen, dating Duncan for the first time, and giggling with Lilly about how maybe one day they'd be sisters-in-law.
And okay, given all that's transpired, maybe Veronica doesn't actually want to linger on the idea of being Lilly Kane's sister, but that's a little besides the point, isn't it? Dating Duncan is like stepping back into the pre-murder version of herself and her life. After the year she's had, Veronica can appreciate that.
ooOoo
After Veronica breaks up with him, Logan kind of stops giving a shit about trolling around with Dick and Beaver and those other idiots, causing random mayhem and terrorizing biker kids. Instead, he spends a lot of time by the pool in his yard, getting wasted and contemplating the pool house where his father fucked his girlfriend before killing her over the sex tape of it. He thinks a lot about burning it to the ground, but can't seem to muster any enthusiasm for that sort of destruction.
It takes him three weeks and Dick dropping by to complain about never seeing him any more for the irony of the situation to occur to Logan.
ooOoo
The second night she finds herself retching into the toilet at two in the morning, Veronica wonders if maybe she's been dwelling too much on her best friend and her old life. After all, she doesn't especially want to be naive and peppy and so goddamn optimistic again, does she?
Her best friend was murdered after sleeping with her boyfriend's father, her dad was chased from office, her relationship with Logan Echolls did crash and burn when he decided he more wanted to get drunk and light things on fire then he wanted to be with her, she did spend most of a year thinking she'd been the victim of a rape only to discover that the perpetrator was her ex-boyfriend/potential half brother, who was drugged at the time... Veronica was pretty sure those things had to change a person. It would be pretty well indecent if she was the same girl she was before she ever saw Lilly Kane's bloody corpse.
This time, as she gets back into bed, Veronica resolves to forget about all the nostalgia crap and concentrate on what she and Duncan have now, not what they had when they were two bumbling kids who blushed when they held hands in public and were always sober to the very last round of 'never have I ever'.
She puts her new resolve into action eight hours later, when she and Duncan manage to ensconce themselves in his suite at the Neptune Grand. They're on the couch, because they'd been pretending that they'd come here to watch a movie, but by the second scene, they're attached at the lips and Duncan is starting to press Veronica down into the cushions.
Her heart is going so fast she thinks she may actually be on the verge of heart failure, which is totally a good thing, right? It speaks of passion and lust and... and this is what she wants, okay?
Except it doesn't really feel like good excitement, after all, more like the sudden-appearance-of-murderous-eyes-in-the-rear-view-mirror excitement. She suddenly remembers waking up at Shelly Pomroy's house, the panic she'd felt then. But that's stupid, because even though this is the same boy, it's not at all the same situation, and Duncan had explained and he'd been drugged and she didn't even remember that night, so it was impossible to be reminded of it and it wasn't like she hadn't done other stuff since then, so there was no reason to be freaking out just because Duncan had started to ease her shirt up her rib cage.
None of that changed the fact that when her cell phone rang, she all but shoved her boyfriend away and yanked her clothes back into place.
"Huh?" he asks, but Veronica didn't answer him, instead concentrating on slowing her breathing enough to take the call.
"Hello?" she says, only slightly breathlessly, "What? Wallace? Oh, sure. Yeah. Uh-huh... no, of course. I'll be there in ten, okay? Bye."
"You're leaving?" Duncan asks, sounding perplexed, though not actually annoyed, which Veronica is grateful for on several levels.
"Um, yeah, Wallace needs me for something," she tells him, "And if I don't return a favour for that kid every once in a while, I begin to feel like I've failed Barney and all his lessons on friendship."
Duncan nods, and the relief that she's feeling? Yeah, it's totally because her boyfriend isn't mad at her, and nothing else. "Okay, then. Call me later?"
"Sure," Veronica says, already on her way to the door. At least things with Duncan are easier in some ways.
Not to say that all things with him aren't easier, or that dating Logan had been anything less than the most complicated, confusing thing she'd ever done. Veronica was just glad –
You know what? Never mind.
ooOoo
After he hires a crew to knock down the pool house and put in a skate board ramps, it occurs to Logan that what might be even better than remaking the house in all the ways that would most annoy his father would be to sell it outright.
This idea strikes him as so brilliant that he needs to tell someone immediately, and so he's half way through dialling Veronica to tell her when it occurs to him that they broke up and maybe he's a little drunker then he'd realised. Switching gears, he dials Duncan, because if he recalls correctly, young master Kane is quite possibly the only person close to sharing Logan's level of disgust and hatred for his father.
"Hello?" asks a slightly breathless female voice, and, oh shit, he did end up calling Veronica, how's that for a Freudian drunk dial? "Anyone? Bueller?"
Logan is thinking of maybe saying something, since he's called her anyway, you understand, not because he's been missing her or anything, okay – except he's missed his chance and just before she hangs up, he hears her say. "Sorry, Duncan, but apparently they didn't want to talk to you after all."
So apparently he had the right number and somehow still managed to screw that up, so maybe he wasn't in the right frame of mind to sell his family home, then. And anyway, selling a house sounded like a lot of fucking work, and if he sold his house, where would he keep all his vodka?
ooOoo
The third night she wakes up, there isn't even that moment of confusion, Veronica just walks straight into the bathroom, throws up, brushes her teeth and goes back to bed. If there's a certain niggling suspicion that she refuses to let form in her brain, well it's not allowed to form, so who cares about it?
She has reached one inescapable conclusion, though; in the morning, she's going to have to break up with Duncan.
Of course, when she tells him that, he doesn't seem quite as resigned to it as she is. "I don't understand, Veronica," Duncan insists plaintively. "Things have been so good between us!"
"It's not that I haven't enjoyed spending time with you this summer," Veronica begins, and is frankly pretty relieved when Duncan interrupts. She's not entirely sure where she's been going with this.
"You say that like we're some sort of stupid summer fling!" he cries out, kind of making Veronica regret choosing to have this conversation at Java the Hut. "After all this time –"
All this time? She wonders if by that he means 'the month of August', because that's as long as they've been doing this whole let's-be-a-couple thing. Actually, it hasn't been a whole month, even, because she didn't actually kiss him until her birthday on the 5th. So by 'after all this time' what Duncan is saying is 'after slightly over three weeks', and really, what exactly do you owe someone you've been dating for three weeks?
"Look, Duncan, I'm really sorry," Veronica tells him, "But dating you is starting to feel like an attempt to go back in time to before Lilly and everything else, and that's not fair to you."
"Really?" he retorts, "Because to me if feels like things going back to the way they were supposed to be!"
"Oh, Duncan, does it really feel that way?" Veronica asks him sadly, "Because it's not the same as it was before... and I don't think it ever can be."
ooOoo
August is good to Logan Echolls.
You know, as long as you define 'good' as hearing that his father was assaulted in prison and was sent to the infirmary, and the official papers coming through to declare him an emancipated minor.
Because other than that, and hearing Dick confirm that Duncan and Veronica were blissfully déjà vu'ing it up together, Logan doesn't actually remember a whole heck of a lot of what went on in that final month before his senior year of high school.
ooOoo
The forth night in a row, Veronica just wonders if she can possibly parlay all this puking into skipping the first day back at school tomorrow.
Maybe if she stays in bed all day today...
But she has to work, so she gets up again when her alarm goes off, and, ignoring the three voice mail messages awaiting her on her cell, gets dressed. God, she hopes Duncan will stay away from Java the Hut today, despite his previous claim to haunt the place whether or not she's around.
She's fairly certain he will, but that doesn't stop Veronica from flinching every time someone walks in, including the time when the basketball player walks in to ask her to figure out why he failed his drug test. She toys briefly of the idea of agreeing to help him – even a stupid case might be a nice distraction – before regretfully deciding that no, she really does have bigger things to worry about, things she will have to stop ignoring pretty soon.
Right now though, having gone an entire shift at the coffee shop without seeing her most recent ex, Veronica decides to celebrate that by going home and having a nice, long nap.
ooOoo
"Fuck that," Logan tells his lawyer succinctly when the man informs him that he is still expected to finish high school, regardless of his emancipation.
"If you don't prove to the courts that you're mature enough to be responsible for yourself, then they will appoint a guardian," the man in the business suit says, not bothering to sound like he has much faith that Logan is up to the task. And okay, maybe he did have to come all the way out to the Echolls mansion himself in order to get Logan to talk to him, but what of it? It's been a tough summer and at least his father had good taste in pools. "Of course, since you're nearly eighteen, we may be able to convince them, best case scenario, that your sister Trina is a suitable candidate for the role."
Well, what do you know? Apparently there are alternatives worse than going back to Neptune High.
"God, there better be one of those stupid first day of school, ease out of summer field trips tomorrow," he snaps, throwing an empty rum bottle in the pool in lieu of shoving the lawyer in.
ooOoo
The fifth night, Veronica decides that this is all probably psychosomatic and the only reason she's still tossing her cookies every night at two a.m. is because somewhere along the line, that suspicion she wasn't allowing to form took root and is now manifesting the evidence of its own existence to punish her for ignoring it. The fact that this seems like a reasonable explanation to her convinces Veronica that she's better off going back to sleep then worrying right now because she does have school in the morning and she's pretty sure there will be no avoiding Duncan outright there.
Come morning, she's reasonably happy to discover she's wrong when she doesn't so much as glimpse her ex-boyfriend in class or at lunch, and instead ends up agreeing to help Wallace with the same case she'd sent yesterday's dumb jock packing with. Breaking into Clemmons office, searching down phony drug test results, none of this brings her within sight of the person she most wants to avoid.
This goes to hell, of course, during fourth period, when she goes to get on the bus for the field trip to tour Shark field, and she and Duncan manage to walk up to the bus at the same precise moment.
And as if that isn't awkward enough, Veronica hears a sneering voice from behind her that tells her that her other ex-boyfriend has joined the party. "Ah," he taunts, "Young love."
"Shut up," snarls Duncan, while all Veronica can do is avert her gaze to stop anyone from seeing the stupid tears that have stupidly started to form in her stupid eyes.
"What's this?" Logan asks, something biting in his tone which probably doesn't match the expression in his eyes, were Veronica capable of checking such things. "Trouble in paradise already?"
"We broke up," Duncan snaps, and in a move that Veronica can understand if not appreciate, gets on the bus, leaving her standing there, staring at the asphalt three feet in front of Logan Echolls.
"Well, look at you, Mars, getting your Maneater on, leaving a string of broken 09'er hearts in your wake," he snarks, "I'll have to warn Dick and the others about you, and how you get off on dumping rich dudes."
Veronica can't handle it, not on top of everything else she's got to deal with and so, not looking at him once, she turns around and goes back into the school, because her alternatives are kind of limited by Duncan being on the bus and Logan being between her and her car.
ooOoo
Well, apparently Logan had wasted his time preloading snide comments about Veronica and Duncan's blissful union. Fortunately for him, there wasn't a whole lot else he needed to have done with his last two weeks, or maybe he'd be a little more put out about now.
It is weird, though, that the dynamic duo fell apart so quickly; Logan may actually have to talk to Dick about Veronica, less as a warning and more to find out the details he may have missed while stewing in anger and martinis by the pool. That is if Veronica herself didn't shed some light whenever she got around to responding to him.
Except the girl who hasn't so much as glanced at him this whole time has now started to walk away. And there must be something extremely wrong in Veronica land because she is not a girl who walks away without comment. Even in her pre-private detective days she might have been an innocent but she was never exactly shy; for Christ's sake, she even gave him a verbal smack down at Lilly's funeral for showing up drunk.
And oh god, what if it had turned out that Veronica really was Jake Kane's daughter, and Duncan and Veronica found out and are going through some sort of accidental incest fueled spiral? Or maybe Jake, relieved that Veronica wasn't his daughter and missing her mother, had propositioned Veronica, and she and Duncan had gotten in a fight when he'd found out. This was Neptune; the sordid possibilities were endless. Veronica could be facing some seriously traumatizing shit, and if Duncan wasn't standing by her, then who the hell at this school would?
Logan goes after the petite blonde.
ooOoo
Once she gets into the school, Veronica realizes that she doesn't have anywhere to go from here, since her entire journalism class is on that bus, and all the friends she does still have are in class, but at least the halls are empty and no one sees the tears that are rapidly escaping her control.
She refuses to lose control in this hellhole; she'll just swing by her locker, grab the rest of her things and then go home once Logan has had enough time to either get on the bus or otherwise vacate the parking lot. Veronica just needs to keep it together for that long... except even she is aware that she doesn't actually have it together at the moment. Okay, best case scenario, she sobs silently while she goes to her locker and sees no one between now and the time she peels out of the parking lot. Workable.
Except then she hears a door slam and footsteps behind her and Veronica is forced to resort to ducking into the girl's bathroom. Fine, she'll hide in here until, until – too late.
She's sobbing for all she's worth now, leaning over the sinks, making an awful racket, pouring buckets of tears, practically choking on snot. The whole nine yards.
Which is probably why her first clue that someone has followed her into restroom was a voice behind her saying, "So I take it the split wasn't exactly amicable, then?"
It says something about her – she refuses to speculate what, exactly – that the tears disappear nearly instantly. Or maybe it just says something about her relationship with Logan. "He took it better than you did," Veronica manages to say, avoiding the mirror in front of her for fear of glimpsing Logan standing behind her. "But then, this time I was smart enough not to breakup with him in my apartment ten minutes before my dad is due home."
"Happy to have provided the learning experience," Logan responds with heavy sarcasm. Veronica is only surprised by the fact that he doesn't use it as a parting shot and instead stays while she makes a futile attempt to put herself back in enough order to escape the building.
Water and paper towels only do so much for her puffy red eyes, but she's had enough of preening while Logan just stands there, so she turns, half hoping he'll get that she doesn't plan to respond to his last comment and just walk out. When he doesn't, instead standing squarely between her and the door, she is forced to ask, looking at his left shoulder, "Will you please let me by?"
In response, Logan Echolls, in a show of supreme maturity, just slouches against the door. Veronica wonders briefly if this act of childish contrariness constitutes an egregious enough affront to warrant threatening him with her Taser, but concludes that he is likely to call her bluff.
"Did you really skip a field trip to a baseball park in order to hang out in the women's bathroom?" she snaps, with something approaching her usual vehemence.
"Did you?"
"Well, if figured if I'm going to spend all night throwing up, I might as well hang out where the toilets are, just in case," Veronica retorts before she can really weigh the wisdom of her words.
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about the fact that I've woken up five nights running now, to upchuck my dinner at two a.m.," she responds, "Which has left me a little wrung out, if you must know, and is probably part of the reason you walked in on me breaking down in the washroom like a stupid girl a minute ago."
"You are a girl," Logan responds in an annoyingly neutral voice. "That part was never in doubt."
"I'm pretty well on my way to proving the stupid part doubtless, too," Veronica responds in irritation, finally reaching past Logan to yank on the door handle, more to make him understand how serious she is about wanting to leave then out of any hope of budging his much larger frame.
"What do you mean?" he asks, and fine, if he wants to know so damn bad, she'll tell him.
"Because, Logan," she tells him, looking him dead in the eye for the first time, "I'm seventeen, one day into my senior year of high school, and I'm pretty sure I'm pregnant."
This shocks him enough to stumble forward a step, which Veronica takes as an opportunity to wedge the door open. "Congratulate Duncan for me," he says as she goes to leave.
"Why do you think I broke up with him?" she asks, before she can stop herself. "He's got nothing to do with this."
And with that, she is gone, absolutely sprinting for her car, the things in her locker be damned.
This time she does make it to her car before the crying starts again, a little less torrential then before, thank god, but still enough to make it hard to get the key in the ignition. She doesn't know why she's surprised when Logan opens the passenger door and lets himself in. "What are you doing here?"
"What did you mean, it's got nothing to do with Duncan?" Logan asks, his eyes so intense Veronica can feel them even if she's refusing to look at him. "You're pregnant, so your boyfriend has-"
"Ex-boyfriend," Veronica insists, a tad hysterically, because her life hasn't been normal in a long time but this conversation is starting to seem downright surreal. "And I'm not sure I'm pregnant. It's just a theory; grant it, a theory based on several very damning pieces of corroborating evidence."
"Get to the part about Duncan having nothing to do with it," Logan instructs.
"Fine. Duncan and I have never had sex, Logan," Veronica spits out, "Apart from that one time I don't remember a year and half ago, you know, back when he thought I was his sister, but was too drugged to care?"
"Veronica..."
"No. You asked, so here it is," Veronica tells him, "When we dated before Lilly's death, it was all pretty PG stuff, much to his sister's surprising disgust, then there was that incident that wasn't-rape-exactly, and since then, like maybe a dozen kisses this summer leading up to one memorable incident a couple days ago when I'm pretty sure I nearly had a panic attack when he tried to take my shirt off. And that, Logan, is the entire and unabridged sexual history of Duncan Kane and Veronica Mars. Happy?"
"What do you mean you had a panic attack?" Logan asks, focusing on entirely the wrong thing, as far as Veronica is concerned. Not that she really knows what she would prefer he focus on.
"I don't know, Logan," she sighs, "He put his hands on my hips and I wanted to run and he slid them under my shirt and I couldn't breathe and he started to work his way up and no amount of rationalizing could calm me down, and then Wallace called me and I jumped at the chance to bolt."
"You never felt that way when we –"
"No," she tells him without bothering to wait for whatever clever euphemism he's sure to have cooked up.
"So... nothing to do with Duncan, then," Logan summarizes.
"No," Veronica tells him, looking out at the parking lot over her steering wheel. "This is all on me."
"You didn't get that way by yourself, Mars," Logan responds irritably.
She ignores that loaded issue for the moment to insist, "I don't even know for sure I'm that way yet."
"Shouldn't you like, take a test or something?" he demands.
"Gee, why didn't I think of that?" she snaps.
"Well, why didn't you?" he replies, "You've always insisted you're the brains of this operation."
Under her pique, Veronica knows the question is reasonable, so she forces herself to respond reasonably. "I was planning to tonight," she concedes, "My dad went out of town on a bail jump case this morning, so I figured that's as close to a guarantee of privacy as I'm going to get."
"Do you want to go now?" Logan wants to know, weirdly close to calm. It crosses her mind that he doesn't believe her, or that he doesn't realize that the fact that she's never slept with Duncan means that the only person she's ever consciously had sex with is him.
"Yeah, uh, I can do that," Veronica replies, stuffing the key into the ignition again. But before she can turn, Logan has reached over to take it from her.
"Let me drive you," he says.
Veronica can feel the crossroads they're at. Here, in this car, at this moment, she can either choose to let Logan help her or she can shove him away and run.
He hands her back the key, shoots her a very tentative half smile and when he gets out of the vehicle, she does the same, following him to the monstrous yellow thing he drives. How on earth was she supposed to resist him when he was acting like himself again?
"Good choice," he tells her as she's sliding her seatbelt around her and he's starting the car, "You shouldn't be driving when you're this upset. Someone could get killed."
Veronica remembers saying something like that to him the day she dumped him. She thinks of Lilly and Felix and his mother and several people who aren't actually dead, like her mother, but who are basically dead to her, and she remembers what he'd told her in reply. But Veronica also remembers how her dad had thrown him out of the house, and how he hadn't so much as called her for weeks after that, and how she'd started dating Duncan in the space where he'd disappeared from her life.
So she thinks someone already has, but she doesn't say it out loud.
ooOoo
Too late he realizes why those particular words were lingering in is subconscious, but somehow Veronica doesn't take the golden opportunity to bolt that he has handed her.
Which is pretty god damn miraculous, come to think of it, because Veronica has always been the turn-tail-and-run kind when emotions ran high; he remembers finding her cowering in the rose bushes one day when he'd come over to the Kane's place only to find Lilly and Duncan having a massive blow-out fight. When he'd asked her what she was doing, she'd reluctantly informed him that she needed to use the phone to call her dad to come get her, but the feuding siblings were between her and it.
Logan had teased her, he was pretty sure, about being a coward, but he'd also brought her to his place for the first time ever so that she could call for a ride. Come to think of it, Logan wasn't totally sure how an utter marshmallow like Veronica Mars had managed to get a reputation for kicking ass and taking names. Maybe that had been a side effect of all the rumours he'd started. Maybe, in the name of accuracy, he needed to start also telling people about how she'd run from the church before Lilly's funeral service had begun, and was halfway up an apple tree in her black lace dress when she'd spotted him with a flask in his hand, watching her.
Or maybe he needs to just stop spreading rumours entirely, because honestly –
Oh, hell. If she is pregnant, the fucking rumour mill was going to absolutely explode. Not that that was what was important... only, worrying about potential gossip seems just a tonne safer then contemplating the bigger picture, just now.
ooOoo
"I never stopped loving you," he tells her in a hushed, confessional voice. Her watery eyes meet his this time, no longer capable of denying him that, so she sees the utter sincerity burning there. And honestly, she's pretty sure that his words actually have nothing to do with the results of the home pregnancy test they'd purchased on the way to her apartment.
That doesn't make her any more prepared to deal with them, though. Passion has always been so easy for Logan, she thinks. He was able to love Lilly despite their less than perfect relationship, and since even before their first kiss, Veronica had felt that overwhelming tide turn in her direction. Logan loved with everything he had in him, adored and protected with terrifying determination.
But he also hated just as totally. Maybe it had something to do with his father, the way Logan seemed to tangle love and destruction, maybe it had something to do with Lilly's death. Or maybe it was Veronica herself who couldn't help but want to wrap herself in Logan's fire, who demanded that level of response from him.
She'd always had trouble with passion, herself. The idea seemed tainted in her mind, somehow conflated with her mother's vices, and had for as long as she could remember. Veronica had shied away from it, had loved, fiercely in her own way, but chosen who to love with care.
Except Logan upset all that, because he didn't seem to mind being consumed by his own desires, and that was her greatest fear. Still, she couldn't doubt the love he proclaimed.
"Come to bed, Logan," she tells him, taking his hand and pulling him down with her. "I'm so tired in the afternoons, anymore."
They settle down, and Veronica is nearly instantly asleep, despite all the questions and panic swirling inside her and the pressing decisions she should really start making, because that was the magic of Logan. He took everything else away, until it was just her, wrapped in his arms, and nothing else.
"Sleep, baby," croons the boy, and Veronica wonders distantly just who he's talking to, "Sleep, and I'll be here when you wake up."
ooOoo
This time when she bolts up in bed, Veronica is hampered by the heavy arms holding her to a large body, and she barely makes it into the bathroom. Leaning over the toilet, her stomach heaving, Veronica still feels a warm presence crouch beside her. Miserable, she tries to be quick about her retching, and the very second she is able, she lurches to her feet and starts rinsing out her mouth.
"You weren't joking about the Exorcist routine, huh?" he murmurs sympathetically as he stands to lean in the doorway.
"Seeing as I'm not a twelve year old boy, I rarely find myself resorting to gross out humour," Veronica informs him, "You could have stayed in bed, you know. I'm practically a champion upchucker at this point."
"I didn't want to stay in bed, Mars," Logan contradicts her, coming to wrap his arms around her. "I want to be where you are."
That gets the tears welling up again, much to Veronica's own disgust. She has to be pretty near dehydrated from all this crying. "Logan, is it really that simple for you?"
"Simple?" he scoffs, "No, Veronica, almost every single aspect of this is extremely complex."
"But from the second you heard I thought I was pregnant, you've been here," she protests, "Like this baby thing changes the way the world works, like it's just, well, there's a baby now so we're automatically back together."
"You've got this all wrong, super sleuth," he insists, and right, of course they're not back together, and just because he's being nice to her she shouldn't assume such stupid, stupid – "It wasn't the moment you said you were pregnant. From the second Duncan said you two were done, I knew you and me were going to get back together."
Oh.
"That's... awfully presumptuous of you, Mr. Echolls," Veronica aims for scolding and instead winds up sounding awfully lost.
"Shows me for thinking it was romantic," he responds, and Veronica can practically see the way his mouth curls up in tentative amusement even with her head buried against his chest.
"Didn't you know? I'm the wrong girl for romantic, Echolls," Veronica informs the warm expanse of his chest, "I'm the school slut, after all."
"I think I, of all people, know better than to believe those particular rumours," Logan says, dropping a light kiss on Veronica's hair.
"Are you calling me bad in bed?" she snorts, teetering on the edge of true hysteria.
"Not in the least, babe," Logan says, ducking to whisper directly in her ear. "I'm just saying that I'm the one who started most of those rumours, so I have it on good authority that you never did half the things you stand accused of."
"If that's your idea of sweet nothings..."
"How's this, Veronica Mars," Logan says, still right in her ear, which, come to think of it, was probably going to give him a cramped neck. "You and me, we might not work as a couple... but we work even less apart."
"That's reassuring," Veronica says, looking up thanks to his finger's light pressure under her chin.
"I think so," he responds, and god help him, he really looks like he believes it. Suddenly Veronica is a bit ashamed of herself. If Logan Echolls, whose father had fucked and murdered his first love, who had forgiven her for accusing him of both rape and murder, could stand in her bathroom at three in the morning, having just watched her puke for ten solid minutes, if that boy could have faith in their love, why couldn't she? "But just so you know, I only have the you and me stuff figured out. This baby thing... I'm still working on that."
"What do you think it says about me that I find that to be your most reassuring confession yet?"
"It says that you should probably get some more sleep, Sherlock," Logan teases, pulling her back to her bedroom. "After all, it is a school night."
"What if I'm not sleepy?" Veronica asks, shooting him an innocent grin.
"Then I can probably think of one or two other things that will tire you out," he tells her, straightening out covers that have long since grown cold. "Most of them still involve going to bed, though."
"That's good," Veronica says, crawling into bed, "I'll keep that in mind if I'm ever not sleepy."
"Tease," he chuckles in response, not even hesitating as he slides into bed with her. And okay, if this is what being with Logan again is going to be like, Veronica thinks she can probably muster up a little faith.
ooOoo
Logan stays awake long after Veronica falls back to sleep, in no small part because they've been laying in bed since shortly after five and he's not the one who's knocked up, so he's had all the sleep he can stand.
There's also that whole knocked up thing that's buzzing around in his brain, of course. Somehow, despite the seven separate tests he'd convinced Veronica to take all saying it was so, this whole baby thing felt kind of untrue, when Logan got right down to it.
Funny enough, though, it wasn't that he was actually having trouble associating himself with the idea of an accidental pregnancy, it was more the Veronica end of the equation he couldn't wrap his head around. He kept trying to think of Veronica in the context of motherhood and his mind kept slipping, and he wound up remembering what she had been like as a child instead.
He couldn't remember the first time he'd met her, sometime way back in elementary school, but he could remember the first time she'd become a real person to him. He was eleven and hiding out at Duncan's house for the better part of a week to avoid his father, home on a rare break in his shooting schedule. He had just come up for air in the Kane family pool when Duncan started to groan.
"Oh great," he'd sighed, "Here comes my sister."
And Logan had been confused because instead of the snotty blonde girl who had bitched constantly about her younger brother and his friends, he heard the brightest laugh in the world. And yet, there Lilly Kane came, scowl superseded by happy giggling, all that sunshine directed at the tiny chick from his class who Logan was pretty sure he'd never heard speak before. And yet, there she was in a muddy soccer uniform, grinning and making Lilly Kane laugh.
Lilly is probably laughing at them now, too, in their hopelessly clichéd teen pregnancy debacle, Logan thinks. Or maybe she isn't and she's just as clueless as he is, trying to figure out what Veronica would do, what he wanted Veronica to do. Had she ever mentioned kids to him?
Logan couldn't remember if she had. Lilly would probably know; wasn't that the kind of thing girls giggled about? He remembered once, when he had been thirteen and screwing up his courage to ask Veronica to be his date to the eighth grade graduation dance, that Lilly had mentioned something about it. He'd been waiting for his chance to get Veronica alone for days with no luck, mostly because he was pretty sure Duncan was trying to do the same thing. Finally, he'd figured his best bet would just to straight up ask her for a minute alone when they both went to the Kanes' after school.
But on his way out to the pool, Lilly had swooped down on him in the living room and kissed him right on the lips. And honestly, Logan was too shocked by his first kiss to be much of a participant in it, but the few moments his lips were touching Lilly's for the first time ever, were pretty great.
"What was that for?" he'd asked when Lilly had pulled away and casually gone to recline on the sofa.
"I'm a distraction, couldn't you tell?" she giggled, and Logan could barely remember the days when Duncan's sister had called them pests rather than smiling at their jokes and joining their little adventures, Veronica Mars always at her side.
"What were you distracting me from?" he'd asked.
"From interrupting before Duncan could ask Veronica to the dance," she'd said, rolling her eyes as though he'd missed the obvious.
"Well, that's hardly fair," he'd complained. "Why'd you help Duncan instead of me?"
"Um, duh, because if Veronica falls wildly in love with you and marries you, then she won't be my sister," the girl had explained, as if all fourteen year old girls spent their time kissing thirteen year old boys as part of elaborate plans to marry off their brothers.
"Well, if you're going to cost me a date to the dance, then you could at least make it worth my while," Logan had retorted, and suddenly Lilly was looking at him with new interest.
"What did you have in mind?" she'd asked.
And so Duncan had ended up taking Veronica to the grade eight graduation dance and Logan had ended up having sex with Lilly for the first time later that summer.
And god, was that only three summers ago? How had things changed so much so quickly? And if the world could go to hell and back nine times between eighth grade and twelfth, how can Logan be sure of anything?
Veronica stirs in his arms, throwing one leg across his waist in what might be an attempt to find some room in a bed too small to comfortably accommodate two individuals. Maybe the answer was just what he'd told Veronica in the bathroom earlier; maybe Logan can't count on anything else, but he's pretty sure he can count on wanting Veronica.
ooOoo
"So, when you said you had the you and me stuff figured out," Veronica begins the next morning, sitting in his ridiculous SUV in the school parking lot, "Does that include the you, me and the students of Neptune High stuff, by any chance?"
"I'll run interference for you, if you like, Ronnie; it will be good practice for my future career in public relations," Logan offers, and okay, that's worthy of a smile, even in the current grim circumstance. At any rate, she gives him a pass on calling her 'Ronnie'. "Or maybe we just try and fly under the radar for today?"
"Because we're both proven experts in that field," Veronica responds, rolling her eyes as he stares out at their classmates, going about their uncomplicated lives.
"I can be discrete," Logan protests, half smile, cocked eyebrow and all, and God, has she mentioned how much she missed this?
"Well, obviously, or you and half your buddies would probably be wasting all your pretty looks and sweet charms on prison bunkmates rather than pretty girls," she tells him, and she knows they will eventually have to actually go into the school building for this to count as Logan giving her a ride to school, but this is more normal than she's felt in a long time, so excuse her if she's taking a beat. "And that would be an awful shame."
"Is that your way of saying you'd be lost without me?" Logan asks, and now that he mentions it, he may just be on to something there.
"Logan Echolls, I can honestly say that I would not be where I am right now if not for you."
"Yeah?"
"Yep," she confirms very seriously, "Do you think I'd let just anyone talk me into a bright yellow S.U.V.?"
Logan grins, "And she makes jokes, ladies and gentlemen," he says.
"I'm very funny, you know," Veronica insists, still reluctant to leave his car and face the real world again. "No one ever gives me enough credit for my sense of humour."
"I'll make some calls," he offers.
"Okay, you do that," Veronica agrees, finally gathering her school books together (and hoping she doesn't have any major assignments due, because she didn't exactly do homework last night). "I'm going to go and pretend that learning about cellular respiration is still the most important thing in my life."
"Okay," Logan nods, and Veronica thinks that's all he's got, but then he's somehow beside her as she clambers down from the inconveniently tall vehicle. He keeps his hands to himself, which is kind of necessary if they plan to make it even five minutes at Neptune High without someone running to Duncan with gossip about them. "Hey, Veronica, I'll see you later, yeah?"
"Sure," she says, rather than making a joke, "I'm kind of counting on having you around to freak out with."
And from the honest-to-goodness smile he gives her, Veronica can tell she's said the right thing for once, no matter how scary the prospect of counting on him still is.
ooOoo
Apparently you could teach on old Veronica new tricks, Logan thinks as she makes her clever remark about freaking out together and fades into the crowd. Grabbing his school books and heading towards that temple of higher learning, Logan is nearly run over by Dick Casablancas. His erstwhile friend screeches into park and sticks his head out the window.
"Dude! I cannot believe you skipped that field trip, man!" Dick enthuses, which kind of shocks Logan who has never seen the blond boy this excited over something that wasn't a hot chick's breasts. "Where did you even go?"
Madison Sinclair leans across Dick to scrutinize Logan, turning her snobby nose up at him for some reason. "Weren't you wearing those clothes yesterday?" she asks, reminding Logan that he kind of passively hates her.
"What the hell happened at the baseball stadium, man?" Logan asks Dick, ignoring the bitch beside him.
"It wasn't at the stadium, it was after," Dick corrects him, and Logan steels himself to hear some stupid story about the usual debauchery in the back of the bus or whatever. Heaven forbid Dick actually be interested in what was going on with Logan.
ooOoo
There's definitely an even higher than usual level of whispering going on in the halls of Neptune High as Veronica makes her way to her locker. When she sees Duncan with an arm wrapped around Meg Manning's waist, Veronica begins to resign herself to the fact that she and Logan had already been spotted and outted by one of the petty little gossipmongers who frequently masquerade as her classmates. She knows she doesn't exactly have the moral high ground when it comes to judging Duncan's romantic entanglements at the moment; this does not stop her from taking an alternate route to avoid actually walking past the precious 09er King and Queen.
When she spots Wallace waiting for her, Veronica realizes that her best friend looks unusually anxious and resolves to tie up any loose ends on the drug test case immediately.
Things take a turn for the downright bizarre a moment later, however, when Wallace sees Veronica and absolutely flings his arms around her in what is easily the most enthusiastic hug he's ever bestowed upon her. Veronica begins to suspect that his anxiety has nothing to do with getting back on the basketball team.
"Thank God, Veronica," he says with what sounds like genuine reverence, "I thought you were dead, V!"
"Since I last spoke to you yesterday at lunch?" the girl asks as her best friend pulls back to look at her. Has she missed something, or is this just Wallace being dramatic because she's been a little preoccupied lately? If that's the case, then he is going to absolutely hate sharing her attention with the baby.
And ohgodohgod, Veronica did not just think that, because ohgod, that was glib and made it sound like she was having a baby and ohgodohgodohgod she was having a baby, but she couldn't focus on that right this instant because, obviously, Wallace was having some sort of breakdown.
"Why the hell didn't you pick up your phone one of the seven thousand times I called you last night?" he's demanding.
"I, uh, was with someone," Veronica doesn't explain, because even though she knows this is probably the sort of problem you tell to a best friend, she refuses to let this whole thing horn in on her life anymore at the moment. "We were dealing with a bit of a crisis."
"Business, V? I would have thought even you would take a night off to celebrate having survived a fatal bus crash."
By the time Wallace has explained about the bus crash, Veronica is totally flabbergasted. If she hadn't of broken up with Duncan and run into him and Logan before she boarded that bus, Veronica would be dead right this moment.
"Well, probably not," Wallace points out as they slowly walked to history class, "I mean, all of the 09ers on the bus survived because Dick Casablancas' dad sent a limo to pick them up from the stadium."
"I'm not an 09er," she argues, "I would have been on that bus."
"Why weren't you, V?" her friend asks, "And seriously, did you ignore all your calls last night? Because if your dad heard about the crash and then couldn't reach you..."
"I called him right after school," Veronica assures Wallace, "I wanted to talk to him once before – uh, I mean..."
"Before you and 'someone' dealt with this mysterious crisis?" Wallace asks sceptically.
"Yeah," she agrees weakly. "Look, Wallace – "
"You can't tell me?"
"Not at school, no," Veronica specifies.
"Wow, Mars, I didn't think you knew the word no," some dickhead says in faked surprise. "Fennel, man, you must have been asking for some seriously messed up shit, because from what I hear, Veronica Mars is down for pretty much anything."
Rolling her eyes, Veronica turns to deal with this newest insult, only to find that Logan has appeared out of nowhere and the asshole in question is already flat on his back.
"Logan!" she shouts, afraid that he's going to really hurt the idiot 09er, which frankly, she needs not at all right now. And honestly, if he's going to start taking exception to every person who calls her a whore, well, then she probably should have just skipped telling him about the baby. "You don't have time to beat up everyone who thinks I'm a slut."
Logan grins at her while in the background several people flutter over the guy he's just given a black eye to. "Don't flatter yourself, Mars. I didn't do it for you; this asshole just got a really douchey haircut that's been bothering me."
"What's the matter? Think you've got the Neptune High douchebag look trademarked?" she snaps, hating that a part of her wants to smile. "Afraid he was encroaching on your territory?"
"Yeah, you know what? It was all about him stepping on my territory," Logan says, giving her a look that makes it crystal clear he's referring to her. And god, was this what he'd meant when he said he had things between them figured out? How is he even the same boy who'd been in her apartment at two a.m.?
"He's the someone, isn't he V?" Wallace asks, startling Veronica from her silent diatribe. She thinks about lying, but honestly, Logan has long since faded into the crowds and they're not being watched by any of the students more concerned with consoling her antagonist/Logan's victim. "Logan was the person you were with last night, right?"
"Yeah," she admits, and for fuck's sake, are there really tears welling up in her eyes again? Because if this whole weepy thing is a side effect of pregnancy, it officially sucks more than morning sickness.
"Seriously? You're really going down that road again?" Wallace is incredulous; Veronica doesn't blame him. She's pretty sure that in the entire time they were together, Logan never even bothered to learn her best friend's name. And, oh god, how were they supposed to deal with a baby?
"It's not all bad," she defends, because when has she ever let the fact that she suddenly can't breathe very well stop her from answering back? "He's the reason I skipped out on the field trip."
"Jesus Christ, V, I think I'm going to call your dad and tell him you're cuddling up that that asshole again," Wallace says, sounding kind of serious about the threat, from what Veronica can tell over her thundering heart. And seriously, she thinks she may have stopped walking through the hallways, and has it always been so warm in here? "Then maybe he'll kill Echolls for messing you around and I won't have to."
"You don't need to get your hands dirty, Fenell," Veronica says, or she's pretty sure she says – she means to say it out loud anyway, but there's this roaring in her ears, and she can't quite make out her own voice. "Dad's going to kill him anyway, when he finds out."
"Finds out what, V?" And, oh look, Wallace could hear her after all, "V? Are you alright? Veronica?"
And the hallway is empty now, it's just her and her best friend and – wait, is she sitting? When did she sit down?
"Veronica!" Wallace shouts, or it feels like a shout, with him leaning down over her. "You're scaring me, girl. Are you okay?"
"Oh, Wallace," she sighs, and well, here come the tears, but honestly, she's starting to expect these things. "I'm not okay at all."
ooOoo
"So, you and Meg, huh?" Logan asks without preamble when he finally finds Duncan alone for a minute.
"What?" Duncan asks, sounding frankly startled, and okay, Logan supposes he could have softened his delivery some. Only, he was pretty stoked to see his best friend with his arms around someone who wasn't Veronica, and Logan had been looking for the opportunity to suss out the situation since before first period.
"You and Meg Manning," he explains impatiently, "I saw you wrapped around each other in the hallway."
"We weren't – we aren't," Duncan stutters out, looking at Logan like he's gone insane. "She was upset about the bus crash!"
Right. That.
It's not that Logan hadn't heard about it since parting ways with Veronica that morning, but it was hard to focus on anything else just now, when his life was kind of swinging drastically around an absolutely insane focal point. So when Dick finished relating the story, Logan had just thought lucky Veronica and I skipped and gone back to worrying about surviving the day until he could get the girl alone again.
And then he'd heard Sean's nasty remarks and suddenly punching that bastard had taken priority. Because maybe Logan had been the first one to talk shit about Veronica behind her back, but there wasn't a lot he could do about that. He could, however, shut up the assholes who still thought that that was acceptable.
"So you're not dating Meg?" Logan clarifies, because a guy can hope, okay?
"No!" Duncan protests, "I mean, Veronica and I just broke up."
"Because both of you have proven so reluctant to move on in the past," Logan snarks, and would you look at that, perhaps he does have some lingering anger over how things went down this summer.
"That was... different," Duncan offers lamely, "That was Veronica and it was the second chance I've been waiting for, and I'm sorry if it hurt – "
"Well," Logan says quickly, because he doesn't really want to get into the whole apology thing with Duncan because he's honestly not totally sure which one of them screwed over the other worse. "Maybe if you hadn't freaked out and ignored her for two months rather than breaking up with her, then taking her virginity while she was drugged, then abandoning her again, you wouldn't have needed a second chance."
"Look, man," snaps Duncan, "There were things going on there that you don't know about!"
"You mean the whole you might have been siblings getting your incest on thing?"
"Veronica told you about that?" Duncan asks, for some reason looking hurt.
"Yeah," Logan confirms, "The way you probably should have told her at the time."
"Because you've always made the right decisions when it comes to Veronica!" returns Duncan.
Well, Duncan actually has more of a point there then even he realizes. But Logan isn't going to be the one to clue him in; things have been, at best, icy between them for a while now. All Logan is really hoping for is some indication that Duncan isn't going to make life any harder on Veronica then it had to be.
ooOoo
Wallace makes her pick herself up off the floor, then walks her out of the school and deposits her in the passenger's seat of her car, taking her keys in the process. A minute later, he's behind the wheel and pulling out of the parking lot, and she's managed to get herself mostly back under control. Glancing over at her, Wallace must determine that she's doing better, at least, because he says, "So, V, start talking."
Veronica kind of wants to say something shocking, just to see if Wallace will believe it, but she honestly can't think of anything more shocking then the truth, so she sighs, closes her eyes, and starts talking. "Oh, Wallace, I'm such a mess," she begins, because, hey, sometimes even really obvious things need to be said.
"You'll get through it," he says with this ridiculous confidence in her. Veronica has no idea what she's done to instill it in him, and she's sad that she's going to have to burst his bubble. "You always do."
"Not this time," Veronica denies, turning her head away from him, incapable of watching his reaction as well as hearing it. "Wallace, I'm, uh... I'm pregnant," she tells him, and shouldn't it be getting easier to say this with practice, rather than more difficult?
He doesn't slam on the breaks or crash the car or anything, but Wallace does, while still completely silent, pull the LeBaron onto the side of the road. Then he turns sideways on the seat to face her, and she manages not to look away, because it seems like she owes him at least that much.
"You're what?" he asks, his voice tightly neutral, like he thinks maybe he really did mishear her.
"You heard," Veronica counters pleadingly, "Don't make me say it again."
"I see," he says. "And you broke up with Duncan?"
"Yes," she sighs, watching him carefully draw his own conclusions.
"So, Logan, then," he says, and at least he hadn't assumed there was someone else entirely in the equation. "Were you – did he and you... while you were with..."
"Did I mess around with Logan while dating Duncan?" Veronica completes the thought for him, even though it sort of stings, because, well, fair enough, right? "No. This is a left over surprise from the beginning of the summer."
"Right," Wallace acknowledges, and he's holding back some comment, Veronica can tell, but she's hardly about to call him on it. "He knows?"
"He was there when I took the test last night," Veronica says, leaving out the part where he held back her hair while she threw up at two in the morning.
"And?" Wallace prompts, and for a moment she wonders if he's looking for her to confirm that results of the test for him, but then she gets that Logan's reaction is what he's more worried about.
"He told me he's never stopped loving me," she admits, crushing the guilty feeling that she shouldn't be sharing something so private, because if Lilly had been alive, that's totally the sort of detail she'd tell in this situation.
"Do you believe him?" Wallace asks carefully, and he's looking for something from her, obviously, before he makes up his mind or whatever, and because he's her best friend and she's been told she's bad at sharing, she digs deep.
"I do," she admits, "Our problem was never that Logan didn't love me enough."
"So that's good," Wallace says, and as neutral as he tries to make it, Veronica can hear the question, the uncertainty in the statement. Is it really a good thing? Is it good enough?
"It is," Veronica defends, "Only, loving Logan has always been partly about matching him shot for shot on the bad days and never, ever talking about certain things. And Logan's way of loving someone is beating up the idiots who call me names and limiting himself to no more than three snide remarks about my car per day and bringing me my favourite kind of candy when he climbs in my window at three in the morning to fuck, and –"
"V! Too much information!"
"Right, because it wasn't already abundantly clear that Logan and I had sex?" Veronica asks impatiently.
"Well, I didn't need to picture it, thanks," Wallace grumbles, but Veronica can tell he's sorry for interrupting her, and maybe even worried she'll stop talking to him, because he hastily asks, "Have you told your dad, V?"
"No," Veronica sighs hopelessly, "I didn't know for sure until yesterday afternoon and he left before that on a case."
"You're going to tell him, though?"
"I don't know," Veronica responds, "I'm just... I'm scared, Wallace. I don't know if I can handle having a baby myself, and I really don't know how Logan fits into this equation, even though he seems to think we're back together now, and oh god, my dad is going to be so angry."
"Those, uh, sound like reasonable things to be afraid of," Wallace offers hesitantly, and Veronica can tell he's having one of his why am I best friends with a girlmoments.
"Wallace," she complains tearfully, "You're not helping."
"I'm trying, though, V," he assures her quickly, "And I'm going to keep trying for as long as you need me to, okay?"
ooOoo
Logan is edgy by the time the bell rings dismissing them for the day. Aside from brief glimpses in the hallways, he hasn't caught sight of Veronica all day, and it's starting to feel like yesterday was some sort of bizarre dream, or a peek into an alternate reality where things like bus crashes and pregnant Veronicas were a thing. There's this terrifying moment where Logan suddenly thinks, what if Veronica and I did get on that bus and died and this is what the afterlife is, just a series of increasingly unlikely what-if scenarios playing over and over for eternity.
But that idea only lasts a moment, thank god, probably because he's not high as a freaking kite.
Anyway, at the end of the day, Logan makes a mad dash to his own locker to get his books, mostly because he thinks screwing up this whole emancipation deal by failing out is so not an additional complication his life needs now, then bolts for the parking lot and lurks around the LeBaron. It's in a different spot than the one they left it in yesterday, he realizes, which suggests that Veronica has taken it somewhere at some point during the school day.
He's starting to wonder where she could have possibly needed to go, and whether something was wrong and if maybe he should just call her already and find out, when she turns up.
"Logan?" she asks, arms full of school books and looking perfectly fine and healthy and Veronica-like.
"Where were you?" he demands, and, crap, he didn't mean to ask it like that.
"I was waiting for you by your car," she explains, thankfully seeming to give him a pass on his tone for the moment, "You know, that monstrous bright yellow thing you insist on driving despite having access to many much saner vehicles?"
"Oh," he says, sheepishly, fiddling with his keys. "I think this whole baby thing is making me kind of neurotic."
"You and me both, buster," Veronica counters. "Wallace had to pretty much scrape me off the floor this morning after he asked me what was wrong."
"Did you tell him?" Logan asks in surprise, because Veronica is not exactly who he pictures when he hears the word forthcoming.
"Yeah; he's my best friend," Veronica says sort of tentatively, then hastily adds, "But please don't feel you have to rush out and tell your best friend the news, just because Wallace knows."
"That's not a problem," Logan replies easily, "You already know and you're kind of the best friend I have, Veronica."
She looks at him like he's just said the sweetest thing she could ever imagine, but also like she's suspicious he's just feeding her a line, and the mix of the two is insane, but very Veronica. Logan refrains from saying anything else because he'll take it if she wants to think he's sweet, but that wasn't actually what he'd been saying. All he meant was, Duncan and he weren't really speaking, and the deepest connection Dick and Logan had ever shared was a shared appreciation of stupid stunts, pranks and petty revenge.
So really, when you thought about it, Veronica probably was his best friend.
"Logan," she says, and there are tears in her eyes, and he's starting to feel like maybe he should carry a water bottle around so she can rehydrate between crying jags. "I'm pregnant."
"I know, Ronnie," he reminds her, even though what he's really thinking is maybe the school parking lot isn't the place to be having this particular discussion. "We... made a baby."
"That was pretty stupid of us," she sighs, "But I guess there's no point in crying over it now."
Logan refrains from pointing out that she is currently crying over just that fact, because it's just a couple of tears dripping down her cheeks, and really, she cries so much now that maybe she really hasn't noticed and he's not going to be the one to break the news to her.
"You can cry anyway, if you want to," he informs her tentatively, "I won't think badly of you for it."
"Logan," she says again, and there seems to be several layers of significance to the way she says his name just now that he's totally not capable of parsing. "What are we going to do?"
He blinks a few times, because there's only one answer that comes to mind and he's pretty sure it's not the one she's looking for. It's all he's got, though, so... "Have a baby," he responds. "That's what we're going to do."
He counts himself incredibly lucky that she chooses to laugh. A moment passes when she's done, and it's a little more comfortable, even if he's still feeling pretty bewildered. "You'll come with me to tell my dad?" she asks, and holy fuck, does she sound seven kinds of afraid and vulnerable and not veronica.
But Logan sees it for the tentative olive branch that it is, and so he smiles, and says, "Now I see your game, Mars. You're not even really pregnant, are you? You're just looking for the bloodiest, messiest most painful way to have me killed and this is what you've settled on."
"You got me, Echolls," she replies as he opens the door to her car for her. "You can't imagine what a bitch it was, faking all those pregnancy tests."
"Well, the jokes on you, Mars, because I didn't even look at those things," Logan informs her as he slides into the other side of her car. "I'm taking it all on faith."
They drive in quiet contemplation for a moment, and he thinks she may have tuned out his last joke, until she says, looking out at the road in front of them, "I'm trying to do that, too."
"What?" he asks, and he's kind of genuinely confused.
"I'm trying to have a little faith," she says solemnly, "And I'm not very good at it, but I'm trying. And Logan?"
"Yeah, Ronnie?" he asks, because he's noticed she's started to let him get away with the old nickname again.
"I'm going to keep trying, if that's okay with you."
He takes her hand on the seat between them and pulls it to his lips. "I'll try, too, then," he pledges.
"Because we work even less when we're apart?" she suggests, and it shouldn't be a good memory, standing in her bathroom in the small hours while she throws up, but the reminder in her words still manages to make him smile.
"Exactly, Mars," he replies easily, "So you can count on me to hold back your hair while you puke."
A/N: This is not, as the more observant among you may already have realised, the new multi-chapter fic I promised so many weeks ago upon the completion of Those Childish Colours. There is a very good explanation for that: I'm not done writing The Difference It Makes yet, and I know I suck at completing wip once I've started to post them... so, I'm still working on that fic... and another multi-chapter that I'm honestly trying to not-write until the first one is done. Either way, there's a fairly solid chance that I'll post another one-shot between now and when I get around to posting either of the longer fics. So, I guess what I'm saying is, it doesn't pay to tease upcoming projects in author's notes. *sigh*
Sorry for anyone this may actually disappoint...