They're perfect for each other, because he's the worst boyfriend in the world and she's the worst girlfriend in the world. They will never be happy together but they would be miserable with anyone else.
Neither of them is nice, but Veronica is good. She recycles and she waits in lines and she cleans up her messes, helps people, fixes things. Snark and cynicism are things that they share, but they are Logan's essence. Veronica is jaded because being jaded protects her from disappointment; Logan is jaded in a different way, a harder, darker way. Veronica was miserable for a while, but she had her dad. Logan had nobody, and he has been miserable as long as he can remember. She's the first person he's ever had to confide in, but he can't speak anymore. He tries and his throat closes up.
It's not that they're not in love. They like to be close to each other and they kiss in public. Veronica feels safe in his arms and Logan wants to keep her safe. (And she wants to keep him safe too but that's a whole other story and one that makes Logan angry.) They laugh and shout and make up and feed each other fries and on the surface, they seem the same as any other couple. Before their senior year at Hearst they get married at City Hall. Veronica buys a white sundress and Logan wears dark slacks and a mostly-buttoned-up shirt. They're unable to agree on who to bring with them, so finally they pull a couple of witnesses off of the street and take them out to dinner to compensate them for their time. One of them seems to recognize Logan but wisely stays silent. They get rings—Logan insists on this part, even though they are followed to the store and the gossip magazines run the story the next day. "Echolls son engaged?"
They break the news to Keith and Trina. (Keith is disappointed he wasn't invited and the thought of Logan married to his daughter keeps him awake at night, but he wishes them the best and bakes them a cake. Trina approves, gushing, and then hangs up the phone after ninety seconds of conversation.) And then for their last year of school they live together off campus. Veronica picks out curtains, rugs, wall colors, and while she decides between Sea Foam and Spring Grasshopper, Logan plants kisses on the back of her neck.
After following her nose for a few weeks, Veronica catches Logan on their bed with a red-lipsticked call girl. Her shoes are still on and her skirt's hiked up and the entire setup looks so much like a bad porno that it makes Veronica feel sick.
He wants to explain, and he tries really hard even though she's staying in an undisclosed motel and she won't return his calls. He hopes she's listening to his voicemails, but even so it wouldn't matter. There's no way he can explain himself because if he tried it would sound too awful. The fact is that sex with Veronica hurts. He loves her too strongly, too painfully, to just let the biology and mechanics of the thing do their work. She matters, and it makes him want to cry. Logan has been having casual sex for a long time, but this thing with Veronica—he wonders every day if it's more than he can handle. When they hold each other he feels like he could break into a thousand pieces. He needs her more than he's needed anyone, and it scares him and some days he just wants to go back to when sex didn't matter. So every once in a while, just enough to remind him of the way he used to be, he sifts through postings online and orders a girl. Like takeout. Quick and easy, no mess. Wrapped up neatly; thrown away after.
He knows it's not right, but even in his head he tries to justify: at least it's not Madison. He knows how much that hurt her and he could never do it again. He's not trying to hurt her. It's just a side effect.
He finally catches Veronica outside her Neuroscience class and she tries to run, but he's faster and stronger. He pins her against a wall and they're both breathless. She's trying really hard to keep it together, and he's trying to come up with a good justification for his behavior. His body works faster than his brain. (Isn't that always the way?) He catches her lips in his and holds her around the waist. She responds and her kiss brings back that ache, the one that he dulls with hookers and alcohol.
She comes to her senses, slowly, and finally shoves him away. She slaps him and he feels almost relieved. Living away from her has lowered his threshold and just being kissed by her is painful.
Veronica cries, there against the wall, and Logan feels like crying too but his tears are gone. He sits dry-eyed with her, touches her as much as he can handle. He huddles up against her and their shoulders and arms press together. Veronica's crying is making her shudder, and when she can't take it anymore she turns to Logan and he lets her sob and shake, drenching his shoulder.
Later, after a failed romantic attempt on their bed (he hurts, she thinks of prostitutes, and they can't seem to get it done)—she thinks back on her sobbing fit in embarrassment. It's not as if she never cries, but when she has been wronged her reaction tends to be fury. She speaks in a cold rage. She is good at cutting people down. And sure, that's how it started when she caught him; that's how it was at first. But the weeks in a seedy motel made her frustrated and lonely, softened her rage and made her sad.
Maybe that's healthier.
Veronica takes Logan's credit card and buys new bedclothes—fancy, fifteen-hundred-thread-count sheets and a bedspread that complements the walls. She tells Logan she'll throw the old ones away, but instead she takes them out in the backyard and burns them, gasoline-doused, in a trash can. The nosy old lady next door peeks over the fence to ask what she's burning. "Papers," says Veronica. "You know, legal documents, bank statements." And then she adds brightly, "Never trust paper shredders."
Mrs. Olson knows that Veronica is a detective so she takes her at her word, or perhaps writes her off as having been made paranoid by her work.
It's not as if it wouldn't be justified, paranoia. Veronica would be justified, she thinks, in closing herself off entirely and never leaving the house. She wonders sometimes why she hasn't been driven insane. Her dad tried to stop her—too much for a sixteen-year-old kid, he said—but she ignored him. She tries hard to regret it but she can't. This is her life. It's a little shocking that she didn't curl up into a ball and never come out after that horrifying end to her junior year of high school, after being locked up and nearly burned alive. But she got through it and now it's part of her.
She shudders when she thinks about it but she's beginning to think she has a danger fetish. She confesses this to Logan one night, trembling, and he scoffs. "I could have told you that six years ago."
"What?" The thought was a revelation to her. She's angry that he doesn't see it the same way; she thinks maybe he's kidding.
But Logan is serious. "Everyone thought Lilly was the crazy one. But you—you always seemed dangerous to me. Didn't you ever get 'looking for trouble' on a report card?"
"I was a perfect angel," she says. "I can't imagine what you're suggesting. Veronica Mars, a troublemaker?" But she can't just joke, and he's known her long enough that he can see the worry in her face. She's worried now. And there was that one teacher, in third grade, who had warned that she did in fact go looking for trouble. She remembers her parents laughing it off. Maybe they should have listened.
"Haven't I been telling you this forever?" Logan says softly. "I worry about you."
"I worry about you," Veronica retorts, annoyed that he's so cavalier about his own safety but sees no problem with his constant protectiveness. She hasn't gotten over the bodyguard thing. Well, a lot of things. She hasn't forgiven him for constantly putting himself in danger. For almost jumping off a bridge, for carrying a gun, for being arrested for murder. And more recently, that time when he drove into a highway barrier and his blood-alcohol was off the charts. And he has the nerve to talk to her about safety.
She tries to explain. "It has to be a two-way thing, Logan."
He's distracted, tracing her body with his fingers, trying to forget that she's Veronica, to pretend she's just some woman in his bed. Someone he doesn't care this much about.
"Logan!"
"Sorry." He turns back to her. "What?"
She draws in close, wants to be close to him. Murmurs by his ear, "You have to be safe too."
Logan says nothing.
"You can't lecture me about staying safe and being worried when you're so goddamned self destructive all the time." Her voice has risen from a whisper to a near-shout and she hears her words ringing in the air.
He shifts beside her, and she can't tell if he's trying to pull away. Instinctively she reaches for his arm and holds him there. She has a thing about people leaving.
Logan doesn't leave, but he pulls his arm from her grip and that hits her hard, in the pit of her stomach. His eyes don't move from the ceiling, and his breath is deep and heavy. He's thinking hard and she can't stand it, but she lets him be, even with the tension rising through her insides.
Finally he speaks, in that soft, cracking, self-conscious voice that he uses when he's saying something he would never say to anyone else. "I don't know how to do it."
If Veronica were a different person, she might yell at him. You don't know how to stay safe? What kind of an idiot are you? It's a hell of a lot easier than destroying yourself. But Veronica knows what he means. She knows what it's like to be constantly fighting your past, forcing it down as it tries to claw its way out. And as miserable as parts of Veronica's past are, Logan's is darker.
She stays quiet for a long time because she knows what he's dealing with but she doesn't know how to help; she's never been that far gone. She was the girl who went to the police that night she woke up without her underwear. She's been hurt by a lot of things and she has her share of hellish memories, but if there's one thing that Veronica does right, it's placing blame where it's deserved.
So this still feels foreign to her, Logan's self-loathing, the guilt seeded the first time Aaron took a belt to him and told him he was bad. Her mind goes frantic and she runs through the after-school-special list of solutions, but Logan in therapy is one of the least plausible scenarios she's ever thought up. He's too smart and too closed-off to let someone manipulate him into talking about his feelings.
Veronica lies next to him and listens to her breath and Logan's breath and how he takes such deep, heavy breaths when lying in bed that their breathing can never quite sync up. She reaches for him. She locks her fingers in his and squeezes his hand, trying to stop herself from thinking that maybe some people are irreparable.
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