This is the third time he's picked her up this week, drunk and acting like an idiot on the streets of Neptune. He's just glad she isn't driving this time. He'd usually take her back to Hearst, to that weird girl's room, so she could pass out in a safe place and hopefully not choke to death on her own vomit. But she was breaking and entering on the Kane estate (or what used to be the Kane estate). The new owners called him, frantic that some 'wetback biker' was trying to rob them. So he hauls her back to the station and then decides not to book her, even though he knows her dad would love to get that call in Chicago or Phoenix or wherever the hell he is this time and he knows he would love to watch her humiliated yet again, waking up hung over in a cell. Instead he takes her to the station just to keep an eye on her. She falls asleep on the interrogation room bench.
He tapes a piece of paper to the door that says 'Do Not Disturb'. He shushes Sacks and Wilson chatting loudly near the door. He knows that he would never do this while she was conscious, knowing what she would say and what he would say. It's almost two AM when he goes to get coffee from the Luncheonette down the block. Inga has gone home hours ago and the coffee in the lunch room is stone cold. Nan's is always open and he's been friends with the owners since he got his first job at the NPD. Martin gives him a ham sandwich, compliments of the management, a little inside joke: he is the management.
When he gets back, she's awake, sitting in his chair, her head resting on her palm. "Hey. You got anything for a hangover?" She smiles, trying to seem sarcastic, but slurring her words and sounding tired and stupid.
He sighs irritably and hands her one of the two coffees. Sacks can go without, he won't die. It annoys him that he knows how she takes it. Milk, one sugar, the same as him.
"So, what happened this time, Mars?"
She looks at him, glaring over the lid of the coffee cup. "Nothing."
"Nothing my ass. You were liquored up and breaking windows at your ex-boyfriend's former house. What the fuck is going on?"
She looks down at the floor. She's crying and doesn't want him to see. She doesn't need to give him another reason to laugh at her.
"Well?"
She looks up at him sharply. "Did I ever tell you how glad I am that you blew me off when I told you that I was raped?" He almost flinches. Sometimes he forgets how much she hates him. It's easy to when she's asleep.
"No. Did you know that if I knew Cassidy Casablancas raped you I would have killed him?" It's very late and his brain is three steps behind his mouth. "Is that how you sleep at night, Deputy?" It's so easy not to believe him. She remembers that pen tatoo she gave herself in 7th grade Algebra, when Mrs.Norman was busy explaining away slope formula. "Don". With a bunch of hearts around it. She suddenly has the urge to be sick on the floor. No matter how good they seemed, they were all losers.
"Duncan called me." She says it without thinking. She's still drunk and just realizing it. Lamb just looks at her, waiting. "He says that he's getting married. To some Austrailian bitch who he says is a great mom to Lilly." She looks at him angrily. "Feel free to start laughing at me any time. 'Veronica Mars, with her dead boyfriend and her distant father and her alcholism at the age of 21.' Not even Duncan wants her anymore. Not even some second rate former deputy.' I'm pretty fucking pathetic and I know it. But what I don't know is why you're not laughing at me yet. Go ahead. Laugh. Tell me to go see the fucking Wizard and get whatever the hell it is that you think I need." And then she's crying and this is why she used to hate drinking, because all the chinks in her armor would get so big that shit like this would start happening; crying in front of Donald Lamb of all people. In fact, now that she thinks about it, this is why she still hates drinking. Now she just doesn't have a choice.
He gets up and leaves. She doesn't want him to see her like this and he knows it. He hates that he would have laughed at her when she was like this only a year ago. But since Logan Echolls commited suicide, he's been looking out for her, not wanting her to walk out in front of some car while drunk or end up fucking some goddamned louse like Dick Casablancas because it's the closest thing to Logan she'll ever get again.
When he comes back she's asleep so he packs her into the backseat of his car and drives her home with him. He's too tired not to care where she sleeps.