Title: "Get Free"
Author: Lila
Rating: PG-13
Pairing/Character: Logan/Hannah
Spoiler: "Ain't No Magic Mountain High Enough"
Length: one-shot
Summary: "I'm gonna get free, ride into the sun…"
Not a sequel, but pseudo-companion piece to my fic "Blonde on Blonde"
Author's Note: This is what happens when I start going to the gym again, decide my workout playlist is crap and replace my electronica with garage rock from 2002. I know this is a little weird, but like most of my stories it popped into my head and burrowed itself inside and wouldn't get go. It's also about as close to fluff as I get, so bear with me. Still, here we are, and I hope you all enjoy.
"When it's pretty time, look into your mind, don't wait"
The first time he sees her he thinks he's seeing Lilly Kane come back to life.
Long blonde hair, too much pep, the way she catches her lower lip between her teeth and stares up at him through long lashes framing bright eyes. She even has a gang of cloned versions of herself hovering behind. She literally takes his breath away.
Yet, there's something a little too innocent in those blue eyes, something way too earnest in her hopeful gaze, but his heart still slams against his ribs as his mind skips past rational thought and he's convinced the love of his life has come back to him. He wants to touch her, just to see if she's real, and lets their fingers brush as she slips the mallet into his hand. Her skin is warm and soft where their skin touches, and he resists the urge to press the pads of his fingers to the pulsing beat in her wrist and feel the blood throb through her, feel what makes her alive, feel what separates her from Lilly Kane.
She smiles up at him and her laugh is clear and there's no malice in her eyes, no challenge, no manipulation, and he lets himself smile with her as he realizes the blonde in front of him might look a helluva lot like Lilly Kane, but is anyone but her. He lets out a sigh of relief. He's cried enough tears over Lilly Kane – he's done with the bitch that betrayed him, even if he still loves her, even if he can't quite get past her.
She's young, probably too young, but he wants it that way. He's learned a thing or two from Veronica and it wasn't so hard to track down Nip/Shmuck's only child, his baby, his angel, and make her his. He's learned a thing or two from Lilly too, and when he runs his thumb over the smooth skin of her palm and calls her princess and stands a little too close, she's like putty in his hands. When he doesn't feel guilty, he knows he's learned a little too much from Lilly; when the wheels start turning in his head about all the ways he can make Thomas Griffith pay, he knows he's learned a little too much from Veronica. When Hannah smiles as he kisses her good night and his fingers tangle in her hair, he realizes he'll never quite escape blonde girls destined to break his heart.
"She never loved me, why should anyone?"
On their first date – first real date – he takes her out for a fancy sushi dinner and they're barely through the edemame when a pimply faced freshman comes over and asks for his autograph. He just stares the kid down, because the last thing he wants to think about on a date, or any time in general, is the murder charge hanging over his head or his father the action star who slept with and murdered his girlfriend and is also facing a possible death sentence.
Hannah just watches him from across the table, curiosity in those blue eyes, and smiles indulgently. "We're out to dinner," she says quietly, smiles brightly, catches the kid's eye knowingly. "Maybe you could come back and hero worship later?" The kid mutters an apology, stalks off towards the door, and she sits back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest, totally satisfied. "That was kinda fun!" she laughs, and her chin juts out in way that reminds him way too much of Veronica, way too much of sugar coated steel, feels unfamiliar because he's never had a blonde girl fight his battles for him before.
"You think you can protect me from the big bad?"
She shrugs and unwinds her arms. "I could try, herd mentality and all. We like to protect our own."
His fingers creep across the table and brush over hers for the slightest of seconds, and her breath hisses inwards sharply. "Am I yours?"
Her fingers rattle against the table cloth and she jerks them back. "Logan," she starts and he waits for the rejection, for the blow to fall, even if it's all part of the plan. "Do you like me?"
"Princess, if I didn't like you we'd be brown bagging it at Dog Beach."
She frowns, ducks her head, and her hair spills long and blonde down her cheek. "I mean, do you really like me?" She's getting at something he's not quite clear about, a challenge in that normally perky voice, and he's not sure if it's her youth or nerves or the way she lifts her head, blonde hair falling back from her face, and looks right into his eyes, but she's making him lose sight of the big picture, the sunset waiting for him when Thomas Griffith lands behind bars.
She's waiting for an answer, her eyes still challenging him, waiting for him, and he lies the way he's lied to her all along. "If you play your cards right, I think I could fall in love with you."
Her cheeks spark pink and her hand creeps across the table, fingers brushing against his, and he's surprised by the sparks that shimmy their way up his arm. She smiles at him the way he remembers and he's no longer sure he's entirely lying. "Hiding a Full House up that sleeve?" she questions, fingertips caressing the hem of his shirt.
"For you princess, we'll call it a Royal Flush."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
Her fingers shift to wrap around his and he's no longer surprised when the sparks creep up his arm and spread thickly across his chest. "I fold," he says and beckons for the waiter. "Check, please!"
"Come here, I'll take your photo for ya"
On their second date he makes good on his earlier threat and caters a picnic and spreads a blanket across Dog Beach. They drink champagne and her easy laugh turns into a full throttle giggle by the time he convinces her to play frisbee and feeds her cheese and crackers and it's like his worst nightmare straight out of a Freddie Prinze Jr movie. It's the kind of date he used to plan for Lilly, the kind he wanted for Veronica that night on Catalina, the kind he never extended to Caitlin. It's the kind of date he always wanted for whatever girl he was falling in love with, and is only able to act out with the girl he's trying to con. Poetic justice should have been his middle name.
Her skirt blows up around her thighs as she leaps for the frisbee and lands in a jumbled heap in the sand, hair spreading around her face. She's rolling with laughter and she grabs his hand as he stops beside her, inspecting the damage, and pulls him down beside her. They sky is beautiful above them, colors rolling and changing before their eyes, spreading milky and brilliant over the line of the water.
"Sunset's my favorite time of day," she confesses. "Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?" He just looks at her knowingly, eyes tracing the planes of her face, and she rolls her eyes at him. "Seriously, though. I had the best time today, Logan, and I didn't even have to slay any dragons for you."
He smiles and it's not a lie. "I had a great time too. Although your frisbee technique could use a little work."
She socks him lightly on the arm, shifts in the sand so her head is resting on his shoulder. "An athlete I am not." She spreads an arm over his chest and he can't stop himself from wrapping one of his around her shoulders, holding her close, like he's trying to keep her safe." I wish we could stay like this forever," she confesses. "Freeze this moment, the sunset, the champagne…" she lets out a nervous giggle. "It's just so beautiful." She picks up her head, studies him for a moment, and reaches for her purse.
"What are you doing?" he asks and she sits up gamely, an iZone clasped in one hand.
"Ready for your close up, Mr. Echolls?" she asks.
He stares up at the fading sunset and shakes his head. "You're not capturing my good side."
"It's magic hour, Logan," she insists. "Come on, let me take your picture."
"Fine," he says as the camera goes off in a torrent of snaps. A line of photographs slip out, and her forehead knots as she studies them carefully, and with lightspeed rips them into little bits. "Hey!" he says. "What happened to my close up?"
"Ick," she scoffs. "I know you were born with an Oscar in your hand, but stop hamming it up. Just be natural. Be the Logan I know."
It's on the tip of his tongue to tell her that she doesn't know him at all, but instead he turns his head away from her, into the dying light, and the camera clicks rapidly. He turns back to her when she's silent beside him, and her mouth is turned down in a frown as she analyzes the photos.
"What's wrong?"
She slips the line of photos into his palm. "You just look so sad." He holds the photos up, barely able to make out his features in the growing darkness, notes the dead look in his eyes, the blank expression on his face. His father might have an Oscar and his mother might have married into one, but he's never been a very good actor, not when it comes to his feelings, not when it involves blonde girls. She fiddles with the strip of pictures, rolling the planes of his face through her finger tips. "I know I'm young, Logan. I know you've been with girls, girls who are more experienced then me." She won't look at him, just stares into the sand. "I know I'm not much like Lilly Kane or Veronica Mars, but I'm me," she says and he represses the need to flinch as images of Lilly fucking his father, Veronica laughing at him on the beach flash against his eyelids.
"I don't want you to be like them" he says and it's the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, even as it's also a lie.
"I don't want you to be sad anymore, Logan." She still isn't looking at him, and even though the sun is long gone from the horizon, he knows her cheeks are tinged pink and her eyes are fever bright with nervousness. It's been two weeks and he already knows her that well. He dated Lilly for two years and never knew her at all, and Veronica…he doesn't think he'll ever know her. She turns to him, and he can make out those flushed cheeks in the starlight, "I really like you, Logan" she says. "It's probably too soon and I've just gone all scary high school crush on you, but I want you to know anyway. I really like you. You made my first date so special, made me so happy these past few weeks…I just want to make you happy too, even for only a little while."
She's so earnest and her eyes are so bright and she's focused on him, just him, no ulterior motive, no games, and when he cups her face in his hands and presses his lips gently against hers it's the most honest kiss he's had in his life.
"Come here, drive you around the corner"
She sends him a care package when she goes skiing with her family for spring break and he's even thankful for the board games he can force Beaver to play with him because he can't take much more Playstation with only Dick for company. There's a mix CD buried at the bottom and even though the last thing he wants to listen to is Maroon 5 or Fall Out Boy, he puts it in his stereo anyway on his way to La Casa Casablancas for the latest all night rager.
Except he never makes it to the party and three hours later he's still parked at Dog Beach with his stereo blaring softly in the background and watching phantom versions of himself and Hannah reenact the best date of his life. He turns the music off with a frustrated snap and listens to the waves crashing angrily against the beach.
He misses her.
He misses the way she rolls her eyes when he calls her princess and even the giggle that constantly rolls off her tongue and should totally annoy him but only makes her more endearing.
He misses the way she jumps in front of him like a pint-sized superhero when a reporter starts pestering him about the murder charge, tells the guy he's a moron for thinking Logan Echolls could hurt a fly.
He misses the constant stream of izone photographs taped to his locker. He misses the way he smiles in most of them.
He misses kissing her and knowing that when she's kissing him back she's only thinking only about him and the way his tongue feels wrapped around hers and that it has zero to do with Lilly Kane.
He misses not feeling guilty about whatever is developing between them.
He wishes he hadn't missed the moment when she stopped being a game and turned into something real.
"Come here, you know you really oughtta"
They've been dating a little over two months when he lays her down on his Neptune Grand sheets, hips pressing into hers, hands barely skimming the buttons on her gauzy shirt. He knows where this is going and he's been there before, but never like this. She asks him to turn off the lights and he hates that he can't see her eyes in the darkness, can't see all the belief and determination focused on him. He makes out a thin sheen of gold in the moonlight creeping through the blinds, like a halo on his pillow. His angel, spread before him, waiting for him. The irony isn't lost on him.
"I want you to trust me," he whispers against her neck, and her skin is hot against his mouth and her head twists, long blonde hair tangling between his fingers.
"I do," she whispers back, and her voice is firm and steady. "I always do."
"You mean it?" he demands, knowing he's totally killing the moment, but he has to know. He needs to know.
Her hand wraps around his and drags it down the length of her stomach, his fingers trailing over burning hot skin. She stops when he hits the waistband of her jeans, fingers catching on the button. "I trust you," she whispers and the button pops open with a snap.
"Come here, move outta California"
He's halfway drowned in a bottle of Jack when his personal pity party is interrupted by a loud knock on the door, and persistent pounding when he can't pick himself off the couch to make it stop.
"Logan!" he hears her call, firm and insistent. "Logan, open the fucking door."
It's the cursing that gives him the kick in the pants he needs. In the three months he's been using Hannah to save his own skin, he's never heard her say something dirtier than crap, and it's the words pouring out of her mouth that drag him off the couch and towards the door. He jerks it open and she's standing in the harsh florescent light, a duffle hanging off one shoulder, blue eyes shadowed against her cheeks. She pushes past him and into the suite and ignores his half-assed "Hello to you too."
The bag drops to the floor at her feet and she wraps her arms around her stomach, hugging herself, like she needs to hold herself steady to make it. There are tears in her eyes and her breath is jerking out of her in halting, unsteady motions. "You used me," she whispers, fingers digging into her sides so hard her knuckles bleach white. "He used you and you used me and now I'm going to use you."
He pushes the door closed and leans back against it, trying to get the room to stop spinning, for Hannah's face to steady, for her eyes to turn back into the honest blue he craves. "What are you talking about?" he manages to say. She isn't looking at him, eyes squeezed shut as her breath starts to even out, and she unwraps her arms long enough to run a shaky hand over her brow.
"I know what you did, Logan. I know about my dad. I know who he is to you, what you are to him. What I am to you."
He pushes away from the door, manages to make his way to her without stumbling. His thoughts are running a mile a minute and his words are tripping over themselves in his head, the realization that she knows clouding his thoughts, and he barely manages to say, "You have no idea who you are to me."
She tilts her head and in the glaring light looks exactly like Veronica and he holds his breath, waiting for her to stamp her foot and accuse him of evil and high tail it out of his life. But she doesn't walk away, and instead takes a step closer, and then another one, until she's pressed up against him and cupping his cheeks in her hands. "Do you love me?" she asks and her voice is tiny and quiet and nothing like the bubbly Hannah he's come to know.
It's on the tip of his tongue to tell her yes, to lie the way he couldn't lie before, to keep his heart safe from another Lilly or another Veronica or even another Caitlin Fucking Ford, because everything he's built with Hannah has been based on lies and half-truths and manipulations. But she's looking at him with that trusting fire back in her eyes and she's looking right through him, waiting for an answer, and he can't bear to lie to her, not when she's standing there so open and trusting and waiting for him the way all the blondes before her couldn't. "No," he whispers. "I don't."
He waits for her to pull away, slap him, scream and cry and maybe thrown an over-priced Tower of Piza across the room, but she just presses her lips against his and smiles against his mouth. "That's okay," she says. "Because I love you."
He holds her at arm's length, looking into her eyes, but they're still shining and open and free of shadows. "What?" he manages to say. He's said the words a thousand times, in his dreams, and sometimes, when he worked up the nerve, out loud and to disastrous results, but he's never heard the works back. Not in his life, not since his mother threw herself off a bridge.
"I love you," she says. "I love you and I forgive you. My dad, what he did…I know you didn't kill that biker."
He manages to laugh, because how could she possibly know. Even he doesn't know for absolute sure and he was there. "You have no idea."
She steps closer, reaches up to push his hair off his face. "Yes, I do."
"How could you possibly know, Hannah? You've known me for three months – "
"Because I know you," she interrupts. "I know what you were doing. I hate it, I really do, Logan. It's not like I didn't know who you were when you walked up to my booth at Winter Carnival. And I don't just mean because you're Logan Echolls and the most popular guy at school. I read the papers, you know? I knew about you and my dad. But I liked you anyway, I trusted you anyway. I got to know you anyway." She reaches up and runs her fingers through the short hair standing off his forehead. "I don't want you to die, Logan. I'm here to save you."
He asked Lilly to love him, and she fucked his father. He asked Caitlin to stay with him, and she cheated on him with Chardo. He asked Veronica to trust him, to believe in him, and she sold him out for murder, broke his heart, and stomped all over the shambles of his life in one fell swoop. He's been waiting on a miracle his entire life – he just never expected it to come from another blonde girl. Especially not this blonde girl. "Hannah," he says. "You don't even have your driver's license. I'm gonna be tried for murder."
She smiles, catching her lower lip between her teeth, and it's like looking at Lilly. "I have journalism with your ex. She taught me a thing or two about searching the internet." She reaches into her bag and pulls out a tool kit, slides a hand down his calf and pushes up his jeans. "We're gonna run away, Logan. I can't be in the same house with my dad…and I don't want to watch you die." Her voice is barely there and her hands shake a little as she works at the buzzing anklet wrapped around his leg. It falls to the floor with a loud clap and she stands up, self-assured and proud. "Pack a bag, Logan. We're getting out of here."
He knows it's wrong. She's fifteen and barely been kissed and she's willing to risk her life for him, take on her parents and their friends and even the law to keep him safe. Lilly stood up to her parents and it was because she wanted attention, Veronica stood up for him because she wanted to someone to blame for Lilly's death – he'd known both of them for nearly his entire life and all the time it had never been about him. Hannah has known him for less than a semester and she wants to put her life on the line to keep him safe, to save him. No one has ever made that sacrifice for him before, and he's not sure he can say no.
He doesn't know what to say. She's looking like Lilly and acting like Veronica and he doesn't know if he should tell her she's totally out of her mind or accept the hand she's offering and let her take him away. In the end, he chooses himself, and wraps his hand around hers. "You're sure?" he asks, but does nothing to discourage her because he's selfish that way and he's not sure he can handle another blonde girl leaving him.
"Yeah," she says. "I'm sure. I want to go away, just the two of us, where no one can hurt us." Her eyes flare up and burn and it's like looking right at Veronica. "I want my dad to pay."
They don't take time to pack a bag – "we'll buy whatever we need on the road" she says – and she's the one to drive as they pull out of the Neptune Grand parking lot and take off into the night.
The sun is just beginning to peak through the clouds and the car is jerking awkwardly down the highway as he guides her through the motions, her laughter catching on the wind as Mexico looms before them. The border patrol barely checks their IDs and he looks at her curiously and she just shrugs her shoulders. "You don't think I missed you and Weevil forming an axis of evil? He's good for more then car parts."
Of course, he's running for his life and it's all tied up in Weevil and Veronica and a past he can't seem to escape. She ignores his groan and keeps her eyes focused on the road, blonde hair blowing back from her face as she steers them towards the future.
"Why are you doing this, Hannah?" he finally asks. "I lied to you. I used you. You know all that, and you're still helping me?"
"I love you," she says. "I know it was all a game to you. My dad screwed you over, you return the favor. I know this is all too soon, but I realized this one thing about love, that when you love someone, really love someone, you sometimes do things you shouldn't do." She finally takes her eyes away from the long stretch of highway and turns to look at him. "Last night I dreamt that you died."
"Hannah – " he starts, but she shakes her head, turns back to the road, her voice shaky for the first time since their misguided adventure began.
"You weren't alone either. Lilly Kane was with you and holding your hand and I was holding the other and we were pulling, like a tug of war, and we were tearing you apart. She wanted you so bad, just ignored that you were in pain because she wanted what she wanted and that was all that mattered. So I let you go. I let go of your hand and she gathered you in her arms and took you back to wherever it is that she lives."
She turns back to face him, just for a moment, and he sees something he's never seen before in her eyes. "I realized that it mattered more to keep you alive than what mattered to me. She just wanted a prize; I didn't want you to suffer." She pauses, takes a deep breath, her eyes shiny in the rearview mirror. "I know you don't love me, maybe you never will. But I can't let you die."
She glances at him through the tears and he realizes he's staring at love staring back at him, and there's a blonde girl taking control of his future and she's not running away. "Hannah," he whispers. "I think I'm falling in love with you."
"Yeah?" she says.
"Yeah."
The sun has broken over the horizon and is spreading vivid and new over the open road. "Beautiful," he says and he's not just talking about the sky.
The tears are gone when their eyes meet and she smiles, and it's the familiar reassurance he's beginning to love. "I changed my mind."
He slaps a heavy hand against his heart. "Such a heartbreaker, Princess."
She just laughs and it makes him smile, really smile. "Sunrise is much better than sunset."
He laughs along with her. "We have a whole lifetime of sunrises waiting for us."
"Until we get caught," she says and there's hesitance in her voice, but her tone is firm and strong.
"We're not getting caught."
"You can't know for sure – "
"Do you trust me?" he interrupts.
Her hands shake a little on the wheel, but her nod is resolute. "Always."
"Then trust me on this. The princess always gets a happily ever after. You're not going to be any different." He's sure of this, more sure of anything in his life.
"A lifetime of sunrises, huh?"
"A lifetime of sunrises."
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