Summary: Logan/Veronica ship, Veronica never stays and basically she thinks about why she doesn't. Crap summary. But I think it's pretty good. I wrote it months and months ago, when Duncan was still a regular. Anyways…
Spoilers: None, but knowing Season One would be nice.
Rating: PG-13 for swears and mature situations
Disclaimer: Doesn't belong to me; RT is a god.
A/N: Yeah, basically I wanted to post this because my friend thought it was pretty good even though I wrote a long while back. And this is my first fic, so reviews are lovely. So yes, enough blabber, here it is…
Red Light Stop. Green Light Go.
It was the third time in the last week (and Lord only knows what number it is in the last six months) and she wasn't proud of it. She stumbled (quietly but hardly gracefully) out of his bed and shuffled around the room look for her bits and pieces of clothing that were torn off in the heat of passion. She pulled on her underwear, snapped on her bra, pulled on that tweed skirt she wore to work the following day and buttoned up the sweater over her now wrinkled and unprofessional looking creamy camisole. Twenty-three years old Veronica Mars looked over her shoulder one last time at the once (and still sometimes reoccurring) psychotic jackass, Logan Echolls. He was sound asleep, not knowing she was leaving once more. And Veronica quietly crept out of the New York apartment, not knowing that Logan would feel that stab of being left behind once more.
Veronica didn't exactly know why she always left. Habit? Fear? Or – the most obvious and reasonable to Veronica – something she just picked up from a certain lady Mars? But she lived in a fast pace world – she was, of course, working an internship for the New York Times – where you had to keep moving to keep up with everything important in your career (even if that means cutting out family members, lovers, friends, a loveable dog you've had since ninth grade…). Veronica Mars' life was on the go, always moving, always flashing green lights to signal faster, more responsive movement. It was filled with go (go, go, go!) and she liked it that way.
Some people try to keep up with her quick pace – Wallace and Keith top the two-person long list – and Logan desperately, almost like he wouldn't live if he didn't try, tries to make it on that list, to bump it up to three, but he failed every time.
Logan changed drastically since senior year back in no-name town Neptune, California. He shaped up. Of course, he's not perfect (he couldn't be, it's part of his charm to be so perfectly imperfect), but compared to the life he led in his final high school years, Mr. Logan Echolls is something else now. He goes to NYU, studying the one thing he understood without much effort, and also loved: writing.
He wanted to be a writer one day; he decided that the first night, and what Veronica said specifically would be the last, he and Veronica ever stepped into the realm of something they experienced a number of (countless, for Logan) times each, but never with each other. That night, as he lightly slept, Logan heard her muffled voice through the cotton sheets saying that she believed in him, that some university could take him in even now, the day after graduation, and he could do something, anything, he wanted. She finished it off with a small kiss and that would be the last he felt something from her like that (something with so much love and effect that wasn't verbalized – that's Veronica Mars for you)for four years.
They went their separate ways. Veronica went to Hearst, unable to afford Stanford University after coming in an extremely close second place for the Lilly Kane Scholarship. Logan pulled some very stubborn strings very hard and was able to get himself into NYU, trying to forget the petit blond who (what felt like in his dreams) convinced him to do something, anything.
Then they met, on a cliché New York subway, four years after they parted. She was tired; her new black messenger bag stuffed with books, papers and a laptop, her hair was in a messy bun (with emphasis on the messy), her clothes were wrinkled, she had bags under her eyes. Logan was tired too, but much better off. He just finished his final exams for the summer and was looking forward to doing…nothing. Not his most exciting plans that he ever made, but university can do that to you.
It was simple greeting. Veronica tried to cover up her shock with natural conversation skills and Logan greeted each statement and question with a smirk and a snark and a smile.
That night, Logan invited Veronica to his apartment (to catch up, of course. Logan didn't bring up any other suggestions… verbally). They talked at first, over last night's (or maybe the night before?) Italian take out. That night they end up in a sweaty mess and Veronica left, for the second time, with a few muffled words and a kiss on the forehead.
Six months later, in late November, Veronica was doing it again. She realized this for the fifth time in a few minutes, as she walked down the stairs to the apartment building's foyer. Except this time, she thought, it was minus the kiss and the muffled words. Maybe it was because she knew she would see him again tonight, and if not tonight, tomorrow night. She wanted to go back up there, sprit up those stairs, for a few moments of happy, unforgettable bliss of just laying in the morning sunrise but she was on go, go, go mode, on green light mode; she had a meeting in sixty, no, forty, minutes.
It was a good thing her apartment was close, because she looked exactly how she felt: crap.
That night she walked calmly (as opposed to her usual sprinting) up the stairs and knocked on the door simply (knock…knock…knock), instead of her frantic taps. That night they ate Chinese take out (fresh Chinese take out) while they watched everyday American's compete for a million dollars. That night they didn't have sex like they usually did when she stopped for a surprise visit. But this time, she simply let Logan's forearm cover her tummy and his face plant into the dip of her neck. He held her like that for the rest of the night.
When the sunlight hit her the next morning, Veronica got up (fully clothed, a first at the Echolls casa). She walked over to his balcony, over looking an already busy street at five in the morning. New York City was her town. It was five in the morning and things were already moving quickly, in a go, go, go motion that Veronica loved – or maybe it was just the pace she was used to?
She looked at the intersection. The stoplights were flashing a bright, cherry red.
Stop, stop, stop.
It was a sign. Veronica stumbled (not so gracefully, she tripped over her shoe) into the bed. She fell asleep with her face planed against Logan's chest, breathing in (really breathing in for the first time) his scent.
Veronica woke up with her face against a pillow. Logan was beside her, sitting up, grinning. She smiled back.
Outside, the traffic light broke down and was stuck on a flashing cherry red.