Hi! Uh... so there may have been a *slight* delay in posting this chapter. (*cough*fouryears*cough*) When my computer died back in 2010, I lost both Chapter 4B and my outline for this story, and I basically just left it for dead. Recently some lovely people on tumblr have encouraged me to finish it, and I'm hoping some people here might still be interested in seeing how it ends. My current plan is to have Ch. 5 up on Monday, June 9 (of 2014, not 2018) /o\
Your delinquent author,
Caroline
The Way We Were – Chap. 4B
Logan is positive that in his twenty-two years of existence, he has never reached this level of exhaustion.
He chances a glance down at his watch: 4:03 AM. Fucking hell, he thinks.
Logan and Dick are back at the apartment; and to Logan's extreme annoyance, Dick is once again asking him the exact same question he's asked him four times already since they left the club.
"Dude – you're seriously not gonna call her?"
Logan tries to rein in his exasperation. "For the fifth and final time: I'm not calling her."
"And explain to me again why you're not?" Dick asks Logan, the disbelief evident in his tone.
Logan grits his teeth, wracking his brain for an answer that will placate his friend, or at least shut him up.
"I don't know. Whatever, man. She was cool, but she wasn't my type, okay?"
Dick looks horrified. "What the fuck - your 'type?' She's hot, she's legal, and she gave you her number."
"Well, maybe that's not enough for me. Maybe I'm more complicated than that."
"Bullshit," says Dick sharply. "You've hooked up with plenty of chicks in the past. Seemed simple enough to me."
"Well, maybe things are more complicated than that. You know what I'm dealing with right now – why would I want to drag an innocent bystander into this crazy shit?"
Dick looks at Logan like he's grown another head. "You wouldn't be 'dragging her into' anything. Call her. Get some. And get gone. It's that simple, bro. The only way it'd be complicated is if you were in a relationsh"- Dick trails off abruptly. His eyes open comically wide and then narrow to angry slits. "Oh… no. No, no, no, no. NO. You better fucking come clean about this right now, Echolls – are you back with fucking Ronnie?"
Logan can feel Dick's anger coming off him in waves. "Dude, calm down."
"Well? Are you?"
By this point, Logan can feel his own anger burning inside him. Until now, he'd been prepared to - semi-truthfully - deny the accusation. But if this was how Dick was going to be? To hell with him.
Logan matches Dick's glare with his own. "And if I am?" he asks coldly.
Dick shakes his head, as if in denial. "You can't be serious," he says, half-pleadingly.
When no reply is forthcoming, the reality of the situation sinks in.
"Damn it, Logan!" he practically spits. "Are you some kind of sick psycho who likes getting fucked over by ice-cold bitches? You let Veronica treat you like shit, man. And you went crawling back to her every time she snapped her fingers. Hell, even your mom treated you like shit and"-
Logan's mouth goes dry. "Shut up"-
"No. It's true. Caitlin Ford used you"-
- "Shut your mouth"-
-"don't forget your manipulative, attention-whore sister who couldn't care less about you. I know you still send Trina money"-
"-I said stop"-
"-Lilly used you for a fuck-toy and then jumped your dad's bones the first chance she got. Same with Kendall, come to think of it"-
"Dick, I swear to God"-
"-and Veronica's the worst of them all. And I better not hear a goddamn word from you when it all goes south - which it will"-
"-I'll fucking end you if you say one more word."
The venom in his voice is unmistakable. Logan is shaking with anger, and for at least a full second, he really means it.
Dick doesn't bat an eyelash. "Easy there, killer," he says, quirking an eyebrow in Logan's direction. "Guess you've got more in common with your old man than you thought."
"Right back at you, bro," spits Logan furiously. "You must have picked up a ton of tricks from your dad over the years. Trying to make me feel so shitty that I'll jump off a roof just to get away from you, too?"
Oh, god.
The instant the words are out of his mouth, he regrets them. Logan instinctively takes a step forward, but Dick actually staggers backward slightly, as though he's been struck. His face registers both shock and betrayal and his sharp, pained intake of breath slices through Logan like a knife.
"Dude," gasps out Logan, "I didn't mean that. You know I didn't. I was just"-
By now, Dick's eyes are closed and his fists are clenched tightly. Logan braces himself for the blow he's pretty sure is coming. Instead, Dick takes a deep, shuddering breath.
"I need to barf," he announces flatly.
And before Logan can say a word, Dick turns and walks slowly to the hall bathroom. Several seconds later, the unmistakable sounds of retching emanate from the room. For once, Logan would dearly love to attribute this to a night of heavy drinking. But he can't.
A few minutes later, Dick emerges, looking white and shaken. He holds his hand up, forestalling Logan's attempt to speak:
"I don't want to talk about it. I'm not pissed at you, okay? But I can't do this right now. I'm sorry I gave you shit about Ronnie."
And with that, he exits the room, shutting the door to his bedroom, leaving Logan standing in the middle of their living room - feeling somewhat nauseous himself, truth be told.
His exhaustion is absolute, but Logan is certain beyond a doubt that he won't be able to sleep. Hardly knowing how he got there, he finds himself curled up on the couch, absently flipping through channels. Golden Girls. CSI: Miami. Infomercial. Random reality show. Other random reality show. Disney movie. Tinseltown Diaries.
His heart skips a beat. There are his parents, talking animatedly; looking happy and tanned and very much alive. The attack on Veronica had temporarily renewed the public's interest in the Lilly Kane-Aaron Echolls affair, and the special had been airing frequently the past few days.
Logan swallows painfully, watching his mother laugh at something his father had said to her – some footage from an interview taken several years ago.
"And how," asks the perky reporter, "do you manage to keep your family grounded, despite your very busy careers?"
Aaron's face turns somber. "My family," he intones huskily, "means the world to me. Lynn and I have always said that our most important job is to provide a caring environment for our two, beautiful children. That is how we measure success. And of course Lynn and I always make sure to save time for one another – our marriage has only grown more intimate and loving over the years."
The interviewer presses onward. "I'm sure you're aware that your son's ex-nanny has sold an interview to the press in which she makes numerous accusations against your family that are at odds with the image you present: In particular, she mentions frequent fights and accuses you of verbally abusing your wife and children."
Aaron raises his eyebrows, calm and collected. "And why shouldn't she?" he asks. "If she stands to gain so much for saying these hateful, untrue things. Money? Fame? Attention? If these things were her goal, then we must all congratulate her on her success – never mind that she stepped across the backs of my family to do so."
"So you deny the accusations?"
"Of course. Now I will say that all families have… disagreements from time to time. It's normal and natural. But they have never approached the levels suggested by this sad, disturbed woman. And the one rule my family has always and will always live by is this: We never go to bed angry."
Logan holds up the remote control with a shaking hand. He points it at his father's head and imagines that he's holding a gun, ready to pull the trigger.
He can see red. He can actually see fucking red.
"Good night, Dad," he says loudly, a grim smile plastered to his face as his thumb presses the button at the top of the remote.
Off.
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It takes four hours of sleep, three hits of the snooze button on his alarm, two cups of coffee, and a shower before Logan feels even semi-human.
It takes a good long while for him to dress, and the process feels eerily like he's donning a costume. He rifles through the back of his closet, where most of his high school and early-college ensembles have been relegated. He considers and discards a few outfits before settling on an older pair of jeans and a dark-blue and slate-gray t-shirt he'd been fond of wearing their freshman year at Hearst. After a few moments of uncertainty - but remembering the doctors' advice about familiar things being helpful for Veronica - he heads over to the oak credenza in the corner of his room and resurrects his seashell necklace from the depths of his desk drawer.
Ten minutes later, he has the necklace on and his hair spiked up youthfully. He glances at his profile in the mirror and decides he could easily pass for nineteen. Feeling only slightly ridiculous, he grabs his wallet and car-keys from the kitchen island and gets ready to head to the hospital.
As he shuts off the light in the kitchen, he hears the click of Dick's bedroom door shutting. Dick must have been in the bathroom and then snuck back into his room. Logan crosses the room as quietly as he can and stands in front of the doorway, straining to hear any sounds from inside. He waits there for several seconds, shifting his weight restlessly from one foot to the other, hand raised and poised to knock, before thinking better of it. After all - what would he even say?
The drive to the hospital is surreal.
He flies down the highway with the radio on, an indie song from several years ago filtering through the speakers - some band that Duncan of all people had really liked way-back-when. Or possibly he still likes them; Logan has absolutely no way of knowing if Duncan is even alive, much less if he's in the kind of place where he has access to a good music selection. It's hysterical, but somehow - despite the fact that Duncan and his illegitimate offspring are currently on the lam from the FBI, having violated about a thousand federal laws - Logan absolutely cannot picture straight-laced Duncan downloading music illegally. He used to rail against it back in high school, and Logan has to admit he'd consider it some kind of poetic justice if the cops caught up with him by tracking his iTunes account.
The music picks up in tempo - and yeah, cruising down Interstate 5 with the windows down and the breeze blowing in from the sea-salt air - he really could be back in high school. He fingers his seashell necklace with his left hand briefly and for just a second, he can feel three ghosts in the car with him. Lilly is tossing her hair over her shoulder and turning the music up louder, eyes crackling with laughter, bitchy-sweet and sixteen, the way she'll always be in his mind. Duncan is in the backseat, arm slung lazily around Veronica's shoulders, cautioning Logan to slow down but laughing when he brakes crazily and swerves in and out of the lanes, anyway. Veronica is curled up, catlike, under Duncan's arm, digging her fingers into his thigh whenever Logan pulls a bone-headed maneuver, but trusting the people in the car not to hurt her. Trusting the world not to hurt her.
They're all dead.
He had been there at the gravesite when they'd lowered Lilly into the ground, singing somber songs and saying solemn things about an irreverent sixteen-year-old who would have mocked them mercilessly if she could have seen them.
Duncan had died, in every way that matters to Logan, their senior year of high school - when he'd come home to the Neptune Grand to find Celeste and Jake, red-eyed, boxing up Duncan's possessions and asking Logan hollowly if he wanted to keep any of Duncan's clothes.
And the version of Veronica who had been capable of trusting anyone at all? Well, she was more dead than Lilly, and that's saying something.
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Veronica's fingers tremble slightly as they flip the pages of Wallace's texbrook, which looks even from a distance like it has tried to commit death-by-highlighter.
Wallace runs a hand through his hair in apparent frustration. "So wait... Prospero's talking about Caliban in that passage, or - ?"
"No, no, no," says Veronica wearily. "Here, go back and read this last stanza here, when he's saying, '...I shall chide thee, if not hate thee!' He's talking to Miranda. He's trying to mockingly make the point that since Miranda's never seen any men except for Ferdinand and Caliban, that she obviously doesn't -"
"I'm sorry," breaks in Logan brightly, watching two pairs of eyes flick up toward him from the hospital bed. "They told me my Ethics Seminar was meeting in here, but I appear to have wound up in the English-for-dummies classroom instead."
Logan pointedly does not care about the way Veronica's face is lighting up at the sight of him. He does not care because it is not real.
"Logan," says Wallace, turning to him with a sigh of relief. "How are you, man? Hey - do you want to go do something fun together - like scrub some bedpans? Or wax the hospital floors? Basically anything that's not this?" he asks pathetically, indicating the Shakespeare anthology resting on Veronica's knees.
Logan laughs.
"So good of you to help the less fortunate, sweetie," he says to Veronica, the endearment slipping out almost without his volition.
"Freshman Shakespeare," says Veronica dramatically. "It's what separates the boys from the-"
"-gay dudes?" says Wallace irritably.
Veronica slaps Wallace's hand in rebuke with all the strength she can muster.
"Ow," mutters Wallace, looking up as Logan catches his eye for a split-second. Because of course they both know that Wallace isn't taking Freshman Shakespeare; he's taking a 400-level summer English class to make up the credits he'd missed out on during his year in Africa.
He's taken out of these thoughts by Veronica's voice, which sounds uncharacteristically tremulous:
"Hey, Wallace, do you mind if I... talk to Logan alone for a few minutes?"
He and Wallace exchange the briefest of panicked glances before Wallace clears his throat and says, "Uh... well... I'm - I'm still not sure I really understood that last question on the assignment-"
"I'll help you with it, I promise," says Veronica immediately. "I just need a couple minutes for Logan and I to talk - and do me a favor? Run interference for me, in case Dad comes back from lunch early? He's been very needy the last couple of days."
"Yeah, weird," says Wallace. "You'd think his only child had almost died or something."
"You slay me with your wit," says Veronica dryly. "But seriously - can you please scram? Just for five or ten minutes?"
Logan gives Wallace his fiercest death-glare and shakes his head furiously at him, but Wallace shrugs helplessly, shooting him a well-what-am-I-supposed-to-do look?
"Uh... okay," says Wallace finally. "I'll be right outside."
Veronica raises an eyebrow. "Creepy," she says mildly.
Wallace gazes at her in alarm. "You're not, uh, planning to-"
"Wallace!" she shrieks, gesturing to her bandages. "Obviously not."
"Okay, okay," he acquiesces.
"Although," says Veronica, shooting a coy smile in Logan's direction, "we can tell you some stories - like that time on the marina under the stars, when we made love until the wee hours -?"
"La la la, not listening," says Wallace loudly, clapping his hands over his ears and hastening out of the room.
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The air in the hospital room is dry, and Logan's throat feel like it's constricting as he swallows.
Veronica looks just as bruised and battered as she had yesterday, but she's moving the upper half of her body more freely and her spirits seem brighter. The bruise blossoming near her eye looks ghastly under the room's too-bright fluorescent lighting, and Logan finds himself somewhat hampered in his attempts to not care about her by the fact that he wants to kill whichever Fitzpatrick did this to her.
Slowly and violently.
"So...what did you want to talk to me about?" he asks, willing himself to sound casual and unconcerned.
She blinks her eyes up at him - a long, upward sweep of her lashes as her sea-blue eyes open and hold his gaze - and fuck, he is done for; he is so fucking done for.
She beckons him to come sit on the bed with her and he obeys, drawn to her like a moth to a flame. (Although his screenwriting teacher would say that that analogy is overdone. Right now he actually thinks he feels like one of those comets caught in the gravity of a planet; one that spirals closer and closer with each passing orbit until eventually it just smashes into it and explodes into fragments, merging with the larger planet and leaving a faint scar behind. He wonders fleetingly if Mars has ever had one.)
Terrible analogies aside, the trouble is that so much of what he has always felt for her is physical.
That sounds horrible, but he doesn't even necessarily mean it in a sexual way. It's just - his body his always reacted to hers. Sweating when their palms touch, a dizzying sort of high when he smells her perfume, heart banging madly in his ribcage when he sees her, throat drying up mid-conversation, a swooping roller-coaster sensation when they kiss -
It had almost frightened him at first - was it supposed to be this intense with someone you loved? Did everyone feel this way?
Even when he'd hated her, he'd been unable to look away, and he suspects it was the same way for her. They've been drawn to the other's gaze; attuned to the other's presence; affected by the other's moods for so long that he doubts they'll ever know another way to be.
"Actually," says Veronica, "I had a question I've been wanting to ask you ever since yesterday. Are you - Logan, are you upset with me?"
Logan's shocked-wide eyes must give his answer away. "What? No," he says. "Why would I be?"
Veronica shakes her head. "I'm not sure. But... I mean, I'm not trying to sound critical, but you've barely been to see me and you ran out of here so fast yesterday..."
"I'm sorry," he says automatically. "Yesterday I was - I was - overwhelmed," says Logan, which is true enough.
Veronica reaches for his hands, and once again he takes them gently in his. "Okay," she says slowly, "but Logan, I just can't shake the feeling... is there something you're not telling me?" she asks pleadingly, her hands resting lightly in his grasp.
Logan closes his eyes and thinks I'm going to hell. There's no way around it. I am going to hell for this.
He opens his eyes, squeezes her hands gently, and says, "No. No, I promise there's not."
He can see how hard it is for her to trust him; he can see the struggle in her eyes, and in the set of her jaw, and in the nervous squaring of her shoulders. And the final outcome: She believes him. She relaxes her body, looks trustingly into his eyes, and chooses to believe him.
"Okay," she says quietly.
Then she shocks Logan by lifting their joined hands slowly up to her lips and placing a soft kiss on the back of Logan's right hand. He wills his hand not to shake, but he's utterly thrown by this - even when they had been together, that would have been an uncharacteristically tender gesture for Veronica.
She tugs on his hand, pulling him closer to her. His heart thumps wildly as she cups the back of his neck, the pads of her fingertips burning into him like a brand as she lowers his face down, angling it close to hers.
He's falling into her and she's rising up into him, and when their lips are about two inches apart, she turns her head at the last second and -
and -
"I love you," she whispers; and it's a secret breathed against the corner of his mouth that reverberates throughout all of him - echoes of it are swimming across his skin and spreading through his whole body -
Before Logan can even begin to reply, Veronica has tilted her face upward, brushing her lips against his - first lightly, then with intention.
His whole body is lit up; like fire, like electricity, like that spiraling comet that knows it's on its last loop around before the crash.
She breaks the kiss just long enough to whisper, "Logan? Did you hear what I-"
He cuts off her sentence by sealing his mouth over hers, and he knows that he doesn't have to worry about whether or not he's going to hell...
...because he's already there.