AN I: It's been a while I know...I have no excuses. Thank you for reading my story. I would love a review on your way out. Thanks!
Logan was kissing Veronica, mouth fused to hers, almost desperate in its warm sliding grip. He clutched wide palmed handfuls of worn fabric covering soft skin. Her freshly showered scent wormed through his nose. He couldn't think, his brain always a whirling mass of complexities and subtext simply shut down. No manipulations, no lies, no fear that Aaron was going to kill him.
Just marshmallows and promises.
He gripped Veronica lightly and lifted until she was wrapped around his body, legs firmly locked around his waist. Holding her full weight easily, Logan kicked at the door, hearing it shut as he maneuvered towards the couch. He never once broke contact with Veronica's warm lips, swallowing her breathy sounds as soon as she made them. The pain, courtesy of Aaron's twisted sense of fatherly duty, receded to the back of his mind. Dick and Beaver were already forgotten. Even Veronica's flight of frenzy was ignored.
Only Veronica and Logan, together. He'd always been really good at living in the moment. And, what a moment!
Holy shit he was kissing Veronica Mars, and he liked it!
God, did he ever like it. The skin pulled on his back, and he fought down a surprised hiss as Veronica's small teeth accidently nipped at a still healing tear in his full bottom lip. The slight intake of air rippled into her mouth and Veronica jumped before she then paused, leaning her head shakily against Logan's shoulder. Her breathing was just as ragged as his. He could hear his own heartbeat thundering in his ears, the only sound in the small darkening apartment.
The air was thick with tension, seeped with an attraction neither had been expecting, or necessarily wanted. But neither could deny its existence, not now.
With gentle hands, Logan smoothed back Veronica's hair, wanting to sooth the fine tremors he could feel racking her small frame. Her hair was heavy with moisture, the strands naturally wavy, curling around his fingers. Holding Veronica was different than holding Lily, she was smaller, more slender, and less curvy. Her scent was all the more powerful due to its unobtrusive elusiveness.
With Lily, he'd always been thinking, calculating, because he had known she was as well.
If I touch her this way, she will do this. And expect that.
With Veronica, Logan was flying by the seat of his pants, diving headfirst into uncharted territory. She was hiding something, he knew it. And Logan had his fair share of secrets too. But touching Veronica Mars, all tortured history aside, felt like the most honest interaction he'd ever had. Which was an amazing feeling to the emotionally and physically abused son of two vapid self-centered movie stars.
Veronica, for her part was confused as hell. She prided herself on being the one in the room with the plan, always being in control. She had plan A's and plan B's, contingencies and angles. But kissing Logan, feeling his arms around her, seemed to wipe her brain out. Veronica felt shock at how not horrible kissing Logan had been. Given her experience last year, she thought she'd just never feel comfortable opening that part of herself up again. And the events with Dick and Beaver had just further driven home how defective she really was.
The 09's had won, Veronica felt broken.
But, in Logan's arms she hadn't felt dirty. She'd even forgotten momentarily she was supposed to feel that way. It was only now, in the booming silence that her insecurities stuttered to life, demanding homage. When Logan had touched her, she hadn't been scared, she hadn't felt lost, or used.
She'd felt safe. She'd felt beautiful
And really, what the hell was she supposed to make out of that? This was Logan, her most hated enemy, bitter arch nemesis. She could never let him know just how good it felt to be around him, to let him understand would give him power over her. And Veronica felt she'd given enough over the past year, bleed enough, cried enough. So, when she wanted to snuggle into Logan, utter words of warmth, she instead made herself push away.
Only, if she stood by herself, would she know how strong she really was. This couldn't be about Veronica, this had to be about saving Logan. Nothing more, nothing less.
Aaron Echolls needed to pay for what he'd done.
"What's the matter," asked Logan, trepidation filling his voice at her sudden shift in distance away from him. He felt cold by himself, the angry welts on his back screaming loud and long for his attention. Something was the matter, he could tell by the look in her eyes.
"Logan, how long do you have until your parents are back from the new location?"
"I don't know, a few days maybe, a week, depending on how the initial scenes go." His eyes said everything he wouldn't and Veronica refused to let herself feel guilty as she scooted even further away.
This is Logan freaking Echolls, she reminded herself, and he'll only hurt you. It was hard to tell herself that though as pictures of Logan broken and bleeding kept flitting across her mind's eye and the sensation of Logan's kiss kept ghosting across her lips.
"Well, obviously you can't stay there and let him keep hurting you Logan," bit Veronica sarcastically, attempting to keep herself from jumping back into Logan's arms.
Disbelief and hurt warred across his expressive features as he just stared at Veronica. "Let him hurt me, are you serious? As if I ever let him do anything."
"No, that didn't come out right, it's not what I meant," murmured Veronica trying to diffuse the situation.
But Logan barreled on, real true emotion driving his words, as secrets he'd kept bottled up his whole life burst out in broken discarded fragments. "Let him, like I said hey Dad go ahead and beat me, it'll make me feel like a real man. Use the belt, Dad, that one's my favorite. Or maybe when I was five I asked him to break my arm. I bet when I was eight, I asked him to hold my head underwater and laugh while I sputtered and choked. I asked when I was twelve to have the daylights beaten out of me and cigarettes put out on my bare skin. Yeah, Dad, thanks for that lesson. I really needed you to teach me how to be a man."
Logan was angry and hurt, he didn't even fell the tears cascading down his face.
"God, Logan," started Veronica. "That's…."
"My life," he finished hotly. "Who are you to judge?" He reached over and lifted Veronica off the couch. She was too surprised to protest, as he slammed her back in to cushions, levering himself over her, fingers bruising her flesh even as his tortured gaze burned into hers. "Do you want to let me do this Veronica? Could you stop me?"
His breath was hot against her face and his tears continued to fall, dripping warm salt over her pale and drawn cheeks. Veronica wanted to help Logan, but she'd screwed up, said the wrong thing….and now he was starting to scare her. Gone was his comforting presence. Over her loomed a man, beaten down, but very much capable of violence. She shivered and Logan caught the movement.
"Could you stop me, Veronica, could you?" he repeated.
"No," cried out Veronica, "no I couldn't. Please stop Logan, you're hurting me." She whimpered as real sensations of pain cursed down her arms radiating from his iron grip. "Please," she whispered.
All of Logan's weight suddenly disappeared and Veronica dragged in shaky breaths in his absence.
"Oh God, oh God, oh God, what have I done?" Logan was pressed against the arm of the couch, rocking and forth, movements jerky and stilted. "I'm just like him, I really am just like him." He looked at Veronica and laughed a hysterically. "I guess it's all in the blood."
Veronica didn't know what to say, what Aaron had done to Logan was horrible, absolutely horrific. But she wasn't without her own demons and Logan has scared her. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, frozen in place. She still hadn't moved, she didn't know what to do.
Logan moaned and lurched off the couch running down the hall. Veronica leapt up, freed from her previous paralysis, shaken to the core that he might think suicide was a good option again. She scrambled thinking of her Dad's gun case in his room. But, that wasn't where Logan was headed.
He careened into the tiny hall bathroom and threw himself to his knees. Throwing up the cracked toilet seat lid with none of his usual grace, Logan dry heaved like he was trying to see his own intestines. He was crying and heaving and choking, God, he couldn't breathe. All he could think was I'm a monster, just like Aaron.
Tentatively, Veronica entered the bathroom and placed a hand lightly between his shoulder blades. They were so fucked, both of them, apart and together.
How Neptunian of them, she thought.
With nothing to come up, Logan finally calmed his stomach and sat back against the cool tiles, resting his face on his drawn up knees. He had nothing left to cry, nothing left to give. He had nothing.
He knew Veronica was in the room, but he couldn't look at her. Logan couldn't believe that he'd snapped and lost control like that, after Dick, after everything. Did his father snap once too? Was that how it had started?
Oops, it won't happen again son, I promise. Until it did. Until Aaron didn't even bother to apologize, instead hiding his actions behind lessons. Until his mother no longer responded to his screams.
Until Logan learned not to cry.
He flinched when Veronica sank down on her knees next to him. He closed his eyes, never making a sound, when she wrapped her arms around him drawing his head down onto her breast.
"I didn't let him, Veronica. I never let him." The words came out raw and honest, his voice broken.
"I know Logan, I never let them either." She ran a hand through his hair, nails lightly scratching his scalp. "We'll fix this Logan, I promise."
He didn't tell her it wouldn't work, he'd tried telling when he was little, and it never worked. Instead, he fisted a tired hand in her shirt and held on for his life.
Curled around each other on Veronica's tiny bathroom floor, Logan and Veronica cried together.
AN II: Whew...that was intense. I'd love to hear from you!