Okay, yes, here you go. A million thanks to querulousgawks for the beta.
Logan stares at her for a minute before craning his neck out the door, peering at his mailbox and the glinting number on the house. "Well, it looks like I'm still in the right place. So what are you doing back here in Kansas?"
"Sometimes the tornado brings you back," she says. She looks basically the same, hair a little shorter maybe, eyes just as intent.
"Not a no place like home girl?"
"Eh." She shrugs. "That too." He can feel how good it is to see her in the smiling unsettledness of his stomach. But Matthew is lying between them, heavier than just his weight on Logan's hip where he's shifting to get down. Logan steps back, lets the door swing fractionally. "Do you have time to come in?
"Sure," she says, and maybe three people in the world would notice the tiny lift of her chin that is the determined tilt of a knight accepting a challenge.
He puts Mattie on the floor, where he totally ignores the two of them in favor of returning to his plastic farm. Logan goes to sit beside Veronica, but his kid's grip is a little enthusiastic when he grabs up a bright pink pig, and Logan slides down, positioning himself to guard against flying animals. He looks up at Veronica, who has been watching them carefully.
"He's big," she says after a minute, although he realizes that she has no frame of reference. This is the first time she's seeing Matthew.
"They've been begging for him at Gerber," he replies. "He's perfect."
"That's good."
There's an awkward silence that feels different than high school. Finally Logan asks, "I thought you still had another semester before I had to get you a hat for your press badge."
"I do. But I'm doing my investigative thesis, and the material up north just didn't seem as much fun as the stuff back home."
"Of course. Veronica Mars makes her triumphant return to reveal the evil beneath our noses." His voice is fond, and the catch as he glances down is split-second. There had been this thought hiding in the recesses of his mind, like a splinter he hadn't even realized had embedded itself until he pressed on it, that maybe Veronica had come back for him. "What are you digging up this time?"
She leans forward a little, and something spirals in his stomach, a "here we go again" the tone of which he can't quite identify. "I'm doing a collection on international adoption. A lot of the countries in Asia and Africa are regulating adoptions from the states, so Central and South America are getting big. And I found out that one of the biggest, most successful agencies in the state is right back in my hometown."
"Of course it is. Having it somewhere else would have been so much less convenient." He freezes as soon as the casual words have left his mouth. "This is going to turn into something about Neptune's rollicking baby trade, isn't it? Because this place had almost dropped to number two on the list of California's top beachside hellholes."
Veronica shakes her head. "Shockingly, I think this is on the level. But I heard the Chamber of Commerce is advertising Dog Beach as a spring break hotspot, so I think the competition is still on."
He relaxes back into the familiarity of this leisurely bantering rerun of details, a breezing flashback to their sophomore and junior years, before Emily, of the two of them on stakeouts, tossing around case particulars and stories of their days. Of trying not to catch Veronica's eye through the dark.
It would be all too easy now, with the sun streaming through his windows and Veronica perched on his couch. But it makes less sense to fall into that now than it did two years ago. Then he was just risking their carefully rebuilt friendship. Now the factors involved make linear algebra look simple.
He isn't quite sure how to feel when Matthew, bored with his game and ready for lunch, starts making a hungry little whine.
"Okay," Logan says, and picks him up. He gestures with his head into the kitchen. "Do you want something to eat?" It almost chokes him, the unfamiliar politeness. He hasn't been like that with Veronica since they were twelve years old. The time when she would have walked into his house and helped herself to the contents of his fridge is desperately recent but distressingly far.
"Just water is fine," she says, and as she pulls herself up onto a stool by the kitchen island, he thinks he sees a shadow in her face that tells him she remembers too.
He puts Mattie in his high chair and goes to get her a glass, grabbing out a baby yogurt and a spoon as he does. Mattie likes to feed himself by this point (and occasionally attempt to feed Logan) but Logan gives him a bib and stations himself in front of him anyway. His walls and floor have had too much food on them for him to trust the kid on his own.
"So what are you doing about this adoption thing?" he asks, glancing at her before focusing back on Matthew, who is thankfully deeply focused on the yogurt-to-mouth transfer.
"I was going to just come and do a day of interviews, but they offered a long term, in-depth deal, so..." She shrugs, somehow shy and sharp.
He nods. "You got that special little shiver."
She looks over at Mattie and drinks her water. "The all access pass is good, but it might have been even more special if I had gone with plan B." He tilts his eyebrow, twitches his mouth. "Undercover," she lays out. "It's been too long since I did some. If they'd said no, I was ready to go back in, Coach."
"Yeah, I miss those old days of near-death experiences. I'm jealous."
"Hey, you would have been invited. Cute couple eager for a baby would have made more sense than me as junior miss spinster ready for a kid." She looks at him over her glass, and he looks back for a spun-sugar moment. She glances at the high chair and tacks on, "We could have brought a picture, said that we were hoping to give him a brother, play up the happy little family thing."
Logan's "No," sudden and inappropriately serious, overtakes the grasping flash of pain he has at the image. "I would have been there, but Mattie stays out of it."
"I wouldn't have him involved if I thought it was that dangerous," Veronica says quickly. Things have shifted in the breach between seconds. Mattie waves his spoon, oblivious.
"I know," Logan tells her, taking a paper towel and reaching out to clean some yogurt out of Mattie's hair. Looking back at her again, he says, "But he's the best thing I've ever done in my life, Veronica. I'm not going to risk him."
She takes a sip of water, seeming to hold back from saying something. She stays for a little while longer, discussing the details of her article, talking about moving back in with her father and making plans to meet up for coffee, while Logan cleans Matthew up and gets him ready to take a nap, but she never really stops glancing at Mattie out of the corner of her eye.
Some days he walks into the shelter and smiles because he can picture now what it's going to look like. It's not just a warehouse anymore. He can see where the kids are going to watch TV, and where they're going to sleep. He's insisted on having compartments built by the beds so each kid can have a place to tuck their stuff away. He's never really recovered the volume of things he lost when his house burned down and for the most part he doesn't miss it, but he knows the ache of not having the things that are precious to you kept safe.
Some days he has to deal with a thousand phone calls and work to tighten the budget and put on his best smile and his Hollywood sob story at town meetings meant to reassure the neighbors that this won't bring a blight upon their houses. Some days he ends up in his office with his eyes pressed into the heels of his hands. Some days he goes over and puts Mattie to sleep, just so he can feel bound together by the weight of his son in his arms. He's never really believed in a better world, and he isn't sure that he does now, but he wants one.
Some days the light streams through the windows, and he swings a hammer beside Wallace, and asks Steph, their general contractor, if he's doing it right, and laughs with Eddie, and teases Maria, and he can't believe that he might not have ended up here.
Veronica shows up on one of those days, looking farm fresh in a pair of old jeans. She and Logan duck into a brief, awkward hug, and she looks around.
"Wallace told me that you can always use extra hands around here." She holds her palms up. "They're small but mighty."
"I know," Logan grins. He calls over his shoulder, "Steph, can we get a hammer for Veronica?"
They're the last two there that night, painting in one of the offices. There's a radio that someone forgot to turn off playing far away across the space. Logan can't make out the lyrics, but the sound of it fills the background as they work, insulates the quick glances they make toward each other.
"How's the article going?" Logan asks eventually.
"Okay." Veronica gets up from where she has been working at the baseboard after finally admitting that even when she used the long roller, the top of the walls looked better when Logan did them. She stretches, extending her back a little. Logan focuses on getting a smooth coat of paint. "I've been trying to get different angles on the story, you know, kids who had good or bad adoption experiences, parents. I've been emailing a few women who gave their kids up for adoption." Something folds in her face. "These women, Logan...they ache. One of them said she knew that it was the right thing to do, but even she said that she still wakes up sometimes and wonders where her son is."
Logan remembers sitting on Emily's bed, more than two years ago now, and asking her if she was considering abortion or adoption. Now the memory makes him take a step back. He knows that for a lot of people in their situation it might have been the right choice, and even knows that if they had gone that way, he might barely think of it now. But the idea of never knowing Mattie's laugh when he is tickled before a bath, of never hearing his stubborn, "No, Day!" before bed, scrapes a rawness beneath his heart.
After a minute, when he can look at Veronica again, he asks quietly, "Do you ever regret deciding not to have kids?"
She is quiet for a moment and he almost wishes he hadn't said anything. He concentrates back on the wall, rolling carefully along the corner. Finally she says, "Nothing would have stopped me. With everything I'd seen, everything I'd done, the idea of bringing a baby into that, even by accident...Maybe I'll regret it someday, but I stand by it."
After a minute, she picks up her brush and returns to the baseboard. "Do you have any regrets?" she asks.
"Where do you want to start the tally? Because I don't know that you have enough paint for that," he says, half joking. She lets out a breath that he thinks might be a laugh. After a while, he adds, pauses between the words, "One thing I do regret. Junior year at Hearst, I wish..."
"I forgave you for sleeping with Emily a long time ago, Logan," Veronica says gently.
He turns around to see her settled on her heels by the still-bare skirting by the doorway, looking at him. "I'm glad," he says slowly, because a part of him has been waiting to hear that since the moment he told her. "But I was going to say I wish we had talked more before you left for Stanford."
"Oh." She seems almost disappointed, turning away from him.
"Do you...you understand why I can't regret that night, right?" He runs a hand along the back of his neck, probably leaving paint there. "For a long time, I thought it said something good about me, that I felt guilty about it. But now..." He swallows, wondering if they've zoned the room correctly, because the space seems too small for awkward truths. "It might have been a mistake, but I have a kid because of it. There are things in my life that I would give anything to take back, but that can't be one of them. I got to be Mattie's dad because of what happened. How can I regret that?"
He almost expects her to walk out, but he's forgotten that she's grown up a little too. She meets his eyes, smiling at him with a bit of a twist to it. "Like Casablanca cock-eyed," she says, and he breathes again.
"Sure," he shrugs. "But thankfully minus the Nazis."
They settle into a routine. Or maybe not a routine, but a predictability, an understanding of proximity. Logan gets used to adding seeing Veronica to his hours with Mattie and talking over tea with Emily when she has the time. He gets used to her showing up at the shelter, to having her laugh at him as he tries to hang posters evenly, and to going for pizza after. And at the same time, he thinks it could end any moment.
She's still uncomfortable around Mattie, but it reminds him more of Mac now, unsure of what to do with a child rather than trying to distance herself from the evidence of betrayal. There's a trepidation on her face that he suspects he would be familiar with if Mattie belonged to some stranger. It's unnerving, though, to see her so hesitant. He almost tells her that it's okay, that she doesn't have to be around Matthew, but if he wants to be around her, at some point it's inevitable.
They spend an afternoon, one of the first nice ones of spring, in Logan and Emily's backyard. Mattie giggles himself into breathlessness as Logan chases him around the grass. Later, Logan lies on his back, Mattie drowsy on his chest. Veronica's shadow is thrown over the two of them, keeping the sun off from where she sits cross-legged beside his shoulder.
"Did you ever think that things would go like this?" he asks quietly.
"No," she says. She smiles down at him, and the sunlit moment feels so fragile he thinks it might be a dream. "But it's not bad, so maybe my lucky stars finally got out of their snit." Something passes over her face and she snaps, "Hey!" Logan starts to sit up, confused, but she is prying open Matthew's grasping hand, which has gripped a clump of dirt and was moving it closer to his mouth. Logan can see, with a little flinch, that there is a bug scuttling within. As Veronica loosens his fingers, stroking them back into calm, she glances at Logan and he sees the hesitancy again, an unsureness of boundaries.
"Once I turned around and he had half a bug in his mouth," Logan tells her. "And I did the exact same thing."
She wrinkles her mouth a little, and it looks more natural than the discomfort did. "I'm glad I could keep this bug intact."
He looks to where her hand is still wrapped around Mattie's small one. "I guess we'll have to keep you around. For the bugs' sake."
He invites her to come over one Saturday evening when Emily and Eric have gone out. He's pretty exhausted from the week, but he wants to see her. She eats dinner with Logan and Matthew, and just sort of blinks and then laughs when some of Matthew's slyly flung spaghetti lands on her top.
"I see where you get your sense of humor," she says wryly as she goes to clean herself up by the sink.
"Hey, I'm the original. I'm suing him for copyright infringement," Logan says, and he's impressed that the words come out clearly because as she dabs at her top his brain is already rocketing at a million miles an hour and he has to look away.
She's picked a movie by the time he gets down from putting Mattie to bed. It's something forgettable, car chases and explosions where they usually do comedies or classics together. He raises an eyebrow when he sees the box.
"It doesn't really look like you have the brainpower for plot right now," she says to his unasked question. As she sits beside him, he can't help but feel comforted, and he fights it because every time he's felt this before, it's been the run up to the rug being pulled from beneath him and he wants stability for just a little longer.
They talk over fiery death and predictable dialogue, discussing the research Veronica is working on and the weekend Logan is planning on spending up with Charlie and Keri and Zoe. There's almost a sleepiness to their ease with each other, a hush over the house that even screeching brakes from the TV can't dispel. Veronica curls her legs on the couch beside her, settles her head on Logan's shoulder, and he wishes he knew what she was thinking.
He almost thinks he is going to fall asleep when there's a quick tapping on the door. He starts to pull away from Veronica to answer it, but it is a slightly damp Emily and she lets herself in, pulling an equally disheveled Eric by the hand behind her. She looks glowing, her smile untangled, and he knows what she's going to say before she gets the words out.
"We're engaged!"
Logan gets to his feet. The movie has switched to a formulaic romantic scene, and he wishes it would go back to scoring his life with car crashes. "Congratulations, Em," he says, reaching to hug her. He shakes Eric's hand and scrutinizes him just long enough to confirm that he looks as happy as Emily.
There's no champagne in either of their houses, so Logan offers to go to Emily's to make milkshakes where the blender can't wake Matthew.
"I'll do it," Veronica says, and because Logan knows he should stay with Emily, and because he suspects Veronica has more milkshake expertise than he does, he lets her go.
Logan moves to turn off the TV. "Want to do the recap now, or wait for your G-rated celebratory beverage?"
"It's a pretty short story," Emily says. "Might not even last through half a milkshake." Her mouth keeps trying to escape from neutral back into a smile. "We had dinner and then went for a walk in Balboa Park, by the rose garden. And it was warm, and it smelled nice, and he asked me. And then the sprinklers came on and we got drenched running back to the car."
"Sounds nice. Simple."
"I knew that elaborate and expensive wasn't the way to go," Eric says. "And I figured that if she said no, it would be better that it happened where no one could see."
Somehow Logan finds a sliver of comfort in the idea that Eric was unsure of Emily's answer but as soon as the thought has gone through his mind, Emily is brushing a hand across Eric's shoulder and kissing his cheek and saying, "You could have done it in front of people, sweetheart." Eric tilts his head toward her, and it looks for a moment as if the air between them is a secret before Emily turns back to Logan. "How was Mattie?" she asks, slipping off her shoes and pushing herself onto one of his bar stools
"I'd almost go for Kubler-Ross over this throwing and eating things phase he's going through, but he's fine. You can check on him if you want." Her eyes move toward the stairs, but Veronica comes back just then with the milkshakes.
"Sorry for using your pitcher," she says to Emily as Logan gets down cups and pours for everyone. "It seemed like a better plan to replace this than to have to replace your glasses and clean your porch."
Emily waves a hand. "Don't worry about it. It'll be my milkshake pitcher from now on."
Logan feels like he should say something, like he should give grinning advice to this woman who has become so important to him, but words, right or wrong, seem to snake out of reach. It is Eric who leans one arm on Logan's kitchen island and says, glass aloft and eyes on Emily, "To the best night of my life."
After Emily and Eric have told Veronica the story again, and Veronica has let out an admiring whistle at the ring, Emily hugs Logan once more and goes to call her parents.
"Theresa's going to yell at you for waking her up," Logan reminds her teasingly.
"Yeah, and then she's going to show up here tomorrow night with a wedding planner and want to know what the colors are," Emily shoots back. "I'm hoping it's my dad who picks up."
Logan goes to rinse out the glasses. Veronica rests on the counter beside the sink, watching his face.
"Want to talk about it?" she says after a minute.
"About what?"
She sighs with force, as if the air had been annoying her. "Your sad puppy face is obvious even to those of us who haven't known you for ten years." He stays silent, focusing on the steel of the sink. "You must have known this might have been coming."
"Last time we talked about it, she wasn't sure," Logan says, cursing the past version of himself who, with the confidence of Emily's doubt behind him, had encouraged her relationship. "And it's not that I don't want her to be happy."
"It's that you don't want her to be happy without you," Veronica says, voice flat, and he looks up at her, half shocked. He finds her eyes.
"I'm happy that Emily found someone. I'm happy she's engaged," he says very clearly. "But they're going to be a family now. Someone's going to take their picture and it's going to start getting sold in frames." He pushes away from the sink. "They're the Cleavers and...I'm Uncle Billy."
"Hey, you're a lot prettier than Uncle Billy," she says. His face is expressionless, his arms tight against his chest. She rests a palm against his forearm. "You're not going to lose him, Logan. Eric isn't his father, Emily isn't going to take him away from you. You're all going to stay right here and one day he's going to stomp in and tell you you're ruining his life, and then you'll know you've made it."
Logan closes his eyes and smiles without meaning to. He knows it should be a nightmare, but somewhere inside himself he loves the idea of Mattie as a teenager with all the pain of someone who has never suffered.
"If he's going to be anything like me, I should start researching military schools now," he says softly, but they both know it's an idle threat. She relaxes into a smile and turns to shut off the water. Logan moves toward the stairs, touching fingers to her shoulder for a moment before he climbs up and stands by Mattie's door, listening to the hushed sighs his breath and reassuring himself that he will be there for each moment of his son's life.
Logan gets home late one night. It was actually a pretty good day, the kind of day that exhausts him and feels like a deep breath at the same time. But as soon as he sees Eric sitting on his porch drinking a beer, all of that goes away. He ignores him as he walks up the steps and as he gets the mail, but before he can put the key in the lock, he opens his mouth.
"You'd think now that there's a ring involved she'd at least let you sleep in the bed." His voice is low, and he feels nasty even as he says it, but there's more of a homecoming to this than there was to the sight of his house coming up the street a few minutes ago, like he's just been playing Good Logan, Kind Logan, for months and years now.
Slowly, not even looking at him, Eric asks, "What..?"
"Well, maybe when you get to the altar she'll loosen up." He has to steel his insides as the words scrape against him. He remembered this being easier, the sweet slide of pained, avenging anger against a girl who was nearly his best friend. He tries to remind himself that he isn't angry with Emily, that it's just this douche sitting on his porch in neatly rolled sleeves and upstanding, relatable jeans. But she brought Eric here, and his breath feels choked and taut at the thought of him there for their rest of their lives, for the rest of Mattie's life.
"What did you say?" Eric's voice is wide and stabbing. Logan has never heard him like this, and there is victory in that. He shrugs.
"If you can hold out for just a few more months, you can play Happy Families all over that house." Logan puts the key in the lock, but doesn't quite twist it.
Eric's clawed stare stays on Logan for a second, and then his shoulders relax. Logan tenses, confused, and does nothing for a wiry moment. Eric rolls his beer between his palms. "My dad," he starts, and although there's more wry pity than Logan would put into the words, he recognizes the tone all the same. "My dad married my mom because he was into the whole Moroccan princess thing. He was too much of a thick shit to realize that it meant marrying someone with a different language and history and skin than his. And when I was born…" He shakes his head. "He died when I was six. But I've spent my whole life understanding lines and fitting in. I know where the lines are here, Logan. I know where I fit." His voice is soft, and Logan turns to face him fully. "I'm going to be Mattie's stepdad. I love him, I think every person who's met him loves him, and I will be right there if he needs me, but you're his dad. I'm not looking to get in the way of that."
Language has always served Logan well: the precise twist of a quip, a quote, his tongue alight. Still, he knows better than many, that sometimes words are just words, sometimes they snicker over the betrayals lurking in their crevices. But he looks at Eric and thinks of what he is offering, and wants, very badly, to believe in this truth. Logan sniffs in a quick breath, nods. "Alright." He turns away, finally turning the key, but doesn't go in yet. "Eric." He lifts his voice so it just carries.
"Yeah?"
"I appreciate that, but I'm his father, and you know what my job is." He knows that he is shadowed by the angles of the porch light, his back broad and bruising against the outline of the door. "So I promise you, touch my kid, and I'll hunt you down." He pushes open the door.
"Logan."
He shifts, just barely, toward Eric's voice. "Yeah?"
"I'm going to be his stepfather, and I have a job too. So I promise you too: touch your kid, and they'll never find your body."
Logan gives a slim nod and goes inside. Maybe he and Eric will never be best friends, but if Wallace is up for it, poker every couple of months won't hurt.
He wakes up one morning and realizes that he expects to see Veronica, and even knowing how dangerous it is, even with the invisible clock of her stay in Neptune running down above him, he finds comfort in that. But he's started to realize that as she has twined her way into his life, hers remains distant. Even more than the itching question in his skin wondering how soon she might be leaving, that reminds him of the way that during their relationship he sometimes felt tucked into a box of her formation.
So when she asks, nearly offhand, if he wants to help out with a quick surveillance job she's doing for her dad, he has to try hard to freeze his reply into casualness.
He suspected that sitting in her car in front of the Camelot would be familiar, but he hadn't realized the arm's reach of the past into this moment.
"Still no civilization," she says, glancing at the way he tucks his knee against her dashboard.
He taps a finger against the window. "I've still got most of the civilization, it's just the class that's worn away."
"You're in the right place then." He senses her growing intent, aiming her camera at one of the upper windows. She checks the photograph, takes another few for good measure, and looks satisfied. It's the smile that does him in. He tilts his head toward her.
"Like riding a bike?" he asks on a breath.
"It always is." She looks over at him, a laugh under her words. "You want an ice cream for getting through that without making it dirty?"
He sits back up as she starts the car. His car is back by her apartment and he tends to find courage in half-light, so he asks, testing, "What do you have in your freezer?"
She pauses for that Veronica quick-thinking, half-blinking second. "You want Moose Tracks?"
"Let's do it."
Keith is reading a book on the couch. He looks over the top as they come in. "Was there a flashback memo that I missed?"
"We knew that the present is hard for you," Veronica says, digging through the freezer.
Keith says, all inflated sigh and book pressed to his chest, "It's just you growing up that's the trouble." He turns to where Logan has an elbow resting on the counter. "How are you, Logan?"
"Okay in the present," Logan nods.
"And what are you up to these days?"
Veronica brushes by his arm, handing him a bowl of Ben and Jerry's as he describes Mattie and the nearly completed shelter.
"And he still finds time for a stakeout," Veronica says, fanning a hand in a grinning sort of fake admiration.
"For the Camelot, I make time." Logan fiddles with his spoon, setting his eyes to meet Keith's.
"Maybe you could make time to join Veronica on whatever journalistic adventures she's been on lately."
Logan turns automatically toward Veronica, the idea that she has been digging into the certainly seedy underbelly of the adoption world without him overriding the near ridiculousness of Keith Mars suggesting that Logan should be spending more time with his daughter. She just shakes her head at both of them.
"It's just interviews. You'll have to wait until they're published to cry like everyone else."
Keith looks doubtful. "I've been referred to as hardboiled before," he says.
Veronica perches on the arm of the couch, balancing herself and her ice cream so she can pat his cheek. "Like an egg," she says fondly.
Logan looks at the two of them and adds dryly, "I think we can keep the tears at bay."
Veronica shrugs. "Big words, but I would read it in private if your rep is important to you."
Logan cries defiantly at his kitchen table reading Veronica's series on adoption. He doesn't say anything about it, but when she sees his face afterward, she grins and says, "My dad didn't hide his tissues well enough."
He goes up for the week before Veronica's graduation. She has some things to do- finishing off and turning in her final project, working things out with her subletter, and moving the things from her apartment back to Neptune- but mostly it will be her showing him where she spent a year and a half of her life. He hadn't thought she would be sentimental enough to want to sit through commencement, and she had backed this up by telling him her dad was eager to see her in her master's regalia. But he watches as she enters the pub where they are meeting some of her friends, sees her smile and the way her sharp, dogged interest in the world is matched by the small group that makes up her program. Logan meets six or seven of them that night, and it's over half the class.
"So what do you do, Logan?" Jackson asks as they settle around a table. He's the kind of tall that is all about an excess of limbs, and seems cramped in his chair.
"I'm the administrator of a homeless shelter," Logan says, the words automatic.
"Please," Veronica snorts from the seat next to him. "You built that place from the ground up," and Logan realizes with a queer jolt that she is proud of him, and that it expands his heart but does not drive him. He is suddenly cognizant of the way he feels like he fills his own skin, and that this was something he built from the ground up too.
He FaceTimes with Matthew and Emily every night. It's the longest he's been away since Mattie was born, and he misses his kid even as he laughs with Veronica, as he claps for her beside Wallace and Keith Mars as she receives her diploma, and lies on the scraps of grass of Memorial Court late at night, after the ceremonies are over.
"Do you think you'll come work here?" he says into the dim, starry silence. He knows that some of her friends are staying, moving into the Ph.D. program or taking jobs at nearby places where they've interned.
She looks around at the buildings that are unfamiliar to him, and he decides that he is going to ask her about her time here, about why she looks at this place with affection. "I got what I needed," she says.
There's a gala when they open the shelter, and Logan comes with an entourage: Wallace and Mac, Emily and Eric, Maria and Eddie. Veronica looks like Persephone in pomegranate red, and Logan wonders if he's heard that story quite right, who was really trapping who. Even Dick shows up on his best behavior, although he leaves after an hour. Logan gives a speech thanking everyone for their generosity, and ensuring everyone that the Two Hands Center will fill a real need in the community.
He thought for a long time about what to name it. He played with memories of his mother, trying to picture her face if he made the sign read Lynn Echolls House, but in the end this is not about his past or his ghosts. It's about the people who helped to build it, and the people who will fill it up.
He's reminded of that strongly when the work really starts. They start getting references from local social workers almost immediately, and the beds are quickly taken. This place, which has taken up almost a year of his life, which he is proud of, sometimes seems laughably inadequate. There are too many kids, too little space, too much still to be done. There are some kids he sees walk out the door after their weeks at Two Hands and it's like watching them walk off a cliff; he doesn't know what's going to happen to them, if they'll be able to keep up with school and find medical care and another safe place to sleep, and he holds Mattie a little closer.
He's taken to bringing his son to work with him some days. Alexandra has finished her master's and is looking for teaching jobs for the upcoming year, so they are transitioning Mattie to day care, but Logan figures there's no reason he can't keep Mattie with him for a little while longer.
He's not small anymore, almost three, but Mattie spends most of his time on Logan's hip. There's a little mischievousness to him, but Logan thinks he's thoughtful, too. Sometimes if things get too busy, he'll pass him off to Eddie or Maria, and then when he looks around ten minutes later finds that Mattie has convinced some of the kids to play tag or color pictures with him.
He has him in his arms one afternoon, trying simultaneously to get through to their supplier to figure out what went wrong with their food order, and open a box of animal crackers. He barely manages to smile at her as Veronica walks into his office and takes first the box and then the baby. She sits in his chair while he continues to pace and figure out if he needs to get Maria in to bust some balls. Or heads. She's not really picky.
Ten minutes later, when the distribution manager is apologizing- through gritted teeth, but still- and he has a guarantee that they'll have their shipment within two days plus a discount on their next order, he comes around the desk to say hello. Veronica has Mattie on her lap, a cracker in her palm.
"Raaahr," Matthew growls, taking the lion from her.
"My boy's a genius," Logan says. Veronica looks up at him and smiles.
"I'd be more impressed if he hadn't roared for the camel and the sheep, too."
"My boy's an occasional genius," Logan amends. "When circumstances are to his liking and the moon is in the appropriate house."
Veronica shrugs. "We can keep him around anyway. I don't know what sound a camel makes either."
There's a knock, and Logan turns. It's one of the new social workers on staff. Logan thinks her name is Lucy, but they all blend a little, with their draping tiredness magnified by the glasses they all seem to wear.
"Logan, I just wanted to let you know that a couple of the kids asked me if there's a room we could use for a substance abuse group to go with individual counseling, and I was thinking that if the group thing is popular, we might start the LGBT group sooner than we had planned."
"That sounds great. I'll talk to Maria and Eddie to see about one of the lounges. Are Thursdays okay?"
"Wednesdays might be better."
"Alright, I'll look into it. Have a good night."
She lifts a hand to Veronica, and moves a couple of fingers in that sort of wave people always seemed to use for little kids. Matthew stares at her for a minute and then returns to his animal crackers.
Even after she is gone, Logan looks at the place where she was. "What's with your face?" Veronica's voice nearly startles him.
"What?"
"Your face. You're doing this smiling thing with your face." She scrutinizes him again and nods. "It's your soppy smiling thing. In a second you're going to say something mushy, and I'm going to roll my eyes and say, 'Oh, yes, there's that obscenely sappy guy I know.'"
"I was just thinking," he said, defensiveness wearing off as soon as he starts speaking, "That some days the hard work is worth it."
Veronica rolls her eyes. "Oh, yes, there's that obscenely sappy guy I know," and she smiles.
On Saturday a few weeks later, Logan gets a text from Emily asking him to take Mattie for a while. When he walks in, Matthew is fiddling with blocks and Emily is pretending to bang her head on the counter. Her phone is sitting next to her coffee cup, and Theresa's voice is coming from it. Emily mutes the phone when she sees him come in.
"Oh, good. Please take our son somewhere and stimulate him intellectually and emotionally in a way that I cannot because my mother is draining both from me."
Logan grins. "Wedding again?" Emily just glares. "Remind her that it's not for months, and remind yourself that you're a girl who can say no."
"Now for the wedding party," Theresa is saying. "Your sisters, of course." She pauses, and by the quick squeeze of Emily's eyes, Logan knows that the two of them are thinking of the sister who won't be there. Theresa clears her throat and starts again, brusque. "But who else?"
Emily shakes herself, making a face, and unmutes the phone while Logan grabs a bag of stuff for Matthew. "I'm going to ask Sarah and Katie and," she shifts her gaze across the room, "Logan."
"The father of your child standing up at your wedding to another man." Theresa sounds like she might be snapping pencils on the other end. "How...non-traditional."
Logan bends and kisses her cheek. "Forget Oklahoma. Just try to keep this away from Sweeney Todd territory."
"Take my baby and run," she whispers.
He and Mattie are just down the street when Veronica texts him asking if he's free. Twenty minutes later, he is watching Matthew playing in the sandbox and Veronica slides onto the bench next to him.
"You watching his hands to make sure none of that is ending up in his mouth?"
"One day," Logan says, a smile pressing up the tips of his mouth, "he is going to build tall buildings and on that day you will regret making fun of his grasp of the medium."
"And today, if you take your eyes off of him, you will regret his general grasp on the medium."
Logan lowers his voice, leaning close to her. "At least he's better than that kid." He nods to a little boy who is having a tantrum by the slide and appears to be gnawing on the leg of his caregiver.
She leans toward him as well, and he feels the warmth of her neck and her hair, and he thinks she is going to say something snarky in response, but instead she asks, "Is this going somewhere, Logan?"
He knows the warmth is still there, but his chest feels frozen. "What do you mean?"
"You're one of my best friends," Veronica says. Everything about her body reminds him how hard these kinds of truths are for her, how hard she is working for him, and there's a different warmth in that. "But I thought that maybe, there could be something more than that. I thought, maybe…"
"I would," Logan says, throat dry. "If it was just me, I would. But I have-" He gestures to Matthew. "He's the most important person in my life, Veronica. And it's not fair for him to have you in his life, for him to know that you're the best at playing pirates and that you're a soft touch for ice cream, and then to have you leave."
"What makes you think I'll leave?" she says, so simply that for a moment he can't think of how to respond. All he can think of is the way her name is a sentence- Veronica mars, Veronica ruins, she scars- and how even knowing that, even as the person he is now, he would be with her anyway.
Trying for gentle, Logan says, "It's what you do. You leave. I sleep with people I shouldn't, and you-" He stops. He hopes Veronica is keeping an eye on Mattie because he can't really see him. Slowly, he says, "I haven't slept with anyone in more than two years."
"I can't speak to that directly," she nods. "But there is evidence to support it, yes."
"I haven't slept with anyone, and you're not leaving."
She looks over at him, squinting in the sunlight. "I got a job. A friend of one of my professors has this website, a watchdog kind of thing, writing in-depth versions of important stories that you'd usually find buried on page J14 of the metro section. It might involve a little travel, but I'm staying somewhere, and I kind of thought it might be here." She turns toward the sandbox. "What do you think, Mattie? Should I stay?"
"Dad, stay, V'onica, stay," Mattie says, settling himself stubbornly into the sand and digging his shovel in more deeply. Logan shakes his head.
"Between the two of us," he says, "I'm not under the delusion that I am the boss."
"The two of us, you and me, or the two of us, you and him?"
Logan smiles, and takes her hand, and says, "Yes."
Epilogue is coming in five minutes. Absolute promise.