Summary: Logan returns from his six month tour in the Persian Gulf.

One Hundred and Eighty Days

Six months.

One hundred and eighty days.

It had seemed doable, especially following the nine years of silence that had spread between them after she'd left for Stanford. It wasn't like Veronica didn't have plenty to focus on with her father's recovery and getting back into the swing of the PI business. It helped to have her friends by her side rather than across the country, and the ability to - at least on occasion - Skype with Logan while he was away. She never would have anticipated that one hundred and eighty days could feel so fucking long.

She hadn't been sure she could meet his ship as it came into port. Forty-eight hours before she was knee-deep in a new case and twenty-four hours before she was neck-deep into it. Logan had told her not to worry about it. She'd be there or she wouldn't, but he wouldn't hold it against her if the case wouldn't give her a chance to get away. He knew how hard she was working. That carefully cool voice of his over their last Skype call rang in her mind and drove her crazy. So crazy that three hours before he was due in - up to her eyeballs in the case - both her father and Mac had demanded that she drive down to San Diego. He'd left his car with her anyway, right? Right. She should go pick him up.

Veronica made record time down to the Naval base where he would be docking and was shuffled through each checkpoint. Every time she expected to hit a snag, her name appeared on all the right lists. Logan may have said that it wasn't a big deal if she couldn't make it, but he'd clearly made sure she had a straight path in if she chose to show.

The docks were busy with husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. New mothers pointed at the ship to their babies like they had any clue that that's where their dads had been for the entirety of their short lives. Veronica weaved in and out of the crowd, watching and listening and observing. Conversations about how long they'd been gone, about information sent home, about plans once they disembarked. Everybody was excited, which left Veronica - as she often was - the odd one out. She should be excited, she knew, but really she was just left with a tremendous amount of anxiety.

It wasn't that she wasn't excited to see Logan again, but she was equal parts terrified. As long as he was gone they were both looking forward to his homecoming. It gave them a goal, a north star to focus on. Now that his ship was docked and it looked like they'd start letting the officers off soon, Veronica couldn't push down the overwhelming fear that they'd fall back into old patterns. Chaos came to their door, they gave into the magnetic pull that felt so right in the moment, but it inevitably turned bitter as one or both of them did something to spoil it. There'd been so much pain in their past that sometimes she wondered if either of them were capable of healthy relationships. Logan, at least, seemed to be trying in a lot of ways, but it was easy in the short sprint of time that was her arrival back in Neptune to help him choose a lawyer and him shipping out. Now that they were both going to be in the same town, she knew it could make or break them, and after everything she wasn't sure she could take another break.

This was where she usually ran. Distanced herself and fled for the hills.

But here she was. Waiting for him.

She hoped it wasn't going to crush her.

Cheers sounded from the crowd and Veronica looked to where sailors were disembarking in their snazzy white uniforms. She waited and watched from her place where she could actually see - at least at a distance - who was leaving the ship, and finally spotted a familiar figure. Her heart leapt in her chest and her feet were moving before she gave them permission to. "Excuse me. Yeah. Sorry." She pushed her way through the crowd in the general trajectory of where she'd seen Logan making his way down and finally broke through the other side to find no familiar faces.

She'd missed him. He must have already gone…. wherever they went when they got home.

"Veronica?"

Veronica turned, recognizing the voice instantly above the rumble of the rest. Logan stood with the same bag he'd had slung over his shoulder the day he'd left, his hat perched on his head, and his thin lips slowly stretching out into a smile. "You made it."

She echoed his smile and then some as she launched forward and heard the sound of his laugh - full, not the amused chuckle she so often got over Skype - in her ear as he wrapped his arms around her. Her legs went around his middle and she felt him spin her around, kissing the side of her head because it was the only part of her he could reach.

He shifted her just a little so that she could lean into a real kiss, her lips melting against his and she felt him set her down carefully, deeping it. His hands rested on either side of her face and one of hers reached around to the back of his neck. He wasn't getting away until she let him, and that wasn't going to be anytime soon.

"Echolls, that her?" someone shouted off to the side and Logan reluctantly broke the kiss. He was still grinning and the other man that was wearing the same wings on his uniform that Logan sported gave him a mock salute and a wink, even as a woman slugged him in the shoulder, laughing.

Logan turned his attention back to her. "You got some time?"

"For you, I can make it," she answered.

Somehow his grin grew and he pecked a kiss to the tip of her nose. "Let's get home."

Home was a relative term. Logan had been living out of a small, studio-styled guesthouse off of Dick's main house on the beach before he'd shipped out. While Dick had another high school buddy - was there any other kind for Dick Casablancas? - moving in soon, he wasn't there yet and Logan still had run of it for at least his first few days back. If he needed to find a new place was a problem for another day. That night, he was home, Veronica was going to take full advantage of the fact that they had privacy there that they never would have gotten at her father's place. She really hoped one of those apartments she'd been looking at came available soon. This was going to be problematic if they had no place to go other than her dad's place.

Logan's kisses were as desperate as her own as he carried her into the little apartment, his bag forgotten in the car parked outside and she was already tugging his uniform off. It was a blur of motion as they moved towards the bed that she hoped had been made up since the last time she'd been in it. They fell back and Veronica revelled in the fact that he was there with her and that he wouldn't have to leave first thing in the morning.

Some time later she was still reminding herself of that fact as they both lay back, pillows thrown from their place and neither of them wearing anything that they had been before. They were wrapped up in the sheets and she was curled up against him. She ran a bare foot up his leg and his fingers sent chills up her spine as they moved up her back, his touch light and delicate like he was savouring it.

This wasn't their first time back together after nine years apart, but it was the first time where they didn't have something looming over them. If it wasn't a false murder charge and her father in the hospital, it had been his orders to ship out as soon as everything was cleared. Now, back on shore-duty, they had some time. Time that left them lounging in bed, her hands traveling over exposed skin, and Veronica couldn't ignore the scars that she knew hadn't been there years before.

Logan caught her hand as it lingered against one just below his ribs, maybe two inches long, and pulled her fingers up to press a gentle kiss to them. He didn't say anything, but she caught his gaze and held it. "Am I allowed to ask?"

A rough chuckle left him. "You're Veronica Mars. I didn't realize you needed permission to ask anything."

Her fingers curled around his and she pressed herself up on her elbow so that she was looking down at him. His expression was soft. He wasn't going to volunteer anything, but he also wasn't telling her not to ask. He was just waiting on her.

"Where'd you get the scar, Logan?"

He pushed a long breath out from his nose. "About four years ago we were flying over… an undisclosed location -" he offered her an apologetic smile and she nodded the small acceptance - "and we came under fire. Shit happened, we had a hard landing, I took some shrapnel."

"Holy shit," she breathed, her fingers moving back to the scar that stood out against his skin.

"Yeah, wasn't fun, but I bounced back."

"Wallace always said you had nine lives."

His lips tugged outward at that. "I should probably check in on how many I have left."

"What…. happens?" she asked carefully, not sure exactly how she should phrase the question. "When you're on deployment and you get hurt, I mean."

He leaned back a little deeper into his pillow, loosing another breath. He wasn't comfortable with talking about this, that much was clear, but if she were to make a bet on it he wasn't used to it. Logan had never been one to volunteer certain things about his life. If people didn't push, he wouldn't say anything. She'd always been one to push. No stopping it now. If they were going in on this, they were going all in.

"When you enlist you have to give them a next of kin. I mean, technically, mine is Trina, I guess? Hell if I was gonna list her though."

Veronica snorted softly, her fingers moving across his torso to lightly scrap his ribs. She felt him tense at that, but certainly not in a bad way. "So who'd you list?"

Logan grimaced at the question. "Dick."

"Casablancas?" she choked out.

He shrugged. "Listen, I know Dick's an… acquired taste, sometimes, but he's loyal. More loyal than most of the people in my life." He sighed and Veronica felt him tighten his hold on her just a little. "People around me leave in one way or the other. Lilly died, my mom died, Duncan left… I'm not blaming anybody, just…. the way it is. Dick can be an asshole, but if I ever need him he's there."

She lay there for a long moment, her fingers still tracing up and down his side and she let his words soak in. If he had died overseas in these last six months - hell, if he'd been injured - she would have been at the mercy of Dick Casablancas to get her the news. Loyal he might be - at least to Logan - but that wasn't acceptable. Not in the longterm, and she wanted this to be longterm.

"Can you change it?"

"Change what?"

"The person who… I don't know. Gets that call?" Again, she felt like she was floundering for the right terminology. As she'd filtered through the crowd on the docks earlier that day it'd felt like people had been speaking a different language. She hadn't known what the acronyms meant or how to decipher what was being said. It was fine. It had all been in passing. But it wasn't, not really. Not if she was honest about wanting Logan in her life.

"Sure," he answered. "I'd just have to update my file."

"Then do it."

He huffed a small laugh. "Do what?"

"Change it. To me."

He tensed at that, catching her gaze. "Veronica….You'd be listed as my next of kin," he said slowly, as if somehow he thought she didn't understand that.

"I know."

"And you're good with that?"

"Are you?"

His lips twitched upward. "I am, but you..." He sighed. "What if the call comes in the middle of a case? What if you should have your focus on something else and you -"

Veronica leaned down, cutting the words off with a kiss. She felt his hands travel up her sides and pull her deeper into it. "I want you," she breathed out, her lips still dangerously close to his. "And I want you to know when you're out there that you have me to face if you let them hurt you."

Logan chuckled at that, leaning up to steal another kiss. "I love you. I never stopped."

"Me neither," she admitted softly. "I wanted to, but…. I think it was pretty obvious when you called after nine years and I flew cross country."

"I didn't know if you would."

"Yeah you did, you asshole," she laughed, kissing him again. "You knew it."

"I hoped." He shifted, easing her around so that she was on her back and he leaned over her. "You really want me to make the change?"

"I do."

"It's a big step. I know it doesn't sound like it, but -"

"Logan," she breathed, "I'm not going anywhere. Not this time. You and me, we're epic."

He grinned and leaned into the kiss. "Years and continents," he whispered.

"Bloodshed," she answered back and he laughed.

"You do love the bloodshed."

"Because anyone that comes after you -" her fingers danced across the four-year-old scar - "they have to come up against me too."

"And this is how we win the War on Terror," he chuckled as his kisses moved down to her jaw line and her neck.

Veronica wrapped her arms around him, pulling him in closer. This was it. One hundred and eighty days or nine years, it didn't matter. They always came back to each other. This time, though, she was determined that they would stay. She was his family now.

Notes:

I actually started on another fic and then this one just sort of tumbled into place as a compilation of a couple of different ideas that ended up fitting together very well. I love the idea of Veronica being listed as his next of kin if anything were to happen and that being a way that she's choosing to support him when she can't physically have his back.

I do feel like I should mention that I am not a member of the Navy, nor are any living members of my family, so there's a better than even chance I'll get a detail or ten wrong along the way, though from what I've heard canon does as well so there's that. :P