Summary: Logan has been in limbo since returning from deployment, spending every night at Veronica's, but never actually moving in. When he starts looking at buying a place of his own, both he and Veronica find themselves having to answer the tough question: what do they really want?

This particular story was requested via a prompt from Elby3000 over on Tumblr: "I want to take a shower so you should probably join me. It'll save water." Yeah... it kind grew beyond that, but there are definitely shower shenanigans involved :P

Compromises

The sun was streaming in through the bedroom window, pulling Veronica reluctantly from the ease of sleep. It was Saturday. And early. Too early for the sun to be peeking in and waking her up. She rolled over with a frustrated sound, fully intending on putting her back to the offending ball of light, wrapping an arm around her boyfriend, and falling immediately back to sleep.

Only she found an empty space where Logan had slept the night before. That's right. She forgot. Apparently the Navy has managed to train his ability to sleep the day away right out of him. He'd likely already been up for hours if the cool sheets on his side of the bed were anything to go by. Awake and productive like a real, functioning adult. It was still a concept she was wrapping her mind around some days.

Veronica yawned and stretched as long as her body could reach. She supposed she should try being a functioning adult too, even if she was getting a later start. She should go get curtains. That would keep that sun out.

After another few moments of procrastination she finally rolled off the bed, bare feet hitting the carpet of the bedroom floor and she sauntered tiredly towards what smelled like breakfast. Okay. She could get used to Adult Logan. Especially if Adult Logan was cooking breakfast for her.

"I smell bacon!" she announced over the sizzling as she rounded out of the bedroom and into the hall.

She found him leaning on the counter opposite the stove and scrolling through something on his laptop. He turned at the sound of her voice, that lopsided smile of his tugging into place. "Did it call to you?"

"It did. Loudly and flavourfully."

He quirked an eyebrow at that. "It called flavourfully, huh?"

She smacked him on the arm playfully and his grin returned. "Tell me there's coffee already made. Then I'll start making sense."

He twisted around to flip the bacon. "It's been in the pot for a couple of —" She grabbed the pot and poured the dark coffee into a fresh mug. "Okay. Don't say I didn't warn you," he finished.

Veronica made a face at the burnt coffee, but he didn't seem to notice, his attention re-focused on his laptop. She poured the remains out into the sink and started a new pot. "What's got your attention this morning?"

"Looking at apartments," he said, turning the computer so she could see.

"For that price tag, we call those condos," Veronica answered as she peered at the very nice layout with an address not too far from there. Funny what a few miles up the beach changed. Gotta love Neptune.

Logan huffed a laugh and turned back to the bacon. He fished it out of the grease and onto a paper towel to pat it dry, then dumped a couple of eggs in the scramble.

"You thinking about having some lady friends over that you don't want me to know about?" she teased as she stole one of the barely-cooling pieces of bacon.

"Oh yeah. Definitely. Rave parties every night, wild bingers. Like college all over again."

"Or high school."

He made a noncommittal sound as he stirred the eggs and shrugged. "I need to get my stuff out of Dick's place."

"Why?" Right after Logan had gotten home from deployment Dick had told him that he needed the guest house that he rented from him for another friend coming into town. Logan had talked about getting a place then, but Veronica had just signed the lease where she was and had roped him into helping her move in. One night led to the next and it wasn't like he would have been sleeping at his old place anyway. Somewhere along the way he'd moved anything that would have gotten in Dick's buddy's way into one of Dick's many guest rooms in the main house and still used that as his home address for any official paperwork.

He dumped the eggs out onto a plate for her. "Apparently his dad's selling the place."

"Did you ever have a lease when you were in the guesthouse? If so, he can't just kick you out, even if he sells it."

"We don't. It's not a big deal. I should have done this after I got back. I've just been putting it off."

It was strange. Logan hadn't moved in, per se, and she wasn't sure she even wanted to start in on what it would take to contemplate it officially being their place versus her place that he slept over at, but she did know that she liked having him there. It was nice - comforting, even - to have him so close after they'd been away from each other so long. She'd gotten used to it faster than she ever thought she could. It was one thing if he just had a room or a guest house he rented from his best friend - a crash pad, really, for between deployments - but if he had his own place, what was that going to do? Would he suddenly want to start sleeping over there rather than here, remembering how much more he enjoyed his million dollar condo on the beach lifestyle versus her rent controlled three story walk-up on the beach? He'd have room for his weights and his surfboards, and all the other things still stored at Dick's place. Then what? Veronica's little apartment would gather dust while his neighbors gave her that look 09'ers gave to the riffraff that stumbled in where they didn't belong. That was his world, not hers and she —

"Veronica?"

The spiraling slammed to a halt as Logan's voice cut through. She blinked hard.

"Coffee's ready."

"Yep," she answered automatically.

"You okay?"

"Yep."

"So do you want to?"

Oh. He'd asked her a question. Shit. "Want to….?" she prompted hesitantly as she poured the fresh coffee into the mug. That smelled glorious. She might actually be able string coherent sentences together with that stuff.

"Go with me to check a few out today," he said in a tone that clearly meant he was repeating the question.

"Oh," Veronica manages, finding that clever gaze of his fixed on her expectantly. She took a long sip of scalding coffee and a deep breath. "What I want-" she set it down on the counter and moved forward, her fingers dancing around the hem of his pajama bottoms and up under his t-shirt, nails scraping lightly against bare skin and she saw him draw in a sharp breath - "is to take a shower. You should probably join me. You know, save water?"

"I think I could get behind that," he answered, his voice low and amusement dancing in his eyes as he ducked down, catching her in a kiss. Veronica felt his arms go around her waist and a muffled laugh escaped her as he hauled her off her feet. She shifted, arms around his neck and legs around his middle as he started back towards the bathroom, the list of available condos left forgotten on his laptop.

Several weeks later Logan finally managed to convince her to go with him to check out what he was still determined to call an apartment rather than a condo. The building wasn't technically a high-rise building, sitting at five stories tall with a separate garage rather than street parking. You needed a fob to get past the gates and there was an elevator up to the floor with the specific unit he was looking at. Logan was not nearly as amused as Veronica was with herself when she asked - in a quality 09'er impression that she had perfected years before - where the doorman was and why they'd have to fob themselves in. What if her hands were full of all the clothes that daddy's money had bought her? She thought she saw Logan roll his eyes at that one.

The condo was beautiful, even if she wouldn't admit it. The floor-to-ceiling windows reminded her of the guesthouse at Dick's that he'd stayed at, but this one looked down over the ocean instead of on level with it. There were two and a half bedrooms, two bathrooms - the one attached to the master bedroom making her just a little bit jealous with its deep soaking tub - a massive kitchen, and a deck that looked out on the ocean as well.

"Do I even want to know how much something like this costs?" she asked, joining him on the deck where he was leaned against the railing, taking in the view. He liked it. She could tell he liked it.

"Do you?"

Veronica loosed a long, loud, dramatic sigh. "Yeah. Hit me."

"Just under two."

"Two what?"

"Million."

She nearly choked on her own breath. "A month?"

That finally broke the love affair gaze he had going on with the waves rolling in and he turned to look at her, laughing. "A month? Seriously? I know I threw money around when we were younger, but hell, Veronica." He turned back to the view. "No, overall. Might be over with taxes."

"Oh," she managed. "You want to buy it."

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Why not? It's an investment. I'm not going anywhere permanently and there are a few other perks." When she crossed her arms to wait on what those were, she saw him give her a quick glance, almost like he was trying to make adjustments for his example. "Next spring you won't have to deal with the idiot AirBnB renters you know will be in the complex raging all night. You can just come crash over here."

"What if I like my idiot AirBnB renters?" Veronica snapped, the question sounding absurd even as it left her lips. She'd grown up in Neptune. She and everyone else knew spring breakers were what they were. No one liked them.

Logan quirked an eyebrow at that. "You spent a Skype session that took me three days to secure last March to bitch about spring breakers in general. That was before you rented a place right on the beach."

"So's this place. What's the difference other than the price tag?"

Logan loosed a long breath, frustration clear even if he looked like he was desperately trying to keep a lid on it. "Okay, what is it you hate?"

"What do you mean?"

"You obviously hate something about it, but you hated the last three places too. I thought you would've liked this one."

"Why does it matter if I like it? You're the one buying it."

"Not yet," he popped back, his tone increasingly more strained and he watched her expression carefully. He was looking for whatever she wasn't saying. Damn him. "What's going on, Veronica?"

"Nothing."

"Something is."

She felt her temper flare, even if there was no reason for it to. She knew that. Logically she knew that, but it was like she couldn't stop herself. "You know what, buy it or don't. It's your money, it's your place. If the ritzy, multi million dollar condo is where you feel at home, I say go for it."

And then she was storming out, something in the back of her mind screaming at her that it wasn't fair to do that to him without even trying to figure out why she was reacting this way. It didn't seem to matter, even if it did. She couldn't stop herself.

Logan had been left standing alone on the balcony of an apartment that he wasn't even sure that he wanted to own as Veronica had stormed out. Distant chatter below on the beach joined the sound of the waves and the eventual awkward question if he was done viewing the unit from the realtor that had made herself scarce during the abrupt argument that he'd been blindsided with. He thought he had been asking her opinion. He thought he'd been including her in a life decision. He wasn't sure where he'd gone wrong.

Veronica's phone rolled straight to voicemail when he called. Not once, not twice, but three times over the next hour, and Logan had taken the next several to vent his frustrations with the top down on his convertible, hitting breakneck speeds down the PCH to try to work through some of the confusion he had and give both of them time to breathe. He didn't know what she wanted and Veronica sure as hell wasn't telling him. Every night she wanted him to stay, but she never actually asked him to move in. He'd been left in a sort of limbo, even after he'd explained that he was being moved out of his apartment at Dick's. He had thought maybe he misread her signals and so he'd started looking for a new place. Apparently that had been the wrong move too.

The sun was setting by the time he pulled up to park the BMW along the street outside her apartment and killed the engine. It took another five minutes to convince himself to get out and start up the stairs. He had a key. It wasn't that he couldn't get in, but suddenly in the wake of a fight in which he still wasn't sure how it'd been started, he wasn't sure if he should knock or just walk in. It wasn't like it was his place too. There had been a few brief times that she had referred to the apartment as theirs in some form or fashion. It always caught him by surprise in the best of ways and he had thought she'd follow it up with something that indicated that he actually belonged there permanently, not that it had just been a slip of the tongue, but she never did.

Finally, he dug the key out of his pocket and stuck it in the lock, turned, and pushed the door open.

Veronica was sitting on the couch with a bowl of ice cream balanced on one knee and some show that he didn't recognize playing on the TV. He closed the door behind him, locked it, and circled the couch. "I need you to give me a hint."

"About what?" Veronica asked around the spoon in her mouth.

"What the hell that was."

"I don't know. You're the one that took forever to get home."

The word struck a nerve and Logan felt his temper flare dangerously. "This isn't my home, Veronica," he snapped. "This is your home. Your name's on the lease, you pay the rent, you have all of your shit here. I just sleep over."

"If you need your space go buy your condo," Veronica popped back and it felt like a slap to the face, even if somewhere under the sting he recognized that particular brand of venom in her voice as the type she used when she was trying to hide something else.

"Don't give me that!" he shouted, finally drawing her gaze around. "You want me over here, but I'm still living out of a bag like when I'm deployed. I try to go get my own place and you storm out like I just threw something in your face. I don't know what you want from me!"

"You!" she shouted back, suddenly on her feet, the bowl somehow deposited on the coffee table. "I want you!"

They stood there staring at each other for a long moment after the outburst, her words hanging between them. "I don't know what that means," he confessed softly and without warning she covered the space between them. Her hands reached up to his face, dragging him down to hers and he felt her pull him into a kiss that he was powerless to stop. Suddenly her fingers were pulling at his belt and he was tugging at her shirt. They were moving together and it was sort of an answer to his question. A piece of the answer. He wasn't sure, but in that moment, he just needed to be close to her in any way that he could.

Sex was a good distraction. Sex with Veronica was the best distraction, but when the distraction ended and they were left breathless in bed, pillows thrown to the floor and the sheets crumpled at the foot of it, the questions started to seap back into his mind. Dangerous and loud and swirling, threatening to drag him under and drown him. Sex was good, but if this was going to work - and Logan wanted this to work with Veronica more than he wanted anything else in his life - it had to be more. They had to figure this out.

He rolled over in bed, finding her tugging the sheets up to wrap around herself and he laced one arm around her middle to curl into her, pressing a kiss against her shoulder. In turn, Veronica shifted onto her side so that she could wrap an arm around him and she ran one bare foot up his calf. He shivered, tightening his hold. "Hey."

"Hey yourself," she answered, her voice relaxed.

"I need to know what I did wrong."

And just like that he felt her tense, but he refused to let go. Finally, she turned those clear blue eyes on him. "Do we have to talk about this now?"

"No," he breathed out, "but I want to. Please."

She sighed deeply and nuzzled in, sending a rush of relief through him. "Talk," she huffed and he had to stop himself from chuckling. Instead he kissed the top of her head and felt her nails scrape along the skin over his spine, threatening distraction if he'd let it.

"I just need to know what you want."

There was a long moment before she loosed another breath. "I don't want things to change."

"Veronica, Dick's selling the house and, crazy thing, for all the places that the Navy sends me, they kinda want a home address. I get that it's too soon for that to be here, but -"

"I never said that."

That stopped him. "You never said it… should be either."

There was a lot of sighing coming from her tonight. She moved, nudging him so that he rolled to his back and she eased herself up on her elbows so that she was looking down on him, her expression tight as she worked through what she wanted to say. She started several times, but the words seemed to get stuck somewhere between where they formed up in her mind and when they actually rolled off her tongue. She would open her mouth, close it, and those pretty blonde brows of hers would draw together as her lips tipped down in a frown.

"Veronica," he coaxed, "I just need to know what you want."

"I don't know," she confessed softly. "It was easier when you had a place but just…. chose to stay with me."

"I'm always choosing to stay with you."

"Are you?" she huffed. "Because you've never really lived with me. You're the man that lives in mansions and suites and -"

"Tiny quarters on the USS Truman," he offered the alternative.

That stopped her. "What?"

"Well, you seemed to be really focused on all the crazy nice places I've lived, but you've never seen what the ships we deploy on look like. There's something like five thousand men and women on my ship. I may not have to share my bunk with a dozen other guys, but it's tiny. Makes this place look like a castle."

"I like this place," she said softly.

"Me too."

"But you also like the condo, and if you bought it, someday…. you'd want me to move there."

"I'm gonna tell you something crazy. You listening?" He waited until she nodded and he couldn't stop the small smirk that tugged his lips. "Just because you buy a condo doesn't mean you have it for life. You can sell it. Rent it out even. Not signing my soul over to it."

Veronica snorted a laugh and nudged him hard in the ribs with her elbow. "Asshole."

"Yeah, but you knew that getting into this." He leaned up and pecked a quick kiss against her lips before falling back down against the pillow. "Here's the thing, Veronica: I want to be with you. Where doesn't matter."

"Even if it's a box on the street."

"Okay, I'm going to redirect you back to my earlier statement about the US Navy wanting a permanent address."

"So give them this one."

The statement hit him hard. "You want me to move in?"

"I don't want you to go."

"Getting my own place doesn't mean leaving you."

"But you won't be here."

"And you want me here?"

"I do."

"Okay," he breathed. "Here are my terms."

She cracked a smile at that. "I'm listening."

"I need more than a drawer."

"We might be able to swing that."

"And I need to pay half the rent and utilities."

And just like that he saw her expression darken. "I can pay my own rent and utilities, Logan."

"I'm not asking to pay them for you. If I live here, I'm asking to pay my half."

"And when you're deployed?"

"We'll cross that bridge next time we get there."

She considered that for a long moment. "Done."

"And I want my name on the lease."

Veronica sighed loudly. "You drive a hard bargain, Echolls."

"It's all about compromises, Mars. So I hear."

"Fine."

"Okay," he murmured with a grin, catching another kiss. "Hey, you know what I need?"

"To stop while you're ahead?"

"A shower. Since I'm gonna pay half the water bill, I think it's only reasonable to conserve water."

"Yeah?"

"Absolutely. For the environment."

She choked on a laugh with that one and leaned down to kiss him again before rolling, taking the sheets with her as she started for the bathroom. She turned back to watch him as he stretched out on the bed, grinning at her before finally moving to join her.

Notes: Have I mentioned that I love the idea of them learning to communicate as adults? Because I love the idea of them having to communicate as adults. Their wants, their fears, and everything in between. Honestly, I just love them.