Author's Note: Okay, so this fic is a little more emotional than bantery, which is probably good because I'm still dialing in the dialogue patterns for these two characters. Promise I'm studying up so I'll be able to nail the repartee for future fics! I had to write this because I was always annoyed in the show at how Veronica asked Wallace for a lot of favors, but rarely seemed to be around to support him in more emotional ways. First chapter is mondo long, sorrynotsorry.

Chapter 1: The Boy In the Tower

Text messages

Veronica: Are you alone?

Logan: Just let me send the Swedish bikini team back to their rooms…

Veronica: I'm serious

Logan: Why, Miss Mars, is this a booty call? Because I do believe you said we were broken up.

Veronica: I need to ask you a question.

Logan: Okay, nice try but if you're going to steal Veronica's phone, make an effort to learn her lingo. Where is she? And BTW her father can track this phone so you've got about six minutes before I get there. Enjoy your last six minutes of having intact kneecaps.

Veronica: Whoa, can't a girl not make a joke without getting kneecapped for it? Do I need to prove it's really me? You hide your pot in the air conditioning vent behind the second bedroom, which is pointless because Dick keeps his on the coffee table. Also, the maids found your stash three weeks ago and yes, they've been skimming.

Veronica: Just having kind of a night and didn't want to walk in on your usual Bacchanalia. I'm here and I'm coming up.

#

Logan

I'm still frowning at my phone barely a minute later when she knocks. In what shitty parallel universe does there exist a Veronica Mars with all her snoopiness and none of her sense of humor?

I open the door. "Before you even ask, whatever the night in question is, I was with thirty-six nuns at a special presentation of 'The Role of Faith in Due Process' at an FBI convention. And yes, in fact I do have all their depositions backing up that alibi. Notarized. In triplicate."

The door rolls off my fingers, sliding closed with its luxurious, spring-buffered hush. It's one of the things I love about living here.

1. No slammed doors

2. No family

3. It currently contains Parallel Universe Veronica Mars, with her jeans tight and her jacket fitted, barging past me into my penthouse like she owns the place and she's about to serve my eviction notice.

How the fuck could I help loving her?

"Well, won't you come in?" I head across the room to the liquor cabinet, because she hasn't said anything yet, which means this is going to hurt. If she has to ask me something and she's this serious about it, she's probably about to accuse me of murder. Again. "We still at alibi or are we all the way to accusation?"

"How about advice?" she says. "Or did you skip alliteration along with your third period lit class last Tuesday?"

Of fucking course she knows the only class I ditched last week.

"Do you know what I pierced in seventh grade, too?" The question is rhetorical, but it falls on deaf ears because she whirls back toward me, then gasps when she sees my face.

"Your lip!"

"This old thing? Had it for years, can't do a thing with it. But the correct answer was penis, and no, I didn't quite understand the concept of a Prince Albert, but I did use a clean safety pin."

She doesn't listen, rushing across the room to take a closer look even as she scowls. "Dammit, Logan, why do you always have to start—"

Like pretty much all fat lips, this one feels like it's taking up half my face, even though it's really not that swollen. The raw rip in the middle makes it even more sore than the usual, but when she reaches up to touch it, I don't flinch away because we've been broken up for weeks. Even a touch that's going to hurt like hell is better than not remembering what her soft, quick little hands feel like on my body.

But she stops herself before she gets there, an old hand at navigating my various fist fight injuries. Her gaze falls to my hands even as her hips start to twist for a quick detour to the mini fridge and the bag of frozen peas we keep there. Probably we should throw them out as a biohazard, considering all their thaws and refreezings and the random smears of blood on the bag, but God knows nobody but Veronica would remember to buy more before the next fist fight. And as I unfortunately remember anew every few seconds…

We're.

Broken.

Up.

Which means nobody will buy new frozen peas. And there will be lots of fights.

But she doesn't move to get the high-mileage frozen peas, because when she sees my knuckles, Veronica's second gasp is a whole lot more horrified than her first.

She grabs my hands, flips them over.

"I'm liking where this is going," I drawl. "But little tip? I prefer it when you bust in unannounced for passionate kissing rather than passionate hand holding."

She looks up at me, those blue eyes anguished and wiped free of any attempt at humor.

"Logan, what's wrong?"

"Did I not mention the passionate hand holding versus other passionate physical activities debate? Because I come down pretty strongly on the other side of the aisle on this one."

"Not funny. Your hands are fine. If you're getting in brawls but you're not fighting back, something is really, really wrong. You were already drunk on the bridge when the PCHers jumped you, and you still fought back, even then." She searches me. "What happened?"

I can't help the way my hands tighten on hers, even that small slide of my skin against hers focusing my attention the way nothing has in weeks. Because she knows it wasn't just "a bridge." It was "the bridge." The one where I lost my mom.

Veronica knows how low I went that night. And fuck it all, she still cares if I might have gone lower.

A hint of a smile touches my face. I brush my thumb across the back of her hand and let her go, because I don't want to wait for her to push me away.

"I took up boxing. It's a legitimate sport, I hear. Even the British do it. They give you these handy little padded gloves." I shrug. "My opponent got a bit…heated." As he should have, considering what I said about his mother. "Hence the face. But the hands are fine." I hold them up and wiggle my fingers. "They're as talented as ever, if you want to text the dexterity."

The concern falls away and she rolls her eyes and smacks me. It smarts on bruises she doesn't know about, but it's worth it to see her casual and confident again instead of trembling and afraid. I hate seeing her like that, even when it's for me.

"Nice to know you still care, Bobcat."

She heaves in a big breath and turns a little away, the casual eyeroll gone like she's a chalkboard that just got wiped.

"Hey, is everything okay?" My voice drops into the gentle register it only knows for her, and only after I've spoken do I realize how much it's giving away. But fuck, it's hard not to show my cards with her, and that's a shitty trait to have when up against a woman with the best poker face in the biz.

"Look, I came here because I knew you'd tell me the truth, not be nice."

My cheek twitches. "It's good to be appreciated for one's strengths."

She won't meet my eyes. "Wallace…left me."

Her voice shakes so bad I reach for her before I even register her words, and once they sink in, I'm even more befuddled than I was by the uncharacteristic show of emotion.

Veronica Mars doesn't cry unless someone has very recently set her on fire. And Wallace, her loyal hoop-shooting Sundance Kid, never strays far from her side.

These are the laws of the universe and until now, they've never bent. No matter how many times I secretly wished, like the horrible person I am, that she would cry over me.

"I didn't realize you two were, um…"

She sniffles hard, shoving the heel of her hand across her eyes. "Not like that. Worse. He friend-dumped me." She slings her bag onto the floor, the comforting bang of her taser ricocheting off the end of my couch. "Said he was sick of being a 'fair-weather friend' that I just needed for favors, information, and someone to sit with in the caf." She flops onto the couch. "I can't believe him. It's not like I've never done him a favor. I've solved like a million cases for him. And okay, I charged for some of those, but those were just for people he knew. It's not like I ever charged him."

She glances up, then glares.

"Stop giving me 'I told you so' face."

I try, I really do. But it's basically impossible. As is keeping the tinge of sarcasm out of my voice when I say, "I don't think he's mad that you didn't solve enough cases for him, Veronica."

She bounces up off the couch. "You know what? This was a stupid idea. I'm going to go."

"You can." I slip my hands into my pockets. "Or I can tell you how to get him back."

She hesitates.

"C'mon, you've gotten me back how many times now? I think I know a thing or two about how it goes."

She snorts. "Yeah, well, I can't just passionately kiss Wallace."

I smirk. "I'm pretty easy, huh?"

"That's the word on the street."

Ouch. That hurts a little more when she dumped me so recently for hooking up with Madison during our last off-again cycle. My smile freezes, then ebbs away.

"Shit." She takes another step toward the door. "I shouldn't have come when—Look, tonight I just—"

"What was the question?" I interrupt her broken attempts at apologies because I hate the idea of her swallowing her pride almost as much as she does. "The one you came all the way here to ask?"

She hugs herself, pulling her jacket tight enough that it no longer disguises how thin she's gotten.

"Am I a shitty friend?" She barely whispers it.

I cross the room, pick up the phone, and speak quietly into it for a minute.

When I put it down, she's watching me with wounded animal eyes that make me ache in a lot more places than the boxing league has.

"Gotta hand it to you, Logan. Of all the possible responses to that question, calling room service wasn't one even I expected. But then you've always been a little impulsive."

"You don't eat when you're upset. You've been upset a lot this year." I gesture to her. "Not sure you got the memo that the Freshman Fifteen is supposed to go on to your hips, not off."

She's back on my couch now, and she glances down to tug at a loose thread on her jeans, her shoulders hanging so low her leather jacket gaps with the empty space.

"There's nothing you wouldn't do for a friend if they needed you to," I answer her quietly. "Even rack up a felony to save the child of a girl who hated you, and oh yeah, got knocked up by your boyfriend. If they need you, you'll do anything." The word whispers out of me with weight, because I've always been afraid of what she might do for me, if I asked her to. How deep I could sink her. "But if they didn't need anything, well..."

She gives me the wounded animal eyes again. "What's with the shruggy part? What's wrong with that? Sounds like a good friend to me."

"Ask me why I took up boxing."

She jumps up, grabbing her bag. "Okay, I get that I need to ask more non-case-related questions of people sometimes. I'm not totally oblivious. Though you could choose a less patronizing way to rub it in, frankly. If that's all you've got, Dr. Phil, I'll just be—"

I step between her and the door, hoping if I don't take the bait and jump into the argument she's clearly spoiling for, then she'll use that big brain of hers to pick up on my body language and my tone and realize the truth. I'm not trying to hurt her.

Her thin fingers clamp over the arms of her jacket, squeezing so they won't shake, and I want to pull her into my arms so bad I'm physically ill with it. Instead, I brush the backs of my knuckles over her shoulder, then tip my head toward my darkened balcony; an invitation.

The balcony is farther from the door, and it's got something I need to make my point. Plus, I think it might be easier for us to really talk in the dark. Creatures like us prefer to have something to hide behind, in moments like this, and I'd rather it not be sarcasm this time.

Most of our most honest talks have taken place with me staring at my bedroom ceiling, because right after we've been together, our hearts are throbbing with that thing that happens between us that I've never been able to put a name to. It's like a reaching, a rawness we call out of each other without even knowing it. It's worse when we kiss. Most intense when we're naked.

Which is why it's after sex that Veronica always starts poking around, asking questions about anything that might prove I'll let her down. Unfortunately, after sex is also the moment when I'm the most excruciatingly aware of all the ways I'm not worthy of her, which means I'm always too fucking honest.

When you have sex as often as we do, there are a lot of those scraped raw moments. A lot of dark questions and even filthier answers. A lot of furiously getting dressed with our backs turned to one another to hide the parts we were sharing mere moments ago.

But this time, we're still clothed and the question she asked was about her flaws, not mine. Which is why the answer will be gentler. I'm going to try to do the thing I always wished she would do for me: tell her the truth in answer to a hard question, but trust her good intentions, too. Imperfect as we both are, we never meant to hurt our friends. And it's not like she can't nail being a good friend, like she does everything else.

She's Veronica fucking Mars.

She's a phenomenon, at everything. She just needs a little push to get started.

She huffs out a little breath and turns toward the balcony like I argued her into it, but I can't tell if she's doing it to get away from my touch, or because of it.

Doesn't matter. This isn't about me.

I mean it is, because it's not like she hasn't turned my guts inside out a time or fifty with her emotional unavailability. It's just that I wouldn't ask her to change, just for me. Not even I'm a big enough hypocrite to do that, after all the ways I've been a terrible boyfriend. But for Wallace, for everyone else in her life, for herself, so she can have a best friend as close as she once was to Lilly…fuck yes. If it's for her, I'll push as hard as she needs to be pushed.

And if it benefits me in the end, I'm Machiavellian enough to enjoy it. Hell, she already said she came here because she knew I'd be honest, not nice. There's enough overachiever in me to try to do both, and if people think I'm not an overachiever, it's just the ones who haven't slept with me.

I follow her out onto the wide balcony, leaving the porch light off but the hotel room lights on so a soft glow bathes the space without revealing too much.

"Wallace thinks you're closed off because he doesn't understand that banter and solving cases is your love language. It's what you learned from your dad."

"Love language? Has somebody been getting into the self-help books they leave in the jail again?"

She slumps into a chair.

"Hey, more than one therapist has bought a sports car on Echolls' money." I take the chair next to her. "My mom was big on therapists, there for a while. And I think we both know what I learned from my dad." I move past it quickly, because she knows about the abuse but we don't talk about it. "In a world where your mom can disappear, where the whole town can turn on you because of something your dad did, in a town where you can lose all your friends like that"—I snap my fingers—"Fighting's the only time I feel in control. That's why I joined the boxing league. Love languages, Ronnie. People like us stick to what we know."

"I guess that's why you used to run those bum fights, then? Love languages?" She snorts. "It's a unique kind of charity work, Logan, I'll give you that."

I look down. "I don't think you want to know why I used to run those fights." It's barely a murmur, those words. I'd tell her, if she asked at the right time. But we'd both regret it. And as hard as she's hitting back tonight, I need to keep my skin thick.

The whole time I was growing up, I dreamed of when I'd be tall enough, strong enough that I could stand up to my dad and he'd be the one who ended up on the ground. As soon as my voice started to change and crack, I started doing push-ups in my room where nobody could see, and lifting stacks of books for weights. Some nights I'd do so many push-ups that I'd fall asleep right on the floor, wherever my arms gave out last. But every time I thought I was big enough, muscular enough to finally win the fight, I was wrong. Even in high school, with a decent weight room and a few months of discretely purchased steroids. Dad always slid past my punches and hit back in ways I never saw coming. He had decades of fights under his belt and all I had was blinding anger.

I didn't want to bother with martial arts, with any kind of choreographed "sparring" where there were rules and people pulled their punches. I wanted blood and teeth and cracked bones.

I wanted people as desperate to win as I was.

And I finally found them huddled around trash can fires, waiting for a payday. They fought dirty and balls out, even the skinniest or sickest-looking of them. I admired that. And the energy of it lit me on fire.

I was a self-centered, stupid young fuck. I didn't think for a second about how hurt they were after a fight, because I'd picked myself up after losing a thousand fights. Pain was just a Tuesday, for me. But once my dad took me to that homeless center, I learned a lesson that wasn't anything about PR or spinning a story for the media. It was about how thin those guys were under their layers of ragged clothes. How sick and unhappy and often not totally in touch with reality.

It's why I let him beat me without hitting back, that one last time. Even though it went on for longer than any of the whippings had for years.

But the time after that…the time after that I finally, finally fucking won.

Dad only taught me how to start fights, but the bums taught me how to win one.

"You wouldn't have brought it up if you didn't want me to ask," Veronica says.

"You asked me if you were a shitty friend, and I told you that you and Wallace are speaking two different dialects of friendship," I remind her. "I took up boxing because I don't know how to stop fighting. You took up detective work because you don't know how to stop digging for the truth. It's pretty textbook—throwing yourself heedlessly into danger to protect the people you love, because that's the only type of affection that feels safe to put out in the open where anyone can see it. It's all people like me and you know how to do, when we've lost everything one too many times. Thing is, the people we love pretty often don't appreciate it as much as we think they should. Actually, they get kinda mad about it." I give her a sideways look. "You know, there might still be room for you to join that boxing league."

She coughs out a laugh, looking at me head on for the first time since she got here. "Shit."

I grin. "Never thought we had the same problem, did you?"

She laughs again, looking down so all that golden hair falls like a curtain. "You're not squirming out of it that easy, Logan. I haven't put half so many people in the hospital as you have."

"I prefer to put them in the dentist's chair." I flex a fist, the little dent in one knuckle still there from when I knocked Mercer's teeth onto the floor of his jail cell. My favorite sound of all time.

"So what does that mean for me and Wallace, though? I mean, you joined boxing for a healthier outlet for your more violent impulses, but detective work is already as healthy as it comes, if you don't look too closely at the financials."

"Or how many trips to the hospital it's given you," I interject fiercely.

"Not that you're bitter," she shoots back. "My body, my choice to risk it."

Her body, but my heart. I keep quiet, because this is the argument that keeps us breaking up over and over again in different forms. She's bad at taking advice. But she's very, very good at learning from what she observes. So I sit back so a deeper shadow hides my face, and I turn it into a story, telling it in a voice so low that all the balconies beneath us won't be able to hear.

"Once upon a time, a boy lived in a high, high tower. Locked there by an evil has-been movie star."

"Logan…" The way she says my name sounds uncertain as it rides on a little expelled breath.

This is just one more thing we don't talk about, but I keep going.

"Not locked in with a key but with the power of the angry townsfolk turned against him, for the sins of his father and then, for his own sins, as carefully chronicled by the wise sages of a little outfit called the Tinseltown Diaries. He wanted to be as high above them as he could, so he'd be safe. But no one came to his tower, and he grew lonely. His only visitor was one spunky young detective-witch. She could knock a man down with the electricity from her fingers, or scare them away with the growl from her witch's familiar, which was of course, a pit bull."

She giggles a little. "She sounds badass."

I don't look at her, because the knot in my throat wants me to turn this into a funny story, not a true one, and that won't help her. But this isn't about me, or my goddamn pride.

"The problem was, the boy was still very lonely, because she only came when she had questions to ask of the tower oracle. And she didn't always have questions."

"Not true!" she burst into his fairy tale. "When we were together, I came over all the time."

I'm not ready to let go of the shield of the fairy tale, or the shadow I'd like to pretend can hide my face completely.

"And on the days when you came over, and didn't ask a question for a case, the boy was the happiest boy in the land. And when you were 'friends' again instead, you stopped coming over unless it was for a case." I can't figure out how to wind this into the fairy tale, because I'm not the Brothers fucking Grimm, so I just say it. "Wallace probably would like it a lot better if he got a few of those question-free days himself. Makes a guy feel a little disposable when you only want favors." I smirk at her like it's a joke. "Sexual or otherwise."

"Asking people for help on cases isn't because anyone's disposable," she says. "It's just what I spend my time on, okay? It's what's on my mind, it's who I am. What's so wrong with that? Should I go back to talking about designer jeans and parties or whatever the 09er girls talk about? Would my friends like me better then?"

"See, that's the whole problem. I don't think you really believe any of your friends really like you. Or me, for that matter." I shrug. "If you did, you'd never have believed Madison meant anything to me, or that I'd be cruel enough to be with her because it would hurt you."

"I am not here to talk about Madison." Her voice is low enough it sounds like she can barely get the words out.

"Ah, Deflection!" I smile and rise to go to the outdoor bar, opening the cabinet beneath it. "My old friend. Right alongside its cousin, Defensiveness. All part of the Keeping People At Arm's Length family of defense mechanisms." She sucks in an outraged breath and I wave her off. "Relax. It's just what happens to people like us, when the person closest to you gets murdered and your mom takes off, along with all your so-called friends."

"Look, you can say we're the same all you want, but we're not. If I was holding people at arm's length, it wouldn't hurt like it does when—"

Without even turning around, I can tell she's struggling with tears again and it's so fucking hard to reach for the Scotch instead of her. But it's a move I'm very familiar with, so my muscle memory can basically do it without me.

"Yeah," I say gently. "The self-protection thing doesn't work that good. Haven't you noticed?"

I set the bottle of Scotch on top of the bar for the moment, wondering what the hell happened to room service. There's a conference in the hotel this week, but that's no excuse for putting my order on the backburner when I've given more money to this hotel than any other guest inside its walls. I turn and lean back against the bar.

"You're a smart girl. It hasn't escaped your notice that you had no friends, and you met every single one of your new ones when you did them favors. Even me. Especially me."

"I'm not sure I love where this is going," she says, and the shadows can't hide the way her voice just cracked.

This is just like surgery, I tell myself desperately. You have to hurt her to help her. I struggle to stay calm, keep my voice level. Not go to her because I'm not allowed to anymore, so it won't comfort her anyway.

"Thing is, I don't think you've noticed that those of us who stuck around did it because we wanted something more from you than your detective skills."

"Yes, well I don't think that's what Wallace stuck around for," she says through a clogged nose.

I pull a stack of cocktail napkins out from under the bar and pass them over, because there's no point in pretending both of us don't know she's crying, even if I am still pretending every tear isn't like acid, burning a simmering hole in what's left of my heart.

"As much as I admit you can 'solve my case' more satisfyingly than any other girl, I wasn't talking about sex, and you know it."

She blows her nose. "Then what else are they sticking around for? That's the thing, Logan. You and everybody keep bashing me for always being busy on a case, always talking about cases, always bringing you all into them. But that's what I do. It's who I am. Do you remember my illustrious seven minutes as a hostess, when I swore off detective work? It didn't last because I didn't know what to do with myself! I didn't have anything to talk about, anything to do because I don't have anything else, like the rest of you do!"

I can't take it. I can't fucking take this level of pain from her, and I snap. I'm on my knees in front of her chair before I can think better of how hard this will wreck me tomorrow, when I remember how I lost my dignity for her. Again.

"I don't love you because of your goddamn cases," I hiss. "I don't care that you can find any missing person and wring a clue out of plain oxygen and dig up every last filthy secret that's been hidden on this planet. I don't care that you're the smartest person in every room. Is it sexy? Fuck yes, it's sexy. Is it useful sometimes? Goddamn right it is, or I wouldn't have hired you to find my mother back when you hated me more than anyone in California. But I've had women who were sexy, and I've had women who were useful, and you are the only person on earth I can't breathe without."

The words erupt out of me so hard and fast that my throat burns like I've been screaming for weeks.

"It has fuck all to do with your job, Veronica," I rasp.

She's just staring at me, eyes wide and a tear caught in a crystalline drop on her cheek, quivering in the light from inside the hotel room like even it is too shocked to move.

I shove away from her chair, furious with myself that I made it about me again. "And I know Wallace feels the same, or he'd be best friends with your dad instead of you." I go back to the bar and grab the Scotch, moving it and two Waterford crystal glasses to the table beside her chaise lounge. "Mac, Wallace, Piz, Weevil, Duncan, me…we all stuck around after you solved our cases because we cared about you. Because we liked the personality you seem to think you don't have outside of detective work."

I'm just talking now to distract her from the confession that just ripped its way out of me. Trying desperately to bring it back to Wallace before she walks out, stepping over the bleeding heart laying on this balcony that oh yeah, probably belongs back in my heaving chest.

I open the mini fridge under the bar and grab a cold can of Coors Lite, carrying it back to where she sits. I'm calmer now, as I remember the metaphor I was going for with the Scotch. I'm the child of two actors and I know how to pivot a scene. So when she takes a breath and her lips start to hesitantly form my name—the easy let down speech is coming, oh how I do know it well—I interrupt her by placing the beer carefully on the table and distracting her with the one thing she can't resist. An unanswered question.

"Do you know what these are?"

Those beautiful blue eyes flick to the two different kinds of drinks and they narrow, her tears starting to dry as her brain cranks back into action. I steal the seat next to her, trying not to think about if it'll be the last time. I just raked her over the coals for only visiting me when she needs something but the proof is in the pudding: I've never kicked her out. I've never refused to help. Because I love anything that keeps her coming back, even as I wish—how I've always fucking wished—that that thing could be me. Just me.

I turn the Scotch. It's as old as I am, and almost as pretty.

"This is what the rich sip out of elegant glasses when they're brooding, alone in their towers. It's expensive enough to help us forget that the only things we have to keep us company are the things we buy."

"Logan…" The tears are back, shimmering in her long lashes. I don't want her pity, have never wanted it as much as I want her love, but she doesn't yet realize I'm talking about her, not just me.

"Because we've driven everyone else away, out of fear that they'll leave when we are no longer of use to them." It comes out as bitter as I am. I give the bottle a little shove across the table to her, offering it. "Go ahead. Try it. See if you like the taste."

"Why the beer?" she whispers, even though her eyes are on me, not it.

"Cheap swill." I crack a smile. "It's what Dick buys me when he's trying to shake me out of a funk. When he insults and pranks me into telling him what's really wrong. It's what we drank when we went surfing for the first time after I watched his brother jump off a building." I stare at the beer. "I've never felt forgiveness like that. The real kind, I guess, where it never comes up again." My finger traces the cold lip of the can. "It's cheap and it comes in six-packs because you drink it with friends. The people who know you're not that fucking elegant, and you're never going to be perfect. The people who keep your secrets. The people who stick around when your dad fucks you over and the accounts are frozen."

All three of us have taken turns footing the bill on this place. Duncan, me, and Dick. Depending on whose card worked on any given week.

I look up at my ex-girlfriend. "You're headed for a life of Scotch, Veronica. Trust me, you won't like the taste." I tap the top of the beer. "But if you go the other way, you've got to let people see you. Wallace can tell when you're holding back, and so can the rest of us. And frankly, it's fucking insulting."

There's a long silence. Stars hanging above us and streetlights gleaming from below. I think about having a drink about a thousand times. I think about leaving. I've used up every scrap of wisdom I could think of, every analogy and metaphor and button I know to push to get her off the shit path we've both been on for so long and headed for the real life she deserves.

"You have both," she says. "You're telling me all this like you know the difference between true friends or false, but you've got Scotch and beer right here and you don't spend time with anybody anymore but me and Dick."

"I own both because I still drink both. I'm a fucking mess," I say bluntly. "But you. You still have a choice."

And I don't hang around anybody but her and Dick because they're the only people left on earth that give two shits about me. Which is screwed up because Dick is Dick and Veronica rips my heart out every other Tuesday.

Fresh moisture glitters in her eyes and for a second, I'm afraid she feels sorry for me and I can't stand it. She sniffles, shoving roughly at her eyes with the heel of her hand and looking away like that will hide it.

"One more pro tip?" I reach out and brush a tear off her cheek, the pad of my thumb moving slowly like it's savoring the taste of her. "Don't try so hard to crank off the water works when you go talk to him. Those tears have broken blacker hearts than Wallace's."

She moves, and I stop breathing because I'm not ready to watch her leave. I'm never ready to watch her leave.

But she flees straight into my lap. Her arms going around me and her head burying itself in my neck. My skin's immediately wet with tears and if I had a free hand, I'd pinch myself. This can't really be happening. Is this an acid flashback?

"You're always trying to save me," she whispers. "Even when I hurt you."

Well…yeah. This is so obvious I have no idea how I'm supposed to respond. Especially since half the time when I try to protect her, she's been pissed about it.

I have no idea what the right move is just now, but she's still clinging to me, and my arms fall to her shoulders, scooping her closer without my permission. She hangs onto me so hard I'm pretty sure I'm going to have tiny girl finger shaped bruises come morning.

I'm completely sure I'm going to treasure each and every one.

"I can't believe you just told me a parable about friendship where Dick was the shining example," she says into my neck.

"Say what you want about Dick. It's all true. He's a douchebag who should probably never be left alone around a woman, or let loose on society at large. But he's loyal."

She sits back, and I try not to think about how good it feels to be this close to her again. She leans in and my heart stops. My lips part, but it's my cheek that gets the brush of a soft kiss.

"I was wrong about you," Veronica says.

This is definitely an acid flashback. I never have dreams this good.

"Oh do tell..." I smirk like it's a joke.

"I think I came here secretly hoping you'd take a cheap shot because I know you can be meaner than Wallace ever would, and I kind of felt like I deserved it."

I raise my eyebrows. Veronica might not be quite so emotionally clueless as I thought.

She touches my chest. "But I think I knew if I came here hurting, that you'd be sweet. You can be, sometimes, when it's for me."

She smiles at me, and it's gentle, and more open than I've seen her face since before Lilly died.

My heart twists like a charley horse in my chest. What does that mean? Is she going to—

But before my mind can spin out of control, she bounces up and snatches the Coors Lite.

"I've gotta go. Gotta see a man about a beer."

My whole body feels cold without her in my lap. "After all that, you're not even going to stay and have a drink with me?" I shouldn't be pitiful enough to ask, but good god, she kissed my cheek. She smiled at me. Those aren't things she does when we're broken up. Then, it's all explosions and screaming and heartbreak.

"You better order in some more cheap beer for when I come back later for our pillow fight and gossip sesh." She grins, all her mojo back in place and sparkling around her like a tractor beam pulling the whole world into her orbit. "That's what besties do."

I smile, bemused by this turn of events. "I thought Wallace was your bestie. Wasn't getting him back the whole point of this particular bout of story time?"

"Your bestie is the one who knows you better than you know yourself," she says, "and who sticks around to comfort you, even when you can't admit you're hurting."

She glows as she smiles at me. The tears dry and the bounce back in her step, and all because of what I said. I'm in awe of my own plan actually fucking working out. In so much awe I can't entirely feel bad that I just got friendzoned so hard my head should be spinning.

She barrels through my hotel room, scooping up her bag and letting in the room service cart on her way out.

"How's tricks, Ratner? Hey, did you spit in my burger or his this time?" She pulls off one of the silver lids and snatches up a burger to take with her. "No matter. Spit is just part of the seasoning at a fine establishment like the Neptune Grand. I've been dining with the stars so long I probably wouldn't even like my food without it anymore."

She dazzles him with a grin and she's gone, just like that. I go inside long enough to tip Ratner, and then head back to the deck and reach for the Scotch. She didn't kiss me, which means we're not back together. It also means she's not coming back until she needs me again. But she will need me again, sooner or later. If there's one thing Veronica Mars never runs out of, it's questions.

I pour the Scotch, but don't drink. I'm just staring into space, still a little off-kilter. She called me her best friend. That's more of her than I think I've ever had, even when she was in my bed every night.

My phone beeps in my pocket and I put down the Scotch in favor of checking it.

Veronica: Just so you know, that'll be a naked pillow fight ;)

My heart jolts in my chest. Fuck me running, I didn't misread that soft look in her eye. We are back together. As I think it over, a smirk lifts my lips. Girl knows if she'd have kissed me, she wouldn't have gone anywhere until dawn, Wallace or no Wallace. I toss the Scotch out of the glass with one quick flick of my wrist over the railing, and set it down to text one gleeful message.

Logan: Bffs 4 eva!

Author's Note: I have at least 2 more chapters of this, maybe 3. Still trying to decide if I want to keep it clean or write some makeup sex. I've only watched through mid season 3, so PLEASE NO SPOILERS IN REVIEWS for the movie or S4.