Playing with Matches, a veronica mars fanfic

Playing with Matches

Logan loves therapy.

AU end of Season 1; Logan-centric, some LoVe

A/N: Because dark!Logan is better than crack.

Disclaimer: He doesn't belong to me; I just like to torture him.

"Life's a bitch, and then you die." – Veronica Mars

Logan loves therapy. Loves it. Loves the sterile, stream-lined room and the uncomfortable chair—it's cold and hard and the back leans back too far but not far enough so he's stuck in that uncomfortable middle like a sort of purgatory or something like that (he wasn't paying attention that day in class when they were discussing Purgatorio. He was too busy rereading sections of Inferno again. Now there was a piece of literature he could get behind). Loves sauntering in with a bottle of vodka or Jack Daniel's in his hand. Sure, she takes it away as soon as he walks in the door, but it's the thought that counts.

He loves letting lose on the shrink with staccato bursts of sarcasm like machinegun bullets—bangbangbangbang. He's run through four shrinks before this one, leaving them all broken and unsure of themselves—two in tears. This one's tougher, older, been in the business longer. No nonsense, no bullshit. Pretends nothing he says bothers her or surprises her—like she doesn't judge.

But here come his bullets and sometimes she twitches. Just the slightest twitch, twitch, twitch, her shoulder jerking upwards just a little, and he smiles slowly and weaves his fingers together behind his neck and leans his head back against them (she stopped asking him to keep all four legs of the uncomfortable chair on the floor during their second session).

It's so cliché and he knows it: poor-little-rich-boy-daddy-beat-him-everyone-he-loved-left-him-hiding-his-pain-behind-sarcasm-and-alcohol. So cliché, and he loves (hates) it, because it's exactly what she's expecting.

She leaves him alone in the room, to write, to get his feelings down on paper and "out of his system and to a place where they can't poison him." He leans back in the chair and flicks his pencil at the ceiling. It sticks in the ceiling tile and he grins.

When she returns, there are seventeen pencils sticking in the ceiling, a blank piece of paper sitting in front of him, and a smirk on his face. Her mouth is a straight line, and she doesn't sigh.

Unlike the others, she doesn't flinch when he curses. No matter what word or combination of words he uses, she just stares at him from behind glasses that magnify her faded blue eyes. He's got a great imagination, and he and Lilly used to watch his Dad's R-rated film collection when they were twelve or thirteen, giggling at the new words and taking mental notes. He's not as crude as most people would think, he doesn't use the harsher ones very often—that robs them of all their power, and he knows he wants them to mean something someday—but he always knew his collection would come in handy.

But she doesn't react, and it's the only thing that frustrates him.

She tries to get him to talk about his Dad (he's been calling him Aaron in his mind since he was ten). About his Mom (he can't remember her face anymore, just the sight of that blob falling in slow motion into the ocean). About Lilly (he remembers her all too well, and she's always, always laughing. At him.). About Veronica (that was a split-second thing; it isn't like it mattered. Except when it did. Too much.).

Instead, he tells her the plots of Aaron's movies, changing the names and pretending that they happened to him—she's old enough that she probably hasn't seen any of them, but she isn't stupid enough to believe a word of them.

She—finally—rolls her eyes, and he decides he likes her.

It's always Trina waiting for him when he emerges (Mommy dead and Daddy in prison who else would come?), and the ride home is all not-too-carefully-veiled insults (all slut and whore on his end and selfish bastard on hers) and her letting him know how incredibly inconvenient his mere existence is.

But after a while, they lapse into silence, and she switches the dial when the radio starts in with breaking news about the Aaron Echolls Case (so many words like "alledged" and "accused" and "suspicions," and it sounds like the media is just humoring the sheriff's office, because everyone knows that the Sexiest Man Alive couldn't possibly have screwed and killed his son's girlfriend), and it makes him kind of glad she's there, because if she weren't, he'd listen to the updates straight through (and even he's aware of how masochistic that is). At least she came.

And when they get home, there's more JD in the liquor cabinet ("It's almost endearing that I need a key to the liquor cabinet"—he can't let himself think about that night) even though he knows he emptied it out last night. Maybe it's possible that she's not so bad (sure, she's a bitch, but so is every woman he knows).

But he still doesn't have anything to say to her (she's always loved Aaron). After all, her mom didn't kill herself by jumping off a bridge when a camera was there to catch the whole thing.

And besides, she's got a red carpet to appear at tonight.

Duncan never drops by or even calls, and Logan can't (not) blame him.

He doesn't visit Lilly's grave, because that's too twisted (normal) for him. Instead, he sneaks into Neptune High (he knows thirteen ways to get in without setting off the alarm) and visits the boy's locker room where Lilly relieved him of his virginity on his fifteenth birthday during fourth period. He leaves behind a unicorn bracelet, a condom and a bottle of coconut rum (no flowers for Lilly—his memorial is much more fitting).

He also tells her to leave him the hell alone (because he may not see her like Duncan does, but he sure as hell hears her laughing, and that's a million times worse).

When he dreams (which isn't often, because he mostly just drinks himself into a drunken stupor where dreams can't find him), he dreams of them all, all of them pressing close around him till they're like one person (AaronMomLillyVeronica). They laugh and laugh and laugh, and he can never breathe (he definitely does not wake up crying).

He finds himself lurking outside Veronica's apartment at night, and even he realizes how sick (desperate) that is. He doesn't go so far as to peek into her bedroom window (he's not sure who he'd be more scared of if he got caught: Keith or Veronica herself). Instead, he watches as she makes dinner for her Dad, wrestles on the floor with Backup, watches lame movies with Fennel (she looks comfortable with him, whereas with Lilly, she always looked self-consciously eager for approval). He doesn't pretend that he's inside with her, doesn't imagine conversations with her, and he doesn't feel guilty.

Besides. He knows that she knows he's there (she's Veronica).

When all the lights have gone out (and he can imagine her asleep, breathing evenly, undisturbed by nightmares), he wanders down to the beach, floats off into the waves on his surfboard, and lets the rise and fall rock him to fitful sleep (Mom never sang him lullabyes, told him bedtime stories, got him a glass of water—she was always at parties or away on location). He could drown, probably, but he (tells himself he) doesn't really care.

He always wakes up on the sand, his skin pruney like an old man's (which seems right somehow), and it's back to an empty house (Trina spends less time there than even he does) to shower and drink black coffee and get ready for another round of therapy (which he loves).

One night, while he's sitting on the hood of the Big Bird Mobile staring at the blue TV light staining the Mars's living room, the door opens and Veronica walks out (she looks so tired that he doesn't notice how beautiful she is. Liar).

She doesn't say anything, barely looks at him, just climbs up onto the hood beside him.

They sit like that for several hours, and maybe the silence isn't comfortable like it used to be (on those rare moments when the Kane kids left them alone and it was just Logan and Ronnie who always understood each other better than they let on). She looks at the stars, maybe, which doesn't seem at all like her (or maybe too much) and he smokes cigarette after cigarette.He hasn't smoked since he was thirteen and trying to be rebellious, but when Logan plays a part as he's playing juvenile delinquent now, he plays it to the hilt (he learned that from Mom; Dad was always a shitty actor, all smarmy charm and good publicity). Besides, he likes the way the smoke curls up and obscures the stars.

The sky has turned from black to that shade of blue you can only ever see if you stay up all night (his favorite color: the color of a bruise) when she slides down off the hood and heads towards the door.

Without looking back, she says, Goodnight, Logan.

The next morning, he calls the therapist and lets her know that her services are no longer needed.

(He doesn't even make a crude joke about "servicing." Maybe he really is getting better.)