Give and Take

Author: xyellowroset

Rating: G

Summary: Things always seem to slip away from him . . .

Disclaimer: I'm in no way affiliated with Rob Thomas, UPN, or Warner Brothers. This is my own, not-for-profit endeavor spawned by love of the show.

Notes: "bubbleficathon" fic, written for auchic, who requested Logan/Veronica, a toy boat, and not too fluffy. This is my first VMars fic, so feedback would be lovely. I've also never read any VMars fic, which in some ways was very freeing, because I have no way of knowing if I captured any of the fanonical oeuvre and was able to just do my own thing.

Spoilers: Everything through One Angry Veronica is fair game.

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When he was a little boy, his mother had given him a remote controlled boat for his birthday. It was white with blue stripes, and he immediately ran out to the pool to try it out. He made it zip around the perimeter and dash around the floating chairs until Trina made him take it out so she and her friends could swim.

He came down a half an hour later with his water guns.

His father beat him for that – and took the boat away, saying that if he couldn't wait to play with it, he didn't deserve to have it. That was the way it always went. His mother gave him something, and his father took it away – even Veronica.

His mother had given him Veronica. Through her suicide, Veronica's sympathy and willingness to help him – if only for a little while – believe that she was still alive.

His father had seen that she'd never want to be with him again.

Logan reached the end of the hotel pool, and turned, ready to begin another lap.

He hated that every time he thought about her, he couldn't help but inwardly seethe. He'd been a fool – a damn fool – to lower his defenses enough to let her in. Women were bitches, and at least with Kendall there wasn't any pretense that there was anything else between them.

The water was barely cooler than the warm southern California air, and he flipped to his back to begin a backstroke. They'd tried to get him to join the swim team at school, and he'd declined. It wasn't that he didn't think he was good enough; he just didn't want to have to spend the time at practice and competitions. That, and it might have actually given his parents a reason to be proud of him.

Duncan did things like that – Duncan, who's entire life seemed centered on how it would look on his college application. Didn't he understand that in cases like theirs it wasn't the balance of extracurriculars but the balance in the bank that mattered?

He reached the end of the pool, and turned, to begin another lap. Spitting a mouthful of chlorinated water out as he did so. There was something comforting and familiar in the taste of chlorine. He preferred it to the brackish taste of the saltwater on the coast less than a mile away. How fitting that he preferred the unnatural artifice to the real thing – sort of like the difference between Veronica and Kendall.

Veronica was the ocean, untamed, unpredictable, and unreachable. Kendall was artifice and creation – and his as long as he continued to through money at it. Kendall was easy. Yes, he realized, laughing and then choking at the irony. Kendall was easy.

He never was able to hang onto anything – his toys, his girlfriends, anything. He told himself it didn't matter, everything was replaceable.

Sometimes, he acknowledged, the replacement was a pale imitation of the original. Sometimes, however, the replacement was much better.

He flipped again, and switched to a breast stroke. Slipping under the warm water, he was in his own world – a world without sound, and with limited sight. A world of his own making, bought and paid for with his father's money. As much as he hated his father, he had no problem profiting from their relationship. If that made him a hypocrite, it didn't make him any bigger a hypocrite than anyone else in Neptune.

Except Veronica. Of course. Veronica. It always came back to her. He was better without her. She had a way of reminding him of his failings by mere virtue of the fact that she existed. He didn't need that. He had his father for that.

He reached the wall, and surfaced, taking a deep breath in preparation for another dive beneath the water. The air burned his lungs as it filled them, and he let it out and took another deep breath, relishing the heady feeling that came with it.

He realized he was getting tired, but he didn't care. The pool was safe, warm, clean, cathartic. The longer he stayed in the pool, the longer he could stay out of his house. His father's house. Even in his absence, the presence of his father still loomed in every room – the closet where the belts hung, the movie posters, the residual checks that arrived every month in his name. He promised himself that as soon as his father was convicted – as soon as there was no chance of him coming home – that he'd rip the posters from the wall and give the belts to the local homeless shelter.

He surfaced, and exhaled, then inhaled just as quickly. As though privy to his thoughts, she was there – blonde, tiny, hands on her hips and ready for a fight.

"Veronica Mars."

"Logan Echolls." She repeated, a steely edge to her voice.

"Come to join me in the pool?" he asked. "I'm sure Trina left something around that would fit you." He paused a moment, deliberately running his eyes up and down her body. "Of course, you could also skinny dip. I promise not to tell anyone."

"Right." Veronica rolled her eyes, and then grabbed the towel from the lounge chair to toss at him. "Get out, we have to talk."

He grabbed the towel just before it hit the water. "You know these work better when they're not wet, right?"

"Just get out."

He eyed her again. "You sure you don't want to come in?"

"Get out," she ordered again. "You and I are going to talk about the person your dad hired to kill me."

He dried his face, hiding his shocked expression in the towel. Veronica may harbor suspicions – but she tended to play them close to the vest unless she was certain. If she was willing to accuse his dad of contracting to kill her, she probably had

He threw the towel over his shoulders and started the walk up the pool stairs.

"What makes you think I have any idea what my father does?"

It was a fair question, and he saw how quickly it took the wind out of her sails. "You're right," she said turning on her heel. "I should know better than to expect anything from you, anyway."

He stood – halfway out of the water – and watched her walk away. It wasn't as though he could say anything to stop her – he couldn't help her, he couldn't make her trust him again – he couldn't take back the last six months. He could only watch her go, and think once again on everything that he'd lost.

The End

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