Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I've grown old before my time, Logan thinks lazily. It's true that spending the last week of winter break lying on his couch would not be featured on a late night TV list of "Top Ten Things Logan Echolls Does," but he has reached a state of almost hypnotized languor. It's like what he imagines experienced Zen masters can achieve, so determinedly focused on stillness that he can ignore his bodily needs. He has a bottle of Coke sitting on the coffee table, within arm's reach, but he doesn't move for it. His cell phone chimed a text ten minutes ago, but he hasn't looked.

Eventually, however, he can see the sky darkening, and can no longer ignore his hunger. He can cook well enough to feed himself now (a necessity once his relocation from the Grand to his own small house had brought an end to his ability to rely on room service) but he has a craving for Chinese, so he stands to grab his phone. The text is still indicated when he goes to call for takeout, so he checks it first. It's from Emily, a girl he met a little over a month ago, right at the beginning of break. He figures he'll look at what she has to say, call Ho Lee Chow, and reply to her while he waits. But he's driven back, wide-eyed, to the couch by what he sees on the screen.

I'M PREGNANT reads the first text, 99% IT'S YOURS

just thought you should know

emily btw

And then, inexplicably and, he imagines, nervously: bye

The last time Logan had thought about having kids was because he had absently answered Veronica's cell phone. It was sitting in the car seat next to him while she was locking up Mars Investigations, and because they had just gotten back together after her summer in Virginia, because there was all smiling and no secrets, he hadn't even thought there would be a reason for him not to pick it up. He had been sure it was Wallace, annoyed that they had not arrived with the pizzas yet.

He had immediately been on alert when the automated message informed him that it was a call from a doctor's office, but had tried to remain calm. Veronica's birthday is in the summer. She probably missed her annual physical he thought, fingers fluttering and spasming around the phone.

"We are calling to confirm a…post-procedural appointment…for…Veronica Mars…on…Tuesday September eighteenth…at…ten o'clock am. To confirm this appointment, please press 1."

Veronica had gotten in the car just then and he had handed the phone to her. "Press one to confirm your appointment," he had said flatly, not looking at her.

"You answered my phone without asking me?" she asked furiously, mashing her finger onto the button.

"I thought it was Wallace." He rounded on her, his body shifting in an aggressive arc in the too-small space of the car. "You had surgery and just forgot to mention?"

"It wasn't surgery, and it wasn't any of your business." She put her hand on the door handle, and he could see the second she remembered that her car was at home, that he was her transportation. He could see the second that she regretted trusting that they could last a whole day without a fight. He could see the second that her Veronica Mars manipulation went into play. "Look, I'm fine. It was a voluntary procedure. I'll get checked out by my gynecologist and I'll be fine."

"What kind of voluntary gynecological procedure does a healthy young person need?" he snapped. But it was a case of his mouth working faster than his brain, because as soon as the words were out, he knew. His voice hushed itself. "Veronica, did you get your tubes tied?"

"No, Logan. I had a hysteroscopic sterilization, actually. I don't want to worry about the Pill, I don't want kids, and if I ever do in the future, I kind of buy into the whole 'giving a home to a needy child' bit. You know me, doing my part to solve the overpopulation crisis." She had looked at his still stricken face. "Come on, Logan. It was just insurance."

"Right. Insurance." His voice was still dead, but he had started the car.

"Tell me a story?" Veronica said quietly after a few minutes. It was something she used to say when their misadventures with the Kane children had tipped slightly over the line and she needed light and grounding. He remembered the first time, the soft drift of her voice as they dragged Duncan and Lilly's inebriated forms through the Kane's rose bushes at three in the morning. He had grinned, then, and although he was drunk enough himself that moving his mouth had felt like a dream, made something up about a crime-fighting iguana.

"No stories this time," Logan said roughly, and shut off the engine.

He tried to put the whole thing out of his mind, had gone along when she had acted like everything was normal, but three weeks later, he and Veronica had broken up and it had slipped down the list of worries regardless.

He wants to call Dick and say, "Don't ask questions, just take me to the nearest bar and let me get so shitfaced I don't remember anything."

He wants to call Duncan and let the panic he feels out when he begs to know how to deal with being an accidental father.

He wants to call Trina and tell her that she's at this point definitely out of the will.

He wants to call Keith Mars and ask him how to be a good dad.

He wants to call Lynn and say, "Surprise, you're going to be a grandma."

He wants to call Aaron and swear that he will not be living up to his fatherly example.

He wants to call Veronica and hire her to find the way that this isn't true. He wants to call Veronica and tell her he's sorry, to wonder hesitantly if there is any way that she will ever forgive him for this. He wants to call Veronica and have her listen quietly as he talks about his fear and his doubt and his confusion and self-loathing.

In the end, his body stagnates from too much wanting and he falls asleep, still hunched over on the couch.

Lilly already knew what she was doing the first time they had sex. He, on the other hand, was fourteen and just figuring out how to maneuver with limbs suddenly grown long.

"Looks like something else is having a growth spurt," she had said wickedly one afternoon, reaching for his belt as he desperately tried to play it cool. He had hooked up with other girls before, but there was something about Lilly Kane that shook him up. Her confidence, maybe, or the way that instead of seeming delighted to be with him, she made it seem like he should be delighted that she was letting him be with her.

He hadn't been good the first time, but Lilly had patted his cheek and promised to train him up. "You're going to be spectacular," she had winked. "And I'll forbear until then."

And by a few months later, he was very very good. Good enough that Lilly had needed to catch her breath before rolling over and telling him matter of factly, "I'm pregnant."

Every muscle in his body weakened. "Shit." He had clenched the comforter tightly in his fist, squeezing his eyes shut and blowing out a breath before managing shakily, "Shit, Lilly. What do we do? Do we raise it together? My trust doesn't kick in for another few years but maybe if I ask my parents—" He had cut himself off when he realized that she was clenching her lips against laughter.

"I'd love to see their faces," she eventually got out, "But don't worry, you're a few years away from Pampers and preschools."

"Jesus Christ." He rolled off the bed and flung himself toward the liquor cabinet. He wasn't sure that he would be able to make a successful bottle-to-glass transfer, and wasn't really interested in the polite regulation of cups anyway, so he took a direct gulp, and then a few more. When the alcohol - he wasn't entirely sure what he had grabbed - started to flow through him, words returned. "What the fuck was that?"

"Just a little fun." She had come up behind him and wrapped herself around his shoulders. "Just something to shake you up." She shimmied against his back. "Don't pretend you're not getting turned on right now." And he had discovered that as good as sex was with Lilly, sex with Lilly when he was riding on an arc of relief and anger was even better.

But he had always been exceptionally careful after that. That minute of pure panic had been too much for him already.

Because "karma" is apparently from the Sanskrit for "can't believe you thought you'd ever catch a break, dickhead," Logan wakes the next morning to the cell phone in his hand vibrating and displaying Veronica's number. He is paralyzed enough that he doesn't really have to make a choice about whether or not to pick up, and the phone rolls over to voicemail. Eventually he shakes himself out of it and checks the recording. Her voice rings through clearly, busy and excited.

"Still Harriet Tubman? Guess you must have really overdosed on too much Arrested Development if you haven't changed the inspirational message. Anyway, slacker, just checking to make sure that we're still on for dinner before Mac's thing. And it's my turn to pick, so unlimited breadsticks for all!"

His fingers somehow decide that he should listen to the message two more times before he finally gathers himself and turns off the phone, holding it between his palms and resting his chin on it. He had forgotten that Mac, recently making an effort to bond with her biological family, had invited them all to game night at the Sinclair's. He had forgotten that he and Veronica were going to go together to hang out as the friends they had somehow managed to become. They've been inching toward something more, and he remembers this once again as he realizes that she could have just texted him, but had instead chosen to call, had wanted to speak with him, to hear his voice.

He wants to hear her voice, too, but he absolutely can't face a night of lying to her by pretending that everything is still normal. Still, he wants to keep their friendship intact, so he calls her back. "Don't spill it to Entertainment Tonight, but Trina's been picked up for some decidedly lewd conduct in Malibu, and in the spirit of the season of family togetherness, has called me to come bail her out." It's like he's possessed, because he can see his reflection in the window and he still looks shell-shocked, but the lie comes out smoothly, touched with the appropriate measures of humor and irritation. There's shame, bitter in his mouth, as he realizes that somehow he has managed to regain her trust enough that she does not question him, that she commiserates jokingly about his need to change plans. He calls Mac as well, making the same excuse and apologizing for leaving her with one less buffer person. He says that if he gets back to town in time, he'll try to make it.

"Well, Lauren will miss you. I'm pretty sure she's going through withdrawals after so much Logan-less time," Mac teases, and Logan groans exaggeratedly and flexes his fingers and hates himself.

He doesn't know what to do when he's done. He almost moves to get a drink, even though he has cut back drastically over the last year, to Lynn-Echolls-would-have-no-reason-to-talk-to-him-at-a-cocktail-party levels of sobriety. But then he thinks You can't drink when you're pregnant and he sits with his knuckles pressed against his teeth to keep from screaming and doesn't move for an hour. Finally he texts Emily back.

we should probably talk about this. 12 okay for you?

He wants her to say no, to respond embarrassedly that she had meant to text Lincoln, not Logan, that it was all a misunderstanding, ha ha, hope we can forget about this. But she writes back almost immediately:

same bat place.

Here's the really ironic thing: when he and Emily hooked up, or whatever, it felt good. She had come to the party with a friend who he knew because she had a sister the same age as Heather and they sometimes ran into each other when he was going to stuff her parents were too busy for. But Amber had soon gone to talk to someone else and he had been alone chatting with Emily. As the night wore on they started kissing and eventually she told him that it was time for her to go home, but that her roommate had already left town for vacation. She asked if he wanted to come with, and he said yes, so they went back to her place and slightly better than decent sex.

"You can stay, if you want," she had mumbled after, and he was tired from studying for finals and just slightly buzzed, so he did, even though the dorm beds at Hearst were far too narrow for it to be comfortable. They ate cereal together in the morning - she cross-legged on the bed and he at the desk - and talked about classes, arguing over which of them had the crazier professor: his possibly ex-KGB Stats lady, or her elderly, oversharing Lit teacher. She had walked him to the door even though it was visible from the bed.

"I guess a good time was had by all?" he had said, smiling as she added her number to his contacts.

"Definitely." She handed the phone back, kissed his cheek. "And text me if you want those notes from that Comm class. You'll see in a few weeks. Snyder talks so fast that doubling up is basically a necessity."

He had kept smiling as he walked away, had flipped his phone and caught it, and probably even whistled as he went to find his car. He supposed technically it was a walk of shame, but he hadn't felt ashamed, he had felt normal. There was no guilt, no concern for the consequences of what had happened, none of the sleazy disorientation that came from wondering who he had slept with and why, no need to finish catching his breath before steeling himself to tell a half stranger to get her things and go, or for him to sneak out in the night. He wasn't over his relationship with Veronica (he's never over his relationship with Veronica, only betwixt and between) but this somehow felt like the mature version of a hookup. It had felt functional, like he was part of the ninety-nine percent for whom one night stands were not traumatic or borderline abusive.

I might as well have put a 'kick me' sign on my back for fate to aim at, he thinks morosely, and goes to try to drown himself in the shower.

He wanted to bring coffee so that he would have something to do with his hands, but he's pretty sure that pregnant women aren't supposed to drink coffee, so he refrains, figuring that she might see it as unencouraging at best and insulting at worst, and that's not how he wants to start things off. He regrets it, though, because he's going absolutely crazy inside his skin. He remembers where Emily lives, and it just rubs it in deeper that the memories are so clear because it's further proof of how cogent he was at the time, how careful, and so how could this have happened? Thankfully, it's far enough away from anywhere that he suspects anyone from his friend group would be that he doesn't worry about his lie being exposed. Instead he spends his energy stressing over why is takes her seven full seconds to answer the door after his knock.

The February before Lilly had been killed, Lynn Echolls had organized a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood. It hadn't been the most popular cause. There were, of course, liberal or pseudo-liberal members of the Neptune community, but it was always easier to get donations for causes people could agree on, like breast cancer or reseeding the green at Torrey Pines. Still, when Aaron Echolls approached people and, squeezing their hands just a touch too hard, told them jovially, "Lynn tells me that we haven't received your RSVP. Of course, we'd love to see you there," the tables filled up.

Usually he wouldn't have gotten involved, but Lynn had been particularly invested in the event. She had remained unusually clear-headed leading up to it, but Logan remembered one night when she had gone just slightly over the limit.

"It's her choice, Logan. If you're ever in that kind of situation, it's her choice. It's her body and her choice and you will support her." She had been shaking her glass in his face at that point, hard enough that a little piece of ice chipped off and hit his cheek. He had loved his mother, he really had, but at that point all he wanted to do was ditch her forced family time for some time with Lilly's new custom lingerie from Germany.

Now that he considers it, her words might not have been about the kids in the pamphlets that had been scattered around the living room. If you looked at her resume, it would be obvious that she had gone from rom-com star and action sidekick to voicing cartoon turtles and popping in as the mom on sitcoms just around the time that Logan had been born. And even though he knows that she loved him, as he waits hyperventilating slightly in front of Emily's room, he wonders if it had been her choice to have him at all.

Still her words are all he can think about as Emily opens the door, biting her lip, and he lifts his forehead from where it is resting against his crooked arm on the doorjamb. "It's your body and your choice. What do you want to do?" he blurts.

She looks tired and ridiculously terrified and he thinks thank God it's break because there's no way in hell either of us could go to class thinking about this.

They sit side by side on the bed and he thinks that she would be offended if he told her how profoundly grateful he is that she changed the sheets. He's hanging very precariously onto sanity and seeing those same turquoise stripes wouldn't be an unlikely candidate for pushing him over.

They've been sitting quietly for a while before he asks again, trying to be gentle, "What do you want to do? Because I'm with you, whatever you want."

"I don't know," she says, voice shallow. "I mean, I'm," she waves a hand around vaguely in the air, "Catholic, but, like, birth control and cheating during Lent Catholic. And having a baby right now would basically screw up my life."

He's about to say, "So we're thinking abortion? Adoption?" when she buries her face in her hands. "I mean, there's no reason to keep it, but I think I'm going to do it anyway. It just feels like…it feels like the right choice."

"Shit. Really? Shit." All of his eloquence and posturing desert him. He isn't sure how to react inside his own mind, much less toward her. Crucially, the terrible little whisper in his mind hadn't snuck out, the one that was saying that leaving the choice up to her was supposed to relieve the pressure of choosing to have an abortion, not justify keeping the baby. Trying to live up to the person he is attempting to be, he pulls himself together to add, "Are you sure?"

She shudders tearlessly, and he feels it run through him as well. "I'm going to think it over for a few days, but I'm pretty sure."

Logan thinks of the fetus evolving inside of her at this very moment and tries to think of the most neutral way to question that. "Do we have that kind of time?" he says eventually.

Emily reaches over to her nightstand. "We have a few more weeks," she says, rifling through a stack of papers. "Abortions in California can be legally obtained until the twenty-fourth week of pregnancy, although most providers consider it safer during the first twelve weeks," she reads off one of the printouts, before switching, almost obsessively, to another. "Paternity can be tested at nine weeks with a blood test that carries no risks, so I scheduled an appointment. That'll be in two weeks."

"So… so there's a reason to test paternity?"

"If I got pregnant, then it means my pill failed. In the timeframe the doctor told me, I was…with you, and then there was once with my ex." If he wasn't already feeling disastrous about this situation, the fact that she can't say the word 'sex' to him would have clinched it. She refuses to look at him, so all he could see was the way she was compulsively biting the inside of her cheek.

"Have you told him too?"

Emily gathers up all of the papers, tucking them into a red binder on her desk. For all of her straightening, they have no holes punched, so they slide and fan out of the file. "Uh, yeah. I texted him also. He won't talk about it yet, though, so I'm not going to force it until the test comes back and it becomes an issue."

Rubbing a hand across his mouth as if muffling the words will make them less true, he says, "I guess you'll need me there. To give blood or a cheek swab or whatever."

"Yes." She doesn't look like she wants it to be true any more than he does. And in that moment, looking at the pale tightness of her mouth, any doubts he had about someone playing a trick, any thoughts about his father's sex talk, which was basically a warning that the groupies out there would do anything for an Echolls baby, vanish. Either she is a better actress than anyone he has ever met, a list which includes Meryl Streep, or this is real. He does not react further, but can't tell if it's a sign of increased comfort with the idea or if he's just gradually being submerged into shock.

She crosses her arms, shifting a little. "The test is pretty simple. They'll draw your blood, draw my blood to find the baby's DNA in it, a few hundred dollars, and then they tell us if they match or not."

"I'll pay for it. Whatever you need, I'll pay for it."

"Not for this. I have the money for this. Later, if I need help, we'll talk about it, but I'll be fine for now."

Logan isn't sure how to respond to that. Part of him finds her independence endearing, finds it reassuring that she doesn't want to take his money. But he is panicked despite himself because if he is not going to be able to support her financially, it means having to support her emotionally. And he's not certain he can even do that for himself at the moment.

He flounders for another question, wishing that he had thought to write these all down, wishing he were the responsible type of person who would have bothered. "Are we…are we telling people?"

"I told my best friend," Emily says, looking down. "But she's not going to tell anyone. And I think I'm going to call my doctor from home." She laughs like a cut, tucking her arms over each other. "I still go to a pediatrician. I was supposed to get a grownup doctor, but I've been going to the same practice since I was a kid, and they just kept scheduling me appointments after I'd aged out."

So far he's been shocked and panicked and even angry enough to punch a couple of walls, but this just makes him sad. He doesn't quite know what to say. "So, you'll call me, whatever you decide about…?"

"Yeah, Logan. I'll call you." He gets up from the bed and lets himself out the door. It occurs to him as he walks away that that was the only time she has called him by his name.

He has these dreams, has had them for years, where it's just Veronica saying his name. She stands in front of him and says his name in all the tones she has for it - upset and pissed and wondering and admonishing and playful - and he wakes up gasping for no reason at all. Sometimes he goes to call her, sometimes the phone has already begun to ring, but he always hangs up.

Logan hasn't really missed the Grand since he left, but now he wishes for the extensive on-site gym. He takes long runs on the beach and around the neighborhood, but it doesn't have the same mind-freezing properties as lifting weights until his muscles give up. It gives him too much time to think when he really wants to do the opposite.

He's tremendously grateful when school starts again. He quickly adds another class to fill up his time, forcing himself to pay attention to readings he would have skimmed over in semesters past, and even investing in highlighters.

Emily catches up to him one day as he's walking to class. There isn't a lot of mystery to where he'll be; these days he moves mostly between class and home. The time that he had started spending with Veronica and Mac and the rest of their friends has declined. He's been making excuses for a week and a half, and that just makes him feel worse, as if everything is hitting at once.

He and Emily haven't talked again because she had seemed like she needed space, and he definitely needed space, even though it just allowed room for the anxiety to grow. So he's surprised when she seems to drop out of the sky in the middle of the path.

"I'm keeping it," she says, rip-the-bandaid-off quick. "The appointment for the test is next Thursday, at two." She is rubbing her hand roughly over her collarbone. If it's a tic he, not surprisingly, isn't familiar with, and the way that he can know this one secret and none of the smaller part of her makes him want to vanish . "My ex is still kind of…out of it, but if you'll give a blood sample, then we can rule you out. You can come with me, or schedule your own time to do it."

Logan has class at two on Thursdays. "I'll be there."

She gives him the address, on a tiny piece of torn paper that he tucks in his wallet because he doesn't know what else to do, and turns away, walking quickly in the opposite direction.

He goes to class and hopes that they aren't discussing anything important, because through the daze in his head he can't remember what the subject is. When the people around him get up, he goes to the registrar's office and drops his extra course. He might want the distraction, but he probably needs the extra time in his life now.

In February of his sophomore year, Logan entered a piece of writing in the Hearst arts festival. Out of character, yes, because it wasn't required, and there wasn't a prize, and college hadn't made him into the type of person who wore jackets with patches at the elbows and quoted Kerouac to seem deep. But he had just moved into his new place, and he and Veronica had stopped talking five months ago, and he hadn't just taken newspaper in high school for kicks. Dick kept pushing him to go out, and writing his story had become an easy go-to excuse for avoiding the temptation of getting hammered all the time.

It was a sad story, nostalgic and a little funny. "Characters are explored in a way uncommon for short fiction. Their emotions and their stories are laid bare for the reader to judge and understand," read the commentary that accompanied his entry. He would deny it if confronted, but he reread the review for weeks afterward, sneaking it out before he went to bed like a junkie so he could fall asleep with an idiot grin on his face.

The writing was published in a journal, but he was still invited to attend the opening of the visual art show. There was a part of him that hoped that he would be approached not with a breathless "Aren't you Aaron Echolls's son?" but by someone who would rest their hand on his arm and tell him gravely that his story had moved them. So he put on his best well, you invited me, so here I am casual-formal attire and went.

Once he arrived, though, he wished that he had read the list of contributors more carefully, because Veronica Mars was standing in a blue cocktail dress, speaking to two older women and gesturing to a photograph right behind herself. He was turning to go when a voice by his shoulder said, "You're Logan Echolls, aren't you? I read your story. And I wanted to know if you hate all women, or just the ones who might stand up for themselves."

He was trapped in conversation with a freshman ("freshperson") transfer called Enid for an hour. Irritatingly, and frighteningly, she was clearly cleverer than he was. She was also persistent, so that every time he tried to get out of the conversation by excusing himself or walking away or getting pissed at her, she just kept talking until he came back and defended himself.

Enid eventually let him go and, in the way of things, he turned around and Veronica was standing behind him. It was the first time he had even seen her in months, since their horrible fight. The details of it escaped him, but he remembered the finality of his heartbeat as the door had smacked shut behind her.

"I see things haven't changed," he said, gesturing to her face, which was registering the mix of irritation, disappointment and grudging pleasure that she seemed to sport so frequently around him.

For a second, pissed became her primary expression, but then her eyes softened and her mouth resigned. "I see things have." She crossed her arms in a way that made him wonder why she had bothered coming over to him in the first place. "I...I read your story. I thought that it was really good."

"I would have seen your pictures up close, but I got kind of waylaid by the feminine mystique back there." When she smiled, he couldn't fight the instinct to smile back. Before he could check himself, he asked, "I was going to go, but there's this new all-night bakery, and if you're not busy, maybe we could do apology cookies?" Then, subtly horrified, he backtracked. "Or something suitably not lame, but simultaneously commitment free."

"No," Veronica said quickly, and the look on her face made it clear that she have any more control over her words than he did over his. She closes her eyes for a moment, corrects the course of her words. "I mean, yes. You know I'm always down for a cookie."

They had managed to make conversation for an hour, the kind of meaningless small talk that both made Logan almost forget that she held a lot of the qualities that would qualify her as his best friend, and wish to regain that closeness. Finally Veronica put down her cookie (her fourth, and they were large) and informed him that they were just going to have to talk about it.

Logan had been relying on her typical avoidance strategies to be able to see her again without actually confronting anything. It's an unfortunate time for her to be turning over a new leaf. "I don't really need to have the why we broke up rehash, seguing into the why we broke up argument. I already have my merit badge in that, so it's time to try for the woodworking one." The nature-or-nurture theatrical part of Logan wished that they were someplace fancier, so he could signal for the check or throw money down on the table. Veronica must have seen something in his eyes or the shifting of his movement, because she rested a hand on his arm.

"Maybe we could try working on the communication badge instead?" He looked at her face, so concertedly meek, and settled in his seat again, laughing. Defensively, she added, "I was a Girl Scout."

"Of course you were. Is the communication badge a real thing?"

A reluctant smile tipped up the corners of her mouth. "Just for Boy Scouts, but my dad always kept his old shirt around. When I was little, he would make up all these stories about how he earned his all his patches. Like, he would say that he wrestled a bear for his Wilderness Survival badge." The curls of her smile froze. "But eventually I stopped believing him."

"Good." Logan was aware that his voice was too sharp and choked, but he didn't care. He didn't look at her, though, focusing instead on the crumbs scattered on their tabletop. "I wouldn't want you to go out to the woods to try for yourself." He picked at a nail, under the table where she couldn't see. "I don't mean to blame you, and I know that it's part of who you are, but the way you put yourself in danger…I don't know that I'll ever be able to handle that."

"Maybe you won't have to," and it was the hope in her voice that made him face her. "After what happened last semester, Mac and Wallace sat me down for a quality intervention. Really, you should have been. Cheese curls and everything while they told me how my behavior was hurting me and the people I care about."

"And I'm sure you eagerly hopped on that train." He tried for sarcasm, which usually came so easily, but it was touched by jealousy. He would have given anything for her to listen to him, to just take care of herself a little more, but all he remembered was her anger and rejection.

"I didn't talk to them for three weeks," Veronica said baldly. "But they were right. You were right."

Isn't that a four letter word for you? Logan forced himself to be gentle. She was apologizing, which was all he had sought for so long. But it rubbed him to forget, made him nervous to show her his softness. "What does that mean?"

"It means I'm done." She looked away, and he was glad. "Not with everything, but the really dangerous stuff, the stuff that lost my dad the election and the rest of his hair—"

"And me my sanity," Logan muttered. It is only partly involuntary, but he continued apologetically, "I mean, I know that you probably don't want to hear it from the guy who was voted "Most Likely to Commit a Felony" in our yearbook—"

"Hey, you only got that because I was already awarded Class Skank," she said, lightly joking. He grinned and relaxed a little.

"I get that what you do is important, and that it's a big part of who you are. But I can't say I won't worry less about you knowing that you're spending less of your time around people with criminal tendencies."

"Well, don't count yourself out, tiger." The uncomfortable look that came over her face, the way she couldn't seem to help playing with the wax paper from her cookie echoed the vaguely nauseous feeling in his stomach. After a minute, she looked up. "Look, I know I'm not the easiest person to be around. And you've had reasons to doubt me in the past. But if we could get to a place where we could be friends, I would…I would really like that."

The noise of the shop overwhelmed them, and he just stared for a moment. Finally he said, "You're not the only sinner here, Veronica. And if you…" He cleared his graceless throat. "If you can forget that I used to go around town writing your phone number in public bathrooms, then friendship could just be the everything old that's new again."

The smiles that came over her face was one of the shy, slow dawns that he sometimes saw behind his eyes in the second before he truly woke up. "Deal."

And somehow his prayers that they would manage to actually maintain a friendship were answered. Bad movie festivals and talking Veronica into trying rock climbing eventually became made-up game night with Wallace and Mac and Mac's new roommate Rosa (Parker had transferred to a school in Arizona to get away from everything Hearst reminded her of, and was very happy from what Logan could see on her Facebook page). Even Piz joined them once he had stopped flinching from Logan and alternating between blushing and glaring at Veronica. The glowing in Logan's chest the night everyone stayed up until dawn helping him finally put together the impossible IKEA furniture in his new place was outweighed only by the time that Wallace had mentioned that they should go to a basketball game together, so casually that it wasn't until hours later that Logan had realized that he actually had friends.

Chapter Text

Veronica is sitting on his couch when he gets home. She is looking down at her phone but before he can even fully finish his thought about somehow avoiding her, she has looked up at him.

"I'm full up on bibles, but thanks anyway," he says, attempting to make her forget that he hasn't talked to her in a week and a half.

"Yeah, we're not doing that." She gets up and follows him as he puts his keys away, as he slowly unloads his bag. "It's way past time to get to explaining why we're having a session of radio silence."

Logan thinks that, just for a change, maybe he should think ahead and try to figure out how to avoid the things that are going to bite him in the ass. But it's a resolution for another day, so he shifts his eyes to somewhere beside Veronica's head and deflates a little. "There's something going on." He can see her body close up out of the corner of his eye, but doesn't hasten to correct her impression. If she's been waiting on the edge this whole time for him to mess up, then it won't matter what he says. He continues dully, "It's not hurting anyone, but it's not my story to tell." He finally gathers himself enough to look at her face. It looks soft, and he hopes that it is not deception. "I didn't want to have to lie to you," he finishes helplessly, moving his fingers in a little shrugging gesture.

He can't remember the last time he was so surprised, but when he looks over, her face is the same. "Okay." She crosses her arms protectively, swings herself so her hair covers part of her face. "We're doing another thing with Mac in a couple of days. Do you want to come?"

Sitting in the Sinclair's living room trying to avoid the Taboo words and Veronica's eyes is simultaneously the best and worst thing he can think to do. "If we can do the normal thing, then, sure, family game night is on."

"Of course I'll take up my usual mantle of keeping Lauren away from you. Don't you worry, smoochie buns." She knocks her fist into the side of his arm and makes a clicking sound at him with her mouth. He smiles and laughs a little. "But if you don't work at it, you'll get stuck on her team instead of mine for charades."

"I've been training. Wouldn't want another 'Bridges of Madison County' disaster." He makes a fist, thumb running over the backs of his fingers. "So, do you want me to pick you up?"

"I think I can make my own way there," she says, and even though her voice is light, her face tilted up toward his, he remembers that she is still Veronica Mars and there's something in her marrow that doesn't let her forgive so easily.

She starts toward the door and he follows her and it's not because of any good hosting manners that he has. "Veronica," he blurts as she steps outside and he is left hanging onto the doorway for stability. "I know it goes against every lesson Jessica Fletcher ever taught you, but can you just let this one stay just as it seems?"

"No one's been murdered, right?"

"No."

"And I'm not going to get called to post bail?" He shakes his head.

"And you'll tell me eventually?"

"When we get to eventually, I won't be able to avoid telling you."

She squints at him, hand on the handle of her car door. "Okay."

He gets a text from her ten minutes later. I wasn't kidding about eventually, it says, and even though he smiles, he feels sick at the same time.

Two weeks later, Logan gets home at about ten. He's pissed off because it was a long day of classes and then he went for pizza with Heather and all she wanted to do was talk about some guy. He'd snapped at her after forty-five minutes because he couldn't handle another second talking about the glories of Doug, and she had stewed across from him until he had dropped her off.

But it's an uncomplicated kind of anger, sensible, cause-and-effect aggravation separated from the thoughts that have been festering in his mind for the past month, and so he doesn't mind it. And then he goes to throw his mail on the counter and notices the large letters that say CONFIDENTIAL across one of the envelopes. The letters are shredded, the envelope drifting to the floor a moment later, and he is confronted with the most passive-aggressively dooming sentence he has ever read.

The Alleged Father cannot be excluded as the biological father of the fetus based on the samples submitted from the mother and the alleged father and the DNA extracted from the population of fetal cells.

He retches a little, the words the alleged father pounding through every one of his heartbeats. He goes out to the beach, intending to run, but he just ends up screaming "Fuck!" at the sky with varying degrees of intensity and sitting on the sand, head rested on his knees, until dawn. This is no longer a girl he met once saying probably. Now it's science, cells and physicality that are changing his life.

He shows up at Emily's door before human hours have strictly begun. Her roommate answers the door groggily, and he blinks a couple of times because she has been absent for the entire drama and he doesn't even know her name. Emily comes up behind her after a few seconds, which is lucky because Logan can't seem remember how to politely request her presence.

"I assume you got one of these?" he says, brandishing the letter. He focuses his eyes slightly to the left, because he is struck by the idea that there is a human being percolating inside her body and he doesn't want to start screaming again in her presence.

"Yes," she says, so calmly that he forgets her pale face as she thrust the news upon him, or the way she broke a little telling him that she was keeping it, or how she flinched and clenched her fingers around no hand at all when the doctor went to draw her blood. He forces himself to breathe because he is suddenly alone in his panic. But he thinks that she can see it in his face because she continues gently, "Give me a few minutes to get dressed, and we can go somewhere to talk about it."

They end up at a coffee shop, empty except for a hipster looking dude in black typing away on a MacBook. Emily orders milk, although she asks for it in a coffee cup. Logan gets coffee, but doesn't drink any of it, choosing instead to tap his finger reflexively against the side. They are quiet for a while, until eventually Logan realizes that he is supposed to start.

"This isn't me trying to get out of anything," he begins, voice tarnished, "But there's some stuff that you should know about me." He pauses, wishing that there were someone around to script this. "I'm not a good guy. I drink too much and get into fights. I don't know what you've heard about my dad—"

"I'm not really into celebrity stuff," she shrugs, almost apologetic. "'Big movie star' is all I really know."

Logan laughs heavily. This is the first time he has had to tell anyone. With quietness he doesn't feel, he says, "My dad was…he could be brutal." He shifts, sniffs sharply, but continues facing down. "It started when I was a kid and…you took Psych 101, right? So that cycle of violence stuff is probably something you're aware of. I just thought you should know that if you wanted me to stick around, it's something that could be coming to a theater near you." She doesn't react except to take a sip of milk, twitching her nose a bit as she does so. Trying to soften the edges of his voice, he says, "I'll still pay for anything you need, but if you don't want me around, you wouldn't be wrong."

"I want you around, Logan," she says, voice certain. He wonders inanely if shaking her will hurt the baby, or if that's strictly a post-birth thing. "All the literature says that kids do better with their fathers around. But if you don't want to be around, I'll understand. If you're going to do it just because I told you to or you're afraid I'll go running to the Enquirer, maybe it's better if you go now."

"Okay." He scrapes a hand through his hair. "So should I go to therapy or AA or rehab or something? Because I'm not really a nice guy and you need someone who will be."

"That's your choice. I don't know you that well, but you coming to me, sitting here, talking about this with me…that seems like nice guy stuff. I don't think you're a bad guy. I think you're a hurt guy."

"You don't get it, okay?" he breaks loudly. "My dad could go from the best guy in the room to smacking me around in the space of a minute. This person, the person I am right now? He could be gone before you knew it, and if that happened, you would need to run fast and far. You couldn't stay around and hope it got better."

Emily takes an unhurried drink and places her cup back down on the table. She stares at him so deliberately that he has to fight against shifting his gaze. "When I met you, I was on the rebound. I had just broken up with a guy I had been dating for six months. We were naked in bed on my birthday and he told me he had my present." She glares at Logan like this other guy is in front of her. "He gave me cooking lessons because," she leans forward and takes on a mannish affect, "'Your cooking sucks and once we're married I don't want to be embarrassed to have people over for dinner.'" She sits back, folding her arms. "I had told him I loved him two weeks before, and I broke up with him in that minute. I told him I might be pregnant because it seemed like the right thing to do and I was panicking about never knowing who the baby's father was, but I'll never go back to him. I know how to get rid of people who aren't good for me. Right now you don't seem to be one of those people."

Logan makes her come to see his lawyer anyway. "If she ever comes with allegations of abuse, even if they're unsubstantiated, she and the kid get seventy-five percent of everything." Out of the side of his vision, he can see Emily getting a pinched, uncertain look on her face as he says the word "abuse." She pulls him quickly into the hall.

"Look, maybe this isn't…" she takes a breath. "You didn't hit your head on anything while I wasn't looking, right? You're just going to let them give me millions of dollars if I come in with a paper cut?"

He slides his hands into his pockets, calm like he's in shock, a false, temporary thing. "If I ever hit you or the kid, if I ever start getting out of control, you'll deserve the money, and you'll need it."

Quite honestly, it makes him feel better for her to look shaken and uncertain after the rest of the morning. "You washed your cereal bowl after we slept together, even though you made jokes about being unaccustomed to physical labor. But now you keep making it sound like you're going to morph into a werewolf in a second."

His shrug is all gallows humor. "Guess you're lucky it wasn't a full moon that night."

She frowns and he can see that he's finally frightened her into taking the money. She turns to go back and he reaches toward her wrist, although she turns just from the brush of his fingers before he has a chance to grasp it.

"Why is this the only thing that freaks you out? I mean, I've seen enough TLC to know why playing host to a baby generally isn't considered a hobby."

She laughs, a sudden, sharp, punching burst that makes him step slightly back. "Please. You think I'm not freaking out? I peed six times last night. I'm considering moving myself into the handicapped stall to save myself the commute. Once this week I cried thinking about cells being taken over by a virus. I skipped classes to read baby books, and let me tell you, those things should be made into horror movies, no sons of Satan necessary. And I hope this baby doesn't actually need any of the protein they say it does, because I've developed an aversion to eggs, beef, any kind of fish and, weirdly, chickpeas." She laughs again looking at his face. It's more relaxed, more genuine now, and he can feel his shoulders loosening just a little from the sound. "I just figured that only one of us is allowed to be having a meltdown at one time. And see, we did a tradeoff thing. You freaked, then I freaked. Good support teamwork stuff!" She holds her hand up for a high-five and then puts it back down immediately. "Forget I did that," she blurts, clearly horrified at herself, and he finally laughs too before they both turn to go back into the office.

When they reenter, the lawyer takes a turn at attempting to pull Logan aside. After he refuses to acquiesce to a sidebar, the man straightens and says bluntly in front of Emily, "This is an insane move. You realize that, don't you, Mr. Echolls? I can't in good conscience…"

"Fine," Logan says, and, tired of people second-guessing his decisions, he and Emily go to find Cliff, who calls them "you wacky kids," and tells them the contract will be ready on Wednesday.

"Not with seventy-five percent in it, it won't," Emily interjects firmly. "The baby doesn't need six on-call hookers and a Bengal tiger. Think about a more normal person number. I understand why you're doing this, but that's too much." Logan nods, a little reluctant. "Good. I'm going out to breathe some fresh air in an attempt to wake myself up. Because I am growing a human being, I'm not allowed to have coffee, and someone had an early morning panic attack."

"I'll try to restrict my panic attacks to midday hours."

"Hey." She rests a hand on his arm on her way past. "Panic whenever you want. You get your turn. But if your phone rings in the middle of the night, just remember how payback works."

Once Emily is out the door, Logan turns back and raises an eyebrow at Cliff. "Try to remember your midlevel legal education, and make sure that this doesn't go in one ear and out into Veronica's other."

"Oh, believe me, Mr. Echolls," Cliff says lazily, leaning back in his chair. "I'm really looking forward to you telling her yourself."

"Yeah, me too," Logan mutters. He leaves the office, and a lot of his satisfied pride along with it.

They agree to sit down a few days later and outline what Logan should be involved in. "You're the boss," he tells her, because he doesn't want her to see how clueless he is. It quickly becomes evident that he should have just faked it, because she's a maniac with a pen and six research papers to support his involvement in everything from choosing the name ("it will help you bond better") to being her Lamaze coach ("I saw your face when you came to find out about the baby. You're never going to look at me sexually again anyway, so watching me pant and get sweaty and bloody won't make a difference"). She's very bossy, and he wonders if this is her real personality, or if she's over-compensating and she's really more like the scared, pale girl who still went to the pediatrician. There's a part of him that knows that he should probably put his foot down and set some boundaries, but he isn't sure how to go halfway with this, especially since Emily seems to want him to be her partner. "We're practically strangers," he wants to tell someone, but there's no one to tell.

Against Logan's better judgment, when Emily calls her parents to tell them, she wants him to be around. He haunts the edge of the laptop screen as she takes a deep breath and cheerfully opens with, (also against his better judgment) "Mom, Dad, there's been an accident."

Emily had given him the lowdown on her family, had shown him pictures from her high school graduation, her face a little rounder and blossoming a brilliant grin. Logan had been mostly focused on the smiling, bearish man flanking her, a protective arm thrown around his daughter's shoulder. But he had forgotten that the scariest person in his life looked less like Barbie and more like Barbie's little sister, because although there is an outburst, it comes not from the burly Irish father, but Emily's tiny mother.

Logan remembers that her name is Teresa, but only because after a ten minute rant about making poor choices and ruining her life, Emily's dad leans over and curves an arm around his wife. "Teri," he says quietly. "It's okay." Her dark head is buried in his shoulder for a moment.

"Please don't cry," Emily manages, wincing a little. Teresa's head bucks one last time, and then she stands, looking furious enough for Logan to move back, although there is no way for her to reach him from Connecticut.

"We'll speak about this later, Emily," and she storms out.

One side of Emily's mouth is pinching in as she bites at her lip. Logan stares at her face for a second and then moves into the main part of the screen. "I'm Logan, Mr. O'Connell. I'm the…I'll be taking care of your daughter."

Jim O'Connell peers at him through thick glasses. "Will you? I trust you'll do a good job, then."

The image freezes, a victim of Hearst's notoriously poor internet, but Logan's throat has already summoned the words, "I'll try."

Emily sits, staring at the computer screen for a while before Logan closes the laptop and gets to his feet. "Let's get ice cream," and twenty minutes later they're sitting across from each other at Amy's.

"It's a little known fact," Logan says, awkwardly casual as a silent Emily manages to somehow lick morosely at her cookie dough fudge mint chip cone, "That they started making Chocolate Bondage here because of me."

His voice jolts her out of her own head although clearly she did not pay attention to his words. "I'm sorry about before," she blurts. "I shouldn't have made you meet them, not when I was just telling them and not when I don't even know what we are. I just really wanted to be able to tell them that I had a plan, that I had people around, that it was kind of normal. Like, 'Hey, I might be ruining my life, but at least I've got a guy here! Now you can finally give Grandma some good news!' Ugh!" She tosses her head before investing herself even further into her ice cream. "It was stupid and it put a lot of pressure on you and I'm really sorry."

Logan looks down at the cup of ice cream in his hands and plays with the spoon. "No, I get it. You need a support system around you, and you want me to be part of that. I probably should be part of that. I just don't want to make you think that I'm going to duck into the phone booth and come out as Superman. But I wasn't lying before. I'm going to try to be there. I'm going to try to learn how to be that guy."

He risks a look up. Emily has her head tilted back. She's smiling a little. She brings her chin down to face him. "Well, knowing to get me ice cream was a good first step."

He really does try. He manages to attend classes, and deep-breathe himself into going to a few of Emily's doctor's appointments (even though most of the time there he spends having staring contests with the waiting room walls before the doctor calls him in to say that everything looks "tip top down in the old tum." Logan wishes Emily would switch doctors to someone who didn't seem to think he was from nineteenth century England, but she seems to find him amusing). He spends time with his friends, who are only slightly colder as they realize that he's still hiding something from them. He decides to start seeing a psychologist and makes an appointment with student health services before he realizes that he has enough money to buy the student health building, and instead asks his GP for the number of the best shrink in town.

He had refused therapy after Lilly had died, but he thought that he knew something about it. His mom had gone to someone for years who might not have listened to her confessions but at least prescribed her antidepressants, and his dad had brought a life coach to live in their guesthouse for two months when Logan was nine, although he had known even at the time that it was more about proximity to bang her than making changes in his lifestyle.

But his assumptions are called into question when the first session with the highly recommended and very pricey Dr. Derek Remora finds Logan slouching progressively more nervously in a waiting room chair while he tries to ignore what he hopes is very loud therapeutic role-play occurring in the doctor's office.

"You know, I've heard that if you really want to disappear, that closet is an alternate gateway to Narnia."

Logan looks up blankly at the casually dressed woman in the doorway opposite him. She is leaning offhandedly, arms folded and one ankle tossed over the other, as she raises a playful eyebrow at him.

"I've seen that look on plenty of patients before." She tilts her head at the other office where the door is still closed. "He's just dedicated. He'll be the same with you when it's your turn."

"Not sure how reenacting scenes from Streetcar Named Desire will help me with my problems, but I guess only time will tell," Logan says dryly. After a few minutes, a tearful man comes out, followed by a silver-haired guy wearing a lab coat over a dress shirt. "Logan Echolls," he intones solemnly, although by that point the other guy has left and Logan is the only one in the room. Logan follows the doctor, but turns back as he enters the office. The woman has disappeared, and all he can see of her is her heel as she flicks the door shut.

"Let us start with some assessments," Dr. Remora says, and that's what they do for the next few weeks. Pick one from this selection of picture books. I see. What is your spirit animal? Revealing.

By the fourth session, Logan is ready to give up. If the best doctor in Neptune is content just to fuck around with him, then maybe he's just getting ripped off because he can't be fixed.

"It's not you," he hears from nearby. It's the woman again. She's been there every time he has, but even when he asks point blank what she's doing there, she just makes up stories ("I steal the vending machine key from here every so often because I get a thrill from free chips." "I'm a protester making sure they don't tear down the building." "I have a thing for one of the janitors."). "Sometimes he works for people and sometimes he doesn't."

"Bet the ones he doesn't work for end up in little padded cells," Logan remarks, idly bitter.

"He's too showy for you. And that works for the ostriches of Neptune, but you've got a hair-trigger bullshit meter. You need someone who won't bullshit you back. But it can't be a man, because you'll just get combative and refuse to work with him, and it can't be a woman because you'll try to flirt and charm your way out of any real progress."

"Do you have a list of recommended genderless shrinks, or can I find them in the phone book?" He waves a cynical, underlining hand.

"Hey, if you're old-fashioned like that." She gives a slight, spunky punch to the air, "You go."

Logan takes out his phone and slouches his legs further in front of him. "Well, as much as I want to get my advice from strangers fix, I'm going to stick with a professional."

"It won't work, but, you know, your choice."

"Yeah," Logan says, sneering a little. "Thanks for your well-informed certainty."

"Well, my BA and doctorate in psych might have something to do with that." She juts her chin a little, not even bothering to step forward to shake his hand. "Dr. Darcy Remora."

Logan skims a look for a nameplate on her door, confused. "The lucky wife?" he asks, returning his attention his attention to his phone.

She has an excellent, rich laugh. "Sister. Younger. I'm the second Remora. And I wanted to add you to my list of clientele."

He has the Remora and Remora business card in his wallet, but had assumed it was an affectation, like the totally unnecessary lab coat his current doctor wears.

"Remind me again why I want to get poached by Doctor Second Best?"

"Oh, it's not poaching. The good citizens of Neptune have provided Derek with a vacation home, a boat, and a woman who would be considered a trophy wife if he were a few years older. His bounty overfloweth, so he doesn't mind if I take the more interesting cases off of his hands." She straightens from her place against the doorjamb, shrugging and taking a step back into her office. "But I would understand if you wanted to stick with him. You're supposed to start experimenting with your chi next week. It's all the rage."

Logan starts scheduling appointments with Darcy after that.

Emily and Logan don't really hang out together. Every so often they'll get lunch together after a doctor's appointment, and he and her roommate, whose name he now knows is Amanda, nod each other when they pass in the halls. Emily doesn't futilely try to keep the baby a secret from the people in her life, but there are no kumbaya bonding sessions between her friends and his. In fact, there are very few bonding sessions between Logan and his own friends. They still talk to him, but the pressure of hiding makes him go home instead of going out, makes him focus on his schoolwork as an excuse. Disappearing is unfamiliar to him; confrontation is more his style. But when he tries to come up with words ("I knocked up a girl," "Maybe you've seen this girl and her rapidly expanding waistline…that's my fault") he can picture Mac's slightly pitying understanding, and the way Wallace will bump his arm and say "you're doing the right thing, man." And then he tries to picture Veronica's face and has to do the focused breathing techniques Darcy has mentioned to ensure that he's breathing at all.

He didn't start to change for Veronica. He didn't hit rock bottom either. It was just him in his room, realizing that he didn't want to be dying alone at forty of liver failure, and trying to remind himself that he didn't get terrible grades and he knew how to interact with people even when they weren't the type to ostracize girls or burn down pools at his command. But the thought of Veronica was perpetual, and the disappearance of that possibility made his body numb. So he takes a page from her book and avoids, avoids, avoids.

But one Sunday morning, he agrees to drive Emily to church. She doesn't go often, but she wants to go today and she asked him far in advance, so he couldn't say no.

"You don't even have to go in. I really just need the ride this time," she had said, and because he and Darcy were talking about cycles, he had thought about gratitude and owing and the fact that he kind of wants to be friends with Emily, and said yes. He didn't want things to be about bargaining between them.

And being the wheels wasn't bad. He had sat in his car for a while, doing some class reading, but by the time people started to filter out he had moved to lean against the car. He looks up from his phone just in time to see Emily step out, which actually makes him smile, until he notices that she is walking out with Weevil. They are chatting as they maneuver down the church's old steps. Emily has been starting to get off balance as her body extends, so she is looking down to avoid the crumbling spots, but he can still see the ticked up corners of her mouth.

"Does knowing about your high school hijinks make me an accessory after the fact?" she is saying. Laughter is still sliding beneath her voice as they approach the car. "Oh, hey Logan. This is Eli. He helped me survive the sermon."

Logan, trapped by secrets and falsehoods and the alternate versions of himself that Emily has never had to face, isn't sure what exactly to say. He glances at Weevil, who is managing to mix amused and poker-face. Even as he opens his mouth, Logan is not sure what will come out, but maybe proximity to the church is working in his favor because at that moment, her cell phone rings.

"It's my sister," she says excitedly. She rests a hand on Weevil's arm. "Maybe I'll see you next week," and she slides into the car with the phone against her ear.

Logan and Weevil look at each other for a second, Logan's mouth lost with the vulnerable slackness it can have in the second before his brain kicks in. Weevil looks up at him from beneath lowered lids.

"Must be so easy for you to fool the sweet ones," he says, leaning almost lazily into the words. "But this one must be extra special if you're risking lightning bolts for her."

Logan's heart rate slows from the barbed familiarity and the words slide out from a gleeful tongue. "Well, she is my…your people use 'baby mama,' right?"

"Weird how I haven't heard anything about that," Weevil returns. "It's almost like you took me off your Christmas card list."

"Figured you could gather the whole family to read about it in the tabs." He shifts a little. Emily, he can see peripherally, is still talking. "Gotta support the rags, you know." As he thinks about it, he doesn't really understand how he's managed to keep everything so quiet, how no student looking for some quick cash has gone paparazzi as he and Emily were leaving the doctor's office. He supposes that it's what comes with living a quiet life: people aren't interested in you. For someone as dramatic as Logan, it's strange being so thankful for that peacefulness.

It's real funny," Weevil continues, and his casual tone makes Logan's back tense up. "I was with Vee just yesterday and she was just her normal level of prickly. And you know how contagious that detective thing is, so I'm gonna Sherlock Holmes my way into guessing that she doesn't know about your little accessory, or her little accessory."

Logan's insides freeze and his mouth moves anyway. "Clearly, Weevs, you need to put the effort in if you want to be Holmes. You miss the obvious fact that my head is not planted on the poor excuse for the Mars lawn, and I'd like to keep it that way."

"You," Weevil says, appraising him from behind crossed arms, "Have one week. And that's only because I want to give you time to make yourself crazy trying to figure out how to tell Our Lady of the Taser about your little Knocked Up situation here."

Problems with Veronica, and Weevil there to simultaneously protect her and torment Logan. It was clear that high school had never actually ended. He flips the bird at the church as he pulls out of the space. Clearly God hasn't decided to step into his life any more than He ever has.

There were many reasons not to meet in a bar: the ready availability of alcohol, the temptation to drown everything he had to say in it, and the knowledge that there was no reason to pace himself so he could get home because Wallace would be responsible enough to play designated driver.

But he told himself that going out for a beer with a friend was normal, and ignored the fact that he was there half an hour early forcing himself just to sip at a scotch. His hand was already signaling for a second glass as Wallace came in.

"Beer. Whatever's cold," he requests as he settles himself on the stool next to Logan's, and Logan wishes for that kind of casual indifference, that simple contentment.

"Hey." Logan hopes that Wallace doesn't notice that he automatically took a sip of scotch upon his arrival.

"Listen," Wallace starts, turning to look directly at him. "I'm glad you called." He accepts his beer from the bartender with a politely absent nod. "I don't want to get in the middle of things, but whatever secret you're keeping, it's driving Veronica crazy, and that means that she drives me crazy."

There is no new information here. He knew that she must be on edge waiting to find out what was happening, and that he would have to tell her eventually. He still feels like saying something cutting to Wallace that will make him look over in disgust and leave. "Did she pester you to talk to me about it?" he asks instead. "That thing she does where she's like a terrier…it can be brutal."

"Hell no." Wallace slumps back against the stool. "She's in strong, silent mode where she pretends not knowing something doesn't bother her. But man, I have never seen her hold out like this." Wallace gives him a look, the kind can only shame Logan because it's Wallace. Because he knows that Wallace knows the bad things that happen in Neptune and chooses not to let them make him a bad person. He takes another drink before setting the glass on the bar.

"Wallace," he says, clapping him on the shoulder and summoning his smarmiest grin. "I have called you here tonight to tell you my great secret." He can't hold the grin, though, and it drops in degrees. He turns back to pick up and examine his glass in the light. "There was a girl a few months ago. And, you know." He toasts himself, mocking. "Congratulations, Mr. Echolls. You're the father."

This admission clearly goes beyond what Wallace considers the boundaries of their friendship, but he makes a gesture toward the air by Logan's arm anyway. "That's rough, man. That's really rough." There's so much awkward compassion in his voice that Logan feels choked by it. "You've been dealing with this by yourself?"

Everything in Logan wants to say something glib, but he tries to ground himself through Wallace's presence. "Just me, my therapist, and I." He tosses back the rest of his drink. "And in an amazing example of the power of fate, Weevil." He looks down at his hands, at the way his fingers flutter against the bar, before sliding his gaze to Wallace. "I'm going to tell her soon, but I just needed to know…do you think she'll forgive me?"

He knows the answer is no, that no matter how much Veronica is trying to change, she's never going to get past this, but he wants Wallace to lie to him. He wants a plan, because he will do anything, follow any advice that Wallace has, to regain the possibility of being with Veronica.

"I don't know." Wallace says after a minute. "I've known the girl for years and I still can't always figure out which way her mind's going." He squints a little as he looks at Logan. "But have you maybe considered that this isn't your fault? Maybe it's not something that you have to be forgiven for."

Logan flips his glass over so he won't order another drink. He doesn't know what he expected, but he had wanted something more than uselessness.

The day he tells Veronica is a great one. He turned in a paper on Friday, so he is expecting a quiet weekend. But mid-morning Saturday Veronica shows up at his door with her winningest smile and convinces him that he really wants to spend the day playing backup on a low level case she has.

It turns out that this kind of backup just means standing around chewing on a straw while Veronica plants cameras in a restaurant that seems to have an employee who feels entitled to more than their share from the cash register.

There's an awkward moment as they squint in the sun just beyond the restaurant awning, where the work is done but they can't quite figure out how to transition into their once familiar friendship when everything lately has been so secretive. After a minute, Logan, who can't resist the idea of a day with her, unsuccessfully tries to convince her that going to the beach is a year-round activity. He isn't as skillful as she is, though, so they end up just getting ice cream and eating it on the boardwalk. By the time they're done, Veronica is pulling him toward a cafe, reminding him that she's a growing girl.

"Dream on, princess," he says, taking a risk and patting her head, but they go to get dinner anyway. They pass a karaoke bar on the way back to their cars and Veronica, looking over at it, mentions that the last time she did karaoke she was working a case. Without discussing it, they end up inside.

When Veronica jumps off the stage, flushed and still clearly caught up in her performance of Hot N Cold. She had fun with it, but Logan gets the pointed choice. He realizes that if fate didn't have it in for him, he's ninety-nine percent sure they would be getting back together tonight. As it is, he folds his hands into themselves, fingers to palms, and wishes he were the kind of person who prayed.

She stumbles, just a little, as she comes back to their table. He puts a hand by her waist, although she doesn't really need it.

"What would your father say about this type of behavior?" he says, aiming for his usual drollness.

"Probably something uninspired about how his fond memories of Prohibition." Her voice is breezy as she smiles up at him and rests herself against his side. She's at that happy, unconcerned stage of Veronica tipsiness. If this were any other time in their life, this would be a moment where he would put a hand on her face and kiss her. If he hadn't seen a blurry ultrasound image last Wednesday, this would be time for them in the best way they've ever been.

But life has never done anything just because he wanted it to, so he takes a breath. There are a thousand ways to put it, a thousand ways he could manipulate the words, and he doesn't want to say any of them.

"I slept with someone."

Veronica pales and flinches. He tightens his grip on her waist for a moment before letting go. He can't believe he's telling her this with a terrible version of Piano Man in the background. He chokes out the words as quickly as he can. "It was just once. It didn't mean anything. But she's pregnant, and she's keeping it." He steps back, turns away, clenches his hands around the back of a chair. "I'm going to be a father, Veronica." It's a fact, but it sounds lost and hollow as it comes out of his mouth.

When he manages to look back at her, she has her arms crossed. It's as if she's become instantly sober. "Wow. I'm two for three on exes knocking people up. Better get Piz to make sure Piz Junior isn't running around out there somewhere."

Some guy, midsized and buff and fratty-looking, bumps into Logan, barely realizing to mumble a "Sorry, man," as he laughs his way onto the stage. Jolted, Logan tries to cling to the suddenly remembered reality of the bar. He tries to remember Wallace's words: Have you maybe considered that this isn't your fault? Maybe it's not something that you have to be forgiven for. "I didn't mean for this to happen, but I'm doing the best I can with it. I'm trying, Veronica. I'm sorry I kept it from you. And if you can't deal with that, or it, or anything, I'll get it." And he would, because he can feel the burning of nausea in his throat at the thought of her having a child with someone else.

As if she can tell what he's feeling, she blurts stiffly, "I can't breathe," and walks so quickly to the exit that he pauses by the table for a full minute before following her.

When he gets outside, certain that she'll be gone, she's leaning against a wall that doesn't look like it's clean enough for that purpose. As he approaches, he can see her cross her arms, straighten, gather herself. "I assume you got a paternity test. The advice given in the Echolls guide to boot-knocking, I'm sure. If she has an in with the testing company, she could have faked the results." She fakes a dramatic sigh. "And you on the hook for child support. You realize that money's one of those things where you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone, right?" She finally looks at his face. Her features look smaller than they usually do, tight and tired. "What's her name?"

There's a certain amount of dirty relief in this course of questioning. The Veronica who wants to investigate medical testing companies and pregnant biology majors to help you is the Veronica who will stay. But there's part of him that struggles every day with going to class and not getting wasted, that wants to be something other than a rich screwup who Emily doesn't tell her kid about, and that's the part that grips Veronica's hands and says, "Don't, okay? She's a good person. I believe her, so I can't have whatever this is messed up."

The first time Logan got into a fight was in second grade. He was sent home for the rest of the day, and he remembers his mother sitting down beside him and asking him why he had done it. He had played with the sleeve of his shirt, poking with a finger and widening the hole he had torn there. "He said my new haircut looked stupid," he had told her truthfully.

Lynn had turned away, sighing, and had moved downstairs to make herself a drink. Logan had sat on his bed and kept pulling until the stitching on his sleeve was destroyed and he needed a new uniform shirt. After that he realized that it was better not to tell the truth than to disappoint people. Because he was afraid that one day he would tell her the truth and she would not just go down the stairs, she would go away. If he showed her the inside of himself, the whys behind the things he did, she would leave. It wasn't his last fight, but it was the last one he was honest about.

He lets go of Veronica's hands and steps back. If she's going to leave, he going to let her go, even though he has to swallow to keep from being overwhelmed by the thought. "I slept with someone. I knew we were probably going to get back together soon, and I slept with someone anyway because it was just once and I didn't think it would hurt anyone. I can't take it back. And you can walk away if you have to, but," he glances away, grasping for the control to get the words out. "I hope you don't. If you could just...just keep trying to be my friend...I'd like that."

He feels raw with the words, wishes they could go back to quips and snark that sometimes cut deeply instead of honesty that cut even deeper.

Her arms are crossed again, and he's sure that she's going to spit fire and draw this as the line. But he's forgotten that he's not the only one who's been trying to change. Her eyes are dim and tense and she looks like she doesn't want to say the words. "This isn't something that I'm comfortable with. I'm angry that you keep having sex with people, and I'm angry that I'm angry about that, because you don't owe me anything. And that's not even getting into the part where you're going to have a kid in a few months. But I," she shifts herself and her face softens, just a little. "I like being your friend, Logan. We worked for it, and I don't want to lose you."

He had thought that he could no longer be surprised, but in a reverse of everything in their lives since they were fifteen, he is proud of her. He moves forward gingerly, arms slightly open, and his lungs relax as she allows him to hug her. She is not all there, though, and he knows that not everything is fixed.

"I know you're still mad," he says, hushed and clumsy. "But I don't want to lose you either. And after this long, I think we've proven that we're stuck with each other."

She smoothes out a little in his arms, and because it is dark and something calm is playing in the bar he allows himself to hope.

Chapter Text

Dick comes back from spring break with ten days' worth of stories about bikini clad girls, and a glass Cola bottle of sand which he tosses to Logan as he unpacks his suitcase.

"Figured you could gaze at this while you think your deep, grown up thoughts," he says, clapping Logan on the shoulder, that slippery vulnerability in his voice that for a moment makes Logan want to hug him before Dick taps the bottle in Logan's hand and deepens his voice. "These are the days of our lives and all that shit."

Logan had turned down Dick's offer of Bahamas, beers and babes, choosing instead a week in Neptune doing nothing. Emily went home, and a week without her gives Logan some breathing space. Wallace is supposed to be filming some sort of testimonial about his time in Africa for a benefit Invisible Children is having in a few months, but he is terrible on camera, never able to make it through a take without stuttering or stopping to question whether his words are right. Mac and Veronica and Logan spend their days lying around on his couch, taking turns controlling the camera. They are probably a further distraction, but the others don't have cash to go anywhere and Logan finds peace talking about nothing on the worn Fennel cushions.

Wallace finally makes a decent clip. They all go back to classes without an emotional, in depth conversation about Logan's impending fatherhood. But he is reminded of it once more on Monday afternoon as he goes to pick Emily for her post-trip doctor's appointment. She fills him in on her equally uneventful break as they walk across the grass to his car.

"Okay, so then on Wednesday night, we're all around the table - it's this big oak thing that doesn't really fit in our dining room, but it's from my grandma and it's as intimidating as she was so we keep it around - and my sister Jess invited her boyfriend. We're all sitting around eating our…" she pauses. Logan has found Emily to be a cheerfully terrible storyteller and waits for her recollection of some trivial detail. "Perch? No, tilapia. Bass? Anyway, we're eating our fish, and Mom's doing her twenty paranoid questions game. Finally Jess goes 'Mom, it's not like I'm going to marry him,' and the guy turns to her and he's so hurt, and he asks 'Wait, you're not?'" She bubbles with laughter, and when she starts snorting a little, Logan can't help laughing too.

"Is it just the two of you?"

"I'm one of four. Three."

Logan glances sidelong at her as the smile breaks from her face. His hands nervous in his pockets, he is wondering how to ask about that, if he can ask about that, when there's an impact against his side and he's catching Veronica instinctively.

"Texting while walking." He shakes his head at her as she straightens and tucks her phone into her bag. "You're a hazard, Mars."

"Least of my offenses today. Just got back from stealing lunch money off a couple of fifth graders." They are standing at the intersection of two paths, and Veronica moves so they are only blocking one of them. She can see Emily clearly now, and it is a credit to Veronica's abilities to conceal her emotions that her eyes only stay on Emily's midsection for a brief moment and that when she looks up her voice is clear. "And now that I've shown you my best self, I guess I should tell you that I'm Veronica."

"Oh, you're Veronica! I'm Emily, although," she gestures to her stomach, "I guess this kind of takes away that mystery." There's an awkward pause. Emily looks at Logan uncertainly as if she doesn't know how much she is supposed to know about Veronica. "Um, anyway, for what it's worth, fifth graders are the worst. Or so I've heard."

Veronica smiles. "Well, I guess you two will be finding out soon." Logan almost doesn't recognize her, the firm politeness unfamiliar to any version of their relationship.

"Not that soon," Emily laughs. "Right now it's all about the doctor's continued quest to get me to exercise. And this month is when we're supposed to be focusing on childcare." Logan braces himself a little as Emily gives a tiny, excited gasp. "You know what would be great? When I've narrowed down the options, would you be able to do background checks on nannies? As a job, obviously. I've heard you're a great detective."

"Well, Logan's an easy sell. The shiny magnifying glass dazzles him."

"Actually you solved a case for a friend of mine last year. Klepto roommate?"

"Weirdly the only one of those I've ever had. Lots of sleep eaters, though." Veronica adjusts her bag. "Get me a list when you're ready and I'll do the Mars special on your nannies."

"I thought the Mars special was the extra cheese lasagna, but I guess you learn something new every day," Logan says, shifting in the direction of the parking lot. Emily steps that way as well.

"We do have to go, but it was great meeting you. I'll get that list for you soon."

They're halfway to the car when Logan tells Emily to keep walking. He jogs back toward Veronica.

"Hey," he says as he falls into step with her. "I know Mac's the computer expert part of the team, but try not to accidentally look up Emily too, okay?"

"You were right. She seems nice," Veronica says, her eyes doing a scan of the path in front of them.

"She does. And I swear, if all she wanted was money she should probably just have held my surfboard for ransom."

"Your surfboard? She should have held Dick for ransom. He's been your training kid up till now."

Logan shakes his head. "He's surprisingly good at getting himself out of bad situations. Probably upload a video tour of her underwear drawer to YouTube and reveal his location."

"Well, I'll leave that solve to you." She stops walking and turns to him. "Again, I promise, Logan. Recon only at your command."

"Once again, you adapt the compliment scale." Logan looks over his shoulder to where Emily is just reaching the car. He steps back, lifting his fingers in a little salute. "Thanks, V."

"If she turns out to be less than legit, you might see a video of me uploaded to YouTube."

"'Hot blond takes out preggo chick?'"

"Disturbingly perfect title. Remind me not to look at your search history." He laughs a little. "Logan," she calls as he starts to walk away. "It'll be more like 'Guy has friends in low places.'"

Veronica is one of the best friends Logan has ever had. Something still glows in his chest when she confirms it, a glow that lasts through the drive and into the doctor's office.

Logan likes the ultrasounds. He hates that Emily hangs the printouts on her fridge with cutesy little titles made up of her magnetic poetry words ("A womb with a view," "Life on the inside." It's truly miraculous that he doesn't induce an aneurysm holding in his eye-rolling every time he sees them) but he find himself enchanted by the images themselves. There's something extraordinary about seeing features that he knows, head and ears and fingers, shrunken and existing inside Emily's body. There's something incredibly peaceful about the slow, blurry movements of this small, protected thing. It's just when he imagines the reality of it, when he sees in his mind an actual, tiny human being moving unprotected into the world, into his life, that he runs into trouble.

The day that they find out it's a boy because Emily finally broke down and decided she wanted to know, Logan sees her home, reminds her gently to take her pills, laughs at the overly concerned imitation she does of him, and goes to get drunk. It's the first time he's done that in months, and he's a little disappointed, to be quite honest, to find that everything is so familiar. He had wanted it to have changed, to be a sign that he had changed, but the chill of the glass feels the same, the liquor burns the same way going down, over and over. He loses count of how much he's had, but eventually it's enough that he calls Veronica.

"Hello?" Her voice is foggy, and he realizes that it has grown dark as he sat.

He intends to say, "It's me," to put forth some semblance of normalcy, but what comes out is, "It was only me. It was never Mom or Trina or that damn girl Persian that we had before Mom realized it shed on everything. And I'm so glad that it wasn't them, but it was me and it's going to be a boy, it is a boy, right now, it's growing, and what if it's me again?"

"Logan," she sighs, and for one second he feels like crying because he thinks that it's how screwed up he is that she is breathing out. He thinks it must be pretty bad news if straight-shooting Veronica Mars is hesitating. He tries to gather himself because if there's a step below drunk-dialing your ex to talk about your abusive father, it's crying while doing it. But even as he fumbles for breath, her voice changes, wakes, hardens. "It was Aaron. Back then, it wasn't about you."

"But what if I'm just like him?"

He can hear the shifting of fabric in the background, and he imagines her sitting up, resettling herself against the wall to talk to him. "There are parts of you that are like your dad, Logan. I don't…I don't want to lie to you. You can get violent, you make grand gestures, especially when protecting loved ones. You can hurt people." He presses the phone more sharply against his skull. He is glad that someone is finally saying it aloud. "The difference is that he would never have realized how he hurt you. He never would have realized that he was wrong. You always know."

"Yeah?" Logan rests his head on his closed fist, feeling the bite of his knuckles. "And how does knowing that I hurt my kid make him not hurt anymore? Do I have secret time-travel capabilities now? You'd think that in an alternate universe, I'd get something cooler than that. Or at least I'd be decent enough to travel back and help him avoid having me for a father at all."

"Look." There's a groan in her voice that reminds him that Veronica isn't great at playing therapist. "We've broken up like half a dozen times, and you and Lilly were like the Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton of Neptune High. Did you ever think to yourself, 'God, it would be so much easier just to hit her to shut her up'?"

Even the most self-loathing parts of his mind know that the answer is no, but he also knows that sometimes his body reacts without consulting his brain. He wonders if Veronica ever stood across from him and saw his hand twitch as if it wanted to arc toward her face. He tosses back another shot and, the question jagged in his throat, he asks her. "Were you ever scared that I would?"

Veronica Mars loves the truth, has spat it in his face enough times that there's a particular tightening in his stomach that he associates with the occurrence, and even she hesitates. "Logan—"

"No, it's okay. I want to know." What will you do if the answer is yes? Run? Finally jump off the Coronado Bridge? his mind teases, and he belts back a little more tequila trying to quiet it.

"I was never scared in the moment, no matter how angry we were with each other," Veronica says finally, voice so gentle that it feels violent. "But there were a couple of times when I wondered what if."

"Then why did you stay?" and there's real panic in his voice, because if Veronica didn't try to save herself from him, then he doesn't know if he can be around her or anyone else.

"Because you never wondered, never even considered it," she tells him, tone factual. "So we never got to if." She gives a muffled yawn and her voice goes taut in a way that makes him think she's stretching. "Are you at a bar? I hear a lot of shouting and glass."

His mind is still caught on her words. He wants to question them. He wants more. But he settles for the comfort of her certainty, and lets her change the conversation. "Yes, Detective. I'm at that new place, The Encounter. Emily had an appointment today and she decided to find out the sex, and I needed to not think about things anymore and this was the closest place." Too late, he realizes that this is the exact kind of thing that will make her want to roll her eyes and say that he would never change.

Without a pause, she says, "Do you need me to come get you? You've probably been getting very friendly with your old pals Jack and Jose tonight, and it must be close to last call."

Logan shakes himself a little and looks up. The crowd is thinning but not gone, and he goes to tell Veronica that her detective skills are slipping when the bartender shouts "Wrap it up," from somewhere far too close to his head for comfort.

"You're scary, Mars," he says, feeling disconnected from his body as he slides himself carefully from the stool and places a few bills on the bar. "You should take that on the road."

"What, you haven't seen my booth at the county fair?" He closes his eyes, trying to capture the wash of pleasure he gets from hearing her sleepily teasing voice. "But really, Logan, do you need a ride?"

"I'll get a cab," he says. "I know how precious the world's attractiveness resources are. I'm not going to squander them by smearing this face across the pavement." It's cool outside, and he leans his forehead against the side of the bar as she snorts, picking at the brick with a fingernail. "And Veronica? I just...you've got to know how much I appreciate everything from tonight."

"Any time," she returns, her pillowcase rustling and settling in the background. "But go call that cab, Logan. It'll put a real damper on my morning if I have to look over my cereal bowl and learn that handsome mug of yours is in less than pristine condition."

"Well, we all know it's really my body you're after," Logan says before he can stop himself. He assumes at this point that getting back together is not going to happen, but he doesn't want to make her uncomfortable or remind her of that. He's doing his best with the friend thing, and if tonight proves anything, it's that it's worth it.

Confusingly, wonderfully, she just laughs. "Go be drunk at home, Logan," she orders. "Good night."

"Night, V," he whispers, and waits until she hangs up the phone before he goes to call his cab.

Early on, Emily suggested meeting every few weeks to have a sort of state of the union. It started off formal, the two of them laying everything out on a calendar, from birthing classes to Emily's graduation in May. But eventually they had just started talking, reminding themselves of the easy comfort there had been during their first meeting. Everything is different now, intensified, but they do actually like each other, and as Logan begins to include details in his picture of Emily - her fanaticism about tennis and that she can read hundred page long science articles but the only fiction she likes is cheap paranormal romances - he finds that easier to remember, easier to consider her a friend.

He is still incredibly anxious when he shows up at her door one Tuesday evening with a handful of DVDs. She has a Guys and Dolls poster beside her bed, and these are all the old musicals his mom used to play on rainy days when Aaron was out of town.

"Hey," he says when Emily opens the door. "I thought since you finished that big paper, maybe we could…?" He holds up the videos.

"Oh my gosh, that would be perfect!" Logan almost starts to smile, finally feeling that he has done the right thing. "But I was actually going out." As she opens the door wider to invite him in, he sees that she is wearing a nice top that he has never seen before, pale pink with lacy sleeves and a ribbon around the waist. She is not as enormous as some of the women in their birthing class, but she is, at nearly six months along, obviously pregnant.

"Sure." Logan fiddles listlessly with a small elephant figurine that decorates her desk. "You deserve it. Have fun with your friends. Don't let them make you play default designated driver."

Emily's back is to him, glancing wide-eyed into the mirror as she applies mascara. "I'm actually going to hang out with the youth minister from the Unitarian church, so hopefully no designated driver needed."

"Are you insane?!" Emily spins awkwardly toward him, makeup slashed across her cheek. She is just as startled as he is by the words and their force but he recovers quicker. "You're going on a date with a youth minister? I thought we canceled your subscription to Pedophile's Monthly."

Emily takes a small cloth and turns back to the mirror to wipe away the makeup. "And I thought you had thrown away your issue of the Daily Jumping to Conclusions...er." She pitches the cloth toward the trashcan hard as if to make up for her weak retort. She takes a breath and turns to face him. "He's a perfectly nice guy, and I don't really see how it's your business anyway."

Logan raises his voice, and it's like he's never been to therapy at all. "Yeah, I'm definitely not involved when you're finding replacement fathers for my baby. I hope you got his nice guy documentation in triplicate because it doesn't count otherwise."

"So when I go out with someone, suddenly it's your baby?" Her voice sounds congested. She is struggling against crying, but just looks at him with eyes squinted in anger as she grabs her purse from the dresser and a cardigan off the back of her desk chair and opens the door for him, glaring until he follows her out into the hall. "Screw you, Logan," she continues, shoving her key into the lock. "We'll talk about this later." He has to step back so her bag doesn't hit him as she flings it onto her shoulder and goes down the hall.

Logan leans against the door for several minutes before he ambles down the stairs to the parking lot. He finds his car and sits with his head bent against the steering wheel for almost an hour. He is finally fumbling to put the keys in the ignition when Emily knocks on the passenger side window. It startles him, but he loosely gestures her in anyway, tossing the DVDs into the back seat to make room as she maneuvers her way inside.

"I shouldn't have yelled at you," he says immediately. She nods, accepting it just as quickly, but keeping her stare out the front window rather than looking at him. He keeps his eyes on his hands, clenched around the steering wheel. Most days he doesn't notice them. They're just his hands; they hold pens and cups, they run just the right amount of product through his hair, and, twirling, punctuate his sentences. But they're also the hands that have broken noses and jaws and ribs, that he once made the mistake of holding up to Aaron to defend himself, the hands that cradled Veronica's head in the parking garage, and that fleet over Emily's knuckles when she gets blood drawn. He wonders what Emily sees when she looks at his hands.

"I'm glad you're sorry. You really shouldn't have yelled like that, no matter what the circumstance." Emily's voice is strong. She fiddles with the bracelet around her wrist. "Maybe it wasn't fair for me to spring the idea of me going out with guys on you without discussing it first, but I didn't like your reaction."

"It was instinct—"

"Then you need to readjust your instincts." She drops her fingers from her bracelet and shifts gracelessly to face him. He suspects they should have done this outside. "Look, it wasn't even a date. I went to discuss something with this guy, and I'm sorry I didn't correct it when you jumped to conclusions, but I didn't like the person you became when you jumped. It's not fair for you to only be the baby's father when you're feeling possessive."

That strikes something in Logan. He should not have yelled, he knows that, but possessiveness isn't the problem. "Hey. I know I've let you make most of the decisions so far, and it's probably been the right choice, but I think I should get a say over who's going to be around my kid."

"Not when he's still in utero." Emily rolls her eyes. "I know they can hear in there, but that's ridiculous. Wait until he's not attached to my body, and then you can start on an approved visitors list. And I feel that people of God should probably automatically make the cut."

Logan almost laughs at the naiveté. "No, and I definitely stand by that. If you paid any attention to current events, you would too." He risks a glance over at her. Although it was only a short time ago that he saw her getting ready to go out, she looks deflated. "Is that something you do a lot? Hanging out with members of the clergy - is that some weird hobby that you don't put in your MySpace profile?"

She laughs, distracted and a little awkward. "No. I mean, a little? But not in a weird way." She shakes flustered hands through the air a bit. "Sometimes I just need someone to talk to."

"About what?" He says the words without really considering them, because he had kind of assumed that other than being knocked up during college, Emily lived the kind of charmed everyperson life he was only familiar with from television.

Emily pauses. She looks at him and then away, thinking, and when she speaks, her voice is simple. "My sister died three years ago." She stares at his face, watching it contract as he considers her words.

"My mom..." His breath catches. Of all the things that have happened to him, this is one he has never really been able to internalize. "My mom died the same year."

There's some bitterness in Emily's voice as she speaks. "Yeah, I know. Them and thousands of other people."

Logan thinks, very suddenly, of the graveyard of their families. "What happened to her? Is it okay if I…" He strengthens his voice. "If it might hurt the baby, I need you to tell me what happened."

She turns and faces out the front again. "My sister was called Dine. It was short for Geraldine, after one of my dad's great aunts or something, but she," she shakes her head. "She hated that." Logan's not a psychologist, but even he can recognize avoidance. She is picking at her nails, breathy pauses between her words. "She was driving home from college and she wasn't paying attention, so she hit a truck and…" Emily shrugs, gathering herself. "I—We were really close. I have two other sisters, but with the age difference, it was always me and Dine, and the two of them. And I hate that I lost her but..." She is crying by this point, not dramatically but with deep sadness as tears cover her face. He reaches into the glove compartment by her knees and grabs out a handful of tissues. "I'm so mad at her, Logan. She was the one who taught me to drive, and it was always 'Don't drive tired, Emily. Always look when entering intersections. Never race against a yellow light,' but when it mattered she didn't listen to any of that. It was such a stupid thing to do." She presses the whole clump of tissues to her cheeks, taking deep breaths. "That's why I still go to church every so often, even if I don't really believe. It's why I go talk to different people every once in a while. I figure they're kind of experts. I just want to see if one of them can help me figure out how to forgive her."

Logan debates suggesting therapy, but by this point he figures she'll get there by herself if she needs it. If she trusts him to figure out how to have his past but not let it rule him, he has to trust her to do the same.

"Do you want to raise him," he nods toward Emily's midsection suddenly, "religious?" Thoughts of religion and the past swirling in his head, it makes sense for his mind to go there, but he hadn't really expected it. Lynn had been a Christmas and Easter church attendee, although Logan suspects, with affection rather than sorrow, that it might have been for the opportunity to wear an elaborate hat more than anything else. Other than that, he has had little engagement with religion, nor any particular reason to believe.

Emily looks a little surprised. It's the first time he has asked about these kinds of details. She quickly reshapes her features into thoughtfulness, but Logan spent his childhood around pretenders and he can see the consciousness of it. "I mean, I was a Catholic schoolgirl for most of my childhood, but I'm not going to put him through that. The only thing I can tell you for sure is that there will be Santa. Every kid deserves Santa."

Logan can't remember a time when he truly believed in Santa or the Easter Bunny as anything more than a dude in a costume at one of the Echolls family seasonal bashes. "First on a list of non-negotiable childhood highlights," he nods. They sit awkwardly for another moment before he adds, "And you should, you know, see whoever you want."

He can tell immediately from the way she is glaring that this was the wrong thing to say. Impatience barely concealed, she says, "Not your decision, Logan. We aren't in a relationship, and at least one of us isn't fooling herself into thinking that we're going to be playing happy family in that way." Logan opens his mouth. She just purses hers and cuts him off. "You have, like, four friends, and I can tell every time Veronica's name comes up on your phone because your face goes through a six act opera."

"You know, I don't think you were this mean when we first met."

"You've been a bad influence on me," Emily informs him. "In more ways than one." She has already begun to turn out of the car, the remark meant as a glib closing line, but she turns back. "I didn't mean that. You're doing fine. I really do think you're a good guy, Logan."

Logan leans his head back against the seat. "Yeah," he says, twitching his mouth. She smiles at him and steps out of the car. He does not tell her how little he believes that.

Emily graduates on the third Sunday in May. They haven't known each other long enough for Logan to sit through three hours of speeches for her, but he does meet her family, in for the weekend. He spends the drive to the restaurant where they're meeting making mental lists of all the thousands of things he would rather be doing than this - swimming during a lightning storm, getting the birds and the bees from Keith Mars - but honestly it is not as bad as he fears. For all his bulk, Emily's father is more teddy bear than grizzly. He is a researcher and part time professor at the state university in Connecticut, and mostly he seems disappointed that Logan knows nothing about chemistry. He spends the meal chatting about it anyway, scribbling diagrams on napkins and peering at Logan hoping for some recognition.

The O'Connells are clearly a case of opposites attracting. Teresa has a controlled black bob and an annotated commencement weekend schedule that she brings around everywhere. She spends dinner sawing nervously at a steak and grilling Emily about maternity leave and hospital ratings and appropriate vitamin intake, as if by this point all she can hope for is a daughter who is the world's best pregnant person. Emily is patient, far more patient than Logan wants her to be, sketching out their month-to-month plan and, in a low voice, the child support they finally agreed on. Logan pretends to be absorbed in a description of oxidation at that point.

One of Emily's sisters is a junior in high school, the other a freshman. They look uncannily like Emily, all with their mother's thin, vaguely curling dark hair, and tiny noses lost on their father's pale face. Logan wonders if their parents ever look at the three of them and ache for the matched set.

Given his experiences with Heather and Lauren, Logan had been half dreading their interest in him, half hoping for them to be on his side if it came down to it. Jessica and Samantha barely spare him a glance as they text on their respective cell phones and alternate between sniping and giggling at each other. Finally their mother snaps at them to put the phones away and focus on the family. Then they join forces, turning cross-armed glares toward Teresa. She doesn't notice, too busy reading off a list of local doctors recommended by her colleagues.

"I already have a doctor, and you work with endocrinologists anyway, Mom," Emily points out as they start hearing a description of the apparently highly respected Dr. Lawrence Martin.

"I went down to obstetrics and asked around. If you're really going to give birth out here, I wanted to make sure you had information from reliable sources rather than the internet or locals who might not be experts on natal care." The criticism is fair, and she doesn't even look at Logan when she makes it, but he feels accused anyway.

"I'm sure Emily has made the right choice," Jim says absently. He is still glancing down at his drawings of covalent bonds, but his perfectly timed remark, the small touch he gives to Teresa's hand, encouraging her to return her list to her bag, makes Logan reconsider his judgment about the power dynamics in this family. "She is our college graduate after all." He seems to have set something up in advance because their waitress comes over at that point with a cake, round and chocolate. It says Congraduations! on top in scrolling green letters.

"That's such a dad pun," Jessica groans.

Jim grins. "We get a handbook. I only pick the best ones." All three of his daughters hide their faces, but laugh even as they do. Logan excuses himself and goes to lean against the hall by the bathroom.

Dinner is not as bad as he feared. He is going to keep breathing. He is going to keep trying. That doesn't mean that there aren't little mines in their normalcy and nervousness that make him want to slip out the rear door and not come back.

As if to rub in the difference between them, Emily is the kind of applied individual who has known for years what she wants to do, and has been involved in her field after classes and over summers. She has had an internship at a small pharmaceutical company in San Diego since the middle of her sophomore year and was apparently useful enough for them to offer her a full time position beginning in October. Until then, through the final summer months of her pregnancy and the early weeks of the baby's life, that is all her life will include.

A lot is already taken care of. Their child support arrangements have been finalized. Emily has been emailing back and forth with her mother, comparison shopping pediatricians. They have a nanny lined up, a woman named Alexandra who has a sturdy, capable hands, a fast, arcing smile, and a BA in Early Childhood Education that excites Emily more than Logan feels it should. Veronica has vetted her, and Logan, out of his depth as soon as he started looking at resumes, defers to their judgment, his only request a private one that Veronica make being a relative of Weevil a disqualifying criterion.

"We're not even going to try giving peace a chance?" she says when he mentions it to her, a rueful admonishment under the quip.

He responds, "I'm saving that for next week's very special episode of The Wonder Years," but really it's just that he doesn't want the possibility of having Weevil around for more than their apparently inevitable annual run-ins. Emily talks with fondness about her former babysitters, whose children she knows and with whom her mother still exchanges Christmas cards. If Logan comes home to find Weevil in his backyard, smirking at him over a burger, he's going to find out if good old Weevs has improved in a fight since high school. He's precarious in this new life as it is. He doesn't need Chatty Carlos over there putting in his two cents.

The next step is finding a place for Emily to live now that her extended time in the dorms is running out. It's a long conversation full of uncomfortable shifting before they decide that Logan will leave his apartment and the two of them will try to find adjoining places closer to her job. They consider sharing a place but the idea is too awkward and they give it up in mutual silence.

She has some money and her parents are helping out but it's not enough to support herself before she starts working, so he will begin child support before the actual appearance of their child. It's not the money he minds, but the investment, the idea that it will go toward diapers and bottles and unfathomably tiny clothes, toward homes for the two of them close enough that he can stumble out to relieve her of a crying baby in the middle of the night.

Emily is picking through a fruit salad as they talk, stabbing a piece of melon until it is more fork holes than fruit. Finally she looks up at him. "I've never done an ultimatum before, but there kind of has to be a point of no return, so here it is: the time where you could leave and just be weekend adventures dad without being a dick is past." The way she tilts her head is probably supposed to look casual and controlled, but she is still scraping at her fruit. "Look, to be honest I don't want to do this without you, and if you become just a check in the mail I'll probably curse you with the good Irish curses my grandma taught me. But before you leave behind your life of bachelor opulence to become my neighbor in the wonderful world of apartment living where the highlight is my secret recipe waffles, I need you to promise that you're okay with being around permanently."

Logan doesn't fool himself. They both know that he could easily leave no matter what his promises to her. Despite all his resolve, bodily fluids and midnight feedings could be too much for him, and if he ever considers violence toward either of them, his comfort about being next door neighbors will be the least of their problems. It would be a lie to say that the idea of leaving the bulk of the child care to Emily and the nanny isn't appealing: the kid would be taken care of with minimal effort or opportunity for mistakes on Logan's part. But Logan has a long memory. He can recall the fear in his small child self every few months when Aaron returned home. Not because he had been hurt already, not yet. Because Aaron was there and gone again so easily that he had been a stranger. So he promises. He forces his eyes from where he is tracing a finger through condensation on their table to look at her face. "How else could I find out the secret waffle recipe?" he asks, and watches as she bites her lip in poorly concealed relief. He reaches for her fruit. "This is a lost cause. I'm just going to get you a brownie," he says, and this time she actually smiles.

Emily considers waiting until July to start their house hunt, hoping for reduced prices on long-standing listings, but Logan encourages her to start right away. "It'll be your third trimester by then, and it'll be hot. The book says your feet might get really swollen," he adds shyly. "I think you're going to want to be bonding with your air conditioner, not beating the pavement searching for your little house on the prairie."

"Right, air conditioning," Emily mutters, smiling distractedly at him as she scribbles the words onto her ever-growing wish list.

Perhaps it's that she wants too much, or perhaps he is too picky, but no matter how many apartments and condos they see, nothing seems right. There are several that Emily will settle for, but every time she meets his eyes and tilts her head in question, Logan pushes himself off from the wall by the door where he always rests while Emily walks around. "If it's not perfect, we'll keep looking," he says, placing a gently guiding hand on her back.

In the end it isn't any of Emily's careful comparison shopping or Logan's refrain of "money is no object" that finds them the place. Logan is vaguely lost in Hillcrest, cursing Dick's ridiculously specific Thai food requests and his own error in giving in to the man who is half brother, half wallpaper. And, three blocks over from the restaurant that Logan never makes it to, near a traffic light that seems to take forever, is the house. It's a pale olive shade and a sign on the picket fence advertises an open house today. Multiple occupancy property. Both units available, it says. Logan squints and notices the two doors that take up the slightly widened front. Sometime in the years it has taken for the tangled vines that cover the arbor over the front path to grow, the house has been altered so that it contains two inside.

He pulls over and calls Emily. He can't stop staring at the house. She sounds cranky when she picks up the phone, which probably means she was asleep because barring the time surrounding naps her hormones tend to run toward tears rather than irritability, but he doesn't even pause at her snappish tone. "I found it."

"Found what?" she asks, voice creaky. "The gateway to Oz?"

"Well, they do say there's no place like home." He starts the car again. "Stay there, I'm coming to get you."

Ninety minutes later they have finished touring the house.

"It even has a guest room, so your parents won't have to live in the hallway when they come," Logan says as they step off the porch. Teresa and Jim are coming for several weeks after the baby is born. To say that Logan will be glad to have them around is an overstatement. To say he is overjoyed not to be dealing with an infant alongside no more experienced a hand than Emily is an understatement.

"I know I'm going to appreciate it when she's here and probably cry from the multigenerational beauty of it all, but just thinking about my mother coming is stressing me out." Emily rubs a little at her collarbone before glancing back at the house over her shoulder. "Every room in there - both units - is a different shade of yellow," she points out. There is a tiny grin worming its way around her practicality. "The backyard is fantastic to have, something we were missing in all those apartments, but I can't imagine one of us mowing it. And the realtor didn't answer my questions about potential termite damage."

"And you worked so hard googling those." Logan slings a teasing arm around her. "This is the place. We'll paint the yellow rooms. I'll hire a guy to do the yard. Come on, Em." The nickname slips out and he holds a breath, hoping that it won't be awkward. She doesn't seem to notice the endearment, just boosts herself halfway into the car before requiring a hand to push herself the rest of the way. Once she is settled, she faces him. Her grin fades, although every time she peeks back up at the house, it twinkles at the corners of her mouth.

"This is a serious investment, Logan. We were looking at apartments because I could kind of afford those if I squinted. I can barely help keep the hardwood shiny here."

He interrupts her quickly. "Don't make this into the hard knock life for us. You've seen my bank statements. Paying for this won't knock a digit off."

The neighborhood is quite midmorning on a Friday. There's nothing to distract her from scrutinizing him. "Look, I know you promised, but I need you to be sure. A house, even broken up like this...it's more than we were planning on."

There's something in her voice that makes it seem like she is making the very difficult decision not to cry. From the things he's read and the stories of the women in their birthing class, all Emily really wants at this point is to hibernate until the baby is born. There's nothing Logan can do about that, but he can give her this. He smiles for her. "I've been waiting my whole life to share a weird half-house with someone. How could you deprive me of that?"

Emily keeps her stare on him for another minute before she unleashes her smile. "Let's go talk to the agent. I can pay for utilities, I guess. And make you waffles."

"Hey, someone's gotta keep the hardwood shiny."

They move in on a Wednesday in June. Most of Emily's friends have already gone home for the summer or have left for their sure to be swell Sex and the City lives somewhere else, so it is Logan's friends who help them. Veronica can't make it (her summer classes have already started) but everyone else shows up. Dick and Wallace don't really talk but manage to get most of the bigger items inside. Rosa is tall with powerful arms and an inability to play well with others, so she takes over the medium sized things by herself, cursing every time she trips over the doorstep. Mac tries to assign herself the job of setting up all the electronics, but she finishes before they do, so, reluctant and long-suffering, she is put in charge of Emily after Rosa, face dour, informs him that she keeps trying to help even though any idiot would know that heavy lifting isn't good for the baby.

"Everyone's doing something and I'm sitting here. I just feel really bad," Em says, starting to push herself up as Rosa brings in the last of the recently acquired second hand chairs. Logan notes the glass of chilled lemonade by her side, the way she doesn't even move the magazine from her lap as she lifts her torso. He flicks the glossy pages with a finger and raises an eyebrow.

"Liar," he says affectionately, and goes to help move in the dressers.

Logan, having owned a house for a few years now, has more stuff than Emily does, and even he doesn't have that much. They're done by half past one, and Logan orders pizza and passes around the beers that were Dick's housewarming present. There is an awkward moment where they can't figure out which house to eat in, but they end up on the floor of Emily's living room so she won't have to leave her couch.

"My mother always taught me to make sure a woman was comfortable, and that goes double for a pregnant one," Wallace tells Emily, his eye-crinkling smile sprawling itself onto her face as well. As she turns to grab a napkin from the end table, Wallace catches Logan's eye. "Smooth," he mouths, accompanying his self-compliment with a small gliding hand gesture. Logan gives him a sarcastic thumbs up and reaches for another slice of pizza.

"Dude!" Dick's voice is muffled around the chunk of crust sticking out of his mouth. He seems to have forgotten it, staring at Emily's stomach in a way that is half mesmerized, half disgusted. "It's getting Alien in there." Logan looks too and sees, against the tautness of Emily's shirt as she leans over, a distinct shape pressing and shifting.

"It's just the baby moving," Emily says, resettling herself and her shirt quickly.

"Is this the first time?" Mac asks, politely uncomfortable, as if she's not sure exactly what the right thing to ask is. Emily seems to wish she had chosen something other than that.

"No, it's been happening for a couple of months. Mostly at night, though. I think the kid's nocturnal." She looks at Logan. "You're not half owl, are you?"

"Quarter." He presses his lips together in a flat smile and flickers his eyebrows up once, trying for lightness. "On my mother's side." It's an effort to keep his gaze on her face, and it's an effort at which he fails. His eyes keep flickering down to her abdomen, although it is still now.

"That explains his thing for Hooters," Dick says loudly. As Mac groans and Rosa lobs a mushroom at him, Logan wonders, not for the first time, exactly how oblivious Dick is.

Once everyone has left, Emily starts unpacking clothes and books and knickknacks while Logan shifts around the small amount of furniture that she has, ensuring that the table is in the right place and that the television is stable. Eventually she tiredly tells him that it enough, that they'll work on it again in the morning. He goes out her door and through his and begins organizing his own things. Halfway through storing his dishes away in cabinets he stops and goes out again, intending to knock on Emily's door.

He had known that movement was a thing, of course, a milestone. How could he not, when it was printed in every pregnancy book for fathers with exclamation marks, and pronounced with verbal ones every week by Douchehead Dan from their birthing class, as if his kid hasn't been kicking for two months now. But "every pregnancy is different" mantra in mind, he'd assumed it was just going to be later for them. He had trusted that if Emily wasn't worried, he shouldn't be either. And he had been right, but not for the right reasons.

He sees her as he opens his door. She has moved one of her chairs to their shared porch and is sitting wrapped in a comforter. She waves a blanket-covered hand at him as he goes to sit on the step in front of her. It looks sweet. He snorts a soft laugh. They are quiet for a few moments, staring out at their new street, their new yard with its foreign vines.

"Why didn't you tell me about the baby kicking?" he asks eventually, voice soft, curling just at the edges with hurt.

There's a comfort to darkness, to shadowed, indirect faces. Still, she hitches the blanket more fully over her shoulders, nervous but playing calm. "I was scared." She swipes at her face where the hair has slid into her eyes but the blanket just leaves it more fluffed up and flyaway. "You've been so great with the classes and meeting my family and buying me a house." She gestures at the porch roof, voice dazed and wondrous. "All the books say that seeing and feeling the baby is how fathers are supposed to bond, because that makes it real. But that reality...I was afraid it would backfire. I was afraid that if you felt it, how real it is, you would leave."

The night is so calm that it is a moment before he realizes that he is angry about that. Because he promised. Because for all his doubts, he hasn't left yet. Because they are sitting on the porch of their new house, where the only decoration she has put up are those black and white swirls that make up the baby, and he can look at them and not run. He feels that he deserves some credit for that. He looks up at Emily, silhouetted and peaceful in the dim porch light, and realizes that it is not about accusation, but about admitting emotions she can't help but feel.

"I'm scared that I'll leave too," he says. "But I don't think I will. I haven't yet, so my Magic 8 Ball is telling me that outlook is good."

"What about the Ouija board? What's the verdict there?" Emily teases quietly before freezing. She looks down at him nervously, and he can tell what she is going to say before she does. "Um, he's kicking again. Do you want to feel?" She opens the curtains of coverlet over her midsection. Logan doesn't give himself time to doubt. He rests a hand carefully on her belly. He does not realize that he was not fully committed to the action until the baby kicks right below his palm and he is surprised by the force of it against a hand he thought was barely connected.

The baby kicks again, somewhere off to the side, but still hard enough that Logan feels it, and just for that moment his panic fades. He stops thinking about labor and feedings and the right number of breaths. He doesn't remember cigarette burns and broken noses, doesn't wonder if his father ever held his hand against his mother like this. The baby kicks, and he just feels his child against his hand.

Emily has her head tilted back. "It sounds so stupid, but I feel like he has a personality already. Like he has different times and foods that he likes and doesn't like and that make him react in different ways. And I'm terrified, but I can't wait until he's here and we can see what he's like in real life, and not just so I can have my bladder to myself again." She says it all in a streaming breath, as if she has been damming these words, saving them up for when they were ready to talk about it. "I guess we're more than halfway there, though."

"Let's hope we're living on something more than a prayer," Logan says, not sure himself if he is joking or serious. Emily seems to consider it for a minute before she rests a hand in the air before her. Logan wraps his fingers around hers, pulls her up. He can see her through her front window for a moment before she begins making her way up the stairs and he goes through his own door to spend his first night in his new house.

The air conditioning is unnecessary. It's a cool summer, and Logan isn't home much anyway. He takes a couple of summer classes, two week intensive courses that make him want to stab himself in the brain no matter how much Emily says it will relieve the pressure in the long term. He surfs with Dick at the beaches close to his new place, even though Dick spends a lot of the time falling (or being pushed) off his board laughing over voluntary summer school and the ninety-nine ways in which Logan's senior year scoring opportunities are totally screwed. Mac found out a while ago that they share a love for Stephen King, so they spend the off moments of the summer doing an annual re-slog through all his novels and then debating their relative merits over finger-mashing rounds of Gran Turismo.

With Veronica, it is lunch and coffee and mini golf that they both suck at, a light enjoyment of avoidance. They had struggled to become decent at communication before the slow downslide of his life, and he almost wants to talk to her about everything - real estate and parenthood and overwhelming fear - but this is bigger than anything that they have had to talk about since they started trying. It makes him think of tipping points. It makes him think of her leaving.

She doesn't notice the avoidance, which is something alarming on the Veronica scale. He thinks that she is busy hiding something and he hates that, hates the regression, but he doesn't need to look at his calendar to remember the weeks it took him to tell her about the baby, a concept with which she still seems not entirely comfortable.

"If it's a case, you know you can call me if you need backup," he says one afternoon in mid-July, staring down at his Starbucks cup.

It probably says something alarming about either him or Veronica that he is a little concerned by how touched she looks. "It's not, but I'll keep that in mind."

He brings his head up, squints over her. "Is it about the baby?" and he is pleased that he barely pauses, that his voice stays almost steady, as he says the words.

"No. Logan, you're doing really well with it. The whole stand-up man thing, it's really…" she places a hand on his arm. He turns to face her. "I'm proud of you."

"So what's bothering you?"

"I just have the embrace the platitude and say that it's not you." Her voice shifts from sober to sincere. "Really, though. You're doing so well. One might even call you Boy Scout-ish. Some day soon I swear I'm going to see you helping a little old lady across the street."

Sometimes he believes her. Some mornings he wakes up and he thinks he can do it. Some mornings he rolls over and goes back to sleep because he can't imagine doing it right.

"Just keep going through the motions until you get back to the positive," Darcy advises.

Logan tosses a ball toward the ceiling, head resting against the back of her oh-so-typical but actually really comfortable couch. "The good old fake it 'til you make it routine. A standard, but by George, it just might work."

Darcy doesn't care about his smartass tone. She shrugs. "Hey, it's a cliché for a reason."

So he tries to follow that advice. The baby's room, like all the others, was repainted before they moved in, a cream color that Emily adds accents to, pictures of animal and book characters that the baby won't even be able to focus on for months. They go shopping for more furniture than Logan realized a baby would need. Emily was fine picking things up second hand ("all my baby things were Dine's, and all Jess's were mine") but Logan argues splinters and lead paint and termite damage, so they get everything new, and then another set for Logan's place. Emily is going to be the primary parent, but they (Emily) figure it is better that they have stuff there just in case. She rambles on about transitions and boundaries, but Logan mostly nods along. He drives the car. He hands over the credit card when it's time. He moves the new furniture around when it arrives. He keeps the door to the baby's room, in his house painted a shade of pale orange called Marmalade that Emily hates, closed.

One night he comes home to find Emily on his couch with her feet propped on his coffee table. They're neighbors now, so she has a spare key and he sees her a lot, but not usually taking over his furniture. She looks up as he enters.

"I was out of orange juice," she says guiltily, holding up his carton. It's a plausible excuse. She has been drinking it obsessively for the past week, even though it gives her heartburn. Still, he can't help but notice that Wimbledon replays are on one of the enhanced sports channels he gets as part of his cable package.

He sits down beside her, careful not to disturb the command center she has set up on the cushion next to her, a jumble of cell phone and notepads and snacks and remote control seeming to ensure that she will never have to get up again. Something is trapped behind his back as he sits. He pulls out a book, white and heavier than it should be. The Dictionary of Given Names.

"I thought maybe we could pick one." Emily darts her eyes to the TV and back to him. A commercial for salad dressing is playing. He stares at it anyway.

"Sure. Does he feel more like a Tynnifer or a Marzipan to you?"

It turns out to be not much of a joke. Emily actually likes unique names. "I just want him to stand out a little. There were four other Emily's in my class growing up. I always got Emily P.'s invitations to stuff that they hadn't meant to invite me to, and I spent a day crying because someone told me that my boyfriend was going to break up with me when they meant Emily J." She has her notebook in her lap, flipping to the list of names she has already selected. She finds the page and settles back, looking up at him. "Weren't there any other Logan's in your school?"

He looks away, grabbing blindly for the remote to switch off the TV. "The year after I was born, my name went from 177th most popular boy name in the US to 109th." He makes a soft sound in his throat. "Yeah, there were other Logan's in school. But maybe blending isn't a bad thing." He glances at his hands. "Do you want to maybe name him after your sister?" She mentions her every so often, in stories and comments that are always accompanied by a laugh before a sigh settles over her eyes.

"What would we call him, Gerald?" Emily snorts. "Hopefully I'm birthing a baby, not a seventy-five year old British man. Anyway, Dine hated her name. The rest of us were top twenty popularity and she was stuck with the Victorian throwback."

"It's not always fun to be the one of these things that's not like the other."

They compromise in the end. Logan uses Emily's love of statistics to convince her that Matthew is far enough down on last year's list not to be pedestrian for boys his age.

"Middle name is up to you," Logan yawns when he finally breaks her down. "Matthew Cincinnati O'Connell sounds like he'll go far."

Half dozing too, she asks, "You don't want him to have your name?"

"Em, I don't want to have my name." He takes a pillow and hugs it to his chest, pressing his head into the cushion behind him. "Just trying to help him out as much as possible. I think I saw that in the job description."

On the hottest night they've had all summer, Logan is woken from a dream about running beside the ocean by his ringing phone. It is three am. "V'ronica?" he mumbles as he reaches for it, because that's what middle of the night phone calls mean to him: Veronica whispering to him from her place slouched in front of the Camelot.

"No, it's...um, it's me." Emily's voice is shaky. "I've been timing them and they're lasting for a minute or two and they're five minutes apart and the book says that it might be time, so—"

Logan sits up. He has his shoes on before he realizes that he is wearing only his boxers. "You're talking about contractions." He yanks on a shirt, a pair of jeans. It isn't that he wasn't expecting it. It is the second week in August and the thirty-eighth week of Emily's pregnancy. They have taken the hospital tour. They have graduation certificates from their birthing class, and Logan keeps his folded in his wallet even though the ink is smudged and his name was misprinted as "Lohan." The bag Emily packed with clothes for them and a couple of books and her camera is beside where she is sitting on her couch. She has two layers of towels beneath her. She is trembling.

"I didn't want to be that woman who shows up, like, negative dilated, or freaking out over Braxton-Hicks," she rambles as he helps her to her feet. "But they're getting bad now and the TV isn't distracting anymore and I don't want you to have to deliver the baby with a shoelace and my nice towels."

"Well, I guess I boiled all that water for nothing, then," he says. His voice sounds smooth and unfamiliar. Their street looks foreign in the orange streetlamp glow. Emily moans and clutches at her bag as he rolls out of the driveway. They're halfway to the hospital before he realizes that he forgot to lock either of their doors. He looks over at her and doesn't mention it.

The most distressing part of the labor is that nothing - not the books, not the birthing class or the horribly graphic videos - prepared him for the reality of the fear.

"You were right," Emily says. She is crying a little. "I do want my mom." Teresa had been scheduled to arrive two days from now to help with the birth, the house and the baby. She is trying to get an earlier flight, but for now it is just Emily and Logan. He passes her an ice chip because there doesn't really seem to be anything for him to do. They just did a walk around the hall and a bathroom trip. She doesn't want to read or watch TV. She just looks at him with big eyes, halfway to shock, and lets him feed her ice chips. When a contraction comes, longer and very soon after the last, she crunches down on a chunk, moaning.

The Lamaze teacher advised deep breaths, calming tones, focus objects. Logan decides very quickly that, like so many things in his life, that advice was crap. Okay, he thinks. Flying blind.

He puts the ice chips on the table beside the bed, leans over Emily's stark frame until his face is all she can see. "Swear," he tells her, squeezing both of her forearms. "Curse as loud as you fucking can."

"First time I've ever seen a lady in labor who needed to be told to swear," says the nurse, an older woman with deep dimples, who is coming for Emily's blood pressure.

"Hey," Logan starts, because this is something he knows, exactly how to turn fear into anger. He turns to look down at Emily. "You're doing great."

"Shut up, you literal motherfucker," she tries, squeezing her eyes tightly. Logan grins.

She keeps that up for a while, leaves off insulting him for the most part, but switches over to long, groaning strings of shitshitshitshit and inserting curses into her requests for another pillow because her back aches or a washcloth because she is sweating. Eventually she can't talk anymore, the pain coming fast if the way she is squeezing Logan's hand is any indication.

The day blurs by. He does the breathing thing like he is supposed to. Nurses come in and out. They hook her up to more monitors, and the sound of the baby's heartbeat is overwhelming when Logan lets it be. The anesthesiologist who finally gives her the epidural looks like he should be working as a bouncer rather than inserting needles into people's spines, but in the end Logan likes him better than the doctor who breezes in every so often to tell Emily that she's just got to keep going for a little longer.

"I'm really tired," Emily whispers to him after she's been stuck at six centimeters for two hours. The politeness, the absence of the anger to power her through, makes her deflate against the bed. Tears leak out of her eyes.

"I'm sure you can do it. What doesn't kill you and all." The doctor winks and pats her on the shoulder in a way that is probably supposed to be reassuring. It is only Emily's death grip on his hand that keeps Logan from knocking him out.

It is as Logan is trying to figure out how to put Emily's hair into a ponytail that the doctor finally announces that they can get things started.

"Oh good," Logan says acidly. "All this doing nothing was really starting to wear." He circles the elastic around the gathered, sweaty hair one last time, leaving Emily with a loose, lopsided ponytail. He almost goes to fix it but Emily clutches onto his forearm and he moves down to remind her how to breathe as the doctor tells her for the first time to push.

Logan's watch is on his bedside table. His phone is trapped in the pocket of his jeans. He must have been trapped in this closing room for hours and he wants the anchor of time, of reality. Everything in these moments, advertised as the most exciting of his life, blends, and he wants a stable point in it. "You're a model patient," one of the nurses tells Emily in that messy time. "Chin on your chest and keep giving us those nice firm pushes. Good girl."

"Let's pass out the gold stars later," Logan snaps before he can stop himself, but it is lost as the doctor, face serious now, tells Emily to give a big push with the next contraction and Emily screws up her face, giving a long and low moan that ends with a sob, and the baby slithers out into the doctor's hands.

"Would you like to cut the cord?" the doctor asks Logan, and it's him earning the gold stars because he just shrugs at Logan's horrified "No," and starts talking to a breathless Emily about the delivery of the placenta.

"He looks great, sweetheart," the nurse says warmly as the doctor clips the cord. There's a flurry of movement as the doctor uses what looks like a little baster on the baby's nose and mouth and the nurse rubs at him with a blanket. He cries for the first time, a piercing, indignant sound, as they weigh and measure him, but has stopped and just whimpers drowsily by the time they give him a diaper and a cap, wrap him up, and hand him to Emily, who has used Logan's still arm to drag herself back against the pillows and is holding her hands out for him.

They place the baby on her chest and she folds her arms over him. He has a little hair, a brownish shade that doesn't belong to either of them, which darkens as Emily's tears fall onto his head.

"Hi, baby," she whispers, overcome. "Hi, Matthew."

Logan's mouth is open just a little, but he does not notice. He feels weak and unstable, like he wants to collapse into the chair beside the bed, but instead he stammers, "I'll—I'll be right back" and goes out into the hall.

There's another man out there, gesturing broadly as he talks on his cell phone and paces a short path beside one of the rooms further down. "Eight pounds, seven ounces," he is saying gleefully. "Absolutely perfect." Logan leans his forehead against the wall opposite Emily's room. He wants it to be Emily's turn now. He did everything he was supposed to, buried his doubt and confusion and disgust during the labor, and with the baby here he wants it to be Emily's turn.

The hospital windows are streaming light. It is just after noon. Logan wants to sleep. He wants a drink or twelve. He wants his mother. He is tense, and when a hand lands on his elbow, he turns and accidentally almost clobbers the woman standing too close beside him.

His first impression is of teddy bear scrubs and a stethoscope. It takes a moment before he recognizes Veronica's face.

"Never had this fantasy before," he says, straightening and flipping her stethoscope.

"Hey, I'm nothing if not creative." A doctor comes striding down the hall, and Veronica takes Logan's arm and tugs him into the stairwell. "As much as I love fulfilling the dreams you never knew you had, I'm really here to let you know that someone wasn't paying attention in their HIPAA seminars."

He just blinks at her. "Would that have made sense before my 3 am wakeup call?"

A smile fleets across her face. "Someone on the hospital staff tipped off the tabloids. Apparently the new generation of Echolls still merits a couple of column inches. The parking lot is crawling with press. This was the only way I could get in without people connecting my face and your name. Kept getting asked if I had seen the baby, but no one recognized me."

He rolls his neck to face the ceiling. "That first amendment. What a masterpiece, huh?"

"Try to keep from availing yourself of the second, okay?"

"You really are a buzzkill." He laughs softly, steps forward and tentatively hugs her. "Thanks for coming to tell me." Her shoulders are suddenly hard beneath his hands and he releases her so he can look at her face. "Of course there's more," he whispers.

"I'm going to Stanford," she says quickly, arms taut over her chest. "I got a conditional acceptance back in March and I didn't think that I would be able to finish my last courses, but with my AP credits and overloading and the summer classes I just finished...Hearst okayed me to graduate early."

Logan knew that Veronica had been looking at Stanford, had even been the one to suggest journalism as a good combination of the criminology major it was too late to change, her love of truth, and her doggedness. But he was not prepared for it to be now. He wasn't expecting her to co-parent his son, but he had pictured cups of coffee, ice cream just when he was reaching his breaking point, not this absence.

"With the tuition costs, it just makes sense," she is still explaining. The teddy bears on her scrubs look ill in the dim light.

"Yeah," he mumbles. Feeling nearly disconnected from his body, he rests a hand on her arm. If he had known that this was what she was hiding, that she was going to leave anyway, maybe he would have talked to her more. "That's great, Veronica. I'm happy for you, really." He summons a smile, pulling it up as if from a great depth. "Although I can't believe you're actually deciding to join the scum sucking hoards."

"A girl's gotta have goals."

"So when do you leave?" He sees it on her face. "Tonight," he says, voice resigned despite all efforts to the contrary.

"Tomorrow morning." Somewhere further upstairs, someone opens the door to the stairwell and starts moving down. Veronica peers upward, although there's nothing for her to see. "I have to get going. Takes a lot to move your whole life somewhere else."

"I know the feeling."

"Right." She says the word crisply, just a little embarrassed, tipping her chin down and looking at the floor by his shoes for a second. "Heard from the scum sucking hoards that it's a healthy boy."

"Yeah." He nods softly, head down. "Matthew Josiah O'Connell. He seems good. Wrinkled."

"Teach him to walk with confidence and he'll still get the ladies."

"It's in his genes." He seems to realize what he said a minute after she does.

"It's going to be fine." The footsteps are growing closer. Veronica opens the door and they step back into the hall, speaking quietly. "You're going to do fine, Logan. Really. I believe that." She grips his hand, and just for that second he believes it too. Then she kisses his cheek, impulsive and quick, and walks down the hall. He watches her go. He knows that he is supposed to go back into Emily's room - he can see her through the narrow window, still cuddled with the baby - but as Veronica gets into the elevator, he turns and rests his head back against the wall. He can still hear the voice of the other father down the hall, fading as he closes his eyes. "This is the best day of my life."

Chapter Text

Logan doesn't fall in love with the baby right away. It doesn't help that the kid shares an alarming number of characteristics with a broken umbrella, crumple-skinned and spiny and never moving in a convenient way. But with Emily and her parents commenting on his clear eyes, and each claiming to have seen his first smile, it all makes Logan feel like shit, and so he doesn't tell anyone.

Jim leaves after a week, his need to return to prepare for his classes reminding Logan of the imminence of his own. Logan drives him to the airport, and there is a moment when Jim shakes his hand warmly and assures him that panic is normal, that he has felt it four times and survived, when Logan feels almost calm. An external calm, at least, prevails for the next week and a half as Teresa stays on. It is under her supervision that Logan is forced to practice burping and diapering and bathing a living child. She is training him as her replacement and he must be perfect. She does not tolerate his hesitant hands, the delicate attempts to wrap the baby, the fearful gentleness with which he supports his head.

"He's more resilient than he seems," she tells him as the loose blanket once again slides out from around the baby's frame. "He wants to be snug. Swaddling won't hurt him."

"He senses your tension," she counsels when a short walk down the hallway seems only to increase the baby's cries.

"Is he good for earthquakes and tornadoes too? Because I'd like to know if I need to stock up on bottled water."

Teresa's voice and eyes harden, but she doesn't acknowledge his words, continuing to reel off advice. "Relax, and he'll relax too."

Despite the baby boot camp that makes him clench his jaw to keep from snapping, Logan begrudgingly appreciates her. She makes sure that Emily and the baby have clean clothes and sheets, that the freezer is filled with neatly labeled meals, that Emily needs to do nothing but rest in between feedings. She serves as the gatekeeper for Emily's underclassmen friends, beginning to arrive back for the new semester and eager to divert themselves for the last few days of summer with twenty minutes of holding the baby even though that will result in an hour of needing to calm him down. He's a decent sleeper when it is the three of them in a quiet house but becomes tense and sour when strangers assert themselves.

"Let me open my big book of flaws to see if you got that from me," Logan says idly mid-afternoon on the baby's second Wednesday in the world. He stands in the kitchen holding Matthew while Teresa, ignoring protests about the shortness of the visit, shepherds out the first pair she has allowed in, and Emily creaks her exhausted way back up the stairs. "I suspect you won't be a winner in the genetic lottery, kid." He makes his slow way up the stairs too. He's used to holding the baby now and the fear of dropping him as he moves up the steps is passive rather than a constant clenching. Still, having him around feels impermanent, almost pretend, like when they first moved to Neptune and he had needed to adjust his associations of the place from yachting and day camp and sleepovers with Duncan to school and avoiding his father - the stuff of real life.

He leaves Matthew with Emily, letting her nurse. She hasn't worn anything except sweatpants and large T-shirts since he got home from the hospital and he hasn't seen the return of that pure smile from when she held Matthew the first time, but for someone who only gets to sleep in three hour shifts if the baby does, she seems to be doing alright.

Logan really has to learn not to jinx shit like that.

The day after Emily's mother leaves, Logan's voicemail asks the caller to leave a message only after his wry, tired voice takes on a vague Scottish tint and informs them that "The best laid schemes of mice and men do oft go astray."

He doesn't have a chance to change it for another week because Robert Burns is damnably right.

Teresa gives Logan a final exam before she goes, making sure he knows the different ways to hold the baby (cradling, over the arm, in the baby carrier) and that he remembers what brand of wipes to buy (Lansinoh Clean and Condition). His prize is a lecture about postpartum depression, a list of symptoms, and her phone number.

"If she exhibits a significant number of symptoms for more than a few day, I expect a call," she tells him strictly. When his assurance comes a touch too slow, it seems as if she is going to change her flight again, although she has already stayed an extra three days and she has daughters and a husband and a job she needs to return to across the country.

"We'll be fine," Logan says. "Everything will be fine." He knows she doesn't believe him because when he leaves her awkwardly at the airport he can see her in the rearview, eyeing him from the terminal entrance, but doesn't realize it's a lie until later.

The first day does go fine, as does second and the third. Matthew sleeps and wakes on his normal schedule. Between those periods, Emily dozes while Logan plays video games with the sound down low, and warms portions from the pot of soup Teresa left in the fridge, and pages through fatherhood books that seem to focus too much on the supposed changes in his sex life and not enough on the background of unease that he now lives with daily. When he leaves for his own house at night, Emily is asleep with Matthew clean and dry in his bassinet beside her, and despite everything, Logan feels accomplished, like he had been hoping just to pass and had ended up with an A.

He takes his time on the fourth morning, two bowls of cereal and contemplations of surfing before school starts filling his days. He has this crazy urge to wave jauntily to the neighbors as he moves next door. He is still reveling in his fatherly victory as he opens Emily's door.

The baby sling is draped at the bottom of the stairs and he is crouching beside it before he realizes that it couldn't be so shapeless if Matthew were inside. He tosses it over his shoulder and takes the stairs to Emily's bedroom two at a time.

She is sitting up in her bed with her laptop, the door open. Matthew, seemingly safely asleep in the bassinet, is the only remnant of the quiet house Logan left last night. He picks his way to the bed, around the ripped chunks of a large cardboard box, and a variety of metal rods and plastic pieces that litter the floor.

"So many of these single mother blogs are written once the baby's a few months old," Emily says as he settles himself gingerly on the side of the bed. "I read these before, but I didn't even think that maybe it was because they just didn't have the time to type a few sentences when their babies were really small."

Logan doesn't even know how to respond to that. "He may be small, but I guess he's already going for the coked-out rock star lifestyle," he tries, looking around the room, but it comes off awkwardly.

Emily finally glances up from her computer, connecting his words to the state of the room before looking back down. "Oh, that was me."

"Good. I guess I can call off the warnings about the very localized tornado." And then when she just hums distractedly in response, seeming not to even register that he needs more information, "Em, what happened?"

"The baby happened." It isn't that her voice is flat or accusatory. It's that she seems not to realize that he might have questions about how things degenerated so quickly. "I fed him and then tried to put him back to sleep, but he just kept crying."

Logan runs a hand through his hair. "I thought he was a really good sleeper."

"Mostly he is. The couple of times he got really fussy, my mom took him." Matthew makes a small noise and she looks sharply at him for a moment but he settles back down.

"Why don't you call me? That was the plan." He wants the word to call her back to herself, the Emily that he knows, the Emily of schedules and lists.

She looks at him blankly. "I thought everyone could hear him."

"You thought that I heard the baby crying for hours and didn't come help?" He isn't even insulted. His words are tiptoeing, confused, just a repetition of hers.

"I mean, that was the deal, right? That was what I signed up for, letting him take over my life. So I started looking for ways to calm him down. I tried carrying him in the sling but I couldn't get it on by myself, and then all the single mom sites were telling me to put him in a swing. But I didn't know how to get it together, so I went back to try to figure it out and by then it was time to feed him again so I just stayed up."

"Right. Okay." Logan knows how to deal with people slipped out of their own control, although usually they were drunk - his apologetic mother or brash Lilly or sloppy, lumbering Duncan - rather than sleep deprived and hormonal. He slides the laptop away from her and closes the top part way. "He's sleeping now. Why don't you go shower, and I'll make you a cup of coffee and something to eat?"

"Coffee while I'm breastfeeding?" Her pursed lips are the first genuine expression he's seen on her face yet today and the tension slips a bit from his shoulders.

"Well, we want to ease him into the harder stuff," Logan says, and when she doesn't give much more than a cursory smile, he arranges his features more seriously. "You're allowed a small amount. It'll hurt him more to have a mother who can't keep her eyes open."

Emily takes a breath, and Logan wonders if she notices that Matthew sighed at the same time. He continues sleeping, but she starts to smile. "Okay. That sounds good." She starts to get up from the bed. Logan turns to go downstairs, but pauses in the doorway. "You're not, you know."

"Huh?"

"A single mother. I know you had all these ideas about you doing it on your own before you went back to work, but," he stumbles over the words. "I'm here."

She comes to stand in front of him. She moves slowly now, as if she is unfamiliar in her own body. She takes his hand. Her tone is the humorous one that covers seriousness. "Logan. Will you be my night shift buddy?"

"Like anyone else would take you," he says. He squeezes her hand, glances once more at Matthew, and goes down to the kitchen. He moves some clothes into the guest room later that day.

Matthew really is overall an easy baby. Emily likes looking at message boards of other new mothers, although they all seem to be in various stages of breakdown. Their children won't nurse, they somehow manage to survive without sleep, all their clothes cause rashes, they have croup or colic or allergies.

"Angel child," Emily hums to Matthew, dancing with him a little after she reads these postings. "I feel bad writing anything because our problems are so small," she tells Logan. That doesn't mean they don't exist. There are days when despite the dozens of outfits in Matthew's wardrobe, they seem all to be covered with stains whose origins Logan does not want to contemplate. There are nights when they walk the floor for hours although nothing seems to calm him down, when they sleep in shifts at Logan's to escape the noise.

It gets just a little harder once Logan goes back to school, hard enough that he feels the tipping point although he never quite goes over it. His schedule is light, arranged as best he could. He doesn't have all the AP credits Veronica had, but the year after Lilly died, Logan pretending to need help studying for his US History exam was only thing that could get Duncan to study for his. He's grateful now that he had decided to just take the test because it leaves him with a few classes worth of credits to fall back on. Months ago at class registration, not knowing exactly how schedule a baby into his life, he had signed up for three-hour seminars, deciding to get everything done in chunks. It's not a terrible plan, really. But even with just three hours three days a week, it means hours of commute and classwork. He is taking two upper level business courses for his major, and they require group projects. He is open with them about the things taking up his time and energy, and they exchange glances, somehow already a group without him even though they've all just met.

"Yeah, I get it," Deanna says, impatience striving for kindness in her tone. "I'm working twenty hours a week this semester—"

"And I'm directing a play," Chris interjects.

"But we'll all work it out," Deanna finishes, looking at them for confirmation that her decisive nod tells him she doesn't need.

Logan fakes a smile and adopts the tone of false, dangerous geniality that was his father's. "It's graciousness like this that lets society function."

He knows that they honestly are sympathetic. But he has a hard time feeling the same way toward them when they're laughingly comparing hangovers as he arrives for meetings lightheaded from driving the baby around all night because it keeps him asleep. He is past done with their casual complaints about pushy roommates when the only time he has had to himself is the forty-five minutes between dropping off the baby and turning right around and coming to school. Matthew's lullaby of choice is a supposedly soothing baby version of Bohemian Rhapsody, and the truth is that they won't care if he tells them that if he hears the fake chirping birds in the background once more, he is going rip the sound system out of his car, hire round the clock help, and go live at sea for the rest of his life. A devil put aside for him, indeed.

Thankfully, his other class is much better. It's a writing comp course on short stories which he's taking with Wallace. The two of them have shared one class every semester, at first by coincidence and later by design. Logan's never been more thankful to have him there, the sharp elbow to wake him and the hushed comments to make the hours less torturous.

"Where do you think Williams would go on the Neptune scale of nightmare teachers?" Wallace asks as they grab pizza together one day after class.

Logan consider for a moment, a connoisseur of depravity. "Somewhere in the 'beaten down by life' range, well above the 'offspring of Satan' level."

Wallace nods, taking a bite of his slice. "Speaking of offspring, when am I gonna get to meet yours? It's been a month already, Echolls. You afraid he'll take one look at me and realize who the cool one is?"

There's a genuine jocularity to his tone that keeps Logan comfortable when he would tense with anyone else. "He's young. I didn't want to confuse him with subpar male influences," although really he can think of few role models better than Wallace.

"So I can assume there's already a lifetime ban on Dick?"

Honestly, Dick has expressed no interest in the baby further than commenting on how his birth has curtailed their bro time. He literally flinched the last time he was at Logan's place and saw a pile of baby clothes. He had tried to hide it as enthusiasm over the Xbox, but he hasn't come back since. Logan thinks he might have to do some kind of infant exposure therapy if he is ever going to see his best friend again.

"I think Dick's already banned himself." Logan balls up his napkin and tosses it beside his plate. "You have class this afternoon?"

Wallace isn't slacking off his senior year, spending most of his time grappling with advanced mechanical engineering classes. Logan thinks he might be lying when he says that he's free, but he accepts it anyway.

He texts Emily to tell her that they're having a visitor, but she doesn't respond. Her place is quiet when he gets there, and once he gestures for Wallace to stay put and makes his way upstairs, he sees why. Emily is dozing, looking weary but fine, a book resting on her chest. Matthew is awake and calm beside her, wriggling his legs slightly and bumping a wavering, wet fist against his mouth.

Logan goes around the bed and picks up the baby. Emily stirs a little, slitting open her eyes to just barely focus on him.

"Wallace is here. We're just going to walk him," Logan whispers.

"'s not a dog," Emily mumbles, but she rolls onto her side and into a heavier sleep. Logan kneels, carefully balancing the baby, and sets her fallen book on the nightstand before rejoining Wallace downstairs.

"Warden's asleep, so we can take the kid out." Making sure that the baby is dressed in long enough sleeves and has a clean diaper, Logan looks around for the bouncer to set him down while he puts on the baby carrier. Without a word, Wallace takes Matthew out of Logan's arms, holding the baby easily. Logan tries to remember the age difference between Wallace and his brother, tries to think if Wallace has younger cousins, but is distracted by the process of untangling the carrier straps. He manages it, and a moment later the baby is nestled against Logan's chest. Grabbing one of the many tiny hats that have been on the bench beside Emily's door since she received them as gifts, Logan settles it on the baby's head and follows Wallace out the door.

Wallace seems to expand as soon as they get out into the still lingering summer heat, stretching a little toward the porch overhang. "I'm never taking my grab the wallet, grab the keys routine for granted again. You do that every time you leave the house?"

"You're actually witnessing baby's first day out. Doctor just gave the okay."

"The doctor gets to tell you when you can take your kid outside?"

The baby stirs a little. Logan lifts the hat brim, but he seems fine. Logan angles his neck anyway, seeking Matthew's drifting eyes, before straightening to look at Wallace. "You're not looking big picture. That's like a footnote in The Single Guy's Guide to Childcare."

"So am I the single guy in this scenario, or is that you?" He rounds his lips as he says the last syllable, eyebrows up.

"Is this your subtle way of asking if I'm seeing anyone? Because you know that what happened between you and me was just because of the moonlight."

"No, it's my subtle way of asking whether you're getting down with the old lady." The bluntness startles something out of Logan that is more air than laughter. This is not how they usually talk, but he can feel his gratefulness for Wallace in the backs of his shoulders. "I mean, you're practically living with the mother of your child, who was not exactly a member of the ugly duckling club even when she was pregnant. You know, a guy can't help but ask."

"A guy is as eager for gossip as a Fiddler on the Roof townsperson." Wallace, never the top recipient for his musically theatrical wit, looks a little puzzled but grins anyway before turning on that patient, quiet stare that means that Logan will confide in him sooner or later. Logan puts it off for a minute, but then gives in. "Nothing's going on between me and Emily. She's like my sister." He gives a split-second pause, and then adds, "Although she's not a druggie bitch, so I guess she's better than my sister."

Wallace sounds skeptical. "I know you don't exactly have a normal family, but I thought you'd picked up enough from TV to know that you don't have kids with your sister."

Logan lets a hand flutter up to his mouth, his brow creasing and eyes wincing as if genuinely shocked. "You're telling me there was nothing unwholesome behind the Waltons' closed doors?" It's mostly reflex that drives him one-liners rather than answers, and he recognizes that. He lets himself cross the street to avoid a woman who is smoking on her front steps before answering truthfully, struggling to describe a relationship that he hasn't entirely worked out himself. "I like Emily. She's one of the good ones in this hard, bitter world. But we're not...That's not what it's about."

"Plus you're still hung up someone else." Wallace finishes, factual, rubbing a hand up the back of his neck in rueful affection. Logan wonders frequently why Wallace has stuck around. There must be better friends he could have, friends without murder and abuse and tangles of romantic drama in their past.

"Have you heard from her? Veronica?" he says, surprised that the name comes out so easily. In the past when the two of them have been enemies or even uneasy friends, her name has transformed in his mouth, making her Ronnie the traitor or Veronica with sardonically dragged out syllables.

"Sure," says Wallace. "Got the Skype tour of her new place a couple of weeks ago. You two haven't talked?"

Logan shrugs one shoulder just a little, careful not to shift the sling too much. "We've texted, but neither of us has had a lot of time."

Wallace breaks their silence after a moment. "I won't violate the BFF code, but I think you and me are at least F. You can ask about her."

Logan gauges. He seems sincere. "She's really doing okay?" he asks, first thing, because it seems safe and because he honestly wants to know. It was hard to tell by hurried messages from five hundred miles away. He couldn't see her eyes, couldn't read her pauses or parse her tone for what she might be hiding.

"Yeah. Like you said, she's busy, and she misses her dad and everything, but it's working out so far."

"Have you asked her why she left?" Logan tries to sound minimally self-centered as he adds, "Do you think she left because of me? Because of the baby?"

Wallace squints, looking ahead and then looking over at Logan. "I think she left because Stanford was a great opportunity and sticking around Neptune like a hangover wasn't her style. But I won't say that the baby had nothing to do with it. You know that V and kids don't exactly go like chocolate chips and cookies."

"I know I screwed up. But I'm trying to be a father. I'm trying to figure it out."

"I know, man." Wallace looks like he's almost going to touch Logan's shoulder but decides better of it. "But it's weird to see you with a kid, and you and me don't even have the whole dramatic Notebook-style history."

Logan doesn't mind resting a hand on Wallace shoulder. It sits there lightly for a minute as he says, "I was lying about the moonlight. If you wanted me to build you a house, all you had to do was ask."

Wallace makes a face. They have circled the block, ending up back in front of Logan's place. "I'll leave the star-crossed stuff to you and V. But I'll tell you this: I think you're doing the right thing by your kid." He tilts his head to where Matthew is bundled against Logan's chest, to where one of Logan's hands has not left the baby's back the entire time. He raises his eyebrow, lets it set in for a moment, before going up the walk to say hello to a sleepy Emily, resting against the doorway.

When Logan was little, Aaron would have what Lynn called "just one of those bad days," where everything would hit at once. He would lose a part to some younger, hotter, better actor. One the maids would give a quote to the latest insubstantial, insignificant article about the rocky Echolls marriage, something about how Mrs. Echolls seemed to eat meals made mostly of pills. Trina would show up in a tabloid pic of some B-list starlet and her coked up entourage, and the two them would fight, him angry because of the spectacle and she pouting that she was just a blurry, red-eyed afterthought in the background. And then he would get home, find one of Logan's Hot Wheels cars beneath the couch, and backhand him to the floor.

It was a long time before Logan realized that no matter what his mother said, these were not just occasional, foreshadowed outbursts of his father's temper. It didn't matter what Logan did, Aaron would find an excuse. Even knowing that there was no logic to it, though, even as he stayed out late and drank obnoxiously so that at least there might pretend to be some reason when his dad made him pick a belt, he was always looking out for "just one of those bad days."

Logan's first bad day comes when Matthew is seven weeks old.

He wakes up feeling weird and a little fuzzy, even though he actually got almost a full night's sleep. The temptation to ignore his alarm is strong; he wants to hang on to the possibility of restfulness. Two years ago, he probably would have, but he's on a self-civilizing campaign, and he has it on good authority that Good Students like Veronica and Emily and Mac don't ditch class, so he gets up.

There's an accident on the way, so he's a little late, not late enough to justify skipping but enough that he has to make the awkward walk to a seat with the eyes of the entire room on him.

"Nice of you to join us, Mr. Echolls," the professor says snottily, probably fulfilling some quota in his contract. It's the same guy who rejected Logan's Grade My Ass project freshman year. Logan still stands by that (Mac actually keeps it live and running, and reports that it's making decent profits, even minus the consultant fee Dick insists on being paid) but he wishes that he had done something a little less memorable. The professor glared at his name during roll call the first day. He clearly hasn't gained a sense of humor. Logan gives a little bow in response to the remark anyway.

"You know I can't stand missing this special time together," he says, shyly batting his fingers toward the front of the room as he reaches his usual seat. The professor looks like he doesn't agree. Humphing, he restarts the lecture.

He might be on bad personal terms with the guy, but since the beginning of the semester, Logan had been determined to impress him academically. The first group presentation is coming up in a week and feels fairly confident about that. But then again, he had felt confident about last week's quiz and, as he discovers as he collects his at the end of class, his confidence was misplaced. It's a C, a passing grade, but just barely. He's scowling his way from the room, remembering the way he had tried to rock Matthew and hold the textbook at the same time, and trying to find leeway for regaining some points when he literally runs into Dick. The paper falls, but Dick catches it neatly, unabashedly looking at it before he hands back to Logan.

"Sucks, man," he says, bumping Logan's side a little as they fall into step, walking away from the classroom.

"You do bring that touch of the poet to any situation." The remark is joking, but Logan's tone is just barely the right side of bitter.

Dick speaks quickly, like he can tell that Logan's pissed but has decided either that he has nothing to do with it or that it should just be ignored. "We should go out. Just ditch and go for the old all-night party. There's a new place ten minutes from here that does margaritas with senoritas after eleven on Tuesdays." His rejection is clear in the way that Logan shifts. "Come on, man. This whole stand-up family guy act bit it with Brady's. Just get over yourself and let's go. It's gonna happen anyway. Your natural habitat awaits."

The worst part, the part that makes Logan angriest with himself and by extension with Dick, is that he wants it. He wants easy laughter and uncomplicated girls, a drink relaxing in his hand. He wants to give up this charade of progress. He opens his mouth to say...what? Yes? How goddamn hard it is to keep himself on the straight and narrow and that Dick is no fucking help? But instead he closes it and walks away.

He has, at this point, about nineteen minutes to get food and make it to the library study room for his project meeting. He actually succeeds in both, but only by gulping a chicken sandwich chokingly fast on the walk between caf and library. He arrives at the same time as Chris, who is wearing his usual black-on-black and chats idly in Logan's direction about the school's money mismanagement. Deanna already has her folder out on the table (she has files for each of her classes; this one is matador red) and glances approvingly at her watch as they walk in. If Logan can just make it through this meeting, he can go home.

For once, the uselessness of the meeting wasn't his fault. He had sat there quietly, like it was an out of body experience. Chris and Deanna spent the entire time arguing over things they had already decided at the last meeting. Alma, delicate, dark haired, and the best writer out of them all, seemed to think her part was over now that the majority of their write-up was done. She was mostly interested in reminding them of their promise to coordinate their outfits, and suggesting color schemes.

Eventually Logan had gotten fed up. He had ignored Deanna's squawking "Hey!" as he pulled her folder towards himself. A couple arrows to switch things around on their presentation layout, and he was slinging his bag over his shoulder.

"We're done," he had said when it looked like Chris was going to open his mouth, and walked away.

The man across the street is mowing his tiny scrap of a front lawn when Logan pulls into the driveway. The sound grates at his head as he gets out of the car. Emily is sitting on the porch, Matthew lying on her lap and staring up at her face. They are gliding very slightly backward and forward in the white, wooden porch rocking chair that Emily's parents had sent a couple of weeks ago. She loves it, enough to only laugh when Logan asks where the other Beverly Hillbillies are.

"Hi," she smiles at him as he comes up the stairs.

He can feel, as if from far away, his face molding itself, tight-lipped, into an arrangement that might be classified as a polite smile. "Hey."

Emily readjusts the baby against her, frowning a little at Logan's manner before the expression clears. "Light-headed from all that knowledge?" she tries, apparently deciding to overlook the mood.

"Yep. That must be it." Logan turns from her, grabbing the mail from his box and starting to look through it.

"Well, Mattie and I had a big day too," she says. "They had a baby story time at the library, which, hey, wasn't really an interactive experience, but I got to see some actual adults."

"Great. Wouldn't want you to miss time with the other desperate housewives. I know how you all like to compare your busy days full of unemployment." Logan's voice is tight, his eyes still trained on the mail. He's pretty sure he's flipped to this exterminator ad three times already.

Emily doesn't say anything for a moment. She sounds curling and tentative for the first time when she does. He doesn't think he has ever said something rude to her like that before. "That wasn't nice."

"Finally she gets it." He turns and lifts his hands, praise-be and victory, the handful of bills and flyers still in his fist. "I knew at least one of those times I told you that I'm not nice couldn't just go in one ear and out the other."

"Hey, no one forced you to be here." But even that is hurt rather than offended. The baby is against her chest. The rocker is totally still. Across the street, the lawn mower stops. Logan thinks he can see the man standing beside it squinting over at them.

He drops the letters back in the mailbox and clangs the top shut. He lunges off the porch, ignoring the stairs.

"Where are you going?" There's a note of concern and panic, but other than that Emily sounds like every shrewish sitcom wife there ever was.

"Wherever the road takes me that's not here."

Logan drives around for a while, although that's a generous way of putting it; it's the end of the day and it's mostly sitting in traffic. Eventually he gathers himself enough to remember that seeing Darcy might be a good idea, but by the time he gets there the therapist is done for the day. He knows he could call her but he just sits in the parking lot for a while. Once he punches the steering wheel and barks "Damn it!" but apart from that he is silent.

Evening is sliding along the horizon as he takes out his phone and dials Veronica. She must have picked up some kind of case up north already because she asks in a sultry voice, different from the one that she used for him, for the caller to leave a message for April. He hopes she is being safe.

"Hey, uh," he says, his head against the seat. He rolls his neck from side to side for a moment. "How was your day? Mine was shitty. The forced interaction with other people, the yelling at innocent girls, that was par for the course, but Hearst really needs to start working on fixing their AC. I can feel my pores opening up from the heat, ya know, and I just—" He stops. His throat pulses once as he swallows, and then again as he breathes. "I feel like I'm drowning most days, Veronica. I keep saying I'm trying, and I am, but...it's a lot and it still never seems like enough." The day is darkening gradually around him. He brings a hand up to his eyes, swiping away moisture with the base of his palm, and then presses one for more options and star to erase the message. He texts her (Wallace told me you already got one of your roommates to ditch her cheating boyfriend, and that without trying. Try to hold off on taking over the world until next week). He hopes that she'll accept the excuse without her perpetual suspicions being aroused as to why he called first instead of texting.

He drives home circuitously, the way he used to when he knew that he was going to get it from his dad and wanted to hold off the inevitable. He doesn't think he can face Emily, but his feet take him up the steps and to her door as if they are unafraid. He puts his palms on the door frame, bracing himself, but he recognizes the confinement of that, the menace in the motion, and pulls back.

Emily looks confused as she comes to answer his knock. He usually just walks in. He starts speaking immediately. "I shouldn't have said the things I said to you. I know how hard it is to take care of the baby, and I appreciate that."

She widens the door fractionally. "Come in, I guess," she says, unfriendly but still managing to sound like she wants him to take his usual chair.

"That's not a good idea."

"Well, I have food getting cold, so it seems like a good idea to me." She moves aside, opening the door farther. He lets his eyes flicker inside, to the glint of light on the floorboards, to the plastic shopping bag by the couch that he knows is full of new, still-empty photo frames. He doesn't move.

"My mom should have left the first time my dad hit her. She definitely should have left the first time he touched me. I don't want this all to be just a little bit of history repeating. If I'm a threat to you, one of us needs to leave." He wants to move back into the shadows, so he forces himself to look at her face.

"Logan." She gives his name the exasperated sigh of his nanny and his third grade teacher and, occasionally, his mother. "You had a bad day. You don't need to put on your black hat just yet."

"No!" and her eyes widen immediately. She glances up the staircase quickly and steps out onto the porch, shutting the door behind her. "You don't get it. I don't get to have bad days. They're just an excuse."

"An excuse for what? You didn't do anything." There's a stubborn set to her jaw that is both gratifying and worrying. "You didn't go near me. You didn't touch Matthew. Look, you said some mean things and I'm mad at you about that." She crosses her arms. Her voice cracks a little anyway, going shallow and strained. "But that's one of the bad parts of being in a family. You're mad about other stuff and you come home and say nasty things and everyone's angry for a while and then they forgive each other. Did you think you were going to go Mattie's entire life without yelling at him, or being angry ever again?" Logan keeps silent because no matter how many times Darcy reminded him that there were acceptable ways of being angry, he didn't quite believe it. His anger feels, sometimes, like both the most natural and most dangerous part of himself. Emily sighs. "That's not a life, Logan. It's a Hallmark card."

He learned early that his life was flawed; that's not the problem. It's that he has always hoped for the existence of perfection. He knows it's not true, that even the best people he knows and the best relationships he's seen have had problems, that they're still good even with those flaws. Part of him wants the Rockwell painting anyway. "There are ways that I can hurt him that have nothing to do with violence," he says, because that is the kind of truth he knows.

Emily looks up at him. "Yes. But I trust you not to. And I know you don't trust yourself, but I need you to trust me. I'll know if I need to get out, and there's nothing that you've done that says that I need to. You've been amazing so far, and the idea that you aren't allowed to have a bad day is bullshit." She backs up a step and puts her hand on the doorknob. She keeps her eye on him. "Now, the baby's asleep, so I'm going to watch a crappy movie and eat Chinese takeout, and I'm still mad at you so you're not invited."

Logan goes to sleep right when he gets home, neglecting dinner and class reading. He is awoken by a text in the middle of the night. You're still not forgiven but I want to get some sleep. And I got half a dozen cinnamon buns yesterday and I need someone help me eat them.

Emily puts the whimpering baby in his arms and goes to bed without a word or a warning. Logan arranges himself on the couch, Matthew on his chest, the TV on high enough to soothe the baby and low enough that Logan can try to drift off for a little while longer.

Matthew relaxes against him. He trusts Logan instinctively. Emily makes the educated choice to trust him. Behind all the shark smiles and relaxed stride, it has always been easier for Logan to put his faith in others than to trust himself. He promised to try, though, and this is part of that.

He is just beginning to accept that he is not broken, that he is past-present-future tense breaking, but that he can pick up the pieces again and again, that every time he fractures it gets easier to put himself back together.

Matthew gives a drooly little yawn, reaching blindly toward Logan's face, his absurdly sharp baby nails scratching at Logan's chin. Logan takes the hand and holds it gently in his, looking down at its delicacy.

Darcy's going to be pissed that she missed all the breakthrough shit.

Emily goes back to work a month later. They've been getting ready for it, having the nanny start a couple of days a week with at least one of the two of them around. Emily was relaxed, conversing easily with Alexandra and looking approvingly at the way she handled the baby and all of his accoutrements. Logan watched for something more ineffable than warming a bottle to the right temperature or knowing how to bathe the baby safely. He watched Alexandra's mouth, and her big, pretty eyes in the moments when Matthew spat up on her or when he shrieked in lengthy, nonsensical fury. He watched her hands to make sure that she supported the small body not only according to the textbook, but with care. He watched for the tiny signs that she would be the same person when there is no one watching.

Emily's first day back at work is a Monday, when Logan's class runs from three in the afternoon until six at night. He sees Emily off and then spends the morning at her place, trying to do a write-up for his Operations Management course. Alexandra works neatly around him, seeming unphased by his presence on what is supposed to be her first day alone with the baby.

When Matthew goes down for a nap, Alexandra takes a book out of her bag and tucks herself into the armchair in the living room. After a few minutes, Logan says casually, "We've got beers and stuff in the fridge if you want." It isn't true, but if she says yes she'll be out the door before she has a chance to find out.

"Um, I think that if you were a cop, that might count as entrapment," she replies. "But you were really bad at it." She sits up straighter, tucking her finger into her book, a big, colorful softcover called Developmentally Appropriate Practice: Curriculum and Development in Early Education. It has a picture of a smiling girl stacking blocks. It looks hellishly boring anyway.

"I thought you had said goodbye to pencils and books and teachers' dirty looks," Logan says abruptly.

"I'm actually trying to sign up for all that permanently. I'm getting my masters in education. It's all I ever wanted to do, working with kids, and when having a bachelors didn't seem to be enough anymore I went back to school." She looks at him, questioning. "I mentioned this in my interview, actually."

Logan is sure that is true, but he had left the hiring to Emily. He hadn't anticipated feeling this way, fairly convinced that a well-mannered gorilla would be better at taking care of the baby than he is, but also suspicious of anyone who tries. "Well, the missus and I don't really talk anymore. It's been so hard since the little guy came along." He twirls a finger upward toward Matthew's bedroom, voice suitably light.

Alexandra, who he is softening toward by the minute, smiles. "That's why you hired me, remember? You don't have to sit around watching him. Go live your life."

There's a pause when Logan tries to remember what his life was before Matthew. He smiles back, slowly, and closes up his own books. "Thanks for letting me out early, teach."

It's past time for the best morning waves, so he goes for a run. It feels like a movie montage, like some feel-good song should be playing in the background. He showers, and takes his books and goes to the library, works for a little bit until class. It's not like he had been watching the baby around the clock, but the idea that it is officially someone else's job to take care of him, that Emily won't exhaust herself throughout the day catering to the whims of a tiny, furious overlord, makes him slouch smiling in his seat as he takes notes that evening.

He goes over to Emily's later that night. Matthew is asleep and she is sitting on her couch with her laptop. "How was your first day?" he asks.

"Basically the same as when I was an intern, except now I get paid and no one stole my lunch from the fridge."

"Wow, was that perk written into the contract?" He goes to get a soda from her fridge, and then gets another when she complains that he didn't even ask if she wanted one. Once he has handed hers over and resettled himself in the armchair, he asks, "How was it being away from Mattie for the day?"

"A little weird. I kept looking up and thinking that it had been a long time since I heard him, and I called a couple of times to make sure that everything was okay." She shrugs a little. "It was hard, you know? I haven't been away from him that long since he was born." Just as Logan starts to feel guilty about the amount of relief he had felt today, she leans forward, face serious with a smile shivering just under the surface. "But also? It was great. Being around grownups who use words instead of crying? Actually finishing a task without being interrupted because somebody needs to be fed and the food is attached to my body?" She falls back, hair splashing dark even against the wine red of her couch, and stretches gleefully. "Sign me up for more."

He gets up and slides a fond hand across her hair. "You're in luck. There's gonna be another one just like it tomorrow."

"What a salesman." She smiles up at him, childlike, glowingly eager. "I can't wait for it."

And, really, Logan kind of can't either.

Logan thinks that it might help make babies seem not so incredibly tiny if you didn't refer to their age in weeks. How is he supposed to not worry when he is holding something that has been on earth for less time than that guest star arc Lynn did on Days of Our Lives?

But he goes along with it anyway. Matthew started making shy, wondrous smiles at seven weeks. He laughed at ten weeks, amused by a face Logan made in his direction. Logan had only been passing silent comment on the beets Emily was roasting for her dinner, but the responding fountain of a giggle was a surprise that made Logan try a few more experimental expressions just to hear it again. By a few weeks later, Mattie is making sounds that in his mind mean something, although Logan is still unsure exactly what.

Emily documents these occurrences through photographs, and once a week she prints them out and adds them to a scrapbook along with captions. Logan remembers similar volumes in his own house, upstairs in his mother's office rather than in the living room, probably because Aaron couldn't bear the loss of attention even in order to perpetuate the happy family disguise. They're gone now, burned along with the other mixed bag remnants of his childhood, so Logan is glad to see that all of Emily's pictures are backed up and neatly labeled somewhere in the virtual world. He isn't planning on inducing any bikers to burn down his house, but, plans never having been his specialty, it seems wise just in case.

Logan's class on Wednesdays is in the morning, so when Emily asks if he can take Mathew for his sixteen week checkup in the afternoon, Logan says yes. He is distracted, focused on textual trash talk to Wallace about their next pickup basketball game, but as he hits send, he realizes with a jolt what exactly she said. Sixteen weeks. Four months. There's a permanence to that amount of time. It's longer than he dated Parker. It's longer than his mother ever stayed sober.

"I know it's a balmy winter-in-SoCal fifty degrees, but make sure to put on his coat," Emily says, searching in the pantry for the last granola bar so that she misses the look of sharp contemplation that skitters across Logan's face. By the time she looks back up, Logan is back to searching for the book he left in her living room last night.

Arriving in the waiting room a few hours later, Logan is fairly proud to say that Matthew seems to get attention from the nurses and secretaries and passersby at the pediatrician's office than any of the other babies.

"I see my legendary good looks have been passed down," Logan says to Matthew in the examining room as he unstraps him from the car seat. The baby's hair has thickened and, Logan notices as he stares into the small face, his eyes are beginning to shift from their pure birth blue to a muddier, mistier color. "I'll be sure to teach you how to wield these genetic gifts properly."

The appointment goes as expected. Matthew is his quiet, cheerful self as the doctor checks his ears and eyes and skin and reflexes. Logan holds the baby still through four shots, turning his head just slightly as the needle enters Matthew's fragile arm. His head turns back, Exorcist quick, as an unwavering cry erupts from Matthew. Logan holds him a little closer, just barely holding off glaring at Dr. Kerr.

"Any questions?" The doctor strips off her gloves as Logan rocks the baby a little, soothing him afterward.

Logan asks one that Emily had about starting solid foods. His mind diverts during her answer, for a split second, to a memory of himself asking Dick "Where are the fucking nachos, man?" and the rise and fall of Dick's giggle. He shakes it off, returning to the present. He glances down to where Matthew is resecured in his carrier, and asks a question of his own.

"He doesn't cry as much anymore. Not even at night. That's normal, right?" It's something he's noticed over the past few weeks. He's been spending more and more full nights at his own place. Both he and Emily are relieved, but Logan had been surprised to find himself a little worried as well.

"That's exactly where we would hope Matthew is getting to now," the doctor said, smiling and shaking her head a little. "You're looking a gift horse in the mouth. New fathers do it all the time."

Logan shakes her hand and takes Matthew and buckles him back into the car. His head is somewhere else. It's the first time he has felt like he did something right. It's the first time he has felt like a father.

He looks to the back of Matthew's car seat in the rearview mirror. "I know this doesn't mean much to you because you can't follow a stuffed elephant that's waving in front of your face, but it looks like I'll be sticking around." The baby makes a soft sound to himself, something that seems pleased. Logan grins, puts the car in reverse, and begins the drive home with his son.

Chapter Text

 February

"Can you watch Matthew Friday night? I wanted to go on a date."

Logan looks up at Emily. He is belly down on the floor, nose to nose with six month old Matthew who is staring at him with a wide, gummy smile. "Is it going to be that Lutheran minister again? Because you know that he just ropes you into bingo night at the old Norse church." Emily has been seeking out spiritual advisors less and less over time, but her grand adventure in religion does spring up every so often.

"No, I meant like an actual date," she says. Logan turns onto his back, bringing Matthew into his arms. He suspends the baby above his head, flying him very slowly back and forth.

"Oh, is it replacement daddy discount weekend?" he says as Matthew's giggles squeal out above him. "I didn't have it on my calendar."

"Come on, Logan." She pulls her knees up and tucks a finger into her book. "We talked about this." They have. They've settled into a parenting routine together, but Emily has made it clear that as Matthew gets older, she will be looking for romantic commitment elsewhere. Logan understands that, the way she wants closeness and a relationship and love, and had even agreed as she laid out her explanation, but the thought of Mattie being shared with another person still leaves a coldness in his heart.

"You're right," he says. He swallows. "You deserve to be happy." He lowers his arms so that Matthew's small body lies on his chest. Mattie bobs his head up and down, supporting himself in a half push up and leaving a smiling trail of drool on his father's shirt. Logan sits up carefully, cradling the baby against himself as Emily goes back to her book.

Matthew has been teething, so Friday night finds Logan simultaneously holding the whining baby and trying to wrangle a teething ring out of the freezer. He manages it, but only by also freeing a package of chicken in the process. It falls on the arched bones of his foot and he grits his teeth against a curse as he readjusts Matthew into the cradle of his arm and holds the chilly ring against the baby's gums. He's humming to the baby and trying to figure out how to pick up the chicken and get it back in the freezer when he hears the door.

Emily joins them in the kitchen. She picks up the chicken almost absently and tucks it away, takes a bottle of Snapple from the fridge and hitches herself onto one of the kitchen barstools. The bottle sits unopened in front of her.

"So how was the date?" Logan says, awkward and uncertain, looking down at Mattie in his arms.

She finally looks up. "Disaster, for the most part," she says ruefully. "I kept talking about the baby, and he kept trying to distract me by talking about fly fishing."

"How'd you even meet him?"

"Set up." The words come out in a groan. "A coworker convinced me that it was a good idea."

Logan laughs softly. The baby is quiet now, staring around the room. Logan shifts him to his other arm, careful that he didn't lose his grip on the teething ring. "You really have to learn to just say no."

"I'll start being BFFs with Nancy Reagan another day. For now, I just want to take a shower and go to bed." She holds her arms out for Matthew.

"I can put him back to sleep," Logan says, keeping his hold on the baby.

"Are you looking for extra dad points with the cranky, teething bonus?"

With Matthew making small, smiley sounds around the toy, cranky doesn't seem to apply. "Let's imagine for a minute that I actually enjoy spending time with my kid."

Emily puts up her hands. "Hey, if you've developed cuteness amnesia, I'm not going to argue." She starts for the stairs, kissing Matthew's head as she goes.

"We actually call it 'surrendering to the inevitable,'" Logan remarks to Matthew, who naturally says nothing. Logan continues to walk along the floor with the baby, hearing in the background the sounds of Emily moving upstairs.

He is comfortable with the weird little arrangement they have now, what Emily's glossy rainbow of books refer to as their "nontraditional family," and he is glad that it hadn't changed tonight. But even as he holds Matthew against himself, even as he feels the baby's relaxed body in his arms and meets the unblinking baby stare focused up at him, he knows that eventually it won't just be him and Emily in their son's life.

April

Things are so settled in Logan's life that he mostly doesn't notice how different they are from his life a year ago. It's during breaks that the differences become obvious again. Spring break is a big one. Dick offers the seemingly required invitation to somewhere tropical but barely waits for Logan to turn him down. Logan finds himself hoping for a text from Veronica saying that she's coming home, but instead gets one complaining that grad school doesn't even take spring break.

He can't say that he misses the life he used to have, but he misses the activity of it, the brightness of knowing that there was always a party open to him, that someone would always be running a poker game somewhere.

I need a fucking hobby, he thinks Saturday night as he goes to bed at ten.

But he doesn't take up knitting just yet. Sunday night he goes to what Mac claims will be a party. It turns out to be trivia night, but which he actually excels at. Monday he lies around at the Hearst dorms while Wallace, apparently up for Boy Scout of the Year, tries to get a head start on his post-break work.

"Linear algebra is kicking my ass," he complains, so Logan, who took a version of the course last year, grabs a pencil and tries to help.

Wallace tosses his pencil onto the desk and leans back a little, his chair moving in a short arc. "I must be pretty pathetic if you're playing tutor."

"Impossible. If you're pathetic for needing help, how pathetic would I be for having nothing better to do than provide it?" He keeps the impossibility of his patheticness implied by his arch, bored tone , but Wallace's face loosens a little into a smile. Logan hides the bit of his by leaning over the first problem and trying to remember back a few semesters. Fifty minutes later, he just takes Wallace for nachos and beer instead.

By Wednesday afternoon, though, checking his email seems to have become an activity and he thinks about giving Alexandra the week off. And as much as he loves his kid, he can't believe that he has nothing better to do than change diapers and hide the annoyingly loud toys. But he refreshes the page one last time and finds that he has an email from .

He hasn't heard from Charlie since his brother had responded to Logan's six apologetic voicemails with one asking Logan to give him some time. Some time apparently meant three years, but the part of Logan that had been so eager to believe Norman Phipps - despite all the tiny signs, the almost rehearsed way he spoke about learning that Aaron was his father, and the casual, awkward listing of Logan's stories - opens the email without a thought to the time that has passed.

It's been a while, it read, but I'd like to meet somewhere if you can.

They meet late Friday afternoon at a coffee shop halfway between San Diego and Santa Clarita, where Charlie has moved. Charlie had called to say that he was going to be a few minutes late, but when fifteen minutes have gone by, Logan wonders if he's just been stood up instead. He's looking for a trash can in which to toss his cup in disgust when the door to the place opens.

"Sorry I'm late," Charlie says, sounding a little uncertain about his own apology. "Track practice ran long."

"You run track?" Charlie is taller than Logan, and lankier, so it's not totally out of the question.

"Coach. Both the boys' team, and the girls'."

It's the first thing that Logan has found out about his brother that he can trust, and he wants to ask more - does Charlie like it, did he volunteer or was he forced into the job - but Charlie clearly has an agenda.

"I saw a few months ago that you have a kid. It was—" he clears his throat, looking toward the menu board, running a hand across the back of his neck. Logan realizes, startled, that he does the same thing when he's uncomfortable. "In a tabloid."

"Wow, man. My only blood relative gets his information on me from the tabs. This is a real 'Logan Echolls, this is your life' moment for me." His instinct is to end it with some miniature jazz hands, going for the upper limits of pizzazz, but then he remembers that he's trying not to be a jackass. "Sorry. You're allowed to be mad at me for what I did." He straightens in his seat, hands beginning to twist a straw wrapper into a tight curl. "Yeah, I have a little boy. Matthew." His hand moves to his phone. He has a couple of pictures of Matthew looking out the window in a baby model pose that would have made Lynn Echolls proud, and there's a video he took the other day of Mattie playing peekaboo with a blanket, a ridiculously focused look on his face as he tried to puzzle out object permanence.

"My wife is pregnant," Charlie blurts, his voice thin. "And like you said, you're my only blood relative. Keri - my wife - and I, we thought it might be nice for our baby to have some family from my side." He looks down at the tabletop, pauses, deliberate. "There was a while where you ruined my life. I never wanted to be famous. There was a reason I didn't come forward, and you took that from me."

"I know, man, and I'm sorry. I thought that you'd told—"

"You said in one of your messages. And I guess I understand that. But to tell you the truth, I don't know if I would have contacted you if we weren't having a baby." He shrugs, the defiance sitting awkwardly on him.

Logan can't help feeling like this whole meeting is a test. He thinks about family barbecues, about Mattie having a cousin to visit with on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and swallows his anger. "I understand," he says, voice low. And then remembering himself sitting across from Emily like this last year, he looks up. "Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?"

"It's a girl," Charlie admits, his face relaxing a little into a smile. It seems more natural on him than the hackles and the anger, but they're back after a minute. "With your boy, do you ever...that reporter, he said that…" He takes a breath, a shaking one. "Are you ever afraid?"

It seems absurd to Logan that he keeps having important conversations in coffee shops. He doesn't really want to be talking about the explosiveness in his blood, the disease that could be helixing along his DNA, even with the one person who might understand it, when behind them is a man complaining that there isn't enough extra foam on his latte. He does it anyway. "I'm afraid all the time. I think everyone is. It's so easy for them to get hurt, and the idea that you could be the one hurting them...I don't know, man. It makes you want to run. But I guess that's the difference. My dad - our dad - he didn't think like that. It wasn't about me, it was about him. It was all about him. So I try to remember that I'm not him. I try every day not to be him. And I haven't screwed it up too badly so far." His hands play along the lid of his coffee cup but he's not stupid enough to try to take a sip; whatever is left will be cold and disgusting by now. He shrugs. "Or some other one-liners from Therapy 101."

"I don't think any of that was in the basic psych classes I took in college," Charlie says, his tone jokingly doubtful, however forced. There's something in that, the normalcy and quiet humor, that reminds Logan of the best parts of Duncan, that makes Logan see, as if through squinted eyes, how he could be friends with his brother. "But it helps. Thank you."

"Can I ask you something?" At Charlie's nod, "Do you surf?"

"Not really." Even knowing that Norman Phipps must have based his Charlie on what Logan wanted to hear, it's a disappointment. "But I like to run."

"I know it's a long trip, but maybe sometime after the baby's born, I could come up and we could run together. Stroller races or something." He feels childish as he says it, hopeful and yearning.

"Yeah. Maybe someday," and while Logan wouldn't exactly categorize it as a resounding agreement, Charlie smiles as he says it and Logan knows it's a start.

May

Charlie's little girl is due to be born at the beginning of June, so he emails an apology in response to Logan's graduation invitation. There's a fading, dormant disappointment as Logan reads it, even though he laughs at the picture Charlie attached of Keri smiling gamely despite her swollen feet and enormous belly. Although he and Charlie keep in touch intermittently now, he thinks that maybe Charlie is simply not ready to show up for his milestones.

He is smiling truly, however, by graduation morning as he and Wallace pose in their graduation gowns while Veronica takes a picture of them over Skype.

"Weren't you a photographer for two illustrious academic publications?" Wallace asks. He flicks Logan's tassel away from his face once again. "Don't you know that all you're gonna get is the glare trifecta from your computer, our lights, and the glimmer off this fine polyester apparel?"

"Well, if I can't be there in person, I'm going to bear witness to these first class garments of non-natural origin as best I can." Veronica snaps another picture. She had wanted to come for today, but between finishing her semester and starting her summer job at a camera store up at Stanford hadn't been able to get back.

"Mrs. Fennel and Emily will have you covered. I'm starting a modeling career with the shots they got of me earlier," Logan says, giving a leading man set to his chin and smiling. A horn honks outside. "Speaking of the photographers, it looks like we have to go."

"Look collegiate!" Veronica instructs, and they say goodbye, stripping off their robes for the drive to Hearst. It's sunny and already almost eighty degrees; going commando wouldn't have been a bad idea, except he was not prepared for the power of Alicia Fennel's disapproval if he hadn't put on a respectable button down and dress pants.

Logan knows he made the right choice not attending Emily's graduation last year. He barely wants to be at his own. Hearst gets second rate honorary degree recipients, so they have to listen to some former attorney general give cliché reminiscence of her own graduation. Emily, a better person than Logan, is in the crowd somewhere with Mattie on her lap. He catches a glimpse of her only once, as the camera pans to catch a group of parents wheeling strollers on the section of the football field between the graduates from the onlookers.

You should have just stayed home, he texts her. I would have even reenacted my big walk for you. For a limited time only, Pomp and Circumstance included.

We're doing fine. Mattie and I wanted to see your big day! Make sure to smile when you go up!

He slides down a little in his seat as he reads it, but when he gets up to the stage, when he walks across knowing that one pair of clapping hands is just for him, he is glad that she came.

They go to Wallace and Alicia's for a barbeque afterward. In the car, Logan is slightly horrified to discover that between the time he saw them this morning and now, Emily has changed Matthew into a onesie with the Hearst logo on the front.

"I didn't think I would be that person," Emily says defensively, seeing Logan's face. "But I wanted him to be extra cute for his pictures with Daddy."

In the Fennel's backyard, she makes him put his gown back on to take more pictures with Matthew. He protests, but finally acquiesces despite Wallace's laughter, because his kid is pretty cute, and easily entertained by the tassel on Logan's mortarboard.

It's a good night. Mac comes over with an entire entourage which includes grandparents but not Madison. They end up with far too many tofu hot dogs because both of Mac's mothers and Wallace all remembered to buy, but Mac looks uncomfortably touched and it's not a problem. Keith Mars shows up and that's still okay. A silly smile covers his face as he makes Alicia laugh. He speaks jovially to Wallace and even Logan as they tend the grill.

"Congratulations, Wallace," he says as he comes over. "And you too, Logan." There's a difference in the way he shakes their hands - Wallace's name could easily be interchanged for "son" - but it's not a restraining arm to the chest, so it's definitely a step up.

It's not late, but things have begun winding down as Matthew gets increasingly fussier, letting out small tired whines that seem to draw all the maternal figures toward him. Mac looks on with disturbed fascination, as if she is observing the strange behavior of some kind of bug. Emily offers to let Logan stay, but he thanks Wallace and Alicia and they go home.

It's hard to maneuver Matthew's sleepy, boneless body into his pajamas, and there's no hope for a bath. As Logan rocks him and places him carefully in his crib, Mattie's hair smells like charcoal and the beginning of summer.

June, July, August

Being an unemployed college grad is not, as it turns out, "living the fucking dream."

"But look at it like this," Dick, the author of said claim, explains, boisterous and patient like Logan needs to be walked step by step through the most elementary things. They are straddling their boards in the morning surf, waiting between waves. Logan slicks back his hair with a wet hand. "You have unlimited time again but then you've got the certificate of kiss-assery on your wall. It's the perfect balance. You're slacking," he holds out one hand, palm up, "but you've got no one riding your ass for being a slacker." He holds out the other and moves both hands up and down in the air in a "win-win" gesture. His eyebrows are raised like he's just gifted Logan with great wisdom.

Logan squints out across the water. "Maybe your advice would come across better if you hadn't just failed Intro to Logic."

"Fucking Diller said the thing was flunk-proof." Dick's face collapses into a scowl. He drops his hands, sounding persecuted. "That bitch professor just wants to keep me around so I can play teacher's pet. It'll be slim pickings around the schoolyard once Hearst is in my rearview."

In the distance something swells, California blue. "It's a different world you live in, isn't it?"

"Maybe. But that just gives me the advantage. I'm away from the action. My head's totally clear." It's always impressed Logan that Dick's words can sound coherent while his tone sounds as if he's losing brain cells by the minute. "Let me be your Buddha."

Logan shifts onto his stomach. "Enlightened, or a fatass? Because you can't reach enlightenment by just chugging that one more beer every night."

Dick yells, "Fuck you!" and either splashes some water at him or falls off of his board trying, but Logan is already paddling out.

Buddha or not, Dick is right about the free time. (Also about the diploma on his wall, framed and hung in the space off the living room that would have been an office if Logan had anything official to do there.) Although it's relaxing for a few weeks, there's only so much time he can fill with video games and surfing and ice cream with Heather, especially since she is vaguely, adolescently irritating to be around these days.

"I could stay out all night and she wouldn't notice," she says, poking sullenly at her brownie sundae. He closes his eyes against a headache and half wishes she would go back to in-depth descriptions of her latest crush rather than endless complaining about her mother's dating habits. It hurts a little to hear her bitterness over this. Just a few years ago she had been a starry-eyed believer in love and he wishes she could have that back.

"I'm sure the guy isn't that bad," he says, wondering when exactly he turned into the always look on the bright side adult.

Heather snorts. "Yeah, five AM hikes and tofu casserole. We're BFF now." She sticks a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth, but Logan can see the vulnerability as she swallows and says, "He has kids already. Two little ones who wear whatever my mom picks out and never talk during movies."

Logan puts a hand over hers where she is stirring the melting ice cream around the dish. "And your mom has one awesome kid who never shuts up during movies and could pull off a Veronica Mars wardrobe at age eleven."

Heather's face lights up. Somehow she's still starry-eyed when it comes to this. "How is Veronica?"

He tells her the last story he heard from Veronica, about the thief who she referred to as the Freedom of Information Bandit, a guy who was taking books from Stanford's rare book collection and placing them in the open stacks. He likes the way it makes Heather laugh again, and it means that he doesn't have to think about the way Heather's story parallels his own.

Emily has been going out more frequently now that he has unlimited Matthew-watching time. Logan can tell from the way she talks about it - saying that she's "having some fun" and "trying things out" - that she isn't serious yet. But Emily wants to get married, and one day she will be serious. Someday, when Mattie is a year old, or two, or five, she is going to bring another guy into their kid's life.

He does like that her dating means he gets to spend more time with Mattie, though. He had assumed that he would want a carefree post-college summer, so Alexandra is still around most days. But the two weeks she takes off for vacation, when he fills his day with his son, are a kind of carefree he didn't expect. Matthew is oddly good company, still a baby, sometimes cranky and crying, but mostly staring around, big-eyed and curious, excited by funny faces and different plays of light. He's easy to talk to, and Logan finds himself falling into offhanded monologues about everything: what they're going to do that day, the supersonic pitch of Mattie's squeals, and whether Love You Forever is cute or creepy.

He refrains from telling Charlie about any of this because his brother (half- brother? Charlie never says anything, but he seems to prefer the specificity) is still going through the "why won't she sleep?!" phase with his daughter Zoe.

She's two months now. This ends soon, right? Logan smiles at that and doesn't tell him that Matthew still doesn't always sleep through the night.

He also refrains, at Emily's advice, from asking Charlie if he wants Logan to come visit to help out. They haven't seen each other in person since that first meeting. Although they do correspond now, however tentatively, Logan is still surprised when Charlie emails him the last week of July and mentions that he'll be in town for a conference in mid-August.

I'm staying with a friend from grad school, he writes, But we could meet for drinks while I'm there.

Logan is checking his email on his phone, Matthew dozing in his arms, when he receives it. He's already managed to type out a yes before he realizes that to Charlie it's possible he's still the semi-alcoholic version of himself portrayed in magazines. But, he reasons with himself, maybe anything more than drinks would be too much commitment for Charlie.

Matthew stirs a little in his arms and he realizes that he's gone tense thinking about it. Man up, Echolls, he tells himself and asks Charlie out to dinner.

A few hours later he's following Emily around the kitchen, trying to convince her to join them.

"He really wants to meet you."

"Liar." She's a little sweaty; she's been taking an exercise class, spin jazz Pilates or something. "No way you said, hey, the mother of my kid is pretty snazzy and he went, well stop the presses, I have to see her in person."

"Well, I would never use the word 'snazzy,' but you have Charlie down and you don't even know him yet."

She rolls her eyes. "We'll have to ask Alexandra to stay late, or get another babysitter if she can't."

"See?" he says, a grin growing on his face as he seizes on her agreement. "You're not snazzy. You're spectacular."

Alexandra can't stay but the work he puts into finding a replacement is worth it as he drives to the restaurant a couple weeks later with Emily sitting calmly beside him.

He doesn't know why he's so nervous. He wasn't this nervous meeting the imposter Charlie, but everything about the real one is different. Maybe it's that he messed up with him before they even met, or that Charlie has a calm control that Logan clearly lacks, but being around his brother makes him feel young and unspooled.

"Will it help if I tell you that he's probably just as scared of you as you are of him?" Emily asks as they approach the restaurant. Logan raises an eyebrow and grips the steering wheel and doesn't say anything.

Charlie brought along the friend he's staying with to round out the group, and Emily goes to introduce herself while Logan and Charlie have an awkward mini reunion.

"Thanks for inviting me," Charlie says. "This place looks great." Logan's surprised to find that he sounds sincere, if a little strained.

Logan had discovered this place, close as it was to the beach, as a way to get some quick carbs into a hungover Dick, but the hipster comfort food vibe worked for him. Everyone else seems to like it, and even though it's a little loud, dinner goes smoothly. Charlie's friend is named Eric. He teaches history at a boy's school in the area, and looks the part in jeans and a vest. He's a dark-skinned guy, confident even though he's only an inch taller than Emily. The two of them were good buffer choices. Eric's calm good humor, Emily's warm clarity, smooth the conversation along, and by the end of the night, Logan has one elbow resting on the back of his chair as he gestures with the opposite hand, illustrating a story about Matthew's newfound favorite gesture.

"He just ends up flipping people off. I don't know how he does it, but his fingers just do it automatically." Even Emily is laughing. "And like I didn't have enough problems, it's always around old ladies."

"Would it be too obvious to say that it gives a whole new meaning to 'flipping the bird?'" Charlie asks.

"Yeah," Emily says, "But it's already too late, so we'll have to forgive you."

As they walk back to their cars, Charlie looks over at Logan. "You're a good dad, you know."

"The tone of surprise really," Logan makes an okay sign with his fingers, "sells it."

Charlie laughs, shuffling and embarrassed. "I can't tell you that I looked at the stuff I'd read and said 'wow, this guy's going to be a great father,' but you are." Logan knows that there's a difference between anecdotes and the everyday relationships of fathers and son, and something of that must show in his eyes. Charlie looks at him straight on. "You light up when you talk about him. You love Matthew, and I'm impressed with how you're handling things."

Charlie is six years older than Logan, but getting a compliment from him is like getting one from Keith Mars: a stand-up affirmation that warms him even though he tries to tell himself that he doesn't need their approval. He wants to hug Charlie, but sticks out a hand instead.

Emily stands talking to Eric under the streetlight for a few minutes after Logan gets in the car, so Logan has the time to himself to find a song he likes on the radio, to lean his arm out the window, to look up at the ceiling and smile to himself in the dark.

August

Logan holds the party for Matthew's first birthday.

"Why do we need to do something big?" Emily asks. "We'll get him a couple of presents, and I know my parents are sending something. We'll give him those, have some cake, and call it a day."

"Ah, the Party Witch. I think I read about you in my Mother Buzzkill fairy tale anthology," Logan says, already thinking of who should make the guest list.

He eliminates most of the people he knows because although they're up for a party, they're not looking for one with a Sesame Street theme. He's left with the same old people - Mac, the Fennels - to have over for cake on a Sunday afternoon. He lets Charlie know, even though it's too far for him to drive just for the day. After a little hesitation, he invites Dick too, although he doesn't expect him to show up.

There aren't a lot of activities you can do with a one year old, which means the party mostly involves mingling interspersed with cooing over the baby, something Matthew appears to tolerate but not relish.

"I guess we're lucky on that front," Emily says from the corner where they are watching as Mac, having completed her obligatory minute with the baby, hands him gingerly to Mrs. Fennel. "My dad says until I was two I cried if anyone but him, my mom or my sister tried to hold me." Logan has a sudden, sharp jealousy at the statement. He has no idea what he was like as a baby, and there's no one around to tell him.

Emily added a few friends of her own to the invite list - some mothers she has met at the park and the library, colleagues from work, and, Logan notices, Charlie's friend Eric - and Matthew's patience at meeting them all is clearly running out. Pushing his thoughts from their morose wanderings, he goes to rescue Mattie from a particularly affectionate scientist coworker of Emily's. He is pulling his son into his arms as, over the noise, he hears the doorbell.

"Should we wait a minute?" he asks as he settles Matthew on his hip. "Because I hear that if it's the postman he always rings twice." He holds up two fingers in demonstration; Mattie seems more interested in grabbing and pulling them. He manages to get his hand away to answer the door, and it feels like the right move because Dick is standing there looking like he's uncomfortable just with the presence of a child, much less one who's doing anything.

Logan swallows. "Hey, man, I'm glad you came." It feels thick in his throat.

"Just came by to give this to the kid." Dick shoves a parcel into his hands. Through the plastic wrapping, Logan can see a blue onesie, "Boob Man" written across it in black letters. A laugh huffs out of him.

"Thanks," he says, looking up, only to find that Dick is already down the steps. Logan steps after him, closing the door on the party. "Hey. Dick." He knows it isn't logical, knows that he should go back inside to people who don't hate his kid and look at him like he's a disappointment for growing up. But he also knows that as twisted as Dick is, he has stuck around. "Dick," Logan calls again. "We're having cake in a minute. If you wanted to stay."

Dick doesn't stop until Logan is right over his shoulder. Then he turns, heavy and reluctant compared to his usual loping sloppiness.

"You totally brotrayed me, you know, knocking up some chick and then going off to play house. It sucks that you did that." Usually Dick's emotional moments are facilitated by more than a couple of cold ones, characterized by tears or false casualness. The way he speaks now is simple, honest. Logan straightens. "I could maybe deal with that, but you're all about the kid now and the only kid I was ever around, I f—" He looks at Matthew, who is wriggling to get down from Logan's arms, and amends, "Screwed up."

Logan shifts Mattie a little, but knows that he only has another few minutes before it's going to be impossible to hold him. "Look," he says, trying not to sound helpless. He wants to tell Dick that when he had hurt Cassidy he was just a kid too, that their father shouldn't have sanctioned the torment of his younger son, but that isn't what they say to each other. "You don't have to take care of my kid. You don't even have to be around him if that's...not your thing. But the cake's chocolate, if you want to hang around."

Dick takes a step back just as the guy from down the street walks around the corner with his dog. Matthew's eyes go wide and he pushes forward from Logan's arms. Dick's hands come up with a jolt, automatic, to catch him, even though the little boy only managed to flop the front of his body forward.

"Doc," Matthew says firmly. He apparently has other things to worry about than being held awkwardly between his father and a stranger.

Dick looks at Logan. "No, man, Dick." He looks down and notices that he is still holding the baby. He pulls his hands away.

"Doc." Matthew points to the retriever across the street.

Logan readjusts Matthew once more. "He says it all the time. That and Elmo are a few of his favorite things." He gestures toward the balloon tied to the porch railing, the Muppet faces slightly warped from the rounded shape. Even as Logan's body turns toward the house, Mattie is still trying to reach over his shoulder for the dog. "Let's have cake instead," Logan says, but his son ignores him. Logan takes a step away from Dick. "I should take him inside before he kamikazes trying for an early career in dognapping."

As he reaches the top of the porch, he finds Dick beside him. "Guy wants one thing in life, and you're too cheap ass to get him a dog?"

Logan bumps him with a shoulder. "You spend all your time taking care of your board, you even know what it's like to take care of a dog?"

"Hey, caretaking, that's your job now." Dick says, raising an eyebrow and pointing a finger at Logan. He opens the door to the house and they go to have cake.

That night, Logan is the one to put Matthew to bed. The activity of the day has made him exhausted, so he falls asleep quietly, halfway through the board book Logan starts reading to him.

Taking a deep breath, Logan places Matthew in the crib. Usually he sneaks out at this point, but something about the baby's breathing keeps him there. He stands looking down at his son, his year old boy, for so long that Emily slips into the room, standing shadowed at his side.

"If my dad were still alive," he starts, and then pauses, watching as Matthew brushes a hand across his face, seeming almost aggravated even in his sleep. He could tell Veronica this because she knows how he feels about Aaron. He can tell Emily because she's the only one in the world who feels this way about this boy. "If my dad were still alive, I would kill him." He stares down at Matthew, watching him through the dark. "If there was a chance that he could be a danger to Mattie, I would make sure he wouldn't be around to hurt him."

After a minute Emily says, "That was weirdly sweet for someone talking homicide."

He ducks his head a little deeper and laughs, all hushed breath. "Hey, theoretical patricide is a step up for me." He wants to stroke along the slightly thicker section in the middle of Matthew's hair which almost resembles a mohawk but resists, knowing that it will probably wake him. Instead he looks down at the baby for another minute before he gives Emily a quick side hug and goes home.

September

Wallace gets a job in the fall, an entry level gig at a company that designs drink machines. It sounds boring as hell to Logan, but Wallace shrugs and says that it's putting money in the bank. On the side, he starts volunteering at a youth center, coaching basketball.

"You don't have to try so hard to make the rest of us look bad," Logan complains.

Wallace laughs. "Gotta keep the good guy game competitive."

A couple weeks into the job, Wallace's car breaks down, and it's Logan's turn to step up his own game while it's getting repaired. Without much to do anyway, Logan starts driving him home in the afternoons.

He is regretting the offer on the fourth day as he sits in the car for fifteen minutes waiting for Wallace to finish talking with a pair of boys. Matthew is in the backseat, his hands clenching fussily. He needs a nap.

"Snookums," Logan finally calls out the window, batting his eyes and tapping his fingers against the side of the car. "I've got a roast waiting in the oven and I know how you like your meat tender."

Wallace glares over his shoulder, bumps fists with the two, and jogs back to the car. "Sorry, man. They're just having some problems, needed someone to talk to." He reaches back before he puts his seatbelt on, holds a hand out to Mattie. "High five, little man?" Mattie, usually eager for them, just flaps his hand vaguely toward Wallace's and crinkles his face. Best case, he'll hold out until Logan can get him to bed, or maybe cry a little bit and then fall asleep in his carseat. Worst case, screaming all the way home, tortured animal style. Logan floors it.

They pass the boys Wallace was talking to standing by the bus stop on the corner. Glancing at them in the mirror, Logan opens his mouth to ask if their downcast faces are because their mom told them that they're moving with their auntie and uncle in Bel Air, but decides better of it. "What did they need to talk about?" he says instead.

Wallace breathes out softly. "They weren't really interested in talking specifics, but they both ran away and the shelter they're staying at is emergencies only, so they have to be out after two weeks. Wanted to know if I knew a place they could stay."

"Do you?"

"I thought maybe the apartment at my mom's, but she's got a new tenant coming in soon. They can go to an adult shelter but those places can be rough, you know?"

"What do you think will happen to them?" Logan never considered running away. He didn't know what might have happened to his mom if he wasn't there. And anyway, Aaron was a part of his life, something he had to deal with. He had resigned himself to that when he was young.

Wallace shrugs, still looking burdened. Logan understands why they asked him for help. "They'll probably be on the streets for a while. Not like they'll be alone. There are only a couple of youth shelters in the city and like a thousand homeless kids."

Logan almost reminds Wallace that hyperbole isn't his style, but then it sinks in that hyperbole isn't Wallace's style. "A thousand? Jesus."

"Yeah." Wallace shakes his head, voice bitter in a way that makes it unfamiliar. "But I don't think he's listening."

Even after he drops Wallace off and goes upstairs to rock Mattie, who cries exhaustedly for twenty minutes before the tiredness overtakes him, Logan is thinking of those numbers. Two shelters. A thousand kids. Even if they were giant warehouses they couldn't house that many, much less keep them fed and clothed and happy. After finally placing a tear-stained Matthew in his crib, Logan finds himself googling how-to guides. How to start a homeless shelter. How to start a 501(c)(3). Then to find large plots of land or buildings for sale in the area.

"Hey, sorry I'm so late," Emily says, hanging her bag on a hook by the door. She shakes her hair out as she comes over to stand beside him at the kitchen island. "What nefarious things are you up to?"

Logan looks up at her, feeling a little cloudy. "Nothing nefarious, but Judy, I think I'm going to start a homeless shelter in the barn."

October, November, December

Emily doesn't understand it at first, how ideas of maybe someday getting a job transformed into a multimillion dollar project in something with which he has no experience. It's the inexperience that gets him weird looks when he starts trying to interview managers.

There are a few websites that give step by step instructions, but no one seems to agree on the order. He figures he can start with a business plan, staff, and a space. All those business classes seem less useless as he does the former, and the husband and wife team he hires to oversee everything helps with the last.

They're named Eddie and Maria, and they've been working in shelters for longer than he's been alive. It quickly becomes clear that he's going to be better off leaving the daily operations to them, but that doesn't mean he sits back and just sticks his name on the building. The three of them work with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, find a building to convert, hire psychologists and social workers to round out the staff.

In December, knowing that even his ill-gotten inheritance won't support the place indefinitely, he hosts a fundraiser, the bow tie of his tux feeling both alien and better than ever.

"How do you do that?" Emily asks incredulously as he walks over to her, leaving a real estate mogul grinning behind him. "No one should be able to get people to sign over their checkbooks with just a little small talk."

"I have vast talent," he says, twitching his cuffs with a little 007 flourish.

"Just make sure you use it only for good." She looks past him toward the bar where Eric is getting her a drink. They've been seeing each other for a few months now, starting seriously a couple of weeks after Mattie's birthday party.

"How's that going?" Logan says, his mouth curling upwards, delicate and coy even as the thought tenses in his chest.

There's a strange tentativeness in the way she watches Eric making his way back to her. She stands with her head tilted, seeming almost weighted as the two of them watch Eric balance the drinks carefully as he waits patiently for the older lady walking in front of him. "It's going really well," she says anyway.

Logan looks over at her. "You sure?" he says, intent but trying to keep his voice from dropping to seriousness.

"Yeah, of course. Total sweetheart of a guy who's good with Mattie, bakes me muffins, and likes Discovery Channel almost as much as I do? I think it's basically the dictionary definition of going well." Maria comes over to Logan then, reminding him that he's supposed to introduce the slideshow prospectus in a few minutes. He follows her, but glances back over his shoulder at Emily as he walks to the edge of the room. She's lit like the full moon, clear and startlingly bright, arm hooked through Eric's as he finally reaches her. Logan's gut still tells him that they'll be talking about something later.

January

It's not until a month later, but he's proved right.

Alexandra still watches Matthew during the day, and Logan likes to come see them when he's working from home. He cuts back when Alexandra reminds him that routine and boundaries are good for kids, instead letting her bring Mattie over to his place for lunch or for a brief visit. He needs those times, really, after mornings spent talking permits and grants on the phone, or hours of looking at the numbers and leaning back in his chair realizing that no matter how many kids he helps, he's never going to be able to help all of them. Thinking about holding Mattie at the end of the day helps him through that.

He usually hangs out with Matthew at Emily's in the late afternoon and early evening, but when Emily is going to a work thing, or out with friends, or on a date with Eric, Mattie sometimes sleeps in the room Logan had set up for him months ago. It's strange, at first, doing all the dad things, knowing that his home is Mattie's home too, but he's been doing it all for months in pieces and after a while it's just automatic.

One night mid-January, he's gone through the usual dinner-bath-bed routine and is reading downstairs when he hears Emily's car in the driveway and her steps up onto the porch. She usually comes to check in with him when she gets back, but she doesn't come to his door and he doesn't hear hers open either. After a few moments, he looks outside.

She is sitting, hunched and loose-limbed, on the porch steps, despite the rocking chair placed neatly next to her door. He listens for Mattie and then goes out, closing the front door quietly and sitting beside Emily on the cold porch.

"How's Mattie?" she says, hushed and automatic.

"He's fine. Asleep upstairs." When she barely nods, "You're back early," he says. "Inspiration point too crowded?" She's quiet next to him, a distracted kind of silence. He pulls back to look at her. "Hey. Em." He rests a hand on his knee, close to her uncovered, goosebumped one. "Did Eric do something? Did something happen?" He likes Eric, he wants to trust Eric, but his instincts have been wrong too many times for that to be a deciding factor.

"Yeah." Her voice is stratified. "You could say that." She puts a hand over his as he jerks, finally looking at him. "Not like that. You can keep it cool, boy."

"So why are we being flash frozen out here?"

"He asked me if eventually I would want to get married," and everything goes silent inside him.

After a minute, Logan shifts. "He tried to put a ring on it? Seriously?" The night suddenly seems enveloping, putting ice in his chest, in his stomach.

"He started an exploratory pre-ring conversation. Thinking rationally about the future. Because he's older and looking for commitment and thinks that could possibly be with me."

"What did you say?"

"Oh, we're taking the shuttle to Vegas tonight. I'm just here to pack a bag," she snaps, and then swallows. "I told him that I wasn't sure." She leans away from Logan a little, sliding her arms around her knees. "It's all just happening really fucking fast, you know? I went through a breakup, I got pregnant, I graduated college, I had a baby, I got a job. I live next door to my...you. And now there's this guy, and he's— and it wasn't supposed to happen now." She reminds him of Veronica just then, struggling between self and surroundings, cornered and lashingly desperate. "I was supposed to start dating, and then in a few years when I'd gotten used to my life I was supposed to find the right guy, the guy who was good with Mattie and who was good for me."

"Yeah, and when have plans ever worked out?" He puts his palms flat on the porch behind him, resting his weight back on them. He looks out past her. "Do you love him?" he asks, because while she won't be cracking his heart with the answer, she might be cracking the family that they have built, the comfort he has gained.

He can see her parents at war in her face: Jim's calm surrender to optimism, Teresa's locked realism. "Yes," she admits, resting the word carefully between them. "But does that matter?"

Logan fell in love with Lilly laughing and unburdened. But he woke in love with Veronica, sudden, accidental, and, despite everything, true. He knows what it's like to be insensibly filled with love like that. "It matters," he tells her, and there must be something in the way he says it because she turns to look at him. He tilts his head. "Look, he didn't get down on one knee after five months. He knew you better than that."

"So you think he deserves a chance?"

"Hey," he gets up and, offering her a hand, pulls her to her feet. "It's your life. But I think you're betraying Rick James if you give up on love because you didn't have it penciled into your day planner."

Emily laughs slightly, still a little in her own mind. "Yeah. Okay." She brushes his arm quickly and steps toward her door. "I'll be on the lookout for your sex and relationship column from now on," she tosses back at him as she goes inside.

Mattie is still asleep when Logan gets back inside, just one small sound from his room disrupting the silence of the house as Logan gets ready for bed. Eric and Emily are on his mind, but more than that it's Veronica.

It's not that he hasn't thought of her in the months since she left for Stanford. They text and call each other occasionally, and she comes up in conversation with Wallace and Mac often. More than that, she comes to his mind at random because she's wound into him, because she's his oldest friend, because they live separate lives and still he loves her.

But the specter of her hangs around him more potently all week, through meetings with Eddie and Maria and the construction foreman for the building renovations that they're doing, as Alexandra tells him that she thinks Mattie is getting a cold, and when Emily tells him with a casual smile that she and Eric are going out again next Saturday. He wonders what she would say.

He is focused on Matthew that Saturday afternoon with Emily out. They are playing with Mattie's Fisher-Price farm set, which means that Matthew is cantering animals around until he gets bored and throws them across the floor one by one. Logan's role is to retrieve the plastic figures when Mattie runs out of them. He's grateful when there's a knock on the door. He picks up Matthew, because his little boy's joyful curiosity can easily turn to disaster if he's left unsupervised, and goes to answer it. As the door swings open, his mind goes blank.

"Think of the devil and she appears," is what comes out after a moment, because Veronica Mars is standing on his doorstep.

Chapter Text

Logan stares at her for a minute before craning his neck out the door, peering at his mailbox and the glinting number on the house. "Well, it looks like I'm still in the right place. So what are you doing back here in Kansas?"

"Sometimes the tornado brings you back," she says. She looks basically the same, hair a little shorter maybe, eyes just as intent.

"Not a no place like home girl?"

"Eh." She shrugs. "That too." He can feel how good it is to see her in the smiling unsettledness of his stomach. But Matthew is lying between them, heavier than just his weight on Logan's hip where he's shifting to get down. Logan steps back, lets the door swing fractionally. "Do you have time to come in?

"Sure," she says, and maybe three people in the world would notice the tiny lift of her chin that is the determined tilt of a knight accepting a challenge.

He puts Mattie on the floor, where he totally ignores the two of them in favor of returning to his plastic farm. Logan goes to sit beside Veronica, but his kid's grip is a little enthusiastic when he grabs up a bright pink pig, and Logan slides down, positioning himself to guard against flying animals. He looks up at Veronica, who has been watching them carefully.

"He's big," she says after a minute, although he realizes that she has no frame of reference. This is the first time she's seeing Matthew.

"They've been begging for him at Gerber," he replies. "He's perfect."

"That's good."

There's an awkward silence that feels different than high school. Finally Logan asks, "I thought you still had another semester before I had to get you a hat for your press badge."

"I do. But I'm doing my investigative thesis, and the material up north just didn't seem as much fun as the stuff back home."

"Of course. Veronica Mars makes her triumphant return to reveal the evil beneath our noses." His voice is fond, and the catch as he glances down is split-second. There had been this thought hiding in the recesses of his mind, like a splinter he hadn't even realized had embedded itself until he pressed on it, that maybe Veronica had come back for him. "What are you digging up this time?"

She leans forward a little, and something spirals in his stomach, a "here we go again" the tone of which he can't quite identify. "I'm doing a collection on international adoption. A lot of the countries in Asia and Africa are regulating adoptions from the states, so Central and South America are getting big. And I found out that one of the biggest, most successful agencies in the state is right back in my hometown."

"Of course it is. Having it somewhere else would have been so much less convenient." He freezes as soon as the casual words have left his mouth. "This is going to turn into something about Neptune's rollicking baby trade, isn't it? Because this place had almost dropped to number two on the list of California's top beachside hellholes."

Veronica shakes her head. "Shockingly, I think this is on the level. But I heard the Chamber of Commerce is advertising Dog Beach as a spring break hotspot, so I think the competition is still on."

He relaxes back into the familiarity of this leisurely bantering rerun of details, a breezing flashback to their sophomore and junior years, before Emily, of the two of them on stakeouts, tossing around case particulars and stories of their days. Of trying not to catch Veronica's eye through the dark.

It would be all too easy now, with the sun streaming through his windows and Veronica perched on his couch. But it makes less sense to fall into that now than it did two years ago. Then he was just risking their carefully rebuilt friendship. Now the factors involved make linear algebra look simple.

He isn't quite sure how to feel when Matthew, bored with his game and ready for lunch, starts making a hungry little whine.

"Okay," Logan says, and picks him up. He gestures with his head into the kitchen. "Do you want something to eat?" It almost chokes him, the unfamiliar politeness. He hasn't been like that with Veronica since they were twelve years old. The time when she would have walked into his house and helped herself to the contents of his fridge is desperately recent but distressingly far.

"Just water is fine," she says, and as she pulls herself up onto a stool by the kitchen island, he thinks he sees a shadow in her face that tells him she remembers too.

He puts Mattie in his high chair and goes to get her a glass, grabbing out a baby yogurt and a spoon as he does. Mattie likes to feed himself by this point (and occasionally attempt to feed Logan) but Logan gives him a bib and stations himself in front of him anyway. His walls and floor have had too much food on them for him to trust the kid on his own.

"So what are you doing about this adoption thing?" he asks, glancing at her before focusing back on Matthew, who is thankfully deeply focused on the yogurt-to-mouth transfer.

"I was going to just come and do a day of interviews, but they offered a long term, in-depth deal, so..." She shrugs, somehow shy and sharp.

He nods. "You got that special little shiver."

She looks over at Mattie and drinks her water. "The all access pass is good, but it might have been even more special if I had gone with plan B." He tilts his eyebrow, twitches his mouth. "Undercover," she lays out. "It's been too long since I did some. If they'd said no, I was ready to go back in, Coach."

"Yeah, I miss those old days of near-death experiences. I'm jealous."

"Hey, you would have been invited. Cute couple eager for a baby would have made more sense than me as junior miss spinster ready for a kid." She looks at him over her glass, and he looks back for a spun-sugar moment. She glances at the high chair and tacks on, "We could have brought a picture, said that we were hoping to give him a brother, play up the happy little family thing."

Logan's "No," sudden and inappropriately serious, overtakes the grasping flash of pain he has at the image. "I would have been there, but Mattie stays out of it."

"I wouldn't have him involved if I thought it was that dangerous," Veronica says quickly. Things have shifted in the breach between seconds. Mattie waves his spoon, oblivious.

"I know," Logan tells her, taking a paper towel and reaching out to clean some yogurt out of Mattie's hair. Looking back at her again, he says, "But he's the best thing I've ever done in my life, Veronica. I'm not going to risk him."

She takes a sip of water, seeming to hold back from saying something. She stays for a little while longer, discussing the details of her article, talking about moving back in with her father and making plans to meet up for coffee, while Logan cleans Matthew up and gets him ready to take a nap, but she never really stops glancing at Mattie out of the corner of her eye.

Some days he walks into the shelter and smiles because he can picture now what it's going to look like. It's not just a warehouse anymore. He can see where the kids are going to watch TV, and where they're going to sleep. He's insisted on having compartments built by the beds so each kid can have a place to tuck their stuff away. He's never really recovered the volume of things he lost when his house burned down and for the most part he doesn't miss it, but he knows the ache of not having the things that are precious to you kept safe.

Some days he has to deal with a thousand phone calls and work to tighten the budget and put on his best smile and his Hollywood sob story at town meetings meant to reassure the neighbors that this won't bring a blight upon their houses. Some days he ends up in his office with his eyes pressed into the heels of his hands. Some days he goes over and puts Mattie to sleep, just so he can feel bound together by the weight of his son in his arms. He's never really believed in a better world, and he isn't sure that he does now, but he wants one.

Some days the light streams through the windows, and he swings a hammer beside Wallace, and asks Steph, their general contractor, if he's doing it right, and laughs with Eddie, and teases Maria, and he can't believe that he might not have ended up here.

Veronica shows up on one of those days, looking farm fresh in a pair of old jeans. She and Logan duck into a brief, awkward hug, and she looks around.

"Wallace told me that you can always use extra hands around here." She holds her palms up. "They're small but mighty."

"I know," Logan grins. He calls over his shoulder, "Steph, can we get a hammer for Veronica?"

They're the last two there that night, painting in one of the offices. There's a radio that someone forgot to turn off playing far away across the space. Logan can't make out the lyrics, but the sound of it fills the background as they work, insulates the quick glances they make toward each other.

"How's the article going?" Logan asks eventually.

"Okay." Veronica gets up from where she has been working at the baseboard after finally admitting that even when she used the long roller, the top of the walls looked better when Logan did them. She stretches, extending her back a little. Logan focuses on getting a smooth coat of paint. "I've been trying to get different angles on the story, you know, kids who had good or bad adoption experiences, parents. I've been emailing a few women who gave their kids up for adoption." Something folds in her face. "These women, Logan...they ache. One of them said she knew that it was the right thing to do, but even she said that she still wakes up sometimes and wonders where her son is."

Logan remembers sitting on Emily's bed, more than two years ago now, and asking her if she was considering abortion or adoption. Now the memory makes him take a step back. He knows that for a lot of people in their situation it might have been the right choice, and even knows that if they had gone that way, he might barely think of it now. But the idea of never knowing Mattie's laugh when he is tickled before a bath, of never hearing his stubborn, "No, Day!" before bed, scrapes a rawness beneath his heart.

After a minute, when he can look at Veronica again, he asks quietly, "Do you ever regret deciding not to have kids?"

She is quiet for a moment and he almost wishes he hadn't said anything. He concentrates back on the wall, rolling carefully along the corner. Finally she says, "Nothing would have stopped me. With everything I'd seen, everything I'd done, the idea of bringing a baby into that, even by accident...Maybe I'll regret it someday, but I stand by it."

After a minute, she picks up her brush and returns to the baseboard. "Do you have any regrets?" she asks.

"Where do you want to start the tally? Because I don't know that you have enough paint for that," he says, half joking. She lets out a breath that he thinks might be a laugh. After a while, he adds, pauses between the words, "One thing I do regret. Junior year at Hearst, I wish..."

"I forgave you for sleeping with Emily a long time ago, Logan," Veronica says gently.

He turns around to see her settled on her heels by the still-bare skirting by the doorway, looking at him. "I'm glad," he says slowly, because a part of him has been waiting to hear that since the moment he told her. "But I was going to say I wish we had talked more before you left for Stanford."

"Oh." She seems almost disappointed, turning away from him.

"Do you...you understand why I can't regret that night, right?" He runs a hand along the back of his neck, probably leaving paint there. "For a long time, I thought it said something good about me, that I felt guilty about it. But now..." He swallows, wondering if they've zoned the room correctly, because the space seems too small for awkward truths. "It might have been a mistake, but I have a kid because of it. There are things in my life that I would give anything to take back, but that can't be one of them. I got to be Mattie's dad because of what happened. How can I regret that?"

He almost expects her to walk out, but he's forgotten that she's grown up a little too. She meets his eyes, smiling at him with a bit of a twist to it. "Like Casablanca cock-eyed," she says, and he breathes again.

"Sure," he shrugs. "But thankfully minus the Nazis."

They settle into a routine. Or maybe not a routine, but a predictability, an understanding of proximity. Logan gets used to adding seeing Veronica to his hours with Mattie and talking over tea with Emily when she has the time. He gets used to her showing up at the shelter, to having her laugh at him as he tries to hang posters evenly, and to going for pizza after. And at the same time, he thinks it could end any moment.

She's still uncomfortable around Mattie, but it reminds him more of Mac now, unsure of what to do with a child rather than trying to distance herself from the evidence of betrayal. There's a trepidation on her face that he suspects he would be familiar with if Mattie belonged to some stranger. It's unnerving, though, to see her so hesitant. He almost tells her that it's okay, that she doesn't have to be around Matthew, but if he wants to be around her, at some point it's inevitable.

They spend an afternoon, one of the first nice ones of spring, in Logan and Emily's backyard. Mattie giggles himself into breathlessness as Logan chases him around the grass. Later, Logan lies on his back, Mattie drowsy on his chest. Veronica's shadow is thrown over the two of them, keeping the sun off from where she sits cross-legged beside his shoulder.

"Did you ever think that things would go like this?" he asks quietly.

"No," she says. She smiles down at him, and the sunlit moment feels so fragile he thinks it might be a dream. "But it's not bad, so maybe my lucky stars finally got out of their snit." Something passes over her face and she snaps, "Hey!" Logan starts to sit up, confused, but she is prying open Matthew's grasping hand, which has gripped a clump of dirt and was moving it closer to his mouth. Logan can see, with a little flinch, that there is a bug scuttling within. As Veronica loosens his fingers, stroking them back into calm, she glances at Logan and he sees the hesitancy again, an unsureness of boundaries.

"Once I turned around and he had half a bug in his mouth," Logan tells her. "And I did the exact same thing."

She wrinkles her mouth a little, and it looks more natural than the discomfort did. "I'm glad I could keep this bug intact."

He looks to where her hand is still wrapped around Mattie's small one. "I guess we'll have to keep you around. For the bugs' sake."

He invites her to come over one Saturday evening when Emily and Eric have gone out. He's pretty exhausted from the week, but he wants to see her. She eats dinner with Logan and Matthew, and just sort of blinks and then laughs when some of Matthew's slyly flung spaghetti lands on her top.

"I see where you get your sense of humor," she says wryly as she goes to clean herself up by the sink.

"Hey, I'm the original. I'm suing him for copyright infringement," Logan says, and he's impressed that the words come out clearly because as she dabs at her top his brain is already rocketing at a million miles an hour and he has to look away.

She's picked a movie by the time he gets down from putting Mattie to bed. It's something forgettable, car chases and explosions where they usually do comedies or classics together. He raises an eyebrow when he sees the box.

"It doesn't really look like you have the brainpower for plot right now," she says to his unasked question. As she sits beside him, he can't help but feel comforted, and he fights it because every time he's felt this before, it's been the run up to the rug being pulled from beneath him and he wants stability for just a little longer.

They talk over fiery death and predictable dialogue, discussing the research Veronica is working on and the weekend Logan is planning on spending up with Charlie and Keri and Zoe. There's almost a sleepiness to their ease with each other, a hush over the house that even screeching brakes from the TV can't dispel. Veronica curls her legs on the couch beside her, settles her head on Logan's shoulder, and he wishes he knew what she was thinking.

He almost thinks he is going to fall asleep when there's a quick tapping on the door. He starts to pull away from Veronica to answer it, but it is a slightly damp Emily and she lets herself in, pulling an equally disheveled Eric by the hand behind her. She looks glowing, her smile untangled, and he knows what she's going to say before she gets the words out.

"We're engaged!"

Logan gets to his feet. The movie has switched to a formulaic romantic scene, and he wishes it would go back to scoring his life with car crashes. "Congratulations, Em," he says, reaching to hug her. He shakes Eric's hand and scrutinizes him just long enough to confirm that he looks as happy as Emily.

There's no champagne in either of their houses, so Logan offers to go to Emily's to make milkshakes where the blender can't wake Matthew.

"I'll do it," Veronica says, and because Logan knows he should stay with Emily, and because he suspects Veronica has more milkshake expertise than he does, he lets her go.

Logan moves to turn off the TV. "Want to do the recap now, or wait for your G-rated celebratory beverage?"

"It's a pretty short story," Emily says. "Might not even last through half a milkshake." Her mouth keeps trying to escape from neutral back into a smile. "We had dinner and then went for a walk in Balboa Park, by the rose garden. And it was warm, and it smelled nice, and he asked me. And then the sprinklers came on and we got drenched running back to the car."

"Sounds nice. Simple."

"I knew that elaborate and expensive wasn't the way to go," Eric says. "And I figured that if she said no, it would be better that it happened where no one could see."

Somehow Logan finds a sliver of comfort in the idea that Eric was unsure of Emily's answer but as soon as the thought has gone through his mind, Emily is brushing a hand across Eric's shoulder and kissing his cheek and saying, "You could have done it in front of people, sweetheart." Eric tilts his head toward her, and it looks for a moment as if the air between them is a secret before Emily turns back to Logan. "How was Mattie?" she asks, slipping off her shoes and pushing herself onto one of his bar stools

"I'd almost go for Kubler-Ross over this throwing and eating things phase he's going through, but he's fine. You can check on him if you want." Her eyes move toward the stairs, but Veronica comes back just then with the milkshakes.

"Sorry for using your pitcher," she says to Emily as Logan gets down cups and pours for everyone. "It seemed like a better plan to replace this than to have to replace your glasses and clean your porch."

Emily waves a hand. "Don't worry about it. It'll be my milkshake pitcher from now on."

Logan feels like he should say something, like he should give grinning advice to this woman who has become so important to him, but words, right or wrong, seem to snake out of reach. It is Eric who leans one arm on Logan's kitchen island and says, glass aloft and eyes on Emily, "To the best night of my life."

After Emily and Eric have told Veronica the story again, and Veronica has let out an admiring whistle at the ring, Emily hugs Logan once more and goes to call her parents.

"Theresa's going to yell at you for waking her up," Logan reminds her teasingly.

"Yeah, and then she's going to show up here tomorrow night with a wedding planner and want to know what the colors are," Emily shoots back. "I'm hoping it's my dad who picks up."

Logan goes to rinse out the glasses. Veronica rests on the counter beside the sink, watching his face.

"Want to talk about it?" she says after a minute.

"About what?"

She sighs with force, as if the air had been annoying her. "Your sad puppy face is obvious even to those of us who haven't known you for ten years." He stays silent, focusing on the steel of the sink. "You must have known this might have been coming."

"Last time we talked about it, she wasn't sure," Logan says, cursing the past version of himself who, with the confidence of Emily's doubt behind him, had encouraged her relationship. "And it's not that I don't want her to be happy."

"It's that you don't want her to be happy without you," Veronica says, voice flat, and he looks up at her, half shocked. He finds her eyes.

"I'm happy that Emily found someone. I'm happy she's engaged," he says very clearly. "But they're going to be a family now. Someone's going to take their picture and it's going to start getting sold in frames." He pushes away from the sink. "They're the Cleavers and...I'm Uncle Billy."

"Hey, you're a lot prettier than Uncle Billy," she says. His face is expressionless, his arms tight against his chest. She rests a palm against his forearm. "You're not going to lose him, Logan. Eric isn't his father, Emily isn't going to take him away from you. You're all going to stay right here and one day he's going to stomp in and tell you you're ruining his life, and then you'll know you've made it."

Logan closes his eyes and smiles without meaning to. He knows it should be a nightmare, but somewhere inside himself he loves the idea of Mattie as a teenager with all the pain of someone who has never suffered.

"If he's going to be anything like me, I should start researching military schools now," he says softly, but they both know it's an idle threat. She relaxes into a smile and turns to shut off the water. Logan moves toward the stairs, touching fingers to her shoulder for a moment before he climbs up and stands by Mattie's door, listening to the hushed sighs his breath and reassuring himself that he will be there for each moment of his son's life.

Logan gets home late one night. It was actually a pretty good day, the kind of day that exhausts him and feels like a deep breath at the same time. But as soon as he sees Eric sitting on his porch drinking a beer, all of that goes away. He ignores him as he walks up the steps and as he gets the mail, but before he can put the key in the lock, he opens his mouth.

"You'd think now that there's a ring involved she'd at least let you sleep in the bed." His voice is low, and he feels nasty even as he says it, but there's more of a homecoming to this than there was to the sight of his house coming up the street a few minutes ago, like he's just been playing Good Logan, Kind Logan, for months and years now.

Slowly, not even looking at him, Eric asks, "What..?"

"Well, maybe when you get to the altar she'll loosen up." He has to steel his insides as the words scrape against him. He remembered this being easier, the sweet slide of pained, avenging anger against a girl who was nearly his best friend. He tries to remind himself that he isn't angry with Emily, that it's just this douche sitting on his porch in neatly rolled sleeves and upstanding, relatable jeans. But she brought Eric here, and his breath feels choked and taut at the thought of him there for their rest of their lives, for the rest of Mattie's life.

"What did you say?" Eric's voice is wide and stabbing. Logan has never heard him like this, and there is victory in that. He shrugs.

"If you can hold out for just a few more months, you can play Happy Families all over that house." Logan puts the key in the lock, but doesn't quite twist it.

Eric's clawed stare stays on Logan for a second, and then his shoulders relax. Logan tenses, confused, and does nothing for a wiry moment. Eric rolls his beer between his palms. "My dad," he starts, and although there's more wry pity than Logan would put into the words, he recognizes the tone all the same. "My dad married my mom because he was into the whole Moroccan princess thing. He was too much of a thick shit to realize that it meant marrying someone with a different language and history and skin than his. And when I was born…" He shakes his head. "He died when I was six. But I've spent my whole life understanding lines and fitting in. I know where the lines are here, Logan. I know where I fit." His voice is soft, and Logan turns to face him fully. "I'm going to be Mattie's stepdad. I love him, I think every person who's met him loves him, and I will be right there if he needs me, but you're his dad. I'm not looking to get in the way of that."

Language has always served Logan well: the precise twist of a quip, a quote, his tongue alight. Still, he knows better than many, that sometimes words are just words, sometimes they snicker over the betrayals lurking in their crevices. But he looks at Eric and thinks of what he is offering, and wants, very badly, to believe in this truth. Logan sniffs in a quick breath, nods. "Alright." He turns away, finally turning the key, but doesn't go in yet. "Eric." He lifts his voice so it just carries.

"Yeah?"

"I appreciate that, but I'm his father, and you know what my job is." He knows that he is shadowed by the angles of the porch light, his back broad and bruising against the outline of the door. "So I promise you, touch my kid, and I'll hunt you down." He pushes open the door.

"Logan."

He shifts, just barely, toward Eric's voice. "Yeah?"

"I'm going to be his stepfather, and I have a job too. So I promise you too: touch your kid, and they'll never find your body."

Logan gives a slim nod and goes inside. Maybe he and Eric will never be best friends, but if Wallace is up for it, poker every couple of months won't hurt.

He wakes up one morning and realizes that he expects to see Veronica, and even knowing how dangerous it is, even with the invisible clock of her stay in Neptune running down above him, he finds comfort in that. But he's started to realize that as she has twined her way into his life, hers remains distant. Even more than the itching question in his skin wondering how soon she might be leaving, that reminds him of the way that during their relationship he sometimes felt tucked into a box of her formation.

So when she asks, nearly offhand, if he wants to help out with a quick surveillance job she's doing for her dad, he has to try hard to freeze his reply into casualness.

He suspected that sitting in her car in front of the Camelot would be familiar, but he hadn't realized the arm's reach of the past into this moment.

"Still no civilization," she says, glancing at the way he tucks his knee against her dashboard.

He taps a finger against the window. "I've still got most of the civilization, it's just the class that's worn away."

"You're in the right place then." He senses her growing intent, aiming her camera at one of the upper windows. She checks the photograph, takes another few for good measure, and looks satisfied. It's the smile that does him in. He tilts his head toward her.

"Like riding a bike?" he asks on a breath.

"It always is." She looks over at him, a laugh under her words. "You want an ice cream for getting through that without making it dirty?"

He sits back up as she starts the car. His car is back by her apartment and he tends to find courage in half-light, so he asks, testing, "What do you have in your freezer?"

She pauses for that Veronica quick-thinking, half-blinking second. "You want Moose Tracks?"

"Let's do it."

Keith is reading a book on the couch. He looks over the top as they come in. "Was there a flashback memo that I missed?"

"We knew that the present is hard for you," Veronica says, digging through the freezer.

Keith says, all inflated sigh and book pressed to his chest, "It's just you growing up that's the trouble." He turns to where Logan has an elbow resting on the counter. "How are you, Logan?"

"Okay in the present," Logan nods.

"And what are you up to these days?"

Veronica brushes by his arm, handing him a bowl of Ben and Jerry's as he describes Mattie and the nearly completed shelter.

"And he still finds time for a stakeout," Veronica says, fanning a hand in a grinning sort of fake admiration.

"For the Camelot, I make time." Logan fiddles with his spoon, setting his eyes to meet Keith's.

"Maybe you could make time to join Veronica on whatever journalistic adventures she's been on lately."

Logan turns automatically toward Veronica, the idea that she has been digging into the certainly seedy underbelly of the adoption world without him overriding the near ridiculousness of Keith Mars suggesting that Logan should be spending more time with his daughter. She just shakes her head at both of them.

"It's just interviews. You'll have to wait until they're published to cry like everyone else."

Keith looks doubtful. "I've been referred to as hardboiled before," he says.

Veronica perches on the arm of the couch, balancing herself and her ice cream so she can pat his cheek. "Like an egg," she says fondly.

Logan looks at the two of them and adds dryly, "I think we can keep the tears at bay."

Veronica shrugs. "Big words, but I would read it in private if your rep is important to you."

Logan cries defiantly at his kitchen table reading Veronica's series on adoption. He doesn't say anything about it, but when she sees his face afterward, she grins and says, "My dad didn't hide his tissues well enough."

He goes up for the week before Veronica's graduation. She has some things to do - finishing off and turning in her final project, working things out with her subletter, and moving the things from her apartment back to Neptune - but mostly it will be her showing him where she spent a year and a half of her life. He hadn't thought she would be sentimental enough to want to sit through commencement, and she had backed this up by telling him her dad was eager to see her in her master's regalia. But he watches as she enters the pub where they are meeting some of her friends, sees her smile and the way her sharp, dogged interest in the world is matched by the small group that makes up her program. Logan meets six or seven of them that night, and it's over half the class.

"So what do you do, Logan?" Jackson asks as they settle around a table. He's the kind of tall that is all about an excess of limbs, and seems cramped in his chair.

"I'm the administrator of a homeless shelter," Logan says, the words automatic.

"Please," Veronica snorts from the seat next to him. "You built that place from the ground up," and Logan realizes with a peculiar jolt that she is proud of him, and that it expands his heart but does not drive him. He is suddenly cognizant of the way he feels like he fills his own skin, and that this was something he built from the ground up too.

He FaceTimes with Matthew and Emily every night. It's the longest he's been away since Mattie was born, and he misses his kid even as he laughs with Veronica, as he claps for her beside Wallace and Keith Mars as she receives her diploma, and lies on the scraps of grass of Memorial Court late at night, after the ceremonies are over.

"Do you think you'll come work here?" he says into the dim, starry silence. He knows that some of her friends are staying, moving into the Ph.D. program or taking jobs at nearby places where they've interned.

She looks around at the buildings that are unfamiliar to him, and he decides that he is going to ask her about her time here, about why she looks at this place with affection. "I got what I needed," she says.

There's a gala when they open the shelter, and Logan comes with an entourage: Wallace and Mac, Emily and Eric, Maria and Eddie. Veronica looks like Persephone in pomegranate red, and Logan wonders if he's heard that story quite right, who was really trapping who. Even Dick shows up on his best behavior, although he leaves after an hour. Logan gives a speech thanking everyone for their generosity, and ensuring everyone that the Two Hands Center will fill a real need in the community.

He thought for a long time about what to name it. He played with memories of his mother, trying to picture her face if he made the sign read Lynn Echolls House, but in the end this is not about his past or his ghosts. It's about the people who helped to build it, and the people who will fill it up.

He's reminded of that strongly when the work really starts. They start getting references from local social workers almost immediately, and the beds are quickly taken. This place, which has taken up almost a year of his life, which he is proud of, sometimes seems laughably inadequate. There are too many kids, too little space, too much still to be done. There are some kids he sees walk out the door after their weeks at Two Hands and it's like watching them walk off a cliff; he doesn't know what's going to happen to them, if they'll be able to keep up with school and find medical care and another safe place to sleep, and he holds Mattie a little closer.

He's taken to bringing his son to work with him some days. Alexandra has finished her master's and is looking for teaching jobs for the upcoming year, so they are transitioning Mattie to day care, but Logan figures there's no reason he can't keep Mattie with him for a little while longer.

He's not small anymore, almost three, but Mattie spends most of his time on Logan's hip. There's a little mischievousness to him, but Logan thinks he's thoughtful, too. Sometimes if things get too busy, he'll pass him off to Eddie or Maria, and then when he looks around ten minutes later finds that Mattie has convinced some of the kids to play tag or color pictures with him.

He has him in his arms one afternoon, trying simultaneously to get through to their supplier to figure out what went wrong with their food order, and open a box of animal crackers. He barely manages to smile at her as Veronica walks into his office and takes first the box and then the baby. She sits in his chair while he continues to pace and figure out if he needs to get Maria in to bust some balls. Or heads. She's not really picky.

Ten minutes later, when the distribution manager is apologizing - through gritted teeth, but still - and he has a guarantee that they'll have their shipment within two days plus a discount on their next order, he comes around the desk to say hello. Veronica has Mattie on her lap, a cracker in her palm.

"Raaahr," Matthew growls, taking the lion from her.

"My boy's a genius," Logan says. Veronica looks up at him and smiles.

"I'd be more impressed if he hadn't roared for the camel and the sheep, too."

"My boy's an occasional genius," Logan amends. "When circumstances are to his liking and the moon is in the appropriate house."

Veronica shrugs. "We can keep him around anyway. I don't know what sound a camel makes either."

There's a knock, and Logan turns. It's one of the new social workers on staff. Logan thinks her name is Lucy, but they all blend a little, with their draping tiredness magnified by the glasses they all seem to wear.

"Logan, I just wanted to let you know that a couple of the kids asked me if there's a room we could use for a substance abuse group to go with individual counseling, and I was thinking that if the group thing is popular, we might start the LGBT group sooner than we had planned."

"That sounds great. I'll talk to Maria and Eddie to see about one of the lounges. Are Thursdays okay?"

"Wednesdays might be better."

"Alright, I'll look into it. Have a good night."

She lifts a hand to Veronica, and moves a couple of fingers in that sort of wave people always seemed to use for little kids. Matthew stares at her for a minute and then returns to his animal crackers.

Even after she is gone, Logan looks at the place where she was. "What's with your face?" Veronica's voice nearly startles him.

"What?"

"Your face. You're doing this smiling thing with your face." She scrutinizes him again and nods. "It's your soppy smiling thing. In a second you're going to say something mushy, and I'm going to roll my eyes and say, 'Oh, yes, there's that obscenely sappy guy I know.'"

"I was just thinking," he said, defensiveness wearing off as soon as he starts speaking, "That some days the hard work is worth it."

Veronica rolls her eyes. "Oh, yes, there's that obscenely sappy guy I know," and she smiles.

On Saturday a few weeks later, Logan gets a text from Emily asking him to take Mattie for a while. When he walks in, Matthew is fiddling with blocks and Emily is pretending to bang her head on the counter. Her phone is sitting next to her coffee cup, and Theresa's voice is coming from it. Emily mutes the phone when she sees him come in.

"Oh, good. Please take our son somewhere and stimulate him intellectually and emotionally in a way that I cannot because my mother is draining both from me."

Logan grins. "Wedding again?" Emily just glares. "Remind her that it's not for months, and remind yourself that you're a girl who can say no."

"Now for the wedding party," Theresa is saying. "Your sisters, of course." She pauses, and by the quick squeeze of Emily's eyes, Logan knows that the two of them are thinking of the sister who won't be there. Theresa clears her throat and starts again, brusque. "But who else?"

Emily shakes herself, making a face, and unmutes the phone while Logan grabs a bag of stuff for Matthew. "I'm going to ask Sarah and Katie and," she shifts her gaze across the room, "Logan."

"The father of your child standing up at your wedding to another man." Theresa sounds like she might be snapping pencils on the other end. "How...non-traditional."

Logan bends and kisses her cheek. "Forget Oklahoma. Just try to keep this away from Sweeney Todd territory."

"Take my baby and run," she whispers.

He and Mattie are just down the street when Veronica texts him asking if he's free. Twenty minutes later, he is watching Matthew playing in the sandbox and Veronica slides onto the bench next to him.

"You watching his hands to make sure none of that is ending up in his mouth?"

"One day," Logan says, a smile pressing up the tips of his mouth, "he is going to build tall buildings and on that day you will regret making fun of his grasp of the medium."

"And today, if you take your eyes off of him, you will regret his general grasp on the medium."

Logan lowers his voice, leaning close to her. "At least he's better than that kid." He nods to a little boy who is having a tantrum by the slide and appears to be gnawing on the leg of his caregiver.

She leans toward him as well, and he feels the warmth of her neck and her hair, and he thinks she is going to say something snarky in response, but instead she asks, "Is this going somewhere, Logan?"

He knows the warmth is still there, but his chest feels frozen. "What do you mean?"

"You're one of my best friends," Veronica says. Everything about her body reminds him how hard these kinds of truths are for her, how hard she is working for him, and there's a different warmth in that. "But I thought that maybe, there could be something more than that. I thought, maybe…"

"I would," Logan says, throat dry. "If it was just me, I would. But I have—" He gestures to Matthew. "He's the most important person in my life, Veronica. And it's not fair for him to have you in his life, for him to know that you're the best at playing pirates and that you're a soft touch for ice cream, and then to have you leave."

"What makes you think I'll leave?" she says, so simply that for a moment he can't think of how to respond. All he can think of is the way her name is a sentence - Veronica mars, Veronica ruins, she scars - and how even knowing that, even as the person he is now, he would be with her anyway.

Trying for gentle, Logan says, "It's what you do. You leave. I sleep with people I shouldn't, and you—" He stops. He hopes Veronica is keeping an eye on Mattie because he can't really see him. Slowly, he says, "I haven't slept with anyone in more than two years."

"I can't speak to that directly," she nods. "But there is evidence to support it, yes."

"I haven't slept with anyone, and you're not leaving."

She looks over at him, squinting in the sunlight. "I got a job. A friend of one of my professors has this website, a watchdog kind of thing, writing in-depth versions of important stories that you'd usually find buried on page J14 of the metro section. It might involve a little travel, but I'm staying somewhere, and I kind of thought it might be here." She turns toward the sandbox. "What do you think, Mattie? Should I stay?"

"Dad, stay, V'onica, stay," Mattie says, settling himself stubbornly into the sand and digging his shovel in more deeply. Logan shakes his head.

"Between the two of us," he says, "I'm not under the delusion that I am the boss."

"The two of us, you and me, or the two of us, you and him?"

Logan smiles, and takes her hand, and says, "Yes."

Chapter Text

The year Mattie is six, he decides that he doesn't want to be called Mattie and finally realizes that most of his class doesn't bring a posse with them every time there's some kind of school pageant or fair. There are plenty of kids with divorced parents in the school, but most of those are of the messy, "I'll have Christmas, you have Easter" variety. Mattie's parents don't request neighborly cups of sugar from one another as much as they walk into each other's houses and help themselves before leaving a playful warning about better cabinet organization. The first time Logan heard one of Matt's friends question this, he was four, and didn't even blink as he talked about how his house was really two houses and how he sometimes got to switch between bedrooms.

It's an unusual Saturday that finds Logan alone in the car with his son. They are on the way back from a Junior Lego Robotics competition, and Matthew is holding his robot carefully in his lap, while the trophy he won is leaning against his thigh.

"Dad," Mattie says, turning from the window to look toward his father. Logan crosses his fingers that it isn't going to be another plea for a dog. "I usually have a lot of people come to see my stuff, right?"

It's been a rare occasion that Matt has looked off the stage at an event and not seen multiple parents, pseudo-grandparents and assorted aunts and uncles sitting in the front row. (They show up early to get priority seating. If there are people already scattered in those seats, Logan, Emily and Veronica glare at them until they get uncomfortable, and then Eric and Keith sweep in and graciously suggest alternate arrangements.)

"Yeah, Matt, you do. But your mom won't be back from her trip until Tuesday, and Veronica needed to work today. She'll be home later, though, and she said she'd make dinner so get ready to call for pizza."

Making fun of Veronica's cooking is typically a sure way to make Matt laugh, but now his son is quiet, frowning. "I saw my friend Victor today. And he didn't have his mom or his dad with him."

Logan recalls, vaguely, a solid looking boy, a couple of years older than Matt who they saw every so often at competitions. "He was with his team, bud. He didn't come with his parents."

"Yeah," Matt retorts, frustrated that Logan isn't following his train of thought. "But the rest of his team had moms and dads who came at the end. And Victor said his mom and dad left forever, so he lives with a lady who takes care of kids."

It's these kinds of questions that make Logan freeze up and wish that Mattie saved the heavy stuff for when he didn't have to worry about causing an accident. "Hey. You know that your mom and I would never leave you. Not ever." He makes sure to catch Matt's eye in the rearview.

Carelessly, Matt continues. Veronica might not be related by blood, but her relentlessness has definitely had an effect. "Okay, but I have lots of people who come to see my stuff. I have you and Mom and Papa and Veronica, and Mamie, and sometimes Nana and Grandpa, and Former Neptune Sheriff Keith Mars." Matt is pretty in awe of Keith and, after hearing the title on the news once, refused to call him anything else. "But Victor doesn't have anybody." From what Logan can see, Matt's eyes are wide, almost panicked. "Did I take all of Victor's people? Is that why I have a lot and he doesn't have any?"

Logan pulls into the driveway. He grips the steering wheel and blows out a breath before he gets out of the car. He opens Matt's door, pauses for a moment before he places his hand on the seat, trying to remember what the new stain is from (chocolate milkshake), and bends down so he's even with his son. "Mattie. Everyone gets the family they get, and it's nobody's fault. You don't choose your family." He levels a stare. "Your mom and me, we would choose you every time if we could. But sometimes we just have to just work with what we've got. You're never going to live in a world where we don't love you, but there are people who don't have that. So it's our job to make sure that we become their family. You think you can do that?"

Matt grins at Logan, still clutching his robot. "Yeah. I can do it."

The two of them are in the middle of making chili - Logan cutting and stirring and using the stove, and Matt carefully measuring out the appropriate spices - when Veronica gets home. "I said I would cook!" she protests, tossing her shoes beside the door.

"I know. That's why we're cooking," Logan responds wryly. Mattie - Matt, he's Matt now - giggles from his place at the counter.

"You can make dessert," he tells Veronica, making it sound like a consolation, although they all know what he means is that he wants her to make him an ice cream sundae.

She brushes a hand against his hair. "Do those spices right, and we might have a deal."

It's March, not quite warm enough to eat outside, but Matt begs them, so they take the food to the huddle of low chairs on the grass. As it gets dark out, Veronica goes inside to get the ice cream and Logan goes to get Matt a jacket. He catches her arm before he goes upstairs.

"Hey," he says, and when she turns, he kisses her, because he hasn't had a chance yet, and because he can.

"You're getting soft, Echolls," she tells him, and then, looking at his face, reevaluates. "You're maintaining softness. You really can't afford to get any softer."

"Go get your ice cream," he says, and takes the stairs two at a time.

Matt has gotten into Roald Dahl, and he and Logan read a chapter every night that they can. Tonight, though, after robotics and a Skype call with Emily and Eric at her conference in Colorado, he can barely keep his eyes open, and Logan has barely finished chapter four of The BFG when Matt rolls over and is asleep.

Veronica is in her office when Logan gets downstairs, so he goes to get a rocks glass, pours himself a drink and settles on the couch. He considers turning on the TV, but can't seem to find the remote. He's somewhere between thinking and dozing when Veronica walks out. The living room lights are brighter than those in the office and she blinks as she comes toward him, adjusting. It makes him think of the way she teased him last year when he thought he might need glasses; he is going to save up commentary for if she ever gets them.

She sits beside him and neatly steals his glass. "I dare you to go into a bar one day and order this," she says, taking a sip.

"I don't think they stock apple juice."

"Oh, I don't think you'll get it, I just think it would be funny to see you order an AJ on the rocks."

"You bring yourself enough humor. No need for me."

She puts the glass on the side table and settles against his side. "He go to sleep okay?"

"It was staying awake that was the problem," Logan says, eyes closed.

"He still asking for a dog?"

"Not today." He stretches a little. He's not yet thirty, but sometimes at night now he feels pleasantly, contently older. "But I'm sure he's just waiting to sneak it on me tomorrow after my night of false security."

She snorts a tiny laugh against his side. "What are you thinking?"

"Em is thinking yes. She says it'll teach him responsibility and help him understand consequences, or reality, or something."

"Yeah, but what do you think?"

"I think he's so responsible already we can probably put him in charge of Dick. And I'm not sure I need him understanding too much reality." He shifts to get more comfortable, and Veronica shifts with him. After a minute he says, "Today he was asking me about this kid at robotics, probably in foster care, because he noticed that his parents weren't with him. What kind of six-year-old notices that? Clearly his mom's had a good influence on him."

"He's a great kid," Veronica agrees. "But Logan, he's half you, and being emotionally attuned like that comes from your piece of the pie."

Logan barely lifts his shoulder; he knows she can feel the shrug. "The village is just raising him right." Even though Veronica's father and Eric's mother are involved in Mattie's life, even though he has been surrounded by a group Logan feels lucky to have in his life, it stings a little that he'll never be able to include his mother in that number. But every day with Mattie is like spitting on his father's grave, and he has to let that balance out.

"Logan." Veronica's voice interrupts his thoughts. It is very close to his face, and very firm. He opens his eyes to look at her. "You're raising him right." She stares at him until he tips his head slightly. She nods and sinks against his side again. His eyes close again, and he lets himself fall into the peace of the house. Veronica speaks again a few minutes later. "Tell me a story?" she mumbles into his arm.

He's halfway to falling asleep, but he starts anyway. "Once upon a time, there was a guy and a girl and another guy and another girl and a little boy and…damn, this is getting too complicated…I'm ditching half of you."

"Do I make the cut?"

"We'll see." He readjusts his arm so she is settled more firmly against him.

"Logan?"

"Yeah?"

"Did you ever think we'd end up here?"

He thinks of the years when he wasn't sure of anything, wasn't sure of himself or how to be a father or, sometimes, how to get through the next minute. He thinks of the years when he almost lost Veronica. He thinks of his son upstairs, breathing his slow, sleepy, unquestioning breaths. He thinks of Veronica beside him, Veronica who can't change except as much as she does. "No," he says. "But I'm glad we did."