Chapter Text
Logan skidded the XTerra to a halt and swung the wheel sharply right. He felt the SUV's back end squeal-crunch against the cement barrier, the shuddering shock of the impact. He threw the door open, sprinted and sprang to the railing of the bridge, taking it in a half-gainer — bam! Over and gone.
Or.
Some nights he stood up there thinking about it, the cold wind ruffling his hair and snapping his sleeves and his pants legs, looking straight down from the bridge to the vast blackness below. He knew the jump was coming. Sometimes he wanted it. Sometimes he was helpless to stop it, and those nights were bad.
He didn't actually remember the night on the Coronado Bridge. He watched Veronica and her father walk away across the beach, Veronica not looking back; then he woke up later that afternoon -- no, the next afternoon -- sprawled half-off his bed, still in his clothes and still mostly drunk, a hangover gathering in his head like a late-summer storm. His face looked like a busted pumpkin. He assumed his father had gotten after him. Later, he learned Aaron Echolls was flat on his back in the ICU at Neptune Memorial. Not in a position to be getting after anybody.
Flashes of memory surfaced later. He hadn't been afraid. He'd been ready to die. The height of his fall and the surface tension of the water would make it like landing in concrete. He'd be killed instantly, just like his mom. No swimming to shore and starting a new life under a new identity. No free at last. No drowning. Dead.
He would wake up at three or four in the morning, shivering in chilly sweat, a taste in his mouth like he'd been sucking on tin foil and a firm certainty in his head that this, the dim ink wash of his bedroom, this was the dream, and he had jumped, and this was all there was after death, this one day and this one night spooling on an endless loop for all eternity.
By the middle of July, the nightly meeting of The Coronado Bridge Club had accomplished what Duncan and Trina and all their nagging failed to do: Logan stopped drinking.
There was no getting over this. All these things he'd crammed into a hard, heavy ball inside of him like an Acme cartoon bomb. All these things he would not, could not think about. Could not even begin, because to begin was to touch a match to the fuse, knowing the explosion would tear him to pieces.
But, the nightmare was worse.
He knew she would come by the house. He was surprised she hadn't been 'round already. He didn't want to see her. Yeah, yeah, sure. She was wrong and sorry and guilty and she could never make it up to him, and he'd take one look at her and collapse like a soufflé, because she was a gorgeous, golden light, and he was a stupid fuckwad. Last fall, after he'd served detention for helping Weevil plant the school flagpole in Mr. Daniels' car, his father had broken three of his ribs. That's what it felt like. He wanted her so badly, it was like breathing knives.
Sometimes, he didn't wake up after jumping.
"Seriously. What do you think you can do to me?"
"Why dontcha step down, and we'll have a chit-chat?"
Logan snorted. Somewhere in the darkness of the San Diego waterfront, a bell began to sound the hours in rolling, iron-throated strokes.
"Okay, okay." Weevil conceded. "Get down here, and I'll beat the shit out of you. That's what I meant."
"Hmm..." Logan tapped his chin with one finger. "Tempting offer, but no thanks."
"What difference does it make? Be a pal, huh? Lemme beat you up." Weevil laid his helmet on the seat of his bike, and stepped forward, hooking his thumbs under his belt buckle. "All the comforts of home. I promise."
Logan raised his middle finger to Weevil. "Morituri te salutamas," he said with a smirk, and stepped backward off the railing.
He was right. It was like falling forever. He didn't even realize when he sliced from night air into water. He was wrong. He didn't die immediately. He sank, trailing a last breath from his nose and mouth in a stream of silvery bubbles. The cold speared him, clenched its claws in his muscles; pressure crushed his ears as he plunged deeper and deeper.
The pylons of the bridge glowed with green phosphorescence, warty with barnacles, trailing seaweed like drowned hair. Things swimming and squirming in the deeper blackness below waited to welcome him. Farther down glimmered the faint shapes of domes, arches, turrets: a city under the water. It didn't seem strange that he could see everything, while at the same time he knew it was utterly dark. Still he heard the bell tolling long, low note after note. The sound was coming from the city beneath him.
That struck him wrong. Truly, superbly wrong. He thrashed toward the surface of the water. Let Weevil beat the shit out of him. Hey, no problem. Let his dad continue to use him as a punching bag. Fine. Bring it. Anything but this endless, endless falling, darker and colder than he'd ever imagined. He struggled against the drag of the water, fighting the urge to open his mouth and breathe in. This wasn't what he'd wanted. This wasn't death.
Something snagged his ankle. His mother floated in the water just below him, greenly pale and bloated, sleek with a pearly pattern of scales, eyes blackly ancient. Logan opened his mouth to scream, and inhaled water. It went down with an icy burn, and a dark sunburst of pain spread through his chest. She smiled, tightened her webbed hand around his ankle and drew him down to her embrace.
Logan flailed awake to blinding daylight. He had absolutely no clue where he was. A moment later, he realized he was in his truck. The Coronado Bridge, the PCH Bike Club, the darkness, the water — gone. The Yellow Peril sat in the parking lot of a strip mall, under the stippled shade of a willow tree. His cell phone buzzed in his pocket.
Duncan, sitting in the passenger seat, smiled. "Morning."
Logan stared at him for a second, then shook himself and pulled out his phone. The display screen read,
Heartless Bitch
He had about fifty messages he hadn't listened to since the night on the bridge. The first night, you mean. Maybe all the messages were from Veronica. He didn't know and he didn't care. He did care. He just didn't want to deal with her shit. He wanted to deal with her shit. He couldn't. He could. He wouldn't. He didn't. He chucked the phone into the back seat of the XTerra and turned to Duncan. "How long was I asleep?"
"Not very."
Logan rubbed his eyes. He felt like he was looking through two pinholes. "Why didn’t you wake me up?"
"You told me not to. Besides, you looked like you needed it."
Yeah. I needed that little catnap like a I need a hole in the head. No, strike that. Trepanning might help.
Then the first part of what Duncan had said swung around and donkey-punched Logan: You told me not to.
"Hey, Dunk — let's pull over here for a sec. I'll catch some Zs, and have myself a pants-pissingly scary nightmare where my dead mom tries to drown me. I've been having the same dream nearly every night, but ya know... I kinda missed it. I'd like to have it in the middle of the day for a change. So, whatever you do, don't wake me up."
Logan had no memory of saying anything like that. Why the fuck would I tell him not to wake me up? Of course, Duncan had no reason to lie.
"... it been since you ate some soap?" Duncan asked.
Logan squinted owlishly at him. "Huh?"
"I said," Duncan repeated, like he was talking to a two year-old, "how long has it been since you got some sleep?"
"About two minutes."
"Seriously."
"I don't know. Couple nights." Or, possibly more like a couple weeks.
Duncan frowned.
Logan added, "A little sleep deprivation's not gonna kill me. I looked it up on Wikipedia. You have to be awake for months before that happens."
"If you looked it up, then you've probably been awake longer than two nights."
"You were so much more fun when you were medicated."
"You were more fun when you were drunk," Duncan retorted angrily.
Ow.
"Nice," Logan said. "Cute. Thanks a lot. Get out of my fucking car, Donut."
Duncan glared at him. "Tell me something, Logan. Are we still friends?"
Logan jumped out of the XTerra. He took two running steps and gained the bridge railing; another leap and he'd be —
"Come on, Logan," Duncan said from behind him. "Cut the shit and talk to me. Please."
Jesus Christ. Horror poured over Logan in a chilling wave. He'd actually been there. On the bridge. His brain hit a patch of gravel, the back wheels lost traction and started to slide. The whole thing tipped, overbalancing, center of gravity skewing. He could feel it coming. The crash. The explosion. The shrapnel.
No. No-no-no-no-no.
Fists tight, Logan walked across the parking lot toward the Starbucks, passing beneath the circular sign of the green mermaid, her hands holding up the two forks of her tail, her smile especially for him. I'll see you soon, Logan. Just close your eyes and let yourself fall. Asphalt baked under his sneakers, sweat crawled on his cold skin and everything turned drowned and darkwatery for a second, like an eclipse crossing his vision.
I'm losing my mind, he thought.
Okay, no. Calm down. Keep it together. You haven't had any sleep for a while. That's all.
"Everywhere, creatures are falling asleep," he murmured. "The Collapsible Frink just collapsed in a heap."
A girl coming out with a tray full of coffee cups gave him a sidelong smirk.
"What the fuck 're you looking at?" Logan snarled, and she scurried past him out of the store.
All right, you've started quoting Dr. Seuss. You've definitely gone a tad batshit.
Logan stood in line for the register, scowling at the tile floor between his feet, listening to that fucking stupid Hoobastank song playing on the overhead speakers. Hadn't Hoobastank's fifteen minutes been over months ago?
He couldn't talk about it with Duncan. There was nothing to talk about, exactly. Both of them had been through a gale-force shitstorm over the last few months. It made Lilly's death last year pale by comparison, almost. That had been a single, clean blow. Girlfriend murdered, murderer caught, grieving and longing and moving on, and, awful as it was, that was that.
But this.
This, this, this.
All this could be managed, he knew. All this could be digested. All this could be worked through, after a few billion dollars in therapy and some extensive electro-shock treatment, and maybe an ice-pick lobotomy. All this could be filed neatly and locked away and never thought of again.
Without Veronica to hold him, soothe him, distract him, kiss him — he could not begin. He was a mess. A no-longer-drunk mess. At least when you were drunk, you were supposed to be a mess. You were expected to take off your pants and threaten to kick people's asses if they didn’t Wang Chung. You couldn't make that excuse while you were hopped up on caffeine.
If Veronica resolved herself, all of this would fall in line.
If you would go talk to her, she would.
He couldn't. It was just so — they were so — maybe they needed time apart. That was such a fucking chick thing to say, but maybe the chicks were right this time.
"Hi, welcome to Starbucks; can I take your order?"
"Venti Mocha Valencia with an extra shot, and a venti Chai latte."
"Soy?"
"Cow."
"Name please?"
"Billy Joe MacAllister."
She wrote it on both cups without batting an eyelash. "Seven-fifty, please."
He didn't even know why Duncan liked him.
Something flickered in the corner of Logan's vision: a vague dark shape edging close to him. He turned his head. Nothing there. Nobody close to him in the coffee shop. Sleep deprivation, that's all it was. Classic symptom. Shadow figures, phantom noises. Talking Starbucks mermaids. No problem. He had it covered. Everything was cool.
The shadow had shown up about a month ago. The day he'd learned about his father screwing and then killing Lilly. That had been a bad day — oh yeah, talk about your classic understatements. He'd woken up drunk at four in the afternoon. Hey, let's start the day bright and shiny with a new Logan Echolls All-Time Low. Everything came sweeping back by the time he'd staggered into the shower. His arrest, his breakup with Veronica, his exhibition of Matrix-fu on the Coronado Bridge, Weevil... things got a little fuzzy from that point on. But, he'd obviously hit rock bottom. Done a face-plant into it, to judge by his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Then he'd turned on the television and discovered rock bottom had a trap door to a sub-basement, full of Morlocks.
Fucking bitch.
The sheriff's department turned the entire Echolls house upside-down following his father's arrest. Even Logan's room. Logan's stash of weed vanished, but in a single, small mercy, nobody mentioned it. Logan guessed Deputy Leo had found the pot. Deputy Leo. Obviously in Veronica's pocket, probably also in her pants.
Logan wasn't in the habit of trashing his own room. He was neat. It pissed him off, seeing his shit tossed haphazardly everywhere, the bed covers balled on the floor, books and CDs in messy piles on the desk. He started cleaning up. The help would get around to it eventually, but right now, the place looked like a frat house. Straightening his room gave Logan something to do, so he didn't have to brood, which was something else he wasn't any fucking good at. Brooding was another Duncan Kane specialty. Maybe he'd call D.K. later and ask for some pointers. Maybe Duncan had an extra Yorick skull laying around.
As he was putting things away, he caught a dark shape standing behind him (his father) and he turned fast. His hip hit the desk; the stack of CDs cascaded clattering to the floor. He was alone. Logan hissed, exasperated, catching that nasty, ass-end of fear after the fact. His heart jangled painfully before it settled down.
"Great," he muttered.
He put it in the CD player anyway. Cranked the volume all the way up. The angry, tribal bass and drums crashed over him. Yeah. Fuck yeah. That was more like it. That was exactly how he felt.
Logan threw his head back and yelled at the top of his lungs, "Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!"
He found yelling very therapeutic, and he continued yelling until his litany of "fuck" became a wordless howl of rage and hurt; he kept that going as long as he could, expelling all the air from his lungs in one long scream until he ran out. The moment he took a breath, a headache hit him right between the eyes. Black flecks splattered his vision, and his legs went shaky.
Woo, damn! he thought, and bent over, hands on his knees, panting.
The volume on the Drowning Pool CD dropped. Logan looked up; Duncan stood by the stereo as if somehow Logan's furious cry had summoned him like the Bat Signal.
"Thank you!" Trina called from somewhere in the house.
Logan straightened slowly, his head pounding, and stared at Duncan. He had no idea what to say. No strength or will to defend himself against any the many, many accusations Duncan would hurl at him. He wouldn't have put it past Duncan to punch him in the face.
Duncan only said, "Hey."
"Hey," Logan replied.
Duncan shifted his weight awkwardly. "How are you?"
Logan laughed shortly. "All things considered, I'd say... " He see-sawed one hand. "Mmm... completely shitty."
"I got here as soon as I could," Duncan gave a small, apologetic-looking shrug. "I had to sneak out. I..." He ran a hand through his hair. "Christ, Logan..."
"I'm sorry," Logan said. He knew how stupid and insufficient it sounded. What else could he say?
Duncan's brows drew together.
Oh, here it comes, Logan thought.
"No," Duncan replied, like he'd read Logan's mind. "No."
He crossed the room and pulled Logan, startled, into a tight hug. Logan didn't give a shit if it was weak or gay or whatever Duncan would rag him about later. He hung on to Duncan for a second before letting him go.
"Don't you fucking apologize," Duncan said with soft ferocity. "It's not your fault."
Logan did not contradict him. Afterward, Duncan dropped by the Echolls house nearly every day, to play XBox, or watch TV. The subject of Veronica was never mentioned.
The barista making the coffee was a plump, gorgeous girl with heavy black eyeliner and highlighter-pink hair. The arch humor in her eyes reminded him of Veronica. Everything reminded him of Veronica. "Venti Valencia and Venti Chai for, ah... Billy Joe?"
Logan raised his hand.
She smiled and slid his drinks across the counter. "Have a good one."
"Thanks."
Logan left the store and went back across the parking lot to the XTerra. Duncan had moved to the driver's side, and now he was sitting with one arm crooked out the open window. When he saw Logan returning with the two cups of coffee, he grinned. Logan was hard-put not to smile back. He handed Duncan the Chai latte.
"I knew you weren't really mad," Duncan said.
"Shut up and drink your girly-drink, ass pirate."
"Are you gonna get in the car?"
"It's my car. You get out."
Duncan's eyes darkened with concern. "I don't think you should be driving. If you're that tired."
"All right. Fine. Whatever." Logan walked around the other side, hopped in and shut the door. It felt weird to be sitting in the passenger seat of his own car.
"I'll take you home," Duncan said.
"Okay, but I don't put out on the first date."
"Maybe you should go somewhere for the summer. Away from Neptune, and everybody. Even me. I mean, you and I have got this... thing."
"This little blond thing."
"Yeah," Duncan sighed. He glanced briefly over at Logan before returning his attention to pulling out of the parking lot and into the traffic along Mar Vista Avenue. "Look, I don't know what to..."
"Forget it."
Logan emphatically did not want to talk about The Veronica Problem, but Duncan seemed not to catch the ball, because he added, "Go someplace alone and get your head straight. I've been thinking about it myself, except my parents put me on lockdown ever since I jaunted off to Cuba. I promise you I'm not going to try poaching on Veronica. I wouldn't do that. If it she chooses..."
"We both know she's gonna choose you, Duncan."
"There's the Echolls confidence I admire so much."
Logan smiled sardonically and took a sip of his coffee.
"I have to admit, I'm hoping for a dark horse," Duncan added. "Some third guy we never see coming."
Yeah, like Weevil Navarro. Veronica's knight on a shining Harley, Logan thought sourly. He said, "So we can get shitfaced and bond over our mutual heartbreak."
"Exactly."
"Maybe you're right, man. Maybe I just need to get out of Neptune for the summer."
"Don't forget to send me a postcard from Fire Island."
"Fuck you," Logan said.
"I don't put out on the first date," Duncan replied coolly.
Both of them cracked up. Okay fine, they were laughing too hard at something that wasn't all that funny. There was a definite edge of hysteria. Didn't matter. It just felt good to laugh for a change.