Title: The Snail and the Jackhammer

Author: Wynn

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Veronica Mars. They are owned by Rob Thomas, UPN, Warner Brothers, etc. and are used for non-profit, entertainment purposes only.

The Snail and the Jackhammer

By: Wynn

Okay.

Okay, breathe.

Breathe, Veronica. In and out. In and out. Nice and steady. Slow and steady. Like a snail. Yeah, just like a snail. Ignore that jackhammer thudding in your chest and the person that put it there and just breathe.

Shit. Bad idea. Bad, bad idea. Just breathing leads to just thinking and thinking now is not an option. Maybe five minutes ago it was because then I wouldn't have done what I did and therefore wouldn't have anything to not think about right now. Well, except for how the hell I'm supposed to infiltrate the inner sanctum of a probable psychotic school bomber who has the hots for me. But only that. Nothing else. Certainly nothing related to kissing my school arch-nemesis on the balcony of the local dive motel like some twisted version of Romeo and Juliet.

Oh, god. What the hell was I thinking? Okay, I know exactly what I was thinking. I was thinking danger and gun and Logan coming to my rescue, my rescue, me, Veronica Mars, and punching the shit out of my presumed kidnapper. I was thinking friendly peck on the cheek, a thanks for the non-rescue and severe over-protectiveness. I was thinking- Okay. All right. I wasn't thinking. Because if I had been thinking, I would have realized that my supposed friendly peck on the cheek somehow morphed into a full fledged kiss and then the most intense make-out session of my entire life. If I was thinking, I would have stopped. Stopped well before I started. If I was thinking.

Which I wasn't.

Why wasn't I? I always think. I am a thinker. Wallace says I think enough for four people, but somehow at that particular moment I stopped thinking. And started kissing. But don't think about that. Not thinking is the issue here, Veronica, not the kissing, so focus. Focus. Focus on the not thinking and not on the Logan kissage.

Logan kissed me.

Logan Echolls kissed me, Veronica Mars. And not in any way that could be classified as a friendly peck on the cheek in a serious denial session. This was… this was…

Hot.

Hot and insistent and.

And desperate.

Like oxygen depriving desperate.

Breathe, Veronica, breathe.

Okay, so I kissed Logan and Logan kissed me. Engaging in a serious session of denial won't change those basic (hotdesperateinsistent) facts, so I'm not going to try. Instead I will- what? Hyperventilate some more? Real productive there, Mars.

No, no more hyperventilating. I am the snail and not the jackhammer and will think this through logically. I kissed Logan. Logan kissed me.

Why?

Ah, the crux of the issue. Why? Why did I do what I did? Why oh why did I do what I did? And why did he do what he did? And why did he have to do it so damn well, too?

Focus. Focus, Veronica, on the why. Why make with the kissing? Was it all because of the danger and the gun and the heart-pounding rescue?

…possibly.

Possibly? Possibly? Oh, god. Oh, god. Does this mean that it might be because of something other than the danger and the gun and the heart-pounding rescue? That I- that I like Logan? Because I can't. I can't. I can't like Logan Echolls.

No matter how good he kisses.

No. No. That doesn't matter. Don't think about that. Thinking is bad. Logan is bad. He's Neptune's obligatory psychotic jackass. He's the bane of my high school existence. He's the one that smashed in my headlights and ring-leaded the Ostracize Veronica Movement of 2004. He hates me.

He hates me.

Doesn't he?

Okay, so people who hate other people don't normally go to their rescue, swooping in like some denim clad knight ready to save the damsel in distress. But that might have been some momentary blip on the radar. Maybe he hasn't had much of a chance to get his violence on lately- no headlights to smash, no Weevils to fight- and so he seized this opportunity to unleash his inner Rocky and it had absolutely, positively nothing to do with me.

Yeah, right. It had nothing to do with me when he was sucking the oxygen straight from my lungs with those lips and that kiss and that look.

So, what? He doesn't hate me? I don't hate him? Does this mean- are we friends now? Friends who occasionally engage in hear-stopping, breath-snatching, brain-freezing kisses now and again? Because if that's what friends do, Wallace and I have this BFF thing all wrong. Logan and Duncan, too.

Whoa.

Logan and Duncan kissing.

…

Suddenly Logan and I kissing doesn't seem so strange.

Hot and desperate and insistent, yes.

Very much wrong and against the natural order of things, yes.

But strange? Okay, yes, strange, too, but not the strangest kissing combination possible. And I guess that's something. That has to be something because otherwise? I have nothing but questions with no answers and questions with Logan answers and questions with jackhammer answers and right now I need to be the snail.

So no more thinking, Mars. Not about that. You have a different obligatory psychotic probable school bombing jackass to capture. Time to get to work.