Fic: For Now (Veronica Mars/NCIS) 4/8
Title: For Now (4/8)
Author: JaqofSpades
Fandom: Veronica Mars/NCIS
Rating: M (for language and moderately explicit sexuality)
Summary: She's the first intern they've ever had. It's the first time anyone has let her near a real federal case. And her chief suspect is the reason she made it out of high school alive. Life's a bitch, Veronica Mars. Then you have to grow up and figure out how to live.
Chapter 4
“Get your gear. They think they found the kill site.”
David and DiNozzo rise simultaneously and are halfway to the elevator, gearbags in hand, by the time Gibbs finishes the sentence. Tim McGee fumbles in a drawer for two seconds before joining them, shooting Veronica a sympathetic glance as he goes. She nods tightly, and turns back to the crime scene photos still spread over her desk from yesterday. She hopes whoever is documenting this scene does a better job.
“Is there a problem, Mars?”
Gibbs is holding the elevator door ajar, and looking pissed.
“Excuse me?”
“I said “get your gear”. That means everyone. Hopefully before the scene gets trampled?”
Hopefully no one heard the silly little squeal of glee, Veronica thinks as she collects her jacket and tries not to skip across the room to join the NCIS team.
DiNozzo and David's matching smirks suggest otherwise, however, so she has to say something.
“Can I take the photos this time? I find it really helps when they're in focus,” she says, voice dripping with sweetness.
David gapes at the affront, and McGee and DiNozzo move as one to the furthest corner of the elevator. Gibbs merely smiles, and leans forward to pluck the camera bag from the Israeli woman's shoulder.
“Have at it,” he shrugs, and for a moment, Veronica wonders if he's biting back a smile. Nah, she decides. Trick of the light.
The scene is deep into Maryland and the Beltway slows them to a crawl even before they get to what Tony explains is the 301. It's an uncomfortable forty minutes stuck in between David and McGee in the back of a too-small SUV, making small talk about her criminal justice major, and dodging questions about her past investigative experience.
“My Dad was a private investigator. I used to help him out,” she says casually. “Filing, coffee for the clients, that sort of thing.” When McGee turns wounded puppy eyes on her, it's time to stonewall. She's had plenty of practice - her sordid history is out there in the public domain - and has perfected the blank stare that warns people not to ask about Lilly, or Neptune, or being the infamous daughter of the twice-booted Sheriff.
Not these people, apparently.
“So, the Lilly Kane murder. What happened there?”
Federal interns, she had learned, couldn't go around calling acquitted movie stars murderers. Even when he'd tried to kill her too. So the story was short, when she was forced to tell it.
“Lilly was my best friend. She was murdered. I needed to find out who did it.”
The sympathy oozes from McGee's pores, but David's eyes are still enquiring. She's the tough one, Veronica thinks. McGee is a genius, but too nice to be a threat. DiNozzo is sharp, but he'd be easy to trap, with all those romantic notions. David and Gibbs, though - they'll see through her, Veronica suspects. And they'll give no quarter.
She has to figure out how to play this.
“Did you?”
The accent suggested that it was possible David had never heard of Lilly Kane, or even Aaron Echolls. That she didn't know about the trial, and the newspaper stories, and the two bullets that had left a man dead in the penthouse of the Neptune Grand. Veronica nearly smiled. Possible, yes. But she was veering towards unlikely. Her luck was like that.
“Yes. I did. He told me how he bashed her head in, and then he tried to kill me. And a jury still let him walk.” She could feel the bitterness snapping and snarling in her gut, threatening to push its way up and make her less than what she was. She turned to David and forced her mouth into a wide, bright smile. “On the upside, I'm fairly enthusiastic about admissible evidence these days.”
Tony DiNozzo's voice cut in front the front.
“Musta sucked. So - how does Eli Navarro fit in to all that? Sounded like he might have been a suspect.”
Cool, Veronica reminded herself as her teeth ground together. It's their job. Your job, if you play this right. These answers wouldn't hurt him. (And there it is, Veronica. Way to set your priorities.)
“He was one of Lilly's lovers. Broke into her house to steal some things after she was gone. Police had to look at him.”
“Kid has form a mile long. Police were already looking,” Di Nozzo snorted. “Who's the Mars on the arrest records?”
As if they didn't know.
“My Dad.”
“I guess that explains why you were into him. Way to piss Daddy off!” Di Nozzo wisecracked. Veronica was about to put the smarmy bastard in his place when David leaned forward to smack him over the head.
Gibbs glanced in the rear-vision mirror and exchanged a tiny smile with David. His obvious approval made Veronica glad she'd held her tongue. Momentarily, at least.
“More to do with the muscles and the tattoos, really,” she fake-confessed. “Everyone loves a badass. But I guess you wouldn't know anything about that, would you DiNozzo?” she insinuates, eyes flicking in David's direction.
Two birds, one stone, Veronica smirks to herself as Ziva's jaw drops and Tony flushes pink with annoyance. McGee chokes on his laughter, mumbling something about rules, and Gibbs' lips quirk suspiciously before he rolls his eyes.
“Quit fighting, kids. We're nearly there.”
He doesn't say another word until they were climbing out of the car, and he thrusts the camera bag at her.
“You wanted it, you carry it,” Gibbs grunts. “And remind me to get you a copy of the rules, too. I'd be thinking about number ten if I were you.”
It's quite the warning, she discovers later.
*
McGee's used to whizkids. He was one, and had spent most of high school and all of college hanging out with the smartest of the smart. Even so, he's never met anyone quite like Veronica Mars.
It's not just that she's hot. (She is. Blisteringly so. It's distracting, so he tries not to think about it.) It's more that she's sharp, like a diamond. Brilliant and beautiful, but cold, and hard. Hard to see, too, when the image is so dazzling.
Right now, she's completely focused on the documenting the site, and - he's done this a time or two. He's a fully trained federal agent, with an unparalleled knowledge of technology and procedure, but next to her? He sucks. She's shooting from angles that would never occur to him; close-ups of material that he would have thought was innocuous, wide angle shots of the views and the approaches and all the lines of sight.
Normally, Gibbs would be asking for this shot or that shot, but he just watches her, and every now and then, something inscrutable flashes across his face. He's impressed, McGee figures, but he doesn't want to be, for some reason. He's worried, too.
Rule number ten? Probably. Of all Gibbs' rules, not being personally involved with a case was right up there, and a past sexual relationship with a suspect is too many kinds of personally involved. Honestly, though - what could she have done? Pretended she didn't know the guy? Excused herself from the case because she went through a bad boy phase in high school? McGee snorts in disgust. It'd be their loss - she's already the best damn crime scene photographer they've had, and it's only her second freaking day.
NCIS might not take interns, but someone knew they needed to take this one, and they were right.
“Tony?”
Ziva startles him when she materialises at his elbow, and follows his gaze to the girl working her way around the periphery of the scene.
“My photographs are not out of focus,” she huffs, but she sounds less than outraged. “But she is very good with the camera, no?”
“Way good,” he agrees, without taking his eyes off her. “I've been watching her. She uses that camera like Abby uses Major MassSpec, or I can use code. It's like … an extension of her brain.” He breaks off, embarrassed by the fanboy gushing, but Ziva seems to like the analogy.
“Me and weapons, Tony and his charm, Gibbs and his rules,” she chortles, then grows serious.
“Veronica is going to have some trouble with the rules,” she points out needlessly. “She and Navarro are definitely involved.”
“Were,” he reminds her.
Ziva raises her eyebrows and pins him with sceptical brown eyes.
“Are,” she says. “Whatever they had, it's not over. There are some people you can never walk away from, no matter how bad they are for you,” she sighs, and he knows the sorrow isn't for Veronica.
He slings his arm over her shoulder and guides her back towards the vehicle.
“She's not the only one with an eye for the undercurrents, is she, Ms Badass?”
Ziva gives him the evil eye and refuses to look at Tony as he strides across the clearing towards them.
*
She's grotty and hanging out for a shower after a twelve-hour day when she finds it under her doormat. She'd expected a text, or an email, but instead, he chooses old fashioned stalking, and leaves the welcome mat of her sublet slightly askew to mark his passage.
The envelope is a thin rectangle of faux-fancy paper, and there's only one thing inside. A key, and a small engraved disc - Camelot Motel, it says. No 8. She laughs out loud, then unlocks her own door and heads straight for Google.
Washington Square. $52 a night. It'll probably be crawling with vermin and overrun with lowlife, but she knows she's going, and maybe even more than once. She knows he's going to kiss her, and she's going to let him, and minutes after that, nothing about the motel room will matter.
So she's going to make sure she gets the information she needs first.
*
Veronica unlocks the door just as he is hooking into the first container of takeout. He nearly spills kung po chicken all over the bed in his need to get to her.
She's here. She's fucking real. She's warm in his arms and her skin smells like citrus, and he just wants to bite down until she's sweet under his tongue. “Eli,” she breathes, and the lips he still sees in his dreams are pressing small kisses to his hands and his face and his eyelids and he needs to fuck her now.
He's already undone the top button of her jeans when she stumbles backwards, mouth working as she searches for words. He smirks, and then she slays him.
“No.” She throws up a hand, insistent. “Business first. And then ...” she smiles, and there she is, the flirtatious girl he remembers. “Getting down to business.”
He wonders for a minute if that's all it is for her, the sex. It's not, for him. He doesn't think with his cock, and wouldn't be here if that was all it was - he could leave now, he thinks, and be satisfied. Fucking aching, yes, but the need to see her secret smile, to show his scars, to live in her eyes - satisfied. She sees him, Veronica Mars, and allows him to see her. It's the purest relationship in his life.
But, fuck, he wants to do dirty things to her.
“Talk,” he growls, dropping down into the chair at the tiny kitchen table.
“My line, chico. You were lying through your teeth yesterday. Wanna tell me what's really going on?”
He hesitates, and reviews the facts as he knows them. The guy's dead, and it's probably because someone in the operation is pissed off. He hadn't signed on for this, and if it was all some power grab, or a double-cross, they could come gunning for him next. Be helpful if he knew who the fuck they were. But he guesses that's Veronica's job now.
“Let's just say I'm not in Washington to work in the garage. I am working on cars, though,” he started, looking her in the eye.
“Shit. I'm gonna need to sit down for this, aren't I.” She drops into the chair next to him, laying her forehead on the table. “Let me guess. The family business?”
“Kinda. But we've expanded. My tio Angel was in the Marines, you know? Few of his old shipmates, they come to him if they need a car. So … we started taking cars to them on the base in SD. Lots'a cars.”
He doesn't need to explain the damn cars are so hot they're practically smoking, and she doesn't need to know that he's created the biggest clearing house for stolen cars in southern California.
“So things are moving nicely out of SD, but we're limited to two or three cars in each shipment, because too many doesn't look good for my boys. And I've got customers screaming down south, so we need another outlet. And my cousin Julio has the yard over here, so …” he shrugs, knowing that Veronica Mars is more than capable to filling in the blanks.
She groans, and bangs her forehead on the desk twice, before straightening up and swinging her body to face his.
“So. The dead guy, Hernandez. How do you know him?”
“Didn't know him at all. I'd been putting a few feelers out, his name had come up, I asked for an intro.”
“Fernando Teixeira?”
“Yup. Works in my cousin's yard, went to school with your dead guy. Honestly, V, I think you're barking up the wrong tree here. They were pretty friendly.”
Which, if he thinks about it, makes him the prime suspect. “But I guess you can never know ...”
She rolls her eyes at him and asks the one fucking question he doesn't want to answer.
“So, who's stealing all these cars? You have to be in bed with someone.”
“In about two minutes? I sure am hoping,” he drawls, and prays she'll take him up on it. He needs her tongue in his mouth, soon, or he'll succumb to this mad urge to tell the truth.
She simply stares at him, eyebrows raised in expectation.
“VCV, for us. Fernando's got a brother high up in MS-13, so I was gonna be talking with them. But I wanted to get the sailor locked in before talking to anyone else - can't be about that, chica.”
“Well, if you say so … but the thing is? I grew up in this nice little town called Neptune, and someone really smart taught me that when it comes to criminals? No such thing as coincidence, is there baby?” she grits out, pounding his chest with her fist in frustration.
She stills then, anger leaching from her body as the thought takes her. He watches her forehead crease and her eyes narrow as she turns over the idea, and despises himself for wanting her so much. Then her thumb brushes his collar bone in an absent-minded tease, and he can't help but to move into it, twisting his body to face hers fully, trapping her knees between his.
He shrugs as she looks up in question, and traces down the side of her face with one finger. “Just making sure you can see me, chica. So you know I'm not lying.”
V scoffs, but she doesn't move away. “Okay, then, talk to me. So Hernandez ends up dead. Is it something to do with this, or could it be something else?”
His gut is telling him something's gone wrong with the deal, but he hasn't seen or heard anything to make him think that. Just - he knows these people. They're not beyond killing a dude. And the operation in DC seems a lot shakier than his end of things.
“Can't be sure. But it's probably this. Just not sure how,” he frowns.
“But you had nothing to do with his death? Just in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
He nods, annoyed that she even needs to ask.
“Swear it to me, Eli. On your Abuela's grave.”
He growls into her face, and leans forward to grab the chair either side of her narrow shoulders.
“Would you even believe me? I'm just a no-account ex-con who'd sell his abuela to make some money, chica. Murder's not that big a stretch,” he sneers, and shakes the chair in frustration. He's trying to scare her, he realises. She's got some catching up to do, and number one fact about the new Weevil? He's a criminal, who handles some bad shit, and deals with even badder people. (He may not have killed this guy, but he's still a murderer.)
She needs to be fucking scared of him. Because she has to be the one to walk away - God knows he never will.
*
Her teeth clatter together and her hair is all over her face, and he looks so angry that she just has to close her eyes. She's not scared, exactly, but she's sad to doubt him, and angry at the situation they've found themselves in. And he's surrounding her with muscles and ink and caramel coloured skin, and, well. Hello downfall.
He looks a little bit broken when she opens her eyes, and she can see the apology lurking in his. She doesn't want sorry, she realises. She wants him to shake her again, to make her feel his pain, to punish her for abandoning him. So she turns her head and bites down hard, her teeth worrying the muscle of his bicep even as her tongues laves it better.
She's on her back in the middle of the badly-sprung bed before she can blink, pushing her jeans down and wriggling out of her panties as he drops his jeans and whips off the black wifebeater. She wants a moment to just look at him, but he's already rolling on a condom, and licking his way up her body.
Her vision goes fuzzy as he reminds her of exactly how good they were together, and she tells herself that it's this, the hot madness, this is why she's never been able to leave him behind. (She lets him steal her mind, so she doesn't have to think about the other things he makes her feel.)
Purely physical, she gasps to herself as he throws her legs over his shoulders and applies himself to obliterating her, one burst of pleasure at a time. It's just because he's so good at this, her brain babbles. So talented, so fucking into this ...
“O-o-o-r-r-r-r ...”
He lifts his head and quirks a brow in question. “Really, Mars? You wanna talk right now?”
She blushes, feeling obliged to finish the thought. “Oral fixation. Last time. We talked about your oral fixation.”
His laughter rings around the room and he crawls up further to give her a slow, wet kiss. “Nah, baby. Ain't your mouth I'm fixated on, remember? Just taste so good, chica,” he moans, turning his head to breathe into her ear. “I could eat you all fucking night.”
And it's not that she wants to argue, but he's huge and hard in the vee of her thighs and it's reminding her of everything else she's missed, while he was in prison, or wasting time with all those boys who simply weren't him.
“Or...”
“I could fuck you into next week?”
“Hmm. I think I'll take - door number two! With an option on the other for later.”
“Sounds like the price is finally fucking right,” he growls, sliding into her slowly, and then stroking back and forth with agonising gentleness. It's torture, and her moan is so needy and desperate, she'd be embarrassed if she could manage to care. Instead, she slams her hips up to meet his and sinks her fingernails into the globes of his ass.
“Make love to me later, chico. Fuck me now.”
He just grins before stilling his hips altogether to concentrate on teasing her nipples with long swipes of his tongue.
Turns out, they both like it better when she begs.
*
Gibbs starts the car just after midnight, his lights making a brilliant arc over the bilious pink door he's been staring at for six hours. He guesses anyone deluded enough to call a roach motel the Camelot was entitled to paint the place Peptobismol pink. He just wishes they'd invested a bit more in curtaining, because he needs to scour his brain of the sight of his angelic-looking intern pressed up against the glass as her lover brought her off with his tongue.
He felt dirty, and it had nothing to do with the young couple's impressively athletic sex life. It was Navarro he had followed, but he'd known right from the start who he was looking for. This tryst wouldn't bring them any closer to catching a sailor's murderer, or even clear him of suspicion. All it told him was that Veronica Mars had chosen her past over her future, and couldn't be trusted. That's all the answer he needs to Vance's already pointed questions.
Disappointment churns in his gut, but the irony of it makes him shake his head. More fool him for being disappointed when the intern he never wanted lets him down.
He's already thinking of how best to deal with the situation, and it doesn't occur to him to look back as he accelerates away from the parking lot. Even if he had, there was nothing remarkable about the second car that slipped into his carspace, directly opposite the door to Navarro's room. Nothing except the nondescript man with the long telephoto lens, aimed directly at door number 8.
***
TO CHAPTER 5