Wishlist fic 7/12: Enough (2/2) Veronica Mars Rated R for hanitje
Title: Enough (2/2)
Author: JaqofSpades
Fandom: Veronica Mars
Pairing: Veronica/Weevil
Characters: Veronica, Weevil, Mac, Logan, Piz,
Rating; R for sexuality and strong language
Summary:He's had enough of a life so fucking sad that the highlight of his month is being bailed out of jail by a girl he's not even sure he can call a friend.
A/N: Part two of my wishlist_fic request for hanitje. Hope the wait was worth it :D Happy post-Christmas and almost New Year!
Part One here.
Veronica stabs her key at the ignition but gives up with a groan when her shaking hands refuse to cooperate. She collapses forward onto the steering wheel and closes her eyes - bad idea. Horrendously bad idea, she realises, as she's claimed by the arousal still racing in her blood.
His hands, trailing fire everywhere they lingered. His mouth, sipping one minute, devouring the next. His eyes, blazing with honesty and heat and want.
The things he'd said.
Just the thought of it - not Lilly, not Lilly, not Lilly - has her fighting a giddy, girlish smile. She refuses to succumb, because her usually-manageable crush is not the point here. She's not free. She's with Piz, doing her best to be a good girlfriend. Letting him in. Being considerate. Ignoring Logan.
And certainly not giving in to the bolt of pure lust that hit her the moment Eli pulled her into his arms.
She tries to hold on to her annoyance, but it's gone completely, lost to the memory of his invitation, and her lie of omission. She had wanted to push the door open for him, and lead him to the bed.
Wanted to strip him bare, and slide her tongue over every inch of him. Baptised in the name of Veronica, and Veronica, and only Veronica, forever and ever, Amen, she thinks fiercely.
She's not a good girlfriend.
She's not a good girlfriend, but she refuses to cheat on the sweetest boy she's ever met, so she's going to start the car, and drive away, and pretend to sleep as she stares at the ceiling above her bed for the next few hours.
Maybe she's spent enough time pretending, a little voice suggests, but the twin harpies of guilt and idealism are shrieking, drowning it out, and her old friend denial waits with open arms.
*
She avoids the admin block for a week, even on Friday, when they'd usually catch up over pizza and Coke. Should be beer, he had always complained, until the day she had snuck a cooler into her car, and they'd set up on the beach, putting away enough Corona to force him to call in sick for the rest of the day. She remembers snuggling in tight to his warm bulk as the sun set, watching his profile and just wishing she had the guts to just lean over and take the kiss she wanted so badly.
She'd known he was just waiting on her. She'd always known. He was more subtle now than in high school, when he liked to fry her brain with sexual innuendo, but the heat in his eyes was still the same. And it's not like she doesn't know why he'll drop everything to help her out. She knows, okay? She's a terrible person.
There's no way she can ask him to help her out, not until she's made some sort of decision about how to handle this, so Piz finds himself invited on his first stakeout, and she drags Wallace away from his books for a night or two, explaining that he needs a break from studying occasionally. It's not until Wallace and Piz are both committed to a basketball game one night that she realises just how hard she has settled into hard core avoidance.
She asks Logan to help her out.
The constant flow of chatter is annoying, but she can tune him out easily now, she discovers. She plunges back into her memory of that night to work the scenarios in her head - what if she had gone inside? What if she had been single? What if she knew what she actually wanted?
What if she was honest, she scoffs, and stares out the window. Want would be the easiest variable to resolve. Her body is telling her what she wants every time she hears his name, every time she remembers that kiss, every time she drives past his street late at night. The question is not what does she want, but what is she prepared to do to get it?
"Veronica?"
Logan's question is intrigued, and he has his hand on her knee. She moves it with less tact than is ideal, and redirects his attention to the warehouse across the street.
"You're here to work, Kemosabe. Don't make me call in the big guns."
"You see - I hear you saying that, but I sit here wondering - who are you talking about? Because I'm pretty sure I have the biggest gun around these parts."
The words are out of her mouth before she can call them back.
"Oh, I'm pretty sure you don't."
Logan raises a brow in question, then narrows his eyes as if he can glare the truth out of her.
"What's going on Veronica? Why am I here and not your actual boyfriend, or Wallace, or Weevil? Even when we were together you said I was too ADD for stakeouts."
"Wallace and Piz are at some basketball game," she protests, and thinks desperately for some reason she wouldn't want to take her best offsider on stakeout.
"Weevil ..."
Logan's eyes widen and he steeples his fingers in front of his mouth to hide his surprise.
"I see," he purrs. "Weevil finally got sick of waiting for you, did he Veronica? He made a move and you didn't like it? Oh, poor, spurned gangster. Not even good enough to be V's backup anymore."
Five seconds of embarrassment gives way to sheer fury.
"The problem, Logan, is that he made a move and I did like it. A lot. But I'm still with Piz and I'm trying to think things through before I hurt a sweet, kind man for what might not be anything more than a very hot fuck."
Logan's jaw drops at her crudity, and Veronica is so ashamed she has to look away. She tries to focus on the street beyond her window as she gulps air into her lungs and fights the urge to cry.
"Do you want to?" he asks eventually, voice completely expressionless.
"What? Hurt Piz? No. Be with Weevil?" Veronica looks over, and Logan is glowering through the windscreen, body tense as if waiting for a blow to fall. He'd been hoping they'd get back together, she knows, but this thing with Weevil ... it could kill that possibility. Forever.
But does she want to?
"Yes," she says softly, and she's felled by the sense of relief that sweeps over her, as if her whole body was waiting for this one, small admission.
Now to figure out what to do about it.
*
She cuts her hair. Or, more correctly, has it cut. There's no way she'll ever wield the scissors herself again - too many bad memories. (And one bad haircut.)
There were things she liked about it though, as accidental as it had been.
"Make is sharp, lots of angles," she instructs the hairdresser.
"I don't want it to be too girly girl. I'm not that person anymore."
She watches the golden locks fall to the floor, and feels nothing but satisfaction. She's wasted too much time trying to be that girl again, the one who was normal and liked to dance, and thought sweet, shy, preppy boys were just to die for.
Veronica Mars is sharp, and pointed, and has little patience for other people's weaknesses. She eats those kind of boys alive, and it's time she stopped trying to play with them.
She digs her phone out of her purse and makes the call.
"Hey. Do you have some time this afternoon? I know we were going out for dinner, but ... I'd like to talk to you first."
Piz is silent on the other end of the line, and she knows it sounds like the prelude to a breakup. It was meant to.
"Yeah, come over to our room. Wallace has practice so we'll have it to ourselves."
Veronica can only hope he means "we can break up in peace" rather than "we can make out," because option one will make it so much easier, and option two is no longer on the table.
(She'd feel unfaithful.)
*
She leaves Wallace and Piz's room in a hurry, when the accusations start flying.
"You were never really in this relationship at all," he says bitterly, and she'd can't think of one thing to say that would disprove that. "Wallace warned me you weren't over Logan!" and yeah, that'd been kind of true at the time, even if it wasn't now.
"Are you sleeping with him?" he'd howls, and she had taken a step back, shocked. Not just at the accusation, but that he had so much passion inside of him. She'd never seen it before, and that said a lot about their relationship.
"No, Piz, I'm not currently sleeping with anyone. Which is possibly part of the problem. We're not sleeping together and I have no real desire to change that, so - we're not right for each other."
She doesn't say that a single pucker of Weevil's lips does more for her libido than rolling around on the bed with Piz does, or that her period of celibacy nearly came unstuck after a midnight jail run a few weeks ago. She walks out instead, unwilling to unleash her sharp tongue on her newly-exed boyfriend, and heads over to Mac and Parker's room.
"I just broke up with Piz."
Parker - who has only recently forgiven her for the whole Logan fiasco - is lying back on her bed pretending not to eavesdrop, but still lifts her head in shock. Mac simply blinks. Girl should at least have the decency to act surprised, Veronica thinks huffily.
"And you're heartbroken?" she asks sceptically, and Veronica's mouth twitches in chagrin.
"Sad for him, mostly. Am I really that much of a bitch," she asks earnestly, and then chokes when Mac shrugs, then nods.
"You kind of are. But it's not your fault that they fall in love with you, and you just fall in like with them."
Veronica frowns at a stain on the floor tiles, and rubs at it with the toe of her boot.
"Maybe I just haven't met the right guy yet."
Mac seizes her arm, forcing her to look up.
"Weevil? You're finally going after that?"
Veronica swallows in shock, and her 'meep' has Mac rolling her eyes.
"Come on, Veronica. All the favours and the flirting and the stakeouts? Half of Neptune thought you were doing it on the sly, and the other half figured there was something stopping you. And no matter what the gossip said, I don't think it was anything to do with money, or his record, or the colour of his skin."
"What then? Because I've been going mad trying to figure it out," Veronica snapped. "Why didn't he ever ask me out? Why didn't I ever just say 'fuck it' and make a move? Why am I such a coward?"
Mac smiled and shook her head. "You just said it, Veronica. He's not just any guy - you think he might be the right guy. Scary stuff for big, bad Veronica Mars."
Veronica heaved a sigh and looped her arm through Mac's. "When did you get so wise, Mac Attack? I need lunch, and moral support to get me through the day. Be my wingman?"
"Long as I get to be Goose. He had all the best lines."
"Take me to lunch or lose me forever?"
"Show me the way to the cafeteria, honey!" Mac crowed, ushering Veronica out of the room.
*
They decided to keep it short.
"Do me a favour?" the text asked, then simply listed a time and a place.
Dog Beach. Sunset.
Veronica's fingers were shaking as she pressed send, and when she glanced up, Mac looked suspiciously serene. It was the tiny lines bracketing the edge of her mouth that told Veronica her friend was trying not to laugh, so she stuck out her tongue as much for Mac's relief as her own.
They must have looked mad, bent over the lunch table cackling uncontrollably.
"Welcome to being a teenage girl," Mac said eventually, wiping her eyes.
"Hey! I resent that. I've had boyfriends before!"
"None that you've ever had to work for, like the rest of us," Mac said pointedly.
"This is what it feels like not being in charge for a change. Ain't it fun?"
Veronica screwed up her nose, then dropped the act. "Thanks Mac. For being here for me."
"What friends are for, Veronica. And also to help you pack that hamper. How romantic do you wanna get?"
"Corona. Pizza. Blanket. Don't need any more than that."
"On a Friday night, huh? Interesting."
"Shaddup."
Her phone pings, and Veronica has to steady her breathing before she can look at the screen.
"So I exist now? What do you need?"
She turned the phone around to show Mac, fear sour in the back of her throat.
"What do I say?"
"Tell him it's a date."
"No, I can't ..."
"Tell him, Veronica. Even when you were just friends he would say he only ever saw you for work stuff - tell him you just want to spend time with him!"
Trouble with Mac was that she was nearly always right, Veronica fumes.
"Your company. Cold Beer. Pizza."
"Is this a date, Mars?"
"Yes."
"I'll be the one with a carnation in my buttonhole."
"I'll be the one with the taser."
"Kinky."
"You wish."
"Every fucking night."
Veronica stopped breathing at that one, and nearly didn't respond. She had a picnic basket to collect, and pizza to order, and beer to pick up from the store.
One hour and forty-five minutes later, she whips out her phone before she heads into class, and types in the message so quickly she doesn't have to think about it.
"Me too."
*
"You've had a haircut," he says as folds himself down onto the blanket beside her, reaching out one hand to tug a little at the spiky strands. "I like it."
She fights her way past the sudden attack of shyness to look him in the eye.
"Yeah, I thought you would. You always did, before."
He shrugged massive shoulders and looked up at her through his eyelashes. "I liked the fact that you looked different to everyone else. Unique." His lips stretched slowly into a grin, and suddenly they were on familiar territory. "And it's sexy."
"Oh. Just as well then. I need all the help I can get in that department," she said shyly, and looked up in shock when he guffawed in disbelief.
"Come on, Mars. You walk sexy, you talk sexy - you breathe sexy, chica. You had me hot for you from the moment we met and you know it!"
"We were four when we met, Eli. Kindergarden."
"When we met again, then. When you stopped ignoring my existence. Eleventh grade. Flagpole?"
"Hmmm. Vague recollection."
He smiled ruefully and accepted the beer she held out to him as they watched the sun sink below the horizon.
"I wanted to ask you to Prom," he said, breaking a long, loaded silence. "Would you have said yes?"
She smiles sadly at the sunset and closes her eyes for a moment, thinking of all the things that might have been different.
"Yeah, I would have. Maybe just to see you in a tuxedo, but by then ... yeah."
"Wasted a lot of fucking time, didn't we girl."
"I can't ... I can't regret being with Logan. I think I needed to be. Maybe that wouldn't be over now I hadn't been with him then," she says slowly.
"You sure it's over now?"
She turns to him fully, and while the face is familiar, the unsure, hopeful look isn't.
"Not really. I think it is. I want it to be, but I can't say I'm sure. I can say ... I want something else right now."
"Yeah?"
She leant closer, bringing their foreheads together.
"Yeah, Eli. I want a romantic picnic with someone I want to spend more time with. And I want to try being more than friends with that person. And I want ..."
She pushes herself into him and traps his full, soft lips between her own, mouth moving slowly, tongue gliding over every contour it can find.
"Wanted to kiss you so badly," she confesses when she pulls back for a breath. "Wasn't the first time, either."
He puts his beer to one side and pushes the pizza box out of harms way.
"Yeah? Wanna show me?" he growls, pulling her to sprawl full length on top of him. His lips are buried in the hollow of her throat, making her pant, when she finally gets around to answering.
"God, Eli. Enough. We're on the beach!"
"So?" he growls, and this time, it doesn't make her angry. His impatience leaves her breathless and wanting, poised on the brink of doing something outrageous. And probably illegal. She forces herself to breathe, hoping it will cool her down.
"So ... ask me."
"Ask you what?"
She bites her lip and says the words straight into his ear.
"It killed me to say no last time."
His grin is a million miles wide, and it stays on his face through devouring her mouth, rolling her under him, and whispering his plans for her into her skin.
"Ask me," she laughs, and this time, he's happy to cooperate.
"So, Veronica Mars. You coming in?"
"Yes please, Mr Navarro. Yes. Please."
fin
Author: JaqofSpades
Fandom: Veronica Mars
Pairing: Veronica/Weevil
Characters: Veronica, Weevil, Mac, Logan, Piz,
Rating; R for sexuality and strong language
Summary:He's had enough of a life so fucking sad that the highlight of his month is being bailed out of jail by a girl he's not even sure he can call a friend.
A/N: Part two of my wishlist_fic request for hanitje. Hope the wait was worth it :D Happy post-Christmas and almost New Year!
Part One here.
Veronica stabs her key at the ignition but gives up with a groan when her shaking hands refuse to cooperate. She collapses forward onto the steering wheel and closes her eyes - bad idea. Horrendously bad idea, she realises, as she's claimed by the arousal still racing in her blood.
His hands, trailing fire everywhere they lingered. His mouth, sipping one minute, devouring the next. His eyes, blazing with honesty and heat and want.
The things he'd said.
Just the thought of it - not Lilly, not Lilly, not Lilly - has her fighting a giddy, girlish smile. She refuses to succumb, because her usually-manageable crush is not the point here. She's not free. She's with Piz, doing her best to be a good girlfriend. Letting him in. Being considerate. Ignoring Logan.
And certainly not giving in to the bolt of pure lust that hit her the moment Eli pulled her into his arms.
She tries to hold on to her annoyance, but it's gone completely, lost to the memory of his invitation, and her lie of omission. She had wanted to push the door open for him, and lead him to the bed.
Wanted to strip him bare, and slide her tongue over every inch of him. Baptised in the name of Veronica, and Veronica, and only Veronica, forever and ever, Amen, she thinks fiercely.
She's not a good girlfriend.
She's not a good girlfriend, but she refuses to cheat on the sweetest boy she's ever met, so she's going to start the car, and drive away, and pretend to sleep as she stares at the ceiling above her bed for the next few hours.
Maybe she's spent enough time pretending, a little voice suggests, but the twin harpies of guilt and idealism are shrieking, drowning it out, and her old friend denial waits with open arms.
*
She avoids the admin block for a week, even on Friday, when they'd usually catch up over pizza and Coke. Should be beer, he had always complained, until the day she had snuck a cooler into her car, and they'd set up on the beach, putting away enough Corona to force him to call in sick for the rest of the day. She remembers snuggling in tight to his warm bulk as the sun set, watching his profile and just wishing she had the guts to just lean over and take the kiss she wanted so badly.
She'd known he was just waiting on her. She'd always known. He was more subtle now than in high school, when he liked to fry her brain with sexual innuendo, but the heat in his eyes was still the same. And it's not like she doesn't know why he'll drop everything to help her out. She knows, okay? She's a terrible person.
There's no way she can ask him to help her out, not until she's made some sort of decision about how to handle this, so Piz finds himself invited on his first stakeout, and she drags Wallace away from his books for a night or two, explaining that he needs a break from studying occasionally. It's not until Wallace and Piz are both committed to a basketball game one night that she realises just how hard she has settled into hard core avoidance.
She asks Logan to help her out.
The constant flow of chatter is annoying, but she can tune him out easily now, she discovers. She plunges back into her memory of that night to work the scenarios in her head - what if she had gone inside? What if she had been single? What if she knew what she actually wanted?
What if she was honest, she scoffs, and stares out the window. Want would be the easiest variable to resolve. Her body is telling her what she wants every time she hears his name, every time she remembers that kiss, every time she drives past his street late at night. The question is not what does she want, but what is she prepared to do to get it?
"Veronica?"
Logan's question is intrigued, and he has his hand on her knee. She moves it with less tact than is ideal, and redirects his attention to the warehouse across the street.
"You're here to work, Kemosabe. Don't make me call in the big guns."
"You see - I hear you saying that, but I sit here wondering - who are you talking about? Because I'm pretty sure I have the biggest gun around these parts."
The words are out of her mouth before she can call them back.
"Oh, I'm pretty sure you don't."
Logan raises a brow in question, then narrows his eyes as if he can glare the truth out of her.
"What's going on Veronica? Why am I here and not your actual boyfriend, or Wallace, or Weevil? Even when we were together you said I was too ADD for stakeouts."
"Wallace and Piz are at some basketball game," she protests, and thinks desperately for some reason she wouldn't want to take her best offsider on stakeout.
"Weevil ..."
Logan's eyes widen and he steeples his fingers in front of his mouth to hide his surprise.
"I see," he purrs. "Weevil finally got sick of waiting for you, did he Veronica? He made a move and you didn't like it? Oh, poor, spurned gangster. Not even good enough to be V's backup anymore."
Five seconds of embarrassment gives way to sheer fury.
"The problem, Logan, is that he made a move and I did like it. A lot. But I'm still with Piz and I'm trying to think things through before I hurt a sweet, kind man for what might not be anything more than a very hot fuck."
Logan's jaw drops at her crudity, and Veronica is so ashamed she has to look away. She tries to focus on the street beyond her window as she gulps air into her lungs and fights the urge to cry.
"Do you want to?" he asks eventually, voice completely expressionless.
"What? Hurt Piz? No. Be with Weevil?" Veronica looks over, and Logan is glowering through the windscreen, body tense as if waiting for a blow to fall. He'd been hoping they'd get back together, she knows, but this thing with Weevil ... it could kill that possibility. Forever.
But does she want to?
"Yes," she says softly, and she's felled by the sense of relief that sweeps over her, as if her whole body was waiting for this one, small admission.
Now to figure out what to do about it.
*
She cuts her hair. Or, more correctly, has it cut. There's no way she'll ever wield the scissors herself again - too many bad memories. (And one bad haircut.)
There were things she liked about it though, as accidental as it had been.
"Make is sharp, lots of angles," she instructs the hairdresser.
"I don't want it to be too girly girl. I'm not that person anymore."
She watches the golden locks fall to the floor, and feels nothing but satisfaction. She's wasted too much time trying to be that girl again, the one who was normal and liked to dance, and thought sweet, shy, preppy boys were just to die for.
Veronica Mars is sharp, and pointed, and has little patience for other people's weaknesses. She eats those kind of boys alive, and it's time she stopped trying to play with them.
She digs her phone out of her purse and makes the call.
"Hey. Do you have some time this afternoon? I know we were going out for dinner, but ... I'd like to talk to you first."
Piz is silent on the other end of the line, and she knows it sounds like the prelude to a breakup. It was meant to.
"Yeah, come over to our room. Wallace has practice so we'll have it to ourselves."
Veronica can only hope he means "we can break up in peace" rather than "we can make out," because option one will make it so much easier, and option two is no longer on the table.
(She'd feel unfaithful.)
*
She leaves Wallace and Piz's room in a hurry, when the accusations start flying.
"You were never really in this relationship at all," he says bitterly, and she'd can't think of one thing to say that would disprove that. "Wallace warned me you weren't over Logan!" and yeah, that'd been kind of true at the time, even if it wasn't now.
"Are you sleeping with him?" he'd howls, and she had taken a step back, shocked. Not just at the accusation, but that he had so much passion inside of him. She'd never seen it before, and that said a lot about their relationship.
"No, Piz, I'm not currently sleeping with anyone. Which is possibly part of the problem. We're not sleeping together and I have no real desire to change that, so - we're not right for each other."
She doesn't say that a single pucker of Weevil's lips does more for her libido than rolling around on the bed with Piz does, or that her period of celibacy nearly came unstuck after a midnight jail run a few weeks ago. She walks out instead, unwilling to unleash her sharp tongue on her newly-exed boyfriend, and heads over to Mac and Parker's room.
"I just broke up with Piz."
Parker - who has only recently forgiven her for the whole Logan fiasco - is lying back on her bed pretending not to eavesdrop, but still lifts her head in shock. Mac simply blinks. Girl should at least have the decency to act surprised, Veronica thinks huffily.
"And you're heartbroken?" she asks sceptically, and Veronica's mouth twitches in chagrin.
"Sad for him, mostly. Am I really that much of a bitch," she asks earnestly, and then chokes when Mac shrugs, then nods.
"You kind of are. But it's not your fault that they fall in love with you, and you just fall in like with them."
Veronica frowns at a stain on the floor tiles, and rubs at it with the toe of her boot.
"Maybe I just haven't met the right guy yet."
Mac seizes her arm, forcing her to look up.
"Weevil? You're finally going after that?"
Veronica swallows in shock, and her 'meep' has Mac rolling her eyes.
"Come on, Veronica. All the favours and the flirting and the stakeouts? Half of Neptune thought you were doing it on the sly, and the other half figured there was something stopping you. And no matter what the gossip said, I don't think it was anything to do with money, or his record, or the colour of his skin."
"What then? Because I've been going mad trying to figure it out," Veronica snapped. "Why didn't he ever ask me out? Why didn't I ever just say 'fuck it' and make a move? Why am I such a coward?"
Mac smiled and shook her head. "You just said it, Veronica. He's not just any guy - you think he might be the right guy. Scary stuff for big, bad Veronica Mars."
Veronica heaved a sigh and looped her arm through Mac's. "When did you get so wise, Mac Attack? I need lunch, and moral support to get me through the day. Be my wingman?"
"Long as I get to be Goose. He had all the best lines."
"Take me to lunch or lose me forever?"
"Show me the way to the cafeteria, honey!" Mac crowed, ushering Veronica out of the room.
*
They decided to keep it short.
"Do me a favour?" the text asked, then simply listed a time and a place.
Dog Beach. Sunset.
Veronica's fingers were shaking as she pressed send, and when she glanced up, Mac looked suspiciously serene. It was the tiny lines bracketing the edge of her mouth that told Veronica her friend was trying not to laugh, so she stuck out her tongue as much for Mac's relief as her own.
They must have looked mad, bent over the lunch table cackling uncontrollably.
"Welcome to being a teenage girl," Mac said eventually, wiping her eyes.
"Hey! I resent that. I've had boyfriends before!"
"None that you've ever had to work for, like the rest of us," Mac said pointedly.
"This is what it feels like not being in charge for a change. Ain't it fun?"
Veronica screwed up her nose, then dropped the act. "Thanks Mac. For being here for me."
"What friends are for, Veronica. And also to help you pack that hamper. How romantic do you wanna get?"
"Corona. Pizza. Blanket. Don't need any more than that."
"On a Friday night, huh? Interesting."
"Shaddup."
Her phone pings, and Veronica has to steady her breathing before she can look at the screen.
"So I exist now? What do you need?"
She turned the phone around to show Mac, fear sour in the back of her throat.
"What do I say?"
"Tell him it's a date."
"No, I can't ..."
"Tell him, Veronica. Even when you were just friends he would say he only ever saw you for work stuff - tell him you just want to spend time with him!"
Trouble with Mac was that she was nearly always right, Veronica fumes.
"Your company. Cold Beer. Pizza."
"Is this a date, Mars?"
"Yes."
"I'll be the one with a carnation in my buttonhole."
"I'll be the one with the taser."
"Kinky."
"You wish."
"Every fucking night."
Veronica stopped breathing at that one, and nearly didn't respond. She had a picnic basket to collect, and pizza to order, and beer to pick up from the store.
One hour and forty-five minutes later, she whips out her phone before she heads into class, and types in the message so quickly she doesn't have to think about it.
"Me too."
*
"You've had a haircut," he says as folds himself down onto the blanket beside her, reaching out one hand to tug a little at the spiky strands. "I like it."
She fights her way past the sudden attack of shyness to look him in the eye.
"Yeah, I thought you would. You always did, before."
He shrugged massive shoulders and looked up at her through his eyelashes. "I liked the fact that you looked different to everyone else. Unique." His lips stretched slowly into a grin, and suddenly they were on familiar territory. "And it's sexy."
"Oh. Just as well then. I need all the help I can get in that department," she said shyly, and looked up in shock when he guffawed in disbelief.
"Come on, Mars. You walk sexy, you talk sexy - you breathe sexy, chica. You had me hot for you from the moment we met and you know it!"
"We were four when we met, Eli. Kindergarden."
"When we met again, then. When you stopped ignoring my existence. Eleventh grade. Flagpole?"
"Hmmm. Vague recollection."
He smiled ruefully and accepted the beer she held out to him as they watched the sun sink below the horizon.
"I wanted to ask you to Prom," he said, breaking a long, loaded silence. "Would you have said yes?"
She smiles sadly at the sunset and closes her eyes for a moment, thinking of all the things that might have been different.
"Yeah, I would have. Maybe just to see you in a tuxedo, but by then ... yeah."
"Wasted a lot of fucking time, didn't we girl."
"I can't ... I can't regret being with Logan. I think I needed to be. Maybe that wouldn't be over now I hadn't been with him then," she says slowly.
"You sure it's over now?"
She turns to him fully, and while the face is familiar, the unsure, hopeful look isn't.
"Not really. I think it is. I want it to be, but I can't say I'm sure. I can say ... I want something else right now."
"Yeah?"
She leant closer, bringing their foreheads together.
"Yeah, Eli. I want a romantic picnic with someone I want to spend more time with. And I want to try being more than friends with that person. And I want ..."
She pushes herself into him and traps his full, soft lips between her own, mouth moving slowly, tongue gliding over every contour it can find.
"Wanted to kiss you so badly," she confesses when she pulls back for a breath. "Wasn't the first time, either."
He puts his beer to one side and pushes the pizza box out of harms way.
"Yeah? Wanna show me?" he growls, pulling her to sprawl full length on top of him. His lips are buried in the hollow of her throat, making her pant, when she finally gets around to answering.
"God, Eli. Enough. We're on the beach!"
"So?" he growls, and this time, it doesn't make her angry. His impatience leaves her breathless and wanting, poised on the brink of doing something outrageous. And probably illegal. She forces herself to breathe, hoping it will cool her down.
"So ... ask me."
"Ask you what?"
She bites her lip and says the words straight into his ear.
"It killed me to say no last time."
His grin is a million miles wide, and it stays on his face through devouring her mouth, rolling her under him, and whispering his plans for her into her skin.
"Ask me," she laughs, and this time, he's happy to cooperate.
"So, Veronica Mars. You coming in?"
"Yes please, Mr Navarro. Yes. Please."
fin