Fic: Answer (1/?)-WeeVer-Rated R
Fic Title: Answer (1/?)
Author: lit_chick08
Pairing: Ultimately WeeVer but references LoVe, Weevil/Lilly
Rating: Light R for language and subtle sexuality
Word Count: 3443
Disclaimer: As I own nothing, that is what you will get if you sue me
Spoilers: Everything to be safe. This is future fic, so there isn’t much risk of spoilage if you’ve seen up to “Not Pictured”
Summary: History never dies no matter how much you want it to.
A/N: I’ve had this on my computer for awhile, so I figured I’d post the first part. If you like it, let me know and I’ll post more.
The thing about being a grad student is that you get no respect, no sleep, are forced to toil hours away working on the thesis that no one ever reads more than once, all while having to work at least part-time because being a student is not only a thankless job but a non-paying one. Even with all of that taken into account, Veronica Mars still loved it. She had spent more time in the library of Hearst College than she did in her bed, but she couldn’t help how much she loved school and loved her thesis topic.
Keith Mars had been surprised when his daughter had chosen criminology as her major. Sure, she had taken a class here and there, but, for her first two years at Hearst, she had been a journalism major. And then, one day, she had come home, announced that she was now majoring in criminology, and that she wanted to get her Masters in it. He couldn’t deny that he had been a bit weary of his daughter spending the rest of her life dwelling on the criminal element, but he saw the passion that she had for it.
Logan, on the other hand, could not. When she had been a nice, safe journalism major, Logan could breathe. After what had happened on the roof of the Neptune Grand on graduation night, Veronica had all but retired from the PI business. She had needed to recuperate, to deal with the knowledge that Cassidy “Beaver” Casablancas was the Crime Kingpin of Neptune, that he had raped her, and she wanted to distance herself from the scumbags that seemed to be a constant in her life.
That first year after Cassidy’s suicide, Veronica had spent most of her time with Mac, whose world had been blown apart by Cassidy’s death. Of everyone, it was Mac who was the most betrayed by Cassidy’s actions, and Veronica knew that, after your entire belief system had been shattered, you needed friends. And, even though she didn’t want to admit it, Veronica had been deathly afraid that if she let the world of mystery solving back into her life, everything would fall apart again.
Cassidy’s death had changed Logan too. He had cleaned up his act, reformed his jackass antics, and became the type of man that Veronica needed. It had taken forever to gain Keith Mars’s trust, even more to gain Wallace’s, but in the end, Veronica ended up with a tight group of friends that kept her grounded, made her feel safe.
It was because she felt safe that she finally realized that she wanted to know why. Cassidy’s rooftop confessions, the detached way that Aaron Echolls had almost casually mentioned how he had crushed Lilly’s skull, every half-assed explanation she had heard during her tenure at Mars Investigations, all of them had stuck in her brain, and she wanted to know why it was that they did those things. Suddenly, instead of catching criminals, she was studying criminals and interviewing them.
It was the interviewing that worried Logan. She had decided that her thesis was going to be on what made criminals reform and why they’d commit crimes again. It meant talking to a lot of people that were either currently or retired felons, and it meant a lot of time that Logan couldn’t baby-sit her. And Veronica wasn’t going to lie; sometimes, it just felt good to piss him off.
But today she did not have to hear from her boyfriend about how her educational pursuits were misguided. No, today she was indulging in some pleasantly mind numbing daytime television before she had to work a shift at Java the Hut and then run to a meeting with her advisor. As she sat on the futon that had taken Logan, Wallace, Keith, and a slightly inebriated Dick 45 minutes to carry up to her and Mac’s 3rd floor apartment while the elevator was out, finding a shameful pleasure in the lie detector tests that Maury Povich was reading, Mac entered the apartment, her dark hair pulled back from her face, a large laptop case over her shoulder.
She had changed even more than Veronica had in the past 5 years. At 23, Cindy MacKenzie had become the type of woman that would’ve killed the 09ers: self-possessed, respected, and financially secure. When they had graduated only a year ago, Kane Software had done everything they could to woo the hotly pursued computer maven. In the end, it had cost them a company car, a full benefits package including a month’s vacation, stock options, a 6-figure yearly salary, and a sign-on bonus that had paid off all of her college loans in one fell swoop. She had tried to tell Veronica that she didn’t need to help contribute to the household funds when she was so severely stretched, but Veronica refused. Mac hadn’t told her that she had put all of her checks into a bank account to give back to her when she finally got her Masters; no, that was the one secret of hers that Veronica didn’t know.
“I can’t believe you’re watching this,” Mac sighed, setting the heavy bag beside the futon that had taken her and Veronica’s 3 months of saving to buy 2 years ago when they had leased the apartment. When she had gotten hired at Kane, Mac could afford an apartment in a classier building with real furniture, but this was home and she liked it just the way it was.
“She who watches Dr. Phil cannot throw stones,” Veronica good-naturedly replied, offering her box of Crunch ‘N’ Munch to her best friend.
“Dr. Phil can be quite helpful,” she argued.
“Yeah, I really loved how he and Robin told me how to find my soulmate.”
“Hey, don’t mock. His episode on what to do when your first boyfriend is revealed to be a mass murderer and leaves you naked in a hotel room really changed my life.”
Veronica couldn’t help but smile. After it had happened, neither of them talked about Cassidy, let alone joked about him. Now, after years of therapy, long talks with Veronica, and more than a few Ben & Jerry’s binges, Mac was able to get past the pain and make gallows humor of it.
“So guess who I ran into when I went to pay the electric bill.”
“Ed McMahon looking for our apartment so he can hand over the big check?”
Mac rolled her eyes. “Yes, and then Justin Timberlake came in and wanted directions too because he saw Dr. Phil’s soulmate ep and thinks that you’re his.”
Voice full of mock seriousness, she chided, “Don’t joke about JT. He’s sacred.”
“Do you wanna know or what?”
Turning down the television as a heavily overweight woman in gold track pants clubbed her cheating boyfriend in the head with her fist, Veronica agreed that she did.
“Weevil.”
This time, she turned off the TV. “You saw Weevil? Weevil Navarro?”
“Do you know other Weevils?”
“Well, no, but…I didn’t know he was back in town.”
“Yeah, he just got back a few weeks ago. His grandmother died, and his nieces and nephews were gonna end up in foster care if no one claimed them. He moved back into her house and he’s working at his Uncle Angel’s garage again.”
“Sounds like you talked for awhile.”
She shrugged, tugging her dark hair out of the tight bun she kept it in at work, the bun that managed to hide the emerald streaks she’d recently added. “Well, like he said, he doesn’t have a lot of friends left in Neptune. Most of PCH is doing time or dead, and I doubt he’ll be hanging at the club anytime soon. Maybe we should have him over dinner. You know, invite Wallace and everyone. It’d be like a grown-up dinner party except that we’ll probably eat Chinese takeout.” Pushing to her feet, wandering into the kitchen to get something to drink, she asked, “Where was he living, New Mexico?”
“Arizona,” Veronica corrected softly, her mind already wandering back to the last time she had seen Weevil.
He had done six months for an assault on Thumper; the murder rap had been impossible to stick. While there were witnesses to him chloroforming the murdering biker, there was no way to tie him to the corpse crushed beneath the collapsed stadium. Veronica hadn’t gone to see him, partly because she was afraid that he had been the one to murder Thumper, but partly because she wouldn’t have faulted him for it. God knows that she would’ve loved the chance to kill Aaron Echolls, had even planned his murder out in her mind. Unlike Weevil though, someone else had done the deed for her.
While she hadn’t visited Weevil, she had taken to visiting Letticia Navarro. She was still sick, but Weevil’s arrest hadn’t weakened her. If anything, it had invigorated her. Cliff, who was working as Weevil’s attorney, had told them a story about how Letticia had taken a swing at Lamb and narrowly avoided an arrest of her own. Even though she had barely known Weevil’s grandmother, Veronica began to go over to help straighten up the house or to run errands for her. It was through Letticia that she learned of Weevil’s release.
Because one of Weevil’s cousins had gone into labor, Veronica had volunteered to pick him up from the San Diego jail that he had been held at. She was sitting in the lobby as they processed him, ignoring the incessant text messages that Logan kept sending her, when she heard the doors unlock and someone step through.
The man before her did not look like Weevil. He was leaner, muscles well-defined beneath his clothes, and Veronica immediately saw that he had a new tattoo on the left side of his neck, a design that she couldn’t quite make out. His skin had a sallow tint to it; the caramel complexion that she had envied appeared yellow under the lights, making the dark circles beneath his eyes stand out even clearer. The stubble that usually covered his scalp was gone; his hair had grown in to the point that it was getting a bit long on top, the ends gently curling. His mouth was framed by a thick but well-kept goatee, and his eyes looked infinitely older. Weevil did not look 19 any longer. No, this Weevil Navarro looked like a man.
Veronica stood awkwardly for a moment, unsure what to do, before finally settling on giving him a quick hug. She and Weevil had never had a very touchy feely relationship, but she always felt self-conscious whenever they did touch, as if she was doing something that she wasn’t supposed to.
He looked her over, at the way her blonde hair was tumbling past her shoulders, at the expensive watch that Logan had given her for her birthday, at the way her mouth opened to speak but no words came out, and he realized that he didn’t know Veronica Mars anymore.
Just like everyone else in Neptune, he had heard the stories of what went down on the roof of The Grand, knew that Beaver, the kid that had tutored him in algebra, the kid that he had always written off as being weak and forgettable, had crashed the bus, killed Curly Moran, killed the pedophile Mayor, and tried to kill Logan and Veronica. He had raged in his cell, throwing his mattress across the cell, destroying everything he came into contact with until Lamb had him restrained. Veronica had almost died and he had been sitting in a cell.
His brother Diego told him about how she goes to visit their grandma, that she made dinner and baby sat the kids, and even did chores around the house. It’s the first time that Letticia Navarro has ever relinquished her kitchen to a female that was not family, and it was a white girl at that. Diego was amazed by that, amazed by Veronica. He continued to refer to her as “your gringa,” but there’s nothing derogatory about it. It took Weevil weeks to realize that there’s pride and awe in Diego’s voice that Veronica Mars, Logan Echolls’s girlfriend and Duncan Kane’s ex, comes to his house and is treated like family when she could be out yachting with the rich boys.
Ophelia even drew a picture for him of Veronica and her little brother Miguel. She continues to call Veronica “his girlfriend” but there’s no fission of happiness within him when his niece innocently called her that. No, he just feels regret and sadness and this overwhelming feeling of helplessness because he can never be there for Veronica when she really needs it.
“Lola went into labor,” Veronica finally said, finding her voice. “Letty took her to the hospital, so I offered to pick you up.”
When he said nothing, she continued to ramble. “You look so different with your hair long like that. The goatee, too. I almost didn’t recognize you.”
Weevil winced as he stepped into the sunlight, shielding his eyes. It’d been six months since he’d seen sunlight that wasn’t filtered through a window, and he had this overpowering desire to go the Dog Beach and just bask in its rays. Two of his older brothers have been in jail since he was in junior high, long stretches for B&E and manslaughter, and he couldn’t help but wonder if they ever missed the sun like he had.
A new sound system in the Le Baron provides the soundtrack to his reintegration to society. Of all the strange things he wondered about on the ride, who put in the thousand dollar stereo is right up there. Weevil had felt some twisted sense of propriety over repairs to her ancient car, and he didn’t want to acknowledge that she had found someone else to do something that he couldn’t, even if it was something as inconsequential as installing a stereo. It was probably a gift from Logan, he decided, and he can’t help but be irrationally angry at her boyfriend.
The house was the same as always, tiny compared to those in the 09er neighborhoods with the yard that was barely large enough for all of his cousins, nephews, and nieces to play in. However, it was packed full of family, and he smiled. He was familiar with these parties; among his friends and family, release day parties were fairly common. When you ran with criminals, jail time was nothing special.
Ophelia leads the charge, and he can’t believe how big she’s gotten while he was gone. He can see her little brother running in that jerky way that only toddlers can do, and he couldn’t help but be startled because Miguel hadn’t even been walking when he’d left. The surprise only deepened when he realized that his godson was not running to him but rather Veronica, who scooped him up as if it was an every day occurrence, and accepted a kiss on the cheek from him.
He lost track of her as his family and neighbors descended, questioning him, telling him either how good he looked or how shitty he looked, and his sister Anita, Ophelia and Miguel’s mother, began to rattle off in Spanish about how “that Mars girl” had been there since 8 o’clock this morning making the arroz con pollo that he loved so much because Lola had to be rushed to the hospital and he had better not be so dumb ever again and a thousand other things that Weevil disregarded, his attention split so much that she eventually smacked him upside the head and called him Elias.
Diego hassled him about not having a beer with them, instead electing to duck inside the house to try to find Veronica. He was almost into the kitchen when something on the wall caught his eye. There, in a frame, was a Neptune High diploma that proudly announced Elias Miguel Navarro Junior had graduated.
Veronica, exiting the kitchen with a covered dish, set it down on the end table and offered, “I got it from Clemmons. I figured…even if she didn’t get to see you walk across the stage, she’d get the proof that you did it.”
Weevil had finally torn his eyes away from his diploma and stared at her for a long, unnerving moment. Veronica was about to say something when her mouth was covered with Weevil’s own.
His kiss was long, gentle, and passionate in a way that brooked no refusal while simultaneously not pushing. She stood there, enjoying the feel of his mouth against her, the taste that was uniquely Weevil’s, her arms venturing up to wrap around his neck when she remembered that she was with Logan and that no matter how good this felt, it was still wrong.
Veronica resolutely broke off the kiss, her hand unconsciously rising to touch her swollen lips, and her eyes were indescribably sad as she met his gaze. Voice raspy with emotion, she reminded him, “I’m with Logan.”
Really talking to her for the first time since she had picked him up, he simply asked, “Then why are you here and ignoring your phone?”
Shame flooded her body as she shook her head. “Weevil, we’re friends.”
“Kiss Fennel like that?”
“Of course not.”
Moving towards her, invading her personal space, he countered, “Then obviously we’re more than friends,” before kissing her again.
She wanted to protest, to scream out her loyalty to Logan, who had been so wonderful to her since Cassidy, who had been more than understanding about everything, including her shock and pain at discovering it had been Cassidy that had raped her. Logan was being the type of boyfriend that she had always prayed for and she didn’t want to betray him with Weevil, didn’t want to hurt him by reenacting Lilly’s betrayal, didn’t want to be the type of girl that had everything she ever wanted and still wasn’t satisfied.
But somehow she had become that girl because she wasn’t protesting when Weevil managed to maneuver them into the small bedroom at the end of the hallway where they couldn’t be caught.
There, on the fresh sheets that Letty had taken off the line yesterday, Veronica had sex for the first time since Duncan had left, since she had discovered that Cassidy had raped her, since she had reunited with Logan.
When it was over, both of them out of breath, slick with sweat, Weevil’s forehead resting against her collarbone, Veronica idly stroked his back, trying to keep the guilt from coming, already trying to make sense of the fact that she hadn’t let her boyfriend make love to her because she wasn’t ready but had let her recently released felon of a friend do so.
As if he could read her mind, he promised into her ear, “I won’t tell.”
He moved off of her then, putting his clothes back on, and Veronica saw the Lilly tattoo on his back, proof of his first foray into an illicit sexual affair with one of Logan Echolls’s blonde girlfriends that would make him swear his silence.
She had felt nauseous when she realized that he probably thought her to have used him, but she wasn’t sure of how she felt, why she had done this. If she had any reasons or excuses to offer him, she would have. But all she had was silence and that was what he left the room with.
For ten days she stayed away from the Navarro house, too embarrassed and unsure of herself to face Weevil. When she finally had the guts to go, Letty greeted her with a hug and a smile, inviting her to see Lola’s baby.
“I was just hoping to talk to Weevil.”
Letty’s face clouded with surprise and sadness. “Elias went to Arizona to stay with his cousin. He owns a detail shop and offered him a job. I thought that he told you.”
Veronica’s heart stopped. “No, he…I haven’t talked to him since his party.”
“I have the phone number if you want to call him.”
Quickly trying to cover her pain, she assured her, “No, no, it’s fine. I’m sure he’s gonna call and tell me it as soon as he’s settled.”
But he didn’t and Veronica slowly began to cut down her visits to the Navarro household. She was too ashamed to face Letty even if she didn’t know what had transpired during that party, too afraid that it was her fault that her grandson had fled the state.
She never told Logan.
Author: lit_chick08
Pairing: Ultimately WeeVer but references LoVe, Weevil/Lilly
Rating: Light R for language and subtle sexuality
Word Count: 3443
Disclaimer: As I own nothing, that is what you will get if you sue me
Spoilers: Everything to be safe. This is future fic, so there isn’t much risk of spoilage if you’ve seen up to “Not Pictured”
Summary: History never dies no matter how much you want it to.
A/N: I’ve had this on my computer for awhile, so I figured I’d post the first part. If you like it, let me know and I’ll post more.
The thing about being a grad student is that you get no respect, no sleep, are forced to toil hours away working on the thesis that no one ever reads more than once, all while having to work at least part-time because being a student is not only a thankless job but a non-paying one. Even with all of that taken into account, Veronica Mars still loved it. She had spent more time in the library of Hearst College than she did in her bed, but she couldn’t help how much she loved school and loved her thesis topic.
Keith Mars had been surprised when his daughter had chosen criminology as her major. Sure, she had taken a class here and there, but, for her first two years at Hearst, she had been a journalism major. And then, one day, she had come home, announced that she was now majoring in criminology, and that she wanted to get her Masters in it. He couldn’t deny that he had been a bit weary of his daughter spending the rest of her life dwelling on the criminal element, but he saw the passion that she had for it.
Logan, on the other hand, could not. When she had been a nice, safe journalism major, Logan could breathe. After what had happened on the roof of the Neptune Grand on graduation night, Veronica had all but retired from the PI business. She had needed to recuperate, to deal with the knowledge that Cassidy “Beaver” Casablancas was the Crime Kingpin of Neptune, that he had raped her, and she wanted to distance herself from the scumbags that seemed to be a constant in her life.
That first year after Cassidy’s suicide, Veronica had spent most of her time with Mac, whose world had been blown apart by Cassidy’s death. Of everyone, it was Mac who was the most betrayed by Cassidy’s actions, and Veronica knew that, after your entire belief system had been shattered, you needed friends. And, even though she didn’t want to admit it, Veronica had been deathly afraid that if she let the world of mystery solving back into her life, everything would fall apart again.
Cassidy’s death had changed Logan too. He had cleaned up his act, reformed his jackass antics, and became the type of man that Veronica needed. It had taken forever to gain Keith Mars’s trust, even more to gain Wallace’s, but in the end, Veronica ended up with a tight group of friends that kept her grounded, made her feel safe.
It was because she felt safe that she finally realized that she wanted to know why. Cassidy’s rooftop confessions, the detached way that Aaron Echolls had almost casually mentioned how he had crushed Lilly’s skull, every half-assed explanation she had heard during her tenure at Mars Investigations, all of them had stuck in her brain, and she wanted to know why it was that they did those things. Suddenly, instead of catching criminals, she was studying criminals and interviewing them.
It was the interviewing that worried Logan. She had decided that her thesis was going to be on what made criminals reform and why they’d commit crimes again. It meant talking to a lot of people that were either currently or retired felons, and it meant a lot of time that Logan couldn’t baby-sit her. And Veronica wasn’t going to lie; sometimes, it just felt good to piss him off.
But today she did not have to hear from her boyfriend about how her educational pursuits were misguided. No, today she was indulging in some pleasantly mind numbing daytime television before she had to work a shift at Java the Hut and then run to a meeting with her advisor. As she sat on the futon that had taken Logan, Wallace, Keith, and a slightly inebriated Dick 45 minutes to carry up to her and Mac’s 3rd floor apartment while the elevator was out, finding a shameful pleasure in the lie detector tests that Maury Povich was reading, Mac entered the apartment, her dark hair pulled back from her face, a large laptop case over her shoulder.
She had changed even more than Veronica had in the past 5 years. At 23, Cindy MacKenzie had become the type of woman that would’ve killed the 09ers: self-possessed, respected, and financially secure. When they had graduated only a year ago, Kane Software had done everything they could to woo the hotly pursued computer maven. In the end, it had cost them a company car, a full benefits package including a month’s vacation, stock options, a 6-figure yearly salary, and a sign-on bonus that had paid off all of her college loans in one fell swoop. She had tried to tell Veronica that she didn’t need to help contribute to the household funds when she was so severely stretched, but Veronica refused. Mac hadn’t told her that she had put all of her checks into a bank account to give back to her when she finally got her Masters; no, that was the one secret of hers that Veronica didn’t know.
“I can’t believe you’re watching this,” Mac sighed, setting the heavy bag beside the futon that had taken her and Veronica’s 3 months of saving to buy 2 years ago when they had leased the apartment. When she had gotten hired at Kane, Mac could afford an apartment in a classier building with real furniture, but this was home and she liked it just the way it was.
“She who watches Dr. Phil cannot throw stones,” Veronica good-naturedly replied, offering her box of Crunch ‘N’ Munch to her best friend.
“Dr. Phil can be quite helpful,” she argued.
“Yeah, I really loved how he and Robin told me how to find my soulmate.”
“Hey, don’t mock. His episode on what to do when your first boyfriend is revealed to be a mass murderer and leaves you naked in a hotel room really changed my life.”
Veronica couldn’t help but smile. After it had happened, neither of them talked about Cassidy, let alone joked about him. Now, after years of therapy, long talks with Veronica, and more than a few Ben & Jerry’s binges, Mac was able to get past the pain and make gallows humor of it.
“So guess who I ran into when I went to pay the electric bill.”
“Ed McMahon looking for our apartment so he can hand over the big check?”
Mac rolled her eyes. “Yes, and then Justin Timberlake came in and wanted directions too because he saw Dr. Phil’s soulmate ep and thinks that you’re his.”
Voice full of mock seriousness, she chided, “Don’t joke about JT. He’s sacred.”
“Do you wanna know or what?”
Turning down the television as a heavily overweight woman in gold track pants clubbed her cheating boyfriend in the head with her fist, Veronica agreed that she did.
“Weevil.”
This time, she turned off the TV. “You saw Weevil? Weevil Navarro?”
“Do you know other Weevils?”
“Well, no, but…I didn’t know he was back in town.”
“Yeah, he just got back a few weeks ago. His grandmother died, and his nieces and nephews were gonna end up in foster care if no one claimed them. He moved back into her house and he’s working at his Uncle Angel’s garage again.”
“Sounds like you talked for awhile.”
She shrugged, tugging her dark hair out of the tight bun she kept it in at work, the bun that managed to hide the emerald streaks she’d recently added. “Well, like he said, he doesn’t have a lot of friends left in Neptune. Most of PCH is doing time or dead, and I doubt he’ll be hanging at the club anytime soon. Maybe we should have him over dinner. You know, invite Wallace and everyone. It’d be like a grown-up dinner party except that we’ll probably eat Chinese takeout.” Pushing to her feet, wandering into the kitchen to get something to drink, she asked, “Where was he living, New Mexico?”
“Arizona,” Veronica corrected softly, her mind already wandering back to the last time she had seen Weevil.
He had done six months for an assault on Thumper; the murder rap had been impossible to stick. While there were witnesses to him chloroforming the murdering biker, there was no way to tie him to the corpse crushed beneath the collapsed stadium. Veronica hadn’t gone to see him, partly because she was afraid that he had been the one to murder Thumper, but partly because she wouldn’t have faulted him for it. God knows that she would’ve loved the chance to kill Aaron Echolls, had even planned his murder out in her mind. Unlike Weevil though, someone else had done the deed for her.
While she hadn’t visited Weevil, she had taken to visiting Letticia Navarro. She was still sick, but Weevil’s arrest hadn’t weakened her. If anything, it had invigorated her. Cliff, who was working as Weevil’s attorney, had told them a story about how Letticia had taken a swing at Lamb and narrowly avoided an arrest of her own. Even though she had barely known Weevil’s grandmother, Veronica began to go over to help straighten up the house or to run errands for her. It was through Letticia that she learned of Weevil’s release.
Because one of Weevil’s cousins had gone into labor, Veronica had volunteered to pick him up from the San Diego jail that he had been held at. She was sitting in the lobby as they processed him, ignoring the incessant text messages that Logan kept sending her, when she heard the doors unlock and someone step through.
The man before her did not look like Weevil. He was leaner, muscles well-defined beneath his clothes, and Veronica immediately saw that he had a new tattoo on the left side of his neck, a design that she couldn’t quite make out. His skin had a sallow tint to it; the caramel complexion that she had envied appeared yellow under the lights, making the dark circles beneath his eyes stand out even clearer. The stubble that usually covered his scalp was gone; his hair had grown in to the point that it was getting a bit long on top, the ends gently curling. His mouth was framed by a thick but well-kept goatee, and his eyes looked infinitely older. Weevil did not look 19 any longer. No, this Weevil Navarro looked like a man.
Veronica stood awkwardly for a moment, unsure what to do, before finally settling on giving him a quick hug. She and Weevil had never had a very touchy feely relationship, but she always felt self-conscious whenever they did touch, as if she was doing something that she wasn’t supposed to.
He looked her over, at the way her blonde hair was tumbling past her shoulders, at the expensive watch that Logan had given her for her birthday, at the way her mouth opened to speak but no words came out, and he realized that he didn’t know Veronica Mars anymore.
Just like everyone else in Neptune, he had heard the stories of what went down on the roof of The Grand, knew that Beaver, the kid that had tutored him in algebra, the kid that he had always written off as being weak and forgettable, had crashed the bus, killed Curly Moran, killed the pedophile Mayor, and tried to kill Logan and Veronica. He had raged in his cell, throwing his mattress across the cell, destroying everything he came into contact with until Lamb had him restrained. Veronica had almost died and he had been sitting in a cell.
His brother Diego told him about how she goes to visit their grandma, that she made dinner and baby sat the kids, and even did chores around the house. It’s the first time that Letticia Navarro has ever relinquished her kitchen to a female that was not family, and it was a white girl at that. Diego was amazed by that, amazed by Veronica. He continued to refer to her as “your gringa,” but there’s nothing derogatory about it. It took Weevil weeks to realize that there’s pride and awe in Diego’s voice that Veronica Mars, Logan Echolls’s girlfriend and Duncan Kane’s ex, comes to his house and is treated like family when she could be out yachting with the rich boys.
Ophelia even drew a picture for him of Veronica and her little brother Miguel. She continues to call Veronica “his girlfriend” but there’s no fission of happiness within him when his niece innocently called her that. No, he just feels regret and sadness and this overwhelming feeling of helplessness because he can never be there for Veronica when she really needs it.
“Lola went into labor,” Veronica finally said, finding her voice. “Letty took her to the hospital, so I offered to pick you up.”
When he said nothing, she continued to ramble. “You look so different with your hair long like that. The goatee, too. I almost didn’t recognize you.”
Weevil winced as he stepped into the sunlight, shielding his eyes. It’d been six months since he’d seen sunlight that wasn’t filtered through a window, and he had this overpowering desire to go the Dog Beach and just bask in its rays. Two of his older brothers have been in jail since he was in junior high, long stretches for B&E and manslaughter, and he couldn’t help but wonder if they ever missed the sun like he had.
A new sound system in the Le Baron provides the soundtrack to his reintegration to society. Of all the strange things he wondered about on the ride, who put in the thousand dollar stereo is right up there. Weevil had felt some twisted sense of propriety over repairs to her ancient car, and he didn’t want to acknowledge that she had found someone else to do something that he couldn’t, even if it was something as inconsequential as installing a stereo. It was probably a gift from Logan, he decided, and he can’t help but be irrationally angry at her boyfriend.
The house was the same as always, tiny compared to those in the 09er neighborhoods with the yard that was barely large enough for all of his cousins, nephews, and nieces to play in. However, it was packed full of family, and he smiled. He was familiar with these parties; among his friends and family, release day parties were fairly common. When you ran with criminals, jail time was nothing special.
Ophelia leads the charge, and he can’t believe how big she’s gotten while he was gone. He can see her little brother running in that jerky way that only toddlers can do, and he couldn’t help but be startled because Miguel hadn’t even been walking when he’d left. The surprise only deepened when he realized that his godson was not running to him but rather Veronica, who scooped him up as if it was an every day occurrence, and accepted a kiss on the cheek from him.
He lost track of her as his family and neighbors descended, questioning him, telling him either how good he looked or how shitty he looked, and his sister Anita, Ophelia and Miguel’s mother, began to rattle off in Spanish about how “that Mars girl” had been there since 8 o’clock this morning making the arroz con pollo that he loved so much because Lola had to be rushed to the hospital and he had better not be so dumb ever again and a thousand other things that Weevil disregarded, his attention split so much that she eventually smacked him upside the head and called him Elias.
Diego hassled him about not having a beer with them, instead electing to duck inside the house to try to find Veronica. He was almost into the kitchen when something on the wall caught his eye. There, in a frame, was a Neptune High diploma that proudly announced Elias Miguel Navarro Junior had graduated.
Veronica, exiting the kitchen with a covered dish, set it down on the end table and offered, “I got it from Clemmons. I figured…even if she didn’t get to see you walk across the stage, she’d get the proof that you did it.”
Weevil had finally torn his eyes away from his diploma and stared at her for a long, unnerving moment. Veronica was about to say something when her mouth was covered with Weevil’s own.
His kiss was long, gentle, and passionate in a way that brooked no refusal while simultaneously not pushing. She stood there, enjoying the feel of his mouth against her, the taste that was uniquely Weevil’s, her arms venturing up to wrap around his neck when she remembered that she was with Logan and that no matter how good this felt, it was still wrong.
Veronica resolutely broke off the kiss, her hand unconsciously rising to touch her swollen lips, and her eyes were indescribably sad as she met his gaze. Voice raspy with emotion, she reminded him, “I’m with Logan.”
Really talking to her for the first time since she had picked him up, he simply asked, “Then why are you here and ignoring your phone?”
Shame flooded her body as she shook her head. “Weevil, we’re friends.”
“Kiss Fennel like that?”
“Of course not.”
Moving towards her, invading her personal space, he countered, “Then obviously we’re more than friends,” before kissing her again.
She wanted to protest, to scream out her loyalty to Logan, who had been so wonderful to her since Cassidy, who had been more than understanding about everything, including her shock and pain at discovering it had been Cassidy that had raped her. Logan was being the type of boyfriend that she had always prayed for and she didn’t want to betray him with Weevil, didn’t want to hurt him by reenacting Lilly’s betrayal, didn’t want to be the type of girl that had everything she ever wanted and still wasn’t satisfied.
But somehow she had become that girl because she wasn’t protesting when Weevil managed to maneuver them into the small bedroom at the end of the hallway where they couldn’t be caught.
There, on the fresh sheets that Letty had taken off the line yesterday, Veronica had sex for the first time since Duncan had left, since she had discovered that Cassidy had raped her, since she had reunited with Logan.
When it was over, both of them out of breath, slick with sweat, Weevil’s forehead resting against her collarbone, Veronica idly stroked his back, trying to keep the guilt from coming, already trying to make sense of the fact that she hadn’t let her boyfriend make love to her because she wasn’t ready but had let her recently released felon of a friend do so.
As if he could read her mind, he promised into her ear, “I won’t tell.”
He moved off of her then, putting his clothes back on, and Veronica saw the Lilly tattoo on his back, proof of his first foray into an illicit sexual affair with one of Logan Echolls’s blonde girlfriends that would make him swear his silence.
She had felt nauseous when she realized that he probably thought her to have used him, but she wasn’t sure of how she felt, why she had done this. If she had any reasons or excuses to offer him, she would have. But all she had was silence and that was what he left the room with.
For ten days she stayed away from the Navarro house, too embarrassed and unsure of herself to face Weevil. When she finally had the guts to go, Letty greeted her with a hug and a smile, inviting her to see Lola’s baby.
“I was just hoping to talk to Weevil.”
Letty’s face clouded with surprise and sadness. “Elias went to Arizona to stay with his cousin. He owns a detail shop and offered him a job. I thought that he told you.”
Veronica’s heart stopped. “No, he…I haven’t talked to him since his party.”
“I have the phone number if you want to call him.”
Quickly trying to cover her pain, she assured her, “No, no, it’s fine. I’m sure he’s gonna call and tell me it as soon as he’s settled.”
But he didn’t and Veronica slowly began to cut down her visits to the Navarro household. She was too ashamed to face Letty even if she didn’t know what had transpired during that party, too afraid that it was her fault that her grandson had fled the state.
She never told Logan.